Page 102 of The Christmas Invitation
‘Didn’t Clara tell you? The last job simply didn’t work out because the husband couldn’t keep away from me, no matter what I said, and his wife was getting jealous. I handed in my notice and came home.’
‘She did mention it the other day but I’d forgotten,’ he said tactlessly. ‘Sorry about the job.’
‘Oh, well, at least it means we can see each other over the holidays, while I look for another post. I’vesomissed you, Mark.’
She cast him a special, intimate smile and there was an unmistakable intensity in her voice.
Mark began to look slightly hounded, though I remembered hearing he’d gone out with Flora on a previous visit. It looked like she wanted to take up where they’d left off.
‘I’ll be really busy working on the renovations, right over Christmas,’ he said quickly.
‘So I’ve heard, and I’m justdyingto see what you’ve been up to,’ she said, undeterred. ‘I could help you while I’m here, if you like?’
Mark was now looking increasingly uncomfortable and kept glancing at me, though Flora was still pretending I didn’t exist.
Lex was impervious to her tactics, though, and introduced me. ‘Meg, this is Teddy’s former nanny, Flora Johnson. Flora, Meg Harkness.’
She turned reluctantly. ‘Oh, yes, the portrait painter. I know all about you, because I’ve brought someone with me that you knowverywell.’
A horrible suspicion was already forming in my mind when, with a certain Parting of the Red Sea effect, she pointed and a path to the fire opened up, revealing, huddled in a chair, a familiar but unwelcome figure.
‘It’s someoneIrecognize too,’ Lex said. ‘Rollo Purvis.’
‘Oh?’ she sounded surprised. ‘He’s Meg’s boyfriend.’
‘No, he’s not!’ I snapped. ‘He’s not even a friend any more, just someone trying to use the fact that he knows me to meet Henry.’
‘He said you’d been cold-shouldering him since you came up here to paint Clara, so he thought you might have found someone else.’
Her limpid gaze looked me over, battered and dishevelled, then her eyebrows rose and she looked from Lex to Mark, as if inviting them both to find this idea as ludicrous as she did.
‘Rollo only wanted to see you,’ she said. ‘So he thought he’d take you by surprise.’
‘I’m certainly surprised he was stupid enough to drive over the Pennines in the middle of winter in his soft-top sports car,’ I said tartly.
‘He stayed at the Pike with Two Heads last night, but his car wouldn’t start this morning and the garage have taken it away,’ she said. ‘That’s why I offered him a lift over.’
‘I hope you’ll give him a lift back, too, and soon,’ I told her. Then I marched up the room to Rollo and paraphrased my favourite film quote.
‘Of all the ancient manorial halls in all the world, you had to choose this one?’
‘Casablanca,’ said Clara, who was standing by the fire with one booted foot resting on the fender. ‘Flora picked him up at the pub, Meg, and brought him back with her. She’s offered to put him up for the night.’
‘I just heard about your car, Rollo. You were an imbecile to drive over the Pennines in it. Didn’t you listen to the weather reports?’
The others had followed me and Flora said, ‘It was lucky I’d stopped in Thorstane on my way home, to buy some supplies, and then decided to have lunch at the pub. Poor Rollo’s car was just being towed away by the garage when I got there.’
‘It was late by the time I got to this Thorstane place yesterday, so when I saw the pub had a motel sign, I checked in,’ said Rollo.
‘We got talking,’ said Flora, ‘and of course, as soon as I knew where he was heading, I offered him a lift.’
‘Of course you did, dear,’ said Clara, ironically.
‘The journey from York took mehourslonger than I expected,’ said Rollo, looking at me as if expecting sympathy. Getting no response, he added peevishly, ‘If you ever checked your phone, Meg, you’d have known I’d had the journey from hell and you’d have driven over to the motel to fetch me yourself.’
‘In your dreams!’ I said, but he was lost in the remembered horrors of his journey.
‘I was stuck on the motorway in the snow for hours and got totally chilled. You know I’ve got a weak chest and Mother was beside herself when I rang her last night and told her about it.’
