Mum.’ Karrie tried to quieten her mother’s anxiety. ‘If you’re using Travis Watson as a yardstick—everybody’s more worldly than Travis.’
‘But Travis is safe—and you’re as unworldly as he is. With this new man of yours, he won’t be content to...’
‘Mum, I probably will never see him again.’ Karrie, thought it politic to end the conversation.
‘You will.’ How could her parent sound so positive? Karrie wished she could be that confident herself! ‘Promise me, Karrie, that you won’t do anything silly,’ her mother urged in a sudden rush.
‘Silly?’ Karrie had no idea what her mother meant for a moment. But it did not take long for conversations she’d had with Margery Dalton over the past six years to come back all at once and make her meaning exceedingly clear. Silly as in getting herself pregnant!
‘Oh, you’ve no need to worry about...’ Her voice faded—she could see that her mother was looking extremely upset. Karrie smiled. ‘I promise,’ she said, without further hesitation—her mother had enough to contend with without being caused further grief if Karrie didn’t give her her word. At last she got a smile out of her mother.
They met up as a family when breakfast was ready—her father was in a grumpy mood as he complained, ‘This bacon’s frizzled!’
Margery Dalton charged straight into battle. ‘Don’t eat it, then!’ she bit back.
Bernard Dalton gave his wife a venomous look and, not taking her orders, crunched his way through his breakfast and left the two women in his household to get on with their own thoughts.
Farne had kissed her, Karrie mused dreamily, kissed her and squeezed her hands. Prior to that he’d stood with her, holding both her hands. ‘It seems that I shall have to let you go’ he’d said. Did that mean anything—or nothing?
Nothing, of course, you chump! What did you think it meant? Well, precisely nothing, she supposed, but... Would he ring her next week, perhaps the week after? He’d left it four days before ringing her yesterday. Today was Sunday. Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, she counted. Would he ring her on Wednesday? Oh, she did hope so. But perhaps he wouldn’t ring at all.
The fact that she must be looking as bleak as she felt at that thought was borne out when her father, looking her way, asked sharply, ‘What’s the matter with you? Are you sickening for something?’
Karrie glanced at him, becoming at once aware that his questions had caused her mother to look at her too. With both parents studying her, Karrie knew a desperate need to be by herself.
‘I’ve never felt better,’ she answered brightly—and as soon as she could she went up to the solitude of her room.
Once there, she faced that her father had not been so very wide of the mark when he had questioned what was the matter with her, and asked, ‘Are you sickening for something?’ She was. Something wonderous was going on inside her which she hadn’t been able to give a name to. She, was falling in love. Oh, my word!
With Farne Maitland in her head the whole of the time, it had gone eleven before Karrie realised it. Aware that she couldn’t stay in her room for much longer if she didn’t want her mother coming up to check if her father had been right and there was something the matter with her, Karrie knew she would have to go downstairs. The problem with that, though, was that her father was far too observant, and, should he glance her way and find her, in some unguarded moment, looking anxious or dreamy, then he wouldn’t keep it to himself. Her mother would then be on to her. But, for Karrie, this fragile emotion that was gaining strength was, in its infancy, intensely private, and therefore not to be spoken of or shared.
It was a sunny summer’s day, so she decided to risk the twice-a-week gardener’s wrath and do some weeding. Changing her slip-on shoes for a pair of plimsolls that had seen better days, she pulled back her hair and secured it in rubber bands in two bunches, and reckoned she looked workmanlike enough for her task outside.
‘It’s a shame to stay indoors on such a lovely day!’ she announced, popping her head round the drawing room door, where her silent parents were absorbed by the Sunday papers. ‘I thought I’d tidy up the rose bed.’
The rose bed was tidy already, she saw. But she decided to tidy it anyway, and was soon on her knees totally caught up—in thoughts of Farne Maitland.
Her concentration was briefly disturbed when, around fifteen minutes later, her father steered his car round from the rear of the house where the garages were. He wound down a window as he passed and commented, ‘Old Stan will have your hide if you mess that up,’—Old Stan being the gardener—and went on down the drive.
Karrie smiled and waved to her father, and tried to concentrate once more on her weeding. Never had an evening sped by so quickly. They’d talked and talked, she and Farne, and she hadn’t felt gauche or unsophisticated in his sophisticated company once. She supposed it said a lot for the man himself that he’d made her feel so comfortable with him. Oh, she’d just die if he never phoned again. Even while she knew there would be nothing in the world she could do about it if he didn’t ring her, she fell to wondering—did he like her? Just a tiny bit? He must do, mustn’t he? Otherwise he wouldn’t have phoned her in the first place. Oh, she did so hope that nothing she’d said or done had put him off. Had she...?
Her thoughts at that moment were suspended after the sound of a car purring into the drive broke into them. Thinking that it was her father, returning from wherever he’d been, Karrie looked up—and got the shock of her life!
It was not her father’s car which made its elegant way up to the top of the drive and which halted outside her front door. But the long, sleek black car in which she had been a passenger only last evening!
At first Karrie thought that she’d had Farne so much on her mind that she was imagining that he was there. But no, as the man in his mid-thirties extracted his long length from the vehicle and, having spotted her, began to make his way over to her, she could see for herself that it was none other than Farne Maitland!
Hurriedly she scrambled to her feet. She wanted to call out a greeting, but her voice seemed to have died on her. Had she left something in his car? Her brain went dead too—she couldn’t remember. Had he called on her to return whatever it was?
Suddenly she became aware of his faultlessly cut trousers, shirt and tie—and her own grubby appearance. Then Farne was there, standing looking at her, his glance going from the bunches she had made of her hair, over the fine bone structure of her face, and down to her dirt-fingered tee shirt, baggy kneed trousers, and ending at her worn and soiled plimsolls. Karrie, left blushing furiously, was absolutely certain that she couldn’t have looked more scruffy if she’d tried!
‘Caught me looking my best again!’ she attempted, wanting the ground to open up and swallow her.
‘I didn’t think women did that any more,’ he remarked teasingly about her blush, his blue eyes now holding her brown ones.
Trust him to notice! He smiled, and her knees felt as saggy as her trousers at his smile. ‘I only do it when there’s an “R” in the month,’ she managed to trot out lightly—regardless that it was July.
His glance went down to her upward-curving mouth. ‘I’m on my way to lunch at The Feathers,’ he informed her, mentioning a smart hotel nearby. ‘I was passing when I thought I’d stop and ask if you’d join me?’
