Over the months Heather had done nothing about the colour, but she had brought in plants, which she religiously tended.
She had also brightened up the walls with some of her illustrations, unruffled by Theo’s initial grunting response and then gratified by his occasional appreciative remarks.
Her interest in hanging a few more, which she had been looking forward to choosing from her portfolio, had been squashed under her uncustomary downward spiral of thoughts.
She let herself into the apartment, dumped the food in the fridge and, still reeling from the depressing effect of Beth’s opinions, headed for the shower.
It was wonderfully refreshing. Although summer was on its last legs, and had been a particularly uneventful one even by English standards, it had been a muggy day and she had built up a healthy sweat trekking up the flights of stairs with a fairly heavy carrier bag.
The sound of the doorbell being rung insistently only just managed to penetrate the sound of the shower and the clamour of her thoughts.
Of course it wouldn’t be Theo. Theo never, but never, got back before seven in the evening. He also possessed his own key, which he would never be scatty enough to misplace. But even so…who else could it be? The porter on the ground floor would never allow any salesperson to go up the elevator. It would have been more than his life was worth. Very rich people hugged their privacy and would have been horrified at the thought that any old person could come knocking on their door demanding their attention. In fact, sightings of neighbours were few and far between. Heather was convinced that the super-rich possessed some kind of special radar that warned them when to venture out of their apartments and when not to.
She felt her heartbeat quicken at the thought that she might open the door to see Theo standing there.
It wasn’t Theo. And it wasn’t a salesperson, unlikely as that option had been. It was a short, dark-haired woman in her sixties, with a face that should have been fierce but just looked exhausted.
Heather didn’t know who was more surprised to see whom. They broke the silence at the same time, one speaking voluble Greek, the other stuttering out a bewildered request for some identity. Eventually, they both fell silent once more, until Heather said, her natural friendliness kicking in, ‘I’m sorry, but would you mind telling me who you are? It’s just that…well…not many people are allowed up unless they’re expected…’ She smiled to offset any offence that might have been taken. Not having had time to change into anything else, she clutched the cord of her bathrobe tightly around her and was self-consciously aware of bright black eyes appraising her.
‘Who are you?’ The woman peered around Heather. ‘Where is my son? Is my son here? The man at the desk said that there would be someone to open up for me. I thought he was talking about Theo. Where is he? Who are you?’
Heather gaped. Theo had mentioned his mother now and again—the mother for whom he had the deepest respect and admiration, the mother who never ventured to London because the crowds confused her.
‘Please—come in, Mrs Miquel.’ A shy smile. ‘I’m so glad to meet you. I’m Heather…’
‘Heather? Heather who? Theo never mentioned a Heather to me, but then my son never talks about his girlfriends. I was beginning to think he had none! Or maybe too many…eh?’ She bustled into the apartment and immediately headed for the sofa, where she sat down with a sigh of relief. ‘Come over here, child. Let me see you.’
‘Oh, but you’ve got the wrong—’
‘Shh!’ Theo’s mother placed one finger commandingly over her lips. ‘Humour an old woman who has been praying so long for her son to find a nice girl to settle down with. And this could not have come at a better time for me, my child. Yes. You look plump and well fed.’
‘I’m on a diet…’ Heather mumbled, aghast at the other woman’s misconceptions and determined to set things straight. ‘Well, soon will be…cabbages…soup…I’ll shed pounds…But, you know, I think…Well…I’m sorry to disappoint you…but…’
‘Disappointed? Of course I am not disappointed, my child…!’ The old face suddenly lit up with a smile and Heather helplessly smiled back. ‘Theo likes to think that I am old-fashioned…maybe that is why he did not tell me about you…he thought that I would disapprove of you two living together…’
‘No, Mrs Miquel…’ Heather urgently positioned herself on the sofa, acutely conscious that her state of dress was doing nothing to further the truth. ‘I mean, we are living together…technically…’
‘And, while I am an old woman, I am not that old that I do not realise how times have changed. In my day—well…we did things differently. But that is not to say that I do not understand how young people do things…’ She unexpectedly reached out to cup the side of Heather’s face with her hand. ‘I am just happy that my beloved Theo has found someone, and I can tell you are a kind person. It is in your eyes.’
