LITMIR.BIZ

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her whom it belongs to. She thinks that she’s lost him and is terribly sad, but when she passes that way the next winter she calls there out of sentimentality, and to her joy finds everything the way she first remembered: the same servants, the place warm and inviting, the same bed...’

      ‘And the same lover,’ Ben finished for her. ‘She begins to suspect that perhaps her food or drink was drugged before, so has nothing. She leaves the lights burning in the room, wanting to see her lover’s face, but it’s a big old-fashioned four-poster bed with heavy curtains all round, he blows out the candles and she doesn’t see him. She tries to talk to him, though, but he silences her with kisses, exhausts her with love, and when she wakes he’s gone. Afraid that by trying to see him she might have lost him, that night she drinks and eats, and again it’s like a dream when he comes to her.

      ‘So every winter she goes back. She has two more children but one of them dies. She is distraught and her husband can give her no comfort. It’s summer, but she goes to the house anyway, finds it empty as before. She sleeps on the bed and this time feels the warmth of his arms, his strength and love and is comforted for her loss. She leaves a locket behind with a picture of her dead child in it.’

      Nell, unable just to sit and listen, took up the story again. ‘Anna has a child to take the place of the one she lost, again by her lover. Twelve years have passed. Then her husband is killed in an accident, and although she’s sad for him she’s filled with happiness at her freedom, because now she’ll be able to go and find her lover, be with him always.’ She paused, her face becoming sad. ‘Then her husband’s possessions that he was carrying when he was killed are sent to her—and she finds the locket. And she knows the truth, and knows that she has lost not only her lover, but all the years of happiness together if she had only know the truth before.’

      ‘I don’t agree there,’ Ben said matter-of-factly, breaking in on her sad sentimentality. ‘If she’d realised the first time who he was, it would have been a coupling just like all the others before, and she’d never have thought that she had a phantom lover. It was the secretiveness of the affair that aroused and fed her sensuality. She’d have gone on being lonely and unfulfilled—unless she’d been driven to have an affair with the stable-boy or some other available man.’ He grinned at Nell’s indignant look. ‘Lots of women were driven to that in those days, you know; either that or turning to religion and doing good works whether the poor liked it or not.’

      ‘That’s hypothetical,’ Nell pointed out. ‘The story finishes with her finding out it was her husband all along and being sad; we don’t have to worry about what might have been.’

      ‘How logical.’ Ben looked round. ‘Did Max say there were the tools for making coffee somewhere?’

      ‘Yes, he did,’ Nell answered, but didn’t get up to look.

      Ben glanced at her and grinned. He went over to the cupboard, found a kettle and cups, packets of coffee, sugar and powdered milk. ‘All we appear to be short of is water,’ he remarked. ‘Where do we get that, I wonder?’

      Satisfied she’d made her point, Nell stood up. ‘I noticed a cloakroom just along the corridor; I’ll get some from there.’

      ‘Thanks.’

      But the water in the cloakroom wasn’t suitable for drinking and she was directed to another place on the next floor. It was almost ten minutes before she came back, and Ben was sitting on the settee, the phone in his hand, his feet up on the arm. The light from the window was behind him, outlining his profile, and for the first time Nell noticed its hardness, the leanness of his jawline and the good bone-structure. He could, she supposed, be considered good-looking, attractive to women, and wondered why she hadn’t noticed before. Because she’d been too tense, probably, too worried about having to work with him, and what he would want to do with her precious story. The latter was still undecided, perhaps still to be fought over, but she felt more relaxed with him now, more able to think of him as a man.

      ‘But surely you can manage,’ he was saying. ‘It’s only for a few days.’ He listened, then gave a resigned sigh. ‘OK, OK, I’ll get back as soon as I can and we’ll talk it over then. Yes, I do understand. Yes. Goodbye.’

      Nell had been busying herself with the coffee, but looked round to say, ‘Milk and sugar?’

      ‘What?’ Ben had been gazing moodily out of the window. ‘Oh—one sugar, no milk.’

      She handed him a cup. ‘I take milk and sugar,’ she told him. He frowned, not with it. ‘So you’ll know when it’s your turn to make the coffee,’ she supplied.

      His mouth crooked a little but there was obviously something else on his mind. ‘I’ll try and remember.’

      Sitting down at the table again, she stirred her coffee and said, ‘I think the first episode ought to end after her first night with her lover.’

      ‘Sounds right.’ But Ben was still frowning abstractedly. He took a swallow of the coffee but then put down the mug and stood up, his hands thrust into his pockets. He took a couple of paces round the room, head bent, then turned to frown out of the window again.

      ‘Hasn’t your crisis resolved itself?’ Nell asked sympathetically.

      ‘My what?’

      ‘You said you were late because of a domestic crisis,’ she reminded him.

      ‘Oh—yes. I mean, no, it hasn’t resolved itself.’ His face changed, grew bleak, the lines at the corners of his mouth deepening and becoming bitter. ‘Sometimes I don’t think it ever will.’ Before Nell could say anything, he glanced at his watch, picked up his briefcase, and said, ‘Look, I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to leave. Why don’t you make a start and I’ll catch up with you tomorrow?’

      ‘But you can’t just...’ Nell’s voice tailed off as the door swung shut behind him.

      CHAPTER TWO

      NELL had wanted to do the book adaptation herself, but, perversely, when Ben abandoned her to it before they’d even got started she became indignant and angry. The word processor was pounded rather hard the rest of that day and quite a lot of work got done.

      She expected him to be late again the next morning and was both surprised and irritated to find Ben there before her. Not only there but sitting at her desk and going through the work she’d done the previous day. ‘My, my, aren’t you the early bird,’ she greeted him sarcastically, dumping her bag on the desk.

      Ben glanced at her. ‘Talking of birds; are you an owl or a lark?’

      ‘What do you mean?’

      ‘Are you up with the lark in the morning or a night owl who never wants to go to bed? A morning person or a night person?’

      Nell thought about it. ‘A night owl, I suppose.’

      ‘That would account for it, then.’

      ‘For what?’

      ‘For your bad temper,’ he said evenly.

      She hung her jacket on a peg. ‘I think I’m entitled to be annoyed after the way you took off yesterday. You’d only been here a couple of hours and we hadn’t even got started on the book.’

      ‘For which I apologised and came in early today,’ he pointed out.

      But Nell had met that male trick of trying to put you in the wrong and make you feel guilty before. ‘It was extremely unprofessional,’ she said shortly.

      ‘I’m a writer, not a clock-watching clerk,’ Ben told her, his voice hardening.

      ‘Yes, but you’re still a professional writer. You are getting paid, aren’t you?’

      She had expected that to needle him, but to her surprise he grinned, and said in a schoolboy voice, ‘I’m very sorry, miss. I’ll try to do better in future, miss.’

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