The Fleethaven Trilogy (137 page)

‘Not today, thank you,’ the woman said crisply, though
not unpleasantly. The door was already beginning to close.

‘I – I’m not selling anything,’ Ella blurted out. ‘I’m
looking for someone.’

The woman was intimidating. White hair, beautifully
set, with every curl in immaculate place, and she wore
make-up, though it was skilfully applied and did not look
out of place on the wrinkled skin. Her dress was plain but
well cut and her nails were long and pointed and painted a
delicate pink.

‘I don’t think there’s anyone in this house . . .’

‘Please.’ Ella started forward, eagerness making her
forget her rehearsed speech. ‘Philip Trent. He used to live
here. Do you know where he went? Where he is now?’

For a brief moment, the woman looked startled. ‘What
do you want him for?’

‘I – do you know him?’

‘I might,’ the woman said guardedly.

Ella swallowed, the excitement rising in her. Deliberately
she tried to keep calm. ‘I’m looking for him because
– because—’ She licked her lips and decided to try to stick
to her original story. The woman already looked wary. If
she blurted out the truth she had the feeling the door
would be slammed in her face.

Ella drew in a deep, steadying breath. ‘I understand Mr
Trent was a group captain in the RAF in the war. I’m –
I’m . . .’ The lie did not come easily. ‘I’m a student and I’m
doing some research for – for a project, and I just wondered
if he might be able to help me.’

The woman frowned. ‘Who gave you his address?’

‘He did.’ The words slipped out before she could stop
them. ‘I mean, he – he gave it to my – my aunt.’

‘He knows your family?’ The woman’s expression
lightened.

‘Oh, yes.’ She almost laughed. This, at least, was true.
She could not resist the irony of the moment and added,
‘Very well.’

‘Oh, well, in that case . . .’ She seemed to be mellowing
a little but still did not offer to invite Ella inside. ‘I’m afraid
he’s not in at the moment, but I’ll tell him you’ve called.
What name did you say? Perhaps you could come back
again another time?’

Evading giving her name, Ella said swiftly, ‘Yes, of
course, I’ll call back. This evening, perhaps?’

Now the woman smiled and nodded. ‘Yes, about seven
thirty, after we’ve eaten.’

‘Thank you. Thank you very much.’ Ella turned and
began to walk away quickly before the woman could insist
on knowing her name. ‘I’ll see you later.’

As she came to the gate a large green Rover swept in
and though the car did not touch her, its sudden appearance
startled her so that she stepped backwards, treading
heavily half on, half off the edge of the driveway. Her heel
sank into the soft earth of a flower border. She lost her
balance and felt herself falling backwards. She gave a little
scream as her hand caught on a rose-bush and a thorn
gouged a deep scratch on the back of her hand.

The car braked, the broad tyres digging deep into the
gravel of the drive with a scrunching noise. The driver
leapt from his seat and came running towards her, not
even bothering to switch off his engine or close the car
door behind him.

‘I’m so sorry. Are you hurt? Did the car hit you?’

He was kneeling down in front of her, without thought
for his light grey trousers and Ella found herself looking
up into the bluest pair of eyes she had ever seen, except
when she looked in the mirror.

He was helping her to her feet, gently brushing away
the earth and examining her hand, the blood now oozing
out down the length of the scratch.

‘Please come into the house and bathe that. It’s quite
deep.’

‘Well . . .’ She made herself sound deliberately hesitant,
as if not wanting to intrude, though she could hardly have
planned it better.

The woman was still hovering near the front door.
‘Mother,’ the man said, ‘please show this young lady to
the cloakroom and see she has everything she needs while
I put the car away.’ He turned back to Ella. ‘I won’t be a
moment.’

He was smiling down at her, his blue eyes warm and
friendly. He put his hand out to her, not quite touching
her, to usher her towards the door into the house.

The woman led the way into a cool hall with a polished
parquet floor, a huge circular Chinese rug covering the
centre. An enormous arrangement of flowers in a basket
on the small side table scented the air as the woman waved
a beringed hand and said, ‘He will drive in at such a speed.
I keep telling him he’s not flying a plane now. This way,
my dear.’

