The Prodigal Wife Read Free Page B

dropped precipitously into the sea below. Hers was the last in the row of coastguard cottages and the most private. The other two were holiday homes, let out for most of the summer and empty for the greater part of the winter. Her windows had an uninterrupted view of the sea, and of the coast that stretched away to Stoke Point to the west and Bolt Tail to the east. Inside the boundary walls she’d planted escallonia, fuchsia, tamarisk, to protect herself from the interested, and even envious, gaze of walkers on the coastal path higher up the cliff that passed a few yards from the front door. She leaned her elbows on the wide wall where feverfew clung in tiny crevices, and clumps of pink and white valerian were precariously rooted. Below her the sea rocked gently as though it were tethered to the cliffs, anchored and going nowhere; a squabble of seagulls screamed insults at one another from sharp-angled ledges. Light streamed down from a wide haze-blue firmament and was reflected back so that there was no distinction between sky and water. Away to the west a single fishing boat ploughed a lonely, shining furrow.
    Soon he would be on his way: there would be time for talk, for sharing, and for love.

    â€˜It’s so silly,’ she said to him much later. ‘I threw a wobbly. Panicking about Henrietta and how she’ll manage while they’re all away. Two months! It’s such a long time, Angus.’
    She passed him a mug of tea, suddenly remembering the remark a mutual friend had once made about Angus Radcliff. ‘He’s so dishy, he could have been the model for Action Man,’ she’d said. ‘I rather fancy him, don’t you?’ Cordelia had pretended indifference but she’d understood what she meant: the disconcerting light-grey stare and strong jaw; the dark, close-cropped hair and compact, well-muscled body.
    â€˜So which outfit do you imagine him in?’ she’d asked the friend. ‘Resistance Fighter? Helicopter Pilot? Arctic Explorer?’
    â€˜Oh, I imagine him in nothing at all,’ the friend had answered promptly. ‘That’s the whole point’ – and they’d shrieked with laughter.
    Now, sitting down opposite him, she hid her smile. ‘And I’ve been thinking,’ she said. ‘You know when we were on the narrowboat I was telling you about Susan’s marriage breaking up and her parents whisking her and the children off to New Zealand? Well, it occurred to me when I was driving home that surely you must know Roger and Maggie Lestrange? Wasn’t Roger at Dartmouth the same year as you and Simon?’
    â€˜Roger Lestrange. Yes, of course I know him. You didn’t mention his surname. But we weren’t the same year. Roger was two years ahead of me and Simon at BRNC, but much later on Roger and I were at the M.o.D. together with Hal Chadwick. Roger and Hal were great oppos. Or should I say Admiral Sir Henry Chadwick?’ He pulled a mock-reverential face.
    â€˜Dear old Hal,’ Cordelia said affectionately. ‘He’s such a sweetie. And Fliss is so perfect as Lady Chadwick. That clean-cut, patrician face. Couldn’t happen to a nicer couple. Remember when they let me do that piece for Country Life on that wonderful old house of theirs? The Keep. Hal was thrilled but Fliss insisted that their more personal details were kept right out of it, which was fair enough, I suppose. Apart from the history of the place we decided to concentrate on the organic vegetable-growing business that Jolyon started, Keep Organics. It was great fun.’
    â€˜Odd, though, isn’t it?’ he said thoughtfully. ‘They weren’t always a couple, Hal and Fliss. We tend to forget it because they seem so right together. They’ve only been married for about seven or eight years. Fliss and Hal are cousins, you know, and The Keep is just as much Fliss’s as Hal’s.’
    â€˜They explained that when I went