Circles of Fate by Anne Saunders Read Free Book Online

friend.”
    â€œIs he?”
    â€œIs he what?”
    â€œYour friend?”
    â€œTonight, all the world is my friend. Did you like my flowers?”
    â€œOf course. I was going to thank you for them.”
    He answered what she didn’t say, because the flowers didn’t have to be tagged with the serenade and could have come from Edward.
    â€œNext time I won’t forget to include a card.”
    â€œYou didn’t forget this time,” she said. “It pleases you to be deliberately provocative.”
    He laughed.
    â€œWhere are we going?”
    â€œFirst we eat.”
    â€œI’ve eaten.”
    â€œThen, unless I can persuade you to eat two suppers, you can watch me eat.”
    There was a marked Arabic touch about the dazzling white houses and huddled streets. His favourite restaurant was situated at the top of a steep rise, up an incredibly narrow street. The upstairs windows were touching close and were fitted with either grilles or tiny step-out balconies. These latter were filled with colourful plants in pots and rioting vines. A fat señora, whose curves gave evidence of too much oily food, wine and child-bearing, stepped out to unpeg the daily wash. A scraggy black cat brushed against their legs and disappeared up a black alleyway.
    Anita didn’t eat with Felipe, but she shared his bottle of wine. He pointed to her finger.
    â€œThat’s an unusual ring.”
    â€œIt isn’t new. It belonged to Edward’s sister.” It didn’t seem odd to be sitting with Felipe and discussing Edward and his family. “She died very young, very tragically.”
    â€œTell me about it.”
    The wine has made me weepy, she thought, explaining the lump in her throat because surely she ought to be able to talk about it after all this time.
    â€œWell, she and her husband were travelling in the last carriage of a train which was derailed.”
    â€œWas anyone with them?” He had a way of going to the important heart of the matter.
    â€œMy mother and father. Of all the train, only the last carriage was damaged. Only my mother was carried out alive. My father, Sheila Masters, that was the name of Edward’s sister, and her husband John, were killed instantly.”
    â€œSo Edward has been a friend of the family, I believe that is the correct term, for a number of years?”
    â€œFor one month before I was born. My mother was carrying me at the time.”
    â€œEdward is much older than you?”
    â€œHe’s forty-one. Nineteen years older than I am. He sought my mother out to obtain news of his sister. They had been very close and he felt her death keenly.”
    â€œPoor Anita. You never knew your father.”
    â€œI know what you’re thinking, but it isn’t like that.”
    â€œNo?”
    â€œNo.” She didn’t regard Edward as a father figure.
    â€œCome on,” said Felipe. “I want to buy you a present. Something to remember me by.”
    â€œSurely the shops aren’t still open?”
    â€œThe shops stay open while ever a prospective customer prowls the street.”
    He held her hand like a novio. She was very conscious of his fingers clasping hers. She thought of carnations and moonlight and all the romantic nonsense a girl thinks of at such times. The shop he selected sold a jumble of inexpensive things. Castanets, tambourines, music-boxes and fans. Not for tourists, surely? – because so few tourists had as yet found this island – but for the employees of the big export people. Ponchos and shawls and sunglasses with exotic frames. Dolls dressed in peasant costume or as gypsies or flamenco dancers.
    Such lovely things! She wondered what he would choose to remind her of him. She felt as excited as a little girl. He preserved her feeling of expectancy by making her turn round while he made his selection, and then he handed her a wrapped parcel.
    Out in the street again, she said: “When