by Anne Mather
Since then, of course, he had endeavoured to put all thoughts of her out of his head, and to a certain extent, he had succeeded. The trouble was, he knew she was still there, whether consciously or subconsciously, and it was her image that was clouding his brain and blighting the coming weekend.
Finishing the whisky in his glass, he swung his feet abruptly to the floor and stood up. To hell with it, he thought savagely. He was going to see her one last time and tell her what he thought of her. Half his frustration came from knowing she thought she had had the last word. He would explain that her isolation had aroused his compassion; that he had felt sorry for her; that far from desiring her body, he had been trying to educate her mind, and if she had mistaken his—well meaning—invitation for something else, she had his sympathies.
Depositing the empty glass on his desk, he strode towards the heavy door which gave access to his secretary’s office. ‘I’m just going out for an hour, Mrs Drysdale,’ he informed the efficient middle-aged woman, who had worked for his father before him. ‘I should be back before six.’
‘But—isn’t Miss Lytton-Smythe expected?’ Mrs Drysdale exclaimed in surprise, removing her horn-rimmed spectacles to look at him.
‘Yes, she is,’ Reed nodded, hardly pausing in his progress towards the outer door. ‘But not before six, and as I’ve said, I’ll be back by then. Relax, Mrs Drysdale. Everything’s under control.’
‘Did you sign those letters?’
Mrs Drysdale seemed loath to let him go, and Reed sighed, running a weary hand round the back of his neck. ‘I’ve signed everything of importance,’ he assured her crisply, impatient to be off. ‘You can go, too, as soon as you’re ready. Celia can find her own way into my office.’
‘Yes, Mr Gallagher.’
Mrs Drysdale had no choice but to accept his edict, although Reed knew she, of all people, found it hardest to adapt to his ways. His father had always deferred to her, as a matter of courtesy, but Reed was less in awe of her admirable qualifications. In consequence, theirs was a relationship based on tolerance, and there were times he knew, as now, when she could not hide her disapproval.
But Reed had no time at present to consider Mrs Drysdale’s feelings. He had exactly one hour to drive across London, speak to Antonia, and drive back again, and that, at the height of the Friday rush-hour, was not going to be easy.
As luck would have it, he made good time to Clifton Gate, and it was only just after a quarter-past-five when he turned into the drive of Eaton Lodge. He knew, from earlier enquiries he had made, that the institute where Antonia worked closed at four-thirty on Fridays, and even taking into account the vagaries of the buses, she should be home by now.
Suppressing the instinct that what he was doing was not only foolish but downright reckless, Reed crossed the forecourt and entered the building. Antonia’s door was the first on the left, and without giving himself time to have second thoughts, he knocked firmly on the panels.
Infuriating though it was, as he stood there waiting for her to open the door, a mental image of her pale features suddenly flashed into his mind. As if he was looking at a photograph, he could see every facet of her indignant hazel eyes and stubborn mouth—the way she had looked when he had last seen her. She had a nice mouth, he reflected unwillingly, the lower lip fuller and inclined towards sensuality—when she wasn’t being angry with him, of course. When she smiled, her whole face lit up—a dazzling transformation—and her eyes were not hazel then, but green …
‘Are you looking for Mrs Sheldon?’ enquired a vaguely familiar voice behind him, and controlling his impatience, Reed turned to face the caretaker’s inquisitive wife. ‘Why—Mr Gallagher, it’s you!’ she exclaimed, her thin features acquiring a decidedly curious expression. ‘Miss Lytton-Smythe’s not here.’
‘I know.’ Reed pushed his thumbs into the pockets of his waistcoat, refusing to explain himself to her. ‘I—it’s Mrs Sheldon I wanted to see. Is she in?’
‘Oh—she’s gone!’ declared Mrs Francis swiftly, and for a bone-jarring moment Reed thought she meant for good.
‘Gone?’ he echoed, his voice revealing a little of the emotion he was feeling, and Mrs Francis nodded.
‘She was catching the six o’clock train,’ she confided, folding her arms, as if preparing for a long intercourse. ‘Gone home for the weekend, she has. You know: to Newcastle. Said she’d be back Sunday night, if that’s any help to you.’
