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Achieve the genteel tones of agatha’s, but by then i had at least managed to wash away the east end. She needs more time to recover she’s a grown woman, a person never stops needing her mother you’re too indulgent nan too kind. I smiled as if this were true the things archie hated most in the world were illness weakness, sadness. He had no patience for recuperation as his mistress. I always maintained a cheerful demeanor light and airy.

The perfect contrast to his not quite fooled and grief-stricken wife. His face softened a smile, twitched, the corner of his mouth. As the french like to say, happy people have no history, archie, never inquired after my past. He only wanted me now beaming and willing. He ran a hand over his hair smoothing.

What was already perfectly neat, i noticed a bit of gray at the temples it made him look distinguished. There may have been a mercenary element to my relationship with archie, but that didn’t mean i couldn’t enjoy him. He was tall handsome and in love with me, he stood up and crossed the room to kneel before my chair archie, i said pretending to scold what if someone comes in, no one will come in. He put his arms round my waist and laid his head in my lap. I wore a pleated skirt, a button-up blouse, a loose cardigan and stockings fake pearls and a smart new hat.

I stroked archie’s head, but gently pushed it away as he pressed his face against me. Not here, i said, but without urgency. Cheerful, cheerful, cheerful, a girl, who’d never been sick or sad a day in her life. Archie kissed me he tasted like pipe smoke. I closed my hands on the lapel of his jacket and didn’t object when he cupped his hand around my breast tonight, he would be going home to his wife if the course i’d planned so carefully were to continue.

It was best to send him to her. Thinking of me, a sponge soaked in quinine sulfate procured by my married younger sister stood guard inside me. Protecting against pregnancy. Never once had i encountered archie without preparing myself in this way, but for the moment my precautions proved unnecessary. He pulled my skirt modestly back into place.

Smoothing over the pleats then stood and walked back around his desk. Almost the moment he returned to his chair in walked agatha, she wrapped lightly on the door and at the same time pushed it open. Her sensible heels made. The barest sound on the carpet at 36. She was much taller than me and nearly 10 years older, her auburn hair had faded towards brown.

Bhagatha archie said sharply, you might have knocked er watch it. This isn’t a dressing room. Then she turned to me and said: miss o’day. I wasn’t expecting to see you here. Archie’S strategy had always been to hide me in plain sight.

I was regularly invited to parties and even weekends at their home six months ago. He would at least have made an excuse for my presence in his office. Stan’S loaned nan. To do some shorthand. He might have said stan was my employer at the imperial british rubber company.

He was a friend of archie’s, but never loaned anybody anything this time. Archie didn’t offer up a single word to explain me perched where i didn’t belong. Agatha’S brows arched as she realized her husband, couldn’t be bothered with the usual subterfuge. She gathered her composure by addressing me. Look at us.

She said pointing to her outfit and then mine, we’re twins. It was an effort not to touch my face. I was blushing furiously what if she had come in two minutes earlier, would she have pretended ignorance, despite all evidence just as doggedly as she did now? Yes, i said yes, it’s true. We are that season.

Nearly every woman in london was a twin, the same clothes, the same shoulder, length, hair, but agatha’s suit was authentic, chanel and her pearls were not fake. She didn’t register these discrepancies with any disdain. If at all, she wasn’t that sort of person, a virtue that backfired when it came to me, never once did agatha object to the daughter of a clerk, a mere secretary entering her social circles. She’S friends with stan’s daughter, archie, had told her excellent golfer, and that was all the explanation she ever acquired in photographs. From this time, agatha looks much darker less pretty than she really was.

Her eyes were sparkling and blue. She had a girly sprinkling of freckles across her nose and a face that moved quickly from one expression to the next

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