‘What?’ look.
A question he didn’t want to answer and he turned back to Susan, who, with rare meekness, said, ‘I’m sorry, Mr Harry. I’ll be more careful in future.’
‘No!’ Maisie, who’d been sitting at the kitchen table, leapt to her feet, knocking over her chair and sending the hen squawking for safety. ‘No!’ she repeated. ‘You mustn’t blame Susan.’ She glared at him. ‘It was me, OK?’ she said, sounding more like a belligerent teenager than a six-year-old. ‘I did it.’
Maisie?
It was deliberate?
He looked at Jacqui in a bid for some kind of sense and realised that she’d known. Her eyes were liquid, pleading with him to understand, to be kind…
Something that Susan, leaping to Maisie’s protection and taking the blame, clearly thought him incapable of.
‘What did you do, Maisie?’
‘I unplugged the phone.’
‘In the library?’
‘In the library,’ she said, with a touch of defiance. ‘In the office. In the kitchen…’
He walked across to the kitchen phone and traced the line to a socket hidden behind a sagging sofa, the plug lying loose on the floor. He didn’t ask how she knew what to do—he could well imagine Sally yanking out a plug when she didn’t want to take a call—he simply replaced it and stood up.
She might be a little demon, but at least she wasn’t prepared to let someone else take the blame for her.
He knew exactly why she’d disconnected the phones, of course. Jacqui kept telling him why. She didn’t want him talking to Selina or Aunt Kate and making other arrangements for her. She wanted to stay here. If he allowed Maisie to tell him that, he’d never be able to send her away…
‘Thank you for being so honest,’ he said. ‘That was very brave of you.’ Then, turning to Susan, ‘And you are a lot kinder than she deserves. Just leave a note about that cleaner on my desk and I’ll see to it.’
There was a sharp rap at the back door, a call of, ‘Anyone about?’
‘That’s the mechanic come to sort out your car,’ he said to Jacqui. A welcome distraction. ‘Can I trust you to call your agency while I talk to him?’ He didn’t bother to conceal his anger with her. She was a grown-up and didn’t deserve kid gloves. ‘They must be very concerned not to have heard from you. Or was the story about the missing cellphone fiction, too?’
He didn’t wait for her answer. He wasn’t interested in her answer.
She’d known.
She’d looked at him with those big grey eyes, held out the telephone for him to listen to the silence and all the time she’d known what Maisie had done.
As he walked away, he heard the telephone begin to ring. It did not, as anticipated, signal relief. On the contrary, it had a hollow knell-like sound.
‘Morning, Dr Talbot.’
The mechanic had loaded Jacqui’s car onto the back of his pick-up and was wiping his hands on a rag.
‘Mike.’ Then, concentrating on the car, ‘You’re taking her down to the garage?’
‘Better get her up on the ramp, have a proper look. Nothing worse than a job half done.’
‘No.’
‘Do you want me to hang on to it until your visitor leaves? She won’t want to be bashing her nice new exhaust to bits going back down the lane, will she?’
He hadn’t said anything about a visitor, or that the VW belonged to a woman. But then she’d asked directions at the village shop; the local equivalent of a tabloid headline.
‘When will it be ready?’
The sooner it was done, the sooner he could get her disturbing presence out of here. Get back to normal. Or the nearest approximation of it that he could manage.
‘Ah, well, I tried to ring earlier. Did you know your phone’s out? I did report it.’
‘Then your call must have done the trick. It’s back on now.’
‘Oh, right. Well,’ he said, gesturing at the car, ‘the problem is that this is an old model. It’s going to take a day or two to get hold of the parts, but since I had to come up to tell you, I thought I’d save a trip and take it back with me. Is the delay going to be a problem?’
‘Will it make any difference if I say yes?’
‘No, but I could organise a rental in the meantime. Something with a higher clearance. If the lady needs a runabout?’
He resisted the temptation. Even if he provided her with alternative transport, where would she go? He had considered suggesting she take Maisie home with her. If she declined, there was no way he could insist. Besides, she might not have room. And if she had, would she admit it?
‘We’ll manage. Just do it as quickly as you can. And Mike, you’d better ask your brother if he’ll fill and roll the potholes in the lane as a temporary measure.’ His purpose in neglecting it had been to keep people out, not have them stuck up here unable to leave. ‘I’ll talk to him about something more permanent as soon as the weather improves.’
‘Don’t leave it too long. He’ll be starting work on the new houses after Easter.’
‘New houses?’
‘Nice little development. Your Aunt Kate is a canny woman. Pushed through the planning permission on that bottom field by the road. The low-cost housing she insisted on did the trick. It’ll keep the youngsters here and save the village school. Mean work for all us.’ He nodded in the direction of the house. ‘Will you be sending your little girl there?’
His words, so casually spoken, struck like a knife wound straight to the heart.
‘No. She’s not staying. Give me a call when the car’s ready.’ And, not waiting for a reply, he turned and walked away. Not back to the house, but up the hill and into the mist.
Jacqui, replacing the receiver, caught sight of her precious car being loaded onto the back of the garage pick-up and, since Harry was nowhere in sight, went outside to find out what was happening.
The mechanic finished securing it and then looked up. ‘Morning, miss. This your little beauty?’
She smiled. ‘She is lovely, isn’t she?’
‘A credit to you. Shame you had to bring her up here.’
Unprepared to commit herself, she asked, ‘Where are you taking her?’
‘Mike’s Garage. I’m Mike, by the way.’ He extended his hand, then, realising that it was less than clean, thought better of it. ‘You’ll find us down the lane behind the village shop. I told Dr Talbot that it’ll be a couple days before we can get a part. It’s her age, you see. Not
