The Vows of Silence Read Free

expression. Slightly diffident smile. Nothing especially distinctive. But a good face. Good-looking? Yes, but not overwhelmingly handsome. It was his expression. Warm. Trustworthy. Yes.
    She glanced at the others. One was out at once—the bushy beard. Another was too old. Perfectly OK but she couldn’t believe he was sixty or under. The last one was fine. Nothing against him. But when she looked back at the first there was no contest.
    “ Click beside any photograph if you would like to know more about this person .”
    She clicked.
    “ Phil is Head of History at a boys’ school. He has been widowed for five years and has two grown-up sons. His interests include cooking, cricket, books and ornithology. He loves his job and has many friends but since his sons left home he has felt the lack of a special companion in his life.
    If you want to send your profile and photograph to Phil, click HERE.
    If you would like to leave a voicemail for Phil, click HERE .”
    She clicked twice.

Three
    “There is not any such word as plam.”
    “There is so such a word as plam.”
    “You’re making it up. Uncle Si, isn’t he making it up?”
    “Mummy …”
    “Don’t ask me,” Cat Deerbon said, dropping a handful of walnuts into the salad bowl, “you know I can’t do Scrabble.”
    “You don’t ‘do’ Scrabble, duh. You play it.”
    “Sam, how many times have I told you, ‘duh’—and especially ‘duh’ with that face—is incredibly insulting and you do not do or say it.”
    Sam sighed and turned back to the board. “Plam,” he said, “is a word.”
    “What does it mean then?”
    “It’s … the sort of way Australian emu birds land. They go ‘plam.’”
    Simon Serrailler stood up with a shout of laughter.“Brilliant, Sam. I give you ten for Creative Cheating.” He wandered over to the other side of the kitchen and dipped his finger into the salad dressing. “Needs more lemon.”
    “I doubt it.”
    “And a pinch of sugar.”
    “Why not make it yourself?”
    “Can’t be arsed.”
    “Mummy, Uncle Simon said—”
    “I know, and it is a most unattractive expression. Don’t say it again, please.” Cat glared at her brother.
    “You’ve got bossier. That’s Australia for you. Loud, bossy women.”
    Cat threw a piece of lettuce at him. Simon ducked. The lettuce landed wetly on the floor.
    “God, I love it. Love it, love it, love it.” Simon threw himself onto the old kitchen sofa. “I wish you knew what it was like when you weren’t here and those people were and I couldn’t come and—”
    “You told us,” Sam said, tipping the Scrabble letters into their green drawstring bag, “how awful it was.”
    “Yes, about a million zillion times.”
    “So you missed us. That figures.”
    “Si, will you open that bottle? Sam, please put the mats on the table. Hannah—”
    “I have to go to the loo, I absolutely-scootly have to.”
    “Mum, you have to stop her doing that, she’s always doing it, she does it to get out of things, she doesn’t need to go to the loo at all.”
    “Stop whingeing.”
    Simon rummaged in the drawer for the corkscrew. “You know,” he said to Cat, “it is “absolutely-scootly” typical of Dad. It really is.”
    “He can see us when he gets back. Don’t make a thing of it.”
    Richard Serrailler, Cat and Simon’s father, had announced that he was taking a holiday just when the Deerbon family returned from Australia.
    “But he doesn’t go on holidays. He hates holidays. And what’s he going to do in Madeira for two weeks, for God’s sake?”
    “Soak up the sun?”
    “He hates sun.”
    “He just didn’t want to make a song and dance about us coming home after nine months—he wants to pretend we haven’t been away at all, and by the time he gets back it’ll feel as if we haven’t. Actually,” Cat put the salad bowl on the table, “it feels like that already.”
    “God, sis, am I glad you’re home.”
    She gave him a brief smile, before bending to take