Escape Me Never. Sara Craven

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СКАЧАТЬ style="font-size:15px;">      Mrs Barrett’s brows climbed almost into her hair when she answered her bell. ‘My goodness,’ she exclaimed. ‘What a transformation.’ Then she caught herself guiltily. ‘Not that you don’t always look nice, Mrs Linton.’

      Cass smiled at her wearily. ‘Is Jodie all right?’ She shook her head. ‘I’m sorry I couldn’t make the open day, but …’ she spread her hands helplessly.

      ‘Well, she was naturally disappointed,’ Mrs Barrett admitted. ‘But I think she’s over it now. I made some of that flapjack she likes for tea, and she’s watching television. She’ll be thrilled you’re home early.’

      ‘You look different,’ was Jodie’s instant greeting.

      Cass kissed her. ‘Different better, or different worse,’ she asked teasingly.

      ‘I don’t know.’ Jodie wriggled free. ‘You didn’t come,’ she accused.

      ‘Sweetheart, I couldn’t.’ Cass stroked her hair, grieving inwardly. She should have been with her daughter that afternoon, not dressed up like a Christmas tree, trying to make an impression on a man who combined too much money, and too much power, with infinitely too much sex appeal.

      She shivered again. Well, at least now she’d admitted why he frightened her so. It was easy to armour oneself, when there was no temptation to break out of its protection, she thought sombrely.

      After Brett, it had been easy to swear her private vow of total celibacy. Easy to keep it too. Now, in the course of one afternoon, everything had changed. Nothing was simple any more, and might never be so again, and if she didn’t take some aspirin soon and lie down, her head would probably burst.

      She listened to Jodie’s excited account of the open day activities, sampled the flapjack, and accepted gratefully Mrs Barrett’s carefully written account of everything Jodie’s teacher had said about her brightness and promise. After the dark beginning to her child’s life, it was the kind of thing she needed to hear.

      She made herself a drink with fresh lemons, when she was in her own flat, and took the promised aspirin, but when she opened her eyes the next morning, everything was infinitely worse, and she closed them again groaning.

      She ached everywhere fiercely, and would have burned up, if she hadn’t felt so cold all the time. But she dragged herself out of bed, and made Jodie’s breakfast.

      When Mrs Barrett arrived to collect Jodie, she took one horrified look at Cass’s grey face and shivering body, and ordered her back to bed.

      ‘It’s this forty-eight hour thing that’s going round,’ she said portentously. ‘They say the doctors won’t even come out for it—just tell you to keep warm, and drink plenty. I’ll keep Jodie with me for a couple of days, while you sleep it off.’

      Cass thanked her hoarsely, and tottered back to bed. After which life became a blur for several hours. She was vaguely conscious of Mrs Barrett bringing jugs of squash, and telling her she had ’phoned the agency to warn them she wouldn’t be in. She tried to say something grateful in return, but it came out as a croak.

      ‘Poor little soul,’ Mrs Barrett said, perhaps then, or maybe much later. ‘Not much more than a kid herself.’

      Cass wondered why Mrs Barrett should be talking about her to her in that odd way, and fell almost at once into a profound and dreamless sleep.

      Or thought she did. But the next time she opened her eyes, it seemed that Rohan Grant was there, sitting in the old armchair by the window, and she turned over, burying her flushed face in the pillow to dispel him, and muttering peevishly to herself.

      Wasn’t having ’flu bad enough? Did it have to be accompanied by more nightmares?

      The next time she woke, he had gone, and she breathed a sigh of relief, stretching out aching limbs and muscles, and discovering wonderingly that she actually felt a little better, and might be persuaded to live, after all.

      And when Mrs Barrett appeared, with a tray holding a cup of home-made vegetable soup, and a few wafer thin slices of brown bread and butter, Cass began to think that living might even be enjoyable again. She drank the soup to the last drop, while Mrs Barrett beamed at her.

      ‘Slept the clock round, you have, dear,’ she said. She looked slightly roguish. ‘I don’t think you even woke up for your visitor.’

      Cass put down the bowl. ‘Visitor?’ she asked, trying to sound casual, but aware that her heart was hammering uncomfortably.

      ‘From your work.’ Mrs Barrett gave an unmistakable wink. ‘Said they were worried about you, so I let him in for a while, although I kept popping in, just in case,’ she added. ‘I hope I did right, dear?’

      Cass tried to assemble coherent thought. ‘What was he like?’ she enquired apprehensively.

      Mrs Barrett’s smile widened. ‘Tall,’ she said wistfully. ‘A real dish.’ She lowered her voice confidentially. ‘And sexy with it. Made me wish I was thirty years younger, I can tell you.’

      ‘How odd,’ Cass said pallidly. ‘He makes me wish I was thirty years older.’

      Mrs Barrett didn’t seem to hear her. ‘I thought to myself—well that explains the pretty dress, and the way of doing your hair, and I was so pleased for you. Jodie liked him too,’ she added.

      ‘She met him?’ Cass’s head felt hollow.

      ‘When I came up—to make sure everything was all right—she came with me, and they had a nice little chat.’ Mrs Barrett gave her an anxious look. ‘It was all right, wasn’t it, Mrs Linton? When I looked in, he was sitting in that chair over there, and he said you’d been restless so he’d given you a drink, and made your pillows more comfortable. I’m sure no one could have been more concerned, that’s why I thought …’ her voice tailed off lamely.

      Cass was burning again, but this time with embarrassment, not delirium. She managed a taut smile. ‘No, he isn’t a boyfriend,’ she said quietly. ‘Just—a colleague of sorts, and I can’t imagine why he should have gone to all this trouble.’

      ‘Flowers he brought too,’ said Mrs Barrett. ‘I left them in your living room, because my mother used to say flowers in a sick room could be funny. I’ll get them for you, now you’re awake.’ She bustled off to return a moment later with about a ton of freesias arranged in an ornamental basket. ‘Don’t they smell lovely,’ she said ecstatically. ‘I’ll put them on the chest of drawers where you can see them.’

      She was right about that, Cass thought wearily later. Wherever she looked in the room, the freesias seemed to be there, in the corner of her eye. When she got up to go to the bathroom, she carried them back into the living room, and put them in the middle of the small dining table. She didn’t want them in her bedroom, reminding her constantly of him—the interloper who’d been there. Not a dream, not delirium, but reality. And how dared he? she thought, trying to work herself up into a rage, but finding she was still too listless to make the effort. All she really wanted to do was cry weakly, but she couldn’t do that. She’d shed her last tear a long time ago.

      When evening came, she felt well enough to get up. She ate the supper which Mrs Barrett provided—a fluffy omelette flanked by grilled tomatoes—by the fire, then switched on the television. Some commercials СКАЧАТЬ