Chapter Nine. I cannot believe how much has happened in one short year

I cannot believe how much has happened in one short year. I am engaged to Roger. My beloved Rebecca is still in London and Laura has married that pompous bore Theodore Worth...

Laura and Theodore. Her parents. Annabel smiled at Aunt Annie’s description of her father. There was no love lost between them. She flicked along a few pages.

I miss Rebecca desperately and write nearly every day. Her letters are full of some woman called Alexandra. They traveled to Paris together. I cannot bear to think of it but I know it is madness to feel such jealousy for one’s best friend. Roger pesters me constantly to allow liberties but I simply loathe his hands all over me. I don’t know how I shall endure married life.

Annabel’s brow creased. As far as she knew, Aunt Annie had never been married. She returned the diary to its shelf and extracted the next volume. A wafer-thin letter slid out as she opened it. Annabel read the contents guiltily, feeling like a clumsy intruder on someone else’s private world.

Sweet Annie,

I’m coming home and I shall never leave you again. I can’t tell you how I feel knowing that you have finally accepted what we’ve always known in our hearts. Don’t worry about Roger. He’ll find some other girl and forget you soon enough. I’m so impatient to see you my darling. I want to take you in my arms and keep you there forever.

All my love, Rebecca

Annabel refolded the letter and tucked it into the diary. She had an uncanny sense of not being alone, of someone else’s presence in the house. For a second she wondered fancifully if it were her aunt’s ghost, or maybe the unknown Rebecca.

Sliding the diary back into its place, she listened carefully but heard only the familiar waves on the distant reef, the rustle of palms, insect operatics.

“Is someone there? ” She poked her head around the door of the upstairs attic and listened again. Footsteps. “Is that you Mrs. Marsters? ”

“It’s me, ” a voice responded from the verandah.

Annabel recognized the accent with a quickening of her pulse. “Cody? ”

She descended the stairs and hurried out, suddenly conscious of her clothes: tiny cut-off shorts, a tatty old halter top. Her hair was loose and tangled from an afternoon catnap and she pushed it off her face with fingers that trembled slightly.

Cody was waiting on the verandah and Annabel’s heart lurched at the sight of her. She was wearing a short, brightly-colored sarong knotted at the valley between her breasts. The knowledge that she probably wore nothing underneath affected Annabel in all sorts of ways, making her shorts damply uncomfortable and her breathing erratic. Cody looked awkward, transferring her weight from one foot to the other as if she might bolt at a loud noise. What had she come for? To tell Annabel she was leaving the island?

“Hi.” She greeted Annabel with a quick uncertain smile. “I was going for a walk and I thought I’d drop in.”

“I’m glad, ” Annabel said. “Can I offer you a drink? ” Even as she spoke, she was mortified. A drink! If Cody were dying of thirst she’d probably turn down a glass of water from her.

“Better not, ” Cody said. “Look where it got me last time.” Her color heightened and she stroked her hair back with that innocent gesture Annabel found almost unbearably sexy.

“I’m sorry—” both women began at the same time, then laughed awkwardly.

“Be my guest, ” Annabel offered with mock gallantry.

Cody started again. “I came to apologize for the other night. I had too much to drink and I behaved badly.” She backed down the verandah steps.

“Cody! ” Annabel’s tone arrested her. “Please don’t go. I’m sorry, too. You might find this hard to believe, but I don’t make a habit of plying women with alcohol and having my wicked way with them.”

Cody’s mouth turned up into a wry smile. “You wouldn’t have to try very hard. You’re an attractive woman.”

“I find you attractive, too, Cody, ” Annabel said huskily. “The other night I...” She was embarrassed. “I guess I must be sexually frustrated, ” she added in an attempt to laugh it off. “It’s been a while.”

“Very flattering, ” Cody responded with heavy irony.

Annabel raised a hand to her mouth, groaning and laughing at the same time. “Wonderful. Now I’m adding insult to injury.” She took Cody’s hand. “I’m sorry. Can we start again? ”

Cody allowed herself to be drawn up onto the verandah. Staring straight into one another’s eyes, they stood frozen in a moment of bright awareness, each recognizing the birth of something new between them.

“I’d like that, ” Cody said very softly.