More Than You Know (43 page)

Emmie woke again.

“Now look what you’ve done,” she hissed at Matt.

“I didn’t make all that noise. Your fault, your fault entirely.”

“So that means I have to go downstairs and heat up the bottle and sit and feed her in that freezing kitchen. While you sleep?”

“Got it in one,” he said. “Anyway, you can sit by the Aga.”

She picked up the baby, went down into the kitchen. She waited
until she was inside, with the door closed, before turning on the light, and then jumped.

Her mother was sitting at the table, a bottle of whisky in front of her. She was clearly a little drunk. She was also crying.

“Mummy,” said Eliza in alarm, going over to her, putting her spare arm round her shoulders. “Whatever is the matter?”

“I just feel so … so ashamed,” said Sarah, “so very ashamed. Of how we—I—treated you and Matt. When he is clearly so kind and loves you so much. What he’s doing for us, with the house … well, it makes everything so much better. I don’t know how to make it up to him; I really don’t.”

“Oh, Mummy,” said Eliza. “That’s easy. Just tell him what it means to you. He’ll understand the rest. I’m just glad he could do it for you. Now, I wouldn’t mind a drop of that whisky myself.”

She looked round at the scene, five minutes later, as Emmie sucked peacefully on her bottle and she and her mother downed rather large glasses of Adrian’s best single-malt and giggled.

“If a health visitor came round now,” she said, “Emmie would be taken into care. Alcoholic mother and grandmother.”

“Miss Scarlett,” said Demetrios, beaming at her as she walked into the foyer, the still blessedly small foyer, a wonderfully sweet, cool contrast to the pelting heat outside. “How very, very nice to see you once more.”

“It’s lovely to see you too, Demetrios. Are you both well, you and Larissa?”

“Very, very well. Larissa is having a baby—”

“A baby! How lovely.”

Would she ever be able to contemplate babies again without a catch at her heart?

“Yes. Very soon, in three, four weeks.”

“That’s wonderful. So … is she resting?”

“Resting? No, Miss Scarlett, she is busy—busy in the kitchen, busy in the garden, I don’t know where she is not busy.”

“Well, I’ll catch up with her later. You know why I’ve come?”

“I do. And we think it is very, very good plan. We would like to join your club after all. If we may.”

They had been wary at first, afraid of losing their uniqueness, their personal running of the place.

“Excellent. We can talk tonight.”

Over dinner in the vine-roofed veranda, watching the sunset, she agreed on terms, told them it would be for the following year.

“I know most bookings are in January–February time, so there’s no point doing anything before then. You can go in my next little brochure, and … well, I’m sure you’ll get lots of people.”

“Lots of nice people?”

“I can’t guarantee it,” said Scarlett, laughing, “but just let me know about any who aren’t and I’ll tell them they’re out of my club. Oh,” she added, as a tall shadow fell across her view, blotting out briefly the sunset. “Oh, hallo.”

The owner of the shadow looked at her blankly, and attempted a rather anxious smile.

“I don’t think—”

“Mr. Frost. Good evening. Can we get you a drink? You remember Miss Scarlett; she was here last year at the same time as you. Excuse me. Larissa, can you get some vine leaves, perhaps, and some olives …”

“I … well, of course, I …” He looked increasingly bewildered.

Scarlett took pity on him, stood up, held out her hand.

“Why should you remember? I was staying here on my own, and so were you, but we overlapped by only one night. Scarlett Shaw.”

“Ah. Well … yes, of course. How rude of me.” He took her hand. “Mark Frost. How do you do, Miss Shaw?”

“Please join me. I’m just chatting to Demetrios and Larissa.”

“Oh … no, I couldn’t … that is, no, I’m just passing … I …”

Since there was nowhere to pass from or to at the taverna, this was obviously a feeble attempt to escape; Scarlett felt quite sorry for him. He was so clearly excruciatingly shy, it would have been cruel to pursue the encounter. She would make her excuses and disappear to her room, but Demetrios had returned with a bottle of ouzo and four glasses.

“There. We all drink together. Larissa will be back very soon. Mr. Frost is building a house here, Miss Scarlett.”

“Oh?” said Scarlett, passing him the glass of ouzo, hoping it would
help him feel better. She actually hated the stuff, sipping at it cautiously now so as not to offend Demetrios. “And … is it going well?”

“Yes. Very well.”

“Perhaps tomorrow, Mr. Frost, you could show the house to Miss Scarlett.”

“Oh … I don’t think …” He looked as if Demetrios had suggested Scarlett do a striptease.

“No, no, Demetrios,” she said quickly, “you know I’m leaving first thing. But are you staying here while your house is being built, Mr. Frost?”

“Yes. Yes, I am. When I can get away.”

“Of course.”

She smiled at him; he smiled back, very briefly, his whole persona transformed. He was, she realised, quite exceptionally good-looking in a kind of chiselled way; she had not properly absorbed that fact before, the height, the slenderness, and the floppy dark hair. What she had remembered were the unusually dark grey eyes looking warily out from the wire-framed spectacles. He was very tanned, and when he did smile, his teeth were American-perfect. He could have been a film star.

