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‘Yes. Of course. Let me get you a cold drink,’ Verity offered, leading the way to the kitchen. ‘Did you walk here?’
‘Mmm…’ Honor mumbled as she took a deep gulp of the iced orange juice Verity had poured for her.
‘Mmm…real juice!’ Honor exclaimed blissfully. ‘Wonderful, but it’s very expensive,’ she told Verity sternly. ‘Dad won’t buy it—he says I waste it because I never finish it and it’s too expensive. He buys it when Myra comes round, though.’ She pulled a face. ‘Apparently she likes it for breakfast—not that she’s ever stayed overnight. She’d like to, though. She thinks I don’t know what her game is but I do—a woman always knows,’ she concluded wisely. ‘She wants to get married again and she wants to marry Dad. He’d be mad if he did—she’s poison.’ Honor pulled an expressive face. ‘She didn’t even like the new clothes I made him buy, and I know why—she doesn’t want any other woman looking at him.’
Honor had chosen Silas’ designer clothes! But Verity didn’t have time to digest this information properly before Honor was continuing, ‘I’ve tried to warn him but Dad just can’t see it…I suppose he can’t see the truth beneath all that make-up she wears. She hates kids as well. That’s why she left her first husband. I know…But Dad thinks it’s because he wouldn’t let her get pregnant…’
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.’
