Anna Abroad

5

Anna Abroad

    Anna’s eyes had long since gone fuzzy. The airport was huge, there were thousands of people here, and if she hadn't been so exhausted after the long flight she’d have been terrified. As it was she felt more stunned. Stunned but with terrified lurking somewhere at the back of her mind ready to spring out the minute she woke up a bit. True, the British Customs people had let her laptop through—she’d been afraid they’d confiscate it or erase everything on it or something. They’d been really suspicious because she’d come via South Africa, but surely most of the planes from Perth did, how else would you get to London from Perth? And they’d looked through everything in her bag, it had been really embarrassing, she should have chucked those old undies out, Carolyn had been right in saying she ought to buy new undies. Anna had stayed at a motel after she sold the flat—it was a nice motel and there was a nice lady there who said of course she didn’t need to make her own bed, that was what she was there for—and she’d rung Carolyn, who was one of Aunty Kate’s daughters (a lot younger than Anna but very bossy, just like Mum and Aunty Kate), because she was desperate to get someone reliable to look after the few bits and pieces of belongings she really wanted to keep. She’d sold the furniture, she’d hated it anyway. But there were all her books, the ones she’d had at Art School had cost a lot, no way would she want to get rid of them, and her pieces of pottery and the sculpture that Danny O’Connell had given her when she’d shared a flat with him, Kika Van Heusen, Jonno Kitchen, Bill Watkins, and Brenda Mollison when they were all students. It was a hideous piece, and there’d certainly been nothing between her and Danny, but it was a memento of the happiest days of Anna’s life, she’d hate to lose it. Carolyn had of course immediately got the address of the motel out of her and from then on had supervised everything. Funnily enough, though, she hadn't urged her not to go, in fact she’d been really keen on it and had kept her up to the mark when she’d started to lose her nerve. Well, she’d come to WA to get away from her frightful, bossy mother back in Adelaide, probably it was fellow-feeling.

    So here Anna was with her intact laptop and her one well-searched suitcase, in the middle of the vast reaches of Heathrow Airport, with her eyes gone all fuzzy. She didn’t even know Rosie, really: why had she been stupid enough to write her that letter? Rosie had written back a lovely letter saying that she must come and stay with them and of course they’d meet her at the airport, and giving her strings of phone numbers to call if by any unlikely chance something went wrong and they couldn’t meet her, and into the bargain both explaining how to use British public telephones and enclosing a phone card, wasn't that thoughtful? Unfortunately Anna was hopeless with electronic cards of any kind: they hated her and would never work for her. She’d always had to make a special trip when she wanted to get money out of the bank and every time she went in the person at the counter, it always seemed to be a different person, would tell her that she could use her card to do this. She’d given up trying to say: “But if no-one comes in what’ll happen to your job?” because they never listened.

    Rosie hadn't thoughtfully provided a photo of herself and her husband, possibly because she assumed that Anna knew what they both looked like—but she didn’t! She hadn't seen Rosie for  years. So she’d gone to Rosie’s film. It was a lovely film and you completely forgot that it was Rosie Marshall, a pretty hard case from Sydney, Australia, with a Ph.D. in sociology, and really believed that it was a much younger girl who was English and didn’t know much about men at all. And you couldn’t tell that the bits with the legs, walking or dancing, those bits, had been their cousin Dot, not Rosie. Though she didn’t think the tap dancing bits could have been Dot. Well, that had helped; now she knew what Rosie looked like. Though possibly she wouldn’t look so much like that in real life. She still didn’t have a clue what John looked like. She hadn’t liked to ask Carolyn, there would have been a fuss. And quite possibly Carolyn would have had to get a photo off Aunty May and she’d have told Aunty Kate—they were very different types but they seemed to tell each other everything—and then the fat would have been in the fire, because Aunty Kate would have rung her up and harangued her and probably told Mum what motel she was in, too!

    All Anna knew about Rosie’s husband was a really garbled report from Mum that he was twice Rosie’s age and old enough to know better, and she hoped to God he knew what he’d taken on. So was she for him or against him? Goodness only knew. Carolyn had mentioned that he was in the British Navy and now she came to think of it she thought that one of those letters from Aunty Allyson had mentioned that, too. But as her letters were always full of gossip about people Anna didn’t know, she usually couldn't make head or tail of them and in fact just skimmed them.

    Well, um, should she look for a dark navy uniform, or—or what? It was their summer, though: would they be in their summer uniforms? There were quite a lot of people visible in uniforms but these were those silly splodgy camouflage ones. Actually some of them didn't seem to be in the armed forces at all, because they were wearing silly tee-shirts or silly coloured baseball caps on backwards or the wrong sort of shoes…

    Some people were holding up signs, mostly very amateurish, with names on them. That lady there had a piece of cardboard that looked as if it had come off a New Zealand apple box, because there was some professional lettering on it, “Zealand Ap” as well as half a picture of a very stylised apple. Well, logically it must be an apple. As well, of course, as the lady’s message, which was “McInTosH”. Anna looked at her with some sympathy: lots of her fellow art students had gone into commercial art and those who had had to do sign-writing for shops by hand had reported sourly that lettering wasn’t as easy as you might think. You had to get close to get the detail right but when you did, you lost all sense of perspective.

    Uh—yeah! So should she be looking for a sign which said “Peregrine-White,” which was her legal name, the name on her birth certificate and passport, or maybe “Leach,” which was Mum’s maiden name that she’d gone back to, she’d been Professor Leach at work, and they’d all been called Leach at school, or—or what? Back when she’d been little, before Dad walked out on them, she could just remember being Anna White. Anna looked round helplessly, biting her lip, her eyes gone hopelessly fuzzy. Um… “Francis BROWNE.” Would he spot it? It was only on a sheet of paper, which kept bending. “O’MAllY.” The E had been left out and then popped in above the line, it was the writing-large-on-a-piece-of-cardboard thing again, wasn’t it? Um… “JOHN SMITH.” Help, how many John Smiths would there be at an enormous airport like this with planes coming in from all over the world? “Mj—” something. Probably an African name: the Black lady holding up that card was wearing a beautiful coloured winged turban and—it was hard to see in the crowd—Anna thought a matching dress. The man next to her was carrying the cutest little kiddie in a pink tracksuit: he must be the Dad! Um… “BESSIE J! HERE!” Well, yes, provided that Bessie was expecting to be met by a bunch of people that would use her first name—they looked like a mob of students. “MARCUS HUGHES”, giant letters, very professional-looking, he couldn’t miss that. “Halibut?” Wasn’t that a fish? Oh, no: “Haliburton”, very wavering, probably crayon, the red wasn’t such a good choice on that brown cardboard. “MISS ARCHER”: possibly a businesswoman, that one looked as if it was computer-printed. Um…

    “Peregrine-White!” Suddenly it leapt out at her. But it couldn’t possibly be for her: that looked like a professional driver holding the piece of paper, he had those mirror-lensed sunglasses and a proper uniform! Not khaki with camouflage splodges, no: black with brass buttons. Anna looked around frantically but no other travellers were hurrying up to the man.

