There was a silence broken only by the splashing of the water in the marble fountain.
“I must go, Dickie,” Fleur said. “But I’ll come back.”
He smiled, painfully, one side of his mouth remaining quite still. “Come back,” he said.
“I do hope you will, Fleur. You’re always welcome,” Sophia said warmly.
Fleur left the house and ran down the quiet street, where great houses stood in gardens on either side.
Then she was in Piraeus, thirsty and breathless. Outside a café sat Dominic with a second man in a white suit and panama hat, with a very pretty dark girl in white. Fleur kissed Dominic. The other man pulled out a chair for her. “How is he?” he asked.
She shook her head. “He’s very unhappy.”
“How are you?”
“Very happy.”
“That’s as it should be,” Sam Hope said. He ordered her a drink.
Dominic told her, “Hurry up, Fleur, we haven’t got long to catch the boat.” He lifted his glass. “To us, health and happiness.”
Fleur dispelled the image of the man in his wheelchair up on the hill. She raised her glass and thought of the olive, cypress and oleander, the candles, the sound of the sea to which she and Dominic would soon return.
A Note on the Author
HILARY BAILEY was born in 1936 and was educated at thirteen schools before attending Newnham College, Cambridge. Married with children, she entered the strange, uneasy world of ’60s science fiction, writing some twenty tales of imagination which were published in Britain, the USA, France and Germany. She has edited the magazine New Worlds and has regularly reviewed modern fiction for the Guardian. Her first novel was published in 1975 and she has since written twelve novels and a short biography. She lives in Ladbroke Grove, London.
Discover books by Hilary Bailey published by Bloomsbury Reader at
www.bloomsbury.com/HilaryBailey
After the Cabaret
All the Days of My Life
As Time Goes By
A Stranger to Herself
Cassandra
Connections
Elizabeth and Lily
Fifty-First State
Hannie Richards
In Search of Love, Money and Revenge
Mrs Rochester
Polly Put the Kettle On
Mrs Mulvaney
The Cry from Street to Street
Miles and Flora
The Strange Adventures of Charlotte Holmes
This electronic edition published in 2012 by Bloomsbury Reader
Bloomsbury Reader is a division of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 50 Bedford Square,
London WC1B 3DP
First published in Great Britain 2000 by Severn House Publishers LTD.
Copyright © 2000 Hilary Bailey
All rights reserved
You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise
make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means
(including without limitation electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying,
printing, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the
publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication
may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
The moral right of the author is asserted.
ISBN: 9781448209385
eISBN: 9781448209392
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