Designs on Life Read Online Free

kind of thing you said about Naomi. And that’s why we’re here—just to get away from Naomi. I told you she meant nothing to me—”
    “You meant plenty to her,” she interrupted swiftly.
    “Did that matter? Could I help it? And didn’t I agree to come here just to satisfy you that the thing wasn’t important?”
    “I thought we came here because we’d agreed there was no future for whites in Africa.”
    “Oh yes, that’s what we told everyone else. But Naomi was the real reason. And now you’re jealous of an old woman of eighty, who’s only been doing her best to help us.”
    “Well, d’you realise she tried to put it into my head that my accident was your fault, even though I’d told her it was mine? Is that helping us?”
    “So that’s it! That’s the grievance you’ve been nursing against me all this time! I knew there was something. But didn’t I tell you not to take the car out till I’d had the brakes checked?”
    “You know, I thought you’d had them seen to. You didn’t try to stop me taking it out.”
    “I didn’t know you were going to.”
    “I could have been killed.”
    “And you think I wanted that!”
    They were equally angry, but while Colin’s voice had stayed loud, Helen’s was low and bitter. As she always did, once she had become involved in a quarrel with him, she almost at once started wondering desperately how to put a stop to it. She could have drawn back from it herself in an instant, apologising, even grovelling, but once Colin was sufficiently angry, it took hours, sometimes even days, to persuade him to forget it. He was looking at her with a strange look in his eyes, which she found peculiarly disturbing.
    “I’m not a murderer,” he said, suddenly speaking only just above a whisper, “but for God’s sake, don’t provoke me too far.”
    Then he picked up the overcoat that he had dropped on a chair, struggled into it and walked out of the room. Helen heard the outer door slam as he let himself out of the flat.
    She knew that he would be gone for most of the rest of the day, perhaps going to a cinema, or pottering about bookshops, or merely walking along the slushy streets, encouraging the black mood that had gripped him, assuring himself over and over again that he was in the right, which, as it happened, this time he really was, or so Helen thought, as she turned her anger, once he was gone, against herself. Of course Naomi had been the real reason why they had come home. And hadn’t she sworn to herself that whatever happened she would never blame him for her accident? If she loved him, she had to accept him as he was, moody, casual, forgetful, but after his fashion loving her.
    Or could that be wrong?
    Sooner or later, after one of their quarrels, she always arrived at this point. Did he really love her, or did he merely feel entangled in something from which he could not break free? Was that the explanation of his moods? Did they mean something far more important than she had ever let herself believe?
    She ate most of Mrs. Lambie’s sandwiches for her lunch. She was halfway through them when she heard the rattle of the letter-box, and leaning on her sticks, made her way along the hall to the front door to see what had been delivered. One letter lay on the mat inside the door. She picked it up, looked at the address on it, then grew stiff with shock. It was addressed to Colin, and the handwriting was Naomi’s, and the postmark was London.
    For a moment Helen could not believe it, thinking that she must be mistaken about the handwriting. But she knew it well. There had been a time when Naomi, who had been a secretary working for the High Commission, had been her friend rather than Colin’s, and Helen had often had notes from her. It was a distinctive writing, not easily mistaken.
    Limping slowly back to the sitting-room, she put the letter down on a table, where it would catch Colin’s eye when he came back again, then returned to the sandwiches.
    Dusk