    She approached timidly. “Um, ’scuse me, are you meeting an Anna Peregrine-White?”

    He looked at her without interest, not taking the sunnies off. “Mr Peregrine-White.”

    “Um, no!” she gulped.

    Suddenly the awful Mrs Babsie Jackson who’d been in the next seat to her all the way, and whom she’d assumed with huge relief she’d lost in the crowd, popped up by her elbow. “It is a very unusual name, Anna, dear. –I think you must be waiting for this lady,” she said very, very firmly to the driver.

    “Mr Peregrine-White,” he repeated a very bored voice.

    “Buh-Babsie”—it was very difficult to call a sixteen-stone woman of around sixty-five this—“it must just be a strange coincidence.”

    “Nonsense! What are your instructions?” she demanded.

    “Pick up a Mr Peregrine-White,” he said, sounding really narked, help! He waved the piece of paper in their direction and Babsie Jackson immediately snatched it off him. Oh, God!

    “Look,” she said grimly to Anna, “Peregrine hyphen White. It can’t be a coincidence, dear, it must be for you. –I suppose you do realise that Miss Peregrine-White is Lily Rose Rayne’s cousin?” she said very, very loudly.

    Let me just die now! thought Anna wildly, her cheeks burning.

    Suddenly the man took off the sunnies, revealing himself as just a tired-looking, pale, pudgy-faced person approaching middle age. “Really? Don’t suppose you could get me her autograph, could you?”

    “Cheek!” gasped Babsie.

    “No, um,” muttered Anna, “people always…” Babsie most certainly had. In fact Anna had the piece of paper with her name and permanent address in Geraldton on it in her purse as they spoke. She took a deep breath. Why should the awful Babsie be entitled and this man not? “Yes, of course I can get you her autograph. I’ll need your name and address.”

    His name was Frank Walsh and his address was something with strange numbers after it which he explained was a London address. And if his passenger didn’t turn up, he could give her a lift!

    Babsie was just volunteering herself to join the party when a male voice that was also English but very, very different from Frank Walsh’s said loudly and acidly: “Did that sign of yours say ‘Peregrine-White’, before it suddenly vanished?”

    And Anna and Babsie just faded quietly into the woodwork as the rightful addressee of Frank’s sign claimed Frank, ordered him to carry those two cases, and departed with him.

    “Help,” said Anna limply after quite some time.

    Babsie gave a loud sniff. “I suppose those were English manners!”

    “Well, yes, English or Royal, he sounded like Prince Charles,” said Anna dazedly.

    Babsie sniffed again. “Yes, and we all know what he is! I’m a republican, personally, dear,” she informed her.

    Anna’s jaw dropped. Her bet would have been a sideboard crammed with lovely plates covered in pictures of corgis and lovely mugs featuring every Royal wedding since commemoration mugs were invented. “Um, yuh—yes! Me, too!” she gasped.

    “No, well, people like that explain why they lost their Empire!” she said loudly, very flushed.

    Oh, Christ! thought Anna, staring hard at the grimy airport floor. “Mm.”

    “Don’t suppose he could have been a relative, could he, dear? I mean, it is a very unusual name.”

    “Yes, but the population of Britain’s about sixty or seventy million, isn’t it, Babsie? I think it must just have been a coincidence.”

    “He was too young to have been your father,” she admitted regretfully.

    “Mm.” The man had been perhaps fifty, and Anna would have taken a large bet that her annual salary would not have paid for the gear he was in. Certainly not if you included the watch that had peeped from under that immaculate shirt cuff as he pointed to the two heavy cases that poor Frank had to carry. Or the cuff-links.

    “A cousin?” she said brightly.

    “Um, I dunno, Babsie, because Mum would never talk about Dad or his family.”

    “Well, that’s understandable. My bet is,” she decided grimly, “that he was a relative, and it runs in the family!”

    “Mm.”

    Babsie had a trolley, one of the few people on their flight who had managed to grab one, but of course that was the sort of person she was. Keeping tight hold of it with one hand she took Anna’s arm firmly with the other and said cosily: “We’ll just wait for your relatives, dear. I expect they’ll be along soon. It is a crowd, isn’t it? Reminds me of that time me and Perce got caught at Tullamarine—”

    The evening before the Melbourne Cup—yeah, yeah. She’d already told Anna this story. The late Perce didn’t come out of it too well, in fact the word “useless” had been bandied about, before. Anna let it wash over her, meanwhile scanning the crowd. “Let—” Something. Leather? No, Leth—Lethbridge! She couldn’t read that other sign at all, but it could scarcely be for her, the man holding it was another driver…

    The thing was, if Rosie and John had come to meet her they’d never realise it was her ’cos now Babsie and her looked as if they were together! What could she do?

    “Um, Babsie, aren’t you missing your bus?” she croaked.

    “Don’t worry about that, dear, I’ll wait with you!”

    Oh, God, she wanted to meet Rosie, of course, how ghastly…

    Suddenly a pleasant tenor voice said: “I say, ’scuse me, but are you Anna Leach?”

    “Yes!” said Anna with huge relief, swinging round. Help! Who was he? He looked awfully familiar. Very fair hair, rather wavy on top and allowed to flop a bit over one eye, but very short at the sides, a brass-buttoned blazer, and very smooth, regular features. But he couldn’t be John, because she was almost sure, she couldn’t have said why, that this man was gay—and besides, she was positive she’d seen him before, and she’d never met Jo—

    “Rupert Maynarde!” gaped Babsie, turning puce with excitement. “I thought you were wonderful as Commander! And my late husband, bless him—though as a rule he hated dramas, too much dialogue, Babsie, he always used to say—he always watched it, because he adored your Noël Coward imitations!”

    “Oh, not at all,” said Rupert Maynarde with a brilliant smile.—Suddenly Anna realised it was the sort of smile that indicates the wearer doesn’t see the person talking at him at all, and she had to swallow hard.—“Care for an autograph, dear?”

    “Thank you so much, Mr Maynarde! Could you put—”

    Anna just watched numbly as he produced a very expensive-looking fountain pen from the breast pocket of his blazer—what was that thing embroidered on the pocket?—and wrote a dedication to Babsie’s dictation, adding his name with a flourish.

    “Lovely thing, isn’t it?” he said in a careless voice, noticing Anna looking at the pen. “Gold and agate. Writes like a pig, though.”

    “It writes like a pig,” said a deep voice with a laugh in it, “because it’s an unconsidered trifle of Derry Dawlish’s—terrifically broad nib—and if it wasn’t that Derry’s got pots and will never miss it, I’d have made him give it back by now!”—A tall, bald man in grey slacks and a blue knit short-sleeved shirt of the golfing variety was smiling warmly at Anna. “I think you must be Anna? I’m John Haworth.”

    “Yes!” gasped Anna, turning all colours of the rainbow. “Hullo, John. How did you know it was me?”

    “I spotted you from the other side of the concourse, Anna, dear,” said Rupert Maynarde smugly. “You’re very like May Marshall. Not as plump, of course,” he added with a smile.

