‘Don’t run away because I am here,’ she called to him, just when he turned with the intention of going anywhere but to the pavilion. ‘Sit with me and let’s talk. It is time, don’t you think?’
‘That rather depends on what it is you have in mind to talk about,’ he said tersely.
‘We both know what needs to be discussed.’ She patted the seat nearest her. ‘Come, sit with me.’
Despite every fibre of his being telling him to put as much distance as he possibly could between the two of them, he did as she instructed. Was that her secret, making people do what they didn’t want to? Was that how she had ensnared Alastair? ‘Where are Nikolai and Irina?’ he asked.
‘They’ve gone. Alastair has taken them to the station.’
‘Without saying goodbye? I’m heartbroken.’
She looked at him with a gaze that was as steely as any Sorrel was capable of giving. ‘I’m sure you are,’ she said.
‘Why didn’t you accompany them to the station; why leave it to Alastair? Or were you too ashamed to be in their company for a moment more than you had to?’
She raised her chin defiantly. ‘I am not ashamed of my stepchildren. But if you want to know, I stayed here because I wanted to have the opportunity to talk to you alone.’
‘And sitting out here all on your lonesome was going to make that happen?’
‘You’re here now, aren’t you? And to be honest with you, I knew you’d stop hiding in your room and eventually come outside. You don’t like to be …’ she hesitated, ‘what is the word I am searching for? Ah yes, to becoopedup. You are a man of action, never one to let the lawn grow under your feet.’
‘Grass,’ he corrected her automatically. ‘Never one to let thegrassgrow under one’s feet.’
The corners of her mouth curled into a half smile and her eyes gleamed, making him feel that he had walked straight into a trap. ‘There,’ she said, ‘now I have given you the chance to feel superior over me. That is how you like things to be, isn’t it?’
‘I take great offence at such a suggestion!’
‘And there you go with your magnificent display of outrage. In the short time I have known you, I have come to know that you do this so wonderfully well.’
‘Is there a point to this interesting examination of my character?’
‘Yes. I would like to hear why you dislike me so much.’
Where to start!he thought.
‘Let me help you,’ she said. ‘You dislike me because I have come from nowhere and am disrupting your well-ordered lives. I am the outsider, the villain of the drama, the one the audience is meant to hate. You hated me before I had even set foot on the stage of this little drama of ours. Was that fair, do you suppose?’
He rolled his eyes. ‘You don’t think you’re being overly dramatic?’
‘But I am foreign,’ she replied with a shrug. ‘That is how I am supposed to behave in your eyes.’
He shook his head, wondering if she wasn’t a little bit mad. ‘You keep telling me how I see things, but you have no idea what I really feel or believe. How could you, when you hardly know me? When you know nothing about us as a group of friends, or the real Alastair for that matter and what we mean to him?’
‘Oh, poor lonely frightened Simon; it is you who knows nothing. I know everything. Alastair has told me all.’
He scoffed. ‘I doubt that very much.’
‘I know that when you were fourteen years old, you and Danny hero-worshipped Alastair, and that you would do anything he said, so when he dared you both to steal with him from a record shop during your summer holiday, you didn’t hesitate. I know that when you three were caught with the hand red by the owner, he made you give back the records you had taken, as well as make you work for free in the shop, instead of taking you to the police station.
‘I know that that Callum and Rachel mean the world to you. I know that Sorrel has never truly forgiven Alastair for choosing Orla over her, and that you have turned the blind eye to her still being in love with him. But that is because you wanted your wife to love Alastair as much as you do. How am I doing when it comes to knowing you, and knowing that you are behaving in the manner of a jealous lover?’
Simon rose slowly to his feet. ‘I don’t know where you’ve got this pack of … of lies from, but I’d advise you to keep your poisonous thoughts to yourself.’
‘But it is from Alastair I have heard these things. Straight from the pony’s mouth.’
‘Horse!’ Simon bellowed, his self-control suddenly gone. ‘Straight from thehorse’sbloody mouth!’
She laughed. ‘How peculiar it is that my English is not so good when I am around you. You must make me nervous.’
