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Theo shrugged. ‘It is naturally up to you if you feel inclined to move out…’
Heather fought the undermining temptation to retract her rash statement and buy herself just a little more time, just a few more months. ‘I think it’s for the best,’ she mumbled.
‘So might it be. Just not yet.’
For a few wild seconds her heart leapt as she translated those three words into what she wanted to hear. Need, love, want! Then reality sank its teeth into her and she looked at him, bemused.
‘Permit me to clarify,’ he said, finishing his wine and helping himself to another glass. ‘As I said, my mother has a heart problem. She’s explained it to me as best as she can and it would appear that it is not life threatening. Of course I will talk to her consultant in depth about that.’ He frowned, and Heather could read his thoughts as if they were written on his forehead in large neon lettering. She felt sorry for the consultant. ‘But, at any rate, it is imperative that she is spared any stress.’
‘Naturally,’ Heather nodded, relieved. Things might have been a lot worse.
‘Which brings me to you,’ Theo said smoothly. He sat back and tapped the table with one thoughtful forefinger. ‘My mother, as you pointed out, is under the illusion that we are involved with one another, that I have finally found the woman I want to settle down with. In her head, you are living in my apartment, and therefore we are conducting a serious relationship…’
‘You mean you haven’t told her the truth?’
‘It was impossible,’ Theo informed her flatly, and Heather gaped at him in consternation. ‘She’s in a very fragile state of health at the moment. If I tell her the truth, then there is no telling how it might affect her current situation.’
‘But you have to!’ Heather cried.
‘Not necessarily.’
‘Not necessarily? I plan on moving out, Theo! Don’t you think she might suspect that something’s not quite right when your so-called serious relationship rents a flat on the other side of town? Anyway,’ she continued, ‘it wouldn’t be right to deceive an old woman…’
‘It wouldn’t be right to burden her with stress she cannot handle…’
‘How can you assume that your mother wouldn’t be able to handle the truth, Theo?’ She leaned forward, so that her hands were lying flat on the table between them. ‘You’re not thinking straight.’
‘I know I’m not,’ Theo said simply. ‘But I’m afraid to take the chance.’
As easily as that he managed to slice through all her protests and appeal to her on the most basic of levels, and although there was absolute sincerity in his eyes, she wouldn’t have been surprised if he had deliberately used the ploy because he knew her well enough to realise that her emotions were her downfall. This was a girl who sobbed during the sad bits in films, who would give her last coins to a busker on the underground and who continued to have faith in a sister who had taken her money and headed for the hills.
Theo watched the sudden indecision in her eyes and breathed an inward sigh of relief.
‘It won’t be for long,’ he promised. ‘A couple of weeks—no more. Just until she’s strong enough to travel back to Greece…’
‘And you’ll break it to her then…?’
‘I’ll break to her gently, over time. Put it this way, your role will soon be over. After that you can get your proper job and find your proper flat and start your proper life.’ He didn’t know why the thought of that made him ever so slightly angry, but it did. Since he didn’t care to analyse the emotion, he let it go. There were far more pressing things to think about.
How easy it was for him to say that, Heather thought sadly. She could easily be replaced. There weren’t many who would bite a hand willing to part with generous sums of money for very easy work.
She thought of the times when she had foolishly bought presents for his girlfriends, while the pain of being the helpful employee in the background had twisted inside her like a knife. Well, if she had thought that fate hadn’t quite finished with her, how right she had been!
‘I think I’ll go to my room now,’ Heather said, standing up. ‘I’ll come out a bit later, if your mother wakes up, but I’m not very hungry.’
‘Another one of your crazy diets?’ Theo asked, and she replied with a smile that was neither friendly nor hostile. She felt as though the stuffing had been knocked out of her. But before she could leave the room he was talking again, telling her as if it was the most normal thing in the world that his mother expected them to be sharing a bedroom.
Heather spun round and looked at him, aghast. ‘Share a room?’ she squeaked, walking towards him. ‘With you?’
‘It’s a very big bedroom,’ Theo said placatingly. ‘With a sofa.’
‘Out of the question!’
‘Why?’ He raised his eyebrows in what was the first indication of amusement since he had walked into the flat a couple of hours previously. ‘What do you think I’m going to do?’
‘I don’t think anything!’
‘Then why the sudden outburst?’ he asked curiously. ‘Unless you think I might be tempted to touch…?’ A sudden image of her flashed through his head, a picture of her lying on the sofa many months ago, after he had delivered her back to the house she had been sharing at the time…lying with her hand flung back and her breasts, full and heavy, gently rising and falling as she breathed.
‘It just doesn’t seem right,’ Heather muttered, blushing furiously. She could tell that he was laughing at her and was bitterly hurt and angry.
Theo’s voice was more brusque than he intended. ‘I know it’s not ideal, but it won’t be for long. Now, you’ll have to clear your belongings into my bedroom—or at least some of them. Enough to…’
‘Perpetuate the charade?’ Heather heard herself say tightly. She couldn’t remember ever speaking to him like that, with real anger in her voice, not even when she had been feeling angry inside. It was as though she was looking at herself for the first time and watching someone else—someone who had been prepared to do as he asked, like a puppy following its master, because the pure pleasure of being around him now and again had outweighed everything else. Every last ounce of common sense.
Now fate had played one last trick on her, and she was being punished in the most cruel way possible.
‘Why can’t you get Venetia to come and stay with you?’ Heather asked in a more normal voice. ‘That way, at least you won’t be lying.’ And that, more than anything else, would force her to make a decision and move out, because knowing that he was in his room with his current girlfriend would have taken the knife-twisting a step too far.
Theo had never brought a woman back to his apartment to sleep. Heather had correctly read this as his way of ensuring that no woman got her foot through the door and started nurturing impossible ideas of permanence. He didn’t mind her living under the same roof because as far as he was concerned Heather wasn’t a threat to his precious independence. She wondered what he would have done had he ever suspected that she was addicted to him. Thrown her out without a backward glance, she imagined.
‘Venetia isn’t the sort of woman my mother would approve of,’ Theo was telling her now, eyebrows raised in amusement at the very thought of it. ‘And besides…’ He paused thoughtfully. ‘I wouldn’t like Venetia to think that a brief spell of moving in might lead to something more concrete. With you it would be completely different. You would know the boundaries and wouldn’t be stupid enough to think that they could be overstepped. Anyway—’ he shrugged ‘—my mother’s taken to you. She thinks you’re very sweet and jolly.’
Heather couldn’t think of two adjectives she would have found more insulting, even though she knew that insulting her was the last thing on Theo’s mind. He was simply stating a fact.
‘Of course I’ll compensate you financially for doing this, Heather. Even I realise that it’s a favour way beyond the normal call of duty.’
An hour later and Heather was still in a daze at the progression of events. She had moved a select amount of her belongings into his room, choosing to stuff as much as she could into the drawers of the room she currently occupied.
Just standing there, looking around her, made her feel slightly sick. She had always found his bedroom enormous, way too big for one person, with its own small sitting area and a bathroom that could have accommodated a small family. However, with the prospect of sharing it in mind, it suddenly seemed painfully small. Was it her imagination or had the proportions shrunk to the size of a doll’s house?
She wouldn’t dwell on it, she decided. In a funny way his unconscious insults, the offer of payment, the assumption that she would know her place because she was, after all, no more than a valued housekeeper who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, would strengthen her. He had effectively managed to put her in her place, and as soon as his mother left she would finally have the backbone to walk away.
