Errors of Judgment Read Online Free PDF

with a precocious sexual appetite and a penchant for risk-taking. He’d employed her in his country house near Oxford, together with some attractive young man whose name Leo could no longer remember, to cook, look after the house, and generally service his domestic and sexual requirements. Quite a summer. It all seemed long ago and far away now. Sarah had been fun, the kind of girl whose very smile encouraged complete dereliction of all responsibility, but the attributes which had made her such a perfect playmate had in the long run turned into liabilities. Her predilection for mischief-making, combined with a tendency to serve strictly her own interests, had put him in more than a few tricky spots. Still, nice to hear she was still around. She had been one of the few people to get under his skin, to get close to understanding him. Perhaps they were two of a kind – not an especially flattering thought. Dear, devious Sarah. Perhaps love and marriage would wreak some kind of miraculous change in her. Somehow he doubted it.

CHAPTER THREE
    The following Sunday Sarah was sitting in the drawing room in Toby’s parents’ house in Surrey after a late lunch, listening to her prospective mother-in-law’s interminable chatter, and wondering if the dreary day would ever end.
    ‘The trouble with a July wedding, or August come to that, is that so many people go away on holiday, don’t they? It seems everyone tends to book well ahead these days.’ Caroline Kittering poured coffee from the cafetière into tiny bone china coffee cups. ‘Toby, be a dear and pass that to Sarah.’ She looked enquiringly at her husband. ‘Jon-Jon?’ Dr Kittering roused himself from his reverie and took his coffee, and Caroline went on, ‘A summer wedding is by far the nicest, I always think, because there’s less chance of the weather letting one down. Though nothing’s guaranteed, is it? You remember your cousin Camilla’s wedding last June, don’t you, Toby? The weather was perfect all week, then on the day it absolutely bucketed down, and everyone hadto huddle in the marquee instead of having drinks on the lawn as planned, and all the guests who had parked in the paddock were stuck in the mud, and Mervyn had to get duckboards, or whatever they call them, to get people out. They even had to use the local farmer’s tractor …’
    Sarah wound a strand of blonde hair round one finger, indulging in a fantasy which involved kicking Caroline’s chair over and stuffing a napkin into her busy mouth as she lay flapping on the Axminster. Dear God, would the woman never shut up? Letting Toby’s parents get involved in the wedding plans had been a huge mistake, but there was no going back now. Jonathan Kittering was her father’s oldest friend, and the Kitterings had been over the moon when she and Toby had announced their engagement. It had been Caroline Kittering’s idea to help with the wedding arrangements, since Sarah’s mother was dead, and Sarah’s father had agreed to it before Sarah could say anything. So here they were, spending the weekend at the Kittering’s house near Egham, and talking about absolutely nothing but the bloody wedding.
    She glanced sideways at Toby, and he slipped her a wink. She felt a small surge of affection, but it ebbed quickly away. Looking ahead to her married life, she saw a pageant of ritual visits stretching ahead. Sunday lunches. Christmases, dreary hours spent listening to Caroline Kittering – Wittering, more like – trying to animate her existence with endless talk about people and events, while Toby’s father, the retired paediatric consultant, sat in a postprandial glaze of boredom and inertia, and the late afternoon light faded over the Surrey countryside, and the years passed by. She felt overwhelmed by a sense of claustrophobia. She couldn’twait to be out of here and heading up the M25 in Toby’s Porsche towards London and real life.
    ‘So perhaps June is the best month. Or maybe even May?