Reed withdrew his thumbs from his pockets, aware of a shuddering sense of relief sweeping over him at her words. It was a debilitating experience, and he could have done with a drink now to restore his equilibrium, but instead, he had to convince Mrs Francis that he was grateful for her assistance.
‘Well—thank you,’ he said, running his tongue over dry lips. ‘It … wasn’t important.’
‘Would you like me to give her a message?’ Mrs Francis persisted, clearly sensing some intrigue here and loath to let him go without an explanation. ‘I’m sure she’ll be sorry to have missed you. She doesn’t get many visitors, you know.’
Reed’s lips twisted a little in self-derision. He had few doubts that Antonia would welcome the omission, and far from being sorry to have missed him, she would resent his implicating her in what would seem a reckless indiscretion.
‘As I say, it’s not important, Mrs Francis,’ he declared, moving firmly towards the outer door. ‘I—I had a message for her from Celia. But as she’s gone away, it doesn’t matter.’
‘Oh, I see.’
Mrs Francis accepted his account with an understanding smile, but Reed could still see the doubtful speculation in her eyes. What the hell was he going to tell Cee, he wondered savagely, nodding a farewell and striding back to his car. Now that Mrs Francis was involved, he was going to have to say something, and his brain buzzed frustratedly as he drove back to his office.
Mrs Lord had brought Susie to the station to meet the train. In spite of the lateness of the hour for her, she was jumping with excitement by the time her mother walked through the ticket barrier, and Antonia bent and gathered her small daughter into her arms.
‘Hello, treasure,’ she said emotively, burying her suddenly tear-wet face in the hollow of her daughter’s shoulder. ‘It’s so good to be back! Have you been a good girl for Nanna?’
‘She’s been as good as gold since Tuesday,’ declared Mrs Lord drily, returning her daughter’s kiss and wiping a recalcitrant tear from Antonia’s cheek. ‘All I’ve heard is how many days it is to Friday, and what present might you have bought her for her birthday.’
Her mother’s careless mention of Tuesday brought a momentary pang of conscience, but Antonia quickly dismissed it. She was not going to allow Reed Gallagher to spoil her weekend, she told herself fiercely, and concentrated her attention on Susie’s description of her birthday cake.
‘We’re having a party,’ she explained, holding tightly to her mother’s hand as they walked to where Mrs Lord had left her car. ‘Uncle Howard and Auntie Sylvia, and David and Kevin, are coming to tea tomorrow, and Nanna said I could ask three of my friends from school.’
‘Super,’ said Antonia affectionately, exchanging a wordless look of gratitude with her mother. ‘Six seven-year-olds! That’s all I need! I can see this is going to be a very restless couple of days.’
In fact, the weekend tended to drag. Even in so short a time, Antonia had lost touch with her mother’s life in Gosforth, and although initially they had plenty to talk about, by Sunday there was a definite lack of communication.
On Friday evening, Susie had dominated the conversation, both while she was there and after she had gone to bed. Antonia had been relieved to see her daughter did not appear to have suffered any ill effects from her absence. Susie was just as ebullient as ever, and Antonia was more inclined to accept her mother’s assertion of out of sight, out of mind.
Saturday morning started with Susie opening her presents. Antonia had brought her a doll that mimicked many of the actions of a real baby, b
ut although Susie was intrigued by its ability to drink its bottle and wet its nappy, she spent more time playing with the electronic game her grandmother had provided.
‘Children are notoriously fickle,’ remarked Mrs Lord, as she and Antonia sat in the large, sunlit kitchen, lingering over their mid-morning cup of coffee. ‘As soon as you’ve gone, she’ll discover that she likes the doll best of all. You’ll see. I’m usually right.’
As Susie disappeared into the garden to play soon afterwards, and her mother departed for a hair appointment, Antonia was left to mooch around the house for the rest of the morning. It was odd, she thought. When she was at the flat, she had longed to be at home, back among the people and the places she knew so well. But now she was here, she was restless. Even the surroundings of her old room, which her mother had never altered, in spite of her marriage to Simon, failed to give her the pleasure she had expected. She found herself missing the constant throb of traffic that it was never quite possible to block out of the apartment, the awareness of a city that never seemed to sleep.
