bit of spontaneity. To make love to you on the sofa, for instance. On the floor â why not? In the bath. I donât want to be treated like half of an old married couple stopping the night with friends.â
âItâs not like that, Andrew.â
âIt is just like that. Are you going to tell me you donât keep quiet because theyâre there? Youâre not careful to stop the bed from creaking? If you have to go to the bathroom youâre not conscious that one of them may be in it? Now thatâs embarrassing if you like.â Andrew was dressed by now, peering into the mirror to tie his tie. âAnd donât say itâs as bad coming to me. You know Seb mostly stays in his room. Besides, I canât live in my place without his rent.â
âI wasnât going to say anything.â Getting up, Ismay wondered if the bathroom was free but knew that if she asked Andrew another storm of protests would begin. âEdmundâs found a flat, heâs expecting to sign the contract soon. He and Heather are engaged and as soon as he can move he will and sheâll go with him.â
âAnd how long is that going to be? In my experience itâs only when people pay for property with ready cash that these deals get done fast. Someone I know in chambers waited a year from signing a contract on a house until completion.â He turned round and put out his arms, holding her naked body against him. âI love you. I love holding you like this whenever I want. I want to be alone with you and I donât want to wait a year.â
âOf course it wonât be a year, darling.â Ismay took her dressing gown off the bed and wrapped it round her. âApril is what Edmundâs solicitor says.â
âLook at you. You have to cover yourself up to go to the bathroom. In case your sisterâs boyfriend sees you. And in half an hour weâre all supposed to sit round the kitchen table having breakfast together like two married couples sharing a
gîte
in the Dordogne. Oh, please. But Iâm not doing that. Not this time. Iâm going to leave now and call into Starbucks on my way.â
But they were engaged, Edmund and Heather, she thought when he had gone. They would marry as soonas they had somewhere to live. Heather would go and Andrew could move in. It wouldnât be long, a few months at most. This will all work out, she told herself. It will come right. And as she made her way to the bathroom, passing Heatherâs door which was a little ajar, she caught a glimpse of Edmund and Heather standing as she and Andrew had stood a few moments before. Quickly she looked away but not before she had seen that Heather was naked, Edmundâs arms enclosing her. The difference was that they were kissing.
Looking back, Ismay supposed she had been in love with Guy. He was her type, the prototype of her type really, the first one of a few that ended in Andrew, thin, tall, dark men with fine-drawn features and beautiful hands. When her mother first brought Guy Rolland home she and Heather had been antagonistic, loyal to their fatherâs memory, absolutely unable to understand that Beatrix, at not quite thirty-nine, might not yet be past the age for love. And that attitude had continued as far as Heather was concerned. She liked Guy as little as she was to like Andrew. In fact, when Ismay thought about it, she saw that her sister reacted to both men in the same way, had been similarly hostile â though rather less so â to those boyfriends who had come in between. Was it that they all looked a bit like Guy?
The first evening that Guy came into the house with Beatrix they had been to the theatre and Guy brought her home. It was only their second date, the first being the dinner with Pamela and Michael. Guy was the marketing manager in the firm Pamela worked for at that time. There had been no matchmaking intended, she said afterwards, and it was hard to see
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