anyway it wasn’t me who cracked the number plate, and as for the petrol... Do you know how much petrol actually costs?’
‘I have a fair idea, yes,’ Jon agreed mildly, causing Jenny to remind them both firmly that they were straying off the subject.
‘Oh, you know, Mum... something with a bit of a legal flavour to it.’
In the end, having got no further help from either of her daughters, Jenny had opted for a huge, plain iced cake decorated in darker icing with the scales of Justice.
‘Mum,’ Joss demanded, throwing down his school bag before going straight to the fridge and opening the door.
‘Joss, supper will be ready in half an hour,’ Jenny reminded him firmly, adding, ‘and you’re late. Where have you been?’
‘Mum, you know you said I could take a friend to the party on Saturday?’ Joss reminded her, ignoring her question.
‘I did say that, yes,’ Jenny agreed cautiously, ‘but...’
As a special treat Jon had announced that he had booked a large suite at the Grosvenor so that the girls and Jenny could get changed without worrying about crumpling their dresses on the journey from home and so that they did not have to travel back again until the morning after the party. Now Jenny, who had been planning to make sure that Joss went up to bed well before the party ended, wondered if they were going to be called upon to provide accommodation for Joss’s friend, as well.
‘You know we’re all staying overnight at the Grosvenor, Joss?’ she warned her son, ‘and I don’t know if your friend—’
‘That’s all right. I...I’ve arranged to meet them there,’ Joss told her hurriedly.
‘Oh well, in that case,’ Jenny agreed, relieved. There were innumerable things she still had to do and typically Louise had suddenly started being difficult about the outfit she had decided to wear, claiming that she had never wanted a dress at all and that she would much rather have worn trousers.
‘Mum, about my friend...’ Joss began excitedly.
But Jenny shook her head and told him impatiently, ‘Not now, Joss, please. I’ve got a hundred and one things left to do and you really ought to go and make a start on your homework before supper.’
‘But, Mum,’ Joss protested.
‘Homework,’ Jenny commanded firmly, adding, ‘and while you’re upstairs you might remind Jack that he still hasn’t produced his sports kit and if he wants it clean for football practice tomorrow...’
‘I’ll tell him,’ Joss agreed, going through the kitchen and heading for the stairs and the large, comfortably furnished bedroom-cum-study he shared with his cousin Jack, who had been living with them since the break-up of his parents’ marriage and the disappearance of his father, David.
Jack’s mother, Tania, after a long period of rehabilitation at a special centre for the treatment of people with eating disorders, was now living with her parents on the South Coast. Not yet entirely recovered from the years of suffering from bulimia, she had asked Jenny and Jon if Jack, her son, could continue to live with them.
Jenny had been happy to agree. In the time that he had been with them, Jack had become almost another son, the blood tie between him and her own children very close; their fathers were twins and everyone, but most importantly Jack himself, felt that it was better for him to remain in his present stable and familiar surroundings than to be uprooted to move south to live with his mother and maternal grandparents.
Although only two years separated them in age, at twelve going on thirteen to Joss’s ten, Jack had already entered puberty whereas Joss had not. Both boys got on well together, but Jack was now virtually a teenager growing towards young manhood, whilst Joss in many ways was still a boy, and being male, neither of them was inclined to confide in the other. Since Jack was engrossed in reading a sports magazine when Joss walked into their shared bedroom, the younger boy saw no reason to tell him about his encounter with Bobbie or inform him of the fact that he had invited her to his sisters’ party.
Possessed of a sunny, happy temperament with little inclination to brood or go looking for trouble and a logical way of reasoning things, it simply hadn’t occurred to Joss that his parents might not view with equanimity the discovery that his ‘friend’ and their guest at the party was not another ten-year-old boy but, in fact, a twenty-six-year-old woman.
It had occurred to Bobbie, though, as she ruefully admitted during the course of her telephone call home, surreptitiously timed so that she could speak to her sister when no one else was about to overhear them.
‘It’s the perfect access to the family and right into the heart of it, Sam,’ Bobbie admitted a little reluctantly. ‘I couldn’t believe it when he introduced himself to me as Joss Crighton.’
‘And how old did you say this kid was?’ Samantha Miller demanded of her sister.
‘I’m not sure, somewhere around ten or maybe eleven. He’s a real cutie, huge brown eyes and thick hair.’
‘Sounds great,’ Samantha commented enthusiastically.
Bobbie laughed. ‘Oh, he is!’
‘And you say he’s asked you to his sisters’ eighteenth birthday party?’
‘Mmm...’
‘What else did you find out? Did you—’
‘No, not yet,’ Bobbie interrupted her sister quickly. ‘We were a bit public for me to cross-question him too deeply and we might have been overheard. I don’t want anyone getting suspicious of either of us.’
‘Cross-question, I like that,’ Samantha told her grimly.
‘How are things at home?’ Bobbie asked, her voice suddenly becoming slightly tense and anxious. ‘How is Mom?’
‘She doesn’t have a clue,’ Samantha assured her, ‘although even if I say so myself I am doing rather a good job of running interference for you. The first couple of days you were gone she was going crazy, asking me if I knew where you were, if there was some man... Poor Mom, she’s just so desperate to get at least one of us married off.’
‘What did you tell her?’ Bobbie asked.
‘I said you’d mentioned something about needing to get away now that you aren’t seeing Nat any more.’
‘Oh thanks. So now she’ll be thinking I’m suffering from a broken heart,’ Bobbie told her sister indignantly.
‘Having her thinking that is better than having her guess the truth. When is this party by the way? We don’t have a lot of time, not if...’
‘No, I know. It’s on Saturday, at the Grosvenor in Chester where, as good luck has it, I’m staying. It will be the perfect opportunity, not just for me to find out as much as I can from Joss, but also to study the family in general.’
‘Do you think you-know-who will be there?’ Samantha asked, her voice suddenly tensing and becoming brittle with hostility and anger.
‘I don’t know.’
‘When I think of what they’ve done, the unhappiness they’ve caused...’
‘I know, I know....’ Bobbie paused, then said, ‘Look, Sam, I’d better go. I’ll ring you after the party and tell you what I’ve managed to find out.’
She was just about to replace the receiver when she remembered something she had omitted to tell her sister.
‘I nearly forgot,’ she hastened to add. ‘You’ll never guess what...’ Laughing ruefully, she proceeded to tell Samanatha about Joss’s descriptions of, and revelations about, his Chester cousins.
‘What? Cousin Luke sounds like a real ape,’ came Samantha’s immediate and gutsy response, ‘the type that goes for cutesy, brain-dead little blonde bimbos he