Becoming Strangers by Louise Dean

Author:Louise Dean [Dean, Louise]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Sagas, General, Fiction
ISBN: 9780156032667
Google: xcdoyaNHSlAC
Amazon: B004JZWXX4
Publisher: Mariner Books
Published: 2004-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

36

THERE WAS NO REASON why she should not have a new life, why she should not have all the things she could appreciate. There were wealthy men who had ugly wives. An American man would suit her. It would be a fresh start.

She sat at the side of the yacht; chin out to the horizon, feeling the tensile strength in her collarbones and her nipples hard against the flimsy dress. She could reinvent herself. Her boys would fit into the scheme, whatever it was.

The owner of the yacht, Jason's friend, was a hardened man, firmly into his middle age, firm with his opinions. He insisted on this, insisted on that, and as he was the host, the others garrulously concurred with whatever he expressed.

The captain took them out to a place to fish and the men gathered around the toys at the rear at the boat, each pressing the other to take part, keen to see fun happen. She was not used to being relegated to a women's section and was angry that parts of this day were for men only. She was not offered beer after beer as the men were but allowed to help herself from the crate of cold sodas.

The women bored her, discussing some of the more shocking crimes of the times. At lunch they ate the fish the men had caught and the women praised the men. Missy proclaimed Jason's the biggest and they all fell about, taking it in turns to ensure the innuendo had not gone unremarked. Annemieke felt excluded. She sat silent until the owner himself, between mouthfuls, asked her about herself. She intended to set out towards the terrain of her impending widowhood but she prevaricated, with sophisticate modesty, describing herself as nothing more than a bourgeois, but was shanghaied by Missy.

'Not at all! Annemieke is married to a hero. Her husband went out for an entire night to find an old lady, who went missing from the resort.'

With polite interest, secondary to his rapport with luncheon, the owner raised his bushy eyebrows to look in turn at Missy and Annemieke, sucking his fingertips.

'Of course, it turns out the lady has Alzheimer's/ said Jason with head-shaking disbelief. 'Her husband ought to have thought things through before they came away.'

'Can you imagine,' said Missy, her right hand raised, 'the old woman walking, all alone, in the heat, a stranger, going nowhere.

'It's sad,' she said, looking at her husband with sudden intensity, 'isn't it?'

He squinted at her but apparently saw nothing in it, for he looked distant and shook his head lightly.

'We saw an old man walking along just off the freeway outside of Charlotte once,' Beverly began, 'with a suitcase. We slowed down, Joe and I; I mean nobody walks on the freeway, do they? It was so weird. And with a suitcase. When we asked him what he was doing—'

Her husband cut in, 'He said, "Going home" so we asked him where it was and he wouldn't say a thing, just kept walking.

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