Читать книгу: «Loves Me, Loves Me Not», страница 2

The carriage lurched to a stop and he kissed her lightly before releasing her and moving to open the door.

‘Where are we?’ Amanda stammered, disconcerted to feel her lips tingle from the imprint of his.

‘At the King’s Head in Banbury. I will bespeak a room for the night.’

It was only when the groom was helping her down that Amanda realised he had said one room rather than two and prickles of excitement and apprehension raced through her. But when the landlady had shown them up the stairs to the spotlessly clean bedchamber, she found her husband as adamant on the subject of the room as he had been on the subject of the maid.

‘Two rooms?’ A dangerous light lurked in his eyes. ‘Out of the question, my love. Although this is a most respectable inn, I could not endanger either your life or your virtue by leaving you alone. You must sleep with me and then you will be quite safe.’

‘You must sleep in the chair,’ Amanda argued, panic building in her throat as Hugo slipped off his coat and loosened his neck cloth. He seemed so at ease, so confident, so thoroughly in control. It was making her nervous.

He laughed. ‘Have a heart, my sweet! I have lurched over bad roads all day on a wild goose chase. The least you can do is let me share your bed. I am your husband and it is perfectly respectable.’

It felt quite improper to Amanda, unaccustomed to such close proximity with her husband, but he pressed a glass into her hands and she did not argue. The wine had been warmed and it tasted strong and sweet. Amanda felt the colour bloom in her cheeks and delicious warmth spread through her. The knot of tension inside her started slowly to unravel.

The landlady brought a rich beef stew into their private parlour. Amanda was surprised to discover it tasty. She was yawning, which was unforgivably rude, but when she tried to apologise Hugo only laughed and filled her glass again. By the time the meal was over she was almost asleep and her elbow kept sliding off the table. Eventually Hugo scooped her up and carried her through to the bedchamber.

‘You seem to have been sweeping me off my feet all day,’ Amanda whispered, aware that she was now extremely cast away and that the room was spinning slowly. She looked up into his face and could see the shadow of every individual eyelash cast against the hard line of his cheek. She raised a hand and ran her fingers over his cheek, fascinated by the roughness of his stubble. His eyes closed and she saw a muscle tighten beneath her caress, but then he set her down and started to unfasten her gown with brisk, impersonal movements. She felt his fingers against the nape of her neck, then lower, down her back. The gown eased and she stepped out of it, feeling abruptly and overwhelmingly shy. Gently, he sat her on the bed and knelt to remove her shoes and to roll down her stockings. The candlelight was in his blue eyes, his expression intent and serious and Amanda’s stomach dropped with longing and a feeling she identified, with absolute amazement, as lust.

She must have made a small sound, for he looked up and their eyes locked for a long moment. There was a hard, bright light in his that made her feel quite faint and then—she was never sure how it happened and afterwards she did not care—he rolled her on the bed and his hands were in her hair and she was reaching for him with a fever that equalled his own. He kissed her as though he was starving and she kissed him back and her ribbons and laces were wrenched apart and his clothes were thrown on the floor and they came together exultantly, desperately, with love and lust and no thought for propriety until they lay panting and astonished in each other’s arms.

Afterwards, when she had slept for a little and they had made love again more slowly, Amanda smiled to see her three portmanteaux, packed with respectable night clothes, sitting superfluously in the corner of the room.

‘You promised that it would be perfectly proper for you to share my bed,’ she said, ‘but that was decidedly improper.’

She felt Hugo’s chest move as he laughed. ‘I cannot dispute that. Did you like it?’

‘Yes!’ There was a great deal to be said for bursting out of the restraints of propriety. ‘I cannot think why I did not do that before. It was so much more fun when I join in.’

Hugo laughed again. ‘For me, too.’ He shifted so that he could look at her. ‘I am sorry, Manda.’ His affectionate use of her pet name made her smile. ‘I knew that you had been brought up to believe that physical intimacy was to be tolerated rather than enjoyed and I did not make sufficient effort to persuade you to a different point of view.’ He ran a hand over her bare shoulder and she shivered. ‘I was disappointed that you did not seem to want me and so I withdrew from you when I should have talked.’

Amanda snuggled closer. ‘I am sorry, too, Hugo. I was young and foolish and I thought that to catch a husband was the end of the process rather than the beginning.’

Hugo smiled. ‘We have wasted a lot of time.’