She opened a door to the left-hand side of the hall and
ushered Ella into a cloakroom with a wash basin, toilet
and pegs for coats. ‘I’ll fetch the first-aid box from the
bathroom. Just run the cold water over your hand.’

As she bustled away, Ella turned on the tap and let the
water run over her hand, washing away the blood and any
dirt from the wound.

A knock came at the door and the man popped his head
round it. ‘Okay?’

She turned, smiled at him and nodded, knowing she
was staring at him but unable to tear away her gaze. He
squeezed his tall frame into the small room and as his
mother came back with a box of first-aid materials he took
it from her, set it on a ledge near the basin and said, ‘Now
then, let’s see if I can remember all my first-aid training
from my RAF days.’

‘That’s why this young lady’s here,’ said the woman
from the other side of the half-open door. ‘She’s a student
doing research about the RAF. She says you know her
family.’

The head bent over her hand, which its owner was
dabbing with antiseptic ointment, slowly came up again
and the blue eyes, so close now, were gazing into hers very
intently. ‘Really?’ he said softly. ‘And what . . .’ he paused
and suddenly in the tiny room, the air was vibrant ‘. . . is
your name?’

Ella gazed back at him. Huskily she said, ‘I’m called
Ella but – but my full name is Danielle Hilton.’

The strong warm hands holding hers trembled, and the
breath he released suddenly wafted into her face. ‘Oh, my
dear girl!’ he whispered hoarsely. In the most incongruous
place they could have imagined for such a momentous
meeting, they stood just staring at each other. ‘Do you
know who I am?’ he said.

‘I think so. I think you’re . . .’ her voice dropped to an
almost inaudible whisper that only he would hear ‘. . . my
father.’

He seemed to pull his reeling senses back to reality and
dressed her hand, sticking plaster across a wad of lint.
‘There. Is that comfortable?’

‘Thank you, yes.’

‘Come.’ He pressed himself to the wall and opened the
door for her. ‘We have a lot to talk about.’

As she emerged from the cloakroom, she almost giggled
nervously at his understatement.

The woman was still hovering in the hall. ‘Are you all
right?’ Ella nodded and then the woman’s glance went to
her son. ‘Do you know her family, Philip?’

‘Oh, yes, Mother. I know her family very well indeed.’
As he put his arm about Ella’s shoulders, the girl saw the
surprise on his mother’s face and her glance go swiftly
from one to the other and back again.

‘We’re going to my study and, er, if it won’t cause you
any trouble, Mother, Ella will be staying for dinner.’ He
looked down at Ella and smiled, and now there was
something else in his eyes, a strange mixture of joy and
sadness too. ‘Okay?’ he asked gently.

She nodded and murmured, ‘Okay.’

Was she dreaming? she thought, as he steered her
towards a door to the right of the hall and into a book-lined
study – a real man’s room – and settled her in a
leather armchair near a long window looking out over a
smooth well-kept lawn.

‘I think I need a drink.’ He smiled down at her. ‘Would
you like something?’

She licked her dry lips. ‘I wouldn’t mind a cup of tea,
but if it’s any trouble . . .’

‘Of course it isn’t,’ he said, and disappeared from the
room briefly, returning a few moments later to sit, drink in
hand, in the chair opposite her.

‘Is this really happening?’ he said, with the same
bemused air that she was feeling.

Ella laughed nervously. ‘That’s just what I was thinking.
I used to dream about you, standing under the trees on the
day of Mum’s funeral . . .’ The pain was naked in his eyes
and, swiftly, she said, ‘Oh, I’m so sorry, that was thoughtless
of me.’

‘No, no,’ he reassured her quickly. ‘It’s just that all these
years I’ve had no one to talk to about Kate. There’s been
no one to help me bear the grief, the intolerable loss.’ He
cleared his throat and, more strongly now, said, ‘You saw
me there?’

She nodded. ‘As we all moved away, I saw you walk
across to the grave and just stand there.’

‘I was devastated. I’d only just found her again after all
that time only to lose her so cruelly.’

Ella leaned forward. ‘She met you that day? It was you
she came to meet, wasn’t it?’

He nodded and said huskily, ‘When she was travelling
back the floods came. I was on my way home to York
when I heard about the flooding. I turned round and went
straight back, but I couldn’t get through.’ His face was
pale, reliving that dreadful night. ‘I hounded the authorities,
but the poor devils were working day and night . . .
I couldn’t find out anything.’ He shook his head. ‘At last
when I could get through to Lynthorpe and went to the
police station . . .’ He didn’t need to say any more: she
knew what he had learned.

