the whole Lawford clan, and she was an outsider, after all.
But then the door opened and Penny Lawford was standing smiling at her, her brother Jeff jostling for a position behind her.
“Come on in, Darrell,” she exclaimed, stepping back on to Jeff’s foot and grimacing at his agonised protest. “We were beginning to wonder whether you were going to make it. Take your coat off. You’re soaked!”
Within minutes, Darrell was engulfed into the family circle, a glass of something strong and warming was pressed into her hand and she was thrust into the lounge which seemed to be overflowing with people.
Jeff limped after her, rubbing his ankle. “I’m glad you came, Darrell,” he said, and she knew he meant it.
“Did Susan and Frank get away without too much fuss?” she asked, trying not to be aware that there was no sign of either Matthew Lawford or his wife.
“Well, Matt’s taken them to Leeds,” Jeff explained, pulling the tab off a can of beer and raising it to his lips. “Mike and I managed to fill Frank’s pyjama legs full of confetti, but that was last night. I don’t think he would open the case to check on them this morning. He had quite a hangover after last night’s little celebration.” He grinned reminiscently.
“Oh, Jeff!” Darrell could well imagine Susan’s consternation if Frank pulled out his pyjamas and emptied their contents all over their bedroom floor in the hotel at Porto Cristo. “What a rotten thing to do!”
Jeff chuckled. “It’s expected. And our Susan was too fly to leave her cases lying around. She locked them up last night, do you know that? Slept with the key of the cupboard under her pillow!”
“Good for Susan!” Darrell sipped her drink and then gasped as the fiery spirit burned the back of her throat. “What is this?”
Jeff put his head on one side. “Well, it’s supposed to be punch – Dad’s style. I believe it’s a mixture of whisky, rum, brandy and vodka.”
“I don’t believe you.”
Jeff shrugged. “Please yourself. Knowing Dad, that’s likely to be a conservative estimate.”
Darrell smiled in answer to a greeting called to her across the room from Mrs. Lawford and took another sip of the fiery mixture. “Ugh!” She shivered. “I can’t drink this. It’s – horrible!”
Jeff raised his eyebrows mockingly. “Don’t let Dad hear you say that.”
“Why not? I’ve noticed that all he drinks is beer – like you.”
“Punch isn’t a man’s tipple.”
“And beer is, I suppose?”
Jeff nodded, finishing the can in his hand. “Come on, let’s dance.”
The Lawfords’ home was a rambling old terrace house which Mr. Lawford and his sons had converted by knocking down walls and putting in central heating. Consequently, the lounge now stretched from the front to the back of the property and was big enough to accommodate the rapidly expanding needs of the family. Tonight, a space had been cleared at the end for dancing, and several couples were already abandoning themselves to the beat music when Darrell allowed Jeff to propel her to join them. She had been glad to dispose of her drink on to a side table and determined not to be duped into drinking any more punch.
It was hot, and after a few minutes Darrell had to stop to take off her jacket and unfasten the top couple of buttons of her blouse. She had left her hair loose this evening, but now she wished she had at least brought an elastic band to lift it off her neck.
“Where’s Celine?” she managed to ask Jeff in one of the intervals between records, and he shrugged, glancing round indifferently.
“I don’t know,” he replied. “She wanted to go with Matt and the others, but there wasn’t room in the car and she wasn’t suited.”
“There wasn’t room in the car …?” Darrell looked confused. “Why? What sort of car was it?”
“Oh, it’s a big B.M.W.,” remarked Jeff enviously. “But all the kids wanted to go. You know. Evelyn’s two and our Jennifer’s Christine. They wanted to go out to the airport, so Matt said they could.”
“I see,” Darrell nodded.
“Anyway, they should have been back by now. They’d have been here already, but the flight was delayed an hour. One of those last-minute hitches. Hey – I made a pun! Did you notice that? A hitch for the hitched!”
He laughed and Penny and her boy-friend and one or two of the others who had been dancing came to see what was so funny. There was a lot of goodnatured chaffing going on and Darrell turned away, raising her arms to tug her fingers through her tangled hair. The effort tautened the material of her shirt across her breasts, although she was unaware of it, but as she stood there straightening her arms into a stretch she became aware of the group of young people just entering the lounge, and over their heads her eyes encountered the dark eyes of Matthew Lawford. There was a disturbing moment when he held her gaze, and then she turned abruptly away, catching Jeff’s arm and saying: “I thought you asked me to dance!”
The alarm rang insistently, and Darrell groaned and rolled over to switch it off. Seven o’clock! Who would choose to get up at such an unearthly hour? she thought impatiently, sliding out of bed before succumbing once more to the waves of drowsiness that were tugging at her consciousness. She spared a thought for Susan as she dressed, waking on the morning after her wedding night. Darrell decided wryly that whatever she might be doing at this moment, it would not entail swallowing a hasty breakfast and reporting for ward duty at eight a.m.
The hospital was only a ten-minute walk away from the flat, and this morning the sun was forcing its way through the low-hanging clouds as Darrell set off. Now that she was fully awake, she was glad she was going to work. The brisk routine of the hospital would give her little time to dwell on the disturbing aspects of the previous day’s events.
Not that anything particularly momentous had happened, she acknowledged. Her feelings were the result of an over-active imagination and Matthew Lawford had treated her no differently from any one of the other girls present at the reception. But for her there had been something – something in the way he looked at her, in the way he spoke to her, which, whether he intended it or not, and she was sure he didn’t, had disrupted her emotions to a disquieting extent.
She had told herself it was the wine, that she was un-accustomed to alcohol, but in fact she had not drunk a lot. Nevertheless, it had been a shattering experience to realise that in spite of always believing herself capable of controlling any situation, he had disconcerted her without any apparent effort on his part. It was galling. She felt like a schoolgirl with her first crush, and she despised herself for it. The more so because Matthew Lawford was not only way out of her sphere, but married as well. He might be Susan’s brother, he might be able to submerge his personality into his brothers’ mould when it suited him to do so – but basically he was different, and that, no doubt, was why Celine had married him.
Celine!
Darrell could not suppress a shiver when she recalled the
