Circles of Fate Read Online Free PDF

of her face. His tawny eyes searched hers.
    â€œIs this your silly obsession, Anita? As you are so fond of reminding me, we all have one. Inez chose never to come back here. Considering how much she loved this place, I always thought that was a strange reluctance on her part, a fear almost. What was it she feared? What notion has she passed on to you?”
    â€œNone. Now you are being ridiculous.”
    But was he? It was true that her mother had shown a curious reluctance to return to her beloved island. It was as Edward had said, almost as though she feared something.
    Once, many years ago, she had discovered her mother weeping over what they called their memory trunk. In this trunk they stacked their mementoes. Programmes and newspaper cuttings and photographs, sepia with age. Her mother’s combs of ivory, and lace mantillas so exquisite and fragile that Anita was afraid to touch them and revered them with her eyes. And scraps of material: stiff emerald brocade and rich ruby-red silk. Embroidered slippers and hand-painted fans, and a crocheted shawl as fine as a handful of mist. But it was a baby’s bootee that Inez pressed to her heart as her mouth opened on a broken anguish of words.
    â€œRetribution. Cruel retribution.”
    â€œMother?” a much younger and extremely perplexed Anita had said.
    â€œIt’s all right, my child. I’m behaving in a stupid way. After all, I have so much to be thankful for. I have you.”
    But as she wrapped the bootee in its protective covering of tissue-paper, her eyes contained an infinite sadness.
    It didn’t make sense to Anita. What was her mother weeping over and regretting? The baby that was no more? But surely that baby is me? thought Anita. And it wasn’t as though her mother had that sort of besotted devotion that wanted to keep a baby in a prolonged and unnatural state of infant dependency. She’d seen women cooing over pink or blue bonneted cherubs in prams, had heard them say, “Isn’t he – or she – lovely. What a pity they can’t stay babies for ever!” Her mother hadn’t been like that.
    â€œYou were a wonderful baby,” she had told Anita countless times. “Very forward for your age. You sat up unaided at six months and walked at eleven months. But I didn’t begin to enjoy you until you started school. I don’t think children are interesting until they have passed their sixth birthday.”
    A finger and thumb snapped in front of her eyes. She blinked and Edward’s leonine head came back into focus. He was a big friendly beast of a man, with fierce yellow hair. His eyes were full of compassion as he said: “This isn’t like you, Anita. I’ve always admired the way you face up to realities. And this isn’t even a reality, but a long-forgotten ghost from somebody else’s past.”
    â€œBut that somebody was so closely linked with me that it’s also my past, my ghost.”
    â€œI still say you don’t have to run away from it. Simply let it rest.”
    â€œI want to. I don’t want to stir up the dust of old times.” But the dust was already stirring. She could taste it in her throat.
    â€œEdward!”
    â€œNo, Anita,” he said, rejecting her urgent plea. “I refuse to run because of a childish whim. You’re tired. You’ve had a bad experience. It’s little wonder you are overwrought.”
    She clamped shut her mouth. She would plead no more. Also she feared that Edward was partly right. To speak at the moment would be to struggle for coherence.
    He coaxed: “Put on your nightie and get into bed.”
    â€œI can’t,” she said stiffly. “My nightie is in the overnight bag I left on the plane.”
    â€œThen slip into bed without it. And then –” Suddenly she wanted to pay him back for his indifference, his insensitivity. She wanted to torment him. Her eyes raised steadily to