Instead, she asked, ‘Why didn’t she tell you about me?’

A small sad smile appeared as he shook his head. ‘We
made arrangements that I should come to Lincoln the
following week. She – she said she would have something
very exciting to tell me, something that would make me
very happy, but that first there was something she had to
do . . .’ He was gazing at her now, drinking in the sight of
his daughter.

Ella frowned, puzzled.

‘I’m guessing,’ he said slowly, ‘that she wanted to tell
you about me first. You know, to be sure that you
understood all that had happened, that you were prepared
to meet me.’

‘Prepared to meet you?’ she exclaimed. ‘I’ve never
wanted anything more in my life!’

‘Oh, my dear,’ he whispered, deeply moved.

‘You went to Lincoln to see Aunty Peggy, didn’t you,
after you saw my picture in the paper that time?’

He nodded. ‘She told me all about you. About everything
that had happened.’

She studied his face as he talked. He was still a fine-looking
man: the fair curly hair she had seen in the
photographs was still thick, though grey now, but his kind
face was etched with deep lines of sadness.

‘You’ve lived with your grandmother at Fleethaven
Point, haven’t you? I mean, you’ve been loved and cared
for?’

Ella swallowed. She opened her mouth to tell him, to
pour out to him the heartache of those years. How her
grandmother had never loved her, how she’d only taken
her in – her daughter’s bastard – out of a sense of duty,
how harshly she’d treated her, how hard she’d worked her,
treated her like a skivvy . . .

She almost gasped at the tumult of emotions coursing
through her and, to her surprise, like hearing someone else
speaking, found herself saying, ‘It wasn’t always easy. My
grandmother is a very strong-minded woman and I . . .’
She smiled. ‘I am told I’m very like her. We had some
battles.’

‘But she loved you?’ he insisted. It seemed important to
him that Ella, his daughter, should have been loved. She
could not cause this man, clearly still haunted by the past,
yet more pain.

Carefully she said, ‘I’m sure she did, in her own way,
but – but she’s the sort of person who finds it difficult to –
to show it. I suppose,’ she added, wrinkling her brow
reflectively, considering something she had not really
thought about before, ‘I didn’t make it any easier. Even
from the start, I always wanted to go back to Lincoln to
live with my aunty Peggy.’

He sighed. ‘We thought it best, you see, that as your
loss was so recent, we shouldn’t uproot you, that you
should stay with family you knew. But I gave her my
address and said that if ever you should ask about me
when you were older, then she should give it to you.’

‘I’m living with her now,’ Ella murmured. Although she
didn’t elaborate on her reasons for leaving Fleethaven
Point or tell him that she had just walked out one night,
she did explain that now she was attending a one-year
course at the Technical College and hoped to find work in
the city and go on living there.

‘So, you won’t go back to the farm, then?’

She shook her head and dropped her gaze. ‘No. I won’t
ever go back.’

They talked on and on until the shadows lengthened
and dusk crept into the room. He wanted to know
everything about her and all that she could tell him about
her mother. When a smiling Mrs Trent opened the door to
say graciously that dinner was ready and would they like
to come through to the dining room, Ella and her father
were still talking. As they went through to the dining room,
he whispered, ‘I need a little time to break the news to my
mother. She doesn’t know anything about you, or even
about Kate. Please, could you play along with the student
idea, just until I’ve had time? Tomorrow everything will be
all right . . .’

‘I don’t know how you’ve got the nerve to show your face
again this morning, young woman. You might think you’ve
taken my son in with your lies, but you don’t fool me so
easily.’

Ella, standing outside the front door again the following
morning, gaped at Mrs Trent. Having seemed to accept
the fact that her son knew Ella’s family in some way and
made her welcome, Mrs Trent’s obvious hostility was a
shock to Ella. The previous evening she had left soon after
they had finished dinner, with no further chance to talk
to her father alone for his mother had sat with them until
she had ushered the girl out into the night, exhorting
her to be careful and to go straight back to her hotel;
showing, Ella had thought at the time, genuine concern for
her.