Free Scorpion Sunset by Catrin Collier

notification of John’s death last Christmas. She’d also been paid the first instalments of an annuity John had purchased to give her additional security. Unfortunately she’d spent more of the money she’d received than she could repay from her wife’s allowance, which was all she’d been left with since John had been reported alive by the sick troops sent downstream after Townshend’s surrender.
    Both the army and insurance company had pressed for repayment. By emptying her bank account she’d managed to reimburse the insurance company, but not the army. The clerks had retaliated by freezing her wife’s allowance, until such time as they reclaimed the over payment. She’d appealed, but the officer who’d interviewed her had tersely dismissed her suggestion that small amounts be taken from her allowance over a longer period. She’d walked away wondering if John had notified the military that he intended to divorce her, in which case she’d soon be entitled to no money whatsoever from the army.
    She picked up the silver framed photograph of John that her maid had set next to her jewellery case. She looked at it – really looked at it for the first time since he’d left her to join the Expeditionary Force.
    They’d met in India before the war. Her father had sent her and her mother from Basra, where he was ranking officer, to visit friends at his regiment’s HQ. Ostensibly they went to escape the heat of a Mesopotamian summer, but she knew her father expected her to find a husband among the senior officers. He’d been concerned about her friendship with a young subaltern, Harry Downe, who’d been sent to Basra as punishment for bedding a senior officer’s wife in India. To her disappointment, despite her father’s concerns she’d been far more infatuated with Harry than he with her.
    After John had asked her to marry him she’d told him she’d fallen in love with him at first sight. Had she? Or had she merely been attracted to his good looks? Tall, well-built, with dark auburn hair and deep brown eyes, women turned their heads whenever he entered a room – but unlike most of the other handsome officers she’d met, John had been unaware of his good looks.
    Her father hadn’t been enamoured of her choice when he’d discovered John Mason was an army medic, not a career officer. John had intended to return to England after their marriage, a plan that had been set aside like so many others when war broke out. Her father had been even more disappointed when he’d discovered John and Harry were not only close friends but cousins.
    Harry! She smiled as an image of him came to mind. His fair hair tousled, his grey eyes glittering with mischief. How he’d loved shocking people, particularly the pompous. When her father sent Harry to negotiate a treaty with a Bedouin tribe, Harry had sealed the bargain by marrying a sheikh’s daughter. She’d been as appalled as the rest of military society by Harry’s native ‘marriage’, but that didn’t stop her from admiring Harry’s complete disregard of anyone’s opinion other than his own.
    The last time she’d found herself in financial difficulties was shortly before Robin’s birth. Everyone knew John couldn’t possibly be the father of her child as he’d been on active service for over a year. To make matters even worse, the Gulf was awash with well-founded rumours of her infidelity and scandalous behaviour in India. Instead of judging or ostracising her, as all John’s other friends had, Harry had visited her in the American mission she’d taken refuge in and given her money.
    If only she could talk to him now – he would understand her plight and lend her money. But Harry was dead, killed by the Turks, and she was left with a father she’d never really known. An officer and a gentleman who’d made no secret