An Unexpected Affair by Jan Ellis Read Free Book Online Page B

smiled over at her sister. “You are lucky, you know Jenna? Keith adores you.”
    “I wouldn’t go that far, but he’s not a bad old stick. Now, do they have trolley dollies on these trains? I could murder a coffee and croissant.”

 
     
    Chapter 7: Back to Chevandier
     
    As the monotonous northern French countryside sped past, Eleanor looked over at her sister. Jenna had been reading a bodice ripper on her e-reader but had nodded off and was gently snoring. Now in her early fifties, she was still an attractive woman with white-blonde hair cropped short to emphasise her features. Jenna had always been naturally fair and slender like their father, whereas Eleanor had inherited her mother’s colouring and build, which Connie liked to describe as ‘curvaceous’.
    On her return to London from Chevandier in the late 1980s Eleanor had decided to shift some of the pounds she had put on in France. Like just about everyone else she knew at the time, she had started to attend aerobics classes to help ‘fight the flab’. She had also taken up jogging, which she enjoyed more than the fitness classes, not least because they didn’t involve wearing a skin-tight outfit and leaping around like an idiot. Reflected in the floor-to-ceiling mirrors Eleanor thought that she and her fellow sufferers looked like so many Liquorice Allsorts in their multi-coloured leotards, leggings and stripy leg-warmers.
    Running was different: dressed in comfy clothes with her Walkman clamped over her ears, she loved to pound around London’s parks in the evening after work. When she had more time, she would go down to the South Bank, which was pretty empty of people in those far-off days. Sometimes she would pause to catch her breath and see what was on offer at the second-hand book stalls under the bridge. One or two of the vendors had begun to recognise her and sometimes gave her a few pennies off, not that it was easy jogging with a bag full of paperbacks clutched in her hands, dry leaves and litter swirling around her feet.
    One day while running past the old London County Hall building she tripped and fell. Sitting on the grass feeling dazed and slightly nauseous, she was joined by a tall young man with heavy rimmed glasses who stopped to see if she was okay. Her rescuer helped her to gather up her things and hobble to the nearest pub where, after a medicinal spritzer, she felt much better. The studious-looking young man was Alan, and four months later they were engaged.
    Alan was different to Christophe in every possible way. Whereas Christophe was skinny with dark curls, Alan was broad-shouldered with thick blond hair and a ruddy complexion. He was short-sighted but hated wearing his glasses, even though Eleanor said they were sexy and made him look like Clark Kent. Unlike the languorous Christophe he was sporty and was prone to leaping out of bed at dawn to row on the Thames. Sex with Christophe had been fast and exciting, almost like a game. With Alan everything was slower and calmer, and Eleanor enjoyed the unfamiliar sensation of feeling quite small and strangely ‘girly’ in his rugby player’s arms.
    Perhaps the thing she liked most was that she could talk to Alan about all kinds of things because they had similar backgrounds. It had amused her trying to explain the mysteries of English culture such as Marmite and Benny Hill to Christophe, but it was even nicer to have shared interests and experiences with someone.
    Alan had a robust sense of humour and they spent many Saturday evenings at comedy clubs or jammed inside smoky rooms above pubs. Having been away for so long, Eleanor saw the city through fresh eyes and quite ordinary things now seemed new and exciting. If she hadn’t gone away, would she have found Alan attractive? He was certainly not ‘her type’, whatever that was. Jenna had seemed surprised when the two of them had got together though, at the time, the sisters weren’t particularly close and there was nothing