‘Yes, but we can make up for it.’ She kissed him. ‘How far is it to Gretna Green?’

‘Too far,’ Hugo said. ‘Rather than trying to prevent my grandmother from marrying again, I would rather return home and invest the time in getting to know my own wife properly.’

Amanda smiled. ‘I would like that extremely.’ She rubbed her fingers gently over his chest. ‘I love you, Hugo. In that respect I am happy to follow my mama’s advice that it is quite appropriate to have an affectionate regard for one’s husband.’

‘I love you, too.’ Hugo rolled over to kiss her properly.

‘Manda,’ Hugo said, as the carriage rolled back through the gates of Marston Hall next day, ‘I have something to confess.’ He took a deep breath. ‘Grandmama has not gone to Gretna. She is marrying Mr Sampson at Bath Abbey on the twenty-third of this month. She would very much like us to be there. She left me a note yesterday, too.’

Amanda stared. ‘But if you knew that, why on earth did you let us set out for Gretna…?’ She stopped.

‘I am sorry,’ Hugo said, smiling so charmingly that Amanda’s indignation started to melt like ice in the sun. ‘If you re-read the note that Grandmama left you, you will see that she never mentioned Gretna at all. When you made that assumption—and when you appeared not indifferent to me—I was determined to take the opportunity to try to mend matters between us.’ He smiled. ‘I would have gone all the way to Scotland if I needed to, Manda. You are that important to me.’

Amanda started to laugh until the tears rolled down her face and her stomach ached with great gales of mirth that her mother would surely have thought most unbecoming. When the coach drew up on the gravel she grabbed Hugo’s hand and dragged him into the hall.

‘You owe me something for that deception,’ she whispered, standing on tiptoe to kiss him. His arms went about her.

‘Anything, my love.’

Then both of them became aware, somewhat belatedly, of the presence of Mrs Duke and Mrs Davy, who had evidently called only a few moments before and were studying their amorous embrace with horrified expressions.

‘Mrs Davy, Mrs Duke!’ Hugo said. ‘I do apologise. Is it visiting time? Alas, Amanda is exhausted from our travels and needs to lie down immediately. As do I.’

And he carried his wife up the sweep of the stair and closed the bedroom door very firmly behind them.

Speed Limit

Judy Astley

Judy Astley started writing in 1990, following several years of working as a dressmaker, illustrator, painter and parent. Her sixteen novels, the most recent of which are Laying the Ghost and Other People’s Husbands, are all published by Transworld/Black Swan. Judy’s specialist areas, based on many years of hectic personal experience, are domestic disharmony and family chaos with a good mix of love-and-passion and plenty of humour thrown in.

Judy has been a regular columnist on magazines and enjoys writing journalism pieces on just about any subject, usually from a fun viewpoint. She lives in London and Cornwall, loves plants, books, hot sunshine and rock music—all at once, preferably—and would happily claim that listening in to other people’s conversations is both a top hobby and an absolute career-necessity. Visit Judy’s website at www.judyastley.com

Speed Limit

X. Ex. At risk of getting a frostbitten bum, I sit on the low wall outside the town hall and look up at the brilliant blue winter sky where the vapour trails from a pair of aircraft have left a big white cross. It looks like a huge celestial kiss—a pair of in-love angels, perhaps? No, too fanciful, get real, Claire, I tell myself. It’s just a couple of distant planes criss-crossing the globe above us. I think—briefly—of the bliss of a kissed X contrasted with the pain implicit in the term ‘Ex’. Sad that these two sound so alike and yet…and yet. But it’s all right. I’m now safely over my own Ex—cheating rat—though maybe not quite ready to hurtle fullon into another relationship. So silly, so hasty, I gave that one a go way too soon, pretty much straight after the break-up. Lovely Max, set up for me by well-meaning friends who embraced the ‘get back on the horse’ philosophy, was a delight—we got on so well and it was obvious there was real romance-potential there…but, oh, please, not yet, I thought at the time, running scared. That suddenness of being ‘with’ someone again so quickly after the drawn-out end to a five-year marriage gave me an out-of-control rushed feeling, a certainty that I’d whizzed from the hurt of loss directly to risking it all happening again without pausing for breath. Good grief, I’d barely got used to losing custody of the wedding present toaster.

