Seven For a Secret by Judy Astley Page B

two such lovely names: honeysuckle
and
woodbine. She smiled as she thought briefly of Nigel from the nursery, who saw plants in terms of italic-script Latin tags. ‘Oh yes,
Lonicera caprifolium
– perfoliate woodbine or goat-leaf honeysuckle to the
hoi polloi
,’ she could hear him declaiming, reducing the magic to the level of an index.
    â€˜I suppose their family structure is just like ours really.’ Tom, Asia-bronzed and naked, joined Heather at the window and peered out through the blackness towards the river. Flashed glimmers of reflected light showed its progress past the end of the garden.
    â€˜What? Oh the birds. Yes, except we don’t starve our weakest ones.’
    â€˜I mean they breed, worry about their babies, fuss over them and then trust they’ll survive when they’ve flown the nests.’
    â€˜Big difference, though.’ Heather turned back into the room and peeled off her satin robe. ‘Their young don’t seem to turn full circle in middle age and start worrying about their parents.’
    Tom lay heavily on the bed, frowning. ‘I never realized before how much you and your mother were two of a kind. You complain she’s always wanted to know what you were up to so that she could have a managing stake in your life, and now you want to interfere in whatever deal of death she’s got going with your Uncle Edward. Don’t forget you probably don’t even know the half of it, just like you’ve always said about her.’
    She regarded Tom coolly. Her own body, reflected in the mirror on the open wardrobe door, looked as if it still wore a light-coloured swimsuit. Tom’s was evenly tanned all over, as if he’d been turned slowly on a spit. He had a very grown-up body, long and solid and well-covered, with large, confident movements. Last time she’d seen him, it had been English-pale and a little flabby, but now he looked as if he’d been making good use of the hotel gyms and tennis courts. It was such a pity he’d made that pompous little speech, just when the surprise of how attractively unfamiliar his body was looking had started to interest her.
    â€˜Mind you,’ he went on, ‘I wouldn’t like it. We should promise each other that if we ever get anything terminally awful wrong with us we’ll
tell.
I think we’d both rather make our own informed decisions about the end, wouldn’t we? God, no wonder they call it the second childhood, all your hard-earned adult rights taken away.’
    Heather relaxed and snuggled next to him on the duvet, watching with slightly less distant interest as his penis started to uncurl like a waking animal. She wished, suddenly, that it didn’t remind her of a David Attenborough wildlife programme she’d once watched about the rather repulsive underground life of the naked mole rat, a wrinkled, bald, ugly creature with loose pink skin just a couple of sizes too big, that squirmed blindly but with fervent purpose in tunnels beneath the earth.
    Tom reached across and put a heavy arm around her, stroking her left breast quite tenderly, though she knew he’d rapidly move on. The mole rat was livening up, quietly expanding to fit its skin. ‘Of course we’re not like that generation,’ he murmured into her neck. ‘We don’t keep secrets from each other, do we?’

Chapter Four
    Something invasively loud, ducks squabbling on the river, or the approaching careless racket of distant dustmen, woke Heather at about 6 a.m. and she got up and went outside to water the herbs before the scorching sun got to them. Silver slug trails patterned the path, twined and twisted like Spaghetti Junction viewed from the space shuttle. Heather checked quickly that they hadn’t been feasting off her sorrel, then wondered what it was, this time, they had decimated. She fixed the sprinkler in place, glanced up at her mother’s window and noticed that the