Page 71 of The Christmas Invitation
He paused and seemed to come back from somewhere a long way away.
‘It sounds wonderful and I can’t wait to read it,’ I said truthfully.
‘It’s nearly completed … and Clara, too, has almost finished her latest crime novel, though not her memoirs. I suspect,’ he added, looking at me with a smile, ‘that this one will end on revelations. Just as well she isn’t intending it for publication.’
‘Do you think Clara’s memoirs could end up running to several volumes, like Dodie Smith’s?’
‘Probably only two. I think she’s about to reach a moment of resolution, which would be a good place to end the first one.’
Some major discovery, perhaps, which would crown Clara’s work in the world of epigraphy with added glory?
‘If you could just stop speaking now for a few minutes while I paint your lips,’ I suggested, ‘then I think we’ll be done for the day.’
And the face, at least, was almost at the stage where someone should take my palette knife away.
At lunch, Henry told me that Lex and Al were coming up at about two that afternoon to deliver the huge garden pot that was Lex’s annual Christmas gift.
‘Though of course Tottie decides where it should go and what should be planted in it, so really it’s a gift for the three of us. This time we know it will be identical to the one in the middle of the right-hand knot garden in front of the terrace, so they match.’
‘I’d noticed only one had a central pot,’ I said, while silently blessing him for the warning, for the moment I’d had a cup of coffee, I took my novel (the second in Clara’s series) and went upstairs to my turret room.
If there’d been a hatch, I’d have drawn it up behind me.
I heard Lex and Al arrive and peered out of my little slit window, just in time to see the pick-up, with an enormous terracotta shape roped in the back, vanish round the side of the house.
I didn’t go downstairs till they’d driven off. Unfortunately, I didn’t realize it was just Al leaving until I’d emerged from the garden door on to the terrace and saw Lex there with Tottie.
‘I thought you’d gone!’ I blurted.
‘No, sorry to disappoint you.’ His dark eyes were unreadable.
‘I’m not disappointed, just surprised,’ I said with dignity.
‘I’m going to bring round the bags of compost for Tottie and help her plant up the tree in the new pot,’ he said.
‘What sort of tree will it be?’
‘It’s a box spiral like the other,’ said Tottie. ‘Henry wanted them to match, but he hates angles so we ended up with spirals.’
They went off round the side of the garage to where there was an old greenhouse and returned a few minutes later with Lex trundling a large wooden wheelbarrow piled with bags of compost.
Tottie followed, carrying a sizeable tree in a plastic pot. ‘Take for ever to grow, box, so you might as well buy the biggest you can get for the effect,’ she said.
The pot took two barrow loads of compost before it was full and firmly pressed down around the tree’s roots.
Tottie wheeled the empty barrow away and Lex and I retired to the terrace to admire the effect.
Lex surprised me by suddenly apologizing for the way Al and Tara had behaved at the pottery.
‘I haven’t had the chance before, but Al shouldn’t have spoken to you like that – and he certainly shouldn’t have said anything to Tara about what had happened.’
I shrugged. ‘I don’t really care what they think, and when I leave after Christmas I’ll never have to see either of them again.’
‘I don’t know about that. You looked veryfriendlywith Mark yesterday,’ he said pointedly.
‘Don’t be silly. I barely know the man and he’s years younger than I am,’ I said crisply. ‘What he wants is free advice and unpaid labour, if he can get it.’
Lex grinned quite unexpectedly, with devastating effect. ‘Oh, I wouldn’t underestimate your charms,’ he said.
