CHAPTER FOUR
'He rang you?' Alice's voice went up several octaves and she flushed angrily. 'Stephen rang you, not me? Why? What did he say to you?'
'He wasn't very coherent,' Aston explained. 'He was upset…'
'Upset? He's upset? What does he think I am? He vanishes without a word of explanation, stays away for hours and then rings a perfect stranger?' She looked at Aston, shrugging. 'Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to sound rude, but he hardly knows you. I'm his wife, how can he do this to me? Where is he?'
'He's staying at a country pub, he didn't Say where. It seems he couldn't face coming home, so he drove and drove until he was tired, then he stopped at this pub for a drink and ended up staying the night.'
'Why didn't he come home next day?' Alice was walking about the room restlessly, her hands clenched, spots of burning colour in her cheeks.
'He woke up with a hangover, a blinding headache. He felt sick, so he stayed in bed all morning. By the time he had got over that, he didn't know what to say to you. He tried to ring Lindsay last night, but she wasn't answering her phone, of course, she was here. So he rang me this morning.'
Alice faced him belligerently, chin up. 'And why hasn't he rung me? He could talk to you but not to me—how am I supposed to feel about that?'
Lindsay glanced at the children, who were very quiet, studiously playing with their toys and hoping not to be noticed, 'What we need is some coffee,' she said brightly. 'I'll make some. Matt can help me—come on. Matt.' She scooped up Vicky under one arm and headed for the door; this conversation was not one which the two children should hear. They might not entirely understand what was being
said, but they would be picking up far too much from their mother's angry excitement and the way she talked about their father.
Alice didn't even seem to notice, she was too distressed. 'If he's in trouble I'm the one he should be talking to, not a stranger,' she protested to Aston, who made conciliating noises.
'I'm sure he'll ring you any minute…'
Lindsay closed the door on the rest of that sentence and went into the kitchen with the children. Before she made the coffee she got them dressed in their identical little knitted jackets and put them both into the garden to play in their sandpit. It was a warm morning, the sky was blue and cloudless, there was a slight breeze blowing through the trees; Lindsay stood for a moment, watching Matt digging with a plastic spade while Vicky sat on the sand and picked up handfuls that trickled through her plump pink fingers in a silvery shower. Stephen had built the sandpit for them. Lindsay sighed and went back into the house.
She found Daniel in the kitchen, spooning ground coffee into the percolater. He looked up. 'Will they be okay out there on their own?'
'Of course.' She took the percolater from him and plugged it into the wall point, pretending not to be aware of his narrow-eyed stare.
'Odd that Stephen should ring Hill and nobody else,' Daniel observed. 'Are they close friends?'
'They get on well.' Lindsay got out the cups. The sun was streaming through the window, giving the small room a much happier look this morning, or was that merely because she saw it with different eyes now that she knew her brother was safe?
'Is Hill in the same business?' Daniel asked, leaning back against a formica-topped cabinet, his arms folded across his chest.
'He has some shops; he sells electrical equipment, so I suppose in a sense he is in the same business as Stephen.'
'So he might be in a position to help Stephen out of trouble?'
She looked round at him. 'How should I know? You'd have to ask them, I'm not involved in Stephen's business.'
'Your sister-in-law said something about Stephen being reluctant to ask for help from me because we were divorced,' Daniel drawled.
'I'm sure she's right, Stephen's very proud.'
'So why would he ask Hill for help? Unless he thinks that any day now Hill's going to be his brother-in-law?'
Lindsay heard the terse note in the voice and felt herself flushing. She didn't answer, and luckily the coffee started bubbling right then and she could make a big show of being too busy to say anything, switching off the percolater and unplugging it from the wall. Daniel moved softly, she didn't hear him until he was right behind her, and his voice made her jump when it came so close he was almost whispering into her ear.
'No comment?'
'None of your business,' Lindsay retorted, checking the tray to make sure she had everything: cups, sugar, coffee pot, milk. She kept her eyes down, her back towards him, trying not to be aware of his close proximity.
'You're not; in love with Hill!' Daniel sounded self-satisfied, his voice purring, and her temper began to rise like mercury in an exploding, thermometer.
'Who says?'
'I do,' he told her in maddening amusement.