Mandy was trying to pick up Piers, her small features compressed with the effort.
‘Do you know, she does remind me of someone,’ Sue murmured. ‘What do you think, Alec?’ she appealed to her husband.
He studied Mandy for a moment and then shook his head. ‘Probably a similarity of expression that she shares with Tara.’
‘Mm, but neither of them look like Tara…’
‘We look like our daddy,’ Mandy said importantly, deciding it was time she joined the conversation. ‘Mummy told us that when we were little.’
‘So you do talk to them about their father,’ James commented sotto voce.
‘Sue, I wonder would you mind if we went upstairs to rest for a while?’ Tara asked her hostess, ignoring James’s taunt. ‘I’m afraid I’ve got a headache, and…’
‘Of course you can,’ Sue interrupted before she could finish. ‘You poor thing! I remember those terrible headaches you used to get. But don’t worry about the twins—they can stay down here. Mrs B. normally organises a nursery tea for six, although we don’t normally eat until about eight.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘It’s four now, so you’ve got three hours before you need to do anything.’
Feeling terrible, Tara started to protest, but Sue overruled her. ‘It’s not an imposition,’ she corrected firmly. ‘I’m dying to get the twins to myself; I
can see Mandy is going to be a treasure where Piers is concerned, and Simon can help by taking Misty for her tea-time walk.’
Knowing when she was defeated, Tara thanked her again and headed for her room. Once there she stripped off her suit and pulled on a thin wrap before curling up on the large double bed. She had taken a couple of her headache tablets and as they started to take effect her drowsy mind became full of memories of the past, of James, and as she hovered in the twilight world between waking and sleeping she felt the present slip away from her and she was once again seventeen, on the brink of love and womanhood.
CHAPTER FOUR
‘AND you will stay the night with me, won’t you, Tara? If you don’t I’ll be all on my own, and you promised you’d help me with my maths.’
Tara grinned down at the earnest fourteen-year-old face. If she was honest with herself she would admit that in many ways she preferred Susan’s home to her own; for one thing it was always warm and for another they could spread their school books out without incurring any of the harsh criticism such behaviour normally invoked from her own mother.
Tara suppressed a small sigh as she thought of her mother. Aunt Mary had once told her that her mother had been a pretty and popular girl before her marriage, but Tara found that hard to accept now, and during her last visit she had heard her aunt commenting in an undertone to her mother that she was too hard on her. It wasn’t fair, Tara reflected rebelliously. On the one hand her mother refused to allow her out to parties or the cinema with the other girls from school, telling her that if she wanted to make anything of herself she would have to work hard so that she could get good A level passes and go on to university, and yet when she tried to study Tara invariably found that her mother had a dozen or more small jobs for her to do, all accompanied by muttered grumblings about the untidiness and laziness of teenage girls.
She and her mother had never been close. Tara did have a very dim memory of the days when her father was alive, when their small house had seemed a happier, warmer place, but he had died over ten years ago and althouth there had been sufficient insurance to keep Tara and her mother in modest comfort there was no extra for the luxuries she had seen in Susan’s home.
‘You are coming, aren’t you?’
‘I promised I would, didn’t I? Of course I’m coming,’ she told her.
Some of Tara’s classmates were scornful of the friendship which had sprung up between Tara and the three years younger Susan, but for all her lack of years Susan had a worldliness that bridged the age gap and sometimes made Tara’s heart ache for the loneliness concealed behind the air of defiance.
‘I’ll see you at four, then,’ Susan announced, jumping up from her sitting position on the floor at Tara’s side as the bell signalling the end of the lunch break went.
‘I thought third-formers weren’t allowed in these studies,’ one of Tara’s classmates commented caustically, entering the room as Susan left. ‘Honestly, Tara, you shouldn’t encourage her, spoiled little brat! Mummy wanted to send her to boarding school, but she’s been expelled from so many she couldn’t find one to take her. God, what I wouldn’t give to have rich parents,’ she groaned, rolling her eyes theatrically. ‘No more school for me!’
For all the scorn some of the girls heaped on Susan’s head, there were very few of them who weren’t secretly impressed by her mother’s wealth. Hilary Harvey had become a legend in the few short months she had lived in Hillingdon. She had bought what had once been the local Manor House and spent literally thousands on modernising it. Interior decorators had come down from London; a kitchen such as most of the inhabitants of Hillingdon had only seen on American soap operas had been installed, together with several luxurious bathrooms.
Tara had been unwillingly impressed when Susan had shown her round, but, sensible beyond her years, she had sensed loneliness and uncertainty beneath Susan’s apparent gloating manner, and so she had pushed aside any feelings of jealousy and concentrated on finding the real Susan, hidden away behind the defensive barricades.
‘God knows why you should want to be friends with her anyway,’ her classmate commented in disgust. ‘You’ve always been such a goody two-shoes, and for all that she’s only fourteen I’ve heard…’
‘I’m not interested in what you’ve heard, Jill,’ Tara cut in quietly. ‘It’s only gossip anyway.’
Malice gleamed in the other girl’s pale blue eyes. Tara had never run with the crowd and kept herself slightly aloof from the giggles and whispered confidences concerning boy-friends and dates which were bandied about between the other girls during free periods and lunch breaks, and this, coupled with her intelligence and faint air of disdain, had generated jealousy among some of the girls, including Jill Blady.
‘Huh, Miss High and Mighty,’ Jill interrupted bitterly, ‘but not too high and mighty to make friends with the richest girl in the neighbourhood, even if she is three years younger than you and nothing but a little tart!’
Before Tara could retort she had slammed out of the study, leaving Tara alone. She managed to put the unpleasant incident out of her mind during the afternoon. English literature was one of her favourite lessons and it was easy to lose herself among the heady pleasure of Shakespeare’s Sonnets.
At four o’clock when she went to collect her bicycle from the shed she found Susan waiting for her, her expression so wary and uncertain that she forced herself to put Jill’s envious comments out of her mind and concentrate instead on the younger girl. Was she really thought of as a ‘goody-goody’ by her peers? she wondered uncertainly as they cycled leisurely down the country lane which led to Susan’s home. It was an unpleasant thought, and one that made her want to examine her own motives for befriending Susan more deeply. It was true that they were divided by age and culture, and yet there was something about Susan, an air of aloneness, that called to something within herself.
‘You’re not listening,’ Susan protested. ‘My father’s coming home soon. You’ll love him, Tara.’