he was going to have a little holiday with his uncle, but wasn’t sure how much she’d got through to him, because he seemed far more interested in his toy cars than in the fact that she was packing his night things and the best of his clothes in a small case.
He’s only a baby, she thought as she watched him play, quite oblivious to her own mental and emotional turmoil. He’s too little to be taken from all the security he knows, and be made to speak Greek, and all the other things he’ll have to learn.
Yet on the other hand there was the very real danger that out of love and inexperience she might keep him a baby too long, might try too hard to protect him from the world which he was as much a part of as she was herself. A man’s influence in his life was probably essential, Harriet thought—but what would be the effect of someone like Alex Marcos, wealthy, cynical and amoral, on the mind of an impressionable child?
It was inevitable that when she sat down with the newspaper and a cup of coffee while Nicky played on the carpet at her feet, Alex’s picture should be the first to leap out at her. And, again, inevitably, it was the gossip column, and he wasn’t alone. He was sitting at a table in a restaurant or a night club—Harriet didn’t recognise the name anyway—and the girl beside him, smiling radiantly at the camera had her arm through his and her head on his shoulder.
Her red head on his shoulder, Harriet discovered as she read through the piece that accompanied the photograph. Alex, it said, was in London on business and lovely model Vicky Hanlon was just the girl to help him unwind from his busy schedule.
After an unctuous dwelling on Vicky Hanlon’s physical attributes which would have had even the mildest Women’s Libber spitting carpet tacks and reaching for the telephone, the columnist quoted her as saying, ‘Poor Alex leads such a hectic life. I just want to help him relax as much as possible.’
‘Yuck!’ said Harriet violently, dropping the paper as if it had bitten her. She marched down the passage to the bathroom and washed her face and cleaned her teeth thoroughly which, while a relatively futile gesture, nevertheless made her feel better.
She was increasingly on edge as three o’clock approached. Nicky had grown tired of his toys and demanded a story, and she was just following The Little Gingerbread Man with the Three Billy Goats Gruff when she heard the sound of a car door slam in the street below.
Her voice hesitated and died away right in the middle of the troll’s threat, and her whole body tensed. Nicky bounced plaintively and said, ‘Troll.’
She hugged him fiercely. ‘Another time, darling. Your—your uncle’s come to fetch you, and you’re going to have a wonderful time.’
She remembered what Alex had said the previous day about her sheltering arms and was careful to let Nicky walk beside her to the door as the buzzer sounded imperatively.
Her palms were damp, and her mouth was dry. She had brushed her hair until it shone, and the dress she was wearing, although simple and sleeveless, was the most becoming in her wardrobe, its cool blues and greens accentuating her fairness, and the very fact that she had chosen to wear it was evidence enough that she was on the verge of making a complete and utter fool of herself.
She made herself reach out and release the Yale knob and turn the handle.
There was a man outside, stockily built and swarthy in a chauffeur’s uniform, his cap under one arm, and accompanied by a middle-aged woman with greying black hair who looked nervous.
It was the woman who spoke. ‘Thespinis Masters—I am Yannina. I have come from Kyrios Marcos to fetch his nephew, the little Nicos.’ Her anxious expression splintered into a broad smile as she spied Nicky, who had relapsed into instant shyness at the sight of strangers and who was peering at them from behind Harriet’s skirt.
She crouched down, holding out her arms and murmuring encouragingly in Greek, and slowly Nicky edged towards her.
Harriet picked up his case and handed it to the chauffeur, who nodded respectfully to her.
‘Kyrios Marcos wishes to assure you that the boy will be returned to you on Sunday evening, not later than six o’clock,’ he said in careful heavily accented English.
‘Thank you.’ Harriet hesitated. ‘I—I thought he would be coming to fetch Nicky himself.’
The chauffeur looked surprised. ‘He is waiting below in the car, thespinis. If you have a message for him, I would be glad to convey it.’
Not, Harriet thought, the sort of message I have in mind. She forced a smile and shook her head, and stepped backward as Yannina took Nicky’s hand and began to lead him away. He looked back once and grinned and waved, and Harriet felt a lump rise in her throat as she shut the door between them.
This time, wild horses weren’t going to drag her to the window to watch them go.
So he’d decided to stay downstairs in the car, which was a delicate way of telling her not to read too much into a kiss. Had he sensed something in her untutored, unguarded response to what he would regard as quite a casual caress that had warned him it might be kinder to keep his distance?
The thought shamed her to the core. She felt sick and empty, and although she tried to blame this on Nicky’s carefree departure, she knew she was fooling herself.
The unpalatable truth she had to face was that every nerve, every pulse beat in her body had been counting away the hours, the minutes, the seconds before she saw Alex Marcos again. She knew too that the ache beginning inside her now was deeper and more wounding than mere disappointment or injured pride, and she remembered Manda’s warning, and was frightened.
HARRIET felt pleasantly tired as she walked back towards the house late on Saturday evening. She had done all the things she had promised herself to do, and had managed to fill her day too full for thought, even treating herself to the pure luxury of afternoon tea at a hotel.
When Becca had been carrying Nicky, she had once laughingly remarked that when you were pregnant, every second person you met seemed to be in the same condition. Paradoxically, Harriet thought, when you were alone, everyone else seemed to be in couples. But then London had always been a bad place in which to be solitary.
But she didn’t have to be alone, she told herself. If and when Nicky went to Greece, she would find a flat to share with girls of her own age. There were plenty advertised.
She opened the front door and walked into the hall, to be pounced on by one of the downstairs tenants, looking severe. ‘Three times!’ she announced with a kind of annoyed triumph. ‘That’s how many times the phone has rung for you in the past hour and a half, Miss Masters, and you not here!’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Harriet in bewilderment. ‘Was there a message?’
Mrs Robertson produced a slip of paper. ‘You’re to ring this number and ask for this extension. And now if I might get back to my television programme,’ she added aggressively as if she suspected Harriet of being in league with the unknown caller to keep her from the last few minutes of ‘Dynasty’.
Harriet dialled, and was answered from the switchboard of a famous London hotel. Faintly she gave the extension number, thinking frantically, ‘Nicky—my God, something’s happened to Nicky!’
Alex
