Read Online The Perfect Soldier by Graham Hurley - Free Book Online Page A

beautifully maintained. It hadn’t been cheap, and Giles had agonised for weeks about spending the money, but the late eighties had marked the floodtide of the Thatcher boom and it had been at Molly’s insistence that he’d finally taken the plunge. He worked jolly hard. He owed himself a pat on the back, a little present for weekends. He was getting just a touch old for dinghy racing. Why not invest in the real thing?
    Closer now, Molly shaded her eyes against the livid sunset, beginning to wonder whether Giles had, after all, been to sea. The mainsail on the yacht was lashed down and the decks were bare of the clutter that normally signalled a recent outing. She paused a moment, looking down at the green skirt of algae on the waterline, struck by another thought. For the first time ever, Giles hadn’t bothered about defouling
Molly Jay
’s hull. At the end of every season, without fail, the yacht was always lifted onto dry land and chocked in a wooden cradle. Removing the summer’s growth of underwater weed took the best part of a month, Giles disappearing at weekends with his bucket of chemicals and his scrubbing brush. This ritual had become a family joke, Giles obsessed by the state of
Molly
’s bottom, but this year – for whatever reason – the boat was still in the water. Maybe he’s just deferred it, Molly thought. Or maybe there’s some other reason.
    She stepped aboard, feeling the yacht moving beneath her. Clambering down into the well of the cockpit, she called Giles’s name. The hatch to the cabin was open and she could see a light on inside. She heard a movement, then Giles’s face appeared at the open hatch. To her relief, he was smiling. His hair was everywhere and he was wearing a shapeless old guernsey she’d given him years back. He looked almost normal.
    ‘Darling …’ he reached up and kissed her, ‘just in time for tea.’
    Molly climbed down into the cabin. Giles had the little heater on. With the curtains pulled and the kettle singing on the calor gas stove, the boat felt warm and snug. No wonder he’d preferred this, she thought, to another day of humiliation at the office. Molly found a perch on the cluttered banquette behind the table, undoing the buttons on her coat while Giles rummaged through a cupboard, looking for tea-bags.
    ‘Patrick OK?’ he said.
    ‘He was fine. He took me to lunch.’
    ‘Anywhere nice?’
    Molly named a hotel on Frinton’s seafront. Giles whistled.
    ‘Lucky thing.’
    He found the tea-bags at last and scalded the battered metal teapot with boiling water. Molly watched him, curious now at this latest transformation. The stranger she’d spent the night with seemed to have become yet a third person: relaxed, benign, even light-hearted. She felt herself losing track again, a sense of bewilderment spiced with a certain irritation.
    ‘We talked about what’s happened, the money and everything,’ she said quietly. ‘I’d no idea it was so bad.’
    Giles looked round, the steaming teapot wrapped in atowel. For the first time Molly noticed the oil on his hands.
    ‘It’s terrible …’ he was saying, ‘I’m afraid it couldn’t be worse.’
    ‘But why didn’t you tell me? Am I allowed to ask?’
    ‘Of course.’
    Giles put the teapot to one side and then turned towards her again, leaning back against the tiny sink. He was a tall man and the cabin roof made him stoop.
    ‘Well?’
    Molly tried to warm the question with a smile. The last thing she wanted was another scene, more tears. Better this Giles than the chilly, thin-lipped wreck she’d run home to only a day ago. Giles was looking at his shoes.
    ‘I couldn’t,’ he said simply. ‘I just couldn’t tell you. I tried, believe me. Several times, I almost did it. I used to sit on the train, trying to work out ways of saying it. But somehow …’ he shrugged, ‘it never happened.’
    ‘Until James died.’
    ‘Yes, of course, James …’ he frowned, ‘that really put it in