Before and After Read Online Free PDF Page B

pearls.
    The effect was curiously draining, and I had to wrench my concentration away from her.
    Archie by contrast was blooming with health. His skin was clear and his brow unfurrowed. He gazed from time to time at his wife whose stillness drew the eye.
    It was soothing to sit amongst a family that I hadn’t yet had time to assimilate into my being, soothing and stimulating at the same time, like sipping a strong black coffee whilst nibbling half a valium.
    When the phone rang, both Hal and Bella were keen to answer it, but Hal got there first taking the phone into another room to talk about something incomprehensible to do with rugby. Bella looked disappointed, and the fleeting look of similarity to her mother was strikingly clear.
    “After I have asked your father if he and Hal would kindly bring my trunk to my room, perhaps you’d like to help me unpack?” I said quietly to her.
    She nodded, and like the biddable child she was, obediently stood up.
    In the end Archie dragged the gardener from his task of salivating over pornography in the shed, rather than asking his son to help him up the stairs with my trunk. I introduced myself to Jack Blair and handed him the book of photographs. Jack mumbled his thanks through his gums and turned the book over suspiciously in his hands. I don’t think he trusted any reading matter that didn’t have a pull out centre fold. Between Jack and Archie my trunk was delivered into Mr and Mrs Amble’s bedroom, and I thanked them profusely.
    “I say umm, Miss Tate –“
    “Oh do call me Flora,” I interrupted Archie.
    “Yes, well Flora, why are you in my bedroom?” Archie asked, looking around his room as if he were making an inventory.
    “Oh Sylvia insisted, I didn’t have the heart to refuse and then of course Dr Cavilleri will be so pleased that I’ve taken his advice to heart. Anyway, a change of rooms will do you all the world of good. I think Sylvia has given you your own bedroom at the end of the corridor if I’m not mistaken, whilst she has taken up residence next to Bella. Separate rooms can be such a blessing after the long haul of a matrimonial sentence, I always think, don’t you agree? More private somehow.” I said, smiling at him in a candid way.
    He stared at me and then turned on his heel out of the room.
    “Don’t forget, seven in the hallway,” I called genially after him.
    Bella was standing in the middle of what was her parent’s bedroom, staring at my well-travelled trunk. She slowly opened it, and carefully started to hang up my clothes in what had been her mother’s wardrobe, pushing the familiar clothes aside, to make way for the strange.
    Further down the corridor Archie Amble was leaning in the doorway of what was now his wife’s room.
    “Remind me again who the hell this painted jade, this black crow of a woman with the yellow hair is?” he demanded.
    Sylvia sighed and said wearily, “Darling, I’ve told you often enough. Flora Tate is the life planner, or guru or whatever you want to call it. I showed you the article in The Times, and the one in Vogue. Do you remember the couple we met in Portugal, you know, the Jarvis’s? Well, they recommended her and honestly, they couldn’t speak highly enough of…”
    “Do you mean that couple that sold everything to start a bloody fish farm in Wales?” Archie said disdainfully.
    “Was it Wales? And are you sure about a fish farm? I thought it was something to do with a zoo in Jersey anyway, the point is she helped their marriage considerably, oh and they didn’t sell everything, they lost everything on the stock market –“
    A look of pity and horror crossed Archie Ambles face.
    “ – and she is really very, very highly qualified in all sorts of things, an expert one could almost say, in all sorts of things. We were very lucky to get her, she has a waiting list, you know. And the weekly rate she charges is very –“
    “Wait,” Archie commanded, folding his arms across his chest to