Heather wondered how kindness could be so easily confused with panic.
‘And you must not call me Mrs Miquel, my child. My name is Litsa.’
‘Theo didn’t say anything about you coming over…’
‘I had hoped to…’ Her face fell into anxious lines of worry. ‘It is best if I explain to him in person…Now, I am tired…perhaps you could call Theo…explain that I am here…?’
‘Of course!’ Since Litsa’s eyelids were fluttering shut, and her strength was clearly sapped, Heather didn’t feel it appropriate to embark on a lengthy explanation of how it was that she came to be occupying Theo’s flat, currently dressed in a bathrobe, and what her real role was. She decided that it was perhaps best to leave that little nugget of disillusionment to Theo.
In the meantime she would escort Litsa to one of the spare rooms, make sure that she was settled into bed, and bring her something to eat—although, after that first outburst of curiosity, she now seemed to have wilted.
Thankfully, the sprawling apartment had several spare bedrooms, two with en suite bathrooms, and Heather showed her to one of these. How she had managed to accomplish a trip to London was a mystery, because she suddenly seemed very fragile, like a piece of china that could be easily broken. She was asleep before Heather had finished removing her jacket and shoes. Making as little noise as possible, she closed the curtains and tucked her underneath the covers.
However, she felt sure that anyone who wasn’t stone deaf would have heard her heart beating like a steam engine.
Her fingers were trembling as she dialled Theo’s mobile phone. He answered immediately, his tone of voice implying that she had interrupted him in the middle of something important. She took a deep breath and spoke quickly, just in case he decided to hang up on her without giving her the benefit of the doubt. When it came to matters of work Theo did not possess a sense of humour. Heather had worked sufficiently with him to have spotted the change that came over him the minute he lost himself in anything to do with his job.
‘What are you talking about?’ he snapped. ‘I can’t understand a word you’re saying.’
‘I’m saying that your mother is here, Theo.’
‘Hold on.’ There was a few seconds of silence, then he was back on the line. ‘Now speak.’
Heather knew that her words were leaping over each other. Several times he had to ask her to slow down. No, she didn’t know why Litsa had shown up…but she was asleep now and he had to drop whatever he was doing and come back to the apartment immediately.
There was nothing Theo hated more than any distraction from work, and right now he was in the middle of a high-level conference, but for the first time he felt something more powerful than the magnetic pull of his work. He felt fear. It fizzed in his blood like acid as he hurtled out of his office, urgently calling his chauffeur to have his car ready and waiting outside.
Typically for Heather, who had never learned the art of economising with her speech, she had babbled on in a confused manner about needing to set his mother straight about something or other, but he had barely heard. His brain had a
lready leapt to possibilities that did not bear thinking about.
His mother never came to London, never mind without any prior warning. To have travelled over without first informing him was unthinkable.
Indeed, Theo could think of no reason why his mother should not have warned him of her arrival. He briefly wondered whether she had, whether he had misfiled the information somewhere in his head, but he immediately discounted that. He forgot nothing—and certainly nothing as important as his mother coming to England.
The car had not quite stopped before he was opening the passenger door and heading towards the apartment block.
He burst through the door of his apartment to find Heather anxiously waiting for him, dressed in her usual garb of leggings and a baggy tee shirt with broad stripes.
‘She’s sound asleep,’ Heather said, leaping to her feet and catching him by the arm before he could storm into the bedroom to ask questions.
His eyes looked wild and she relaxed her hold into something more reassuring. ‘Let me make you some coffee. We need to talk.’
For a few seconds she thought he was going to shrug her hand off and head for the bedroom, but instead he ran his fingers through his hair and nodded.
