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But she hadn’t died. She threw back the bed covers and quickly slipped into her thick dressing gown, adjusting the bed back into its daytime position as a sofa so that she could turn on the little gas fire and put some warmth into the freezing room. No, she hadn’t died, she thought soberly, as she held a match to the gas jets. She had grown up instead. And she would never have believed it could be so agonisingly painful.
When Marianne arrived at the supermarket an hour later it was to find the place in something of a panic. Mrs Polinkski had had an early-morning fall and dislocated her knee, which meant that Marianne and the Polinkskis’s two younger daughters—as yet unmarried—were going to be hard pressed.
Mr Polinkski and the son of the family divided their time between the office and the small warehouse at the back of the supermarket, and neither of them would contemplate working in the front of the shop, despite knowing Mrs Polinkski did the work of two women in her bustling, capable way.
Consequently, by the end of the long day Marianne’s feet were aching, her head was pounding with the beginning of what felt like a migraine, and when she glanced in the mirror in the little staff cloakroom before leaving the shop she looked as if she had been pulled through a hedge backwards.
Which made it all the more disconcerting when she emerged into the frosty air and almost into Zeke’s arms.
‘What on earth are you doing here?’ It was a despairing cry and he recognised it as such, his mouth—which hadn’t been smiling as it was—tightening still more into a hard line.
‘Waiting for you,’ he bit back grimly. ‘And that should have been my line, not yours. I can’t believe my wife is killing herself working all hours in a two-bit shop in the back of nowhere. You look terrible.’
‘Thank you so much,’ she shot back furiously. It was the last thing, the very last thing, she needed to hear.
He made no apology, his face even more belligerent as he scowled ferociously at an inoffensive couple who had been laughing as, arm in arm, they approached them. The laughter stopped and the young couple sidled past, the man putting his arm more protectively round his girlfriend and keeping his eyes warily on Zeke’s dark face until they were well clear.
‘Your father is in the car.’
‘What?’
The icy eyes narrowed but his voice was silky as he repeated, with elaborate and insulting patience, ‘Your father is in the car.’
‘You’ve brought my father here?’ she hissed angrily. ‘That’s despicable, absolutely despicable, and you know it.’
“‘Despicable” is not a word I’d choose when someone is trying to allay another person’s worry about the daughter they love,’ he said with sickening self-righteousness.
‘Oh, isn’t it?’ She eyed him furiously, her blue eyes sparking and her face flushed. ‘You brought him here so he could add his weight to yours and persuade me to go back to the apartment. Admit it!’
‘Not at all,’ he said with cool indifference.
‘Liar.’ He didn’t like that, and so she repeated it for good measure before going on to say, ‘Have you told him about Liliana?’
‘I’ve told him what you have accused me of and I’ve also made it plain it’s totally without foundation,’ Zeke said coldly, his eyes glittering.
‘I just bet you have,’ she agreed bitterly. ‘And of course he believed you.’ She had heard Zeke too often in the past not to know he was capable of making anyone believe black was white when he put his mind to it. But not her. Not any more.
‘Your father can recognise truth when he hears it, which is another reason he is here tonight,’ Zeke said a trifle cryptically.
‘What do you mean?’ There had been something there she didn’t understand. ‘If you think you can get my father to induce me to accept what I don’t believe, you’re wrong, Zeke,’ she warned heatedly. ‘You’ll just upset him, that’s all. I love him, very much, but I won’t perjure myself for him or you. This is too big for me not to be honest. It’s also between you and me,’ she added resentfully. ‘You had no right to try and use him to get to me. I didn’t think even you would stoop so low.’
‘You’ve turned into quite a shrew, haven’t you?’ he mused thoughtfully, his breath a white cloud in the icy air. ‘If this is what living by yourself does in two weeks I’d say it’s even more reason to come home.’
‘The apartment has never been my home; I’ve told you that.’
‘And you’re happy to let the Bedlows’ place go?’ He always knew how to go for the jugular. ‘Your sketches and colour schemes were spot-on, by the way.’
She wasn’t falling for that one, Marianne thought angrily. He could use his charm on someone else! ‘Perhaps you should have employed me instead of Liliana?’ she suggested with an acid smile. ‘It would have saved the company a lot of money and you a lot of trouble in the long run.’
‘Perhaps I should have,’ he agreed softly.
She stared at him, aware that Zeke was never so dangerous as when he was being inscrutable. Like now. Marianne decided to change the subject. ‘Where’s the car?’
‘Round the next corner.’ He smiled a shark smile. ‘I thought it only fair to give you a chance to compose yourself before you saw your father.’
‘You really do think of everything,’ she acknowledged with withering coolness. ‘Although you made a little mistake with regard to Stoke. It wasn’t quite far enough away to keep everything under wraps, was it?’
‘Marianne, if I had been entertaining a mistress, as you seem so determined to believe, I wouldn’t have made any mistakes,’ he returned smoothly, the street lamp picking up the shining jet of his hair.
