by Penny Jordan
Verity gave her a wary look.
‘Oh, it’s okay, Dad didn’t tell me that. He’s a great father, the best, but we don’t have that kind of relationship. He’s pretty much for keeping what he thinks of grown-up things to himself, but I’m not a kid…and I’ve got my ear to the ground. She’s just not good enough for him.’
‘How old are you exactly, Honor?’ Verity asked her faintly, automatically refilling the now empty glass Honor had extended.
‘Ten…’ Honor told her promptly.
Ten going on ninety, Verity decided. Did Silas have any inkling of how his daughter felt about her prospective stepmother? she wondered. At least she now knew exactly what the word ‘friend’ meant when applied to Silas’ relationship with his tell-tale girlfriend.
‘I’m starving,’ Honor told her winningly, ‘and Dad’s gone out for dinner tonight. I don’t suppose…?’
Her aplomb really was extraordinary for someone so young, and perhaps Verity ought to very firmly remind her of the age gap that lay between them and the inadvisability of inviting herself into other people’s lives—but she liked her, Verity acknowledged, and even if it was a weakness within herself she simply couldn’t bring herself to dent that luminous youthful pride by pointing out such facts to her.
‘I’m afraid I can’t offer you anything to eat,’ she replied gravely instead, intending to tell Honor that she rather thought that her father would disapprove of them having any kind of contact with one another—and not just because he obviously considered that she had more or less callously practically run Honor down, thanks to the evidence of his ‘girlfriend’. She amended her private thoughts to say gently instead, ‘I was planning to eat out.’
‘Oh, good.’ Honor grinned, telling her frankly, ‘I hate cooking too.’
Verity blinked.
‘Honor, I don’t hate cooking,’ she protested. ‘It’s just…’
‘There’s a terrific Italian place just opened up in town. Italian’s my favourite, I love their ice cream puddings,’ Honor volunteered.
Totally against her better judgement, Verity knew that she was weakening.
‘Mmm…’ she agreed. ‘I like Italian too…’
Woman to woman they looked at one another.
‘You’re right,’ Verity heard herself saying, a little to her own bemusement. ‘Why cook at home when you can eat Italian somewhere else?’
What was she thinking? What was she doing? Verity asked herself grimly ten minutes later when she had parked the car in the town centre car park. There would be hell to pay if Silas ever found out, she acknowledged fatalistically, frowning a little as she waited for Honor to get out of the car before activating the central-locking system.
That wasn’t by any chance why she was doing this, was it? To get at Silas? She was way, way above those kind of childish tit-for-tat manoeuvres, wasn’t she? Wasn’t she…?
‘It’s this way,’ Honor told her, happily linking her arm through Verity’s.
‘You should wear your hair down,’ she advised Verity seriously as she checked their reflections in a shop window. ‘Men like it.’
‘Uh-huh…er…do they?’
Heavens, what was wrong with her? She shouldn’t be the one acting flustered and selfconscious, Verity derided herself.
‘The purpose, the point, of being a woman is not to please men or to seek their approval,’ she told Honor sternly.
‘No, but it sure helps when you want your own way,’ Honor told her practically.
Verity gave her an old-fashioned look. ‘Your father came to see me,’ she told Honor quietly. ‘His…friend…Myra…saw the accident and told him about it.’
Honor grimaced. ‘Yes, I know. He hasn’t grounded me, though, but he was pretty angry about it. He just got angry, though, because he feels guilty that he can’t be there all the time for me,’ Honor told her with a maturity that caught at Verity’s sensitive heart. ‘He worries about me—I worry too,’ Honor admitted unexpectedly, showing heart-rending vulnerability as she confided reluctantly, ‘It isn’t much fun—not having a mother. It hurts a lot sometimes.’
‘I know,’ Verity agreed quietly.
For a moment they looked at one another and then Honor told her quickly, ‘Look, the restaurant’s here,’ directing Verity’s attention to the building in front of them. ‘Don’t let them give us a bad table just because we’re two women eating alone without a man,’ Honor hissed to Verity as they walked inside.