Several dates in, I didn’t at all like turning down Max’s out-of-the-blue offer of a weekend in Barcelona but I heard my newly discovered cautious side suggesting to him that we slow down, take some time out and just be friends for a while. Trouble is, everyone assumes there is an underlying message in that particular line, and it’s not a positive one. I liked Max a lot and he liked me—so he gave me what I’d asked for: space, solitude and time to think. Under other circs Max-and-me could have been…well, who knows? I certainly won’t know, not now, not with him—the ‘space’ drifted into weeks, now months. I suppose it was too much to hope, after I’d effectively dumped him—and, oh, how teenage that sounds!—that he’d be OK with the occasional no-strings drink and a bag of nuts at the pub when we could have been strolling down Las Ramblas in the Catalan sunshine and getting cosy over tapas and Rioja.

It’s a shame you can’t put potential lovers in a cupboard for a few months, then get them out when the previous livid emotional scars have thoroughly healed. He must have thought I was a completely hopeless case, wittering on about wanting to try being alone, needing to Get To Know Myself. All rubbish really. A few months on from that moment of Being Sensible and I can tell you that existing determinedly on your own is highly overrated. What’s so great about being in sole charge of the TV remote? Who needs quite that much spreading-out space in bed? And, as the song doesn’t actually go: if I don’t know myself by now…

‘Hurtling’, by the way, is the reason why I’m here, a bit early, waiting to join a half-day Speed Awareness class and learn how Not To Drive Too Fast. As an alternative to points on my licence it’s likely to be a few hours well-spent. I had no excuse: being caught on a speed camera doing thirty-five m.p.h. in a thirty limit was bang-to-rights, even if it was a deserted dual carriageway, late at night, running my fox-bitten cat to the emergency vet. Sorry—did I say no excuses? We’ve all got our stories.

It’s time to go in and I check in with the jolly-looking organiser in an anteroom full of sheepish-looking fellow law-breakers. Slightly nervously, we smile at each other; someone makes a quip about us being in detention like naughty schoolchildren, and our ‘teacher’ grimaces and mutters, ‘There’s always one…’ I sense he’s got a running bet with himself about how many minutes into the proceedings some wag would come up with that one.

But it is like being in class, and we all sit in rows at desks with a computer each. Apart from a scurrying latecomer who whooshes unseen into a seat at the back, we’re all quiet and concentrating. The first part of the session is all mouse-clicking—on the computer screen there is a video in which we’re ‘driving’ a car; we have to click when we feel too close to the car in front. Appropriately enough, I’m pretty sure I’m being too cautious here—I want to keep a good safe distance. Same with the speed test: I want to slow the virtual car right down. I smile to myself, thinking how like my life this is, these days. Having raced into a young marriage, the first of my group of mates to go for the full-scale meringue frock and multi-layered cake event, now look at me: avoiding a new closeness the moment it comes my way. Oh, well, no point brooding—right here, if I’m not careful, I’ll score nul points for being easily distracted.

We do hazard perception next. The video has me driving in a variety of scenarios, inner city through to country lanes. I clock the cyclist, the horse-rider, the schoolchildren, the skateboarder, an ambulance, some elderly ladies. Click, click, click goes my mouse but there doesn’t seem to be an option for ‘possible love interest’ lurking in those on-screen streets. Perhaps they aren’t such a hazard after all. Too late now anyway, I tell myself. I mean, I could call Max, obviously, or send him a cheery email, but what’s he going to assume this time? That I’m fickle and flighty? That I’m ditsy and dithering? And of course he won’t be free anyway—you don’t get many delightful, attractive, entertaining, unattached men like him to the pound—it would be his turn to back right off. Who wants to line themselves up for a definite ouch? If we’re talking risks and hazards here today, I think I’ll pass on that particular one.

We’ve had our talk on speed limits and been reminded about Highway Code points that a lot of us had forgotten about since our driving test days. I pick up my bag and coat and say goodbye and thanks to the class tutor.

‘Claire—I thought it was you!’ And there he is—the class latecomer was, oh, heavens…Max, almost as if I’d ‘thought’ him into existence. ‘I’m surprised to see you here, Ms Careful!’ he teases as we walk together towards the street door.

‘Oh, well, you know, I just took it a bit fast on a vet run one night. Emergency, but no excuse, I know!’ I explain, heart pounding, words tumbling madly. ‘What about you?’

