‘I can understand that, but Damien is not here,’ Harriet pointed out to his aunt.
‘Damien is always here,’ Isabel remarked with some irony. ‘He seems to have a sixth sense about the place even if he’s a million miles away. Please?’ she added.
Harriet breathed deeply. ‘If you must know, I can’t help thinking he’s a bit of a control freak!’
‘Oh, definitely!’ Isabel agreed. ‘More than a bit, in fact. But it was—’ she put her head on one side ‘—rather a thoughtful thing to do, don’t you think?’
Harriet pursed her lips. ‘I suppose so,’ she said at length, and flinched inwardly a little to hear herself repeating the bit about it being rather a thoughtful thing to do to Brett that evening when she drove over in the blue Holden to see him.
‘Thoughtful?’ Brett repeated as she wheeled him out to the car park to look at it. ‘You sure the guy’s not sweet on you, Harry?’
‘Quite s...’ Harriet paused then said hastily, ‘I think your car keeps reminding him of what I did to his beloved Aston Martin with it.’
‘But he’s not here to see it,’ Brett objected.
‘He has eyes in the back of his head—or something like that,’ Harriet said gloomily, then forced herself to brighten up. ‘How’s it going?’
‘I’ve got a new physio,’ Brett replied. ‘She’s really cool. I’m walking a wee bit further every day.’
Harriet narrowed her eyes as she picked up a jaunty note she hadn’t heard in her brother’s voice for a long time. And she found herself crossing her fingers metaphorically and sending up a little prayer at the same time that this ‘she’, this new physio, might just be the one to provide her brother with the spark he needed.
* * *
The other aspect of life at Heathcote, of course, was Charlie. He didn’t spend a lot of time on the estate during his furlough but when he did he always popped in to see Harriet.
It was probably during the third such visit that Harriet confirmed what she’d first suspected—that Charles Walker Wyatt treated her in rather a strange manner.
And she couldn’t help mentioning it at the same time as she couldn’t keep a straight face. ‘Charlie,’ she said with a chuckle, ‘do I look as if I’ve popped down from Mars?’
‘Mars,’ he repeated, looking startled. He was lounging at the refectory table eating an apple plucked from her bowl when he wasn’t watching her in that curiously assessing way he had. ‘What makes you say that?’
‘You have a way of looking at me and sort of...testing everything I say as if it has a hidden meaning or I have something about me you just don’t understand.’
‘Ah.’ Charlie took a large bite of his apple. ‘Well...’ He munched and thought. ‘I’ve never met anyone quite like you, I guess.’
He paused and studied her thoughtfully. She wore tight black shorts and a sapphire-blue tank top. Her hair was bunched up on top of her head and she wore her red-rimmed glasses as she studied a recipe she was planning to make for her dinner. It was an unexceptional outfit by any standards and yet it emphasised how trim and slim her figure was, how long her legs were.
No wonder Damien had got a bit carried away, Charlie found himself thinking as Harriet reached up and took down a pottery casserole dish.