Read Online Undercurrent by Frances Fyfield - Free Book Online Page A

stood elegantly with her hand on the jamb.

    'Has Neil been round recently?'
    'Yeah. Took her out, Saturday. It's great she likes the castle so much.' As if she didn't know.
    As if she didn't check on Neil, too.

    'Oh, by the way. There's this bloke in town, got here yesterday. He, hmm, says he knew Francesca years ago, wants to get in touch. I. . . hmm, well, any idea what I should say? I mean, I'm her cousin, but you were her closest friend and you, you sort of hmm, know her best. What do you think she would want me to say?'

    She spoke as if she were tossing away a careless and purposeless question, but she was hesitant and slightly flustered, the way she never was. It made Angela more suspicious than ever. She shrugged, thought of the sleeping child, and crossed her arms, defensively, careful not to let irritation show.
    'I dunno what you say. Truth's best, isn't it? Tell him where to write to her, I would. I expect she likes letters. She used to write enough of them. Always writing something.'

    Maggie nodded, smiled and was gone. Angela picked up the artfully wrapped snowdrops, and after three seconds' contemplation of stamping them underfoot, unwrapped them carefully and found a cup to put them in, with water, so that they should not die. They must be prominently displayed until they decayed.

    They had the fresh look of half-budded winter blooms which would last in a cool room for days.
    She would take them to Uncle Joe. The child began to stir in her sleep and cry. Sudden sounds like that made Angela anxious. When this child had come to her, she had newly mended bones and scars the healing of which she could never quite believe.

    It was nonsense for anyone to believe that a woman could not love an adopted child as much as if it were her own flesh and blood. Impossible to love anyone more than this. But real mothers, real, neglectful, selfish mothers, did not have to open the door to every knock. They could ruin their kids and no one would know.

    The cry of the seagulls woke Henry from his doze on the pier. He was aware of a vague sensation of being watched. A long doze which left him consulting the time to find the day waning.
    The last bench had been sheltered and caught the sun; it had invited him to sit on it, but not for so long. Tired again. He blamed the influx of cholesterol having the same effect on his arteries as all those militants blocking negotiations somewhere in the countries of Europe beyond the horizon.

    He had dozed with the readiness of an old, old man, and the afternoon had struck him unawares. His eyes were rimmed with a brittle crust of salt. He rose stiffly, peered over the rails to the fishing platform, and saw again the broken boards and the sea, swelling gently beneath. He remembered the things he needed to do - buy a new hat, find another place to stay - and felt indecisive, fuddled by sleep and ashamed of it. He started to walk back the length of the Titanic towards the town, slowly.

    The shoreline met the sea in a curve. He felt, as he stopped, that he was approaching the rim of the world, a newcomer to it. To the far left he could see the suggestion of a cliff, at odds with the flatness of the coast, as if marking the beginning of new, alien territory a mile away. In the nearer distance there was the squat outline of one of the castles he had come to see, and for a moment, recognizing it from illustrations, he was disappointed. It seemed mean looking and close to the ground, squatting like a toad, instead of rising high against the sky into misty battlements like the castles of fairy tales, and it seemed sadly dwarfed by the redbrick block of flats next to it.

    Henry did not want to register disappointment, so he let his eyes wander, away from the dun castle walls, across a fine parade of white buildings to the junction and then to the houses which stretched out to the right. All of them seemed to be different heights and colours, pinks and blues and whites, red, pantiled roofs,