all laughed, and although Sophie laughed too she felt a bit guilty, but somehow she couldn’t bring herself to tell them about her unexpected visitor that evening, nor the conversation she had had with him. She didn’t think anyone would believe her anyway. She wasn’t sure if she believed it herself.
Several busy nights brought her to Wednesday morning and the realisation that since she hadn’t seen the professor she hadn’t been able to refuse to go out with him. ‘I shall do so if and when he comes,’ she told Mabel, who went on cleaning her whiskers, quite unconcerned.
Sophie had had far too busy a night and she pottered rather grumpily around her room, not sure whether to have her bath first or a soothing cup of tea. She had neither. Miss Phipps, possibly scenting romance, climbed the stairs to tell her that she was wanted on the phone. ‘That nice gentleman,’ she giggled, ‘said I was to get you out of the bath if necessary.’ She caught Sophie’s fulminating eye and added hastily, ‘Just his little joke; gentlemen do like their little jokes…’
Sophie choked back a rude answer and went downstairs, closely followed by her landlady, who, although she went into her room, took care to leave the door slightly open.
‘Hello,’ said Sophie in her haughtiest voice.
‘As cross as two sticks,’ answered the professor’s placid voice. ‘I shall be with you in exactly ten minutes.’
He hung up before she could utter a word. She put the receiver back and the phone rang again and when she picked it up he said, ‘If you aren’t at the door I shall come up for you. Don’t worry, I’ll bring Miss Phipps with me as a chaperon.’
Sophie thumped down the receiver once more, ignored Miss Phipps’s inquisitive face peering round her door, and took herself back to her room. ‘I don’t want to go out,’ she told Mabel. ‘It’s the very last thing I want to do.’
All the same, she did things to her face and hair and put on her coat, assured Mabel that she wouldn’t be away for long, and went downstairs again with a minute to spare.
The professor was already there, exchanging small talk with Miss Phipps, who gave Sophie an awfully sickening roguish look and said something rather muddled about pretty girls not needing beauty sleep if there was something better to do. Sophie cast her a look of outrage and bade the professor a frosty good morning, leaving him to make his polite goodbyes to her landlady, before she was swept out into the chilly morning and into the Bentley’s welcoming warmth.
It was disconcerting when he remained silent, driving the car out of London on the A12 and, once clear of the straggling suburbs, turning off on to a side-road into the Essex countryside, presently turning off again on to an even smaller road, apparently leading to nowhere.
‘Feeling better?’ he asked her.
‘Yes,’ said Sophie, and added, ‘Thank you.’
‘Do you know this part of the world?’ His voice was quiet.
‘No, at least not the side-roads; it’s not as quick…’ She stopped just in time.
‘I suppose it’s quicker for you to turn off at Romford and go through Chipping Ongar?’
She turned to look at him, but he was gazing ahead, his profile calm.
‘How did you know where I live?’ She had been comfortably somnolent, but now she was wide awake.
‘I asked Peter Small; do you mind?’
‘Mind? I don’t know; I can’t think why you should want to know. Were you just being curious?’
‘No, no, I never give way to idle curiosity. Now if I’m right there’s a nice little pub in the next village—we might get coffee there.’
The pub was charming, clean and rather bare, with not a fruit machine in sight. There was a log fire smouldering in the vast stone fireplace, with an elderly dog stretched out before it, and the landlord, pleased to have custom before the noonday locals arrived, offered a plate of hot buttered toast to devour with the coffee.
Biting into her third slice, Sophie asked, ‘Why did you want to know?’ Mellowed by the toast and the coffee, she felt strangely friendly towards her companion.
‘I’m not sure if you would believe me if I told you. Shall I say that, despite a rather unsettled start, I feel that we might become friends?’
‘What would be the point? I mean, we don’t move in the same circles, do we? You live in Holland—don’t you?—and I live here. Besides, we don’t know anything about each other.’
‘Exactly. It behoves us to remedy that, does it not? You have nights off at the weekend? I’ll drive you home.’
‘Drive me home,’ repeated Sophie, parrot-fashion. ‘But what am I to say to Mother…?’
‘My dear girl, don’t tell me that you haven’t been taken home by any number of young men…’
‘Well, yes, but you’re different.’
‘Older?’ He smiled suddenly and she discovered that she liked him more than she had thought. ‘Confess that you feel better, Sophie; you need some male companionship—nothing serious, just a few pleasant hours from time to time. After all, as you said, I live in Holland.’
‘Are you married?’
He laughed gently. ‘No, Sophie—and you?’
She shook her head and smiled dazzlingly. ‘It would be nice to have a casual friend… I’m not sure how I feel. Do we know each other well enough for me to go to sleep on the way back?’
CHAPTER TWO
SO SOPHIE slept, her mouth slightly open, her head lolling on the professor’s shoulder, to be gently roused at Miss Phipps’s door, eased out of the car, still not wholly awake, and ushered into the house.
‘Thank you very much,’ said Sophie. ‘That was a very nice ride.’ She stared up at him, her eyes huge in her tired face.
‘Is ten o’clock too early for you on Saturday?’
‘No. Mabel has to come too…’
‘Of course. Sleep well, Sophie.’
He propelled her gently to the stairs and watched her climb them and was in turn watched by Miss Phipps through her half-open door. When he heard Sophie’s door shut he wished a slightly flustered Miss Phipps good morning and took himself off.
Sophie told herself that it was a change of scene which had made her feel so pleased with life. She woke up with the pleasant feeling that something nice had happened. True, the professor had made some rather strange remarks, and perhaps she had said rather more than she had intended, but her memory was a little hazy, for she had been very tired, and there was no use worrying about that now. It would be delightful to be driven home on Saturday…
Casualty was busy when she went on duty that evening, but there was nothing very serious and nothing at all in the accident room; she went to her midnight meal so punctually that various of her friends commented upon it.
‘What’s