    “Luh—like Aunty May?” she croaked. Nobody had ever told her that before!

    “Mm. The hair’s longer, of course,” he said, looking with unconcealed interest at her long, thick fair plait, “but the same shade as Rosie’s. Rosie couldn’t tell me, but is there Scandinavian blood in your family, dear?”

    “Yuh—yes!” she gulped, swamped by a feeling of complete unreality and incapable of wondering why he was interested. “Mum’s grandfather, our Grandma Leach’s father, he was Danish. A sailor. Mum thinks he jumped ship but Grandma would never admit it.”

    “I knew it!” he cried.

    “Rupy, you’re confusing Anna,” said John with his lovely smile. Heretofore Anna had believed that dimples were really yucky on a grown man, but there was nothing yucky about John Haworth’s dimples. “I rather think she doesn’t know who you are.”

    “Um, like Babsie said, Commander,” said Anna very, very faintly. “I thought you were very good in the film.”

    He beamed and opened his mouth, very possibly to offer her his autograph, but John said quickly: “Anna, this is Rupy Maynarde, our very good friend and co-tenant of our London flat.”

    “Lovely to meet you, Anna!” said Rupy with complete self-possession.

    “Um, yes,” said Anna lamely.

    “And who’s your friend?” asked John nicely.

    “She isn’t,” said Anna quickly. “I mean,” she gasped, going crimson, “we just met on the plane! This is Mrs Jackson, Babsie Jackson. This is my cousin Rosie’s husband, John Haworth, Babsie.”

    “Don’t tell me!” said Babsie with sickening coyness, holding her hand out and simpering at John. “You’re Lily Rose’s real captain! So lovely to meet you! And may one ask, is Lily Rose with you today?”

    “How do you do, Mrs Jackson? Rosie did come with us, but she’s lurking in the car, because we spotted a crowd of paparazzi at the entrance.”

    “Just as well, given the family likeness. You know,” said Rupy Maynarde, screwing his face up and looking very hard at Anna, “she could play the Daughter in later life as she stands.”

    Was it Anna’s imagination—well, she was feeling so groggy that she could be imagining anything—but did John really give him a warning look? “Yes, there is a strong family likeness,” he said calmly. “Now, let me take that case, Anna—and is that a laptop? Perhaps Rupy could be entrusted with it.”

    “But it’s not in a laptop bag!” he cried in tones of deepest disappointment, taking it off her before she could say he couldn’t.

    “Um, it was second-hand,” said Anna in a confused voice. “The new bags are too expensive.”

    “Yes, but Rupy doesn’t mean what you mean by laptop bag; he’s thinking of the carry-all Rosie uses,” said John, smiling and taking her elbow gently. “Lovely to meet you, Mrs Jackson. So sorry we can’t offer you a lift, but we’ve got the baby’s seat in the car.”

    And with that he coolly walked Anna away from Mrs Babsie Jackson forever.

    “Thanks, John,” she said limply.

    “My dear, it was a pleasure. Did she earbash you all the way from Perth?”

    “Mm. She—she got things out of me, too.”

    “That type does,” he agreed calmly.

    “Absolutely!” agreed Rupy, beaming. “John, dear, you’re wonderful!”

    “Thanks!” he said with a laugh.

    “All without telling an actual lie!” added Rupy rapturously. “Did you notice how he said we’ve got the baby’s seat in the car, Anna?”

    “Um, yes. Of course, you would have.”

    “No, but that’s it!” he cried. “The seat is technically in the car, but in the boot, Baby Bunting’s not with us, because Rosie thought we might have to wait around for hours! He’s back at the flats with Doris and dear Miss H.—our neighbours. Well, you’ve seen the film, Anna, dear: the originals of the great-aunties!”

    “Rupy, shut up,” said John calmly as Anna just looked blank and helpless. “Anna’s just off a plane from Perth: remember what you were like when we came back from Australia.”

    “Terribly sorry, Anna!” he said, grinning at her. “John’s right, of course: I was a walking zombie. And I draw a veil over the flight back after the premiere!”

    “You’ll get used to us,” said John with a smile, giving Anna’s elbow a little squeeze.

    “Um, yes,” said Anna limply, not at all sure she would. “Um, she wanted Rosie’s autograph, I’m afraid.”

    John gave Rupy a warning glance and agreed smoothly that of course she had, but Rosie wouldn’t mind, she was used to it.

    It was a fair walk from the exit to where they’d had to leave the car, but John Haworth didn’t make the mistake of leaving the stunned Anna Leach either by herself or in the company of Rupy Maynarde while he fetched it.

    They were within about ten yards of his old black Jag when his wife wound the window down and shouted: “You were ages!”

    John didn’t shout back, though he grinned to himself. He walked up to the car without haste and then said: “Bollocks. We found her in no time. Hop out, darling, you can go in the back with Anna.”

    Rosie got out, smiling at Anna. “Hi, Anna. You haven’t changed at all!”

    “No, um, haven’t I? Hi, Rosie,” said Anna numbly. Rosie wasn’t in a lovely frock like she’d worn in the film, and she certainly wasn’t in the sort of thing she’d worn last time Anna had seen her, when the Marshalls had come over and stayed with Mum one Christmas holidays. Rosie had been sixteen—young to be starting Year Twelve in the New Year. She had spent almost the entire holiday in a shocking-pink bikini-bra and a pair of really fringed faded denim shorts: excruciatingly tight and short. Aunty May hadn't seemed to mind but Mum had had a go at her. Rosie had replied calmly that the shorts weren’t nearly as revealing as the bikini bottom, but she’d wear that if her aunt preferred. And had apparently ignored the subsequent grim reproof completely. Well, she’d certainly looked as if she was ignoring it and she’d gone on wearing the rude shorts, so— But today she wasn’t in anything revealing, she was in baggy faded jeans. The pale oatmeal top was a ribbed knit, of the sort that goes saggy after only a few washings. This one looked as if it had had a lot of washings. It had long sleeves, but was very short, only just to the waist. It didn’t show her tummy-button like the girls’ jeans did this year, because hers came right up to the waist, with a proper waistband. Above that very hard to wear pale oatmeal Rosie’s glorious complexion simply glowed. Anna remembered now that she always had had lovely pink cheeks. The eyelashes were no longer weighed down by what Mum had characterised icily as “ten tons” of black mascara. In fact Anna was almost sure she wasn’t wearing any make-up at all. Maybe a lip-gloss, nothing more. The neat little ears featured pretty little pearl earrings in the shape of flowers, what Mum would have said about pearls with jeans Anna could imagine only too well. The footwear matched the earrings rather than the clothes: high-heeled pink sandals.

    “How was the trip?” she asked, smiling her warm smile.

    “Um, okay. Quite smooth, really. It feels so funny to be back in summer again,” said Anna in a confused voice.

    “She’s very zombied, dear,” explained Rupy quickly. “Look, she’s got a real laptop!” He held it up proudly.