“Mr. Frost found out about us through a friend,” said Demetrios. “His friend came here three years ago and he very kindly suggested Mr. Frost come to see us.”

There was a silence; Larissa came back and started speaking very fast to Demetrios in Greek. After a few minutes, she stood up and beckoned to him to follow.

“Excuse us,” he said.

Left alone with Mark Frost, Scarlett felt quite panicky, then told herself she was being ridiculous.

“So, what do you do?” she asked. “What sort of work are you in?”
Trainee Trappist monk perhaps?

“Oh … I … I …” There was a pause, then: “Do research,” he said, as if suddenly alighting on an explanation.

“Oh, really? Into what?”

“Well … geography, I suppose you could call it.”

“So are you a lecturer?”

“Not exactly.”

He poured himself some more ouzo, offered the bottle to her. She shook her head. “No, thank you.”

Another silence. Then, “Filthy stuff, isn’t it?” he said. “I observed you not drinking it. I don’t like it either; only drink it to please Demetrios. Shall we …?” He looked over his shoulder into the house and then, confident of not being observed, tipped most of the bottle into one of the pots of budding geraniums.

“Probably kill the poor things,” he said, “but better them than us.”

Scarlett looked at him consideringly; he suddenly seemed a different person. “Indeed,” she said.

“So you must like it here a lot. To come back.”

“I absolutely love it. I was afraid it wasn’t as special as I remembered, but it was.”

“I always fear the same thing,” he said, not sounding in the least surprised, “but it always is.”

“You must like it very much,” said Scarlett, “to be building a house here.”

“Indeed,” he said, and lapsed back into total silence. After a minute or two, she decided her book would be more interesting and stood up.

“I think I’ll turn in,” she said. “I’m leaving early.”

“Ah. Getting Ari the Ferry out of his bed early. No mean feat.”

She giggled, surprised again at this flash of humour. “Is that your name for him?”

“It is. Well, I discovered his name was Aristotle and I couldn’t resist it. I’m part Welsh, you see, and in Wales everyone is Dai the Baker or Jones the Fish. It came from that.” He stopped and looked quite anxious, as if aware he had made too big a revelation.
He’s afraid I’m going to start asking him about Wales
, Scarlett thought. “Good night then,” she said, and saw the relief almost palpable on his face. He was a nutcase.

“Good night,” he said, standing up and shaking her hand formally. “Safe journey.”

Her last thought was that in the right circumstances, Mark Frost could—just possibly—be quite fun.

“I just … don’t like it. I’m sorry.”

“But, Matt, why not? What’s wrong with it?”

“He’s married, for a start.”

“Matt! He hasn’t seen her in years.”

“And how do you know that’s true?”

“Matt! For God’s sake. I don’t know, not for sure, but I trust him.”

“Well, I don’t.”

“Funny thing to say about your business partner.”

“That’s not what I meant and you know it.”

“Oh, Matt. Chill out. I’ve got an appointment; I’ll see you later.”

Driving into Chelsea, playing “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” by the Stones very loudly, Louise smiled to herself. She did enjoy rattling Matt. And he was seriously rattled by the fact that she was having an affair with Barry Floyd. She would have liked to think he was jealous, but it was a less flattering reason: he felt professionally threatened by it. He thought they’d gang up on him. Which was pathetic, really. She was too professional in the first place, and it stung that he might even consider it; and in the second, the partnership was much too successful to put at risk. Barkers Park was going up fast; WireHire were perfect tenants, making stage payments on the dot, agreeing to a bonus payment if the offices were finished ahead of time.

There was no way either of them would want to change the basis of any part of their working relationship.

Their personal one, however, had changed rather quickly.

“I mean, I thought he was pretty sexy,” Louise explained to Valerie Hill, who had become her confidante over the whole thing. “But I knew about Maura, of course—”

“The wife?”

“The wife. Yes. But—”

“Don’t tell me, in name only.”

“If living with another man means in name only, yes. They were married when he was eighteen and she was seventeen. She was in the family way, or told him she was, and then surprise, surprise, soon as they were married she had a miscarriage. He said he walked straight into it. Well, you would at eighteen, wouldn’t you?”

“I wouldn’t,” said Valerie. “So then what happened?”

“Well, then she did have three babies over the next five years or
so, but then when Barry came to London, she stayed behind and then started playing around, got very friendly with this farmer—”

“Louise,” said Valerie, “are you sure it wasn’t him playing around? He doesn’t seem too much of an innocent to me.”

“Oh, no doubt he did too,” said Louise. “But now she’s living with the farmer over there, and …”

“Don’t tell me they’re going to get a divorce.”

“No, of course not. It’s not an option in Catholic Ireland. And even an annulment is virtually impossible unless you’re best friends with the pope. But a lot of people just do what Barry and Maura are doing and get on with their lives. He sends her money, of course, and the farmer is not exactly poor, as far as I can make out.”

The fact was that, in spite of her tough talking, Louise wasn’t entirely happy about getting involved with a married man. In the first place, she knew that, given the divorce laws in Ireland, it could never lead to anything permanent; and in the second, and more important, it was against her rather complex moral code. She really didn’t like girls who broke up marriages; in fact, she disapproved of them quite strongly.