LITMIR.BIZ

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ter Ossel spoke.

      ‘Good morning, Miss Fielding, do you intend to buy some flowers?’

      She had whizzed round with the speed of a top. ‘No,’ she told him breathlessly, ‘no. They—they die so quickly, it wouldn’t be worth it.’

      ‘Worth what?’ he asked in such a gentle voice that she forgot for the moment that she didn’t like him and was intent only on hiding from him the fact that she couldn’t afford them.

      ‘I like to see them growing,’ she said after a pause.

      ‘Let me take your basket.’ And he had it before she could think of a good reason why he shouldn’t. Too late she said, ‘Oh, no—it doesn’t matter—I mean, I’m only going back to the flat, it’s no distance…’

      ‘In that case, I’ll give you a lift,’ he told her.

      She looked round her. There were several cars pulled into the curb of the slightly shabby little shopping centre. Samantha looked at them each in turn and then at him. ‘It’s very kind of you, but I’d rather walk.’

      She was sorry she had said that, for he said instantly: ‘Ah, the brush-off,’ and his voice wasn’t gentle any more and he was smiling with faint mockery. ‘Just the same, I should like a few minutes with you—about Klara.’

      The mockery wasn’t faint now, it was very real; she went red under the gleam in his grey eyes and said stiffly: ‘Very well,’ and found herself walking beside him. When he stopped by a dark blue Rolls-Royce Merlin she did her best not to look surprised, but her ingenuous face wore such an eloquent look of enquiry that her companion said carelessly: ‘I travel a good deal,’ and as though he considered that sufficient, opened the door and bade her get in and make herself comfortable.

      Samantha allowed her tired young bones to relax against the soft leather of the seat. How could one help but be comfortable? If it had been anyone else beside her but Doctor ter Ossel, she would have said so; as it was she gave him directions in a polite and wooden voice, and as he pulled away from the curb asked: ‘What was it you want to know about Juffrouw Boot?’

      She saw the thick eyebrows lift. ‘My dear young woman, am I to be expected to tell you at this very moment? I think that I should be allowed a few minutes’ quiet in which to do that, don’t you? Your flat, perhaps?’

      She cast him a suspicious glance. ‘How did you know that I live out?’

      He looked vague. ‘Ah—do you know, I really cannot remember. Is this the street?’

      ‘Yes.’ There was no point in saying more; Morecombe Street was such that the less said about it the better; it was respectable, but it had seen more prosperous days. The doctor drew up outside the house and got out without haste and opened Samantha’s door, collected her basket and then trod, without being asked, up the steps to the shabby front door. He even had the temerity to lift a hand in greeting to old Mr Cockburn, watching them with great interest from his window.

      With key poised at her own front door, Samantha hesitated. ‘Oh, yes,’ he told her blandly before she could frame the polite request that he should say what he wanted to and be gone, ‘I’ll come in now I’m here.’

      She led the way through the minute hall and into the sitting room, where he put the basket down and looked around him with leisurely interest.

      ‘We like living out of the hospital,’ she stated defensively, just as though he had made some derogatory remark about his surroundings. And instantly wished she hadn’t spoken, because the eyebrows flew up once more although he said nothing, just stood there, dwarfing his surroundings and looking at her.

      The rules of hospitality were too strong for her. ‘Would you like a cup of coffee?’ she asked him, and added dampeningly: ‘It’s Nescafé.’

      He smiled at her and her heart flipped against her ribs because it was the smile he had given the old lady when he had visited her; kind and reassuring. ‘That will be nice, but don’t you go to bed?’

      ‘Yes, but I always have coffee first.’ She waved a small, sensible hand at the only real armchair the room contained. ‘Do sit down.’

      They were half way through their coffee when he said abruptly: ‘I have to return to Holland for a day or so very shortly. I should be grateful if you would buy fruit and so on for Klara—and anything else she might fancy. I’ll see that she has a list of likely things on her locker with appropriate translations; she can point out what she wants.’

      He smiled again with a charm which caused her to smile back at him.

      ‘She likes you, you know, she says you have a beautiful face.’

      Her smile faded although she didn’t look away from him. ‘That’s not true,’ she told him, and was deeply mortified when he agreed: ‘No, I know it’s not, but I know exactly what Klara means.’ He got up. ‘I’ll not keep you out of your bed any longer, and thanks for the coffee.’ He stuffed a hand into his pocket and drew out some notes and put them on the table. ‘I hope this will be enough.’

      Samantha eyed the money. ‘It’s far too much,’ she told him roundly. ‘Half of that…’

      He smiled. ‘Spend what you need,’ was all he said. ‘I’ll see myself out. Sleep well.’

      For a large man he moved with a good deal of speed. She heard the front door close while she was still framing a suitable goodbye sentence.

      Although she was so tired, she didn’t sleep very well, being disturbed by dreams which she dismissed as absurd. It was, she told herself as she rose long before her usual time to make herself a cup of tea, because Doctor ter Ossel had been the last person she had seen before she went to bed that she had dreamed so persistently of him. She wandered into the sitting room, trying to shake the memory of him out of her still sleepy head, and found a bowl crowded with daffodils and tulips on the table and a note from Sue, who had been off duty during the afternoon.

      It read simply. ‘These came for you. Who’s the boyfriend?’

      CHAPTER TWO

      THE NINE-THIRTY TRAIN from Waterloo to Weymouth was half empty. Samantha found a carriage in the front of the train and sank into a corner seat with a sigh of relief. It had been a rush to get to the station, but it was well worth it, she told herself. There were four days ahead of her and she intended to enjoy every minute of them. The last night of her duty had been busy and she had spent some of her precious free time shopping for Juffrouw Boot, who, just as the doctor had promised, had a list on her locker. It had been merely a question of pointing to which items she wanted in her own incomprehensible language while Samantha read them in the English written neatly beside them. She had taken upon herself to buy a few extra things too—more flowers, sweets, a bottle of perfumed eau-de-cologne, even a Dutch newspaper which she had discovered one morning and taken on duty that night. She and Brown had rigged up the table so that Juffrouw Boot could see to read it; it meant taking her glasses on and off, of course, and turning the pages for her, but it had been well worth the trouble to see the pleasure on her face.

      Samantha leaned her head back and closed her eyes. She had been paid; that meant that she had some money to give her grandmother, an undertaking of some delicacy because that lady had a good deal of old-fashioned pride, but once that was done, she might even, once she had paid her share of the flat’s rent and the housekeeping and put some money aside to pay for her meals in the hospital, have sufficient over to buy one of those short jackets from Fenwick’s—a brown one, she mused sleepily. She could wear it with her brown slacks and the tweed skirt she was so heartily sick of. She was trying to work out if there would be enough over to buy a thin sweater when she fell asleep. She slept until the train stopped at Southampton and woke to the suspicious stare of the woman seated opposite her; the woman didn’t approve of her, that was evident; perhaps she felt that a girl should be wide awake at that hour of the morning after a sound night’s rest. Samantha closed her eyes again, but this time she didn’t sleep; Doctor ter Ossel’s arrogant features

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