Unguarded Moment. Sara Craven

almost coaxing.

      ‘Don’t worry, Meg. It’s over. It’s past.’

      And her mother’s response, her tone throbbing with something like hatred, ‘Or it could be just beginning.’

      Alix, unseen and unheard, went back to bed without her drink, instinct telling her that any sort of intrusion would be unwelcome.

      What had her mother meant? she wondered as she tossed and turned restlessly. Aunt Bianca had said nothing about another visit. Was this what her mother was afraid of? Constant descents on them, like some goddess coming down from Olympus, with all the fuss and attendant publicity which would probably be inevitable? She could understand why quiet, conventional Margaret should find such an idea abhorrent. It was that unmistakable note of venom which disturbed her. Her mother was a good woman—everyone said so. She belonged to the Mothers’ Union and raised money for Oxfam and a string of other charities. She didn’t have an enemy in the world—or at least that was what Alix had always believed.

      She could only surmise that at some time in the dim and distant past something had happened between the sisters which had driven them irrevocably apart. There had been a breach which Bianca’s unexpected visit had done nothing to heal. On the contrary, old wounds seemed to be open and bleeding.

      Gradually, as the weeks lengthened into months, and nothing was heard from Bianca, although plenty was heard about her—more films, another marriage—things began to return to normal.

      And two years had passed before Bianca came back into their lives again.

      ‘Cheer up, ducks. It may never happen.’ The taxi-driver’s cheerful voice cut across her reverie, and Alix started. He had unloaded her luggage, two cases in cream hide, on to the pavement beside her. ‘Very nice too.’ His gaze slid from the cases over Alix, and on tothe house they were standing outside, so she wasn’t altogether sure what he was referring to, and certainly not inclined to ask.

      The tan she had acquired over the past few weeks suited her, she knew, and she was wearing her thick dark hair loose on her shoulders instead of in a neat chignon as she usually did. Although that, of course, was not entirely her own choice. It was just that Bianca preferred her to look neat and businesslike when she was working.

      Well, perhaps not just that, Alix admitted to herself wryly. She remembered the first day she had come here, summoned by a telephone call not from Bianca herself but from Lester Marchant.

      Would she come and see them, he had said, because he had a proposition to put to her. Alix had hesitated at first, her instinct telling her that her mother wouldn’t want her to go. But her curiosity proved too strong in the end.

      She could remember the uncertainty she had felt, standing at the foot of the steps for the first time, looking up at the tall Georgian house and wondering if she had the courage to ring the doorbell.

      At least she didn’t have to do that any more, she thought, as she fitted her key into the lock, and she was certainly a more confident and self-reliant person than she would have been if she’d gone on with her humdrum little job in a solicitor’s office.

      The driver carried her cases in and she thanked him with a tip and a smile he would remember far longer. Then she closed the door and stood looking around her with the usual pang of delight which assailed her every time she entered the house. It was a beautiful hall, broad and spacious, with a broad imposing staircase, and the walls panelled in honey-coloured wood. Bianca had other houses, but this was where she spent most of her time.

      ‘In spite of everything, England is still the most civilised place to be,’ she was fond of saying in interviews. The only thing she didn’t find civilised was the weather, and as autumn dwindled into winter with rain and fog and frost, she was generally ready to be off to her home in California, or to accept any of the numerous invitations to friends’ villas in Marbella or the South of France.

      Alix had seen a lot of the world in the past few years. She had expected to be taken on location when Bianca was filming, but she hadn’t been sure about the trips which were really frivolity. But Bianca had dismissed her misgivings with an impatient wave of her hand. When she travelled, she liked her entourage with her, and that included Alix as well as Edith Montgomery who had been with her all her life, it seemed, fulfilling a variety of roles—a kind of companion-maid-masseuse-dresser-housekeeper rolled into one.

      Monty was coming downstairs now, neat in the dark skirt and white tailored shirt she usually wore, and she looked at Alix with her brows raised.

      ‘So you’re back,’ she observed grudgingly and unnecessarily.

      Alix kept her face straight. When she had first come to work here, she had been unnerved by Monty’s inexplicable but thinly veiled hostility. Later, when she became more settled, she had been able to reason it out. Monty wasn’t a young woman. Her face was thin and lined, and she made no attempt to disguise the liberal streaks of grey in her hair. But she had a close relationship with Bianca, and perhaps she thought having her niece working as a secretary and actually living in the house might be a threat to that relationship. Alix had had to walk on eggshells for several months in an attempt to convince Monty that she had nothing to worry about, that although she had accepted the job she wasn’t trying to muscle in on anything else. She supposed she had succeeded up to a point. They had achieved a kind of armed truce, but she had stopped hoping that Monty would regard her with any real warmth or approval.

      Now she smiled more widely than she felt inclined to do, and said, ‘Yes, I am. How are things? Any crises during my absence?’

      ‘We’ve had our ups and downs,’ Monty said drily. ‘But you’re just in time for the row of the year.’

      ‘Oh, hell!’ Alix was apprehensive. ‘It isn’t the film, surely? It hasn’t fallen through?’

      ‘No, that’s still very much on the cards. Veronese is coming over here shortly to talk to her about it.’ Monty paused heavily. ‘No, it’s this biography.’

      ‘Oh?’ Alix’s voice sharpened. This was something she hadn’t foreseen. Before she’d gone away, Bianca had been all for the suggestion that her life story should be written. She had even had boxes of ancient photographs brought down from the attic to look for suitable prints of herself as baby and small child for the inevitable illustrations. ‘What’s gone wrong?’

      ‘They don’t want her to write it.’ Monty gave a resigned shrug. ‘She thought it would simply be a matter of hiring someone to listen to her talk through her reminiscences, and then ghost them, but now it seems the publishers have commissioned someone—a Liam Brant. Have you heard of him?’

      Alix thought she had, but couldn’t remember in what connection.

      She said, ‘What has she got against him?’

      ‘He isn’t her idea. She wanted that girl—the one who did the article about her in Woman of Today. She thought she was simpatico.’

      ‘It was certainly a very flattering article,’ Alix said drily. ‘I doubt if the same note of unquestioning admiration could be sustained for a whole book. Has she met this Mr Brant? Perhaps he’s simpatico too.’

      ‘He’s coming here this morning.’ Monty sounded dour. ‘And she says she won’t see him. A nice start that is!’

      A nice start indeed, Alix thought resignedly, bidding her holiday goodbye for ever. She was back in the thick of it, and no mistake.

      She lifted the dark fall of hair wearily from her neck. ‘If he’s the publishers’ choice, then we may be stuck with him, unless she can come up with a better reason for turning him down than she’d rather it was someone else. And it won’t do to antagonise him. I’ll talk to her.’

      ‘I wish you would,’ said Monty, and that was an admission coming from her. She sounded tired, Alix thought. Perhaps the last three weeks had been more trying than usual, although after all these years Monty should be used to Bianca’s vagaries. ‘Leave your cases. I’ll get Harris to see to them.’