hallway.
It was only then that Benji emerged, obviously realising that it was safe to come out from behind the chair.
‘And how old are you, Benji?’ Nina asked, her voice quiet and non-threatening. He didn’t reply but continued to stare at her in the most unnerving way. ‘I bet you like this house, don’t you?’ Nina continued, undeterred. ‘Especially Prince Caspian?’ she said, pointing to the rocking horse by the window. ‘Isn’t he wonderful? I bet you like riding him?’
Benji’s small grey eyes stared at her as if she were quite mad.
Nina looked over at the rocking horse. Poor old Prince Caspian. He didn’t look so regal these days. What was left of his mane looked limp and wiry and, if Benji were indeed to use him as a plaything, he would very soon be completely bald.
‘Have you finished your drink?’ she asked, rapidly running out of things to say to the boy, and wishing Olivia would hurry up with the tea things. She’d always adored children, and usually got on well with them, but it seemed that she didn’t have the knack with this particular little boy. Perhaps, she thought, she should just pick up one of the magazines on the table in front and ignore him completely.
‘Yes!’ his small voice suddenly piped.
‘What?’ she asked in surprise.
‘Finish drink.’
‘Oh, I see.’
Conversation completed, he turned around and bombed out of the room to his own soundtrack of an aeroplane.
‘Benji!’ Olivia shrieked from the hallway before entering with a small tray. ‘It’s like having the boys all over again with him.’
Nina smiled. ‘I thought he might actually belong to one of yours.’
‘Good gracious, no!’ Olivia gasped as she pushed the magazines off the table and put the tray down. ‘My lot haven’t even got as far as the altar yet.’
‘Oh, really?’ For some reason, Nina found this a comfort. It was hard to imagine any of the boys grown-up and married off, especially Alex and Dominic, whom Nina had always thought of as hers in a maternal sort of way. They had always been her special boys and, as an only child, they’d filled the gap that Sindy dolls couldn’t possibly have filled. It didn’t seem possible that they were handsome young men, ripe for marriage.
‘Between you and me, I can’t wait for the right women to take them off my hands,’ Olivia confessed, pouring the tea and offering Nina the milk and sugar. ‘The trouble is, they don’t seem in any rush at all. I mean, Billy’s had his fair share of girlfriends, but he seems more concerned about his career at the moment, and Alex – well – he’s certainly had his share, too, but he never spends long enough with any particular girl for me to think about booking the church.’ Olivia sighed and stared wistfully into the sugar bowl.
‘And what about Dominic?’ Nina asked, wondering what the youngest son was up to, but finding the image of Dommie as she remembered him – aged nine, in his football kit – hard to shake from her mind.
‘Dominic?’ Olivia half laughed, ‘Dominic’s no nearer than his brothers. There’s Faye of course. She’d marry him tomorrow, I’m quite sure of that.’
‘Faye?’ Was little Dominic Milton really old enough to have a girlfriend, Nina wondered, and then remembered the young man who’d stared so darkly at her from his car.
‘Dominic’s old flame from high school. She’s such a sweetheart. They kind of broke up a few years ago,’ Olivia paused and then whispered, ‘but she’s still a great friend of the family and I think she’s definitely still holding a candle for him. She’s helping me out with the garden here and is working wonders on it. Honestly, she’s such a lovely girl and Dommie really doesn’t deserve her, but he won’t listen to the reasoning of his old mother, will he?’
Nina sipped her tea and smiled sympathetically.
‘And what about you, Nina? Anyone on your horizon?’
Nina gulped a mouthful of tea a little too quickly and coughed. ‘Er – no. Not at the moment,’ she said.
‘But there has been, hasn’t there? A pretty girl like you!’
Nina blushed, thinking it strange that she should still be thought of as a girl at the ripe age of twenty-eight. ‘There has been,’ she confirmed, not wishing to open up that particular wound, ‘but not anymore.’
‘Well, I’m sure there’ll be plenty more,’ Olivia said in the comforting way that other people’s mothers had.
‘I’m so glad you came,’ Olivia said, her smile filling her face. She really was a beautiful woman, Nina thought, and absolutely impossible to pin an age on. Nina looked at her shiny red hair in a gloriously thick bob, and the vivid green eyes smiling out of a face that was round in the prettiest sense of the word.
‘So, you’re not working at the moment?’ Olivia probed gently.
‘N— no,’ Nina replied, suddenly remembering her position in the world; unemployed. She’d almost forgotten. In her delight in being a free, if rather poor, spirit, she’d forgotten that it was actually a weekday and that she should be working. But then, she mused philosophically, it was rather hard to keep track of exactly which day it was when you didn’t have a job to decide it for you.
‘Not babysitting?’ Olivia prompted.
‘Oh, I haven’t done that for years,’ she said.
‘You know, you were the only one the boys would have? Gosh! The trouble we had with them before you arrived on the scene!’ Olivia laughed in remembrance. ‘They were little terrors. How on earth did you manage to tame them?’
‘Tame them?’ Nina queried. ‘I don’t think I did anything to tame them.’
‘Then you don’t know your own magic!’ Olivia said.
‘I really don’t think there was any magic,’ Nina said honestly.
‘Ah, I miss those days,’ Olivia confessed. ‘My darling boys. Of course, it wasn’t the same when Billy went off to boarding school. That was the beginning of the end really, but Dudley insisted that it was the right thing to do and Alex and Dommie followed in their turn.’
‘But you missed them?’
‘Of course!’ Olivia said. ‘I drifted around this big old house like a lost thing, but then I began to fill my days with charities and local functions. Plus, looking after Dudley has always been a full-time occupation.’
There was a pause and Nina could hear the distant sound of a vacuum cleaner upstairs and the continuing soundtrack of Benji, who had transformed himself from an aeroplane to a train.
Olivia took a deep breath. ‘And it was secretarial work you said you did, wasn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ Nina said, biting her lip, and wondering what Olivia was leading up to. ‘But I’ve done a bit of everything really,’ she added quickly, trying to inject a little bit of colour into a rather bland CV. ‘Receptionist, sales, human resources, civil
