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‘And you’re serious about him?’
Taye felt her hackles rising. She had near enough had it with one Magnus Ashthorpe, and no way was she ready to discuss her love life with him, thank you very much! ‘I might be!’ she retorted, her fine blue eyes flashing.
Hard grey eyes looked hostilely back. Then at that moment the kettle snicked off. ‘Forget the drink!’ he ordered curtly, and, turning about, left her staring blankly after him. Just what had that been all about?
By morning, trying not to think of the longest three months of her life stretching out in front of her, Taye resolved once again to do her best to get some sort of amicability going. To that end, up early and in the kitchen before him, she overcame the thought that if he wanted a drink he could jolly well make it himself.
‘Coffee?’ she offered when he joined her, having only just made a fresh pot.
‘Thanks,’ he accepted. No smile, just a hard stare. And, as if taking up from where they had left it last night, ‘How long have you known Julian Junior?’ he questioned, not the smallest sign of humour in his expression.
Julian Junior! Taye’s decision to try and get some amicability going began to flounder. She could have mentioned that she and Julian worked at the same place, but did not feel inclined to do so. Though she did give herself top marks that she answered Magnus Ashthorpe at all. ‘Ages,’ she replied briefly—and received another of his hard-eyed looks. Resisting the temptation to slam his coffee down on the counter top next to him, Taye controlled her spurt of annoyance and informed him evenly, ‘I shall be away overnight. I’m—’
‘Julian Coombs?’ he barked before she could finish.
To the devil with him. This kitchen just was not big enough for the two of them. Carefully she placed his mug of coffee down near him. ‘Actually, no,’ she replied with hard-won control. ‘Not Julian. His name is Alden. He’s—’
But, making cutting her off mid-speech into an art form, Magnus Ashthorpe did it again. ‘Just how many lovers do you run at one and the same time?’ he snarled.
This time it was she who went without her drink. ‘That’s none of your business!’ she erupted hotly—and got out of there before she gave in to the temptation to hit him.
She was on Paddington railway station before she had cooled down sufficiently to be able to think of something other than the abrasive manner of her flat-share. Oh, why did he have to be the only one to reply to her advert? Just about anyone else would have been preferable.
Taye pushed thoughts of Magnus Ashthorpe out of her mind and took out her phone and rang her father. ‘Hello, it’s me, Taye,’ she said when he answered.
‘Hello, love. I was just thinking about you,’ he said, and she could hear the smile in his voice. ‘Any chance of you coming to see me some time soon? I—er—need to see you about—something.’
She felt pleased that her father wanted to see her, but was intrigued about the ‘something’ he needed to see her about. ‘As it happens, I’m on Paddington Station as we speak,’ she answered with a smile.
‘Great!’ he said enthusiastically. ‘I’ll pick you up in Leamington. Eleven o’clock?’
Her father was on the platform waiting for her when her train pulled in. And Taye, having searched and wondered and speculated all through the train journey to Royal Leamington Spa, was utterly flabbergasted when, not waiting until they arrived at his cottage, he revealed what that ‘something’ was.
Though she supposed she rather invited it when, as they got into his ramshackle car, she more or less straight away asked, ‘You needed to see me about something?’
‘If you hadn’t managed to come here, I was going to try to come to you.’ And, straight on the heels of that, after only the smallest hesitation, ‘I’ve met someone,’ he announced as in his ancient car they trundled out of town and towards a rural area.
‘You’ve met someone?’ Taye asked, not with him for the moment. Then, as it began to sink in, ‘A girl? I mean, a woman?’
‘Hilary’s forty-seven,’ Alden Trafford replied. ‘Do you mind, Taye?’
Taye was more winded than minding. ‘But…No,’ she said then. ‘Just give me a minute to…’ Her voice tailed away. She turned to give him a sideways look. He was fifty-one and, given that he was virtually penniless—her mother would see to that—quite an attractive man. ‘Er—is it serious?’ Taye asked, getting her head back together.
‘I’m going to ask your mother for a divorce,’ he replied, and Taye reckoned he could not get much more serious than that. Her mother would create blue murder!
‘Oh, dear,’ Taye murmured faintly.
‘I’m sorry, Taye. Unfortunately you’ll not be able to get through this without some of your mother’s bitterness spilling over onto you in some way. But you’re living away from home now, and it won’t be all that long before Hadleigh goes off to university. And, while I want to be fair to you both, I want to be fair to Hilary too.’
‘Of course. Don’t worry about us. Um—have you known—Hilary—long?’
