Now, Ella had turned coy and giggly When I glanced in their direction, she was whispering to Rosalind, hiding her lips behind her hand. Rosalind’s eyes were on me, coolly appraising. Suddenly irritated, I turned my back on the pair of them.
It was then I heard Ella’s voice pipe up, “And Charlie hurt her neck, but I kissed it all better for her.”
I gritted my teeth for a moment, then forced my face to relax and turned back. “That’s right, Ella,” I said brightly ‘All better now.”
“Really?” Rosalind said and I could see her eyes flicking busily over the high collar of my sweater, but I was damned if I was about to give her a demonstration.
Fortunately, I was saved by the bell-or rather, the timer for the cookies, which bleeped to announce they were ready to come out of the oven. Just as Rosalind retrieved a perfectly browned set of odd-shaped cookies and left them on a wire rack to cool, Lucas and Simone strolled in.
They’d disappeared into Lucas’s den when Rosalind had first suggested baking as a way of keeping Ella occupied without her usual array of toys. It was only now, when they surfaced again, that I realized how long they’d been in there together.
‘Ah, perfect timing,” Lucas said, smiling as he moved to put an arm round his wife’s shoulders and give her a squeeze.
Rosalind glanced sharply at him and stepped away from his embrace. For a moment he looked offended, but he shrugged it off with the air of someone trying just a little too hard to promote his innocence. Simone looked flushed, almost excited. What the hell had they been up to?
“So, what have you been up to?” I said, keeping my tone mild.
She frowned at me in much the same way Rosalind had been doing all morning.
“Oh, you know, just catching up on old times,” she said, making too much of an effort to be casual about it.
Behind Rosalind’s back, Lucas flashed Simone a quick smile, conspiratorial. Simone saw that I’d caught the gesture and that I was about to dig deeper. She glared at me. I raised my eyebrows but said nothing.
Ella filled the awkward gap by insisting they admire her cookies.
“Wow, those look just wonderful,” Simone said. “You have been busy, sweetie. Did you make all these yourself?”
Ella paused, torn between taking the credit and sharing the glory. “Well, Grandma helped,” she admitted at last, her face grave. ‘A little bit,” she added, just in case we got the wrong idea of her own contribution.
Grandma.
I heard an intake of breath, but I couldn’t swear whose. All eyes were suddenly fixed on Rosalind. Her face had frozen and-just for a moment- I thought she might actually break and cry Then the corner of her mouth trembled, fluttered, and gradually curved upwards into a shaky smile.
She reached out, almost tentative, and stroked a hand over Ella’s silky curls. Ella dimpled into a heartbreaking smile and I felt some small relaxation of the muscles across the top of my shoulders, that I hadn’t realised had been tense until then.
If you have to protect a child, I thought, it always helps to have the people closest on your side….
I must admit, I thought I’d got away without having to explain any further about what had happened to my neck. I should have known that Rosalind’s distraction was only temporary.
After lunch we all climbed into the Range Rover and headed into town. Simone had apparently expressed an interest in seeing the military surplus store the Lucases ran, and I must admit I was curious about the place myself.
We piled into the luxury four-by-four, with Ella sitting between Simone and Rosalind in the back, and me up front with Lucas.
“Ella was telling me how she has the gift of healing,” Rosalind said to Simone, and recounted her earlier conversation with Ella. I was aware of Lucas snatching little sideways glances at me as he drove, but I stared rigidly out of the front windscreen and pretended to a bout of deafness.
“Oh, er, yes,” Simone said, and I could hear the tension in her voice. She gave a nervous laugh. “Ella noticed that Charlie had a bit of a scar on her neck and so-”
“It was when those nasty men frightened me,” Ella told Rosalind in a loud whisper.
“What nasty men, honey?” Rosalind said, frowning.
“They came to our house and banged on the windows and shouted and took pictures,” Ella said solemnly.
“And you cut your neck during all this, Charlie?” Rosalind asked, getting hold of the wrong end of the stick-deliberately, I’m sure.
“No,” I said, twisting in my seat so I could answer her directly. “It’s an old scar-from years ago. That just happened to be the first time Ella had seen it.”
“But-”
“How about a milk shake?” Simone interrupted quickly “Would you like that, Ella?”
Ella nodded vigorously and treated her mother to a dazzling smile, all mention of scars and paparazzi instantly forgotten.
“OK, sweetie. And what flavor would you like?”
Ella gave her a cunning little sideways look.
“Goo’berry” she said.
In the end, in the absence of gooseberry, Ella settled for a strawberry milk shake at the Friendly’s on the main street. It arrived in a huge glass, with at least as much again still in the stainless-steel mixer. I had visions of her being heartily sick, but Simone helped her out, and we carried at least half of it away with us for later. I could see Rosalind eyeing the lidded container with concern for the Range Rover’s immaculate upholstery.
Lucas gave us the guided tour of the town, which was much larger than I’d suspected when we’d driven in the day before. We ended up with a visit to his surplus store in Intervale, about five miles west of North Conway on Route 302. Mind you, sometimes it was hard to tell where one town stopped and another began. New construction was happening all the way along. I think the way buildings were spread out was the most surprising thing to me. There was none of the crammed-in feeling of home. Every business had a huge car park with the snow hunched up at the edges of it. I’d already seen half a dozen pickup trucks with snow-plows attached to the front, and Lucas told us that you weren’t allowed to park overnight on the streets so they could keep them clear.
The surplus business was housed in a long blockwork building, timbered along the front with a covered veranda and a railing for tying up your horse. A World War II military Jeep was parked on the snow-covered pitched roof at a jaunty angle, just in case you missed the signs. By the double entrance doors was an ashtray made out of a hollowed-out artillery shell and a full-size mannequin dressed as a World War II paratrooper.
Lucas drove round to the side of the building, past great piles of dirty snow, where I assumed the staff normally parked. There were a couple of hulking full-size pickups there, but they were dwarfed by a Hummer Hi, the civilian version of the U.S. military vehicle, in metallic sand like it had just been transported there from the deserts of the Middle East. Loaded with extras, the Hi must have cost at least a hundred and fifty thousand dollars. I didn’t need to hear the hiss of Lucas’s indrawn breath to guess who the vehicle belonged to.
“Damn,” he muttered, braking to a halt in the middle of the cracked concrete. “I didn’t think Felix would be here today” He glanced at Si-mone’s white face in the rearview mirror. “Sorry, honey I know you and he didn’t hit it off yesterday. We can come back another time or-”
“No, no, I’m fine,” Simone said quickly ‘And I’d like to see the store.”
I twisted in my seat. “Are you sure about this?”
She nodded. “I can’t keep running away from the guy, can I?” she said. “Not while he’s a sort of partner. We’ve got to see him again sometime.”