Read Faraday 01 The Gigabyte Detective for Free Online Page B

though we were on the edge of the world.”
    “And you sold up and moved away after she died?”
    He half turned to face her. “That’s right. In fact I always had trouble in finding well-paid work in the area. I was having to travel to Plymouth every day as it was. That may have been part of the problem.” He shrugged. “Anyway there seemed to be no point in staying here on my own.” He turned and smiled at her. “But I still like the area a lot. I feel as though I really only come alive when I return to it.”
    “Yes,” she agreed, “I wouldn’t like to leave Torquay now. I have often regarded it as a prison. But I suppose no-one could ask for a nicer place to be shut up.”
    “You think of it as a prison?” He looked at her in surprise.
    She nodded, at the same time wondering why she was telling him so much, which she would never have revealed to her family or friends. “Strange, isn’t it? My husband would be horrified to hear me say it. I live in a beautiful house. I have no doubt that, if I told him I thought of it as a prison, he would buy somewhere else that I wanted - perhaps in London, or the South of France. But it wouldn’t be any different. Besides I couldn’t do that to him. It was the house where his parents lived in their retirement. It means a lot to him. The only trouble is,” she shook her head, “he is hardly ever here. He is too busy to retire himself.” She paused and looked out to sea. “And I suppose, if I’m honest, I wouldn’t know how to live with him now, if he was here all the time.”
    She was astonished at herself. This was the first time she had ever thought such a thing in so many words, and yet she had gabbled it out to a complete stranger - and a man at that. What was worse - she realised every word she had said was absolutely true. It was as though she was cutting herself off from love and companionship for the remainder of her life.
    “I don’t understand him.” He was standing close by her elbow. “I assume he has all the money he could want, isn’t that so?”
    She nodded. She couldn’t think of anything to say.
    “And here he is, married to one of the most beautiful women of his generation, and he doesn’t want to spend every available minute with you.”
    She looked at him sceptically but, as far as she could see, he was completely sincere. “He is not of my generation,” she said. “He is nearly twenty years older. He was already approaching sixty when we married. Perhaps that is the problem.”
    “I don’t think age is a problem, particularly when you have reached maturity.” He leaned on the wall beside her. “There is so much more to life than making money.”
    “Not to my husband.” Her smile hid the pain.
    He raised his head and looked out to sea, as though breathing in the fresh water-cooled air. “I assume he works in London during the week and comes back here at weekends.”
    “Normally every other weekend. He is too busy to travel all this way every week.” She couldn’t keep the bitterness out of her voice.
    “What about holidays?”
    “We usually have a couple of weeks away at some fashionable resort. If you’re a top businessman there’s always some important annual conference in a beautiful part of the world. The men spend the mornings in the conference-room and the afternoons on the golf course. The wives laze around the pool and gossip.” She lifted her head and said derisively, “I’m good at that.”
    He was astonished. “You mean you never go anywhere new and explore it together?”
    “Oh, he wouldn’t refuse if I asked him.” She gave a brittle little laugh. “He would never refuse me anything. But I know what would happen. He would have a pile of work with him which he would carry everywhere. He would open his briefcase as soon as we sat down. He would be on the phone for an hour or two every day. And within five days a crisis would have arisen back in London which would demand his immediate return. Of course I