Under Gemini by Rosamunde Pilcher Read Free Book Online Page B

beside the point.”
    â€œWhere are you spending tonight?”
    Flora told her about the Shelbourne, the luggage dumped in the hall, the potted palms, and the suffocating atmosphere. “I’d forgotten how depressing it was. But never mind, it’s only for one night.”
    She became aware that Rose was watching her with a cool and thoughtful expression in her dark eyes. (Do I ever look like that? thought Flora. The word calculating sprang to mind and had to be hastily slapped down.)
    Then Rose said, “Don’t go back.” Flora stared. “I mean it. We’ll have something to eat here, and then we’ll find a taxi and go and collect your luggage, and we’ll go back to Harry’s flat, and you can stay there. It’s vast, and there are loads of beds. Besides, if I go to Greece tomorrow I shan’t see you again, and we’ve got so much to talk about, we shall need an entire night to ourselves. And anyway, it’s super, because you can stay in the flat after I’ve gone. You can stay there until you’ve found somewhere else to live.”
    â€œBut…” For some reason Flora found she was searching for objections to this apparently delightful plan. “But won’t anybody mind?” was all she could come up with.
    â€œWho should mind? I’ll fix it with the hall porter. Harry never minds what I do. And as for Mother…” Something amused her. She left the sentence unfinished and began to laugh. “What would she say if she could see us now? Getting together, making friends. What do you think your father would say?”
    Flora shied from the idea. “I can’t imagine.”
    â€œWill you tell him that we’ve found each other?”
    â€œI don’t know. Perhaps. One day.”
    â€œWas it a cruel thing to do?” asked Rose, suddenly thoughtful. “Separating identical twins. Identical twins are meant to be two halves of the same person. Separating us was perhaps like cutting that person in half.”
    â€œIn that case, they may have done us a kindness.”
    Rose’s eyes narrowed. “I wonder,” she said. “why my mother chose me, and your father chose you.”
    â€œPerhaps they tossed a coin.” Flora spoke lightly, because for some reason, it didn’t bear thinking about.
    â€œWould everything have been upside down if the coin had fallen the other way?”
    â€œIt would certainly have been different.”
    Different. She thought of her father, of Seal Cottage by winter firelight, and the tarry smell of burning driftwood. She thought of tender, early springs and summer seas dancing with sun pennies. She thought of red wine in a carafe set in the middle of the scrubbed table and the comforting sound of Beethoven’s Pastoral thundering from the record player. And now, she remembered the warm and loving presence of Marcia.
    â€œWould you have wanted it to be different?” asked Rose.
    Flora smiled. “No.”
    Rose reached out for the ashtray and stubbed out her cigarette. She said, “Nor me. I wouldn’t have changed a thing.”
    *   *   *
    Now it was Friday.
    In Edinburgh, after a morning of cloud and rain, the sun had finally struggled through the murk, the sky was clearing, and the city glittered in a brilliant autumn light. To the north, beyond the deep indigo of the Firth of Forth, the hills of Fife lay serene against a sky of palest blue. Across Princes Street the municipal flower beds of the Waverly Gardens were ablaze with fiery dahlias, and on the far side of the railway line the cliffs swept up to the theatrical bulk of the castle with its distant, fluttering flag.
    Antony Armstrong, emerging from his office into Charlotte Square, was taken unaware by the beauty of the afternoon. Because he was taking a long weekend, it had been an exceptionally busy morning. He had not bothered about lunch. He had not even raised his eyes to glance