The Daughter of Night (17 page)

'Not houses—flats.' She felt much happier and in consequence her steak looked much more appetising— she cut into it and licked her lips. 'I've never lived in a house, only flats. They were very nice, of course, and we made them homey, if you see what I mean, but we always had to be careful, not run about too much because of the people in the flat below, not have the television or the radio on too loud in case we annoyed the neighbours.'

Much later, they entered the hotel suite and Demetrios watched Hester as she kicked off her sandals and sank into a chair. 'You've enjoyed yourself?'

'Like the parson's egg, it was good in parts,' she admitted cautiously. 'I wouldn't like to do it too often, it would play hell with my waistline. I'll just take a look at Katy and then I'm off to bed or I'll be dead in the morning.'

'Katy's all right,' he murmured as he drew her to her feet and slid his arms round her. 'You sound a bit disappointed. Didn't the fleshpots appeal, and will this make it any better?'

'Rounding off the evening with a peal of bells?' she enquired sarcastically.

'But I make them ring for you.' His mouth was so close she could feel his warm breath on her lips and she softened against him, almost weeping at her own weakness. There was never a word of love, yet he could lift her to the stars—it wasn't fair!

Hester parked the Mini outside the garage and walked towards the house. Her new domain, and although there was pleasure in the thought, it was tinged with bitterness. Flo should have had somewhere like this to live, somewhere with space and a garden to tend instead of a cramped flat, a few pots of spring bulbs and a Busy Lizzie on the parlour windowsill. She wondered whether it would be possible to spring Flo on Demetrios, when and if her foster-mother ever came back from the clinic. It would be the ideal place for a long, long convalescence.

And the house would be so easy. She looked at it—a lovely, solid type place, not so old that it was in permanent danger of falling down and not so new that it hadn't gained a little dignity. She chuckled as she recalled the estate agent's description: 'Spac. det. hse. 4 bed. plus mstr bed. with shwr en suite. 2 bath. 2 recp. Inge. fit. kit. hall, cloaks. C.H. dbl.gge. Lge. garden & patio. Ideal sit for commuters'—which all added up to a lot of space when it was turned into proper English, and it hadn't taken anywhere near two months to move in.

Secretly, she was of the opinion that the threatened two months' delay had been in the nature of a firecracker which Demetrios had tied to her tail to make her show a bit of interest, and of course he had succeeded. She had come down the very next day and stormed through the house, reducing the two months to two weeks; gone with him and Katy to the school where her husband had been bland but firm so that Katy was taken, after a short examination of her mental prowess—less than seven weeks before the end of the summer term. On trial, of course, to see if she fitted in, but Hester had no doubts about that—Katy would make herself fit!

After that, they had gone back to town, ordered Katy's school uniform, which was the most important thing, and then browsed about furniture stores in search of less essential things like chairs, beds, tables and soft furnishings. It had been a hectic two weeks, but she had enjoyed every moment of it, especially when Demetrios had presented her with the Mini. As he had pointed out, it wasn't a new one, so a few bumps wouldn't show—he had come with her on her first outing and when her nervousness had passed, he had said she was a careful driver, well suited to country roads but hopeless in town!

Hester hadn't cared about that; she wasn't going to drive in town, she was only going to take Katy to school each morning and bring her home in the evening, with perhaps a few short shopping trips thrown in for good measure.

With a feeling of pleasurable anticipation, Hester went round to the back of the house and entered by the door which led to the kitchen. Here, she unpacked the small amount of shopping she had done and made coffee for herself and the daily woman before starting on some lunch for herself. Her day was planned out right down to the last five minutes, so that when she was bringing Katy home from school, she stopped the Mini with considerable reluctance when Katy squealed excitedly:

'Did you see that, Hes? It said there were puppies for sale!'

They'd been passing the board stuck in the hedge for nearly two weeks and Hester was quite familiar with the list of commodities chalked on the black surface. Bedding plants, free range eggs, lettuce—but today there was a roughly scrawled addition, 'Puppies for sale'. She backed the Mini up and shook her head. 'I thought you'd decided on a golden cocker spaniel, and you won't get anything like that here. This isn't a registered breeding kennels.'

'At the end of that lane my puppy's waiting for me—I just know it!' Katy's eyes were glazed with hope and she was doing a credible imitation of the Delphic Oracle. 'Please, Hes!'

'Just one dog and a little bitch.' The owner of the small holding led the way to a whitewashed outhouse. 'Which do you want? The bitch'll be cheaper, of course.'

'Both!' Katy was buoyant with hope and regardless of expense.

'The dog,' Hester was more cautious. 'If it's suitable, that is.'

'Collies.' The owner seemed short of conversation, but after noticing Hester's frown when she looked at the two squirming little bundles of black and white fluff, he added, 'Welsh collies, not the Border ones. Eight weeks old—weaned and wormed—five pounds for the dog and three for the bitch, that's what I'm going to ask at the livestock auction tomorrow. They'll sell like hot cakes.'

Hester doubted the truth of that statement, but Katy was already clutching the dog pup and her small face had firmed into an adult determination.

