And when Barney had refused even to tell Nita which villa he was spending the night in, the act of rejection was complete. He had made it clear to Nita that any liaison between the two of them had come to an end. Jude hoped to God that wasn’t because he planned for her to take Nita’s place.
As the room cooled down she drifted off into troubled sleep.
TWELVE
Carole Seddon had trained her body to wake up without the assistance of an alarm clock at half past six every morning. Winter, summer, whenever, she liked to be out on Fethering Beach walking Gulliver before seven o’clock.
So after an interrupted, sweaty night (she should have switched on the air conditioning), Carole was rather disoriented when she woke at six thirty (or, rather, eight thirty in Turkish time). Her first thought, to her surprise, was of Gulliver, and she had a momentary pang, visualizing him in his unfamiliar kennels. She saw that look of pained reproach that only he could do so well. And the unspoken reprimand: ‘People like you shouldn’t be allowed to own dogs.’
But then the broad stripe of bright sunlight across her bed brought her back to current reality. Of course, she was in Morning Glory, facing her first full day of holiday. It was a prospect that rather daunted her. Carole felt extremely restless. If a fortnight in Turkey was supposed to be helping her to untwitch, the process certainly hadn’t yet started.
And she was already worried about how Jude would want to spend the day. The two of them were, after all, on holiday together. But did that mean they should both follow the same agenda and do everything together? It was so long since Carole Seddon had spent any length of time with another person that such questions troubled her. And although she and Jude were neighbours, there were still many things they didn’t know about each other.
After opening all of the bedroom’s windows, Carole looked in the cupboard where she had neatly hung and laid out her clothes. Her Burberry was on a hanger in the furthest recesses, and she already knew that it would stay there until she packed to return to England. She felt an idiot for having brought it. The garment looked as reproachful as her image of Gulliver.
For a moment, she lingered over the new beige shorts. If she had felt confident of spending the whole day at Morning Glory undisturbed by visitors, she might have put them on and begun the process of laying down a tan. But the experience of the previous day had warned her that the villa seemed to be open house to anyone who happened to be passing. Travers Hughes-Swann might appear again, so could Nita or Erkan. And, as the owner, Barney Willingdon seemed to come and go as he felt like it. Though Carole didn’t mind Jude witnessing the sight, she didn’t want any of the others to see her legs. (It should be mentioned that there was nothing wrong with Carole Seddon’s legs. Except for the visible trace of a blue vein at the back of each knee, they were unblemished. In fact, they were rather good legs. But Carole herself could never see them that way, and she kept them covered from one year’s end to the next.)
So she reverted to her trusty navy-blue trousers. And a very clean, very white T-shirt. She hoped nobody would notice the bulk of her money-belt underneath. As an act of considerable daring, she put leather flip-flops on her feet. Then she went down to the kitchen and opened the doors giving out on to the poolside area.
There was no sign of Jude. Having overheard much of the poolside conversation of the night before, Carole wondered whether her friend was actually even in Morning Glory or whether she’d succumbed to Barney’s blandishments and gone off with him. Knowing Jude’s track record, Carole wouldn’t have put it past her.
There was instant coffee in a kitchen cupboard, so she put the kettle on. Then she inspected the contents of the fridge and decided that she’d have more or less the same breakfast as she would have done in Fethering – toast. She located a bread knife, cut two slices from the rather dry loaf and placed them in the toaster. She found butter and a choice of spreads. Frank Cooper’s Original Oxford Marmalade, Marmite, local honey and what she deduced from the picture on the label was cherry jam.
Her guidebook reading had told her that the cherries in Turkey were particularly good, so she boldly went for the jam. Then she sat at the kitchen table and ate her breakfast, wishing she had a copy of The Times to concentrate on. Carole Seddon didn’t like being at a loose end when she was eating on her own. She knew it was now possible, for an outlay of money, to get newspapers online, but she hadn’t worked out how to do it yet. So she’d have to survive the fortnight with no daily paper and just her book of collected crosswords.
As she munched her toast – the cherry jam was excellent – she tried to assess how her stomach felt. She hadn’t had much of the Turkish diet yet, but what they had eaten at Cin Bal had been getting very close to a kebab. And she was ready to rush to the Imodium packet if she did feel squittery. But Carole was forced to admit to herself with some surprise that she did actually feel fine.
She washed up her breakfast things with punctilious efficiency and then went upstairs to get The Rough Guide to Turkey. Though she had read through the entry about Kayaköy many times, she wanted to have another look at it. And also Pinara. Nita’s mention of the site the night before had aroused her interest, and Carole thought it might be a good place to visit in a few days’ time.
But the Rough Guide did not hold her attention for long. Carole was extremely unrelaxed. She felt she ought to be doing something. But then she always thought she should be doing something. She looked around to see if the kitchen needed cleaning, but Barney Willingdon’s staff had left it so immaculate that even she couldn’t find fault. And Erkan’s overpainting had efficiently erased all traces of the unwelcoming message that had greeted them.
She went upstairs again to collect her book of Times crosswords and sat back at the kitchen table, trying to focus her mind on one of them. But her concentration wasn’t good, and the nagging knowledge that all the answers were temptingly available at the back of the book meant it didn’t feel like she was doing a proper crossword.
She had been there for nearly an hour, not getting on well with the clues and constantly tempted to check the answers, when she heard some movement from upstairs. Carole expected that the sound of the toilet flushing would be followed by the noise of a shower, but it wasn’t. Instead, a bleary-looking Jude, dressed in a red bikini even more minimal than the previous day’s, appeared at the top of the stairs.
‘Good morning, Carole,’ she said. ‘Haven’t you been out yet?’
‘No, I’ve been busy here. Having breakfast and what-have-you.’ Though she’d finished her breakfast an hour before.
‘Well, come on out. I could see a bit of it from my bedroom window, but you’ll only get the full effect from out the front.’
‘The full effect of what?’
‘Come and see.’ Jude took her friend by the hand and pulled her out to the poolside. Then she turned them both round so that they were looking at the front of the villa. They could see exactly why it was called Morning Glory. Delicate blue flowers tumbled down in profusion over the frontage.
‘Best time of the day to see them,’ said Jude.
‘Yes, I can understand that.’ Then Carole asked urgently, ‘And what are your plans for the day?’
‘Plans?’ echoed Jude, with some level of incredulity in her voice. ‘I haven’t got plans. I’ve only just woken up.’
‘Well, presumably you’ll have breakfast first and then—’
‘No, I was considering having a splosh in the pool first, then having a shower and possibly thinking about breakfast after that.’