Lovers and Newcomers Read Online Free PDF

rounded haunches and broad, well-fleshed back, or her apparent happy security within the solid defences of her body. Unusually, and unlike Amos, her cleverness didn’t make her impatient. She listened and remembered and so her sympathy could be depended on, but she was also clear-sighted and wasn’t afraid to be brisk, or even truthful. She was the member of the group with whom Colin felt most comfortable. If he loved anyone, in the objective and unspoken and theoretical manner that was all that was left to him nowadays, it was Polly Ettridge.
    ‘I feel fine.’
    Looking from Polly down the length of the table, to the faces and the backdrop of old furniture and folded dim curtains, he realized that he really did feel fine. Now that he had actually arrived at Mead.
    He found his way to a place at the table end. Miranda placed a dish of blackberry tart with ivory clots of thick cream in front of him, with a wineglass of champagne. Colin had a sweet tooth. He attacked the pudding and then took a swig of champagne. He brandished the glass.
    ‘Here’s to the big Mead adventure.’
    ‘Jake would have enjoyed this, wouldn’t he?’ Miranda said.
    In their different ways, in the small pool of silence that followed, each of them acknowledged his absence. The scale of it, the absolute way that Jake had left them, had gone and died , was made harder to contemplate because they were so alive tonight.
    After a moment Colin asked deliberately, ‘What stage are the plans at now? Fill me in.’
    Amos sat back in his chair. He described how the new house would rise on a sloping plot of land hidden by a belt of trees to the south-west of the house. It was to be uncompromisingly modern with impeccable green credentials. The last adjustments to the plans, to meet the requirements of the local authority planning committee, were now in progress. Building work, Amos announced, would soon be starting. In the meantime, once the move up here was completed, he and Katherine were going to make a temporary home in the one-time holiday wing at the back of Mead.
    ‘We need to be right here. Keep an eye on the contractors,’ Amos said.
    There was a collective shifting in seats, another change in the glittering currents of air as no one mentioned the real reason why Amos was leaving London and his chambers.
    Katherine thoughtfully broke off a piece of oatcake and bit it in half. She was the only one who had changed before dinner, into an amethyst silk shift dress. Anything that plain and unadorned, Miranda reckoned, must have cost well into four figures.
    ‘We’re looking forward to it. Living in a holiday cottage will be like being on holiday,’ Katherine laughed.
    Selwyn nodded. ‘Maybe it will.’
    Miranda listened to his deep voice rather than the actual words. She knew what Selwyn’s plans were. From now on Polly and he would be living here too. They were going to do most of the work on the derelict wing themselves. She didn’t doubt Selwyn’s ability to tackle the job, or Polly’s willingness to assist him.
    Selwyn had read medicine at university, but he had never completed his clinical practice. He had moved to Somerset instead, to a ramshackle cottage, where he set up a business buying, restoring and reselling antique furniture. Over the years, as the supply of undervalued old gems in need of a French polish seemed to dwindle, he had gone into buying timber and making furniture himself, and once Polly had given up academia and joined him they had run the business together. Polly wrote historical biographies in the short hours that were left to her between the furniture business and bringing up three children.
    Miranda never knew precisely how successful or otherwise their enterprises had been, but it was no secret that they had never had any money to spare. The Somerset house and the workshops had finally been sold, and they had bought their piece of Mead from her.
    Selwyn flexed his chisel-scarred fingers and grinned. ‘I’m