    “Of course she has, ya nana, didn’t you hear one word I told you about her art?” returned Anna’s famous cousin rudely. “It’s for the digitised copies of her pictures. –Anna, will you be okay in the back? It’s not very far, we’re only going back to London.”

    “Um, yes. Isn’t this London?”

    “It’s what they call Heathrow,” said Rosie, opening the back door of the car. “One of the airports. It’s very spread-out. If you think you might be sick, you can go in the front.”

    “No, I don’t get car-sick,” said Anna dazedly.

    “Good. Hop in.”

    Anna got in. Rupy and Rosie then had a loud fight about who would tire Anna more by chattering at her if they went in the back with her, which John settled by pointing out that Rosie would be equally exhausting but slightly more comprehensible. Both of them seemed pleased with this remark: they both smirked and stuck their tongues out at him, and Rosie got into the back seat next to her.

    And John and Rupy got into the front and off they went.

    Suddenly Anna remembered she hadn't asked— “How’s the baby?” she said quickly.

    “Really good! He can say ‘Von-Von’ now: that’s Yvonne, you see, she’s his nanny, well, she used to be my Personal Dresser…”

    “You can stop burbling, darling, she’s asleep,” murmured John.

    “Will that stop her?” hissed Rupy, smiling. He twisted in the grip of his seatbelt, and nodded terrific approval at the sight of the sleeping Anna.

    “Go to sleep, too, Rosie,” suggested John.

    “I’m not sleepy, ya nana, I haven’t come halfway round the world on a ruddy plane!” she hissed.

    “Mm.”

    The car trundled on in the thick London traffic…

    “Out like a light!” hissed Rupy gleefully, having twisted once more. John nodded, smiling, his eyes on the road, and he hissed: “John, darling, what in God’s name is Anna doing here? Is it just a holiday? Or has she landed herself on you indefinitely?”

    John smiled. “Does it matter?”

    Rupy’s shrewd hazel eyes twinkled. He always had said—not to darling Rosie, of course—but certainly to Doris from the second floor—that the man was born to have a harem of them!

    Anna woke up in a strange, white-panelled room. The duna was very pretty, white with a pattern of little spring flowers, and the curtains matched. Oh! Of course, she was in Rosie’s and John’s flat, in England! She sat up slowly and looked about her. The bedroom furniture was really unusual. Not in itself but in what had been done to it. It looked as if it was probably just cheap pine or something of the sort, but the little chest of drawers had been painted blue and the head- and footboards of the bed matched. But the small dressing-table wasn’t blue, it was yellow, and the two shades picked up the blue and yellow in the duna and curtain pattern, wasn’t that lovely? And on the dressing-table in a tall glass vase sat a big bunch of cornflowers, mixed blue and white with a few pink ones! Anna smiled.

    Rather uncertainly she got out of bed, very glad she’d taken Carolyn’s advice and bought a dressing-gown, because in a strange lady and man’s house, never mind if she was your cousin— The shop hadn't had much choice: that was, there had been lots of dressing-gowns but they were all horrible, so Anna had just picked one she could afford. Bright turquoise quilted nylon, with a little nylon frill that tickled round the neck, a real horror. She buttoned it up carefully, put on the slippers that didn’t match—pink nylon scuffs, they’d been the cheapest the shop had—and sallied forth in quest of the bathroom.

    To the left there was only a bedroom, its door ajar. Very smart: oatmeal and black, it must be Rupy’s room. She turned right and went along the passage—the flat had a very strange layout, the passage had a right-angle turn in it. She went uncertainly past the front door, now to her right, and down the other half of the passage. Thank goodness! Right at the end a door was slightly open and she could see it was the bathroom. Thankfully she went in.

    It was an awfully old-fashioned bathroom, she reflected dazedly as she remembered, too late, that she should have brought her sponge-bag along. Unlike her lovely bedroom, it didn’t have anything that could have been called a colour scheme. Green lino: maybe vinyl wasn’t as common in Britain as it was at home? A big old-fashioned bath, with a baby’s bath, blue plastic, sitting in it, and one of those plastic holder things across it, holding a sponge, some shampoo bottles and a jumble of plastic toys, that was a lovely yellow duck! The basin was the heavy, pedestal sort, and the toilet was equally old-fashioned looking. The seat was pale green plastic, though: very modern, it looked new. The towels were a real mixture. Several smart dark navy ones, a pink one with hideous puce roses on it, and a couple of luxurious-looking oatmeal ones, she was pretty sure they’d be Rupy’s. Um, had Rosie given her a towel yesterday?  –Help, there were two bathmats on the side of the bath! One was dark navy and very thick and the other was cheap-looking, pale pink with a pattern of bright puce and, ugh, bright apricot roses. It had a sort of generic resemblance to the horrid pink towel but it didn’t match it, at all. Anna looked slowly from one to the other of the bathmats…

    Ooh! Someone had tapped on the door, was she hogging the bathr—No, a deep voice with a smile in it said: “The oatmeal towels are yours, Anna.”

    “I thought they were Rupy’s,” said Anna in a weak voice.

    “Yes, but he’s put them out for you. Fancy bacon for breakfast?”

    “Um, yes! Thanks, John!” she gasped.

    “Good,” said the voice. Anna waited for a moment, biting her lip, it was very strange to have a conversation with a cousin’s husband that you’d only met for the first time yesterday—if it had been yesterday, it might still be today—no, it must be yesterday, if he was making breakfast—while you were sitting on the toilet!

    But she did feel much happier knowing which towel she was supposed to use, so she got up, smiling, and flushed it. There were two soaps on the basin, both fairly new. After those bathmats, Anna would not have taken any sort of oath that one was Rupy’s and the other her cousins’. One was pale fawn and very creamy looking, an oval soap. Anna picked it up and sniffed it. Mm! Gorgeous! She wasn’t quite sure, but she thought there was a hint of sandalwood in it. The other cake of soap was pink: large and round, its top moulded into the shape of a flower. Anna had seen these soaps in the shops back home, they came wrapped in pink cellophane by themselves, or in gift-boxed sets with a matching pink washer and pink scent spray. “Lily Rose”. The quotes seemed to be part of the name, because they always appeared in the ads. The larger, more expensive sets had the matching bath powder. “Lily Rose” did smell of roses, it was a very pleasant smell, if not particularly subtle, but to Anna’s mind it was nothing like as nice as, say, Bronnley’s Rose Geranium soap and powder. She hesitated but finally did use the pink soap.

    There was now a smell of frying bacon in the passage. Anna went cautiously into the lounge-room. Ugh! Dark brown varnished panelling, like the passage. It was quite a large room, kind of L-shaped, with a big electric heater set into the wall to the far right and some shabby fawn sofas and easy chairs drawn up to it. Curtains were drawn back at the windows beyond the sitting area and you got a view of more apartment buildings, help. Over to the left was a large old dining table, dark brown varnish, very battered, with some place mats and cutlery set out neatly, and behind it against the left-hand wall a big old-fashioned brown sideboard. Beyond the table was an open door with a view of a very small kitchen and John standing at the stove in profile to her. He had a lovely straight back.

