PAINT OF PASSION 7

AFTER FRANCESCA HAD gone Clare stood at the window for a long while, just looking out across the houses to the sea, thinking. That evening the sea was very calm. Just a few wispy, cotton-wool clouds crossed the pinky blue sunset and were echoed by the tiny white horses riding the waves. The beach was deserted but for a boy and his dog. The boy threw a stick and the dog barked, the distant noise carried up to the window by the wind so that it mingled with the calling of the gulls constantly wheeling overhead. The view from the flat where Clare and Daniel lived was almost the same as the view from Steve’s hotel, though their flat was a little lower down the hill.

Steve, Steve, Steve. What had Clare been doing? She had never slept with a married man before and had always thought of the guys who had affairs as rats. In fact she had decided never to do the dirty on another girl right after the birthday party where Susie Powell stole her man and her pre-pubescent self-esteem. But at the sa