Murder Most Royal — читать онлайн бесплатно полностью

Rozie wasn’t sure she’d last twenty – but after ten, her skin felt as if it was vibrating. It was a strange new sensation. Definitely not horrible. She remembered to breathe, and found that with each new breath the pain adjusted into something that was more of a thrill. As she slowly moved through the water, she gained new power with each stroke. The view of the bank was gorgeous from here. When Mary shouted ‘Thirty seconds!’ Rozie ignored her. After forty, Mary positively yelled at her and Rozie reluctantly got out.

Her heart was pumping hard. Every square inch of her skin tingled as she climbed back up the steps towards her towel. She felt vividly alive, and quite jealous of the other four, whose colourful hats bobbed on the water’s surface like billiard balls as they endured and enjoyed the final minute. By the time they came back out to join her, she was wrapped up in her towel (they had told her to bring an extra large one, and she was grateful), and feeling as warm, awake and alert as she had ever been.

‘What did you think?’ Mary asked, slipping into her own towel, which had sleeves and became a warm, puffy coat when she put it on.

‘Bloody brilliant,’ Rozie yelled. ‘Why doesn’t everyone do this?’

‘I know!’ Mary agreed. ‘Sometimes it takes a few more sessions but I’m glad you’re a convert. Coffee? We usually go back to my place before we go our separate ways.’

Being very cold had – to Rozie’s great surprise – been very good, but being warmly dressed in a cashmere sweater and jeans, drinking very good coffee around Mary’s pine kitchen table was fantastic.

‘Oh, yes,’ Alan said with a broad smile when Rozie pointed it out. ‘Everyone thinks we do it for the freezing sea, but we do it for the buzz on the jetty afterwards. And this. We’re not masochists.’

‘Not much,’ said the woman sitting next to him at the table. Her name was Renée, aged about sixty, Rozie guessed, and a ‘new girl’ on the estate, meaning she had only arrived eleven years ago. She specialised in white and dove-grey furniture for the recent explosion in tasteful seaside Airbnbs.

The fourth member of the original swimming group, a man called John, had already gone home, so Rozie just had Mary, Alan and Renée to talk to.