Free The Sea Garden by Marcia Willett Page A

space and silence there was a sense of peace and healing and, as she sits there on the edge of the bed, Jess remembers how deeply she breathed, drawing in great gasps of the clean moorland air. The cold grip of loneliness that has curled around her heart for so long was eased as she took those deep breaths. When Kate pointed to a sinuous, dazzling glint of water away in the west and said, ‘Look, that’s the Tamar,’ Jess’s heart, freed from that chill, habitual constriction, suddenly bumped with an odd sensation of recognition. Her roots were here: here, in this part of the West Country, her father’s family once lived. Just for a brief moment she experienced a feeling of closeness to him, as if he were beside her, encouraging her, approving her journey.
    Jess puts her mobile on the little chest beside her bed: there is simply too much happening to condense it into text-speak. She looks again at the little painting and, seized with a confusing mixture of excitement, happiness and terror, she switches off the light, slips quickly beneath the duvet, curls into a ball and prepares to sleep.
    *   *   *
    â€˜I can’t get over it,’ Tom says for the third or fourth time. ‘She’s Juliet to the life. She’s gorgeous.’
    Kate has brought Jess over for lunch and he is absolutely captivated by her. Now, after supper, he sits with Cass in the drawing-room, remembering the parties down on the Tamar and the lovely Juliet.
    â€˜You’re salivating, darling,’ Cass says, leaning forward to switch channels. ‘Not very attractive.’
    Tom makes a little face behind her back. Meeting Jess has made him feel young again: strong and virile.
    â€˜Well, you’ve got to admit that it’s true,’ he says. ‘It’s an extraordinary likeness. Wait till Johnnie sees her, and old Fred. We really must have a thrash to celebrate. Who else do we know who’d remember Mike and Juliet? What about the Mortlakes? Stephen always lusted after Juliet. He got quite serious about her, actually, way back before he was married.’
    There’s an odd little silence. Cass seems to be engrossed in River Cottage, her head slightly turned away from him towards the television, and Tom remembers that Stephen was also very attracted to Cass, much later on after they were all married and settled with children. He’d been a bit of a pest – but then Stephen had always been a chancer.
    Anyway, that was a long time ago, water under the bridge; Tom makes another little face and finishes his glass of wine. Funny how Jess has really jollied him up. Oh, he’d been aware of Oliver’s sardonic eye on him through lunch, but that hadn’t stopped him. He’d been on form; a bit of a devil. Jess likes him, he can tell. He settles back to watch Hugh – ‘Sod it, where’s the corkscrew’ – Whittingstall and, glancing sideways, Cass can see that he is now totally engrossed.
    But Cass is wrong. Tom is staring at the television screen but the pictures he sees are quite different from Hugh doing clever things with ducks in his kitchen. He has slipped back forty years in time and is seeing the ballroom on HMS Drake; Juliet twirling in Mike’s arms, laughing across his shoulder, her long skirts floating and clinging to his smart uniform.
    *   *   *
    Tom stood at the edge of the floor, waiting for Cass to come back from the heads, watching Juliet and Mike. Juliet’s beauty was not ethereal, though she was graceful and slender; her hair and eyes were a strange mix of red and brown, the colour of a vixen’s coat. She was of the earth, earthy. The long thick hair was piled up high tonight, but long shining strands fell around her throat, and Tom imagined himself taking the hairpins out, one by one, and watching that heavy shining mass fall down around her shoulders and over her bare breasts.
    Cass tiptoed up behind him.