‘I had heard.’
‘I’ve visited her a few times. It took her a while, obviously, to get used to the new place. But now she quite likes it. Apparently the neighbours treat her like a bit of a star. She likes that too. Of course, she misses her brother horribly, but all in all she could be worse.’
‘Dead like George, you mean?’ Linus said.
I smiled. ‘No, I think it’s a little better than that.’ Then I lowered my voice because I didn’t really want to hear what I was saying myself, ‘But in a strange kind of way, although I’m glad she’s all right, it almost makes what happened to George worse. Anyway,’ I shivered, ‘shall we go inside? I’m a little cold.’
Although I didn’t know it as I spoke, that was just the best thing I could have said, because all of a sudden, Linus came alive before me. I felt his fingers grip my shoulders as he pulled me towards him, taking me in his arms. I heard him mumble my name, his breath hot against my hair.
I pulled back a little, looking up into his face. It was pale in the moonlight, but now I saw only his beloved eyes, his adored lips; George was gone.
‘I love you,’ I said. ‘It’s pretty well the only thing that matters to me. And I want you to trust me, please. You can trust me.’
‘Will you stay with me this time?’
I lifted my hand to his face, caressing his cheek with the tips of my fingers, running them down to the corner of his mouth. I smiled at him and felt him smile back. ‘I’ll never leave you again, I promise.’
I heard him sigh, a contented little sigh. ‘I believe you. You’re not a quitter.’
We walked together up the road towards the opera house as the floodlights on the lake were switched on. They shone into the glass crescent, blinding us to the people inside, merging them into the light.
Acknowledgment
I would like to thank my agent, Jo Frank, and everyone at A. P. Watt and my editor, Rosie Cheetham, and everyone at Orion for the wonderful job they’ve done for me and for this novel.
My warmest thanks also to Tina and Bjorn Sahlqvist for their invaluable help and advice regarding matters of architecture. Speaking to them has been an inspiration.
I would also like to thank Jeremy Cobbold and Harriet Cobbold, Anne Hjörne and Elizabeth Buchan and Tony Mott for their advice and support. And finally, a special thank you to Lars Hjörne for his endless patience in listening, and for advising me with such wisdom and ingenuity, and to Lena Hjörne for putting up so graciously with my constant interruptions to her life.
A Note on the Author
MARIKA COBBOLD was born in Sweden and is the author of six other novels: Guppies for Tea, selected for the WH Smith First Novels Promotion and shortlisted for the Sunday Express Book of the Year Award; A Rival Creation; The Purveyor of Enchantment; Shooting Butterflies; Aphrodite’s Workshop for Reluctant Lovers and, most recently, Drowning Rose. Marika Cobbold lives in London.
By the Same Author
Guppies for Tea
A Rival Creation
The Purveyor of Enchantment
Shooting Butterflies
Aphrodite’s Workshop for Reluctant Lovers
Drowning Rose
Also available by Marika Cobbold
A RIVAL CREATION
Tonight I will speak to you about The Failure. The yearning in man to do more than just survive is the making of both the greatness and the tragedy of being human.
Once upon a more prosperous time, Liberty Turner was a published writer, bursting with creativity. Now, aged 39, divorced and pulverised by relentless rejections, Liberty is forced to face the truth that she has long been hiding from: that, despite all her bright-eyed ambition, she no longer has the talent to be a writer. That she is, in fact, a failure.
With nothing but time on her hands, Liberty tries to put her life back together and begins to involve herself more in the lives of her friends and neighbours in her village. But Tollymead is far from the middle-class idyll it appears to be, and everyone seems to have problems to solve and secrets to hide. When the handsome Oscar Brooke arrives in the village, Liberty prays that happiness might just be within her reach…
‘Undoubtedly one of the funniest novels you’ll read this summer’
DAILY MAIL
‘Hugely entertaining… all human life is here’
DAILY EXPRESS
‘Charming, funny and finely observed’
WOMAN AND HOME
The Purveyor of Enchantment
A life lived in fear is a life half lived
Clementine Hope, thirty-something and newly divorced, lives in a small Hampshire town, teaching music and working on a collection of fairy tales left to her by her Great Aunt Elvira. But mostly she worries. She worries about the rising crime rate. She worries about disease and illness, about offending God and, in the rare moments when she is at peace with Him, about upsetting the man in the carpet shop. When her sister Ophelia asks her if there’s anything she is not frightened of,
Clementine has to think for a while before replying, ‘Doris Day.’
But when she falls in love with Nathaniel Scott, the son of her next-door neighbour, her neuroses threaten to destroy her hard-won happiness. Determined to take control of her life, Clementine resolves to transform herself from victim to heroine, slay her personal dragon of fears and phobias, and rescue her very own Prince Charming.
‘Wonderfully funny, with a strong undertow… a joy to read’
DEBORAH MOGGACH
‘I strongly recommend The Purveyor of Enchantment’
DAILY MAIL
‘Cobbold’s brilliantly witty and blackly comic writing manages to both point fun at the absurdities of life and, at the same time, to celebrate them’
ELIZABETH BUCHAN
First published in Great Britain by Orion in 1999
This electronic edition published in 2012 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Copyright © Marika Cobbold 1999
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
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London WC1B 3DP
www.bloomsbury.com
The right of Marika Cobbold to be identified as the author of this work has
been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
All rights reserved. You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (including without limitation electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, printing, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
eISBN: 978 1 4088 2897 7
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