Barbara Erskine 3-Book Collection: Lady of Hay, Time’s Legacy, Sands of Time. Barbara Erskine

stairs to the front door and pulled it open over the detritus of old leaflets and letters that habitually littered the bare floor behind it. He detested Judy’s studio, the shabby rundown house with its dark stair-well that always smelled of cooking and stale urine, the noisy dirty street where scraps of old paper drifted over the pavement and wrapped themselves around the area railings. Every time he left his Porsche there he expected to find someone had stolen the wheels or carved their name across the gleaming bonnet. As he eased himself into the driving seat he was frowning. It irritated him that she was so attached to the studio. It made no sense now she was becoming successful.

      As he drew away from the kerb he glanced back up at the terrace of houses. Her dusty windows gleamed curtainless in the sun, the bottom half of the sash thrown up, the box of geraniums which he had wired to the sill for her a defiant splash of colour in the uniformly drab façade. When he turned back to squint through the tinted windscreen he had already put her out of his mind.

      He was a relaxed driver, his elbow resting casually on the lowered glass of the window, his hand gentle on the wheel as he leaned forward to slot in a cassette while the car crawled along the Brompton Road then north up Gloucester Road.

      He frowned again as he drew up at the lights. Her phone still wasn’t answering that morning. ‘Get the hell out, Nick,’ Jo had said. ‘I’m my own woman. I don’t belong to you. I just don’t want to see you any more …’

      He drummed his fingers on the steering-wheel, undecided, and glanced at his watch.

      The empty parking meter outside her flat decided him. Swinging her latch keys he made for the pillared porch which supported her balcony, glancing up to see the window open wide beneath its curtain of honeysuckle as he let himself in.

      ‘Jo?’ As the flat door swung open he stuck his head round it and looked in. ‘Jo, are you there?’

      She was sitting cross-legged on the floor, the typewriter on the low coffee table in front of her, dressed in jeans and a floppy turquoise sweater, her long dark hair caught back with a silk scarf. She did not appear to hear him.

      He studied her face for a moment, the slim arched brows, the dark lashes which hid her eyes as she looked down at the page before her, the high planes of the cheek-bones and the delicately shaped mouth set off by the severe lines of the scarf – the face of a beautiful woman who would grow more beautiful as she grew older – and he found he was comparing it with Judy’s girlish prettiness. He pushed the door shut behind him with a click.

      ‘I’ll have that key back before you go,’ she said without looking up.

      He slipped it into his breast pocket with a grin. ‘You’ll have to take it off me. Did you know your phone was out of order?’

      ‘It’s switched off. I’m working.’

      ‘That’s bloody stupid. Supposing someone wanted you urgently.’ He took a deep breath, trying to curb his sudden anger. ‘Is there any coffee going while we talk, Jo?’

      Without waiting for an answer he walked through to the kitchen. It was a mess, stacked with unwashed dishes and opened cans. He found the orange coffee pot full of cold grounds and with a grimace began to rinse it out in the sink. ‘What’s been going on here?’ he called out over his shoulder.

      ‘Nothing, as you can plainly see,’ she answered quietly. Soundlessly she had come to stand in the doorway behind him, watching. ‘I’ve been working, as I said, so I haven’t been skivvying and the place is a shambles.’

      He rummaged in the fridge and brought out half a bottle of milk. Solids floated in the clear blue whey as he held it to the light and he shuddered as he tipped it out. ‘You obviously need looking after, lady.’

      ‘Don’t I just.’ She found two clean mugs in the back of the cupboard. ‘We’ll have to have it black. So. What have you come for?’

      ‘To talk. To see how you are.’

      ‘I am fine. Busy. Unencumbered. Just the way I like it.’

      ‘And starving?’

      She smiled. ‘Are you offering to take me to lunch?’

      ‘Nope.’ The coffee made to his satisfaction, he poured it out and, gathering up the two mugs, he led the way back to the living room.

      He put down the mugs and picked up the top book on the pile by her typewriter and glanced at the title. The Facts Behind Reincarnation. He frowned.

      ‘Jo, I want to talk to you about your article.’

      ‘Good. Discussing topics is always helpful.’ Deliberately misunderstanding him she flopped down on the sofa cushions and reached out her hand for the mug.

      ‘You know my views about this hypnotism business.’

      ‘And you know mine.’ She grinned at him, her grey-green eyes narrowing. ‘So let’s break new ground. Let’s discuss my wholefood article. I’ve an interview fixed up with Rose Elliot and another with the head chef at the Ritz, to find out –’

      ‘Jo, will you promise me not to let yourself be hypnotised?’

      She leaned forward and put down the mug. ‘I’ll promise you nothing Nick. Nothing at all.’

      ‘I’ve a good reason for asking.’

      ‘Yes. You think you can meddle in my life. Well you can’t. I thought I had made that clear. I am not your concern.’

      ‘Christ, Jo! Don’t you know how dangerous hypnosis can be? You hear awful stories of people permanently damaged by playing with something they don’t understand.’

      ‘I’m not playing, Nick,’ she replied icily. ‘Any more than you play at advertising.’

      He sat down opposite her, his blue eyes hard. ‘Advertising does not interfere with your consciousness –’

      ‘That’s a matter of opinion!’

      ‘And neither,’ he went on, ignoring her interruption, ‘does it seek to work in your mind without your conscious knowledge.’

      ‘Oh no?’ She laughed. ‘Oh, Nick, don’t be so naive. What else is advertising but mind bending? You’ve read enough psychological crap to qualify you three times over as a better shrink than your brother! But that’s not the point. The point is I’m working. Working, not playing, on a series of articles. If I were a war correspondent I’d go to war. If I find my field of research is hypnotism I get hypnotised. If necessary.’ Furiously she got up and walked up and down the room a couple of times. ‘But if it worries you so much perhaps you’d be consoled if I tell you that I can’t be hypnotised. Some people can’t. They tried it on me once at university.’

      Nick sat up abruptly, his eyes on her face. ‘Sam told me about that time,’ he said with caution.

      ‘So why the hell do you keep on then?’ She turned on him. ‘Ring up your brother and ask him all about it. Samuel Franklyn, M.D., D.P.M. He will spell it out for you.’

      ‘Jo –’

      ‘Go to hell, Nick! Or take me to a pub. But don’t mention the subject again, OK?’

      Nick groaned. ‘You are a stubborn, stupid, blind fool, Jo.’

      She stared angrily at him for a moment. Then, unexpectedly, she grinned. ‘I know. It’s hell isn’t it? Shall I get my jacket?’

      As they were walking along the river’s edge after a pub lunch at Strand on the Green Nick broached the subject again, however. They had stopped to look at the water as it sucked and gurgled around the bows of a moored yacht and divided to race around Oliver’s Eyot.

      He watched her covertly as she stared at the water, mesmerised by the glint of sunlight on the wet mud slicks, her eyes narrowed in the glare. ‘Jo. Will you talk to Sam? There’s something I think you should know.’

      She looked round and stared at him.