A Perfect Marriage by Jean Saunders

Author:Jean Saunders
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781448213184
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2019-11-23T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 11

She couldn’t have said why she bought it, nor what she intended to do with it. It burned her fingers all the way back to the hotel. If the pendant in Robert’s safe had had any significance at all, then it would probably be better not to know, and to leave the past undisturbed. But she had him to thank for her persistence, she thought bitterly. He would never have left a mystery unsolved. In reality, she really didn’t want to know, not if it meant tarnishing his image, but the seeds of doubt were too strong to be denied now.

She stood at the wide bay window of her room, gazing out to where the stretch of sandy cove was so inviting that morning with the sun glinting on the gently rippling tide. It was perfect, like their lives together. Or so she had thought. Until now. And this was the very worst time to be having doubts, when she was here on this island where they had first known love, twenty-five years ago.

But she wasn’t quite as naive as everyone thought she was. She might not be as sophisticated as Robert and John, nor as street-wise as Sarah and the girls, or her own children—or her mother, for God’s sake, but she wasn’t stupid either. Maybe she had been going around blinkered for all these years, but her eyes were opening wider now.

‘Circumstantial evidence is no evidence at all,’ she remembered hearing her father say, applying his military logic to any situation. ‘If you can’t face a criminal with the facts, you might as well forget it, because criminals will always be wilier than you are. Always one step ahead. That’s the nature of the beast.’

Except that Robert wasn’t a criminal, nor a beast; he was a loving husband and father, and there had to be an explanation.

Only he wasn’t around to supply one, and Margaret didn’t like the gnawing suspicion inside her, and wished desperately that she was able to blot it out.

She turned abruptly, aware that the room was stifling her. She needed to be outside again where there was space to breathe, and she strode purposefully along the coastal paths joining the various coves together, walking for miles as if to rid her mind of everything ugly that had no place there. Finally, she turned and walked back more slowly, ending up at the cove nearest the hotel. By now her stomach was telling her it was well past lunchtime, but food was the last thing on her mind.

She walked right to the water’s edge, gazing into the crystal-clear water for a long while, as if it could reveal secrets. Then, with an uncharacteristic sense of rage, she pulled the twin pendants out of her pocket, and hurled them as far as she could into the Atlantic Ocean.

The next minute she was almost knocked off her feet by something heavy lunging against her. She screamed, losing her balance, and would have gone headlong into the water if someone hadn’t hauled her back and into his arms.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.