by Penny Jordan
She had thought that he meant she would change her mind, not that he would manipulate events so that she would have a perfectly acceptable excuse for visiting him.
His behaviour reminded her slightly of the way Joel had taken charge of her when she was at school. The feeling of knowing there was someone else there, someone that she could rely on was comfortingly familiar.
Now, as Kenneth reached the door, he paused and turned to smile at her.
* * *
His car had barely turned into the road before Daphne was questioning her, demanding to know all she knew about him.
‘He was a patient, that’s all,’ Sally fibbed, grateful that her sister’s ego prevented her from suspecting the truth. Daphne quite plainly had no conception of the real reason for Kenneth’s visit, thank goodness.
‘You’ll have to come with us, of course,’ Sally heard Daphne telling her. ‘It would look odd if you didn’t, but for heaven’s sake, Sally, try and make a bit of an effort to smarten yourself up a bit. That dreadful shirt and those jeans…’
‘I was working,’ Sally reminded her. ‘I’ve finished the stripping,’ she added, ‘but I’m not sure when I’ll be able to start the papering…’
‘Oh, yes. I meant to have a word with you about that. Teresa Craven has a decorator who is marvellous, apparently, and quite cheap. We’ve decided to ask him to do the work; after all, we can’t afford to have a second set of paper ruined. You should have made Joel come back and put it right, you know, Sally. You’re far too soft with him. You could never imagine someone like Kenneth allowing his wife to shoulder his responsibilities, could you?’
‘No,’ Sally agreed quietly. ‘I couldn’t.’
As she collected her things she acknowledged that Joel had probably been quite right when he’d insisted that it wasn’t so much her dining-room wallpapering that Daphne wanted, but to humiliate him. But if she hadn’t come round she wouldn’t have seen Kenneth… Kenneth, who had obviously remembered that comment she had made about having to do her sister’s wallpapering on her day off and acted upon it.
Kenneth who had very cleverly and subtly worked with her sister’s vanity and not against it as Joel did.
* * *
Philippa tensed, her fingers curling nervously round the receiver as the number she had dialled rang out.
When it did there was a brief initial silence. Her excitement faded as she recognised the tell-tale signs of an answering machine. She would just have to leave a message and her number and wait for her prospective employer to ring her back, she recognised in disappointment. She started to rehearse her message mentally and then froze as the cool, firm tones of a male voice filled her ear—a voice and name she recognised immediately even though she had not heard it for years, and when she had, the last time she had, it had not been as it was now—cool and pleasant—but hotly, furiously, bitingly angry, hard with a contempt which had lashed her sensitivities and her pride red raw with whipthin acid strokes of dismissal and dislike.
Her reactions were instinctive and immediate, her face draining of colour as she frantically replaced the receiver, cutting off the voice in mid-sentence, her hand trembling so much that it took her several attempts to replace the receiver properly, her heart thumping as hard as though she had just woken up from a nightmare of terror.
She stared at the telephone as though she half expected it to ring and then she would hear Blake’s voice angrily demanding to know what it was she wanted, why she had hung up; why she had rung him in the first place when she knew just exactly what he thought of her.
Caught as she was in a web of shock, paralysed by it and by her own emotions, it was minutes rather than seconds before she had even enough control over herself to accept the irrationality of her own fears.
Of course Blake wasn’t going to ring her back. How could he? He had no idea who she was. When he reran his machine he would simply assume that she was yet another person who balked at the thought of using an answering machine.
Her thoughts formed slowly like tired swimmers fighting desperately against a too swift current.
Blake was a colleague of Elizabeth’s husband, a man in need of a woman to take charge of his orphaned godchild; could coincidence really stretch a long arm so far?
To the best of her knowledge Blake was still working abroad. America somewhere, her brother Michael had said the last time he had mentioned him. Before that he had spent some time working with disturbed children, some of the victims in Romania, his time and skill given free, so her brother had told her.
How could he now be working at a relatively small local hospital in a part of the country with which he had no connections?
It was impossible; she must have imagined it… She stared at the telephone, willing herself to find the courage to dial the number again. When she did so, the voice declaring the name ‘Blake Hamilton’ and the phone number was as cool and precise as before. Her mouth dry, her heart pounding, she replaced the receiver, a cold sweat had engulfed her body, making her shiver.
Thank God Elizabeth had arranged things so that she was the one to get in touch with him.
‘He knows something of your circumstances, by the way—not the full details,’ Elizabeth had told her. Had that ‘something’ included her name and, if it had, had he recognised it?
Obviously not, otherwise he would never have agreed to interview her.
A bubble of hysterical laughter choked her throat.
‘You would be perfect for such a role,’ Elizabeth had told her.
The bubble exploded in a sharp high sound that shocked her into silence. It was the cackle, the shriek of a mad woman, someone on the verge of completely losing control.
There was no way she could ever apply for the job now, and no way that Blake would want her.
Her mouth twisted in grim recognition of her betraying choice of verb. She would have to come up with some sort of explanation for Elizabeth, some sort of excuse, some sort of lie.
