A Place in the Country Read Online Free PDF Page A

country lane. She couldn’t remember where that country lane was but she did remember the feel of her dad’s strong hand clasping hers, and how carelessly happy she had been. She had thought he would never let go.
    Oh, but she’d loved him so. Still did.
    Actually, her father’s and mother’s stories of how they had met were completely different.
    James told Issy he’d walked into the bar at Singapore’s Raffles Hotel and immediately noticed the tall, dark-haired, long-legged woman perched on a stool, sipping a mojito through a pink straw that exactly matched her pink lipstick. Very pretty, he’d thought, catching her eye. As well as he could, since she was wearing glasses.
    She was also wearing a very short skirt and showing a lot of thigh. “I wanted to kiss her knees they were so pretty,” he told Issy. (Kiss her knees ? Ugh! Issy remembered thinking.) “Instead, I said hello, asked where she was from, and her name.
    â€œShe said she was from London,” and her name was Caroline Muggins, or Huggins or something odd like that. He told Issy he’d thought, huh she’s had one too many mojitos, this girl, but then she smiled at him and said I’m going to marry you. He’d asked her why? Was it because she’d promised herself to marry the third man to walk into the bar that night? Or was she afraid of being left on the shelf? Or did she really fancy him?
    Anyhow, he’d already been married. “Twice,” he’d told her.
    â€œHmm.” She’d sucked thoughtfully on that pink mojito straw. “A serial husband. But when you marry me I will be the last wife.”
    â€œYou’ll notice,” James had reminded his daughter, who was curled up in bed, big eyes fastened on him as he told her the story one more time, “that your mother asked me to marry her . Not the other way around.”
    She asked if that really mattered and he’d said not then, but her mom hadn’t liked signing the prenup.
    Now, of course, Issy knew what a prenup was and it meant her mom didn’t have much money.
    Anyway, her mother’s different story was that she had been alone in the bar at the Raffles Hotel. “Sipping that mojito,” she said. “It was the first I’d ever tasted. We were more into gin and tonic when I was eighteen.”
    â€œBut you didn’t drink when you were eighteen !” Issy had interrupted. “You had to be twenty-one.”
    â€œRight,” her mother had said, taking a deep breath. “Well, of course, I meant after I was twenty-one. So, anyway, I was sipping that bloody mojito—ooops, sorry, shouldn’t have said that, it’s just that I’ll never drink a mojito again.”
    Issy had thought it must be because it didn’t taste very good.
    Her mother went on, “I was wearing a black pencil skirt, pulled demurely down…”
    â€œDaddy said you were showing your thighs.”
    Caroline closed her eyes as though trying to remember. She smiled, just a faint upward twitch of the lips. “So maybe I was,” she admitted. “And I had on this top from Zara, black silk jersey, and it kept slipping off one shoulder and showing my pink bra strap. Now, what kind of sophisticated young woman would wear a pink bra under her sexy black top?”
    Issy didn’t know, but still she was fascinated. Her mother was so pretty she could have worn her dressing gown and it would have looked all right; her tall, slender, bosomy mom, with her long, black hair cut in bangs that swept over her shortsighted greenish eyes and got tangled in her red cat’s-eye glasses; with her slopey cheeks and lovely wide pink mouth that was great at giving kisses. And she had pretty hands that always held her tightly when she told this story. “Clinging on for dear life,” her mom used to say.
    Anyway, her mom had gone on with her version of the story. “I was just sitting