Close Encounter with a Crumpet Read Online Free PDF

with it.”
    “Funny thing, all right.” His hand tangled the curls once again damp, this time with pre-dawn dew.
    Gill stirred against him. “What about your family? I mean parents, brothers and sisters? You told me about Sandra, but you didn’t mention anyone else.”
    “Ah, the family. Well, darlin’, the parents married in a fever, produced two hard-headed sons, and split.” He tucked his jacket closer around her. “Long time back, now. I was six and my brother Paul nearly ten. Thirty years it’s been. Brother and I stayed with Mum, of course, and the pater took off for foreign soil. Mum died a couple of years back. I think it was her passing that stirred my own dissatisfaction. Life isn’t a long thing; it goes way too fast to waste it in a place you hate.”
    “And your father? He’s still living? Did you and your brother spend time with him after the separation?”
    “He is and we did. He’s a good sort, loved his sons and all, but just not good at being married. Paul and I, we went along to visit during holidays. Built himself a nice little business, the old boy has, and Paul’s been working with him for a good while now. They get on. Paul’s not such a gadfly as myself.”
    “I still don’t know your name,” she reminded him.
    “Ah, so you don’t. It’s Dohr, darlin’ girl.”
    “D-o-o-r, Door?”
    “Pronounced the same but with an ‘h’ in place of the second ‘o’.”
    “Simon Dohr.” Her head felt too heavy when she tried to sit upright. A yawn escaped. She gave up and snuggled closer. “Nice name.”
    “And you sound sleepy. Maybe we’d better walk a bit and find a taxi to take you back to the hotel. The sun’s coming up, and you need a little sleep before you meet me for lunch.”
    Gill yawned again and rubbed her cheek against his shoulder. “Am I meeting you for lunch?”
    “You are unless you’re of a mind to go to church with the grannies and have soggy sandwiches and lukewarm tea after. I thought you’d be liking a cruise down the Thames, gathered up close beside me, with a stop in Greenwich for roast beef and Yorkshire pudding.”
    “But where do I meet you? And why not meet me at the hotel?”
    “Take your bus pass, get on a central line bus, and get off at Waterloo Station. I’ll be there at eleven. And I’m not coming to your hotel because I have a couple of business calls to make first. The cackling hens don’t need to see us together anyway. It would just give them more reason to pester you, love.”
    Gill was a little vague about the details of her trip back to the hotel. Grey fog touched the edges of her mind, and lack of sleep made her steps slow and deliberate. Simon walked her to the door and saw her to the lift.
    “Have your key?”
    She nodded, too weary to answer but reluctant to let her adventure end.
    “And you’ll get yourself straight to bed, will you? No messing about, doing your hair or something foolish like that?”
    “Bed, nothing else.”
    “Waterloo Station at eleven.” He lifted her chin with one finger; his lips barely touched hers. “Magic it is, Gilly. Dream on it.”
    Dream she did, but of what she wasn’t certain. She only knew when she woke she was filled with a new sense of things being right in the world. Magic, Simon had called it, and love. Gill lay still under her feather duvet, not thinking, just being, as sun spilled over the windowsill. She’d thought after Gary’s death there could never be a place in her world for another man. The heart-stopping, romantic, lives-entwined kind of love only happened once. So her mother had told her. And for Maggie Banks, it was true. But not for her youngest daughter Gillian. Gill was sure of that now. She’d loved Gary with all her heart. They’d had great plans. But Simon was someone entirely different, not less than Gary and not more. Just different.
    And , Gill reminded herself, I live on the other side of the world from him. I’ve known him for two weeks. No, actually I’ve