Free Voices in Summer by Rosamunde Pilcher

streaming glass, waiting for their plane to take off. On time the great jet thundered down the runway, lights flashing through the gloom. He watched it lift off, but seconds later it was lost to sight, swallowed into the clouds. He stayed until the sound of the engines died into the darkness. Only then did he turn away, making the long walk across the polished floor towards the head of the escalator. There were people everywhere, but he did not see them, and no head turned to watch him go. For the first time in his life he knew how it felt to be a nonentity, a failure.
    He drove himself back to his empty house. Bad news travels with the speed of light and by now it was common knowledge that his marriage was finished, that Erica had left him for a rich American and had taken Gabriel with her. This, in some measure, was a relief, because it meant that Alec didn't have to tell people, but he shied from social contact and sympathy, and although Tom Boulderstone had asked him around to Campden Hill for supper this evening, he had refused the invitation, and Tom had understood.
    He was used to being alone, but now his solitude had a new dimension. He went upstairs, and the bedroom, stripped of Erica's possessions, seemed empty, unfamiliar. He had a shower and changed, and then went downstairs again, poured himself a drink, and took it into the sitting room. Without Erica's pretty ornaments, without any flowers, it looked desolate, and he drew the curtains and told himself that tomorrow he would stop off at the florist and buy himself a potted plant.
    It was nearly half past eight, but he was not hungry. He was too exhausted, too drained, for hunger. Later, he would go and investigate, and see what Mrs Abney had concocted and left in the oven for his supper. Later. Now, he switched on the television and collapsed in front of it, his drink in his hand, his chin sunk on his chest.
    He stared at the flickering screen. After a moment or two he realized that he was watching a documentary, a programme dealing with the problems of marginal farming. To illustrate the problem, the presenters had chosen a farm in Devon. There was a shot of sheep grazing the rocky slopes of Dartmoor . . . the camera panned down the hill to the farmhouse . . . the lush green slopes of the lower land . . .
    It was not Chagwell, but it was a place very similar. The film had been shot in summertime. He saw the blue skies, the high white clouds, their shadows racing down the hillside, to where sunlight sparkled on the waters of a bubbling trout river.
    Chagwell.
    The past is another country. A long time ago Alec had been conceived, born, brought up in that country; his roots lay deep in that rich red Devon soil. But over the years, diverted by his own success, his own ambitions, and the demands of family life, he had almost totally lost touch.
    Chagwell. His father had died, and Brian and his wife, Jenny, now ran the farm between them. In the space of seven years Jenny had borne Brian five blond, freckle-faced children, and the old house bulged with their pets and prams and bicycles and toys;
    Erica had no time for Brian and Jenny. They were not her sort of people. Only twice during the whole of their married life had Alec taken her to Chagwell, but the two occasions had been so uncomfortable and so little fun for everybody concerned that, as if by mutual consent, they had never been repeated. Communication dwindled to an exchange of cards at Christmas and the odd letter, but Alec had not seen Brian for five years or more.
    Five years. It was too long. Bad news travels with the speed of light, but it would not yet have reached Chagwell. Brian would have to be told about the pending divorce. Alec would write tomorrow, losing no time, for it was unthinkable that Brian should hear about the break-up of his brother's marriage from some other person.
    Or he could telephone.
    The telephone, at his side, began to ring. Alec reached out and picked up the receiver.