Silas gritted his teeth. He knew when he was being punished and given the cold-shoulder treatment. How best to handle it? In situations like this he’d benefit from a woman’s advice. Verity’s? He checked abruptly. Damn Honor. Now she’d got him doing it.
‘I’ve got your favourite for supper,’ he told her heartily as he followed her into the kitchen.
‘I’m not hungry,’ Honor replied. ‘We’re having an end-of-term play at school…I’m going to be a pop singer but I’m going to have to have a costume.’
‘Well, I’m sure we’ll be able to find you one,’ Silas offered, ignoring for the moment the dubious merits of a ten-year-old aping the manners of a much older pop-singer star, sensing that he was being led onto very treacherous ground indeed, but not as yet quite sure just where the danger was coming from. He soon found out.
‘All the other girls are having outfits made by their mothers,’ Honor informed him.
‘Well, perhaps Mrs Simmonds might…’ Silas began, but it was obvious that Honor was not going to be so easily put off.
‘Verity would know how to make mine,’ she informed him coldly. Silas held his breath.
‘Now, look, Honor—’ he began, but as he watched his daughter’s eyes fill with tears which then ran slowly down her face he closed his eyes. This was the very situation which he had hoped to avoid.
‘Honor,’ he began more gently, but his daughter was refusing to listen to him, whirling round and running out of the room and upstairs.
Silas heard the slam of her bedroom door and sighed.
Verity…
God, but even thinking her name hurt, and not just on Honor’s account.
Ever since the night she had spent here he had been fighting not to think about her, not to give in to his compelling, compulsive urge to relive every single second of the time he had held her in his arms, every single heartbeat…
Closing his eyes, he acknowledged what he had been fighting to deny ever since he had walked away, leaving her alone in bed.
It was too late to tell himself not to fall into the trap of loving her again. It had always been too late, for the simple reason that he had never stopped.
‘Honor, I’ve got to go out for half an hour. Will you be all right or shall I phone Mrs Simmonds?’
Honor looked up from the book she was reading. It was Monday teatime and Silas had just received a phone call from one of his customers who wanted to see him urgently.
‘No, I’ll be fine,’ Honor assured him instantly.
Honor waited until she was sure her father had gone before going into the study and rifling through his desk until she found what she was looking for. Yes, there it was, the photograph of Verity.
Picking it up, she turned it over, quickly reading the message on the back.
Desperate situations called for desperate measures. Squaring her shoulders, she went upstairs to her bedroom
and packed a haversack with a change of clothes. In the kitchen she added a bar of chocolate to it and then, after thoughtful consideration, added another—for Verity.
Having packed her bag, she then sat down and wrote her father a brief note.
Slowly she read it.
‘I am going to live with Verity.’
It didn’t take her very long to walk round to Verity’s, but even her stout heart gave a small bound of relief when she finally got there and saw that Verity’s car was outside. She wasn’t sure what she would have done if Verity hadn’t been in.
The unexpected ring on the doorbell brought Verity to the door with a small frown.
‘Honor!’ she exclaimed as she saw the small lone figure. ‘What…?’
‘I’ve come to live with you,’ Honor told her stoically, walking quickly into the hall and then bursting into tears and flinging herself into Verity’s arms as she told her between sobs, ‘It’s horrid not being able to see you.’
By the time Verity had managed to calm her down she was comfortably ensconced in the kitchen eating home-made biscuits and drinking juice whilst the cat, who had decided to adopt Verity, sat purring on her knee.