Second Act by Marilyn Todd Page B

and propensity for summer colds. The closer she approached along the garden path, the easier it became to compare Claudia’s fur cape with her own. Finding the other’s lusher, more lustrous, just like her clothes, her slippers, her jewels—even the money-grubbing bitch’s skin and hair. No silver strands requiring walnut juice in those curls, dammit, and her bosoms didn’t need padding, either. Julia’s own linen wodges had started to slip halfway along the Via Sacra. Must remember not to take her cloak off. Better a flat chest than to be seen with breasts around her waist.
    ‘I need to speak to you about your daughter,’ she said without preamble. To her immense irritation, a dunnock started to sing in the cherry tree.
    ‘Gaius’s daughter,’ Claudia corrected. There were times, and this was one of them, when she had to remind herself that Julia was only a decade older than herself. Ten years, but she might as well be another species. ‘What’s the sulky little cow been up to now?’
    ‘These last few days have been a nightmare. An absolute nightmare, I tell you.’ Julia sniffed and the dunnock wisely flew off. ‘Teenage daughters are always a problem, I know, but Flavia is giving us so many sleepless nights, now she’s acquired an interest in boys.’
    ‘She’s fifteen. It would be unnatural if she didn’t.’
    ‘I’ve been trying to drum into her the importance of securing a good marriage, but she simply repels potential suitors.’
    Repel was the right word. Spotty, fat and moody, Flavia was hardly catch of the day.
    ‘The child insists she will only marry for love, and this selfish attitude is scuppering any headway Marcellus and I make to fix her up with a husband—’
    ‘To get her off your hands, you mean.’
    ‘—and all the time the wretched creature keeps mooning about over the most inappropriate youth you could imagine. The son of an artisan. Imagine!’
    Teenage crushes come and go. It wasn’t the first one Flavia had had, it would not be the last, and this hardly constituted a crisis.
    ‘What’s really troubling you, Julia?’
    ‘ Me ? Good heavens, there’s nothing wrong in my life, nothing whatsoever— Well. Actually, I suppose there is a little matter I might take the opportunity to discuss in confidence, seeing as I’m here.’ She glanced round the garden to make sure no one else was within earshot. ‘After all, dear, you are family. ’
    Claudia preferred her sister-in-law as a bitch.
    ‘I am not exaggerating when I say Flavia’s been a pain, but—’ Julia stared at a rearing stone horse. ‘Marcellus has been behaving strangely, too.’
    ‘How can you tell?’
    Indignation flared the older woman’s nostrils. ‘Don’t get impertinent with me!’ But the need to confide had engulfed her, she couldn’t turn back the tide now. She looked at the holly bush, awash with bright red shiny berries, and the rows of clipped laurels and the aromatic myrtle, and came to a decision. ‘I think Marcellus might be having an affair.’
    Honestly, who could blame him?
    ‘Do you know who?’
    ‘I would have preferred you to have asked, do I know why. After all, it’s not as though there are cracks in our relationship.’
    ‘What do you call not letting Marcellus in your bed for two years?’
    ‘Lots of couples sleep in separate rooms,’ Julia reminded her, pointedly swivelling her eyes towards the house behind her, with its wide double staircase leading off the atrium. With Claudia’s bedroom on one side of the gallery, Gaius’s on the other…
    ‘Anyway, I made it clear a long time ago that I don’t like That Sort Of Thing.’ Julia’s thin lips pursed white. ‘But that doesn’t mean he has to go elsewhere.’
    ‘Actually, I rather think it does, although I agree about you not having any cracks in your relationship. They’re bloody great canyons, Julia.’
    ‘How dare you!’
    ‘Well, what would you call a marriage in which one party is frustrated and unhappy