Valerie ran her fingers through her hair so that it stood up in crests. ‘You already know Gareth’s wife, I understand.’
James shucked off his jacket. ‘How are you, Diane? Tamzin turned up for her fitting, I hear?’
‘Why wouldn’t she?’ Valerie interrupted.
‘Because she regularly fails to carry out planned activities?’ suggested James.
Valerie made a face. ‘You blow normal teenage behaviour out of all proportion. She’s just a girl.’
James considered letting it go. But, on the other hand, the reluctance of both his wife and his daughter to face up to the realities of the condition of the other was constant grit in his eye. ‘It’s not teenage behaviour in Tamzin. She’s clinically depressed.’ He resisted the pleasurable pedantry of pointing out that Tamzin was twenty and not, therefore, a teenager.
Valerie dismissed him by turning to Diane. ‘So Gareth is improving?’
Diane nodded. ‘Still a mess, but less of a mess.’
‘They won’t let me see him.’ Valerie plucked at the sheet.
James felt his eyebrows lift. ‘Seems logistically difficult.’
‘We can always rely on you to state the obvious, darling!’
Diane rose. ‘I’ll tell Gareth that you’ve been showing sisterly concern, shall I? He’s been asking after you, too.’
Valerie blew out her breath in a frustrated sigh. Then she grinned and for a moment James caught a glimpse of the sexy, pretty woman he’d married, when every glimpse of her happy face had been a pleasure. ‘You’re nice. It was good of you to come and introduce yourself. I’ve often wondered about the mysterious sister-in-law. You’re not at all as I imagined.’
Diane moved towards the door, her long black skirt flipping around her calves in a series of handkerchiefs. ‘Well, as you see – quite ordinary.’ With a last smile she melted from the room.
James didn’t realise he was going to follow her until he found himself outside the door. ‘Can we talk?’ he suggested. ‘How about a drink – in an hour, say?’
She considered him, blue eyes curious. ‘OK. I can hang around.’
Back inside the room he found Valerie had laid down her prickles, now that he was the only company left to her. ‘My dear brother is playing silly buggers, James, isn’t he? That woman’s as normal as any of us.’
After a dutiful forty minutes with his wife, James found Diane waiting on a bench in the gardens, watching the dancing shadow of a rose bush, hair flipping in the breeze. Overblown roses had exploded in a lemon-and-pink confetti of petals around her feet, landing on the thin straps around her arching insteps. At least this time when she looked up, he was only staring at her feet. ‘You’re early.’
‘Valerie’s tired. I missed lunch and I’m starving. I hope you want to eat or don’t mind watching me. I’ve had no time for anything since breakfast. Work was a nightmare of end-to-end meetings.’
‘I could eat.’
He drove them to a large pub, one that was part of a national chain. He flipped off his seat belt in the car park but she remained motionless, her eyes running over the stitched leather car interior. ‘This is a nice car.’
He patted the steering wheel. ‘I love it. Expensive, but worth it.’
She turned to him with that long, assessing gaze. ‘I can see it’s pretty and shiny but I’m hopeless with cars. Is it a Mercedes?’ She indicated the circular badge in the centre of the steering wheel.
‘That’s right. Mercedes E 55 AMG. Double spoke alloys, sports exhaust –’
‘Is it fast?’
‘Nought to sixty in 4.7 seconds.’
She made a face like a question.
He grinned. ‘Fast, yes.’
Following a line of stitching along the dash with her fingertip, she glanced at his jacket. ‘You like leather, don’t you?’
Something funny happened to James’s voice. ‘Yes,’ he croaked. And couldn’t think of a single other thing to say.
