In the Summertime Read Online Free PDF Page A

channels, at the same time diddling about on his iPad and asking in the ickle-baby voice – which he wrongly thought she’d ever found cute – if any coffee was on the go. His clothes from the night before would be in a heap on the floor where most of them would stay, added to the next night and the next till she could stand it no longer and reminded him where the laundry basket was. That would trigger him to accuse her of being an old nag. What he really meant was that dealing with his dirty clothes was her job, just as it had been his doting mother’s and, at his hugely smart boarding school, presumably Matron’s. Poor Dan – it had been hard for him, slowly realizing during the time they lived together that slobbing about like someone too used to being pampered and waited on while she ran an increasingly demanding business and raised two small children was not an acceptable option for a grown-up. But it was no longer her problem. He’d gone back to his fond mama, who was thrilled to be proved so right: a woman who thought a man should be capable of a bit of basic housework could not be considered proper wife material. The clues had been there right from the first time Dan had taken her to meet his family. His motherhad taken Miranda into her utility room and demonstrated the proper way to iron a shirt. Miranda had watched and smiled politely then said thanks but she didn’t actually possess an iron. That would be why there’d been three among the wedding presents. Dan would have gone to work this very morning wearing a shirt his mother had meticulously pressed for him and socks that she had lovingly paired up before she put them in his drawer. If he ever found another woman to live with it would be over his mum’s dead body, and even then it would have to be one who’d never heard of equal rights.
    Miranda folded some T-shirts and put them in a drawer and had a moment of wondering what Steve would be like these days. He’d only been nineteen the last time she’d seen him, an age that had seemed truly awesome to an impressionable sixteen-year-old. Steve was a grown-up, long out of school, working for real, running the ferry and the lobster pots. This wasn’t just some student fill-in soft-handed occupation like bar work or being a call-centre temp, saving up for indulgent gap-year travel; this was proper working for a living. He’d been a quiet boy who didn’t need to waste words when a smile and a look and an invitation to an evening trip out in his boat seemed to be enough to attract girls in droves. Almost certainly he’d be long-term married now – Cornwall was big on early weddings – and most likely father to a couple ofchildren. If they looked anything like him, they’d be beautiful: all huge dark eyes and a smile to charm the toughest heart. That couldn’t, she was now sure, have been him at the pub last night. He’d have long moved on. Australia had been a lot of the local boys’ destination of choice, that and Indonesia, for the surfing, and then maybe London or Bristol in search of the work that wasn’t available locally. No, that one last night was just some random man of a similar build and jawline. She hadn’t really seen more of him than that. The place was sure to be full of them, typical stock from a fairly local gene pool. The teenage Steve had had long brown hair, which was always slightly sun-streaked with a touch of caramel, and his face was tanned from the sea’s constant glare. He’d also had a moody youth’s contempt for upcountry people whizzing about the narrow lanes too fast in what he called ‘fuckin’ poncy drop-heads’, so that pretty much ruled out – unless he’d had a radical change of heart – ownership of that little black Mercedes.
    Oh, but the bliss of being single, she thought now as she plumped up the pillows and pulled the soft lavender knitted throw over the duvet. Later, she’d pick some of the pink roses she’d seen down by the pool, put them in a