    “Hullo, John,” said Anna in a very small voice.

    He looked up and smiled.  “Hullo, Anna. It is tomorrow, in case you were wondering.”

    “Yes,” said Anna limply. “I was, actually.”

    “Rupy sends his apologies, he’s got an early meeting at Henny Penny Productions—the television studios.”

    “I see. That was nice of him.”

    “He is nice,” said John with a smile, carefully moving his bacon around in the pan.

    “Yes. Those towels are lovely!” offered Anna abruptly.

    “I’m glad you appreciate them. Rupy’s got exquisite taste.” He looked up and smiled. “It almost compensates for living with Rosie!”

    Anna swallowed, and smiled feebly. “Yeah.”

    “Notice the bathmats?” he said airily, turning the bacon.

    “Mm.” Suddenly she couldn’t stand it, she burst out: “Is the navy one yours?”

    “Of course. I had mountains of household linen down at the cottage, mostly bought for me by Mother or Fiona, my sister, so I brought some up here, simple-minded idiot that I am. But you see, this has always been Rosie’s territory, and in any case she hates the navy sets—it’s psychological, Anna, don’t ask why!” he said with a little laugh. “So when I put out a nice clean bathmat yesterday she immediately put out a rival!”

    “Yes,” said Anna, going saggy all over as she realised he thought it was funny.

    “And I had put out a navy towel for her but she put it back in the cupboard and got out that pink fright. She recognises it’s a fright, I might add.”

    “Yes,” said Anna in a very wobbly voice. “What about the soap?”

    “Well, the cosmetics firm gave Rosie cupboardsful of that ‘Lily Rose’ soap when Henny Penny Productions agreed to lend her name to the stuff, and according to her, buying soap until we’ve used it up is a wilful extravagance. So the minute we got up from the cottage a rival pink soap mysteriously appeared opposite that creamy one that Rupy and I like.” He looked at her, not quite smiling, his blue eyes twinkling, and suddenly Anna broke down in an awful fit of the giggles.

    He grinned, and went on carefully cooking the bacon.

    “Is Rosie still asleep?” she asked shyly, as John added sliced tomatoes to his pan.

    “Mm. Been doing too much, as usual,” he said with a grimace.

    Anna went very red. “I’m sorry! I shouldn’t have just—just landed myself on you!”

    “No, no, nothing to do with you; it’s the sociology. Her professor, Mark Rutherford, is a decent fellow, but he’s a typical keen Yank, can’t see that other people might have a life outside the sociology. And besides the monthly staff meetings he insists on, not to mention the written monthly progress reports that are beginning seriously to interrupt the research which is what the university is actually paying her for, he’s decided that she has to chair a session at a damned conference they’ve got coming up here in London in October. –The fellow who was going to be the chair dropped dead, I suppose one can’t blame him for that,” he noted drily. “She was slated to write a paper, but as the chair she’s supposed to know what everybody else is going to say, and keep them up to the mark if they haven’t got their papers in. Not to mention the damned meetings. The chap who dropped dead was an elderly, if very eminent scholar, and he seems to have done damn’ all about the conference. He wasn’t ill, it was a sudden heart attack, so there’s no excuse for him, really.”

    “No, um, they shouldn’t have asked a very old man to do it,” offered Anna feebly.

    “I entirely agree. And in my opinion they shouldn’t ask a young mother to do it, either.”

    “No, um, could she say No?” she said faintly.

    “She did say No, but Mark was desperate, and promised her anything if only she’d take it on. Anything but not having to turn up to the blasted monthly staff meetings,” he noted drily. “No, well, he’s let her off giving tutorials next term, that’ll give her a bit more time for her own stuff, and the threat to have her help edit the bloody proceedings of the thing has been withdrawn. I suppose it was a victory for our side, of sorts.”

    “Yes. She isn’t going to do any more TV stuff, is she?”

    “No, though unfortunately Brian Hendricks—the producer, the chap who owns Henny Penny productions—doesn’t seem to believe her. Though he will, I can promise you that.”

    “Mm,” she agreed, cringing, even though his tone had been entirely mild.

    “So,” he said cheerfully, dishing out bacon and tomatoes onto two plates, and whisking some toast that Anna hadn't even realised he was making out from under the grill, help! Wasn’t he efficient! “since Baby Bunting’s snoring like a little Piglet, I’m letting her sleep in!” He took the plates of bacon and toast through to the dining-table. “Grab the toast, will you, Anna?”

    Numbly Anna followed him with the toast.

    The breakfast was delicious, the toast very crisp and light.

    “Yes: the grill does marvellous toast,” he said with a smile to her admiring remark. “I usually make the toast when I’m here, Rose and Rupy are both terrified of the gas grill.”

    “Um, yes, they are frightening, I think,” said Anna timidly, since he hadn't said it in a criticising sort of voice at all, only an informative one.

    “An atavism,” he said, crinkling up those lovely blue eyes at her. “Fear of the naked flame.”

    “Um, yes! Mum always said I was just a coward,” said Anna numbly.

    “I always feel that one needs to stop and ask oneself what is the root cause of any sort of apparent cowardice, and then usually, one finds it can’t be categorised as such at all,” he said tranquilly.

    Anna’s jaw dropped. “In the Navy?”

    “Especially in the Navy. For years my job’s been managing men, you know. Though different circumstances demand different behaviour. I wouldn’t stop and ask a man what his problem was while the ship was being pounded to blazes.”

    “No,” said Anna, swallowing. “Um, what would you do?’

    She had meant afterwards, but he grinned at her and said: “Pound the bastards right back, Anna: that’s part of the job, too!”

    “Yes,” she said limply. “Of course. You are a—a fighting man.”.

    He smiled just a little, clenched one large but well-shaped hand into a fist and looked at it thoughtfully. “I used to be. Damn’ good way to get your brains scrambled.”

    “Um, yes! I see: boxing?”

    “Mm. Still spar a bit, but head-blows are out. Stupid sport, really,” he said dispassionately, spreading marg thinly on his toast. “More tomato?”

    “Yes, please, they’re lovely,” said Anna shyly.

    Suddenly he laughed, ooh, heck! Seated very near to him at the table—he was at the top end and he’d put her at his left, with her back to the room, rather than at his right, wedged between the table and the sideboard—it was quite overpowering. He was terrifically masculine, really, thought Anna dazedly, though most of the time the mild way he spoke sort of—sort of disguised it, really.

    “Yes!” he gasped. “From the market, not out of the garden, as yet!” Grinning, he told Anna about their veggie garden, planted up by him and Greg Singh, who was Rosie’s research assistant and also did jobbing gardening for the village, under the guidance of Jack Powell, their local plumber and handyman. And about Rosie’s loathing of cabbage and inability to recognise anything much that was green and leafy, and especially her inability to recognise a tomato vine…

    Anna didn’t get much of it, she was no gardener, and there were too many names in it she didn’t know and references to things she thought maybe only English gardens had—Swiss what? Was chard a word? This Jack Powell person seemed to have planted a whole bed of it, whatever it was, but he couldn’t be Swiss, with a name like that. But what she did get was that John was very proud of his veggie garden, and in spite of her inability or perhaps refusal to appreciate it, very, very proud of his wife and very much in love with her. And, in short, that John Haworth was a very, very nice man.