‘Two what…?’ Verity started to question, but the maître d’ was already approaching them and, mindful not only of Honor’s stern admonition but also of the fact that as a potential mentor—not to mention role model—to the young girl, it behoved her to set a good example, she looked him firmly in the eye and said, ‘We’d like a table for two, please. That one over there,’ she added, pointing to what was obviously their ‘best’ table.
Without batting an eyelid the maître d’ swept them both a small bow and agreed, ‘Very well, Madam, if you would just follow me.’
‘That was good,’ Honor acknowledged gleefully when they had been seated.
‘No,’ Verity corrected her wryly with a grin, ‘that was Gucci,’ she told her flicking her fingertips over her suit. ‘It isn’t just long hair that men are susceptible to, you know,’ she pointed out drolly, before picking up her menu.
‘Ready to order?’ she asked Honor several minutes later.
‘Mmm…’ the young girl agreed.
Raising her hand discreetly, Verity summoned the maître d’, waiting until Honor had given him her order before giving her own.
‘Oh, and I’d like a glass of the house red as well,’ Honor included decidedly.
The maître d’ was visibly and seriously impressed, as well he might be, Verity acknowledged as, considerably less so, she gave Honor a thoughtful look.
‘Er…with water,’ Honor amended hastily, obviously sensing the veto that was about to leave Verity’s lips.
‘It’s okay,’ she told Verity defensively when the waiter had gone. ‘Dad lets me—he says it’s important for me to grow up learning how to handle alcohol. He says it makes for less mistakes later.’
‘Dad said that you used to live here, in town,’ Honor commented to Verity once they were eating their starter.
‘Er, yes. Yes, I did,’ Verity agreed.
‘Did you know him then?’ Honor asked her.
Verity paused, the forkful of food she had been lifting towards her mouth suddenly unappetising for all its rich, delicious smell.
‘Er…no, I don’t think so,’ she prevaricated. How much had Silas told his daughter? Not the truth. How could he?
‘Did you know my mother?’ Honor asked her, startling Verity with the unexpectedness of the question.
‘No. No, I didn’t,’ she told her truthfully. Poor child, and she was a child still, for all her quaintly grown-up ways and determined independence, Verity recognised. It couldn’t be easy for her, growing up without any real personal knowledge of the woman who had given birth to her.
‘She and Dad met when he was staying in London,’ Honor told her pragmatically, ‘so I didn’t think you would. I don’t look very much like her.’
‘No, you look like your father,’ Verity agreed, her heart suddenly jolting against her ribs as the restaurant door opened and the subject of their conversation walked in, accompanied by a woman whom Verity didn’t recognise but who she guessed must be his ‘friend’ Myra.
‘What is it?’ Honor asked her innocently.
‘Your father’s just walked in,’ Verity told her warningly, but to her surprise, instead of reacting as she had expected, the little girl simply dimpled a wide smile that caused sharp alarm bells to ring in Verity’s brain.
‘You knew he was coming here,’ she breathed.
‘It’s the “in” place to be seen, but Myra won’t be very pleased that we’ve got the best table,’ Honor told her sunnily.
No, she certainly wasn’t, Verity acknowledged,
quickly assessing the other woman’s angry-mouthed expression, and, what was more, Verity suspected that it wasn’t simply the fact that the best table wasn’t free that was angering her. Their presence—full stop—Verity rather guessed had a very definite something to do with the other woman’s ire.
In any other circumstances the sternly condemnatory look Silas was sending her would probably have had her scuttling for the exit, Verity reflected ruefully, but she could hardly leave Honor to face her father’s wrath alone, even if perhaps she did semi-deserve it.
Silas was heading for their table, having bent his head to say something first to his girlfriend, who was now standing glaring viciously, not so much at her as at Honor, Verity recognised with a strong surge of protection towards the young girl.
‘Mmm, this is yummy…Hi, Dad,’ Honor acknowledged her father, turning her head to give him a wide beam.
‘Would you like to explain to me what the hell you think you’re doing?’ Silas asked Verity in a dangerously quiet voice, totally ignoring his daughter’s sunny greeting.
