The End of Summer by Rosamunde Pilcher

Author:Rosamunde Pilcher
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

7

I awoke again, drawn from sleep by some subconscious alarm. I knew it was daylight. I stirred and opened my eyes, and a man was standing at the foot of my bed, watching me, cold-eyed. I let out a gasp of fright, and sat up with my heart pounding, but it was only Sinclair, come to wake me.

“It’s eight o’clock,” he said. “We have to leave at nine.”

I sat rubbing the sleep out of my eyes, giving myself time to let the panic run out of my veins. “You gave me the most dreadful fright.”

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to … I was just going to wake you up…”

I looked up again, and this time saw no menace, simply the familiar figure of my cousin, arms crossed on the end of my bed, tip-tilted eyes dancing with amusement. He wore a faded kilt and a big ribbed pullover, with a scarf knotted at the neck. He looked clean and brushed, and smelt deliciously of the after-shave he had slapped on his face.

I scrambled into a kneeling position and hung out of the open window to inspect the day. It was perfect, bright, clean, cold, the sky cloudless. I said, in wonder, “Gibson was right.”

“Of course he was right. He always is. Did you hear the wind in the night? And there’s been a frost, soon all the trees will be turning.”

The loch, blue with reflected sky, was flecked with small scuds of white foam, and the mountains opposite were no longer veiled in mist, but clear and sparkling, bruised with great sweeps of purple heather, and in the morning’s crystal air, I could trace every rock and crack and corrie that led to their swelling summits.

It was impossible not to be elated by such a day. The uncertainties of the night had gone with the darkness. I had heard what was not intended for my ears. But in the clear light of morning, it seemed perfectly possible that I had been mistaken, had misunderstood. After all, I had not heard the beginning of the discussion, nor the end … and it was wrong to make any sort of a judgement when I was in possession of only half the facts.

Relief at having so easily shed my private worries made me suddenly enormously happy. I jumped off the bed, and went, in my nightdress, to find some clothes, and Sinclair, his mission successfully accomplished, went downstairs to start his breakfast.

* * *

We ate it in the kitchen, warm and snug by the Aga. Mrs Lumley had fried sausages and I ate four, and drank two enormous cups of coffee, and then I went and found an old rucksack, and we packed it with lunch: sandwiches and chocolate, apples and cheese.

“Do you want a Thermos?” Mrs Lumley wanted to know.

“No,” said Sinclair, still filling himself with toast and marmalade. “Put in a couple of plastic mugs, though, and then we can drink out of the river.”

There was the hooting of a car horn from outside, and presently Gibson emerged through the back door.

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