‘Ah, it was by the roadworks up near the airport. I was on my way back from…’

‘Barcelona?’ I interrupt, too fast. I can’t understand this heartsink feeling inside. Did he go there with someone else? I’m shocked at how much the very idea hurts. We only went out together for a few months—what proprietary rights do I have over one flippant weekend suggestion? None at all, I tell myself firmly, trying not to picture him with a stunning blonde and a guidebook, discussing the finer points of Gaudi’s architecture.

‘Dropping my sister off at Terminal Five, actually!’ He laughs. ‘And if you feel like risking it with a criminal driver, could I offer you a lift home?’

I feel embarrassed, flustered—he’s laughing at me now, for the Barcelona comment. What a giveaway, what an idiot I am! Which part of careful/slow/risk-free was that particular little gaffe?

We collect his scarlet Toyota from the car park and he pulls out onto the main road.

‘Bearing in mind the class we just did, I’ll take it very, very slowly,’ Max assures me.

‘Good,’ I say. ‘Well within the speed limit, then.’

Are we talking about driving? Something tells me we’re not, entirely. I sense it’s not just me who’s trying not to laugh.

‘Absolutely,’ he replies. ‘And, if you’ve got time, I don’t suppose you fancy a spot of lunch?’

‘That,’ I tell him, ‘would be lovely. Where do you suggest?’

‘I know a lovely little bodega.’ He’s teasing me, smiling wickedly. ‘Perfect tapas, a delicate little Rioja…’

‘Sounds perfect—where is it? Is it local? It’s not…’

He laughs properly now, reading my daft, crazy thoughts.

I glance up through the windscreen—the X hasn’t quite faded from the sky. Or maybe it’s a new one—hard to tell. I could say that all across the planet the sky must be full of kisses, or I could go with superstition and decide it’s a Sign.

‘No, Claire, it’s not Barcelona! Just off the High Street is a bit more down-to-earth, I’m afraid. But who knows? One day.’

‘Yes, who knows?’ I say as his hand brushes against mine. ‘Maybe some day…’

Save the Last Dance for Me

Benita Brown

Benita Brown trained as an actress but after marriage and four children she switched to a writing career. At first she wrote for radio, then girls’ and teenage story papers such as Mandy, Judy, Jackie and Blue Jeans. She wrote her first contemporary romantic novel as Clare Benedict when the youngest of her children was poised to go to university. There were six more Clare Benedict novels before she changed genre and began to write under her own name. The Benita Brown novels are regional sagas and the first nine are set in Tyneside in the Victorian and Edwardian eras. One of these, Fortune’s Daughter, was long listed for the RNA Major Award. Her latest novel, The Starlet, moves forward in time to 1946. It is the story of Carol Marshall, a small town girl who wins a talent competition and begins a career in films. For more information about Benita and her novels visit www.benitabrown.com

Save the Last Dance for Me

When Laura and Raymond took to the floor other couples would stop dancing to watch. The girls’ expressions were wistful as they imagined themselves in Raymond’s arms. But the men had eyes only for Laura. They were totally enraptured.

She was lovely. Dark hair, blue eyes and as slim-waisted as Vivien Leigh in Gone With the Wind. I was the perfect foil for her—tall, with mousy hair, and pretty enough without being beautiful.

Laura and I had been friends ever since our first week at school when she had lost the shilling her mother had given her for the Penny Bank and I had given her sixpence of my own. I can’t remember if she ever repaid me but I wouldn’t have cared because I was thrilled to be the chosen friend of the most popular girl in the class.

Raymond and Bill had struck up a friendship when they had been posted to the RAF station to the north of the town near the lighthouse. Bill was from a farming family in Yorkshire but, the youngest of five sons, he wasn’t needed for the war effort. No one knew what Raymond’s job had been but it had got around that if it wasn’t for the war he’d have been in films. He was certainly good-looking enough; in his flying officer’s uniform he looked sensational.

That first night Laura had pretended not to notice them. She went on talking as if she wasn’t perfectly aware that they were coming towards us across the empty floor. Just as the music started Raymond coughed gently to attract Laura’s attention. She turned and looked up at him with those dark-fringed blue eyes. He didn’t speak. He simply held out his hand. When she took it he pulled her gently onto the dance floor.

Bill had been standing behind and he turned to watch them go. After a moment he looked at me and grinned. He asked me to dance and I accepted. I might have realised, even then, that I would not have been his first choice.