‘Riccardo gave us the best table, Dad,’ Honor chattered on, apparently oblivious to both Verity’s tension and her father’s fury. ‘Verity said it was because of her suit. It’s Gucci, you know, but I think it was probably because Riccardo fancied her. He likes strawberry blondes,’ she added warmly to Verity. ‘That’s probably why he never gives Myra a good table,’ she told her father, whilst Verity closed her eyes and sent up a mental prayer, not just for her own safe deliverance from Silas’ very evident ire, but Honor’s as well. ‘He doesn’t like brunettes…Dad…’ She paused judiciously before refilling her fork ‘…do you suppose Myra dyes her hair? I think she must because it’s such a very hard shade of dark brown. What do you think, Verity?’
Verity gulped and shook her head, totally incapable of making any kind of logical response. She was torn between giving way to the fit of extremely inappropriate giggles of feminine appreciation of Honor’s masterly undermining of a woman whom Verity could see quite plainly she considered to be a rival for her father’s attention, and a rather more adult awareness of the danger of her own situation and just how little Silas would relish the fact that she was the one to witness his daughter’s artful stratagems.
‘What are you doing here, Honor?’ Silas turned to his daughter to ask with awful calmness.
‘I…I…er…invited her to have dinner with me,’ Verity began, immediately rushing to the little girl’s defence, but Honor, it transpired, didn’t need any defending—rather she seemed positively to enjoy courting her father’s fury, looking him straight in the eye.
‘I invited Verity to have dinner with me,’ she told her father challengingly. ‘It was the least I could do after—’
‘The least you could do?’ Shaking his head, he turned from Honor to Verity and told her acidly, ‘First you damn near kill my daughter with your dangerous driving and then you, God alone knows by what means, persuade her to have dinner with you. What were you intending to do? Trick her into changing her story just in case I did decide to report you to the police? You run her down and then—’
‘No, Dad…It wasn’t like that…’ Honor pushed away her plate and looked quickly from Verity’s white face to her father’s. ‘I…It wasn’t Verity’s fault…I…’ She swallowed and then continued bravely, ‘It was mine…’
‘Yours? But Myra said—’
‘It happened exactly how you’d warned me it would,’ Honor ploughed on doggedly. ‘I did just what you told me not to do. I was on my blades and I didn’t think to stop or look and then I lost control and—’
‘Is this true?’ Silas asked Verity coldly.
For a moment Verity was tempted to lie and take the blame, but before she could do so Honor was speaking again, reaching out to touch her father’s arm.
‘Yes. It is true, Dad,’ she told him quietly. ‘I…I’m sorry…Please don’t be mad. I…I went to see Verity because I want to pay for the damage to her car out of my spending money. It was my idea for us to come out for dinner…’
‘Honor. You know the rules. What on earth…? You were supposed to be going straight to Catherine’s from school and staying there tonight.’
‘I know that, Dad, but today Catherine said that her aunt and uncle were coming to stay and I knew it was going to be a family sort of thing…I didn’t want…’ She hung her head before saying gruffly, ‘I just wouldn’t have felt right being there.’
As she listened to her, Verity’s heart went out to her. Underneath her amazingly streetwise exterior she was still, after all, a very vulnerable little girl at heart. A little girl who had never known the love of her mother; a little girl who quite plainly and understandably was jealously protective of her own place in her father’s life, to the extent that she quite obviously did not like the woman who she had told Verity was angling to become her father’s second wife.
‘I think perhaps we should go, Honor,’ Verity intervened, gently touching the little girl’s arm, summoning the quiet strength of will she had often been forced to use in her boardroom battles. It had never been Verity’s style to assume the manner of a ‘man’—there were other ways of making one’s point and any man, anyone, who thought that she could be bullied or pushed around just because she didn’t hector or argue very quickly discovered just how wrong they had been.
‘I haven’t had my pudding,’ Honor reminded her stoutly, but Verity could see that she was glad of her protective intervention.
