Free The Forever Girl by Alexander McCall Smith Page B

every day, for most of the day; he would be bound to mention that he had rescued his colleague’s wife.
    She felt raw inside. Dread, she thought. That’s what dread feels like. Rawness. Hollowness. She would have to speak to John. She would have to ask him not to say anything. And that meant that she would have to confess that her presence on George’s boat was being kept secret from David. It was nothing short of an admission of adultery.
    The rescuing boat took them all the way back to the canal. One of their crew jumped out onto the dock to pull them in, and they were soon safely attached. Amanda went ashore. The other boat was standing off and was about to leave to go back to its own berth at a marina some distance away.
    John waved to her. “Happy ending,” he called out. “But I’ll have to claim salvage from David!”
    She shook her head. “No,” she called out. “Don’t.”
    He laughed. “Only joking.”
    The other boat was beginning to pull away. She looked at John desperately. She was unable to shout out a request that he say nothing. She waved again, trying to make a cancelling gesture. He waved back, giving her a thumbs-up sign. Then they moved off, leaving behind them a wake that washed sedately at the edges of the canal. She heard the barking of the liquor store man’s Dobermann, and laughter from the other boat.
    George was at her side.
    “You knew him?”
    She nodded miserably. “David’s partner.”
    He was silent for a while. Then: “Oh. Not good.”
    “No.”
    He looked at her expectantly. “What do you want me to do?”
    “You? Nothing.”
    She thought of what she should do. She would go back to the tennis club, collect her car, and then drive straight to the Galbraith house and wait for John to come home. She would explain to him that she did not want him to mention to David that she had been out in George’s boat. She would tell him the truth; she would explain that there was nothing between them but that she understood that it looked suspicious. She would appeal to him through truthfulness.

10
    John Galbraith lived on his own in a house overlooking South Sound. The house was older than others around it, having been built when the land in that area was first cleared. It was modest in scale compared with more recent constructions, and less ostentatious. A recent storm had brought down several of his trees but the house itself was still largely obscured by vegetation when viewed from the road, and it was only once on the driveway that one could see the full charm of the Caribbean-style bungalow. A deep veranda ran the length of the front, giving an impression of cool and shade. The exterior was painted light blue and the woodwork white – a local combination that could still be seen on the few remaining old Cayman cottages. It was a perfect colour scheme for a landscape dominated by sea and sky.
    John, who was in his early forties, had been in the Caymans for almost fifteen years, having arrived several years before David and Amanda. He was now the senior local partner in the accountancy firm in which David worked, and would become, so everybody said, an international partner before too long.
    He was unmarried – a fact that led to the usual speculation, but none of it substantiated. There were rumours about his private life, of course, about boyfriends, but if these ever reached him, he showed only indifference to gossip, and cheerfully enjoyed the company of women, who found him sympathetic and a good listener.
    Amanda encountered John socially at drinks and dinner parties. She and David had been to his house on several occasions, and had entertained him themselves. As a spare man who was good company at a dinner party, he was much in demand byhostesses seeking to balance a table. He could be counted on to talk to any woman he was seated next to without giving rise to any complications. He could be counted upon, too, never to mention business, which formed the core of many of the