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Sara hugged her cushion tighter and said defensively, ‘You don’t know what it was like. After we moved in here she was always hanging around Dad, sucking up to him, making stupid sheep’s-eyes at him and telling him how much she needed him. It was gross!
‘Not that he’s dumb or anything but Dad’s at a dangerous age, you know. He’ll be forty in a few years and I thought he might marry Aunt Tania in a panic about getting old and decrepit and his manhood withering away...’ Sara described her father’s imagined decline with vivid enthusiasm.
‘You see, since Mum died he’s spent most of his spare time doing things with me—he’s afraid I’ll get emotionally deprived or something. I mean, at least I go to parties and stuff with my friends but Dad would rather read a book or listen to music for fun, so what chance is there for him to meet anyone else? Aunt Tania tries to hog all his attention. She even nagged him into taking her to the business things that his secretary used to be his hostess for, and called them dates. Yuk!
‘I suppose she was OK when she was just my aunt and we didn’t see her that often but I couldn’t hack her as a stepmother. She’s always wanting to change me, and Dad too, and sometimes he lets her get away with things because he couldn’t be bothered arguing with her.’
She took a deep breath. ‘Then I remembered about you. Whenever a letter arrived with your handwriting on it Dad would get a big grin on his face, even if he was tired and grouchy. He read the good bits out to me sometimes and I thought that you sounded really funny. Clever, too, not like Aunt Tania who doesn’t get half of his jokes! Dad said you were just pen-friends and I thought that meant you lived too far away but I snooped around one day and found out your address. I thought he might be afraid of meeting you in case you didn’t like him in person or that he knew you were real shy or something. He had this newspaper photograph of you, too, in his top drawer—well, it wasn’t you, was it? I guess it was your sister—in this white glittery dress at the Valentine’s Ball and you—she looked really happy and smiley and much more beautiful than Aunt Tania.
‘So when I was playing up in the attic one day and found those old letters of Dad’s I thought you might ask to meet him if you found out what a terrific, sexy guy he could be. He’s real romantic, don’t you think, to be able to write awesome letters like that...?’ She sighed mistily and paused for an unusual moment of silent contemplation. ‘So I picked some that didn’t have any dates or anything on them and were all just, you know, the hot stuff...’ She grimaced. ‘I guess it was pretty rotten of me, huh? Like Dad taking my ultra-secret diary and letting someone else read it—that’s what he said.
‘Anyway, in the end it all went much easier than I thought because since he’s been here Dad always leaves his personal letters on the hall table for Rhonda to post on her way home from work and all the mail he has redirected from his post-office box gets left there, too. Only nothing seemed to happen for ages and Aunt Tania started hinting to me that wouldn’t it be nice to have a mother to share things with, so then I was desperate and got myself suspended so that Dad wouldn’t be alone around here with her so much—you know, in case she got him in a weak moment...’ She looked at Honor sheepishly. ‘Only you arrived on the same day, and...’
‘And I wasn’t the beautiful fairy princess you were expecting,’ Honor finished her sentence ruefully.
‘No, but you turned out to be OK,’ Sara said offhandedly magnanimous. ‘You sure put Aunt Tania’s nose out of joint!’ She discarded her pillow and flopped across the bed with a frown. ‘Except I didn’t really help, did I? Because none of it was real. Dad said you can’t make people love each other, however many tricks you play on them. In the end it’s up to them.
‘But I want you to know, Honor, that I never read any of the letters you sent back—at least, not after I looked at the first one to make sure you weren’t terminally grossed-out or anything,’ she corrected herself earnestly. ‘I didn’t even open the envelopes. I didn’t really know what to do with them so I just put them straight in the cardboard box I sellotaped under my chest of drawers—where I keep my diary. Aunt Tania snoops too, you see. Dad says as a family we have no respect for privacy.’
‘Perhaps you might see your way clear to letting me have them back, then,’ said Honor gravely.
