Country Pleasures by Primula Bond Read Free Book Online Page B

gathering.’
    Sally waggled her fingers dismissively and sprawled out on the sofa again, one leg hooked over the arm. Her petite hand slid down the front of her jeans as she absently stroked her stomach and started to doze. She had switched off already and was probably dreaming up another colourful scenario, but Janie was as jumpy as a sack of fleas.
    First, she searched outside the cottage but, as she suspected, there were no logs to be seen. Ben might own this little place, but he was the most impractical person she knew. She walked on down the uneven garden path and opened the gate. An enormous willow leaned over, brushing her face with its long silveryleaves and sending drops of rainwater down her neck as she passed. The garden was so overgrown that a passer-by would never know there was a cottage there unless they looked really hard, which was how Ben liked it. The gate led straight onto a pitted driveway, which in turn led up onto the narrow road that ran up from the sea towards the nearest town.
    Instead of making her way along the road, Janie walked straight across the drive in her huge borrowed gumboots. She felt through the thorns and found the gap in the hedge where she and her cousin used to punch and scrabble their way through to the farmer’s land. It would take forty minutes or so to go round by road, and only about ten minutes across the field. No one would see her. She’d be there and back with some logs in no time. And if not, they’d have to go down to the beach tomorrow and gather driftwood.
    The wine was making her ears sing, and Sally’s adventure threaded through her brain, words and images popping like bubbles in front of her eyes. Chasing up behind the words and images was a new, sharp hunger that pierced and twisted in Janie’s consciousness. As usual, Sally was right. This must be sheer frustration for her friend, she thought. She supposed this strong feeling was usually dormant or non-existent, but now it was so acute that it hurt.
    She started to stride round the edge of the field towards the farm. There were no crops planted there this year, only tufts of tall meadow grass and clumps of mud. The owners were letting the farm go to ruin. Janie looked down at her boots as she walked, her friend’s erotic play re-enactment still vivid in her mind. Sally was sex-mad, they’d always joked about that, but seeing her dancing and showing what went on between her legs was like peering through a keyholeand being unable to tiptoe away. Rushing away from the cottage made no difference. She could still visualise the steamy scene in the London flat, the silk ties flicking like whips over Sally’s supine body while she bent over the bed. Janie could go further than that. She could see herself lying on the black sheets, her own legs spread open, her own naked breasts tied up, her own nipples singing with the excitement and the cold while a stranger stood over her, unbuttoning his trousers.
    Sally was rocking the boat by introducing all that sex. Janie had been planning a long quiet summer with no drama and no hassle. But then again, she should have known better than to expect a quiet life once that little she-cat was at large.
    She was glad that the rain lashed hard to distract her, as it swept in from the nearby sea. Janie was forced to bend against the wind as she got closer to the ramshackle buildings of the neighbouring farm. She thought she could hear the rattle of a Land Rover engine over to her left, approaching the cottage, but that wasn’t so unusual. The road was accessed by all the nearby fields and was the only route to town from the sea.
    She took the short cut into the old farm by scrambling over the broken fence beside the pig sheds, and landed up to her ankles in thick mud. She had to tug her knee with both hands to get her foot out and plant it on the concrete yard. Near the farmhouse a couple of wheelbarrows had been left, and a bright yellow digger was