Facing the Light by Adèle Geras Read Free Book Online

frilly nonsense she’d had to wear as a bridesmaid had nearly killed her, quite apart from what she was feeling about Fiona. Her hair had been pulled away from her forehead and tied back. She was standing against a wall, and Efe was looking down at her with something like love in his eyes. That was what she liked to think, anyway. Whenever she took the photo out and examined it carefully, though, she could see the truth. He was looking normal – affectionate and friendly, but no more. All the love was in
her
eyes, turned to look up at him. Love, and something like desperation. There were times when she felt like tearing up the photo, but something always stopped her, a vain hope that the next time she looked,magically, Efe’s expression would be different – filled with passion, seeing
her
as the person he wanted to spend the rest of his life with.
    Sometimes she chided herself for her ridiculous fantasies. There was no reason on earth why Efe should make those come true and leave Fiona for her. He liked beautiful women and Beth knew that no one could call her that.
    She was slim, and her dark hair fell almost to her shoulders in a well-cut bob. She wore little make-up, and what she did wear was very expensive.
But you’re a good-looking girl. You don’t make enough of yourself. I could show you
. Rilla said that all the time and would have liked nothing better than to manage her stepdaughter’s ‘look’ as she called it. Poor old Rilla! Beth realized how frustrating it must be for her that she had a daughter whose style was understated and elegant. No one would have guessed she was the offspring of a rock star. Beth was neither shy nor self-effacing, but she hated clothes that called attention to themselves.
You’re like a funeral mute
, Gwen’s daughter Chloë often told her, in despair at her eternal plain colours, and it was probably true. Her clothes were safe. She simply put them on and forgot about them, and that left her free to devote her energies to more important things.
    Beth was personal assistant to Jack Eldridge, the senior partner in a firm of architects where dark trouser suits and silver earrings were something like a uniform. Eight years ago, when she’d started working there, Jack had been impressed by the fact that she was related to the Walsh family of Willow Court.
    â€˜It’s a most magnificent house, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘You’re very lucky to have partly grown up there.’
    Beth agreed. She loved every inch of Willow Court. It had been built in the early days of the nineteenth century, in imitation of a classical style. The E-shaped buildingwas surrounded by gardens. There were terraces of flowerbeds in front of the house, edged with low-growing lavender bushes, and full of blooms all year round, it seemed. Winter pansies grew before the tulips appeared in the spring, and later, drifts of Busy Lizzies in white and pale pink blossomed in their turn and, of course, roses in profusion. You could walk down the steps between them and make a soft crunching noise on the tiny gravelstones. The formal garden (white wrought-iron gazebo and hedges clipped into neat shapes) gave way to a smooth lawn, which fell in a curve of green to the wild garden, where poppies and cornflowers flourished alongside wild flowers whose names Beth didn’t know. The tall grasses planted down there, set with occasional decorative boulders, made an organized jungle that was always busy with butterflies and dragonflies and the hum of bees when the sun shone. And beyond the wilderness, there was the lake. This was where the willows that gave the house its name wept their leaves into the water, and where the swans congregated. Beyond the lake, shadowy trees sloped up the hill to the village church, whose spire was just visible above a rolling ocean of a green that was nearly black in the evening and when the clouds were thick in the sky.
    Beth liked