    The were doing the dishes together companionably in the tiny kitchen when suddenly a warm, panting presence leaned against Anna’s leg. She gave a shriek and dropped the plate she was drying.

    “Tim! Sit! What the Devil was that all about? You know better than that! –It’s all right, we’ve got seven spare dinner sets—wedding presents, Anna,” said John as she gasped out an apology. “This is Tim, and I apologise for him. He goes potty at the smell of bacon.”

    “He felt so heavy,” said Anna feebly.

    “He is heavy, the bugger. –Yes, sir, you ought to be ashamed of yourself!” he said, ruffling the big black dog’s ears. “He only favours us with the leaning bit when he thinks we need consoling, or it’s dinnertime and we’re standing next to the fridge, or when he smells B,A.C,O,N,” he said with a grin.

    “Is he allowed it?” asked Anna timidly.

    “No.”

    She swallowed hard.

    John’s eyes twinkled. “I don’t say he doesn’t get it occasionally, but he isn’t allowed it. Pat him, Anna, he won’t bite.”

    He looked as if he would: he had huge teeth, quite visible, because he had his mouth open, panting. Anna put her hand out very, very cautiously and patted his broad black back. Tim just panted and moved his huge tail a bit. “What sort of dog is he?”

    “Short-haired retriever.”

    Help, that served her right for asking. “Um—oh! I know: they were bred to bring back the things the hunters shot!”

    “Exactly, but on his form up to now, the hunters wouldn’t get a look in! –He has been fed this morning, he’s just greedy.”

    It seemed mean, the place was filled with the smell of bacon, though John had opened the small window over the sink. But he was their dog, not hers. Anna didn’t say anything.

    “Bacon?” said a loud, accusatory voice.

    “And tomatoes,” replied John meekly as Rosie appeared in a bright pink nylon quilted dressing-gown, yawning.

    “You’ve got an awful dressing-gown too!” gasped Anna in enormous relief. Too late, she clapped her hand over her mouth.

    Rosie merely replied cheerfully: “Yeah, we call the shade putrid pink. Mum chose it before I came to England. It’s good in the winters, mind you. The winters like now,” she said with an evil look at her husband. “Why’s that ruddy window open?”

    “I’ll close it,” he said meekly, closing it. “Want bacon and tomatoes, darling?”

    “Look, how do you expect me to keep my weight down if you keep offering me bacon? To say nothing of your cholesterol level!”

    “It’s a treat because it’s Anna’s first morning.

    Rosie winked at Anna. “Oh, well, that’s different! Yeah, I will, thanks. With thin toast?”

    “With thin toast,” he agreed calmly, putting the pieces of broken plate in the bin.

    “Come out of the kitchen, Anna,” said Rosie urgently, pulling at her turquoise sleeve, “he’s gonna light the fucking grill.”

    Gratefully Anna backed out of the tiny kitchen with her.

    John produced a match. He lit it. He turned something. He approached the match—

    Anna shut her eyes.

    Woomph!

    “Is he all right?” said Rosie.

    “All present and correct, ma’am!” he replied cheerfully.

    Anna opened her eyes. “Mm.”

    Cautiously Rosie opened one eye. “Yeah. Phew!” She opened both eyes and smiled. “I love the toast, but every time he lights the bloody thing my heart sort of—dunno. It feels like it kind of swells up.”

    “Yes. John was saying it’s an atavism,” agreed Anna.

    Rosie smiled. “Mm. Not into condemning people for things they can’t help. –Alone of his sex.”

    “Bullshit, darling,” he said calmly, trimming bacon. “No! Get down, you brute!”

    Anna gasped: the big black dog had put his paws on the bench and stood up on his hind legs!

    “I think you’ll have to shut him in the bathroom,” admitted Rosie.

    “That or give him bacon, y—”

    “WOOF!”

    “That does it,” he said, grabbing Tim by the collar and hauling him away without further ado. He was really hauling, Anna could see the big dog was resisting. She looked at Rosie in horror.

    “He’s really very good It’s just bacon that makes him forget all his acquired behaviour. Which is funny, isn’t it, ’cos it’s not a natural food at all.

    Anna nodded numbly. “He looks so strong.”

    “He is, the bugger. But John’s stronger. Not in the jaws, obviously,” she said tranquilly. “They quite often have a tug-of-war in the garden. –For fun,” she explained as Anna was still looking at her in horror.

    “Oh! –Yes,” she said limply.

    “John always wins, insofar as he drags Tim over to his side, but Tim never lets go, no matter how hard he pulls.”

    “Yes,” she said faintly, imagining it.

    “It took me a while to get used to Tim,” said Rosie comfortingly.

    Anna swallowed hard. “Mm.”

    “About twelve hours, as I recall it,” said John neutrally, coming back in. He went over to the sink and rinsed his hands. Good, thought Anna weakly. What Mum would have said on the subject of having a huge dog like that in a small city flat—! “Then she was encouraging him to get on beds.”

    “Is that where he was?” said Anna limply.

    “Mm? Oh, this morning! Yes, she’s got him into some very bad habits,” he said with a grin. “Going back to bed after one’s morning walk? Unheard of!”

    “It’s got something to do,” noted Rosie in a very airy voice, “with me and Tim being on our own for six months while he was at sea and Baby Bunting was on the way.”

    “And with him being spoilt rotten,” he noted.

    “Yeah,” agreed Rosie peacefully.

    Anna smiled a little. They weren’t about to have a row, after all. And John didn't mind that Rosie let his big black dog get on the bed.

    “Why not sit down again, Anna? I’m making enough coffee for us all,” he said mildly.

    Obediently Anna followed Rosie out to the dining table and sat.

    Fiona Kendall set down her teacup and leaned back in her chair with a little sigh. “That’s better! Why is going round the galleries always so exhausting?”

    “It’s all the standing, I think,” said Anna shyly. Rosie had had to go into the university today—it was Monday—and John had gone back to Portsmouth yesterday evening, and Rupy, though not appearing hopeful about it, had an audition later in the day. So they’d appointed John’s sister Fiona to look after her. Anna felt very strongly that it was that, and Fiona’s very kind but also very much in charge manner hadn’t done anything to change her mind.

    Fiona was very much a lady. She was tall and slim with short, ash-blonde, slightly wavy hair: a very casual look, but Anna was in no doubt she spent hours every week at the hairdresser’s. The clothes were also casual—slacks, simple blouse, waistcoat, in shades of greenish-khaki—but had probably cost what Anna had earned in three months at Golden Acres Secondary School. She was the sort of real English lady that made you realise that Aunty Kate, back home, was only a fake lady.

