The Longest Pleasure. Anne Mather

She would not have wanted her to sell it, and if there was any other way, she had to find it.

      Torn by emotions suddenly too strong to resist, she let Adam pull her into his arms. For the first time since hearing the news that afternoon, she felt the hot sting of tears against her cheeks. Nan was dead; she acknowledged it bitterly. She would never speak to her again. Never sit with her, and talk with her, and share with her all the thousand-and-one things they used to share when she was a child. How had it all gone so wrong, she wondered. At what point had their relationship begun its downward slide? What had happened in the years between that she should be blaming herself now, because the old lady had died without her being there?

      ‘Hey…’ Adam’s hand beneath her chin caused her to try and take a grip on her emotions. ‘If it means that much to you, we’ll keep it; whatever it costs.’ He bestowed a tender kiss at the corner of her mouth and smiled a gentle smile. ‘Come on. This isn’t like you.’

      It wasn’t, Helen knew. She was not an emotional person. Oh, she got angry from time to time, just like anyone else, but it was years since she had cried—about anything. Adam always said he liked her cool competent way of dealing with things, and it must be quite a surprise for him to discover she was so vulnerable. But grief was not like other emotions, she decided. And until today she had not realised how painful it could be.

      The sound of the telephone solved both their problems: Adam’s because he wasn’t entirely sure how to deal with her; and Helen’s because she was glad of an excuse to escape from his embrace. Tonight she felt in no mood for Adam’s lovemaking. Her affection for him had not changed; it was simply that the present situation had left her bereft of feeling. She needed time to absorb this new development. Time to come to terms with the way it would affect both their lives.

      Smudging her cheeks with the back of her hand, she lifted the kitchen extension from its hook and put the receiver to her ear. ‘Yes?’

      ‘Helen?’

      The voice was unmistakable and to her dismay Helen felt a wave of colour sweep up her cheeks. Hoping Adam would assume it was the result of her emotional upheaval, she nevertheless turned her back on him to make her response. ‘Yes,’ she said tautly. ‘This is Helen Michaels. To whom am I speaking?’

      ‘Don’t you know?’ the sardonic voice rasped in her ear. ‘All right,’ as she made no attempt to answer, he conceded, ‘Fleming here. Did you get my message?’

      ‘That my grandmother is dead? Yes, thank you.’ Her voice was clipped and brittle. ‘Is that why you rang? To make sure I heard the news from you?’

      There was a moment’s silence, and she thought for one anxious second he had rung off. But then, with studied insolence, he responded: ‘How or from whom you heard the news doesn’t interest me. I simply wanted to know if you intend coming to the funeral. The weather’s getting pretty bad down here, and I’d hate for you to make it a double event!’

      ‘You——’ The epithet was inaudible. Helen was suddenly intensely conscious of Adam, propped against the drainer behind her, listening to every word. ‘I—of course, I’m coming to the funeral. I shall drive down in the morning. There are—arrangements to be made.’

      ‘I’ve made them,’ retorted Rafe laconically. ‘When you didn’t ring I assumed you were leaving them to me.’

      ‘Then you had no right to——’ Once again, Helen broke off, biting her tongue. ‘That is, if I’d learned of my grandmother’s death sooner——’

      ‘Sooner?’ Rafe sounded incredulous. ‘I rang you as soon as I could. It wasn’t my fault you weren’t at either of the addresses I found in the old lady’s bureau.’

      ‘You looked in—in Nan’s bureau!’ Helen was incensed. ‘How—how dare you?’

      ‘How else was I supposed to find you?’ he retorted flatly. And then: ‘Anyway, I didn’t make this call to get into an argument over the rights and wrongs of how I found you! The old lady’s dead, for God’s sake! Doesn’t that mean anything to you?’

      ‘Of—of course it means something to me.’ Helen was furious to hear the tremor in her voice. ‘But—I just don’t understand why you didn’t reach me. I’ve been either here or at the shop all day. At least——’

      She broke off again, remembering with despair the hour she had spent in the reference library before going to the shop. She caught her lower lip between her teeth. ‘You must have spoken to Melanie then.’ So why hadn’t she told her?

      ‘I spoke to some old guy who said you were both out,’ declared Rafe wearily. ‘I was going to ring you back, but I just didn’t have the time. It’s been pretty hectic here, one way and another. Paget sent the telegram.’

      ‘Miss Paget?’ echoed Helen faintly, and Rafe swore.

      ‘Yes,’ he said, impatient now. ‘Well, I guess that’s——’

      ‘Wait!’ Glancing anxiously at the steaks, which were starting to spit under the grill, Helen moistened her lips. ‘I—can you tell me how it happened? I mean——’she chose her words with care ‘—had she been ill?’

      ‘I’m tempted not to answer that question,’ responded Rafe harshly. ‘You should know.’

      Helen quivered, her knuckles white as they gripped the receiver. ‘Rafe, please——’ She despised herself for begging, but she suspected she wouldn’t get much sleep until she knew the truth.

      There was another ominous silence, and then he made a derisive sound. ‘No,’ he said, after a moment. ‘She seemed perfectly all right yesterday evening. Your conscience needn’t trouble you. Not on that score at least.’

      Helen replaced the receiver without answering him. Uncaring at that moment what Adam might think of her behaviour, she moved almost automatically towards the grill, pulling out the pan and flipping the steaks over. She needed the reassurance of accomplishing so familiar a task to give her time to recover from Rafe’s attack, but even so her hands shook abominably.

      Adam let her attend to the steaks without comment, but when she moved towards the fridge to take out the salad, his voice arrested her. ‘I assume that was a call from Wiltshire,’ he remarked quietly. ‘Is something wrong? You seem—distraite.’

      Summoning all her composure, Helen took a deep breath before turning to face him. ‘I’m just—in shock, I suppose,’ she murmured, hoping he would not probe. ‘That—that was my grandmother’s agent. I’m afraid he and I have never seen eye to eye.’

      ‘Ah.’ Adam inclined his head. ‘Well—I shouldn’t let anything some old peasant says upset you. You know what these rustic types are like. Unless you keep them in order, they get an inflated idea of their own importance. And they’re so used to dealing with pigs, they begin to sound like one!’

      The graphic portrait Adam described brought the ghost of a smile to Helen’s lips. The image of Rafe as some hoary old farmer, deep in pig-swill and manure, with brutish features and a straw dangling from his mouth, was so far from the truth as to be laughable. But she didn’t contradict him. The chances of the two men ever actually meeting one another were negligible, and Rafe’s behaviour had only reinforced her determination to get rid of him as soon as possible.

      ‘That’s better,’ said Adam now, seeing her smile. ‘Come on, darling. It’s not the end of the world. Oh, I know it’s a shame that the old lady died so suddenly. But isn’t it better? From her point of view, at least? You wouldn’t have wanted her to be in pain.’

      ‘No.’ Helen felt an involuntary shiver prickle her spine. But Adam was right. Nan could not have suffered for long. With a determination born of desperation, she put all thoughts of her grandmother—and Rafe Fleming—aside. ‘You know,’ she added, ‘I think I would like that bottle of wine after all. Would you mind?’