Free Voices in Summer by Rosamunde Pilcher Page B

fatstock show at Smithfield. Would you like to meet?'
    No comments, no postmortems, no unnecessary sympathy. 'More than anything,' Alec told his brother. 'Come to my club and I'll give you lunch.'
    They fixed on a day and time.
    'And what shall I tell Gerald?' Brian asked.
    'Tell him I'll be at his wedding. I wouldn't miss it for all the tea in China.'
    Brian rang off. Slowly Alec replaced his own receiver. The past is another country.
    Images filled his mind, not only of Chagwell, but now, thinking of Gerald, of Tremenheere as well. The old stone house at the very end of Cornwall, where palm trees grew, and camellias and verbena, and scented white jasmine covered the sides of the glass houses in the walled garden.
    Chagwell and Tremenheere. They were his roots and his identity. He was Alec Haverstock and he would cope. The world had not come to an end. Gabriel had gone; parting from her had been the worst, but now the worst was over. He had touched bottom and he could only start coming up again.
    He stood up and, carrying his empty glass, went through to the kitchen to look for something to eat.
    ISLINGTON
    It was five o'clock before Laura finally reached home. The breeze had dropped and Abigail Crescent drowsed sleepily in the golden sunshine of late afternoon. For once, the street was almost deserted. In all likelihood, her neighbours were sitting in their tiny gardens or had taken their children off to neighbourhood parks for the solace of grass underfoot and shady trees overhead. Only an old lady, with a shopping trolley and an ancient mongrel on a leash, was making her way down the pavement. As Laura drew up in front of her house, even they disappeared, like rabbits down a burrow, descending steps into some basement flat.
    She gathered up the day's shopping, her handbag, and her dog and got out of the car, crossed the pavement, and went up the stairs to her front door. She always had to remind herself that it was her own front door every time she found her latchkey and turned the lock. Because the house, which she had lived in for nine months, was still not totally familiar. She was not yet in tune with its moods nor its reactions. It was Alec's home, and it had been Erica's home, and Laura always entered it tentatively, unable to suppress the sensation that she was trespassing upon another person's property.
    Now, the warm silence pressed in, thick as a fog. From below, from Mrs Abney's domain, came no sound. Perhaps she had taken herself out or was still asleep. Gradually the humming of the refrigerator in the kitchen made itself heard. Then a clock ticking. Yesterday Laura had bought roses, filled a jug with them. Today their scent, from the sitting room, lay heavy and sweet.
    I have come home. This is my home.
    It was not a large house. Mrs Abney's basement and, above it, three stories – two rooms at each level and none of them particularly spacious. Here, the cramped hall and stairway; on one side the sitting room, on the other the kitchen, which also served as dining space. Above, the main bedroom and bathroom and Alec's dressing room, doubling as a study. Above again – with dormer windows and sloping ceilings – the attics. A nominal guest room, usually stacked with suitcases and an overflow of furniture, and the nursery, which had once been Gabriel's. That was all.
    She set Lucy down and then went into the kitchen to unload the groceries and the chops she had bought for supper. Here were pine fitments, blue-and-white china, a scrubbed table, wheel-back chairs. French windows opened onto a teak deck, and from this a flight of wooden steps led down into a small paved garden, where grew a flowering cherry and a few tubs of geraniums. Laura unbolted these windows and threw them open. Air stirred through the house. Outside on the deck were a couple of garden chairs and a small, wrought-iron table. Later, when Alec came home, and while the chops grilled, they would have their drinks out here, in the dusky