5
Jasmine had already eaten and gone to bed when Evie sat down to her solitary dinner. She shuffled the food around her plate unable to eat. Afterwards, too angry even to read a book, she retired early to bed in the guest room as usual.
Under the flimsy sheet and shrouded by the mosquito nets, she struggled to sleep. She longed for oblivion – a few hours where she could escape into dreams, hopefully ones unpopulated by Douglas Barrington. She didn’t want to think about him, about this godforsaken country or the loathsome people at the club. The dreams she craved were of the English countryside, of leafy lanes dappled with sunshine, cows and sheep grazing in green fields, the sound of woodpeckers, the pealing of bells for the Sunday service. Not this infernal heat and not the horrible eve
