‘My mother’s sister. This is her flat. A small part of the spoils of a very lucrative divorce settlement. Happily she prefers to live in France so we get to house-sit.’
‘At a price.’
‘We just pay the expenses, which admittedly are not low…’ Then, ‘Oh, you mean you.’ And she laughed. ‘Don’t worry about it. Sophie’ll come round.’ She stopped. ‘This is your room.’
And she opened a door to the kind of bedroom I’d only ever seen in lifestyle articles in the Sunday supplements. A blond wood floor, taupe walls, a low double bed with real blankets and the bed-linen was just that. Linen. It was spare, stylish and, in comparison with my single-bedded room at home with its floral wallpaper, shelves full of favourite childhood books and menagerie of stuffed animals—very grown up.
‘It’s lovely,’ I said. Still unwilling to put down my suitcase and spoil the perfection.
‘It looks too much like a department store-room setting for my taste. It needs living in.’ She glanced at me, standing practically to attention, afraid to touch anything, and grinned. ‘Relax, Philly. Don’t be afraid to muss it up and make yourself at home.’ She crossed the room and threw open another door. ‘You’ve got an en suite shower. And this,’ she said, ignoring the reality of my ruined suitcase, ‘is a walk-in wardrobe.’
It didn’t take a theoretical physicist to work out that I didn’t need a walk-in anything. A small cupboard would accommodate my limited wardrobe with space left over. But what with a uniform for work and overalls for the garage—neither of which was needed in London—I was rather short of clothes. My priority had been saving up for a deposit on a home of my own so that when Don eventually realised that there was more to life than old cars there’d be nothing to stop us. I was going to assuage my misery by blowing some of it on some serious working clothes. If I wasn’t going to have a personal life for the next six months, I might as well do my career some good.
‘Do you want to give me your jacket? I’ll hang it up to dry.’
It occurred to me that people who lived in this kind of apartment block couldn’t hang out their washing on a line in the back garden. ‘Is there a launderette nearby? Some of my…um…clothes got a bit muddy.’
‘Possibly, but why go out in the rain when we’ve got everything you need right here? Washer, dryer and the finest steam iron a divorce settlement can buy.’
A dryer? I quashed the thought that my mother wouldn’t approve and grinned. ‘Thanks, Kate.’
‘You’re welcome,’ she said. ‘Now I’d better go and make sure that my sulky little sister isn’t lacing your tea with something unpleasant. Don’t stand on ceremony. A bathrobe is as formal as it gets around here at this time on a Friday.’ And she grinned. ‘Just follow the sound of Sophie’s teeth gnashing when you’re ready.’
CHAPTER THREE
It’s dark and raining. Your room-mates have gone out and you’re on your own in a strange flat. As you turn on the cooker to prepare some absolutely vital comfort food you blow the fuses. Do you:
a. remember that there’s a pub on the corner? You can get something to eat there and find a bloke who knows how to fix a fuse. Excellent.
b. go next door for help? The guy who lives there never leaves the house in daylight, but, hey, it’s dark, so that’s not a problem.
c. ring the emergency services and cry?
d. keep a torch and spare fuse wire by the fuse-box? You fix the fuse yourself.
e. just cry?
‘FEELING better?’
Kate was on her own in the kitchen and waved in the direction of the teapot, indicating that I should help myself.
‘Much,’ I said, although I felt a little self-conscious in my aged bathrobe, with my hair wrapped in one of the thick soft towels that had been left for me. I’d never shared a flat with girls my own age before but I had friends who were quick to tell me that it was a minefield.
Rows over who’d taken the last of the milk, or bread. Rows over telephone bills. And worst of all, rows over men. At least that wouldn’t be a problem. I had enough trouble holding my own man’s attention against the incomparable glamour of a carburettor, let alone attracting any attention from any of theirs.
Kate seemed friendly enough but I didn’t want her to think I was freeloading. ‘I need to go shopping, stock up on the essentials, if you’ll point me in the direction of the nearest supermarket,’ I said as I filled a cup.
‘Don’t worry tonight. So long as you don’t eat Sophie’s cottage cheese you’ll be fine.’
‘No problem,’ I said, with feeling, and we both grinned.
‘Do you know anyone in London, Philly?’
I shook my head. Then said, ‘Well…’ Kate waited. ‘I met the man who lives next door. We hailed the same taxi and since we were going in the same direction it seemed logical to share. Not that I knew he lived next door then, of course.’
Kate looked surprised. Actually it did seem pretty unlikely, but it wasn’t the coincidence that bothered her. ‘You got into a taxi with a man you didn’t know?’
I was still feeling a little bit wobbly about that myself.
‘It was raining. And he was prepared to let me take it. He was really, very…um…’ On the point of saying kind, I was assailed by a vivid recollection of impatience barely held in check behind fathoms-deep sea-green eyes. Of his heel grinding my attack alarm in the pavement. Of his sharp ‘wait here’. And my mouth dried on ‘kind’.
‘Yes?’
‘Actually, I owe him an apology.’ I swallowed. ‘And probably a new umbrella.’ Kate’s brows quirked upwards. ‘It’s a long story.’
‘Then it’s one that’ll have to keep. I’ve got a date with a totally gorgeous barrister. I’d have cancelled when I realised you would be arriving today, but I have long-term plans for this one and I’m not risking him out alone on Friday night.’ And she grinned as she pushed herself off her stool. ‘Don’t worry. I’m not leaving you on your own with Sophie. She’s going to a party. I would have asked her to take you but, in her present mood, I couldn’t positively guarantee you’d have a good time.’
‘No,’ I said. Relieved. The thought of going to a party, being forced into the company of a roomful of strangers, with or without Sophie, was not appealing.
And when, an hour or so later, Sophie drifted into the kitchen on high, high heels, ethereal in silvery chiffon, a fairy dusting of glitter across her shoulders, her white-blonde hair a mass of tiny waves, the relief intensified.
If I’d walked into a room alongside her fragile beauty, I’d have looked not just like a mouse, but a well-fed country mouse.
‘Will you be all right on your own?’ Kate asked, following her, equally stunning in the kind of simple black dress that didn’t come from any store that had a branch in Maybridge High Street. ‘There’s a pile of videos if there’s nothing on television you fancy and a list of fast-food outlets that deliver by the phone.’ And she grinned. ‘We don’t cook if we can help it.’
‘I’ll be fine,’ I said, trying not to dwell on the fact that, for the first time in as long as I could remember on a Friday night, Don would not be bounding up to my front door ready to fall in with whatever I’d planned for the evening. Even if it did involve sitting through a chick-flick. I tried not to picture him down the pub with his car-crazy mates—no doubt encouraged by his miraculously restored mother not to ‘sit at home and brood’. Instead I gestured ironically in the direction of the washing machine where my knickers were going through the rinse cycle. ‘I’ve got plenty to do.’
Kate