Clouds among the Stars. Victoria Clayton

pleased to be described as svelte and enigmatic.

      Portia joined us at the window. Her bruises were beginning to turn yellow and the swellings to go down, but the broken tooth was startlingly incongruous with her beautiful face. She had not been able to bring herself to confront the outside world in order to visit the dentist. Her sleep had been so troubled by nightmares that she had moved to a camp bed in my room. She refused to say a word more about her experiences and had made me promise not to tell the others. She insisted she was nearly over it but I was worried about her. She glanced indifferently in the direction of Cordelia’s pointing finger and then ducked down beneath the sill.

      ‘It’s one of Dimitri’s bodyguards!’ She clutched my ankle. ‘Not Chico, the other one! I think his name was Dex.’

      ‘Are you sure?’ The man, who was leaning against the lamppost, rolling a cigarette, looked quite ordinary. ‘I can’t see, Cordelia, if you’re going to put your head there.’

      ‘Would I say so if I weren’t sure? You think I’m having hallucinations? Or going mad, perhaps?’ Portia was extremely snappy these days, which was unlike her. ‘He’s got a birthmark on his cheek. I can hardly make a mistake about that, I suppose.’

      ‘Some people think it’s rude to push,’ said Cordelia bitingly.

      ‘Well, I can’t see one.’ I was studying the man’s profile as he fiddled about with a box of matches. ‘He’s so undistinguished, I bet thousands of people look just like –’ I broke off as the man turned his head to stare up at the house and I saw a dark red mark running from temple to chin. ‘Oh. Oh dear. It’s Dex, all right. But what can he want?’

      ‘I expect he wants Maria-Alba’s recipe for minestrone. Honestly, Harriet, you seem to be particularly stupid at the moment. Of course he’s looking for me.’

      ‘Poor man! I think it’s very sad,’ said Cordelia. ‘Imagine having people stare at you all the time. There’s a girl at school –’ Cordelia stopped speaking and begun to hum.

      I was well aware that Cordelia had been deliberately avoiding all mention of school because she was afraid someone would insist on her going back.

      I stared down at Portia. ‘Why?’ Portia had turned round so she could sit on the floor, out of sight. She shrugged her shoulders and spread her hands wide in a gesture of bafflement. ‘I know you don’t want to talk about it,’ I went on, ‘but I’ve been wondering – how did you meet Dimitri?’

      ‘Bron introduced us. He suggested we went down to The Green Dragon for a drink. He pointed Dimitri out the minute we got in there and said he was incredibly rich.’ Portia went faintly pink. ‘I thought at the time it was something of a set-up. Bron shuffled off the minute Dimitri started talking to me.’

      I was silent for a moment. An unpleasant idea had at once presented itself. This might be the explanation for Bron’s new-found riches. No doubt selling one’s sister was a time-honoured method of raising the wind in many parts of the world but I was incensed with my own brother for doing it. ‘The low-down louse!’ I said aloud.

      ‘That’s putting it mildly, I think.’ Portia thought I was referring to Dimitri and I didn’t bother to enlighten her. ‘What’s Dex doing now?’

      ‘He’s talking to one of the reporters.’ Cordelia kneeled on the window seat to get a better view. ‘He’s looking very bad-tempered. I expect it’s his birthmark that makes him grumpy. If he was a girl he could wear his hair across his face like Veronica Lake in I Married a Witch. You remember, the one which starts off with a thunderstorm and the lightning strikes the tree Veronica Lake’s buried under. She and her father, who’s also a witch – or would that be a wizard? – were burnt by the Puritans two hundred years ago and the two witches come out as puffs of smoke –’

      ‘Oh, mercy!’ cried Portia. ‘Just tell me what’s happening, will you?’

      ‘He’s shaking his head. He’s looking at the house – he’s looking at me!’ Cordelia pulled her hair half across her face and began to pout. ‘Golly, he’s really staring at me. I wonder if I remind him of Veronica Lake? I love the bit when they’re going to be married and the woman keeps singing, “I love you truly” and he says, “Oh, shut up!”’ Cordelia began to giggle helplessly.

      ‘If you don’t want to be tied to a railway track and have your Veronica Lake locks cut off by the wheels of a passing express, you’d better shut up yourself.’ Portia put up her hand and got hold of Cordelia’s skirt. ‘Move over and let Harriet see.’

      ‘Don’t pull! He’s getting out a little book and writing something in it. Now he’s tearing out a page. He’s walking up the path – he’s coming up the steps!’ We heard the flap of the letter box clang and Dirk, who had been sleeping off his breakfast on the sofa, went from nought to sixty in one point eight seconds and was at the door attempting to remove the paint from the panels with his front paws. ‘I’ll get it. You beast, Portia, you’ve torn my skirt. I hope it’s a love letter. Or a poem. I shan’t mind about the birthmark. I wish he was a bit more swave, though.’

      She ran off, ignoring Portia’s unkind laughter. She returned, frowning over the note. Written in crooked capitals, bunched together like a cipher was the legend, ‘GIVEUSTHECLOBERANDWELLEVEYOUALONE OTHERWIZYOULBESORYYOUWAZBORN.’

      Cordelia looked disappointed. ‘It’s not a very good letter. I expect he was an orphan and was made to work in a blacking factory instead of going to sch – O-ho, a-ha … What’s a clober?’

      We puzzled briefly over this until the general absence of double consonants suggested ‘clobber’. Bron came in at that moment, wearing only a towelling robe. His hair was wet and sleeked back from his noble brow. He looked every inch a splendid specimen of modern manhood.

      ‘Hello, Portia. Your face is turning quite a fetching shade of gold, like Tutankhamun’s mask. But whatever you do, don’t grin. That tooth really spoils the effect.’

      Now I thought about it, I realised that Portia had not smiled once since her return. Bron wandered to the window, pointedly ignoring me, but I was too angry with him to be hurt.

      ‘Cordelia,’ he went on, ‘be a good girl and ask Maria-Alba to make me a chicken sandwich. I’ve got a date with a girl whose father owns a merchant bank. Just the thought of all that tin is making me hungry. Hello, what’s that bloke doing out there?’ He stabbed a finger at the pane. ‘Geezer who sold me the coat. Fellow with the birthmark. I paid the first instalment in cash so there can’t be anything wrong about it. He’s lowering the superior tone set by the gentlemen of the press. I’ll tell him to go away.’

      ‘No, don’t do that,’ we girls cried in unison as Bron made to throw up the sash.

      ‘It must be Bron’s coat he’s after,’ cried Cordelia. ‘I’ll run and fetch it, shall I?’

      ‘What are you talking about?’ Bron took hold of Cordelia’s arm. ‘Keep your mitts off my gear.’

      ‘But Dex wants it. He’s going to make us sorry we were born if we don’t give it to him,’ Cordelia explained. ‘You’re pulling my jersey.’

      ‘One step further and I’ll pull your head off. You don’t mean to say that you’re actually considering handing that ape my beautiful new coat?’

      ‘Read this.’ Portia gave him the note.

      Bron turned it sideways and upside down before finally interpreting the crude capitals. ‘Go and get it,’ he instructed Cordelia. ‘Chop, chop!’

      ‘I’ll come with you,’ said Portia, crawling across the floor towards the door. ‘I’m getting tired of this ventre à terre existence.’

      Bron watched Portia’s progress with an air of puzzlement. ‘What’s the matter with her?’ he asked me, forgetting that I was in Coventry. Dirk was so enchanted to find a human face at his own level that he followed Portia into the hall, pawing at her