‘I’ve got some fruit and ice cream,’ she told her, before turning to Silas and looking him straight in the eye as she said, ‘You’re quite right, I should have checked with you before bringing Honor out—that was my mistake. Yours…’ She paused and reminded herself that with Honor as an interested audience, never mind the maître d’ and the now very obviously fuming Myra, this was not the time nor the place to point out where he had gone wrong or what his misjudgement had been.
‘I’m quite prepared to drive Honor round to her friend’s, but I wonder if she might be permitted to finish her supper with me?’
‘Oh, yes, Dad. And then you could pick me up from Verity’s on the way home,’ Honor interrupted her eagerly. ‘I’d much rather do that than go to Catherine’s.’
‘If your pudding is ordered, then I’ll ask the maître d’ to bring another chair and you can stay with Myra and me. I take it you’ve finished your meal,’ Silas demanded of Verity coldly.
‘No. She hasn’t…She hasn’t had her pudding,’ Honor told him indignantly, adding, ‘Besides, I don’t want to be with you and Myra, you know she doesn’t like me…’
‘Honor,’ Silas began warningly, twin bands of anger beginning to burn high on his cheek-bones, although, as Verity could see, she herself was more alarmed by his fury than Honor.
‘Look, what’s going on? When are we going to eat?’
All three of them looked up as Myra finally grew tired of waiting on the sidelines and came to join battle.
‘I’m sorry,’ Silas apologised, giving her a warm smile. But Myra wasn’t looking at him. Instead, her eyes were flashing warning signs in Verity’s direction, narrowing angrily as she studied Verity’s suit.
‘I was just explaining to Honor that she could finish her meal with us,’ Silas told Myra.
‘What? But you’re coming back with me so that I can show you that video I’ve got of my cousin’s wedding…’ Myra protested, darting a fulminating look at Honor.
‘If I stay with you, can I have cappuccino to finish with?’ Honor asked Silas.
‘Er…’ Silas was looking uncertainly from his daughter’s face to his girlfriend’s. In any other circumstances and with any other man, Verity knew she would have felt quite sympathetic towards him. As it was, tucking down the corners of her mouth so that no one could see the smile curling there, she caught Honor’s attention.
‘Remember the Bible story of Solomon?’ she asked the little girl sotto voce.
‘Solomon?’ Honor whispered back w
hilst Silas and Myra removed themselves slightly from the table to engage in what looked like a very heated conversation. ‘Oh, you mean the one where the two women both claimed the baby and Solomon threatened to cut it in two and let them have half each?’ Honor asked her.
‘That’s the one,’ Verity agreed dulcetly. Honor frowned and then suddenly burst out laughing as she saw Verity glance over towards Silas.
‘Oh, but Dad isn’t a baby,’ she protested.
‘No, but he is your father and sometimes loving someone means letting them make their own decisions,’ Verity told her gently.
‘But she’s not right for him,’ Honor protested, and then shrugged her shoulders. ‘Okay.’
‘Dad…’
‘Honor…’
Verity waited as they both started to speak and then both stopped.
‘If you’re sure you don’t mind giving Honor supper and keeping her with you until I can collect her,’ Silas told Verity distantly.
‘I don’t mind at all,’ Verity responded truthfully, adding as she smiled at Honor, ‘In fact, it will be a pleasure.’
‘Goodie…There goes Myra’s plan for showing my father the tempting prospect of getting married via her cousin’s wedding video,’ Honor exulted several minutes later as she and Verity exited the restaurant, Honor clutching a huge double portion of rich ice cream that the now-besotted maître d’ had insisted on giving her complete with a bowl of ice to keep it chilled until they got home.
‘I shouldn’t be too sure about that,’ Verity warned her. ‘Myra looks one very determined lady to me…’
‘Determined she might be, but Dad is catastrophically old-fashioned about me going to bed early on school nights. There’s no way he’s going to be able to go home with Myra tonight.’
Verity stopped walking and swung round to glance incredulously at Honor.
‘Did you deliberately plan all of this?’ she asked her bluntly.
Honor’s face assumed a hurt expression.
‘Me…I’m ten years old,’ she reminded Verity.
‘Yeah…but somehow you seem so much older,’ Verity responded feelingly.