    The galleries they had gone round hadn’t been the ones that Anna was hoping to see, such as the National Gallery or the Tate, but the local little galleries in the district where Fiona and Norman Kendall lived, where Fiona was sure she’d be able to sell her paintings. The suburb had lots of street trees and large two-storeyed houses with lovely gardens. Fiona’s front garden had a huge old tree in it which its owner had first claimed was a lime tree and then, as Anna had said dazedly: “It doesn’t look like a citrus,” had corrected to “linden”. There was a big back garden, too, with a lovely velvety lawn and lots of flower beds: Norman was a very keen gardener. True, the man out there mowing as they sipped their tea amidst a collection of floral linen-covered sofas, indifferent watercolours, lovely old rugs and antique cabinets—late Georgian or William IV, mostly—was not Norman.

    Anna accepted another biscuit—they were delicious—wondering silently if Fiona had made them herself. Oops, no: she was telling her all about this wonderful little shop she’d found: the biscuits were Italian. Or possibly the shop was and they made them? It wasn’t at all clear.

    They’d just finished their afternoon tea and Fiona had unwrapped the charcoal sketch she'd bought and was wondering if Norman would notice if she replaced that horrible watercolour of a rowing boat with it—she’d already explained grimly that most of the watercolours had been done by Norman’s mother—when the phone rang. Fiona bounded up eagerly but excused herself very politely nonetheless. It was The Green Apple, ringing to say the two partners had now discussed Miss Leach’s pictures and were very keen to see her again and could she possibly come back this afternoon?

    “There!” she cried. “What did I tell you?”

    “Um, yes,” said Anna dazedly. “But the digital images don’t really give you an idea of textures.”

    “Never mind that, they want to see you again!” she cried. “Come along, my dear!”

    Numbly Anna got up, let herself be sent to the toilet, let herself be helped into her parka again, and let herself be driven to The Green Apple. The apple itself was huge, about two metres square, and disappointingly not a three-dimensional apple, but flat, like an inn sign. Not a Granny Smith, unfortunately, but a much darker shade. “Oh, now I remember,” she said as they entered to a view of white embossed oblongs, each featuring one dash of sail-shaped or cottage-roof-shaped or spire-shaped colour, against a background of very dark blue hessian walls.

    “Of course, my dear! They’re rather nice. I’ve bought one for Terence, for his next birthday: that flat of his is a disaster.”

    Anna now knew that Terence was John’s and Fiona’s younger brother; she nodded obediently. “Is it modern?”

    “Modern but disastrous!” said Fiona, laughing.

    And, the partner whom they’d met before shooting out of the little office at the back at that moment, they were whisked off to it.

    Anna did sort of remember the man, now: he was medium height with an interestingly pale brown skin, and rather slanted, very dark eyes. He now reminded her, shaking hands, that he was Jimmy Smith. It seemed a very English name for a person with those exotic looks. He was short and slim and wearing a lovely dark grey suit with a very pale green shirt, she’d seen a dress just that colour in one of the magazines Carolyn passed on to her: the magazine had called it peppermint, though personally Anna had only ever seen white peppermints. She’d liked it so much that she’d cut it out, carefully avoiding the dresses next to it, which were hideous, and stuck it in her colours scrapbook.

    She was still smiling dazedly at Jimmy Smith and his lovely shirt when there was a clatter of feet on the stairs of their open-plan gallery and his partner appeared. Ooh, she was a lady! Anna had unconsciously been expecting another man, she was pretty sure that Jimmy Smith was gay. The lady was quite young and her trouser-suit was even smarter than Jimmy’s, a very dark navy that looked good with her slim figure and pale skin, and Anna’s heart sank, because  what with the suit and the figure and the short, slicked-behind-the-ears, smart dark hair, she was the sort of lady that she, Anna, couldn’t talk to to save her life. Unlike Jimmy Smith she had very pale skin and very wide blue eyes. Which were sort of explained when he introduced her as Kate O’Meara because Anna knew quite a few people back home of Irish descent with just that colouring.

    “Cate with a C,” said Ms O’Meara, firmly, shaking hands.

    Ulp! Beg your pardon, Cate O’Meara, then!

    Briskly showing them to seats, Cate explained that they tended to look for stuff that was semi-representational but not too traditionalist. Anna nodded, the white oblongs with their careful splashes of colour had already told her that.

    Quickly Fiona said that she was sure Anna’s pictures were just what they were looking for! And prompted Anna to show them the pictures on her laptop.

    “Ye-es,” said Anna slowly, opening it. “The digital images don't give you much idea of the textures. And the colour isn’t bad but you have to sit facing it with the screen at the proper angle.”

    Briskly Cate outed with the proper attachments to plug it into their big screen, help!

    And so Anna’s pictures were projected onto the big screen…

    “That’s just like home!” cried Jimmy loudly as she showed the one that she’d called Open Window Number 5. The thing was, they were what Cate had said, semi-representational, except when you viewed the whole sequence, you realised, um, possibly you realised, that that hadn't been what she was on about. Or not only that. Anna looked at him uneasily. The picture looked as if it was about an open casement, with a view of a white wall under a blue sky and, in the foreground, a close-up spray of bright puce bougainvillaea. If you wanted to you could tell yourself it must have been in a jar on the windowsill but you couldn't see the jar.

    “I’m from Perth.”

    “I see! Western Australia! I’m from Cape Town!” he beamed.

    So that was what that accent was! “It’s bougainvillaea, do you have it, too?” said Anna cautiously.

    “Of course: it looks just like the view from my Granny’s back window!” he said with a laugh. “Any minute now Mary Lou is going to wander by that wall looking vague with a huge plastic basket of washing on her head! Our local laundress,” he explained.

    “I see,” said Anna politely.

    Jimmy’s slanted dark eyes twinkled just a little. “Is it a real wall?” he murmured.

    “No,” said Anna baldly.

    “Mm. So how did it start off?”

    “Well, there was a real wall, and a real window. If you just looked out it wasn’t like that, because the wall wasn’t very high, but one day I dropped a pencil and when I knelt down to get it, I saw those shapes. It was a very bright day. Um, we get those in Perth. But really the garden wall was pale grey like the walls of the flats and the bit round the window was turquoise, because the block had just been redone in Nineties Hid—”Anna broke off.

    “Nineties Hid?” asked Jimmy politely.

    “Nineties Hideous,” she said limply. “Only with the light behind it the window frame could have been any colour, really, or no colour. And I started trying out combinations all based on the same, um,”—she swallowed—“geometry, really, and, um—”

    “These are the result!” he said gaily. “Was the bougainvillaea real?”

    “It must have been,” objected Cate.

    “Yes, it was, but that was a different day. I took a lot of photos of it, because the way the light came through the, um, leaves—botanically they aren’t petals, only I’ve forgotten the word—um, the way the light came through them was very tricky.

    “Bracts,” said Cate briskly. “What about the brushes and pencils in the jar, in Number 3?”

    “Um, they were real,” said Anna faintly.

    ‘No, what were you trying to do?”

    “Harder shapes, more geometric, with, um, the lines broken up by the bristles and the sticky labels,” said Anna in a very small voice. “The pencils were from my collection and I keep them in order with… sticky labels.”

