First Friends

First Friends

Also by Marcia Willett

A Week in Winter

A Summer in the Country

The Children's Hour

The Birdcage

Marcia Willett

THOMAS DUNNE BOOKS.
An imprint of St. Martin's Press.

FIRST FRIENDS.
Copyright © 1995 by Marcia Willett. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martin's Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

www.thomasdunnebooks.com
www.stmartins.com

Design by Jane Adele Regina

ISBN-13: 978-0-312-30662-5
ISBN-10: 0-312-30662-8

First published in Great Britain by Headline Book Publishing, a division of Hodder Headline PLC, as
Those Who Serve

10  9  8  7  6  5  4

To Roddy

My thanks to Cate Paterson, my editor, who acted as midwife to the
birth of this book and encouraged me through the labour pains.

First Friends

Cassandra Wivenhoe stood at the foot of the open grave and watched her daughter's coffin being lowered into the Devon earth. She thrust her hands into the pockets of her dark grey wool suit and swallowed several times. She simply must not think of Charlotte, lying there, alone and unprotected: soon to be abandoned to the windy moorland churchyard.

‘Thou knowest, Lord, the secrets of our hearts . . . '

The secrets of our hearts! She looked up and into the eyes of Kate Webster, her oldest and closest friend, whose compassionate gaze stiffened Cass's spine and gave her a small measure of courage. She blinked back tears, remembering Kate's words: ‘If you go on playing Russian roulette, one of these days you'll get the bullet.'

But I didn't want anyone else to suffer, Cass cried silently. Not my children! Not Charlotte! She was only fifteen!

‘. . . to take unto Himself the soul of our dear daughter . . . '

Despite herself, images superimposed themselves on the churchyard scene. Charlotte; as a baby, as a small child playing with Kate's twins, as a bigger girl learning to cook in a too-large apron—her face serious and intent—on her pony, and then, as a teenager, shy and awkward . . .

No! screamed the voice inside Cass's head. I can't bear it! It is simply not to be borne!

‘ . . . earth to earth . . .'

Handfuls of damp black moorland soil thudded softly on to the wooden lid, breaking into crumbs.

She jerked her head up and met Kate's eyes again. She saw that Kate's own hands were balled into fists and she knew that Kate was willing her some of her own strength.

Cass swallowed, her face twitching pitifully and gave Kate an infinitesimal nod.

‘. . . in sure and certain hope of the Resurrection . . . '

M
EMORIES CROWDED UNBIDDEN INTO
Kate's head: so many scenes and conversations, a whole way of life that had finally brought them to this graveyard on a wild autumn afternoon. Through unshed tears and a whole shared past, Kate looked back.

The Isle of Wight, ghostly and featureless, seemed to float on a sea of liquid glass. A faint, thin pencil line of silver indicated the horizon where it merged with a sky of a uniform grey-white. There was a brightness, a gentle glow to the late-autumn afternoon, a promise of sunshine yet to be fulfilled. Kate, scrunching slowly across the beach at Stake's Bay, was gradually adjusting to her new surroundings. Accustomed to the sandy beaches, rocky outcrops and towering cliffs of the West Country, these shingly flat shores and broad esplanades, with the worn stretches of grassed areas behind them, seemed tame to her. Even the behaviour of the sea itself was much more domesticated here. It lay placidly against the land, retreating calmly, advancing demurely, quite unlike its boisterous, wild poundings on the north Cornish Coast.

Kate glanced into the shelters that were placed at intervals along the esplanade. She was beginning to recognise the elderly regulars who sat there like so many spiders waiting to trap the unwary victim with friendly little nods and bravely pathetic smiles. They were lonely, of course, and so was she, but she knew that if she went too close she would be drawn in by the flying strand of a casual greeting and caught in a web of gently banal conversation which would wind inexorably around her independence, curtailing the freedom of her walk. Almost it was tempting. There would be a certain companionship in sitting idly, half anaesthetised by the gentle hum of reminiscences, knowing that any half-hearted struggles to escape would be obstructed by the sticky flow of talk flowing over and around her.

Kate hardened her heart and turned her head away. Her husband, Mark, had gone to sea for seven weeks and it was early days. Remembering all the advice and warnings that she had received from well-meaning friends on her wedding day nearly two months before, Kate stuck her chin out, thrusting her fists more firmly into her duffel coat pockets. She had no intention of admitting defeat and rushing home the first time that the submarine sailed although it would have helped to have known a few other people in Alverstoke before Mark had left. He didn't know anyone either. How could he when he had come straight from Britannia Royal Naval College and Fourth Year Courses to
HMS Dolphin
, the submarine base at Gosport?

Watching the Isle of Wight ferry ploughing out from behind the sea wall, Kate let herself realise how much she missed her closest friend. Cassandra and she, both twelve years old, had first met at boarding school on the north Somerset coast on the edge of the Quantock Hills. The friendship had meshed smoothly and firmly at once. Kate, coming from a home overflowing with brothers, a sister and dogs and presided over by two loving generous parents, had listened, eyes stretched, as Cass, an only child, talked about nannies and Army quarters and her father—now a General—at his wits' end after her mother's death in a car accident.

‘Rumour has it,' disclosed Cass, biting into a forbidden doughnut, ‘that she was eloping with her lover.'

Kate's eyes grew rounder.

‘Gosh!' she breathed. ‘But can you elope if you're already married?'

Cass shrugged, the details were unimportant. She licked up some jam. ‘Ran away, then. Anyway, the car was a write-off. I can't really remember her. I was only two.'

‘Your poor father.'

‘Devastated, poor old dear. And he simply doesn't know what to do with me now I'm growing up. That's why he's sent me out here, to the back of beyond, for the next five years. He thinks I'll be safe from temptation.'

Even the way she spoke the word gave it a flavour of excitement and promise. Something to be sought rather than avoided.

The five years had passed, punctuated with crushes on Cliff Richard and Adam Faith followed by agonising infatuations with other girls' brothers. They had played lacrosse and tennis, rode and swum, passed examinations by the skins of their teeth, chaffed over puppy fat and spots and then, one day, they had woken up and it was all over. The schooldays that had stretched so endlessly ahead were now a thing of the past.