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‘Did she love him? Eleanor, I mean?’
‘In her own shallow fashion,’ Hannah allowed. ‘But she often pretended he was her younger brother. She was so terrified of getting older and losing her looks. He was raised like a miniature adult. He doesn’t know what family life is.’
‘I doubt if what he’s seen of his mother’s relatives made him feel any sense of loss,’ Claire mused unhappily. Dane had been dragged up in his gilded cage. He had been made tough and self-sufficient. A pang of pain touched her for the little boy he had never been.
‘I think he rather looks on you as the kid sister he never had. Why did he stop visiting Ranbury?’
‘He had a terrible row with Grandfather. I haven’t a clue what they fought about.’ She let a smile lighten her tense mouth, liking this stern, no-nonsense woman for her affection for Dane. ‘You know, I used to have the most enormous, elephant-sized crush on him.’
‘He’s far too good-looking for his own good,’ Hannah murmured, seemingly unsurprised by the admission. ‘How did he handle it?’
Claire laughed unaffectedly. ‘Well, he handled it so diplomatically that until a couple of days ago, I’d convinced myself he hadn’t even noticed! Still, I doubt if I embarrassed him. I was painfully shy.’
‘And you grew out of him,’ Hannah concluded.
Was there a small question there? She grinned. ‘Starved crushes die, Hannah, and even in the midst of mine I knew I might as well have aimed at the moon!’
It was late afternoon before Hannah took her back to the hotel. Impatient to see Max, Claire took complex instructions from a helpful receptionist on how to reach the Walker home without getting herself lost. The area was something of a surprise. It was a dismal housing estate, scarred by graffiti and litter, and she quickened her steps in the rain when a crowd of cold-faced teenagers shouted obscenities at her from a nearby entry. It was getting dark when she finally stood outside the tower block where the family appeared to live.
On the way up in the jolting, noisy lift, she reflected on the culture shock Max must have suffered coming from a country background to live in such a featureless, depressing place. There was no answer at the flat on the eighth floor and she rattled the letterbox anxiously. Max had a mother and a sister. Surely someone would be in?
‘Will you stop that racket?’ A sharp, female voice demanded, and Claire spun, hot cheeked, to see a plump but not unpretty face poking out from behind the door to her rear. ‘It’s obvious there’s nobody home.’
‘Do you know when someone will be? Look, I wouldn’t ask but I’ve come quite a distance and I’m leaving London again.’ It was strictly the truth. ‘It is important.’
The bottle-blonde looked her up and down. ‘He’s away for the week, visiting his family,’ she said truculently. ‘What’s it to you? You don’t look like you belong round here in your fancy clothes.’
Her unpleasantness seemed out of all proportion to the occasion. ‘I’ll call back,’ Claire answered with a forced smile.
‘Stuck-up bitch,’ drifted to her ears as she retreated back to the lift, distinctly red in the face. Well, Max, didn’t have very friendly neighbours. Maybe that woman had been drinking or something. She had talked as though Max was living alone. Had his family moved out? He hadn’t mentioned the fact in his last letter. Shaken by her inability to speak to him before she flew out to Paris with Dane, Claire slowly breathed in. She had expected time to discuss everything with Max. Now she was faced with making that choice alone, without recourse to his feelings.
After a visit to this horrible estate she saw even more clearly how hopeless things would be without money. He wouldn’t marry her to bring her here. Perhaps it was wisest that it should h
appen this way. Max might not like to openly encourage her to marry Dane, but deep down inside she was sure he would be grateful if she did. What other option did they have in the current unemployment crisis? It might be years before he found work and she couldn’t bear the prospect of waiting years more to marry.
Deep within her own introspection, she strolled out into the cold air again. To have waited so long to see him and then arrive to find him absent was frustrating, not to mention disappointing. In the darkness, she cut across the rough, open ground in the centre of the estate, eager to return to the bus stop.
She didn’t even hear her assailant. A violent shove sent her sprawling her length on the wet, muddy ground and then, while she was choking out a terror-stricken scream, a weight came down on her legs, a rough hand yanking cruelly at her hair. ‘Don’t make a sound,’ he warned.
She felt rather than saw the cold smoothness of a blade resting against her throat and she gasped helplessly as he hauled her arms out from beneath her. ‘No jewellery? Christ, you were hardly worth jumping! What’s in the bag?’
Another voice sounded and in a mad fear that she was about to be raped as well as robbed, the knife no longer touching her skin, she tried to throw him off her by suddenly arching. The blow to her head made her cry out in pain and then somewhere she heard a loud shout. She was suddenly freed and while she struggled, sick and dizzy, to put her wits back in order, a torchbeam shone down on her.
A pair of hands firmly helped her up out of the mire. Claire had never been so glad to see a policeman in her life, even though all the way back to the squad car parked on the road he berated her for walking across that particular stretch of ground.
‘I don’t need to go to hospital,’ she mumbled shakily. ‘I just want to go home.’
‘You’ll need to make a statement at the station first, miss,’ he ruled more kindly, and asked her name and where she lived.
‘The Dorchester,’ she stammered out.
‘The Dorchester what? Sorry, I don’t recognise the address. It’s not local, is it?’
‘The Dorchester Hotel.’
‘I think she’s concussed,’ he stage-whispered to his driver.
Claire gazed down at her mudcaked hands and clothes and had no doubt her face was little cleaner. She had to resemble a tramp. ‘I … I am staying there,’ she insisted. ‘They took my bag.’
