welcome to everyone who walked into it.
Perhaps she should have taken hold of her courage and asked Katie outright if she expected this Silas to share her room, her bed. But then Katie’s room still only had the small single bed she had all through her teens.
That was no excuse, she told herself severely. The house had five bedrooms and two bathrooms. The room she had made up for Katie’s friend was the smallest of these, right next door to her own room. It had a tiny dormer window, and a polished wooden floor. It also had a large double bed. All the rooms apart from Katie’s and her own did, and she could hardly have moved out of her own room, not without causing Katie to make some comment.
So what would she do if Katie gaily announced that she would move into the spare-room with their guest for the duration of his visit? What would she do if this Silas chose to insist that Katie show her mother just how committed she was to him by sleeping with him?
Hazel had heard enough horror stories from other parents, other mothers confronted with just this sort of situation to feel more than mere apprehension. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to admit that her daughter was an adult, a woman. Of course she knew, of course she accepted … but it was one thing to accept that Katie was old enough to have a sexual relationship with someone, and quite another to be forced to witness that relationship, to be forced to have all her fears and anxieties revived right under her nose. It was bad enough worrying about Katie when she couldn’t see what she was doing …
If only they would arrive. Or, even better, if only they would ring and say they’d changed their minds. She was dreading meeting him, dreading it …
But for Katie’s sake she would have to pretend that she was happy for her. She would have to pretend that she liked him.
Stop it, she warned herself. He’s probably a very nice boy. He’s probably just as much in love as Katie is. He’s probably just as vulnerable, and he’s also probably got a mother somewhere dreading meeting Katie as much as I’m dreading meeting him.
SURELY they couldn’t be much longer? About four o’clock, Katie had said. Now it was almost five. Hazel’s stomach knotted and churned. What if there’d been an accident? History repeating itself—Katie dying as her father had died …
Once again she had to stop herself from allowing her imagination to run away with her.
She had prepared Katie’s favourite supper, including a pie made from their own Bramley apples. She had enough carefully stored to take her over Christmas and into the new year.
Secretly she had been looking forward to Christmas, to having Katie home, treasuring the thought of it like a child with an illicit hoard of sweets, because she knew that after this first term, after this first year, Katie would make her own friends and would naturally want to spend future holidays with them. So deep in her heart lurked the knowledge that this coming Christmas could be their last together. Now she wondered, shivering in the chill of the thought, if she would be expected to share Christmas with this Silas, or, even worse, if he would take Katie away from her completely, if the two of them would spend their Christmas somewhere alone, while she …
As she heard the sound of a car drawing up outside, her stomach muscles tensed and she froze, and then forced herself to walk as calmly as she could towards the front door.
As she passed the mirror hanging over the fireplace, she glanced surreptitiously into it. What would he see, this Silas, who threatened her peace of mind so much? She frowned at her own reflection, wondering if he would notice or even care that she and Katie shared the same heart-shaped face, and the same slightly almond-shaped eyes, but where hers were an uncertain, hesitant greeny-brown—hence her name—Katie’s were a brilliant laughing blue, just as her curls were mere brunette, where Katie’s were glossily and extravagantly black.
Katie’s colouring, like her height, came from her father, but they shared the same fine bone-structure, the same delicacy of wrist and ankle. One thing she did envy Katie, though, was her height. Hazel hated being so small, barely five feet two, and so slender with it that there were still occasions when people called at the house and found her dressed in jeans and a T-shirt working in the garden and, seeing her from the back, made the mistake of assuming that she was still a child.
Perhaps if she wore her hair in a different style, but it was so curly and untameable that there was little she could do with it other than to have it go its own wayward way.
The front door of the house was wooden and solid. She could see nothing through it as she unbolted and then opened it, but already in her mind’s eye she could see her daughter: laughing, exuberant, flinging herself into her arms, and almost knocking her over as she did so—only when she did open the door, there was no sign of Katie.
Instead a man was climbing out of the car parked on her drive, smiling slightly at her as he acknowledged her presence.
Disappointment mingled with relief. Whoever this man was, he could not be Katie’s precious Silas. He was too old, for one thing, closer to forty-five than twenty-five.
He was probably a stranger who had lost his way. Certainly he wasn’t anyone she knew she had ever met. Had she done so she would have been bound to remember him. He was far too attractive, far too male for any woman to be able to forget. Her heart gave a tiny unsteady thump as her brain acknowledged what her senses had already registered; namely that this stranger walking towards her was an extremely virile and masculine man, whose casual attire of well-worn jeans and soft denim shirt revealed a body packed hard with muscle and male strength.
Hazel could feel the most odd sensation burgeoning into life in the pit of her stomach. She wanted to wrap her arms tightly around herself as though doing so would control this strange, unnerving feeling.
‘Miss Partington?’ he queried, coming towards her.
His voice was deep and pleasant. The way he spoke her name made Hazel feel faintly dizzy. Her name. How had he known her name?
‘Er—yes. I’m afraid I don’t know …’
He was extending his hand towards her, so that she automatically reciprocated the gesture, her eyes registering the shock caused by the brief physical contact between them. What was the matter with her? She had shaken a man’s hand before, for heaven’s sake.
Feeling thoroughly flustered, she looked uncertainly at him.
‘I’m sorry. I haven’t introduced myself.’ He smiled at her. ‘I’m Silas Jardine. I dropped Katie off in the village. She said something about wanting to buy something. She told me not to wait, said she might be a little while, and told me to come and introduce myself. She said something about wanting to catch up on some gossip. It really is kind of you to put me up like this.’
Hazel wasn’t listening any longer. She was staring at him in shocked disbelief.
This man could not be Katie’s Silas. This man could not be Katie’s boyfriend. Boyfriend! This was no boy. Outrage mingled with her shock. How could he stand there, glibly carrying on a conversation with her, when all the time he must know how shocked she was, how stunned, how … yes, how disbelieving that he could …? That he could what? Love her daughter? She caught herself up on the thought. What was that feeling beginning, like a cold, sharp dagger in her middle? That wasn’t maternal protectiveness, was it? That was … That was …
It was nothing, she told herself quickly. It was nothing at all, and it certainly wasn’t an uncomfortable and impossible stab of something almost approaching betrayal.
Her smile had turned to a frown now, as her shock registered all too plainly on her face. She could almost feel him withdrawing from her, distancing himself from her with cool reserve. Panic clawed at her. This was a situation she simply could not deal with, did not know how to deal with. When she had envisaged Katie’s Silas, she had envisaged a younger man—a much younger man. This man was far too old for Katie. Far,