Piranha to Scurfy by Ruth Rendell

Author:Ruth Rendell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9780307427267
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2007-12-17T16:00:00+00:00

All mornings were the same here, all bright sunshine and mounting heat and cloudless sky. First she went to the pool. He shouldn’t think she was running after him. But she had put on her new white swimming costume, the one that was no longer too tight, and after a while, with a towel tied round her sarong-fashion, she went down to the beach.

For a long time she didn’t see him. The American girl and the Caribbean man were serving the food and drink. Alison was so late getting there that all the recliners and hoods had gone. She was provided with a chair and an umbrella, inadequate protection against the sun. Then she saw him, leaning out of the pavilion to hand someone a towel. He waved to her and smiled. At once she was elated, and leaving her towel on the chair, she ran down the beach and plunged into the sea.

Because she wasn’t being careful, because she had forgotten everything but him and the hope that he would come and sit with her and have a drink with her, she came out of the water without thinking of the mountain of water that pursued her, without any awareness that it was behind her. The great wave broke, felled her, and roared on, knocking out her breath, drenching her hair. She tried to get a purchase with her hands, to dig into the sand and pull herself up before the next breaker came. Her eyes and mouth and ears were full of salt water. She pushed her fingers into the wet, slippery sand and encountered something she thought at first was a shell. Clutching it, whatever it was, she managed to crawl out of the sea while the next wave broke behind her and came rippling in, a harmless trickle.

By now she knew that what she held was no shell. Without looking at it she thrust it into the top of her swimming costume, between her breasts. She dried herself, dried her eyes, which stung with salt, felt a raging thirst from the brine she had swallowed. No one had come to her aid, no one had walked down to the water’s edge to ask if she was all right. Not even the beach butler. But he was here now beside her, smiling, carrying her Diet Coke and packet of crisps as if she had ordered them.

“Ocean smack you down? Too bad. I don’t think you lose no jewels?”

She shook her head, nearly said, “No, but I found some.” But now wasn’t the time, not until she had had a good look. She drank her Diet Coke, took the crisps upstairs with her. In her bathroom, under the cold tap, she washed her find. The sight came back to her of Agustin encircling his wrist with his fingers when he told her of the white bikini woman’s loss. This was surely her bracelet or some other rich woman’s bracelet.

It was a good two inches wide, gold set with broad bands of diamonds.

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.