Separation, The by Dinah Jefferies Page B

aftershave, his cigarettes and his sweat. She hesitated. There was something else. Something faintly exotic.
    She looked round: took in a neat pile of freshly laundered clothes and the deeply polished floor. This was not the Jack she knew; undomesticated, he was a man who only felt alive when there was a thrill to be had.
    She headed for the soapy-smelling bathroom. This was too good a chance to peep into Jack’s hidden world. His toiletries sat on a glass shelf above a slightly discoloured wash-hand basin, with a magnifying shaving mirror to the right and a small tin bathroom cabinet to the left. Jack’s damp towel was draped over the edge of the bath, and the showerhead dripped intermittently. She picked up the towel and held it to her face. It smelt smoky: coal tar soap, she thought. She washed her hands in his basin and splashed her face. The water came out cool, though flecked withrust. She dried her hands and face with his towel, her scent mixing with his. She folded the towel the way it had been and turned to face the cabinet on the wall. She really shouldn’t, she told herself. But her hand lifted up and turned the cabinet key.
    Inside, along with Jack’s toothbrush and toothpaste, was a jar of Pond’s cold cream, a lipstick and a tiny glass vial of scent.
    She folded her arms across her middle, the breath knocked right out of her, and sat abruptly on the edge of the bath. A voice in the back of her head told her not to be silly. He must have had other women. Alec said he had. And Cicely insinuated as much, even when Lydia was seeing him. But it was Jack who’d begged her. Leave, he’d said. Live with me. It was he who kissed her and pleaded for her not to end it.
    She knew that it was stipulated in his four-year contract that he couldn’t marry or live with anyone on his first tour, but when she’d raised it, he said there were ways. He’d been saving money to buy his way out of the contract. They’d take the girls; go back to England. In the end she couldn’t do it; Alec saw to that.
    Her heart was racing. Who was the woman? Well, for a start her things may have been sitting there from before she herself had met Jack. She picked up the tube of lipstick, a make she didn’t recognise, and wound it down. Pale pink. Blossom it said on the back. The scent only had two Chinese characters on its label, which she didn’t understand at all. She dabbed a touch on her wrist. Jasmine? No. Without a doubt, it was the unidentified fragrance in Jack’s bedroom. Her heart sank. The woman was recent after all. She looked at her watch. Nearly twelve. He mustn’t find her there. She pulled herself together, escaped by the door to the veranda and shuffled into her seat at the front of the house.
    With a hand on her heart, she forced herself to smile as Maz ran across and clattered into the seat beside her. He chattered and pointed at drifts of butterflies, impossible to count, and they both listened to the high-pitched trill of a flower pecker. Though she felt hurt, there was no point fretting, after all she’d be leavingsoon to go to her family. And by the time Jack strode back, her breathing was calmer and her face composed.
    ‘You seem better.’ He grunted as he flung himself into an armchair and pushed the wave of blond hair from tired eyes.
    ‘One of the great unwashed. I must have given you a fright. I didn’t start off that way, you know. In fact I looked rather nice.’ She grinned. Her navy dress, piped with white, was now in the bin, ruined beyond repair.
    He laughed. ‘You always look good to me. Though I prefer your hair long. Is that what they call a pixie cut?’
    She ran her hands through her shorn locks. ‘Not quite. It’s easier like this.’
    He ate rapidly as if on red alert, curry soup with noodles, followed by chicken satay.
    ‘What’s that?’ Maz said.
    ‘A magpie robin. Why don’t you see if you can find him?’
    While Maz went off in search of the bird, she was able to tell the whole