He watched as she meticulously made some coffee. Along with all the other amazing and under-used high-tech gadgets in his kitchen was a cappuccino maker which he had never learnt to use. Heather, ditzy as she was, had sussed it out in no time, and now she handed him a cup of frothy coffee and sat opposite him at the chrome and glass kitchen table.
‘Is there a problem?’ Theo demanded. ‘My mother never makes unannounced visits to this country so I am assuming that there is. What exactly did she say?’
‘You mean did she tell me why she had come over?’
‘That’s right. Did she?’
Heather shook her head slowly and tried to figure out how to break it to him that his mother had rushed into some pretty horrendous misconceptions. She had tried on the telephone but her words had come out all jumbled, and anyway he hadn’t been listening. Even from the other end of the line she had managed to glean that much.
‘Theo. Is she all right? I mean, physically? She looked a little…frail…’
Theo’s eyes darkened and he leant towards her. ‘Explain.’
‘She just seemed delicate…’
‘And you would have been able to see that all in the space of what…half an hour? Because you’re not actually doing an art course at all? Because you’re actually studying to become a doctor?’ He gave a bark of laughter under which Heather could pick up the strains of fear and her eyes widened sympathetically.
Theo stood up abruptly and pushed his chair back, then he leaned both hands on the table and shot her a hard, cold look. ‘And spare me the compassion. I’m not in the mood for it.’
‘Okay.’ She felt the sting of tears at the back of her eyes and bit her lip.
Theo looked at her downbent head and knew that he had been unnecessarily cruel, but the apology he felt obliged to offer refused to come to his lips. Did she have any idea how her passing glib remark had consolidated all the nebulous fears that had been swimming about in his head? He banged his fist on the table and Heather jumped.
‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered.
‘Sorry about what?’ Theo snarled back. ‘About offering your opinion when it hasn’t been asked for?’
‘Sorry that you’re scared.’ She met his eyes bravely and was relieved when he at least deigned to sit back down. She had never seen him scared before, had never seen him even close to it. If he wanted to take it out on her, then so be it. Wasn’t that what love was all about? And didn’t she love him?
However, she instinctively knew that dwelling on it wasn’t a good idea, so she gave him a watery smile and sighed.
‘There’s something else,’ she volunteered tentatively. ‘I did try explaining to you on the phone, but I’m not sure you understood what I was trying to say. You know how sometimes I say stuff and it doesn’t come out the way I mean…’
In the face of this prosaic understatement Theo felt some of the tension drain away from him and he smiled grudgingly. ‘I’ve noticed.’
‘Well…when your mother rang the doorbell I was in the shower…’
Theo frowned and tried to make sense of this random statement. He couldn’t, so he waited patiently for her to continue. Given sufficient time, Heather’s ramblings usually led to a fairly coherent place.
‘I know you’re probably thinking that it was a pretty odd time to have a shower, in the middle of the afternoon, but I’d decided to climb the stairs with some shopping…Anyway…Yes, I was in the shower and I went to answer the door in my bathrobe…’
‘Do you plan on getting to the point any time this year?’
‘Forget about the bathrobe…it doesn’t matter. The point is…and I know you’re going to be angry at this but it wasn’t my fault…your mother wasn’t expecting to see me.’
‘Why didn’t she ask Hal to let her up if she wasn’t expecting to find anyone in the apartment?’
‘Because Hal told her that someone would be here…she just expected that someone to be you…’
‘At four-thirty in the afternoon?’
Heather ignored this rhetorical question and fixed him with a pleading stare which immediately sent alarm bells clanging in his head.
‘I’m afraid she got the wrong impression…’
‘Got the wrong impression? What impression did she get?’
‘That I was…somehow involved with you…’
‘You are involved with me. You’re my housekeeper, amongst other things.’
‘Not that kind of involved, Theo. Involved, involved. On a romantic level involved. As in your girlfriend.’
Theo’s reaction was unexpected. He burst out laughing.
‘I know it’s incredible,’ Heather said tightly. ‘I know I’m not the sort of woman you would glance at twice…’
Theo stopped laughing and looked at her narrowly, faintly uneasy about her tone of voice, but she had already progressed to the main body of the story and he was now getting the picture loud and clear.
