Free The White Pearl by Kate Furnivall Page B

did you say?’
    ‘One extra for lunch.’
    ‘Who is it?’
    ‘Johnnie Blake.’
    ‘Johnnie? I didn’t know he was back.’
    She was already smiling broadly. It was impossible not to. Flight Lieutenant John Blake was always bursting with vitality,
     but he tempered it with such charm and good humour that he was always in demand at dinner tables. He and Nigel had been school
     friends at Eton, lost touch for a while and had bumped into each other a number of years back at a grand dinner at Government
     House in Singapore.
    ‘Like two long-lost penguins,’ Connie had laughed when she saw them clasp each other in their dress suits, both the same height,
     both the same age, thirty then, only Nigel’s brown hair was neatly oiled into submission, whereas Johnnie’s fawn-coloured
     mop was tossing about, as flyaway as his smile.
    ‘Watch out for this blighter,’ Nigel had warned with affection as he brought the pilot over to her and introduced him, ‘he’s
     left a string of broken hearts in his wake.’
    But Johnnie had never overstepped the mark with her, not once. Sometimes she found herself half wishing that he would.
    ‘How wonderful,’ she exclaimed. ‘Teddy will be thrilled.’
    Her son hero-worshipped Flight Lieutenant Blake. That worried her a little. When you gave your heart so completely, it was
     bound to get hit for six one of these days.
    Connie checked that the table was well laid with the best china and the finest crystal glasses that had once belonged to Nigel’s
     mother. His parents had both been killed in a mid-air collision on a local airfield just outside Palur when Nigel was eighteen.
     He’d watched it happen.
    Dear God, what did it do to you to watch your parent die so violently? Did it build an anger in you like she’d seen in Razak,
     so high that avalanches of it came careening down to suffocate you when you least expected it?
    She didn’t know.
    Maybe even the sight of his mother’s crystal wineglasses was enough to set one off. With a sudden instruction to Masur, she
     bundled them on a tray.
    ‘Put these away. Bring out the other glasses instead. Be quick.
Lekas
! Hurry.’
    Masur, who had worked for her for nearly six years, looked at her with gently bemused eyes but he did as she asked.
    ‘
Terimah kasih.
Thank you, Masur.’
    ‘
Tuan
Blake, come today?’
    ‘That’s right, he’ll be here for lunch.’
    ‘He jolly busy in sky now.’
    ‘Yes, he certainly is. The RAF is keeping a sharp eye out for intruders, don’t you worry, Masur.’ She didn’t say who the intruders
     were. They left it unspoken.
    ‘You look wonderful, Connie. How do you keep growing younger every time I see you, while old Nigel here is getting as cranky
     as his father?’
    ‘Flight Lieutenant Blake, you are an outrageous flirt,’ she smiled.
    Johnnie Blake kissed both her cheeks in the French fashion, holding onto her hands so that she couldn’t escape his admiring
     gaze. She had changed her frock for a pale blue one that she knew sat well on her slight hips, and had twined her long blond
     hair up in a loose pleat with a pearl clip for a more sophisticated look. Somehow Palur and its fusty colonial ways felt very
     provincial whenever Johnnie was around.
    Stylish was the word for him. None other fitted him so well. As he swung Teddy up in the air in greeting, Connie sensed the
     atmosphere in the house brighten, and even the dark staircase lost its gloomy mood. He was tall and elegant in his RAF blue-grey
     uniform and careless in the manner with which he tossed his jacket aside for Teddy to seize upon.
    ‘Constance, let me introduce Mr Fitzpayne.’
    Nigel turned to a figure who was standing behind him, still in the doorway. Connie had an impression of strength as the man
     steppedforward. He was shorter than her husband and bulkier, the muscles of his forearms clearly visible in the dark short-sleeved
     shirt he wore, and his grey eyes did not smile at her. Something in the coldness of his