    “Mm. Show us the one with the greenish-turquoise shade in the window frame again.”

    Limply Anna showed them Open Window Number 2. It was the same window, the same wall, but this time the object in the foreground was a pale green succulent. More of a pale grey-green, really, with just a suggestion of blue in it. Its leaves formed an elaborate succession of rosettes.

    “Hah!” said Cate. She got up and came to stand over Anna. “How does this grab you, Jimmy?” Rapidly she switched from Open Window Number 2 to Open Window Number 5 and back again—and back—and again—

    “Would you call those fractionated triangles in the plants? To die for!” said Jimmy with a laugh.

    “Can we frame these as a diptych?” demanded Cate.

     What kind of triangles? Anna jumped. “Um, but they’re a whole set,” she said feebly.

    “Yes, but these two in particular—well, we could just put them side by side.”

    “James Allen’ll grab them and resell them in Bond Street for a fortune,” noted Jimmy sourly.

    “Only if some mug sells them to him in the first place, Jimmy!”

    “Yes. Sorry, Ms Leach—ancient history!” he said with a rueful grin. “Well, can you get them over here? We’d like first offer.”

    “Um, yes. They’re quite heavy,” said Anna in a bewildered voice. “Acrylic on board. They’re in my cousin’s garage.”

    “Anna, we can arrange shipping,” said Fiona quickly, patting her knee.

    “Um, yes. I can write to Carolyn…”

    “No, my dear, we’ll ring her. But I think we’d better ask Norman’s advice, first. –If Ms Leach is to go to the expense of shipping them over she’ll want a firm commitment from you,” she said to the gallery’s owners.

    “We might hate them once we see them in the flesh,” replied Jimmy on an airy note.

    “Well, that’s the risk you take,” said Fiona drily, getting up. “I think we can say in principle that Ms Leach would like to show here, though at this stage she won’t be committing herself to anything.” Anna was now staring at her in horror. “Come along, Anna, my dear.”

    “Um, they—they aren’t really representational,” she croaked.

    “No, thank God!” said Cate with a laugh. “Don’t look at me like that, Jimmy: they’d have to have turned green with mould for us to hate them!”

    “Yes, um, it doesn’t rain that much back home,” said Anna in a bewildered voice. “And Philip said the garage is very dry.”

    “Of course,” agreed Fiona smoothly. “That’s right, unplug that wire, my dear.”

    Limply Anna closed up her laptop.

    And, assuring the gallery owners that she would consult her husband about the business aspects and making sure they had her name and address as well as her telephone number, Fiona shepherded Anna briskly out of the Green Apple.

    “Aren’t we going to sign anything?” said Anna limply as they got into the car.

    “Not yet, my dear, but it’s very promising!” she said with an excited laugh. “To tell you the truth, at first I thought that Ms O’Meara loathed them.”

    “Um, no, I think she was just looking hard.”

    “Mm. Too hard?” said Fiona very thoughtfully indeed. “Just who is James Allen, I wonder?”

    “A man who bought up something from them and resold it for a lot of money,” explained Anna.

    “Resold it in Bond Street, my dear!” she said, patting her knee. “Well, we’ll see. I’ll speak to John, I think. But it might be as well not to commit yourself definitely to these people, Anna.”

    “I—I liked them,” said Anna uncertainly.

    Fiona blinked. “Well, yes, so did I. They seemed very genuine, I thought. Some of those gallery owners—well, I wouldn’t trust them as far as I could throw them. I know for a fact that the fellow in that frightful place two blocks down with the dusky pink windowsills tried to sell poor Diane Hanson-Blake a modern copy of a Japanese print for a fortune!”

    “There are modern Japanese print-makers who use the traditional styles and methods,” said Anna on a dubious note.

    Fiona started the car. “My dear, it was a copy of an Edo School print—a student copy, I think, possibly.”

    “Help. Couldn’t she see it wasn’t genuine from the paper?”

    “Well, personally I should think she could have seen it wasn’t genuine from the turquoise—in the old prints it’s faded to a terracotta shade,” said Fiona very drily indeed. “Fortunately she asked her son, Gerard, to come and look at it before she bought it, and that was that. He knows a lot about art, you see.”—Anna nodded obediently, though she couldn’t help thinking that you wouldn’t have to know a lot about art to see when a piece of paper wasn’t several hundred years old.—“But the frightful man just said he’d never claimed it was genuine, and caveat emptor!”

    “Ugh.”

    “Exactly! But those two didn’t strike me like that at all, and I do think they could do quite well for you. But there’s no denying it, this isn’t Bond Street!” said Fiona with a laugh, heading for home.

    “Um, no,” said Anna obediently.

    Rupy came into Rosie’s room that evening shaking his head. “It won’t do, Rosie. Fiona’s got the bit between her teeth, and not content with dragging poor Anna round all the galleries within a fifty-mile radius of Wimbledon, now she’s proposing taking her off to Bond Street!”

    “She’d be made if she could sell in B—”

    “Made and with a nervous breakdown?” he hissed crossly.

    She gulped. “Help. Do you think she’s that bad?”

    “Helplessly lost, would be my diagnosis, darling,” he said grimly. “Take her down to Bellingford. Lovely R&R. Tell you what, soon as I can get down we’ll have a lovely Jamaica! Hammocks and silly drinks and Greg’s yummy curries!”

    “Anyone that didn’t know our version of Jamaica might feel very lost at encountering that in rural Hampshire, Rupy!” she said with a smile.

    “Pooh. Ring John. Tell him to stop bloody Fiona in her tracks.”

    “Oh, shit. That bad?” She rang him.

    Rupy didn’t go away, he blatantly listened. “Will he stop her?”

    Rosie hung up with a sigh of relief. “Yes. First thing tomorrow.”

    “Good. –Oh; she’s ordered sheets and sheets of board, by the way, to be delivered here.”

    “Anna has?” she croaked.

    “No! Bloody Fiona!”

    “In that case they can wait until—if and until—Anna feels like painting again.”

    “Good.” He went over to the door. “Rosie, darling, once she’s got used to Bellingford, give her a cottage. She likes you and John, but I think she needs to be on her own.”

    “Um, well, Luke’s got Number 7 and Number 11’s gonna be for Colin... Maybe she could share the middle one with Georgia, just for the holidays—and Molly, when she comes down—but then it could be hers permanently, whaddaya think?”

    “Ideal!”

    “Righto. I’ll tell John to put a bit more furniture in, make it comfy for her. That it? Nighty-night, then.”

    “Nighty-night!” Rupy went out, smiling. He couldn’t have said precisely why, but he was absolutely sure that being left to do her own thing in her own time was exactly what Anna needed. He went to bed firmly concentrating on the healing properties of Bellingford, and trying not to wonder what the follow-up series to The Captain’s Daughter was going to be like—because he had a strong feeling it was going to be disastrous. Whether or not Derry Dawlish’s mad plan to direct it himself and star Georgia in it ever came off.