‘Oh, sure. But you’ll have to ask Dad. He took them after we had our talk. I have to go back to school on Monday and stay in my room for— Hey, Honor, where are you going?’
* * *
Like his daughter, Adam was lying on his back on his bed, with one significant difference: he was surrounded by carelessly torn-open envelopes and numerous lined sheets of delicate blue writing paper. He was reading intently. Good God, she had even perfumed the things with a sprinkle of dried flowers fro
m her garden!
‘How dare you? You thieving, rotten, unconscionable pig! Give those back to me!’ she gasped as she burst into the room and launched herself without hesitation across him, grabbing madly at the pieces of paper that swished and swirled around them in a sea of giant blue confetti, stuffing pages down the neck of her blouse as fast as she could, trying to avoid Adam’s laughing attempts to retrieve them.
‘What’s the matter, Honor? You’re so serious,’ he taunted when she swore bitterly at the discovery that her black top wouldn’t accept any more stuffing without bursting its buttons. ‘Isn’t this funny? Isn’t this a farce?’ He caught her around the waist, her chest crackling furiously as he pulled her down and declared in a furious hiss, ‘Don’t ever lie to me like that again! My God, I was right when I said you were gullible, wasn’t I? A reckless, hot-headed, gullible romantic! You fell for it like a ton of bricks. Didn’t it occur to you to check up on me first? That writing things like this to a man you’d never met was a bloody dangerous thing to do? What if I had turned out to be some psychotic sex maniac looking for my next victim?’
‘You might yet!’ she spat back, flushed with fury and embarrassment and the strange, shocking novelty of having a hundred and fifty pounds of angry male thrust vibrating beneath her.
‘You’re going to have ample opportunity to find out!’ he vowed, the yellow fire in his eyes melting into a savage satisfaction as she continued to scrabble and squirm desperately for the few remaining sheets that weren’t crushed under his body. ‘I wouldn’t bother if I were you, darling. It’s too late. I’ve been reading them for the last half-hour and I have a photographic memory for print. I’m word-perfect already...care to test me?’
‘You—’
Her lips were sealed by a calloused finger. ‘Now calm down and I’ll help you to collect them up. What’s done is done, Honor. Now there’s nothing left for you to hide. Learn to live with it.’ His deceptively calm voice lowered to a silken murmur that shook her from the boughs of her anger. ‘My belated thanks for the lovely compliments, by the way. No one has ever written to me in quite such uninhibited terms before...’
‘What about your original Helen?’ Honor retorted, easing herself away, determined that he would never be able to call her gullible again. To her surprise he let her go.
‘My Helen of Troy?’ He smiled, but it was a smile of amusement rather than remembered passion. ‘She wasn’t much for expressing herself in words. I left my letters in the proverbial hole in the tree and her replies were usually a matter of a few lines to tell me where and when to meet her. We were star-crossed lovers, you see, and the illicit nature of it made it all that much more exciting.’
Honor compressed her mouth. ‘Could you roll over, please? I want to get this last one underneath you.’
‘Certainly. Oh, that’s my favourite,’ he said, peeking. ‘Isn’t that the one where you said I was—?’
She crushed it to her misshapen chest. ‘Goodnight, Adam,’ she said firmly, stepping away from the dangerous territory of his bed.
He stood up and stretched, as contented as a well-fed cat. ‘And sweet dreams to you, darling. I certainly know I’ll have them...’
He walked her to the door, her dignity suffering badly from the loud rustle she emitted with every step. Once there she waited stiffly while he opened it. But before he let her make her escape he caught her back and kissed her, briefly and hard, a promise rather than a threat, his hands running possessively down the whole length of her spine and back up to knead the tension from her shoulders as he told her soothingly, ‘Everything’ll be fine in the morning, you’ll see. A good sleep will put all this in its proper perspective. There’ll be no more nasty surprises and awkward complications to get in our way. From now on we can just concentrate on you and me...’
* * *
He couldn’t have been more wrong!
