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When father and daughter excluded her with jokes and references to people that Harriet didn’t know, Marcus would pause and give her amusing thumbnail descriptions of their characters, drawing her back into the conversation.
When the talk drifted to the merits of being only children it seemed natural to tell them about her elder brother—how she had shared her parents’ terror of Tim’s daredevil exploits, and had felt overshadowed by the sheer exuberance of his personality. He had graduated over the years from climbing the highest tree and diving from the highest board to skydiving, climbing mountains, bungee jumping from helicopters and, just before he’d died, had taken up extreme skiing.
‘You mean I won’t get to meet him?’ said Nicola, with typically youthful self-absorption. ‘How long ago did he die?’
‘Two years ago.’ Harriet didn’t look at Marcus, but out of the corner of her eye she saw his hand still on his water glass, his knuckles whitening under invisible pressure.
‘What happened? Was he killed on a mountain or something?’ Nicola asked.
‘No, that was what was so ironic. He came down with what he thought was a mild flu and twenty-four hours later he was dead,’ she said quietly. ‘It happened so fast…some virulent form of meningitis. All those years of Mum and Dad living in fear of a late-night phone call from some God-forsaken spot on the other side of the world, and he dies at home from an infection that could have been cured if he hadn’t been so stoical and refused to go to the doctor. By the time we took him to the hospital it was too late. I don’t think Mum ever forgave herself. I think that’s what brought on her stroke.’
She blinked rapidly and took a hasty sip of her sparkling mineral water, but instead of politely pretending to ignore her embarrassing lapse, as most people were inclined to do when unexpectedly confronted with the subject of death, Marcus encouraged her to continue. He pointedly asked her if Tim had also outshone her at school, and Harriet had to smile at his chagrin when she answered wryly, ‘As a matter of fact, yes. He was a brilliant all-rounder, while I’m afraid I was ordinary at everything. A little brown sparrow to his peacock…that’s what my mother used to call us.’
He had obviously expected her answer to be in the negative. He had been trying to apply balm to her wounded childhood ego. Harriet was secretly touched, although she maintained her outward amusement.
As the leisurely evening drew on she realised in despair that liking Marcus Fox was the least of her problems. She was very much afraid that the emotions already ran far deeper than that. If so, her freedom was going to prove just as much an illusion as her former security had been.
They didn’t have dessert until after the housekeeper had retired, and Harriet went with Nicola to fetch it from the kitchen.
‘Are you going to stay the night?’ Nicola asked, putting the tray of raspberry tartlets into the oven to warm briefly.
Harriet almost dropped the crystal dish of cream that she had been asked to get from the fridge.
‘No, of course not!’ She couldn’t stop the urgent question spilling out. ‘Does your father often have dinner guests stay over?’
Nicola smiled. An unnervingly adult smile. ‘If you mean women, no.’
Harriet stiffened. ‘Not that it matters to me.’
Nicola leaned against the bench. Her hair had been wound on top of her head and her rust-coloured dress was one that Harriet had helped her buy—youthful, yet more sophisticated than her usual jejune style. Her expression behind her glasses was alarmingly frank. ‘It matters to Granny. She’s always asking me about Daddy’s girlfriends.’
‘I’m sorry. I didn’t meant to pry,’ Harriet replied. God forbid that she should be anything like that blue-rinsed drill-sergeant!
‘Actually, Daddy’s never had a woman to stay while I’ve been here. He’s awfully discreet. I think he’s afraid that I’ll be corrupted for ever if I find out my father has an active sex life.’
‘Nicola!’
‘Well, I’m fifteen—I do know about these things even if Daddy likes to pretend I don’t.’
The timer pinged and she turned her back on Harriet’s gaping face to pick up the oven glove.
‘But Mummy’s been dead for ten years and I don’t expect he’s been celibate all that time, do you?’ she said, removing the tarts from the oven. ‘I mean, it wouldn’t be natural, would it? I don’t suppose that you inviting him round to your place last night means you and Daddy are…?’ She trailed off with heavy-handed delicacy, her eyes rising suggestively over the tops of her spectacle rims.
Harriet went red. ‘No! And I didn’t invite him. He simply turned up.’
‘I just wondered.’ She arranged the hot tartlets on the dessert plates with deft fingers. ‘You don’t have to worry about me, you know…if you were thinking about it. I wouldn’t mind.’
Harriet was going hot and cold with embarrassment. If she was that transparent to a child, how much did everyone else see? Maybe that explained the people who had been just ‘popping in’ to the file room in the last couple of days. She shoved the ghastly thought away.
‘Really, Nicola, you have a very weird imagination. Your father and I are totally incompatible!’
Nicola looked at her pityingly. ‘Sex isn’t about compatibility—even I know that. It’s about animal magnetism and the survival of the species!’
Harriet was still brooding over that highly simplistic interpretation an hour later as she sat in the passenger seat of her Porsche and watched Marcus having a few last words with his daughter on the doorstep of the elegantly sprawling house. Bringing her own car had not prevented Marcus from playing the gentleman to the hilt and insisting on driving her home, pointing out that the generous amount of liqueur she had enjoyed in her coffee might have her teetering on the edge of the legal limit. They were also twenty minutes out in the country, along winding, narrow, unlit roads that were unfamiliar to her in daylight, let alone on a cloudy night with no moon.
Harriet doubted that her faculties were in the slightest impaired, but she knew that she couldn’t be seen to take the slightest risk with Nicola looking on. The message that alcohol and driving didn’t mix had to be applied to everyone to be effective.
‘Or you could stay the night,’ Marcus had said blandly, and as she’d hurriedly refused Nicola had uttered a snicker that had made Harriet want to throttle her.
