Mistakes We Make Read Online Free PDF

otherwise perfect sky. There was no mirror loch this morning; a light breeze was whipping the water into ripples that weren’t quite white horses. In the distance, half a dozen dinghies scudded across the blue expanse. The conjunction of rock and grass and sharply-angled mountains was spectacular.
    On impulse, she called out, ‘Shall we stay tonight? I’d like to stay.’
    ‘You sure?’ Lexie emerged from the bathroom. Her hair was an inch or two longer than she normally wore it, and her face a little less angular.
    Molly, studying her friend, thought that pregnancy suited her. It took the edge off her restless energy, replacing it with a kind of contentment. After Jamie’s death and all they’d been through, it was a welcome sight. She crossed the room and hugged her.
    ‘How’s baby Mulgrew-Gordon?’
    ‘Active.’
    Lexie reached for Molly’s hand and placed it on the bulge.
    ‘She kicked me!’ Molly was shocked to feel the stirring of a response to the movement somewhere deep in her own belly.
    Lexie laughed and settled her hands on the bump. ‘She’s going to have Patrick’s dynamism. What are you thinking about breakfast?’
    ‘We’ll go down, have the full spread.’
    ‘Really?’ Lexie didn’t say, What about Adam? but the unspoken question was there all the same.
    ‘Really. Let’s go.’
    They picked their way down the stairs, Lexie clutching the handrail to protect against trips, Molly braced for the encounter in a buttocks-clenched, lips-pursed, face-of-plaster kind of way because, although she’d made up her mind to do this, there was a cost.
    She was prepared to feel hostile. She was braced for insecurity, and jealousy, and guilt. What she wasn’t prepared for was feeling sympathy for the woman Adam had brought with him.
    They saw her at once, sitting all alone at a table in a corner of the dining room, turning a mobile phone fretfully round and round in one hand. She was an exotic bird, gloriously clad in emerald silk, but a dejected one.
    ‘Are you on your own?’ Molly said, surprising herself by stopping by her table en route to the window.
    The woman looked up. ‘Adam is already out on the hills.’
    Memories flooded back in force. In their first year together Molly and Adam had joined a hill-walking club. Ben Lomond had been her first easy ascent. Ben More, Mull’s scenic island peak, her second. Her third had been Ben Nevis, granddaddy of them all. The recollection scythed through her – Adam in his tatty trousers and red jacket, secretly carrying champagne in a backpack all the way to the top to toast her ascent of Britain’s biggest mountain.
    When had the romantic gestures stopped?
    ‘I didn’t think he would be up so early this morning. He was putting his boots on at six o’clock!’ The woman’s lips (painted pink, the colour of the rhododendrons on the driveway) were curved into a rueful smile. ‘I asked him, I said, “Adam, what are you doing? Come back to bed,” but  he said, “Shhh, sleep, my beauty, I shall walk.” And then he was gone.’
    Where had Adam found this striking woman? She was improbably perfect, an airbrushed film star. Her face was oval, her cheekbones high and prominent. Her skin was the colour of pale caramel, and flawless. She had outlined her eyes in black kohl again, and her eyelashes were mascaraed to perfection.
    And there was nothing in any of this that made her right for Adam, Molly thought with a surge of belligerence.
    ‘I’m Sunita, by the way.’ The vision held out her hand. Molly spotted a large diamond – right hand, not left – and perfect claret-painted nails. ‘And you’re Molly.’ Sunita’s smile was brilliant, her dark eyes unreadable, but not hostile. ‘Adam talks of you often.’
    Does he? Does he really? Molly was shaken by the idea that Adam might discuss her with this woman. It seemed unlikely because he had never been much of a talker – but then, what did she know of Adam now?
    ‘Won’t you sit?