Free The White Pearl by Kate Furnivall

where to find me.’
    ‘Yes,’ the oldest one said in flat voice. ‘We know exactly where to find you.’
    As Madoc stepped away, lightning flickered across the canopy of the jungle like a flash fire in the treetops. The storm was
     rumbling somewhere close and the first raindrops began to fall, as flat as pennies on the dark banana palms. The men hurried
     onto the jetty where their boat was tied up, and Madoc stood watching in the rain as they jostled each other to climb inside
     it. Its engine finally rattled off downriver.
    We know exactly where to find you.
    That didn’t sound good.

6
    ‘Oh, Constance, why on earth are you reading that?’ Nigel failed to keep his annoyance out of his voice.
    Connie abruptly shut the book and wrapped her hands protectively around it, as though he might snatch it from her. She smiled
     sheepishly at him. The book was dog-eared from years of handling, and she read its title aloud.
    ‘
The English Country Garden.
’
    She ruffled its pages, and pictures of lupins and delphiniums flicked past, along with instructions on the best mulch to use
     for peonies. She heard her husband sigh.
    ‘Aren’t you tired of all that?’ he queried. ‘Look out there, in front of you.’
    She was seated on the west veranda, a refuge from the morning sun. She’d been teaching Teddy how to perform a cartwheel, demonstrating
     it herself with ease and then tugging his muscular little legs straight when it came to his turn to whirl upside down across
     the lawn. He was now showing off his new-found skill to his dog, Pippin, who kept hurling himself at Teddy’s middle, bringing
     them both crashing into a heap of giggles and barks on the grass.
    ‘Look,’ Nigel said again. Urgent this time.
    She looked at the expanse of impossibly green lawn, at the cascades of bougainvillea that spilled like wine from the veranda
     roof, at the pool of scarlet hibiscus, Malaya’s national flower, at the stately orchids and at the dark, secretive leaves
     of the nibong palm. Nigel was right; they were glorious. A rich, luscious tapestry for the eye to linger over. When, damn
     it, would she stop yearning for snowdrops and daffodils and …?
    ‘How can you not love it here?’ he asked softly.
    ‘I do, Nigel, you know I do. It’s a kind of paradise.’ She waved her hand at a flock of parrots that was landing in the canopy
     of the trees, squabbling over the perches.
Just not my kind of paradise.
But she could hear the pride and contentment in his voice, so she didn’t say it. She would never dream of saying it. ‘It’s
     just this letter from my mother. It set me thinking about England.’ She tucked the book out of sight down the side of the
     chair cushion. ‘She says it’s freezing over there.’ Connie rolled her eyes at him dramatically. ‘Hell, Nigel, who in their
     right mind would want to be stomping through snow in chilly wellingtons?
    Me. I would. Christmas shopping, swaddled in gloves and mufflers, chestnuts on the fire. Ice cobwebs on the window pane. Me.
     Me.
    She laughed. ‘Look at Teddy.’
    But she was aware that her husband’s gaze lingered on her for a moment, before he perched on the veranda rail and bellowed,
     ‘You look like a spider-crab, my boy! Get those legs straight.’
    It was Sunday, Connie’s favourite day of the week. Sunday was when life became denser, in some strange way. As if it had learned
     on that one day not to stretch itself so thin. The Hadleys’ Sunday ritual was something she had introduced after Teddy was
     born and, to her surprise, Nigel had fallen in with it readily.
    Days BT – Before Teddy – had been utterly different. Then, Sunday had been a snail-like creature with no shape and no joy
     to it, a bleak interruption to the busy week. A day of stilted, awkward hours strung together, pretending to read the English
     papers or writing letters back home, relieved only by curry tiffin at the Club or by having a houseful of friends over to
     play Halma and