‘Three years. But it’s only since New Year—we were both at a friend’s house—that things have—er—hmm—blossomed between us,’ he answered, with an embarrassed kind of cough. ‘Anyhow, I want to marry her, and your mother and I have been separated long enough now to make a divorce between us a quite simple procedure.’
Taye smiled; what else could she do? The divorce might be a simple formality, but the fall-out it engendered would not be.
‘Will I meet Hilary this weekend?’ she asked.
‘I rang her after your call. I asked her to pop round this afternoon and have a cup of tea with us.’
Taye took to Hilary within a very short time of meeting her. Hilary was a widow, worked as a schoolteacher, was short and a little on the plump side—and it was obvious from the way Alden Trafford’s face lit up when he saw her that this woman meant everything to him.
And, as Taye adjusted to this new state of affairs, she could only be glad for him. He had had it tough for long enough. Prior to him leaving their home he had worked in high finance. But, feeling stale in the work he had been doing, he had changed employers—but had not cared for some of their accounting procedures. When he had started asking pertinent questions he had found himself out of a job. He had been unable to find other work and, after a year during which his savings had dwindled, his wife had seemed to much prefer her room to his company—and then his father had died—and he had moved out.
When Taye returned to London early on Sunday evening it was not without a few worries gnawing away at her. That she had taken to Hilary Wyatt caused Taye to feel a little disloyal to her mother. But there was no denying that she and Hilary had liked each other. And, seeing how much Hilary meant to her father and soon realising that he wanted to spend as much time as he could with the woman he hoped to make his wife, Taye had invited her to stay on to dinner.
They were suited, her father and Hilary, but all hell was going to break loose when her mother heard about it. After thinking about it, Taye’s father had decided he would do his present wife the courtesy of telling her in person. In his view, though he considered he owed her very little, it did not seem right to let her find out via the auspices of his lawyer.
Taye let herself into the apartment she now shared with Magnus Ashthorpe, and saw he was speaking with someone on his mobile phone. ‘I’ll come over next week,’ he was saying warmly. ‘No, no.’ He was obviously answering something said on the other end.
Taye decided to take her overnight bag into her bedroom and so leave Magnus to finish his call in private—although for that matter he was quite capable of walking to his own bedroom and taking his phone with him.
Taye had reached her bedroom door when, ‘Leave it with me, Elspeth,’ she heard him say. ‘I’ll deal with it.’
So, Pen-Penny was out? Goodbye, Penelope—hello, Elspeth!
When she thought she had given him enough time to finish his call, though to be on the safe side Taye opened her bedroom door a crack and listened, she left her room. Soon, she suspicioned, when her mother knew about the divorce, there would be enough unpleasantness around without inviting more from anywhere else.
That being so, she decided to ignore the spat she’d had with Magnus yesterday morning. Pinning a pleasant look on her face, she popped her head around the sitting room door. ‘I’m making a pot of tea if you’re interested?’
‘Thanks,’ he accepted, and buried his head in his newspaper.
Waitress service! Now, now, don’t get cranky. She made the tea and took it through to the other room. He lowered his paper as she poured some tea and placed his down on the small table next to him.
‘Good weekend?’ she enquired, attempting to build bridges.
‘Average,’ he replied. ‘You?’
She thought about it. Yes, given that she had been a touch shaken by her father’s news, it had been a good weekend, a happy weekend. ‘Lovely,’ she replied, a smile in her eyes as she thought about it.
‘Hmph!’ Magnus grunted sourly, causing her to want to give up. The man was insufferable! ‘And does dear Julian know about dear Alden?’ he had the nerve to ask.
Does dear Penelope know about dear Elspeth? From somewhere Taye found a smile. ‘Well, they’ve never actually met,’ she replied, keeping her tone as pleasant as she could in the circumstances. ‘But Julian did very kindly offer to save me a train journey and drive me to meet him.’
‘My stars, there’s no end to your brass-necked—’
Taye, having roused him to anger—without any idea why—found tremendous delight in cutting in on what he was saying for a change. ‘Naturally I refused—’
Her delight was short lived. ‘Even you baulked at entertaining two lovers at one and the same time!’ He cut her off aggressively—and insultingly.
She’d had it with him! Oh, how she’d had it with him! ‘For your information,’ she hissed furiously, ‘Alden Trafford is my father!’ And, unable to bear being in the same room with this unbearable man any longer, she sprang up from her chair, tears of she knew not what—anger, hurt—spurting to her eyes. She made it as far as the sitting room door before he caught up with her, and with a hand on her left arm he halted her and turned her round to face him.
He looked down into her shining mutinous eyes. Taye looked belligerently back at him. ‘Oh, hell!’ he muttered, his hand dropping away from her.
