Read Online Love by Clare Naylor - Free Book Online Page B

wholesale. Y’know, I might just buy this place intact, rhubarb leaves in wineglasses, that kind of thing. No imagination of my own, just method furnishing.”
    â€œI sometimes think that one day I’ll have a magnificent dinner party with all this stylized stuff, serve pebbles in bowls with a few red berries for color, goldfish in the soup tureen,” Amy ventured. They both got the giggles and invented a fantastical life in the day of the Conran Shop shopper.
    â€œPyramids of oysters and a banana tree,” he offered.
    â€œA bed you could live in, like that Evelyn Waugh character, Sonia Digby Vane Trumpington, who just drank Black Velvet in bed all day, entertained all her gentlemenfriends from the bath, and let her pekes keep her feet warm. Darling.” Amy put on her best Noël Coward voice, and they spun through the chic splendor of the shop until they’d constructed a fantasy around every teaspoon and assumed parts of Italian countesses, reclusive starlets, and East End gangsters shacking up on the Costa del Sol.
    â€œWhat about this one?” Orlando said, hurrying over to a filigree lace hammock.
    â€œI don’t think it would hold me,” said Amy, assessing its delicacy.
    â€œRubbish, it would hold both of us. It’s for some South Pacific island where you could swim with turtles by day and lie beneath the Southern Cross at night.”
    â€œTied between two palm trees,” Amy mused, fingering the white lace.
    â€œNo, mango trees, then you could pluck them handily for breakfast.”
    â€œI should think if I decided to plant a farm at the foot of the Ngong hills, I’d like one of these.” Amy put on her best
Out of Africa
voice and patted a large mother-of-pearl-encrusted tea chest.
    â€œBut watch out for syphilis,” warned Orlando.
    â€œWhy syphilis?” Amy asked.
    â€œBecause, my dear, the Happy Valley was positively alive with it, that and elephants and the sound of us all making love to our best friends’ wives. See what I mean, old girl?”
    â€œAbsolutely, darling. Neville was the most handsome man I ever had the pleasure of committing adultery with.” Amy smoked an invisible cigarette and tilted her head to one side.
    â€œAlmost as good as me in bed?” asked Orlando, holding her gaze and falling silent.
    Amy didn’t say anything. For a half second they looked at each other and she held her breath, then a shopper with a large palm tree walked between them. Barely remembering who they were, they collapsed, exhausted, on the sofa where they’d begun.
    â€œI still don’t know what to get for my mother.” Orlando frowned.
    â€œHyacinths,” said Amy confidently. “Mothers always go on about how divine they smell and ‘what a beautiful blue’ they are.”
    â€œSettled,” he said, heading for a vast terra-cotta tub of bulbs.
    They stood in the queue to pay.
    â€œAll this talk of grand lifestyles has made me feel like Neanderthal man, never cooking, never entertaining. Why not come round for Sunday lunch tomorrow? I can’t promise olive groves but I can buy some cashews from Sainsbury’s.”
    â€œLove to,” said Amy. They shook hands.
    â€œDone.”
    â€œHere’s my address.” He scribbled on a taxi card and handed it to her. “One-ish.” Amy nodded.
    As she was leaving she noticed the girl at the till noticing him. She was pouting and fluttering like a drag queen. Never mind, Amy shrugged, I’m sharing roast chicken with him, not her. That-a-girl, Amy!

C HAPTER 13
    A my pulled up on Orlando’s doorstep just a few minutes past one. Ish, she told herself, one-ish, this’ll be fine. She contemplated doing another couple of laps of the street on her bike to waste time but then she’d already done three and might start to perspire, or was it glow? She knew ladies didn’t sweat. A little flummoxed, she checked her