Lynne Graham - Tempestuous Reunion

A light knock sounded on the back door. Without awaiting an answer, her friend Peggy Downes breezed in. A tall woman in her thirties with geometrically cut red hair, she dropped down on to the sagging settee by the range with the ease of a regular visitor. She stared in surprise at the cardboard box. ‘Aren’t you being a little premature with your packing? You’ve still got a fortnight to go.’

‘We haven’t.’ Catherine passed over the solicitor’s letter. ‘It’s just as well that Drew said we could use his apartment if we were stuck. We can’t stay here until the end of the month and the flat won’t be vacant before then.’

‘Hell’s teeth! They wouldn’t give you that extra week?’ Peggy exclaimed incredulously.

As Peggy’s mobile features set into depressingly familiar lines of annoyance, Catherine turned back to the breakfast dishes, hoping that her friend wasn’t about to climb back on her soap-box to decry the terms of Harriet’s will and their imminent move to city life. In recent days, while exuding the best of good intentions, Peggy had been very trying and very impractical.

‘We have no legal right to be here at all,’ Catherine pointed out.

‘But morally you have every right and I would’ve expected a charitable organisation to be more generous towards a single parent.’ Peggy’s ready temper was rising on Catherine’s behalf. ‘Mind you, I don’t know why I’m blaming them. This whole mess is your precious Harriet’s fault!’

‘Peggy—’

‘Sorry, but I believe in calling a spade a spade.’ That was an unnecessary reminder to anyone acquainted with Peggy’s caustic tongue. ‘Honestly, Catherine…sometimes I think you must have been put on this earth purely to be exploited! You don’t even seem to realise when people are using you! What thanks did you get for wasting four years of your life running after Harriet?’

‘Harriet gave us a home when we had nowhere else to go. She had nothing to thank me for.’

‘You kept this house, waited on her hand and foot and slaved over all her pet charity schemes,’ Peggy condemned heatedly. ‘And for all that you received board and lodging and first pick of the jumble-sale clothes! So much for charity’s beginning at home!’

‘Harriet was the kindest and most sincere person I’ve ever known,’ Catherine parried tightly.

And crazy as a coot, Peggy wanted to shriek in frustration. Admittedly Harriet’s many eccentricities had not appeared to grate on Catherine as they had on other, less tolerant souls. Catherine hadn’t seemed to notice when Harriet talked out loud to herself and her conscience, or noisily emptied the entire contents of her purse into the church collection plate. Catherine hadn’t batted an eyelash when Harriet brought dirty, smelly tramps home to tea and offered them the freedom of her home.

The trouble with Catherine was…It was a sentence Peggy often began and never managed to finish to her satisfaction. Catherine was the best friend she had ever had. She was also unfailingly kind, generous and unselfish, and that was quite an accolade from a female who thought of herself as a hardened cynic. How did you criticise someone for such sterling qualities? Unfortunately it was exactly those qualities which had put Catherine in her present predicament.

Catherine drifted along on another mental plane. Meeting those misty blue eyes in that arrestingly lovely face, Peggy was helplessly put in mind of a child cast adrift in a bewildering adult world. There was something so terrifyingly innocent about Catherine’s penchant for seeing only the best in people and taking them on trust. There was something so horribly defenceless about her invariably optimistic view of the world.

She was a sucker for every sob-story that came her way and a wonderful listener. She didn’t know how to say no when people asked for favours. This kitchen was rarely empty of callers, mothers in need of temporary childminders or someone to look after the cat or the dog or the dormouse while they were away. Catherine was very popular locally. If you were in a fix, she would always lend a hand. But how many returned those favours? Precious few, in Peggy’s experience.

‘At the very least, Harriet ought to have left you a share of her estate,’ Peggy censured.

Catherine put the kettle on to boil. ‘And how do you think Drew and his family would have felt about that?’

‘Drew isn’t short of money.’

‘Huntingdon’s is a small firm. He isn’t a wealthy man.’

‘He has a big house in Kent and an apartment in central London. If that isn’t wealthy, what is?’ Peggy demanded drily.

Catherine suppressed a groan. ‘Business hasn’t been too brisk for the firm recently. Drew has already had to sell some property he owned, and though he wouldn’t admit it, he must have been disappointed by Harriet’s will. As building land this place will fetch a small fortune. He could have done with a windfall.’

‘And by the time the divorce comes through Annette will probably have stripped him of every remaining movable asset,’ Peggy mused.

‘She didn’t want the divorce,’ Catherine murmured.

Peggy pulled a face. ‘What difference does that make? She had the affair. She was the guilty partner.’

Catherine made the tea, reflecting that it was no use looking to Peggy for tolerance on the subject of marital infidelity. Her friend was still raw from the break-up of her own marriage. But Peggy’s husband had been a womaniser. Annette was scarcely a comparable case. Business worries and a pair of difficult teenagers had put the Huntingdon marriage under strain. Annette had had an affair and Drew had been devastated. Resisting her stricken pleas for a reconciliation, Drew had moved out and headed straight for his solicitor. Funny how people rarely reacted as you thought they would in a personal crisis. Catherine had believed he would forgive and forget. She had been wrong.

‘I still hope they sort out their problems before it’s too late,’ she replied quietly.

‘Why should he want to? He’s only fifty…an attractive man, still in his prime…’

‘I suppose he is,’ Catherine allowed uncertainly. She was very fond of Harriet’s brother, but she wasn’t accustomed to thinking of him on those terms.

‘A man who somehow can’t find anything better to do than drive down here at weekends to play with Daniel,’ Peggy commented with studied casualness.

Unconscious of her intent scrutiny, Catherine laughed. ‘He’s at a loose end without his family.’

Peggy cleared her throat. ‘Has it ever occurred to you that Drew might have a more personal interest at stake here?’

Catherine surveyed her blankly.

‘Oh, for goodness’ sake!’ Peggy groaned. ‘Do I have to spell it out? His behaviour at the funeral raised more brows than mine. If you lifted anything heavier than a teacup, he was across the room like young Lochinvar! I think he’s in love with you.’

‘In love with me?’ Catherine parroted, aghast. ‘I’ve never heard anything so ridiculous!’

‘I could be wrong.’ Peggy sounded doubtful.

‘Of course you’re wrong!’ Catherine told her with unusual vehemence, her cheeks hot with discomfiture.

‘All right, calm down,’ Peggy sighed. ‘But I did have this little chat with him at the funeral. I asked him why he’d dug up another old lady for you to run after—’

‘Mrs Anstey is his godmother!’ Catherine gasped.

‘And she’ll see out another generation of downtrodden home-helps,’ Peggy forecast grimly. ‘When I ran you up to see the flat, that frozen face of hers was enough for me. I told Drew that.’

‘Peggy, how could you? I only have to do her shopping and supply her with a main meal every evening. That isn’t much in exchange for a flat at a peppercorn rent.’