Clinically her brain observed and assessed the physical weakness of her body and her emotions.
Funny how the sound of a voice which had once had the power to transport her into a teenage seventh heaven of sexual and emotional delight should now almost have the reverse effect upon her, sending instead a cold, shocked frisson of fear and panic racing down her spine, triggering off acute nausea in her stomach, making her recognise that she was still as ill-equipped to deal with the effects of severe emotional trauma at thirty-odd as she had been at eighteen.
Which was it she was most afraid of having to face—Blake, or her own awareness of just how much of a fool she had made of herself in front of him?
It was a shame about the job, of course, much more than a shame, even though she tried to be philosophical about it and remind herself that after all she was really no worse off than she had been when she woke up this morning… before Elizabeth had spoken to her.
She had, after all, already survived potentially worse blows: the death of her husband and the subsequent scandal, the loss of her financial security, her place in local society, the loss of people who had purported to be her friends, the loss of a man who could have become far more to her than just her physical lover. What could one more small loss matter? She hadn’t, in any case, been totally sure that she was right for the job… or that she would get it, despite Elizabeth’s reassurances.
Blake Hamilton… Was it tragedy or comedy that had so nearly brought him back into her life? Or was it perhaps neither, but fate offering her a chance to prove that she had meant what she had said about taking charge of her own life, being her own person… taunting her with the knowledge that there were still some aspects of her personality she could neither change nor escape?
* * *
Blake frowned as he listened to his answering machine and found that two calls had come in, but both times the person at the other end had hung up.
Why did people do that? he wondered irritably. What was it about a simple recorded message that they found so da
unting?
He had been in meetings virtually all day sorting out a myriad small details of his new appointment. That was something that never changed no matter what part of the world he worked in: bureaucracy… red tape… officialdom; and a part of him, for all his self-examination and teaching, still found it tedious and time-consuming, absorbing energy and assets which would have been far better employed on his patients.
He ran the tape through to the end, grimacing as he realised that the woman Elizabeth Humphries had recommended to him had not rung.
According to Elizabeth she was perfect for the job, and with her professional training he had no reason to doubt her judgement. He had never realised before how difficult it was to find someone to take charge of one young child. He had had far fewer problems employing and staffing an entire department. Far… far fewer.
His frown deepened. Perhaps those friends and colleagues who had advised him to let the authorities take charge of Anya had been right after all. After all, what did he really know about bringing up an eleven-year-old girl? Nothing.
But he had seen the look on her face when the social worker had suggested taking her into care.
Care, despair… The two words had formed a relentless rhythm, pounding against his brain and his conscience, reminding him of the moral responsibility he had taken on when he’d first agreed to be the child’s guardian. Him, a guardian.
He hadn’t needed the Social Services to point out that he had no legal responsibility for the child; there was no estate to speak of. Lisa and Miguel, both of them idealists, had worked tirelessly for their cause from their English base with other patriots, but their small council flat had been damp and ill-furnished and their daughter, who had inherited her father’s South American colouring, had looked sallow and undernourished, her huge dark eyes following Blake’s every movement.
Some of Miguel’s co-refugees had offered to take charge of Anya, informally adopting her into their semi-commune-like existence, but the authorities had balked at this even more than they had at Blake’s decision to take charge of her.
He closed his eyes briefly, all too aware of the problems that lay ahead of him, of them both.
There was no psychiatrist yet who could ever totally manage to dissociate himself completely and apply his knowledge unemotionally to his own family or those closest to him; even to apply it in many ways to himself; that was why it was so important that he find exactly the right person to take charge of Anya.
The house felt stuffy after being closed up all day. He strode into the sitting-room and threw open the French windows.
He had bought the house after a single viewing on a flying visit to confirm that he would take up the post the hospital was offering him. The chief executive, an accountant, with, Blake suspected, meanness and suspicion locked into his soul, had not seemed able to believe that he actually intended to take the job.
‘But it’s a considerable drop in salary,’ he had commented several times. Blake had said nothing, volunteered no explanation to satisfy his curiosity.
He paused in front of the open windows, studying the untidy green lawn. The house was Victorian and large with an equally large garden, a family home far too big for one man and a child—but he had seen the green lawn, the shabby summer house, the trees and had immediately thought of his own childhood… and Anya’s.
He had told himself that the house was a bargain, hard to sell due to the recession, and that ultimately when things picked up he could always convert it and sell it off as separate apartments at a profit.
Sometimes he thought he had almost forgotten what real man-to-woman emotion was, questioning even if he had ever experienced it at all, and then something would remind him, some trick of his memory, a woman’s scent, a voice… a laugh… the unexpected glimpse of a half-familiar face, bringing it all back to him again.
In the early days he had often wondered what might have happened if things had been different, if he had been different, but even then his priorities had been set; they had had to be—his mother—and he had been younger too, his principles and beliefs far less flexible, his judgement of others arrogantly harsh. He had learned better since.
