‘He told me that the best tonic for Didi would be for her to have something to look forward to, something that might help her make sense of her days—’
‘She could have whatever she wanted,’ Pierre interrupted brusquely. ‘I have always made it perfectly clear to Didi that money was no object when it came to her wants or needs. If she wants to go on a cruise, then she just has to say the word. That would make a nice change. Older people favour cruises.’
‘Didi? A cruise?’
‘Maybe not a cruise,’ Pierre said quickly, thinking of his unorthodox mother to whom a cruise of any sort might well be construed as some form of punishment.
‘What Didi wants is something that can’t be bought. I managed to drag it out of her in bits and pieces and she’s told me that the only thing she really wants is for you to be happy, for the both of you to have some sort of rapprochement…’
‘There’s nothing wrong with our relationship.’ Pierre stood up, went across to his wardrobe and yanked open the door. Quite frankly, the thought of sitting over an elaborate French dinner with Jennifer didn’t seem very appealing at the moment. Three hours ago his life had been a calm, ordered affair, just the way he liked it. Not so now.
‘I never said there was,’ Georgie was quick to reply. ‘I’m just trying to explain more fully why I came here…your mother would like to see you settled. I think, in some weird way, she feels responsible for the fact that you’ve never married…I think she feels that your background was unstable and now you’re reaping the dividends of something that she created without ever meaning to—’
‘What a load of rubbish.’ Out came his boxers, which he slung on, then a pair of black trousers. ‘I don’t believe in all this psychobabble. I suppose you encouraged her into letting it all hang out? I suppose you persuaded her to open up?’ He shot her an acid look. ‘You might teach little kiddies on how to do finger-painting and simple sums, but that doesn’t give you insight into other people’s lives!’
‘I know it doesn’t!’
‘Then what did you think you were playing at encouraging my mother to try and analyse herself? She seemed perfectly all right the last time I spoke to her a week ago!’
‘Well, she wasn’t and she hasn’t been all right for a while!’
‘And your solution, having sat her down on a couch somewhere and imparted your amateur pearls of wisdom, was to tell her what? That she needn’t worry any more about her wayward son because, lo and behold, he was, in fact, going out with you! Never mind that I have a perfectly well-balanced emotional life. In case you’d forgotten, Didi has actually met a few of my past girlfriends.’
‘Um.’
‘Um? What does um mean?’ He was barely aware of pulling a shirt out of the wardrobe and putting it on.
‘Nothing.’
‘You’ve come this far, Georgie! Don’t tell me that you’re going to dry up on me all of a sudden!’
Looking at him, Georgie actually did feel as though her mouth were suddenly stuffed with cotton wool. Her thought processes, for a few confusing seconds, also seemed to be malfunctioning.
He looked terrifyingly good-looking. He hadn’t bothered to brush his hair, but simply swept it back with his fingers, and there was a rakish, piratical look about him that was at odds with the formal wear. When she had been a silly teenager, she could remember looking at Pierre from the sidelines and feeling a frisson of sexual awareness. Retrospectively, she had put that down to a teenage crush, one of those endearing ‘ogle from a distance’ kind of things that every girl had and eventually outgrew.#p#分页标题#e##p#分页标题#e#
Right now, the frisson that rippled through her felt disturbingly similar and she had to drag herself back to the reality of who he was and why she so heartily disapproved of him.
‘Okay. By um I mean that your girlfriends…well, they aren’t exactly easy company, are they?’
‘I’ve never had a problem.’
‘Because you enjoy discussing world affairs and fiscal policies.’
‘You mean the boring stuff that makes the world go round?’
Georgie drew in a deep breath and ploughed on. ‘I mean your mother has always found your girlfriends a little difficult to warm to…’
‘I’m finding it difficult to believe that Didi’s sunk into a depression because she hasn’t warmed to my past girlfriends. Which reminds me…’ He looked at his watch and, with a sinking heart, Georgie realised that she had made her convoluted journey and got precisely nowhere, which now left her the awkward task of gently hinting to Didi that the unlikely romance with her son was at an end, or else carrying on with the charade but with the absence of the leading man. Neither was a particularly palatable option.