He had kept his mother in the dark about his frequent liaisons—half to protect her, half to spare himself the inevitable disappointment he knew he would read on her face—and now she had walked in on a woman in a bathrobe, sharing his apartment, and had jumped to all the wrong conclusions.
‘But you told her the truth, didn’t you?’ he interrupted.
‘I couldn’t.’
‘You couldn’t? Run that by me, Heather. My mother starts telling you how pleased she is that her son has finally found himself a good woman and you don’t find it possible to point her in the right direction?’ He was beginning to wonder how a day at the office could end up going so monstrously wrong.
‘She didn’t let me get a word in edgeways, Theo, and then she just sort of…lost all her steam—as though energy had been drained out of her—and I just didn’t have the heart to shake her and tell her that she’d made a mistake…’
‘Well, I’ll sort that out.’ He took a sip of his coffee and regarded Heather over the rim of his cup. Heather? Girlfriend? Ridiculous notion. His eyes drifted over her face, with its finely defined features and expressive eyes, then downwards to the striped tee shirt that did absolutely nothing for her and seemed to belong to a range of clothing specifically chosen for that purpose.
Yes, sure, she might have a personality—quite a bit of a personality, as he had discovered over time—but personality wasn’t high on Theo’s list of desirable qualities in a woman.
‘Shouldn’t be a problem,’ he continued.
‘You mean because no one in their right mind would ever think that I might be attractive?’ Heather heard the words come out of her with a start of surprise, and she carried on quickly, not giving him time to latch onto their significance. ‘Perhaps you ought to go and check on her…she seems to have been asleep for a while…’
‘Wh
ere did that come from?’ Theo asked with a frown. Heather might not be a candidate for a modelling contract, but then again he had never once seen her succumb to any real insecurities about her appearance. She joked about her figure now and again, and always seemed to be on some diet or another, but that was as far as it went. ‘Has some man insulted you?’ He felt a flare of sudden overpowering rage.
‘Don’t be silly, Theo. I’m just…in a weird mood. Must be your mother showing up…’
Which brought him back to what his mother was doing here, and he nodded and stood up. ‘I’m going to go and check on her.’
‘Don’t wake her up if she’s still asleep,’ Heather urged. ‘She looked as though she needed the rest. Perhaps she came over here to relax.’ That made no sense at all, but she couldn’t bear to see the sudden lines of strain etched on his darkly handsome features. It was funny how successfully he had always managed to promote his own invincibility. To see him vulnerable hurt her in ways she couldn’t define. Nor could she express how she felt, because he would have rejected her sympathy as fiercely as if she had offered him a cup of arsenic.
‘You don’t have to patronise me,’ Theo said dryly, but at least, Heather thought, he wasn’t angry, and she smiled.
‘I do if it stops you worrying so much.’
‘Why?’
‘Because…’ She felt terra firma begin to shift worryingly under her feet. ‘Because I would do it for anyone.’ Which was a version of the truth at any rate. ‘I can’t bear to see anyone hurting.’
‘A good Samaritan?’ Theo said, still looking at her intently. ‘Well, now I’m going to see my mother, and I shall end up being the bad Samaritan when I inform her that her notions about us are a load of rubbish.’ He laughed and shook his head, as if still incredulous that such an error of judgement might have been made in the first place.
It left Heather thinking how important it was now to leave. She couldn’t blame Theo for the fact that he found any idea of them being connected romantically a complete joke. The joke, she miserably pondered, was on her. She had harboured a ridiculous unfounded infatuation with him virtually from the very first moment she had clapped eyes on him, sitting behind his desk, brow furrowed in concentration, barely aware of her existence as she cleaned around him. And that had eventually led her here, to his apartment, entrenched in feelings that would never be reciprocated. Beth had been right all along. She needed to control her life and set it in the direction she wanted to take—instead of passively allowing her emotions to dictate to her.
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