Body and Soul Read Online Free PDF

longer the person she’d thought she was. Walking over to the drinks tray, she opened a chilled split of champagne and filled her glass. Pol Roger White Label had been Churchill’s favourite champagne; it was hers as well. She felt buoyed by the taste, the sense of occasion. She would close the house the very next day and strut back once more into the world she had walked away from.
    The housekeeper was called before Eden even finished her glass of champagne. Rachel would move in to take care of things here. Eden’s next call was to Max Kerwood, her agent of more than twenty years. She experienced momentary anxiety before the tone stopped and he was on the line.
    ‘I’m going away, Max.’
    ‘For how long, where and why?’ he asked, sensing at once that something important had happened.
    ‘You should have told me I was turning into one of the millions of invisible women,’ she chided him.
    ‘Why should I? You only needed to look in the mirror to see what you were doing to yourself. I thought that was what you wanted – to leave the stage, become a recluse, concentrate on composing rather than performing? Have sex with the occasional country gent, the gardener, anything that didn’t interfere with the passion in your soul.’
    ‘Max, I’ve been having a good hard look at what my erotic life has been and what it is at present. I don’t like what I see. I seem to have neglected that side of my life. Where did it go? And why did I let it? It’s not that I’m going all out to find love or a new erotic life for myself, more that I want to revisit my favourite places and remember what it once was to be an erotic soul therein search of love, passion of the heart. I have to know if I have really become a poor shadow of the woman I once was. Have I burned myself out as attractive and sensual in the eyes of vital, exciting men? Am I now entering another phase of my life, where I’ll begin a new way of being and loving? Who knows? Certainly not me. Hence I’m taking a sabbatical and going on an adventure. I’m not prepared meekly to accept being one of the invisible women men no longer look at, let alone want. I want more than that.’
    ‘Do you know where you’re going first?’ a by now fascinated Max asked.
    ‘To open the house in Hydra. I’ll start from there, my beloved Greece. Could you be a dear and transfer some money into my Athens account?’
    ‘And I’ll call Maria and tell her to open the house. It must be ages since you’ve been there. And so long since the concert you gave in Syntagma Square, the amphitheatre in Epidaurus. I always thought you were crazy to hang on to your property in Hydra. Now suddenly it makes sense that you insisted on keeping it. When should I tell Maria you will be there?’
    ‘Two days’ time. Book me for one night at the Grande in Athens. And no PR, Max. This is a very personal odyssey and though I’m taking my cello, I have no intention of performing in public.’
    ‘I hear you. How long do you expect to be in Greece?’
    ‘I have no idea. But I’ll keep you in the picture of where I am and what I’m doing.’
    ‘You sound happier than I’ve heard you in a very long time,’ he told her.
    Max was at Heathrow Airport when Eden arrived. She was not surprised. He had a history of taking care of her and they both knew that was the way it would always be. He never failed to be where he had to be in order to make her way easier, dismissing the mundanities of travel and life in general for Eden. He saw that as his privilege.
    She saw him immediately she arrived at the terminal. Hardly a woman who passed him did not give him a second glance. Maxwas over six foot tall with broad shoulders and film star good looks. He was dressed in a belted crisp-looking Burberry, collar turned up. Dark blond hair prematurely streaked with white and worn on the long side framed his strong perfect features. For the first time in all the years she had known him Eden realised that he