Under Gemini Read Online Free PDF

love affair, she had become disenchanted with the big city, homed to Cornwall for Christmas, and had needed little encouragement to stay there. It had been a wonderful, relaxed year, knowing, as the winter gave way to a particularly beautiful and early spring, and spring turned to summer, that she could stay and watch it all happening; there was no deadline; no day on the calendar when she would have to pack a suitcase and get back to the grindstone.
    She did, in fact—to pass the time and earn a little money—take jobs, but they were all temporary, undemanding, and usually amusing: picking daffodils for a local market gardener; working as waitress in a coffee bar; selling caftans to summer tourists mad to spend their money.
    It was in the caftan shop that she had first met Marcia and had taken her back to Seal Cottage for a drink. She had watched in delighted disbelief the instant rapport which sprang up between Marcia and her father. The rapport, it soon became obvious, was not simply a passing fancy.
    Love made Marcia bloom like a rose, and Flora’s father became so appearance-conscious that he actually went out and bought himself a new pair of trousers without anybody suggesting that he do so. As the relationship steadily deepened and strengthened, Flora tactfully tried to withdraw, making excuses not to accompany them on their jaunts to the pub down the road and finding reasons for going out in the evening so that they could have Seal Cottage to themselves.
    When they were married, she started making noises almost at once about returning to London and to work, but Marcia had persuaded her to stay on at Seal Cottage, at least for the summer. That she had done, but time was running out. It was no longer Flora’s life, just as Seal Cottage was no longer her home. In September, she promised herself, she would go back to London. In September, she told Marcia, I’m leaving you two old lovebirds to yourselves.
    Now, it was all over. Already it was in the past. And the future? You’re going to be lucky, Marcia had said. You were born under Gemini and all the planets are moving in the right direction.
    But Flora was not so sure. She took out of her coat pocket the letter which had come that morning, which she had opened and read, and then swiftly stowed away before Marcia should ask about it. It was from Jane Porter.
    8 Mansfield Mews
    S.W.10
    Darling Flora,
    The most ghastly thing has happened and I just hope this reaches you before you start out for London. Betsy, the girl I share with, has had the most ghastly row with her boyfriend, and after two days in Spain has come home. She’s here now in the flat, weeping all over everything, and obviously waiting for the phone to ring, which it never does. So the bed I promised you isn’t available, and though you’d be more than welcome to a sleeping bag on my bedroom floor, the whole atmosphere is so fraught and Betsy is so utterly impossible that I wouldn’t ask my darkest enemy to share it. I do hope you can fix something just till you find a pad of your own. Terribly sorry to let you down like this, and hope you’ll understand. Be sure to ring me so that we can get down to a proper gossip. Longing to see you again and I’m sorry, I’m sorry, but it wasn’t my fault.
    Masses of love,
    Jane
    Flora sighed, folded the letter, and pushed it back into her pocket. She hadn’t said anything to Marcia, because Marcia in her new role of wife and mother had developed an alarming tendency to fuss. Had she known that Flora was going back to London without anywhere to lay her head, she would probably have refused to let her go. And having made up her mind, Flora felt that she could not bear to postpone her departure for one more day.
    Now, she applied herself to the problem of what she was going to do. There were friends of course, but after a year, she wasn’t sure what they were doing, where they were living, nor even who with.