From that moment we were a foursome. Bill, tall, rangy and nice-enough looking with hair as mousy as my own, but nowhere near as handsome as Raymond with his dark hair and laughing grey eyes. The four of us went to the pictures together or for walks along the promenade, but most of all we went to the Roxy.

I was hurt that Laura didn’t tell me first. Surely she could have trusted me not to let the cat out of the bag? She and Raymond took to the floor that night with her left hand resting gracefully on his shoulder. But there was something different about it. First one, then another, and soon every one of the girls swirling by noticed the engagement ring. The band kept on playing but the dancing stopped and the girls gathered round to admire the sparkling diamond while the young men slapped Raymond on the back and called him a lucky devil.

There was already an air of exhilaration. The allies were advancing on Berlin and everyone was convinced that the war in Europe would soon be won. Down at the Roxy, the music seemed more upbeat, the dancers more animated, and all the talk was about what we would do when the war was over.

Laura didn’t want to wait. Her parents owned Seacrest, a small hotel on the seafront. Her father, Ted, said he was sure he could manage a respectable reception and her mother, Thelma, made a wedding dress from one of her old evening gowns. She also found something for me because, of course, I was going to be Laura’s bridesmaid.

But a couple of weeks before the wedding Bill came to see Laura. We were in the lounge of the Seacrest, where we often met before going to the Roxy. Bill bought the drinks and we sat with Laura between us on the banquette behind one of the tables.

‘Where’s Raymond?’ she said.

I saw Bill’s knuckles whiten as he clasped his glass. ‘Laura, I’m sorry…’

‘What is it?’ She sounded frightened.

‘Raymond didn’t make it home from the mission last night. I saw him go down somewhere over Holland.’

A shocked silence—and then Laura started to cry. It was Bill who held her until the storm of weeping subsided.

Raymond was posted missing, presumed dead. And over the next few weeks Laura’s grief turned to anger and her anger into a feverish urge to live life to the full.

‘Take my advice, Jeannie, eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die. And that’s from the Bible,’ she said when I tried to persuade her to live less hectically.

There were any number of young airmen who lived by the same principle, and who could blame them? They were risking their lives almost daily. They were good-natured, high-spirited and brave. And something about their uniforms made them positively glamorous. Many queued to dance with Laura, although none could match Raymond.

But Laura had forgotten what it was like to be without a man of her own. It was inevitable that she would eventually settle for one of them. And the lucky man just happened to be Bill.

I never found out what Laura did with Raymond’s ring, but the next time she got engaged I was the first to be told. She said that she knew I was fond of Bill and she’d thought it best to tell me herself so that I could be prepared before the announcement.

‘Kind of her!’ my mother said that night when I wept at the kitchen table. Dad shook his head and quietly retreated.

‘And she actually asked you to be her bridesmaid!’ my mother exclaimed. And then she surprised me. ‘Well, listen, our Jeannie, I hope you said that you’d be delighted.’

I stopped crying and looked up in astonishment.

‘You think I should?’

‘It might stop the tongues wagging.’

I knew what she meant. Everyone was wondering whether I would be heartbroken, angry, never speak to Laura again. My mother, wise as usual, thought the best way to prevent all speculation, whether spiteful or sympathetic, was for me to act as though I was pleased for Laura and I hadn’t really cared that much for Bill.

Tongues did wag, but about Laura, not me. There were many who thought she was marrying in indecent haste and that maybe she should have mourned a little longer for Raymond. But that sort of thing happened in those days. Blame the war.

Bill did the gentlemanly thing, by the way. I found him waiting for me outside work one day and he walked me home. He said, ‘I hope you understand. After all, we haven’t been more than good friends, have we? I’ll always be fond of you but, with Laura, it’s entirely different.’

So Laura and I wore the dresses her mother had made after all. When the bride and groom opened the dance everyone applauded, but then fell silent, remembering. Was it fanciful to imagine Raymond’s ghost following the bride and groom round the floor?

The war in Europe ended in May. VE Day was celebrated with street parties, a civic bonfire on the links and a gala night at the Roxy. There were tears of joy for those who had returned and sorrow for those who never would. And of course there were families who had to wait another three months before the war in the Far East ended.

Bill was one of the lucky ones who was demobbed quite soon and he took Laura to Australia where an uncle had a sheep farm. Bill didn’t think that raising sheep in the Antipodes could be very much different from raising sheep in the Yorkshire Dales.