Why hadn’t that blasted woman rung? Time was running short. The Social Services were already nipping at his heels, issuing warnings and ultimatums.
Why the hell was he bothering anyway, disrupting his life for the sake of one small unknown eleven-year-old? Out of a sense of moral duty? Out of guilt because for the last ten years he had almost forgotten her existence apart from the obligatory Christmas cheque?
If the woman really wasn’t interested in the job then he would have to start going through agencies again.
He reached into his jacket and removed his wallet, flicking out the business card Elizabeth had given him on which she had written her home number. He would give her a ring… find out what was happening.
‘She hasn’t been in touch with you. Oh, that’s odd. I spoke to her today and she said she was going to ring you straight away,’ Elizabeth told him.
‘Look, why don’t you give me her number,’ Blake suggested, ‘or better still her address…? I’ll go round and see her…’
Elizabeth hesitated about disclosing Philippa’s details, but she knew enough about Blake to be able to trust him. ‘Yes, of course,’ she agreed. ‘Her name is Philippa Ryecart and her address is Green Lawn, Larchmount Avenue.’
Philippa Ryecart… Philippa.
As he thanked Elizabeth, Blake’s glance flicked back to the name he had just written down, noting the betrayingly heavy strokes he had used, as heavy as the hammer-strikes of his heartbeat.
A widow, Elizabeth had said. His mouth tightened as he remembered the careful way she had sketched in the story: the husband a failed businessman who had committed suicide, leaving his wife virtually destitute and alone.
Philippa, alone—and common sense warned him to be cautious, to wait, to think. This was something he had not been prepared for—had not anticipated.
‘No matter what happens, Pip will stay with him, she’s fiercely loyal to him. Too loyal in my view,’ Michael had told him during that long-ago Californian summer. He had told him other things as well—made him see himself in a completely new light… a very unflattering light—the same light that Philippa would see him in?
He reached for the phone and then put it down.
Perhaps it would save time, circumvent unnecessary delays if he went round to see her instead, he decided, ignoring the inner voice that mocked and taunted him.
He went upstairs to shower and change. He had bought the house already furnished; the previous owners had gone to live in Spain where they had no need or room for the heavy old furniture that clothed the house.
Its empty silence was faintly depressing. He wondered how easy it would be for Anya to adjust to it after the cramped smallness of the council flat. Easier, no doubt, than adjusting to her parents’ death.
He had dealt with many traumatised children, children who had suffered far, far more in their short, tragic lives than Anya would ever know, and yet something about her had reached out to him, not as a psychiatrist, but as a man.
Perhaps it had been something in her expression, some likeness to her mother, or perhaps it had been the look of resignation and hopelessness in her eyes, her unchildlike awareness of the decision he had almost made that her best interests would be served by allowing the state to take charge of her. Her best interests, or his?
In the future, would she bless him or curse him for making the choice he had? That, he already knew, depended very much on the woman he chose to look after her.
Elizabeth Humphries had assured him that Philippa was the right woman.
For Anya’s sake he could not afford to ignore that advice.
And that fierce unexpected upsurge in his heartbeat had of course nothing to do with the thoughts going through his mind and the memories they had stirred, but were simply the natural physical after-effects of a man of thirt
y-odd going up a flight of stairs too fast.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
‘MUM, what will happen during the summer holidays?’
Philippa tensed as she heard the anxiety in her elder son’s voice. As her fingers tightened around the telephone receiver she could picture him so clearly, that small frown he had when anything worried him crinkling his forehead, his eyes watching, waiting for her to say the magic words that would put his world to rights again.
Only he wasn’t a little boy any more, he was almost an adolescent, too old to deceive with ambiguities and well intentioned lies, no matter how much she might want to protect him.
‘Stuart Drayton says that when his uncle was made bankrupt his aunt and cousins didn’t have anywhere to live any more…’
Philippa’s heart sank. She should have been expecting something like this, she recognised; the headmaster had after all told her himself that her sons weren’t the only boys in the school in families which were suffering financial setbacks.
‘His cousins had to go and live with their grandmother…’ Rory added.
Philippa closed her eyes. ‘Darling, you mustn’t worry,’ she told him gently. ‘I promise you that you and Daniel won’t have to go and live anywhere you don’t want to or with anyone you don’t like,’ she added.
Was it her fault that there was this distance between her sons and their grandparents? She had tried not to let her own feelings colour the relationship between them, but young children were very good at picking up on unexpressed adult emotions.
‘And we’ll be able to come home for the summer holidays—we won’t have to stay at school?’ Rory pressed her.
‘Yes,’ Philippa promised, superstitiously crossing her fingers.
Why hadn’t the bank been in touch with her yet about her proposal that she be allowed to stay on in the house? She suspected that they were playing a game of cat and mouse with her, testing her strength and determination, and for that reason she could not be the one to get in touch with them. Whatever happened with the house she would somehow find a way of keeping her promise to Rory, she decided fiercely; she could not, would not allow her sons to suffer.