Read Online Dancing in the Dark by Susan Moody - Free Book Online

says I need a stabilizing influence?’
    â€˜I do.’ Carolyn reaches up and adjusts the complicated mechanism holding her smooth blonde hair in its French twist.
    â€˜Secondly,’ says Fergus, ‘over the many delightful years that I’ve been privileged to enjoy your friendship, you have placed before me a pot-pourri, a farrago, a veritable gallimaufry of girls so totally undesirable that a weaker man than myself might have been driven to the brink of suicide.’
    â€˜Nonsense,’ Charlie says. ‘What about—’
    Fergus interrupts him with a raised hand. ‘And thirdly, can I state categorically that despite disastrous appearances to the contrary, I am more than capable of finding my own women friends.’ He looks from husband to wife. ‘When you speak of Theo, do you mean that friend of Jenny’s who I met here at one of your parties several years ago?’
    â€˜That’s right.’
    â€˜When I say she’s uptight, don’t get me wrong,’ Charlie says. ‘She’s a very . . . interesting woman.’
    â€˜Exactly,’ says Caro. ‘Fergus needs someone intelligent, complex, feisty. Theo’s all of those. And pretty, besides.’
    â€˜But is she really what he’s looking for?’
    Fergus leans back against the dresser. In the distance they hear the sound of little boys thundering down the stairs, calling his name. ‘How the fuck do either of you know what I’m looking for?’
    â€˜Because I know
so
much better than you do who’s right for you,’ says Charlie. ‘And because I’m a psychologist.’
    â€˜And because we love you,’ adds Caro, sweetly.
    â€˜I really appreciate your concern, but I’ll select my own mate, if you don’t mind.’
    â€˜Be like that.’ Carolyn smiles at him as her sons burst into the room.
    Later, when he is left alone while Caro and Charlie occupy themselves with last-minute preparations for their lunch party, he finds himself thinking about the once-met Theodora Cairns. She had dimples, if he remembers correctly. And extraordinary eyes, the colour of pewter or of deep-packed ice, the colour of smoke, with the blackest eyelashes. Eyes that yearned. Eyes that begged not to be rejected. Smoke gets in your eyes. Makes you weep. Baggage, Charlie said. He dimly remembers something about the mother – a singer? A dancer? – who’d abandoned her when she was a child.
    He walks out into the garden. White-clothed tables laden with glasses and open bottles wait beneath a leafy walnut tree. Something is being barbecued. Caro’s garden gleams green and gold. Has she thwacked the nail on the head? Is that what’s wrong, is it time he settled down? Trouble is, he hasn’t yet found the elusive Ms Right, even though he knows that the woman he hopes for does exist somewhere, she
must
exist, even if it’s on another planet, in another country, a different century, an alternative life. So where is she, why is she not banging on his door? He’s thirty-nine and so far has never met a woman he could imagine in his future. And what are the chances of colliding with her at Caro Cartwright’s luncheon party?
    He pours himself another glass of wine. Remembers the unforgettable vacation he’d spent in Corfu years ago with Charlie, at the Cartwright family’s villa. Part of an unforgettable year. His first book published. Money, for the first time in his life. Freedom. A loosening of the chains which bound him to Dublin. Knowing that he had finally kissed the past goodbye. Or so he hoped.
    Every day he’d got up at five and worked until the household came to life. He’d written there, fingers flying across the keys of the typewriter he’d carted out from England, desperate to keep up with the glossy thoughts oozing from him like some rich oil. Corfu had pulled the words out of him, unrolled them like scarves, like