Ever since she had left school Laura had helped her parents in the hotel. Ted and Thelma were upset, not only because their daughter was leaving to live at the other side of the world but because they had imagined that Bill and Laura would stay and take over the running of the hotel one day. But they wished them well.

Nothing much changed for me. I continued working in the shoe department of the Co-op, trying to make my window displays exciting with the never changing supplies of clogs—no coupons needed—and wedge-soled shoes.

The lads stationed at the air base began to leave and the town’s own servicemen started coming home. There were some tearful farewells and some worried reunions but nights at the Roxy went on pretty much as before, except there were fewer people in uniform.

The King, in his Christmas broadcast, spoke of the dark days we had lived through and of the joys of being together at last to share the things we found most precious. But also of those who would never return and how we would remember them with pride; how we must pray that these brave men and women had found everlasting peace. I found myself wondering what kind of peace Raymond had found.

It was spooky, really, how it happened. One night in January the band at the Roxy was playing the Dick Haymes hit Laura, a slow and smoochy number. My partner was Ron, the gangling lad from the bacon counter. The glitter ball was spilling its usual magic that softened faces and hinted at unspoken dreams.

Carried away, I found myself thinking of Laura, my beautiful friend, who had waltzed off with my beau, and yet she still had a place in my heart. For a moment I forgot my partner’s two left feet and his nervous grin. I was back in the days when Laura and Raymond had held us all spellbound with their dancing.

Then I became aware that some of the dancers had stopped and that they were all looking in the same direction, shocked.

Forgetting that I was supposed to let my partner lead, I steered him through the crowd until I could see. And then I gripped the poor lad’s arms so fiercely that he yelped with pain. Raymond was there.

Perfectly still, he stared into the crowd. As his gaze roamed over the couples he grew more and more agitated. The band had become aware that no one was dancing and had stopped playing. I pushed poor Ron rudely aside.

In the silence Raymond noticed me. ‘Where is she?’

I took his hand and I led him away from the dance floor and into the foyer.

When I collected my coat from Hilda, the cloakroom attendant I saw a battered suitcase resting on the counter.

‘It’s his,’ Hilda said, nodding towards Raymond, her eyes round with wonder. ‘Still a smashing-looking lad, isn’t he? Even in that awful-looking demob suit.’

I put on my coat, picked up Raymond’s suitcase and took his arm. I wasn’t sure what I was going to say and he must have sensed my confusion.

‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘I knew she wasn’t here. I suppose I just didn’t want to believe it.’

‘Where are you staying?’ I asked.

He shrugged. ‘I thought maybe Ted and Thelma would put me up at the Seacrest but they couldn’t show me the door quick enough.’ He smiled dejectedly. ‘I expect I’d better find somewhere for the night.’

‘That’s all right,’ I told him. ‘You’re coming home with me.’

My mother was in the kitchen, concentrating on the pan of milk heating for cocoa. She didn’t lift her eyes when she heard the back door open. ‘My, you’re home early.’

The silence must have alerted her for at last she turned. ‘Good God. Raymond.’

In that split second of inattention the milk rose in the pan and would have boiled over if I hadn’t rushed forward and lifted it from the heat.

‘Well, shut the door, then,’ my mother said. ‘You’ll want some supper.’

Raymond looked bemused but he sat at the kitchen table while my mother warmed up what was left of the soup we’d had earlier. Her eye fell on his suitcase.

‘You’d best go and make up the bed in the spare room,’ she told me. ‘Although I’d better warn you, lad,’ she said to Raymond, ‘it’s cold in there.’

This brought the first smile to Raymond’s face. ‘I think I can cope with that.’

I hurried upstairs to get clean sheets from the airing cupboard, all the while thinking of everything other than a cold bedroom that Raymond might have had to endure since I’d last seen him.

Down again, I found my father in the kitchen drinking his cocoa. We sat together, a comfortable gathering, although Raymond was quiet.

‘Well, then,’ my mother said when we had finished. ‘I’ll leave you to wash the dishes, our Jeannie. Don’t stay up too long, will you?’

Despite my mother’s instruction, we talked well into the early hours.

I think it was something to do with my mother’s matter-of-fact way of greeting him, but by now Raymond had thawed a little. ‘No one else survived the crash. By some fantastic fluke I was flung clear with hardly a scratch on me. I felt so guilty.’