Of course, she was being foolish; and she knew it. The persistent hum of traffic was one of the things she had found hardest to adjust to, and she certainly could not wish to duplicate it here in Gosforth. And as for thinking that London never slept: well, that was true of sections of every capital city and every smaller one, as well. Hospitals; law enforcement; public services; there was always someone working for the good of the community, at all hours of the day and night. There was nothing remarkable about that. She was being ridiculously fanciful in associating it only with London. For goodness sake, what was she thinking of? She had hated it to begin with.
Sitting on the edge of her bed, she drew up one slim leg and rested her chin on her knee. The trouble was, she admitted ruefully, she had been feeling pretty rotten since last Tuesday. No matter how she tried to justify her behaviour, she could not get past the fact that Reed had bought her lunch and she had paid him back by insulting him. Oh, she could find a dozen reasons to exonerate her rudeness—he had no right to send her flowers; he had been given no reason to presume on the flimsiest of introductions that she might be willing to have lunch with him, let alone dinner—but they did not ease her conscience. She had behaved like a timid virgin, embarking on her first date, instead of acting like the mature woman she was, and accepting his friendship in like manner. Men and women could have perfectly platonic relationships, she reminded herself irritably. He probably thought she was a prime example of a raw northern upbringing, a mixture of ignorance and prudery, stodginess and unsophistication.
Antonia’s brother and his wife arrived in the afternoon, and the tea-party that followed left little time for conversation or introspection. Howard’s twins left a trail of havoc wherever they went, and what with mopping up orange juice and scooping jelly off her mother’s carpet, Antonia felt physically exhausted by the time they all went home.
Sylvia, her sister-in-law, did find an opportunity while they were washing up to ask her if she was enjoying working in London. ‘I envy you, I do honestly,’ Howard’s wife averred fiercely. ‘I wish I had a reason to dump my kids on your mother and clear off to pastures new! Sometimes I think I’ll go mad if Howard doesn’t find a way to discipline our Kevin!’
‘He’s only a boy,’ said Antonia reassuringly, even though she didn’t like Sylvia’s dig about dumping Susie. ‘I expect he’ll quieten down as he gets older Howard was quite a handful, I believe, when he was that age.’
‘Really?’ Sylvia grimaced. ‘Well, that’s not what he says. He blames our family for Kevin’s unruly streak. I told him—I said, there’s no one in our family who behaves like a hooligan every time we’re in company. But he doesn’t listen. He really gets me mad!’
Deciding this conversation was moving into areas she didn’t have any right to enter, Antonia changed the subject. ‘I like your dress,’ she said generously, admiring Sylvia’s plaid smock. ‘Is it new? It suits you.’
‘I got it in town,’ Sylvia replied without enthusiasm. ‘I suppose you got that dress in London. You can always tell.’
As Antonia was wearing the cream shirt-waister she had worn to Celia’s party, she smiled. ‘As a matter of fact, I bought this in the sales last January,’ she answered, thrusting back the memories it insistently evoked. ‘Sorry to disappoint you, Sylvia, but I haven’t bought any clothes since I went to London. I don’t need any and, even if I did, I can’t afford them.’
Sunday was the worst day of all. Although Antonia knew she would not want to leave when it was time to do so, the morning seemed endless. Her mother, as always, went to church, taking Susie with her. Antonia should have accompanied them, she knew, but in spite of her mother’s admonishments, she did not feel up to one of the Reverend Lisle’s sermons. Besides, someone had to prepare the Sunday dinner, she said, as they were having it in the middle of the day, even though peeling potatoes and cutting up the other vegetables did not take more than half an hour.
During the afternoon, Antonia packed her bag again, and ordered a taxi to take her to the station to catch the five o’clock train. ‘I’d rather you didn’t come with me, Mum,’ she told her mother gently. ‘It will be easier for Susie if she doesn’t have to wave me goodbye on the platform. This way, it won’t seem so terrible when I’ve gone.’
