and telling herself that he was not her concern? No, she could not have done that. It ran completely counter to her whole nature. Tiredly she allowed herself to drift towards sleep.
‘LOOK, WHY DON’T you take my car? I shan’t be using it today, so you might as well.’
They were sitting having coffee in the kitchen, and Sally’s offer of the use of her car made Sarah say gratefully, ‘Well, if you’re sure you don’t mind, although I’m not sure how to find the house. The path went to a back gate and…’
‘I’ve got a map of the village. The house isn’t difficult to find. I’ll get the map and show you…
‘It was Gray Philips’s grandfather who originally bought it,’ Sally explained when she returned with the map, which she spread out on the kitchen table, pinning it down with her half-full mug of coffee.
‘Gray’s father was the older brother and should have inherited both it and the business, but he was in the army. He was killed in action when Gray was quite small. At least, that’s what Mrs Richards told me. His mother apparently remarried and went to live in America, leaving Gray here. He was brought up by his grandfather, his uncle never married, and—again according to Mrs Richards—Gray was sent to boarding-school and then on to university, so that he virtually only spent his holidays here when he was growing up.’
Sarah was frowning as she listened to her cousin. Against her will she felt an aching tenderness, an awareness of how very lonely Gray Philips’s childhood must have been, but surely that loneliness should have made him more compassionate towards his own child and not less? Then again, she knew enough about psychology to know that an adult would often inflict on his or her own children the same miseries they themselves had suffered, sometimes deliberately, but more often than not quite subconsciously, unaware that, out of their own deeply buried pain and resentment, they were unable to let go of the past and their subconscious resentment of another child, their child, enjoying a happier childhood than they had known.
Most people when confronted with such a truth were both appalled and angry, repudiating it immediately, even when it was explained to them that they were not consciously aware of what they were doing.
Was Gray Philips like that? Did he subconsciously resent his son’s happiness?
She was leaping to unfounded conclusions, Sarah warned herself as she forced herself to concentrate on studying the map…allowing her emotions to take control of her. What Robert needed right now was not someone to reinforce his lack of trust and love for his father, but someone to gently encourage him to form a bond with Gray.
That task was not hers, she warned herself half an hour later as she got into Sally’s car. All she could do was to try to comfort Robert as best she could and to gently point out to him the dangers of trying to run away. It was a pity that Gray Philips had not taken the trouble to find someone more sympathetic and understanding than Mrs Jacobs to take charge of his son, since he plainly was not prepared to give Robert the emotional comfort and support he needed himself.
She found the entrance to the house easily enough. Automatic gates swung open as she drove towards them, admitting her to the gravel-covered drive.
The front view of the house betrayed that it was even larger than she had first imagined and built in the traditional Elizabethan E-shape. The drive swept round not to the front of the house, but through a brick archway and into what had once been the stable-yard. Parking her car here, Sarah climbed out.
Was it her imagination or did the sound of her shoes crunching over the gravel seem preternaturally loud?
She walked round to the front of the house, pausing to admire the double row of clipped yews that framed the main path as she did so. Beyond them in the distance she could see the shape of a formal pond and the spray of a fountain. Reflecting that it must cost a fortune to keep the house and garden in order, she mounted the steps and pulled the bell chain.
For a long time nothing happened, and she was just about to wonder angrily if Gray Philips had given Mrs Jacobs instructions not to admit her, when the door suddenly opened to the extent of its safety chain and a small, familiar voice asked uncertainly, ‘Is that you, Sarah?’
‘Robert…Where’s Mrs Jacobs?’ she asked the little boy as he reached up to release the safety chain.
‘She’s gone home,’ Robert told her when the door was open and Sarah went inside. ‘She said she wasn’t paid to look after the likes of me and that I was getting on her nerves,’ he added woefully.
The hall was low-ceilinged and beamed, with a polished wooden floor and an enormous cavern of a fireplace. It was immaculately clean and yet somehow unwelcoming.
The oak coffer against the wall cried out for a pewter jug full of flowers, the floor for a richly coloured rug, and stairs with barley-sugar twisted and carved posts and heavily worn oak treads led to the upper storeys of the house. A window set halfway up them in their curve let in a mellow shaft of sunlight, and, even while she admired the heavy wrought-iron light fitting that hung from the ceiling, Sarah was wondering why no one seemed to have thought to fit the window-seat with a comfortable squashy cushion, and thinking how bleak the house looked despite its shining cleanness.
‘Are you here all on your own?’ she asked Robert as he took hold of her hand and started to tug her in the direction of one of the doors leading off the hallway.
‘Yes. My father’s gone to work.’
‘And Mrs Jacobs has left. Is she coming back?’
‘No.’ Robert shook his head. ‘She said she wasn’t going to set foot in this place again. At least not while I was here. Children are a nuisance, she said, and there are plenty of places she can work where she doesn’t have to put up with them.’ Tears suddenly brimmed in his eyes as he turned to look at her. ‘My father is going to be cross with me, isn’t he? But it wasn’t my fault that I spilt the milk. I slipped on the kitchen floor.’
Sarah felt a mingling of anger and disgust. How could any father leave his child in the sole charge of a woman as plainly unsuitable as Mrs Jacobs, and how could any woman walk out on a six-year-old child when she knew there was no one to take charge of him, and when she must also know how vulnerable he was?
Robert pushed open a door which Sarah saw led into the kitchen. Her frown deepened when she saw the pool of milk marking the stone floor, its surface ominously broken by shards of glass. Had Mrs Jacobs really left without cleaning up the broken glass? It seemed that she had.
Quietly telling Robert not to go near the broken glass, Sarah set about cleaning up the mess.
While she was doing so he started to explain tearfully to her how the milk had been spilt when he was pouring it into his breakfast bowl of cereal.
The fridge from which he had taken the milk had a freezer section beneath it, and a handle surely far too high for the easy reach of a child of six.
When she heard how he had dragged a stool across the floor and climbed up on it to open the door, apparently while Mrs Jacobs was sitting down drinking a cup of tea, she was so angry both with Mrs Jacobs and with Robert’s father that she felt it was just as well that neither of them was there for her to vent her anger on them.
Surely the older woman must have realised the potential danger of a child of Robert’s age climbing on a stool to open a fridge door? And surely in any case the little boy should not have been left to get his own breakfast?
Not
