Memory and Desire Read Online Free PDF Page A

could just as easily have been Melinda's lover as Richard. More easily, maybe. At least, a lot more casually.
    “You're hoping to find her, then?” Elliot went on. “She's leagues from here, I should think. And what is your specialty, Claire? Treading the boards? Scribing deathless prose? Breaking hearts?"
    “Mending needlework,” replied Claire. She should rent a billboard outside of town, she thought, and put up a twenty-foot-high notice: It's no coincidence Claire Godwin is in Somerstowe! She's searching for Melinda Varek! So much for her vision of herself as the compleat sleuth.
    Sarita shooed the children to their feet. Roshan reappeared with several letters and a large brown envelope. “Ta, most kind,” Elliot told him. “Must run, expecting an important phone call—just between you and me and the gatepost, Andrew Lloyd Webber is having a look at The Play—it'd make a lovely musical, don't you think? Raise it several levels above the village production—which is charming and all, but, well ... Later?"
    He disappeared out the door, his parting “Later?” seemingly directed at no one in particular, and yet, Claire felt, really aimed at her. I'm not your type, she wanted to call after him, but after the last year she wasn't sure any more just whose type she was.
    Not good old Steve's, that was for sure. After the relationships with the scatter-brained music teacher and the yuppie with the cell phone welded to his ear—both of which had still had more possibilities than some of Melinda's affairs—Steve's quiet steadiness had appealed to her. All too soon Claire discovered the difference between steady and petrified. An engineer, he'd done his best to reduce the relationship to flow charts and logic diagrams. And he'd never been comfortable around Melinda, always making little barbed comments under his breath about her travels, her clothes, her sex life.
    But just because Claire was feeling as though she'd fallen into a movie set didn't mean she could re-write the past. What she wanted was to write the future.
    She stood up. “Thank you very much for the dinner. May I help clear things away?"
    “Oh no,” Sarita assured her. “Derek and Trillian always do the washing up."
    Judging by the clatter of dishes and splashes of water coming from the kitchen, they were doing it as an Olympic water polo match. “I think I'll turn in,” Claire went on. “I have to be able to work a needle tomorrow morning."
    Roshan and Sarita murmured pleasantries and showed her out. Claire climbed the steps to her door. From her vantage point on the landing the village and countryside looked like a watercolor, soft greens, golds, and grays streaked by the dark horizontal of the street. The bobby was leaning against the wall outside the pub, chatting with an elderly man. Beyond several green-edged slate roofs rose the spire of a church. The shadow of Somerstowe Hall reached toward the town as though the old house wanted to join in. Somewhere a lamb was bleating, “Muuuum! Muuuum!"
    Elliot strolled along the sidewalk and into a suitably picturesque cottage. As he passed a red Jaguar parked in the driveway he patted its hood affectionately. Aha! So the car was his. That was no surprise. What Claire wondered was why, if he'd been in such a hurry to get his mail, he didn't pick it up hours ago when he'd first blasted into town.
    Melinda had driven like that, passing bats out of hell on her way, and was perpetually taking defensive driving courses to wipe the tickets off her record. Claire, on the other hand, had never gotten a traffic ticket. There was some basic imbalance there. There was a lot about her relationship with Melinda that'd been unbalanced. It was like Claire had always played it safe because she'd had Melinda to take the risks for her.
    Maybe, she thought, Melinda had been able to take risks because she'd had Claire to be her anchor.
    Frowning, Claire unlocked the door. Her leaden feet stumbled over the edge of the