Yesterday's Husband. Angela Devine

the swimming-pool sparkled invitingly. But Emma dawdled deliberately at the poolside, feeling reluctant to shed the protective cover of her thin green, cotton beach wrap. She didn’t want Richard ogling her when she emerged in her bikini. Nor did she want to be hired into playing silly games in the water as if she were really enjoying his company. And his ostentatious concern for her comfort didn’t make her feel any better disposed towards him. Even when he pulled up a cushioned banana lounge for her and ordered a couple of iced fruit juices from a passing waiter, she didn’t thank him but simply continued to glower at him. With a mocking smile, he took a swift gulp of his iced fruit juice, set down the glass and patted her patronisingly on the head.

      ‘Don’t seethe too hard, darling,’ he warned. ‘You’re raising the surrounding air temperature by at least five degrees, you know.’

      Then, blowing her a kiss which only made her seethe even harder, he dived into the water. As she watched him cleaving up the blue pool in a powerful, surging freestyle, her simmering resentment was quenched for a moment by an unwilling spurt of admiration. At the age of thirty-five, Richard still had a magnificent bodypowerful, muscular, honed by years of hard, physical labour, it carried not an ounce of spare fat. His skin was tanned honey-gold by exposure to the sun and his fair hair was still thick and curly. If she hadn’t disliked him so much, she would have felt a throb of primitive desire at the sight of him almost naked in the clear, still waters of the pool. As it was, she tore her gaze away from him to the other occupants of the area and recognised the honeymoon couple who had been on the bus the previous day. They were disporting themselves joyfully with all the carefree abandon of youth, duck-diving, tickling each other, playing complicated games and frolicking together like exuberant dolphins. As she watched, the young man suddenly surged up out of the water with his wife giggling and shrieking on his shoulders. Then, with a growl of mischievous laughter, he sent her deliberately catapulting forward into the water. While she was still gasping and threshing and uttering laughing cries of complaint, he swam swiftly across to the poolside, reached out his hand to one of the glasses of iced fruit juice and took a long gulp.