The wind blew rain into his face. Shivering, he said, ‘Great Ask this firm to get here as soon as possible before I die of pneumonia.’
Zoe tapped in her personal code, only to discover that the phone needed charging.
‘Sorry, it isn’t working,’ she said offhandedly, holding it up to show him she wasn’t lying. ‘I haven’t used it since this morning, but the batteries run down even if you don’t use it.’ She watched rain running down his face like tears, and felt a flash of sympathy. She would hate to be in his position. If he was another woman she wouldn’t hesitate to give him a lift, but she wasn’t risking it with some strange man.
‘Look, I’ll ring for a taxi for you the minute I get home,’ she promised. ‘Just wait here; one will be along before too long.’
He grabbed her door and hung on to it, leaning into her car in what she felt to be a menacing way. ‘How do I know you’ll keep your word?’
Zoe’s patience ran out. She was tired, her head was aching, she wanted to get home and into bed.
‘You’ll just have to trust me. Now, get out of my way or I’ll drive off with you hanging on to my door—and don’t think I won’t.’
‘Oh, I’m sure you’re capable of it!’ he muttered, still holding on to her door. ‘Have you thought how it will sound in the press, though?’
Zoe was sure he was too clever not to let go once she started driving away, but, just in case, she pressed the electronic button that wound her window up again.
He tried to hold the window down but couldn’t stop it closing, and had to snatch his hand away before it got crushed in the mechanism.
She put her foot down on the accelerator and drove off at speed across the main road. In her driving mirror she caught a brief glimpse of him standing in the torrential rain, glaring after her. From this distance he looked about seven foot tall, way over six foot, anyway, with wide shoulders and long, long legs, his wet jeans clamped to them, emphasising the muscled calves and thighs under the clinging cloth. She couldn’t deny he was sexy, in a glowering, thuggish sort of way.
She knew women who went wild about men like him. Women who should have more sense. She was not one of them, however.
He reminded her of someone, but she was too tired to work out who as she headed along the narrow country lane leading to her cottage. Within three minutes she saw the red roof of her cottage up ahead, half hidden by the trees shielding her garden.
She had bought Ivydene because of its peaceful setting and the wonderful view of fields and woods which gave you the impression of an uninhabited landscape. In fact there were other houses, hidden among trees and in folds of the countryside, but she had no close neighbours, could see no lighted windows. Tonight she wished she had. The brief encounter with that man had managed to knock her usual self-confidence a little.
Turning into her driveway, she parked right outside the cottage, jumped out, dashed under the shelter of the small, red-tiled porch built around her front door and locked her car from there with her electronic car key. Rain drummed on the porch roof, dripped off the ivy growing up the walls. Zoe stripped off her wax jacket and left it to drip on a hook in the wall. It was far too wet to take indoors. Stepping out of her boots, too, she stood them against the porch wall, then unlocked the front door and went into the cottage, switching on the light in the hall.
For a second she stood, listening, but apart from the sonorous tick of a large Victorian grandfather clock in the hall everything was quiet. She had been living here for three years now. When she’d bought it, the three-bedroomed cottage had been a mess; it had been uninhabited for a year, the roof had leaked, mould had grown on wallpaper, some of the windows had been broken by local boys.
Zoe couldn’t afford to pay workmen to renovate it, but whenever she had any free time she worked on it herself, painting, wallpapering, choosing new curtains and carpets. The cottage had been built in the Edwardian era, and the spacious rooms had high ceilings, decorated with plasterwork, elegant little ironwork fireplaces, and solid oak doors. There was a butler’s pantry, and a general air of being a miniature country house.
Padding through to the kitchen in her socks, she opened the fridge, quickly inspecting the contents, but nothing much appealed. She wouldn’t get to sleep if she ate a large or rich meal at this hour. It would have to be tomato soup and toast. It only took seconds to open a tin, pour the contents into a saucepan and start cooking it. She cut a couple of slices of bread once the soup was on the hob, and slipped them into the toaster.
After that she walked into the sitting room and switched on her answer-machine, smiling as her sister’s warm, cheerful voice filled the room.
‘Hi, it’s me—don’t forget the barbecue on Saturday, will you? Around six o‘clock. Bring somebody if you like—who’s the latest fella? And a bottle of something; lemonade, wine, anything you like.’
In the background the sound of high-pitched screeching rose, combined with a hammering, crashing sound.
‘Sing quietly, darling,’ Sancha said in the indulgent tone she always used to the little monster she called Flora. Was that ghastly racket meant to be singing? Zoe switched on the realistic electric log fire on the hearth—the central heating kicked in at six o’clock each evening, but it was only background heat and on a night like this she felt she needed more than that, not to mention the illusion of sitting in front of flames.
‘Zoe, I’ve got exciting news for you! I... Don’t do that to the cat!’ Sancha suddenly said sharply.
Do what, for heaven’s sake? The sounds of spitting and yowling competed with Flora’s so-called singing.
‘Got to go,’ Sancha hurriedly said. ‘She’s trying to pull the cat through the bars of her playpen. Zoe, don’t you dare forget and don’t be late! See you!’ She hung up; there was a whirring sound and another voice began.
‘Zoe, please, I’ve got to see you, surely we can talk this over?’
Zoe fast-forwarded the machine to get rid of the husky voice. It had been fun dating Larry for a few weeks, but that was all it had been for her. Just light-hearted fun. He was a nice enough guy—which was why as soon as he started to turn serious she had told him they must stop seeing each other. It was kinder to end it before his feelings got out of hand. In the past she had sometimes hesitated and let a relationship go on too long. Zoe didn’t want to hurt anyone, but neither was she being blackmailed into bed by someone she didn’t love.
The trouble was, Larry wouldn’t go away. Since she’d told him she didn’t want to see him again he had rung her several times a day, and kept writing her the sort of letters that burn the paper they’re written on but are embarrassing to read if you don’t feel the same way. Zoe was worried by the bitterness creeping in among the passionate prose.
It wasn’t as if she was the first woman in his life; he had had other girlfriends. She knew all about them because he had insisted on telling her every detail of his relationships before her. She hadn’t wanted to hear any of it.
She had liked Larry at first, he had seemed fun, but her discovery about his obsession with his past affairs was the first moment when she began to go off him. Zoe never talked about one man to another. She hated having the past hanging around; she switched off memories like a television set and walked away. Life was now, today, the future always beckoned—the past was another country, one she had left behind.
