from Thorogood House.
It wasn’t fair, Amy thought. Why should there be the difference?
She opened her eyes and saw that Jack was watching her face. She was so close to him that all she could see was the net of tiny wrinkles at the corner of his eye and the little, tender fold of his eyelid. Jack was her friend, and he had shown her the secret with ease and grace and she loved him. That was all. The difference was between Jack Roper and poor Peter Jaspert.
Amy reached up to touch Jack’s cheek with her fingers.
‘Thank you,’ she said softly.
‘In the normal run of things,’ Jack told her, ‘I am supposed to thank you.’
Amy lay back so that her hair spread in red-brown feathers over his chest.
‘You know why,’ she murmured.
‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘Well? Did you like it?’
Amy rolled over so that she could see him, touching her finger to his mouth and then looking down at the curled, greying hair on his chest and the tanned, muscular belly, and his long legs still wound around hers. He made her own body look soft and glimmeringly pale by comparison against the rumpled silk cover. Amy bent her head so that her face was hidden.
‘I thought it was wonderful.’
She felt the rumble of laughter. ‘Oh, Amy, my darling. I’d sworn that I wouldn’t ever make the comparison, but you are so exactly like Adeline was.’
‘I don’t mind you comparing,’ Amy said honestly. She was thinking of her mother’s generosity and vitality and her determination to be happy. She knew that Jack was wrong, because she wasn’t the same as Adeline. ‘I’d be proud, if I thought that I really was like her.’
‘I don’t want to think of anyone at this minute but you,’ Jack said fiercely. ‘And anyway, one shouldn’t. It’s most discourteous.’
Passion veiled with flippancy, Amy thought, dreamily. Oh yes, I like that. I do like you, Jack.
He reached for her and kissed her so that she twined her legs more tightly in his and stroked his shoulders and the curve of his flank where it tapered into his hips. How wonderful it is, she thought, to be so hungry and to be fed exactly what you want. And how clever, and how beautiful, bodies are when they fit together.
‘Would you like to put on your exotic black dress again so that I can take you out to supper?’ he murmured.
Amy shook her head slowly. She forgot Isabel, and Adeline, and everything in the world except Jack. ‘I want you to make love to me again. Will you?’
He wound his fingers in her hair and pulled her down on top of him. ‘I’m forty-eight years old, my love. I should have known you when I was eighteen.’
Her hand moved, stroking, and then found him. ‘You can,’ she said simply and she heard the brief bubble of laughter again.
‘Yes. I can.’
Much later, they went out to supper together. Amy’s long black gloves were restored, and the floating white feathers enveloped her to the point of her chin. The diamonds shone in her ears again and her hair was as smooth as when she had left Bruton Street. But Amy was different. As the maître d’hôtel guided them through the packed tables to their shaded corner, the diners looked up at them. They saw the brilliance of Amy’s eyes and her pink cheeks, Jack Roper’s confident height and her fingers tucked under his arm, and they sighed enviously.
At their table the maitre d’ murmured, ‘And will the beautiful madame sit here?’
Amy had been told that she was beautiful before, and the idea had made her nervous. Tonight she knew that she was beautiful, and that she had achieved something that she would never forget.
Across the white tablecloth Jack raised his glass to her, with the bubbles rising and bursting in it like stars.
‘To you,’ he said.
There was no going back to Bruton Street. Amy fell asleep in the little Chelsea house with Jack’s arms around her, and he was still asleep beside her when she woke again in the morning.
She lay quietly, watching the bars of sunlight move infinitesimally slowly across the floor.
Jack stirred and opened his eyes. He was fully alert at once. He always crossed the barrier between oblivion and consciousness with perfect ease. His arms tightened around her now.
‘How long have we got?’ he asked.
Until she had to be a nurse again. ‘Only a week,’ Amy said sadly.
‘And how long will it take you to be packed and ready to go abroad?’
‘A couple of hours, I should think.’
‘Let’s do it, then. I want to see you in the sun.’
They flew from Croydon Airport to Nice. Amy had never travelled by air before and the ease of it enthralled her. Jack grinned at her indulgently, as if she was a child with a coveted new toy. By eleven o’clock they were dining overlooking the harbour at St Tropez, where the lights of the moored yachts reflected in skeins off the black water and the music drifted out over the ripples.
All through the hot, still days of their holiday Amy basked in the sun. Her skin turned gold, and her hair shone with copper lights. She swam with Jack in the warm sea, fighting to keep up with him as he forged ahead of her with powerful strokes sending up glittering plumes of spray. In the evenings they hopped from café to café with the surging crowds of friends, and danced on yacht decks under the strings of coloured lights. Then they went to bed, and reached out for one another all over again.
Amy had never felt so vibrantly happy, nor had she ever had the same sense that everything she looked at or touched was brighter than usual. The whole world seemed charged with a new electricity, from the crystalline sand under her feet to the feather of pink clouds against the evening skyline. The South of France was painted in its exotic colours by the physical pleasure that she shared with Jack. It wrapped around them so that their hands had only to touch to make them stop short and stare at one another, the dancing that drew them close and separated them was almost a torture, and the kisses lightly exchanged under the blue-black night sky grew deeper until they melted against one another and fled hand in hand from the noisy parties to be alone again.
The short summer nights seemed hardly long enough. But Amy felt stronger on the lack of sleep than she would ever have believed possible at the Royal Lambeth.
‘Do you think,’ she asked Jack once as they lay in bed in the ash-pale moonlight, ‘do you think it’s wrong to enjoy this so much? Isn’t there a word for it?’
The moonlight drained the colour from everything and his eyes were grey as he laughed at her.
‘The word you’re thinking of is quite inapplicable to you. You have a perfectly normal, natural appetite and I love it.’
He saw that Amy’s face was suddenly touched with sadness, and he reached out to hold her. ‘What is it?’
‘I was thinking about my sister.’
Isabel and her sadness had been often in her thoughts.
Jack was waiting. He knew about Isabel, as he seemed to know about most things. He even included Peter Jaspert among his huge circle of acquaintances. But he had almost never spoken of them.
‘Jack,’ Amy said abruptly, ‘when we get back home, will you come to Chertsey with me to see her?’
‘Of course.’
The last golden day came. Twenty-four hours before Amy was due to present herself to Sister Blaine once more they swam in the sea for the last time, and then drove back to Nice between the oleanders and the bougainvillaea.
Amy sighed. ‘I’ve never been so happy,’ she said softly. ‘Thank you.’ And then, in Jack’s tanned, familiar face,