Susie, however, saw things differently. ‘I want to come to the station,’ she wailed, her face crumpling up when she saw her mother’s case in the hall. ‘I like going to the station. I like seeing all the trains.’
‘There aren’t that many trains on a Sunday,’ Antonia comforted her unhappily, pulling the little girl on to her lap. ‘Oh, don’t cry, darling. You know Mummy’s got to go back.’
‘When can I come to London?’ Susie persisted, her lower lip trembling. ‘I want to see where you live. You said I could come to the flat.’
‘Next holidays,’ promised Antonia rashly, exchanging a helpless look with her mother. ‘Nanna will bring you down in about a month. You can both stay for a long weekend, and I’ll show you the Houses of Parliament and Buckingham Palace, where the Queen lives.’
‘Really?’ Susie stuck her thumb in her mouth and regarded her mother doubtfully.
‘Yes, really,’ said Antonia, removing Susie’s thumb with a reproving frown. ‘So—how about helping me make a sandwich to eat on the train? I shan’t be able to stay for tea, and there are no buffet cars on Sundays.’
Later, as the train pulled out of Newcastle station, Antonia had to steel herself not to shed a few tears. But they were not really for Susie, they were more for herself, she reflected ruefully. Susie had her grandmother to turn to; she felt as if she had no one.
It was almost ten o’clock when the train pulled into King’s Cross station. The journey, which generally took a little over three hours, had lengthened to nearly five, due to repairs being made to the line at Peterborough. Half-empty, the train had chugged its way through a series of rural stations, stopping at every one, and those passengers who were not reading had fallen asleep out of boredom.
Unfortunately, Antonia had neither the will to read nor the relaxation necessary to go to sleep, and by the time the train reached London, she felt utterly miserable. The flat, which had not seemed so bad from a distance, had lost its appeal by the mile, and she tugged her case down from the rack, wishing for once she had chosen to share an apartment with another girl.
Even Celia Lytton-Smythe shared with Liz Ashford, she reflected, unwillingly thinking of her glamorous neighbours. She wondered what they had been doing this weekend. Not spending five unproductive hours on a draughty train, she was sure. People like Celia and Liz—and Reed, too, she assumed, although she knew nothing about him—went everywhere by car or by plane. They did not waste their time on journeys that could comfortably be avoided.
As soon as the train had stopped, Antonia got out, tugging her suitcase after her. It was not heavy. She had not taken much home with her. But it was cumbersome, and it knocked against her le
gs as she struggled along the platform.
A collector was waiting to take their tickets as they passed through the barrier. Antonia handed hers over, and then set her suitcase on the ground to loop the strap of her bag over one shoulder, and switch the heavier item to her other hand.
As she did so, she got the distinct impression that someone was watching her, and she looked up in dismay, hoping she was not going to have to fend off some unwanted admirer. After the strain of the last five hours, she felt too weary to be polite, and the first twinges of a headache were probing at her temples.
‘Reed!’
Her involuntary use of his name was instinctive. It was the way she had been thinking of him for the past two weeks, if she was honest, and the idea of addressing him as Mr Gallagher was far from her thoughts at that moment.
Reed was waiting for her. From his stance, she suspected he had been there for some time, which seemed to be confirmed by the way he came stiffly to meet her. He was unsmiling, his dark features drawn into an enigmatic mask, but he bent and took her case from her, and she was too shocked to prevent him.
‘The car’s parked over here,’ he remarked, gesturing towards the side exit. ‘You look frozen. Are you? Or is that just your delight at seeing me?’
CHAPTER FIVE
ANTONIA pulled herself together and hastened after him, noticing inconsequently how well the brown leather jacket sat upon his shoulders. Beneath was a fine wool sweater, also in shades of brown and gold, and a pair of narrow Levis completed his attire. She didn’t think of arguing with him; not at that moment. Just finding him here, waiting for her, seemed the most natural thing in the world, and she would have plenty of time later to question her judgment.
Reed deposited her suitcase in the boot of the car and then unlocked the doors. ‘Get in,’ he said, swinging open the one on the nearside, and Antonia complied, glad she was wearing her corded trouser suit.