The Sicilian Doctor's Proposal. Sarah Morgan

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СКАЧАТЬ the housekeeper had gone, she nipped out of bed to brush her teeth before drinking some of the chilled orange juice. Under the silver-plated dome with a handle on the top was a perfectly poached egg, with the deep orange yolk only produced by hens who could peck where they pleased, on a thick slice of toasted brown bread. Several more slices of toast were swathed in a thick napkin inside a basket, next to a little dish filled with curls of butter and a glass pot of thick-cut marmalade that, like the bread, looked home-made.

      After months of enduring the horrible breakfasts in prison, Lucia relished every mouthful. She was pouring the last of the tea into her cup when there was a tap on the door and Rosemary appeared.

      ‘Good morning. What sort of night did you have?’

      ‘Wonderful, thank you.’

      ‘Good. I’m told that coming out of prison is like being discharged from hospital after a major operation. It’s best to take things rather slowly…re-adapt at a leisurely pace. I thought this morning we’d take the dogs for a walk. They belong to my eldest daughter Julia and her husband. They’re visiting a game reserve in Africa. Leaving the dogs with me is preferable to boarding them in kennels.’

      Later, while they were walking an elderly golden retriever and two energetic Jack Russells, she said, ‘Perhaps you’ve wondered why I didn’t visit you in prison to introduce myself before you came here?’

      ‘I hadn’t thought about it,’ said Lucia.

      ‘I felt it might be an intrusion on the short time you were allowed to see people you knew,’ Rosemary explained. ‘Also I felt it would be difficult to make friends in those circumstances.’

      ‘It would have been,’ Lucia agreed.

      She did not reveal that she had had no visitors. Some of the people who might have come to see her lived too far away. After giving up her last job to take care of her father during his long illness, she had lost touch with former colleagues. In their twenties, most people had too much going on in their own lives to bother with colleagues who had either been ‘let go’ or had dropped out for other reasons. Anyway, from what she had seen, visits from family members and friends could be more upsetting than pleasurable.

      But she didn’t want to think about what she had learned in prison. She wanted to put it behind her and get to grips with the future.

      ‘These painting trips you mentioned yesterday…where are you thinking of going?’ she asked.

      ‘I thought we might start with the Channel Islands before going further afield. Years ago, when the girls were small, we shared a house on Sark with some friends who also had young children. We took it for a month. Our husbands came over to join us at the weekends. Other years we went to France. Do you speak French, Lucia?’

      ‘Not very much, I’m afraid.’

      ‘Never mind. It’s not important. I’m not a linguist myself, nor was my husband. I don’t know where Grey gets his gift of tongues from.’

      ‘Does he need them for his work?’

      ‘Not specifically, but languages are always an asset. He does travel a lot, both for business and pleasure.’

      In his spacious office on the top floor of a riverside tower block in London, Grey was pacing the thick carpet and thinking about the girl who, forty-eight hours ago, had still been locked up, and today was being cosseted by his mother, an expert at pampering anyone whom she considered needed it.

      There were other things that he ought to be giving his mind and, normally, he kept his life neatly compartmentalised, focussing his whole attention on the compartment he was in. Right now that was the property business started by his grandfather, developed and expanded by his father, and now directed by himself.

      But instead of being able to concentrate on matters pertaining to a major expansion, he was fidgeted by a strong hunch that, unless he found a way to get rid of her, that girl was going to cause trouble.

      After pressing the bell for his personal assistant, he took another turn around the room.

      When, notepad in hand, she appeared in the doorway, he said, ‘Bring me the file on that court case I was involved in, would you, Alice? And I want to speak to my sister Jenny, if you can get her.’

      Alice nodded and withdrew. A few moments later she reappeared with a black ring-binder and placed it on his desk.

      He was leafing through the collection of press clippings, each one in a plastic pocket labelled with the date and source, when one of his telephones rang. He picked it up. ‘Yes?’

      ‘I have Mrs Wentworth on the line, Mr Calderwood.’

      ‘Put her on, please. Hello, Jenny. How are you?’ He listened to her reply, then said, ‘Are you free this weekend? Splendid. Then call Mum and invite yourself to lunch on Sunday, will you? I’d like your opinion on her latest lame duck.’

      The news that Rosemary’s youngest daughter was coming to lunch made Lucia a little nervous, but she knew that meeting people was something she must get used to.

      It was when Mrs Calderwood added, ‘And Grey is coming too,’ that her nervousness moved up a gear, though she hoped her face didn’t show it.

      ‘Does he visit you often?’ she asked.

      ‘As often as he can…but he’s very busy,’ his mother replied. ‘Jenny’s husband, Tom, is more laid-back than Grey. He’s an architect in a partnership. That isn’t always plain sailing, but it’s nothing like as onerous as the burden on Grey. In these tough, competitive times, having to make decisions that affect a very large work-force is a massive responsibility. It’s what brought on my husband’s health problems. But Grey keeps himself fit. Robert used to play golf, but I don’t think that was as good for him as the swimming and fencing and work-outs that Grey goes in for.’

      ‘What is his business?’ Lucia asked.

      ‘His grandfather was a builder. He never made very much money from the business but he put what money he had into buying land on the outskirts of towns. You may not have heard of a Hollywood film star and comedian called Bob Hope, but he was very famous in his day. He was my father-in-law’s favourite star, and somewhere he had read that Bob Hope put most of his earnings from movies into buying up land on the outskirts of American towns. So my father-in-law did the same thing. He didn’t benefit from it but Robert, my husband, did. It enabled him to expand the business in all sorts of directions. By the time Grey left university, it was one of the largest private companies in the country.’

      Lucia had already learned that the Calderwoods had almost despaired of having a son. As well as having three daughters, Rosemary had had two miscarriages. Then, aged thirty-four, she had conceived again. She had had to spend most of her sixth pregnancy in bed but, at the end of it, had produced the longed-for male child.

      With doting parents and three older sisters, Grey must have been spoiled rotten from birth, was Lucia’s conclusion.

      She wondered why he wasn’t married. The possibility that he might not be heterosexual had occurred to her but been dismissed. In her working life, as a commercial artist, she had met a lot of gay men. Sometimes it was difficult, on slight acquaintance, to tell their orientation. But none gave off the kind of vibes that Grey did. She was certain all his sexual relationships were with women, and that they had been and would СКАЧАТЬ