Close Call Read Online Free

the sort of way that was expected of them. There was not too much variation in their leisure shirts and chinos and sandals, the male uniform where al fresco informality was determined to be the order of the day. Philip Smart, startlingly vivid in a bright green shirt and sage trousers, was very complimentary about Rosemary Lennox’s newly shaped hair and her dark-blue dress, singling out the oldest woman at the party for his attention with uncharacteristic tact.
    Robin Durkin fondled his wife’s bare shoulders in a display of uxorious attention which bordered upon the embarrassing, as she told him sharply when she had had enough of it.
    Ron Lennox felt emboldened to assure Alison Durkin that her dark hair looked very splendid. He had not seen it done before in this loose and carefully informal style, which she had chosen for the party. The normally boisterous Ally seemed rather muted at the beginning of the evening, and Ron was rewarded with something very like an unexpected blush on her rather pale face.
    Phil Smart took a huge breath and plunged in at the deep end. ‘You light up the whole close,’ he assured Lisa Holt. ‘I don’t know how you manage to work so hard in your new house and still come out here looking like something out of
Vogue
.’
    â€˜I don’t think
Vogue
deals much with Marks and Spencer’s summer dresses and sandals from the seconds shop,’ said Lisa dryly. ‘But thanks for the thought all the same, Phil.’
    â€˜And don’t kid yourself she works that hard.’ Jason Ritchie came round the side of the Durkin house, an immaculate white tee shirt stretched tight over his muscular chest, the barbed wire tattoo winding its way impressively around his biceps to disappear beneath the cotton. ‘There’s only one person does the work around Lisa’s place, and that ain’t the owner.’ He bathed the divorcee in a look that seemed to Phil Smart altogether too proprietorial; it roamed unhurriedly from her blonde head to the well-pedicured feet upon the grass. Jason’s labours, the look seemed to say, extended far beyond the garden. And the way in which Lisa Holt grinned back at him implied that the work he delivered in every different area was accounted wholly satisfactory.
    The two men, with almost thirty years and a ton of resentment between them, stared hard at each other, hostility hardening in this least appropriate of contexts. But Carol Smart, with a world-weary expertise born of long practice, thrust a beer can into Jason’s hand and a glass of wine into her husband’s, and said, ‘I’m sure we all wish we were making the rapid progress you are in Lisa’s garden, Jason. But then you have youth and strength on your side. I suppose I can’t expect the same rate of progress from Philip.’
    Jason looked at the attractive forty-three-year-old appreciatively. It suited him sometimes to play the young stud with more brawn than brains, but he understood exactly the sort of diplomacy which Carol Smart was attempting here. He smiled, looked deliberately away from the panting Phil Smart, and said, ‘My dad always says that you can’t rush gardening. You make mistakes if you try to rush it.’
    The moment passed. It had been a tricky one, the kind which could easily have got the evening off to a bad start. But once the drink began to flow, the strange dynamics of this diverse little group of people took over and things bowled along happily, even hilariously. The only common factor they had was that of beginning life anew in the close, but it was a surprisingly helpful one. The fact that they had moved in at this time of year, when the days were longest and the weather at its best, meant that they had seen a lot of each other as they moved their possessions into their houses and began the struggle to create gardens out of a building site. They had spent hours of digging, tugging and cursing in equal