'This is
my
dog, Hes, I told you it was waiting for me. This is the one I want—see, he knows me already.'

'And the spaniel?'

'No,' Katy shook her head, 'I don't want one of those after all, this'll be much better and he's very small. I don't expect he'll grow very big, do you?'

Hester knew nothing about dogs except what she had read in Katy's book, and to her one pup looked very like another. It certainly looked small, but it was with reluctance and a sense of foreboding that she produced a five-pound note from her purse.

At half past six that evening, Hester's well ordered kitchen was in a state of chaos, so that when Demetrios walked in, she was on her hands and knees with a floorcloth, mopping up a truly tremendous puddle, while Katy, on her hands and knees, was chasing the author of the mess. Chairs were skidding on the well polished floor tiles and Demetrios paused in the doorway, his eyebrow nearly touching his hairline as a black and white pup crawled from under the table and squirmed abjectly at his feet.

'Katy has her dog!' His lips twitched. 'What is it?'

'Heinz fifty-seven varieties, I think.' Hester finished her mopping up operation, disposed of the bucket and cloth and removed her rubber gloves.

'It's a collie,' Katy protested.

'It's a mongrel,' Hester corrected, 'and it has all the bad traits of mongrels. It has no dignity—look at the way it's making up to your papa, it's grovelling!'

'It
loves
him!' Papa's daughter was indignant. 'It's just the kind of dog we need, it won't grow too big, will it, Papa?'

Demetrios tickled the pup's white bib and stooped to examine the white paws. 'I'm sorry to disappoint you, Katy, but I'm afraid he's going to grow to be very big,' a pink tongue licked his fingers lovingly, 'and Hester's quite right—he grovels!'

'I shan't be home tomorrow night.' Dinner was over, Katy was in bed and asleep, the pup was ensconced in the bottom half of a packing case in the conservatory and Demetrios was lounging in a chair in the sitting room. 'I have to go to Athens the day after tomorrow, an early morning flight, so I'll stay in town and take a taxi to the airport.'

Hester looked up from her book on the correct care of roses. 'How long will you be away?' She didn't know whether to be glad or sorry—one part of her was singing with triumph that now she would be able to please herself what she did, where she went and who she visited, while the other part was telling her that she'd be cold and lonely, that she'd miss him.

'About two weeks, maybe a little less.' He lit a cigar with a spill from the fireplace—it was only a log fire, but the flames made the big room more cosy, more homelike. 'I shall be four or five days in Athens and then I have to visit Crete and Cyprus. Shall you miss me?' He didn't look at her but kept his eyes on the softly spluttering logs.

'No,' she replied hardily, 'I shouldn't think so. I've got plenty to do—as long as you're back for Katy's birthday, which is a fortnight today exactly.'

'You've something planned for it?'

'Only the usual party,' she explained. 'Tea and a pop session afterwards, she's invited some of her school friends and I was relying on you to ferry them home afterwards. I couldn't get them all in the Mini.' She sprang up suddenly and went to the television. 'There's a good horror film on. Do you want to see it?'

This time, Demetrios looked away from the fire, directly at her. 'I was hoping—I thought we might talk about the future.'

Some imp of perversity driving her, she switched on the TV and turned the volume up full. 'When you come back from your travels,' she had to shout over the noise. 'This is a good film, I've been looking forward to it all day—I don't want to miss it.' And she fixed her eyes firmly on the screen with all the appearance of a person bombed out of her mind by the images that flickered across it. She watched the film, the news, a short programme about the theatre, the late news and the news commentary that followed it, and then yawned prodigiously. She hadn't really heard or seen a thing, it had all been patterns on a screen and noises coming from people's mouths.

'Going to bed now. Goodnight,' she announced shortly, and crept upstairs like a ghost, failing even to look in on Katy, something which she always did.

In the bedroom, she snorted to herself. Her husband was going away for a few days and she was behaving as though all the lights in the world had gone out—if she didn't feel so damn miserable, she would have laughed herself silly. Even a hot bath didn't help; she felt just as miserable when she climbed out of it as when she'd stuck her toe in to test the water. With a sigh, she slid into bed and resolutely turned her back on where Demetrios would be sleeping, closing her eyes and almost praying for sleep to come quickly, but things never happen when you want them to, she told herself savagely as she stayed tense and wakeful, listening for a footstep on the stairs or in the corridor outside the bedroom door.

She heard the hiss of his shower and then the quiet pad of his feet across the bedroom floor and felt the depression of the bed as he slid into it. He switched on the bedside light—she could see it through the thin membrane of her eyelids, but she lay quite still, breathing evenly and deeply.

'You're not asleep, Hester.' Competently, he turned her to face him. 'What's the matter? What do you want me to say, that I'll send somebody else?

'No!' she wanted to scream it at him, and she compressed her mouth into a thin, tight line to stop the words coming out. Words she daren't say because if she did, and if he heard them, she'd be no more than a chattel, a poor, bought thing, utterly dependent on him. So how could she tell him she wanted him to say he loved her? He didn't know the meaning of the word, or, if he did, he'd never think of her that way.