‘Oh, my God!’ she screamed hysterically, as soapy water belched forth round her feet. ‘Oh, shut up! Shut up, William!’
‘You appear to be in some difficulty,’ said a dry voice behind her. Aghast, she swung round. Standing in the doorway stood Cory Erskine.
His reactions were incredibly quick. In a second, as Harriet gaped at him, he had turned off the spin dryer and removed the milk from the boil.
‘There’s enough milk left for one bottle,’ he said. ‘I’ll get the telephone.’
Oh, God, thought Harriet wretchedly, I’ve really done it now. He couldn’t have come back at a worse moment!
‘It’s Jonah ringing,’ said Cory. ‘He wants you.’
‘Where’s he ringing from?’
‘From a call box. Take it upstairs. When he’s through, tell him it might be diplomatic if he went back to school. Give the baby to me. I’ll feed him.’
Jonah had rung up to apologize. His voice sounded high and strained. ‘I just rang to say I don’t want you to go away. I won’t complain to my father about you, and I’m s-sorry, Harriet.’
She felt a great lump in her throat.
‘It’s all right, darling,’ she said. ‘It’s lovely of you to ring. I’m sorry, too.’
Returning to the kitchen, she found William had fallen asleep halfway through his bottle, his mouth open, his long lashes sweeping down over his cheeks.
‘He’s a beautiful child,’ said Cory, handing him back to her. ‘What was Jonah on about?’
‘We had a row this morning. He was apologizing.’
Cory grunted. ‘That child’s got far better manners than either of his parents. Wonder where he gets them from. How’s Chattie?’
‘Fine, in tearing spirits. I’m so sorry you had such an awful homecoming,’ said Harriet. ‘I’m afraid we all overslept, and things got a bit chaotic. Would you like some breakfast?’
Cory shook his head. ‘I’m going to follow William’s example and get some sleep. I’ve been driving all night.’
He looked absolutely played out — deathly pale, unshaven, his eyes bloodshot and heavily shadowed.
An appalling thought struck Harriet. ‘Oh, you can’t go to bed yet. Ambrose had her kittens last night in your bed and I haven’t changed the sheets!’
He must loathe coming back here, she thought, as she made up the huge double bed in the room he had once shared with Noel Balfour. It was such an ultra-feminine room. Everything stagily erotic — the thick, white carpets, the rose-strewn wallpaper, the huge canopied four-poster, the pink frills frothing round the dressing table — must remind him so poignantly of her.
But if Cory minded, he gave no indication. ‘It’s going to snow,’ he said, gazing out of the window.
As Harriet put on the pillow cases, pink from her exertions, she realized he was watching her, and was suddenly conscious that she hadn’t even had time to wash her face that morning, and was wearing an old red sweater, drastically shrunk in the wash.
‘You look better,’ he said. ‘You’ve put on weight.’
‘Mrs Bottomley keeps feeding me up on suet puddings,’ said Harriet, blushing.
Cory surfaced about seven, and came into the kitchen, Chattie hanging on one hand, a large glass of whisky in the other. Chattie was also clutching a six-foot tiger balloon.
‘Look what Daddy brought me,’ she said. She turned to Cory. ‘Harriet overslept this morning and made me late for band, so I had to play the triangle instead of the tangerine.’
‘Tambourine,’ said Cory. ‘And don’t sneak.’
Chattie ran to the window.
‘Look how deep the snow is! Can’t I stay up for supper?’
‘No,’ said Cory. ‘You can show me Ambrose’s kittens, and then you’re going to bed.’
‘How are you getting on at school?’ he went on. ‘Have you got a best friend yet?’
‘Everyone wants to be my best friend,’ said Chattie. ‘But they’ve got to learn to share me.’
At that moment Mrs Bottomley walked in from her day off, weighed down with carrier bags, her maroon wool coat and felt hat trimmed with a bird’s body covered in snowflakes.
‘Mr Cory,’ she squawked. ‘You ’ave given me a turn; you should ’ave warned us. If I’d known, I’d ’ave opened up the front room. Still it’s very nice to see you.’
And he really was nice to her thought Harriet, taking her parcels, and teasing her about buying up the whole of Marshalls and Snelgrove, asking after her rheumatism.
‘Mustn’t grumble,’ said Mrs Bottomley. ‘Having Harriet here’s made a difference. Saves me a lot of work, ’aving a young pair of legs running about the house.’
Cory glanced at Harriet’s legs.
‘Pleased with her, are you?’ he said.
‘Well I’m not saying she isn’t a bit dreamy at times, but we’ve had some laughs, and she’s a hard worker,’ said Mrs Bottomley, unpinning her hat. ‘Which is more than I can say for some of those hoity-toity misses in the past. And how was Antibes?’ she added, pronouncing it Antibees.
For a second Cory’s eyes met Harriet’s.
Then he said gravely, ‘Antibees was very exhausting.’
‘You look peaky, I must say,’ said Mrs Bottomley, ‘as though you’d walked all the way home. Must be all that foreign food — frogs legs and ratty twee — you need feeding up.’
Harriet was determined to redeem the morning’s disastrous homecoming by cooking Cory a magnificent dinner, but it was not to be. She went into the garden to shake the water out of a lettuce, and stood transfixed. The pine trees now carried armfuls of gleaming white blossom, urns filled with snow were casting long blue shadows across the lawn, flakes soft as tiny feathers poured out of the sky.
Memories of the first time she’d met Simon came flooding back. Oh, God, she thought, in an agony of despair, when will I ever see him? She didn’t know how long she stood there — five, ten minutes — but, suddenly, she realized she was frozen.
When she got back to the kitchen she gave a shriek. Tadpole, Cory’s labrador, had the steak on the floor, Ambrose was sitting unrepentant on the kitchen table, tabby cheeks bulging with the last of the prawns and the sauce had curdled past redemption on the stove.
At that moment, Cory walked in. ‘For Christ sake, what’s the matter now?’
Trembling, Harriet pointed at Ambrose and Tadpole. ‘The snow was so beautiful, I forgot I’d left the steak and the prawns on the table.’
Again Cory surprised her. It was the first time she’d heard him laugh and, after a few seconds, she began to giggle.
‘There’s nothing in here,’ he said, looking in the fridge. ‘We’d better go out.’
‘Oh, God, I’m so sorry.’
‘Stop apologizing and go and do your face.’
‘But you can’t take me!’
‘Why not? Mrs Bottomley’ll babysit.’
‘But, but. .’ Harriet began a stream of feverish excuses.
Cory interrupted her. ‘I don’t mind hysterics, nor having my dinner ruined, but I can’t stand being argued with. Go and get ready.’
He took her to a restaurant down the valley. Harriet, appalled by the prices on the menu, chose an omelette.
‘Don’t be silly,’ he said irritably. ‘What do you really want to eat?’
‘It’s all so expensive!’
‘You should see the prices in Paris. Anyway I’ve just had a large advance so you might as well take advantage of it.’
At first, he kept the conversation on a strictly impersonal level, telling her about his trip to France, and the black mare, Python, he had just bought on Kit’s recommendation, who was being flown over next week. ‘If she’s any good I’ll just have time to get her fit for the point-to-point in April.’