‘If that was an apology, I don’t think much of it!’ she snapped, and, feeling better now that the threat of tears had subsided, ‘You’re an insulting, insufferable, diabolical pig!’ she laid into him. ‘And if it wasn’t for the fact that I’ve got your rent and that no one else has applied, I’d kick you out right now!’
He stared at her. And then he laughed. To her astonishment, he actually laughed! His lips parted, showing a superb set of teeth, and his head tilted back and he gave a short bark of laughter.
Rebelliously she continued to look hostilely at him. Then all at once she started to see the funny side of it too. She was five feet nine, and slender with it. He was well over six feet, broad-shouldered and with plenty of muscle. The idea of physically setting about kicking him out was laughable. ‘Well,’ she mumbled lamely, but could not control that, when she had been absolutely furious with him, she could not now stop her mouth from picking up at the corners.
‘Come and finish your tea,’ he persuaded, ‘and tell me all about your weekend.’
Persuaded was the right word. Because, when she was determined cats and dogs would sprout feathers before she would sit sipping tea with him again, she found she was returning with him to take the chair she had so rapidly bolted from.
Though to her mind, as he went and took the seat opposite, there was very little of her time spent with her father that she wanted to tell him about. The fact that her father wanted a divorce from her mother was something that had to be conveyed to her mother before it became general knowledge.
‘You had a lovely time, you said?’ Magnus prompted. ‘What did you do?’
‘Not very much. It was just lovely being with him, relaxing. You know, generally unwinding.’
‘Where do your parents live?’
Taye, a rather private person when she thought about it, could see no harm in him knowing a little of her family. ‘My mother lives on the outskirts of Hertfordshire, my father in Warwickshire.’
‘Your parents are divorced?’
Not yet! ‘Separated,’ she supplied, and, feeling she was being ever so slightly grilled here, was about to ask him about his parents when he picked up from that one word that matters were far from amicable with her parents.
‘And never the twain shall meet?’
‘Something like that,’ she murmured. But, to her astonishment, heard herself confiding, ‘Though I think my father intends to call on my mother fairly soon.’
‘He wants a reconciliation?’
Like blazes! Her parents may have been close at one time, but they were poles apart now, and both liking it that way. Taye shook her head, her lips sealed. ‘How about your parents?’
Abruptly any sign of good humour left him. ‘What about them?’ he asked shortly.
And she was just a little bit fed up with Mr Blow Hot, Blow Cold Magnus Ashthorpe. Though tenacious if nothing else, and always believing that fair was fair and she had after all told him about her parents, ‘Are they still married?’ she asked. ‘I take it they were married?’ she asked sweetly.
He didn’t think that funny, she observed, as a sudden glint came into his eyes. ‘My father was killed in an accident when I was fifteen.’
‘I’m sorry.’ The apology had come instinctively. ‘Have you any brothers or sisters?’ she enquired gently—and wondered as his expression hardened what she had done now.
‘That’s none of your business!’ he retorted bluntly.
Taye stood up and this time he did nothing to prevent her from leaving. ‘I made the tea,’ she said pointedly. ‘It wouldn’t hurt you to wash the cups and saucers.’ With that she put her nose in the air and stormed out. It wasn’t a brilliant exit line, but it was the best she could think of on the spur of the moment.
Thankfully she saw little of him the next day. And on Tuesday she woke up and made herself think not long now before she got rid of him. From where she was viewing it, though, July and August, not to mention September, were going to stretch out endlessly.
She worked late on Wednesday, but found, Magnus home before her, that there was a mild thawing of hostilities in that, making tea for himself, he actually offered her a cup. ‘Good day at work?’ he enquired when, choosing to drink her tea in the kitchen, she pulled out a chair and he followed suit.
‘Not bad,’ she answered, not trusting him—he was as changeable as the wind.
‘Where do you work?’ he wanted to know. He had been living under the same roof for a week and only now he wanted to make overtures of friendship? He could take a running jump.
‘Julian Coombs Comestibles,’ she answered briefly.
‘Which is where you met Julian Coombs Junior?’
Again Taye had an uncanny feeling that she was being given the third degree. But she’d had some of this merchant before, with his draw-her-out tactics and then, when she started asking questions in return, slapping her down.
‘True,’ she answered warily.
‘How long have you been going out with him?’ Magnus asked crisply.
She expected the big freeze any moment now. ‘Long enough,’ she replied.
He let that pass, but, ‘What do you do there—at Coombs Comestibles?’ he wanted to know.
He could not possibly be interested. But, perhaps he wanted to build a few bridges this time. She gave him the benefit of the doubt. ‘I work for the Finance Director,’ she conceded a little.
