her apology. ‘I’d have slept all day if you hadn’t woken me. Iphegenia?’ he prompted, with a frown. ‘What kind of name is that?’
‘The kind that no one can spell?’ she offered. Then, ‘My mother’s a classical scholar,’ she added—at least she was, when she could spare the time—as if that explained everything. He looked blank. ‘Iphegenia was the daughter of King Agamemnon. He sacrificed her to the gods in return for a fair wind to Troy. So that he could grab back his runaway sister-in-law. Helen.’
‘Helen?’ he repeated. If not dumb, definitely founded…
‘Of Troy.’
‘Oh, right, “…the face that launched a thousand ships and burnt the topless towers of Ilium”?’
‘That’s the one,’ she said. Then, ‘He got murdered by his wife for his trouble. But you probably knew that.’ There was more, a lot more, but years of explaining her unusual name had taught her that was about as much as anyone wanted to know. ‘Homer was writing about the dysfunctional family nearly three thousand years ago,’ she offered.
‘Yes.’ He looked, for a moment, as if he might pursue her mother’s choice of name… Then, thinking better of it, said, ‘Tell me about your wandering hamster. What’s his name? Odysseus?’
Irony. He’d just woken up and he could quote Christopher Marlowe, recall the names of mythical heroes and do irony. Impressive.
But then he was a genius.
‘Good try, but a bit of a mouthful for a hamster, don’t you think?’ she asked, keeping her mouth busy while her mind did some fast footwork.
‘I’d say Iphegenia is a bit of a mouthful for a girl,’ he said, as if he knew she was simply playing for time. ‘The kind of name that suggests your mother was not feeling particularly warm towards your father when she gave it to you. If I gave it any serious thought.’
He wasn’t even close.
‘So what is this runaway rodent called?’ he asked when she made no comment, pushing her for an answer.
‘Hector,’ she said.
‘Hector? Not Harry—as in Houdini?’
No, Hector. As in heroic Trojan warrior prince slain by Achilles. Classical scholarship ran in the family but she thought she’d probably said more than enough on that subject.
‘Harry who?’ she asked innocently.
His eyes narrowed and for a moment she was afraid she’d gone too far. ‘Never mind,’ he said, letting it go. ‘He must be quite a mover if you chased him up here. Didn’t the stairs slow him down?’
She hadn’t thought of that. Hadn’t thought, full stop. Certainly hadn’t even considered the possibility that Richard Mallory would be at home in bed recovering from a hot date instead of where he was supposed to be, in deepest Gloucestershire.
Thank you, Sophie…
She supposed she should be grateful that the woman with the black silk stockings wasn’t under the duvet with him. Although she would at least have offered a distraction.
Ginny attempted to recall exactly how large hamsters were. Four or five inches, perhaps, at full stretch? And she realised she was so deep in trouble that the only possibility of escape was to keep on digging in the hope of eventually tunnelling out.
‘Hector—’ she said, with a conviction she was far from feeling ‘—has thighs like a footballer. It’s all that running on his exercise wheel.’ Then, ‘Look, I’d better go—’ before his brain was fully engaged and he began to ask questions to which she had no answer ‘—and, um, let you have your shower.’
‘Oh, please, don’t rush off.’
He was across the room before she could escape, his hand flat against the door, towering over her as she backed up hard against it in an attempt to put some space between them so that he wouldn’t feel the wild, nervous hammering of her heart.
In an attempt to avoid the magnetic pull of his body.
‘I so rarely encounter this level of entertainment before breakfast.’
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