‘You’re an accountant?’
She shook her head. ‘I don’t have any qualifications. I just sort of seem to have a head that’s happy absorbing numbers,’ she answered modestly, aware that she was quite well thought of at Julian Coombs Comestibles. ‘I seem to have inherited my father’s aptitude for figure work,’ she expanded, then decided, for all Magnus Ashthorpe appeared to look interested, that she had said quite sufficient.
‘Your father’s a mathematician?’
‘He did at one time work in the upper echelons of complicated calculations, but he’s a farm hand now,’ she replied. ‘Though he still keeps his hand in with accountancy,’ she added, and explained, ‘Only last weekend he was saying how he’d taken a look at his employer’s figure-work to help out, and now seems to be doing more paperwork than anything else.’
‘And he’s happy with that?’
Taye thought back to last weekend. She had never seen him look more contented. ‘Oh, yes,’ she said. But, getting to her feet, ‘And now I’d better dash. Julian’s picking me up in half an hour.’
She looked at Magnus, mentally daring him to make some snide remark about her ‘lover’. And it was true, he did look as though he was about to lob some acid remark her way.
She braced herself. But when it came, it was a dry, ‘I’ll see to the cups and saucers, then, shall I?’
Taye left him, only just holding down a laugh. She reached her room and discovered she was smiling anyway. What was it about the man? Never, ever had she come across such a one. He could make her angry, furious, bring her to the brink of tears and, in a split second, he could make her want to laugh.
What it was she could not tell, and in the end she gave up trying to puzzle it out and started to get ready to go for a light meal with Julian. There was a new pizza parlour he had heard of and thought they might like to give it a try.
Taye left her office at the end of her working week knowing that she should go to Pemberton and see her brother and mother. The thing was, though, that she had an idea that her father was planning to make the trip to Pemberton this weekend. And, on balance, Taye thought she would not be doing her father any favours by being there. She knew in advance that he was in for an uncomfortable time, and such was his sensitivity he would by far prefer that she was not around as a witness.
Which meant, of course, that she would really have to make that visit the following weekend. It would not be a very pleasant weekend; she knew that in advance too. All she could hope was that in the days between her father’s visit and her own her mother would have had time to cool down.
Magnus was first home. It was the greyish sort of day that sometimes happened in June. Taye suspected the light in his attic studio must have defeated him. Artists needed plenty of good light—didn’t they?
He was in the shower. She saw no harm in making them both a cup of tea while she waited. She dropped her bag and bits of shopping down and had just set the kettle to boil when a phone rang. It was not her phone. She looked about and saw Magnus’s phone on one of the work surfaces. She went over and looked down at it. ‘Elspeth’ she read, and as Taye saw it she had two—no, three choices. She could take the phone to the bathroom to him. No, thank you. She could ignore it. Or she could answer it. Oh, he’d just love that wouldn’t he? Her having a cosy chat with his girlfriend!
Taye chose the middle option and ignored it, and, changing her mind about tea, went to get out of her office clothes. Wearing a light satin kimono, her father’s Christmas gift, she got out the trousers and top she intended to wear for her date with Julian that night. She pinned her hair up so it shouldn’t get soaked in the shower, and then heard the bathroom door open.
Believing she had given Magnus time to get clear, she left her room—and met him, robe clad. His hair was pushed back, damp and black, and she glanced down and found she was thinking what nice legs he had. Then all at once she was so tongue-tied by the idiocy of that thought that she could not think to say good evening. She switched her gaze abruptly upwards. Magnus was not saying anything either, but seemed taken by her white-blonde hair all bundled up any old how on top of her head.
Then his faintly amused grey eyes had transferred to her blue eyes, and, not liking to be an object of fun, Taye found her voice and blurted out, ‘Elspeth rang.’
My word, had she said the wrong thing! On the instant his expression darkened. ‘You spoke to her?’ he grated, outraged in a moment. ‘You answered my phone!’ he snarled. ‘You—’
Taye was not far behind when it came to instant fury. ‘Would I dare?’ She cut through what he was about to say. ‘It lit up!’ she hurled at him. ‘And I can read!’
With that, she pushed past him and went fuming into the bathroom. My heavens, what a man! He was a monster! Thank goodness she had a whole three months in which to take her time and find herself a more congenial flat-mate. Oh, she could hardly wait to give Magnus Ashthorpe his marching orders!
Taye fastened her thoughts on that and started to feel better suddenly—she did so look forward to telling him goodbye. In fact she had never looked forward to anything so much. Oh, what pleasure, oh what joy. She did not know how she would be able to wait to wish him good riddance as she slammed the door shut after him!
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