Her hair clung damply around her face, which was in a definite scowl as she pulled open the front door, lips parted to inform her sister that this was absolutely the last time she was going to go through this predictable charade.
No words came out. Something did but it was akin to a choking, strangled noise.
On the doorstep was Curtis, dressed in an impeccable charcoal-grey suit with a very conventional white shirt peeping out from between the lapels of his jacket. On one side was a highly disgruntled-looking daughter and on the other a leggy blonde with hair tumbling in disarray past her shoulders and a full complement of war paint. Her glossy red lips matched her glossy red fingernails, which in turn matched the glimpse of glossy tight dress that was only loosely covered by a startling terracotta-coloured silk trench coat. On anyone else the combination of colours would have brought on a sudden rush of nausea in the casual observer, but on her the clash of colour was dramatic and overwhelming.
Tessa shrank back and mortified colour crept slowly up her face. She still couldn’t seem to string two words together to form a sentence.
She stared dumbly at Curtis and for once he didn’t give her that lazy, amused grin.
‘Do you normally answer the door with nothing but a towel wrapped round you?’ he asked, levering his eyes upwards to her face.
‘I thought it was my sister.’ At last, she had managed to corner some vocal cords. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘You’d better let us in before you catch a death of a cold,’ he said reasonably. Tessa was very tempted to slam the door on their faces, but he had already wedged one foot on the doorstep. She stood back, burning with embarrassment.
‘Excuse me. I need to change.’
‘Oh, don’t put yourself out for us,’ Curtis said, grinning now and raking his eyes over her semi-clad body in one wicked sweep. Just the sort of look she could imagine him giving the blonde at his side. That thought was enough to put frost into her voice.
‘The sitting room’s through there. I’ll just be a minute.’ She tried not to be affected by the thought of three pairs of eyes following her progress up the stairs towards the bedroom, but she was trembling when she shut the door behind her and hurriedly grabbed some clothes from the wardrobe. A pair of faded jeans and a long-sleeved black tee shirt that had faded through numerous washes.
Her hair was still a wet mess but, rather than waste time blow-drying it, she did what she sometimes did on a weekend to get it out of the way. She braided it into two plaits that just about reached her shoulders.
Now she looked about sixteen, but frankly she didn’t care. How dared he waltz into her house without calling her beforehand to find out whether he was welcome?
Because he was shrewd enough to guess the response, a little voice said.
She slipped on some bedroom slippers, some garish black and gold pointy-tipped things that looked as though they would have been better suited to life in a Middle Eastern harem, which had been one of her birthday presents from her sister four months previously.
The three unwanted visitors were in the sitting room, although, when Tessa walked in, it was apparent that only one of them was at ease. Curtis had made himself at home in one of the comfy chairs while the other two were perched in rigid discomfort at opposite ends of the sofa.
‘Sorry to barge in on you like this,’ he said pleasantly.
‘You didn’t have to.’ Tessa sat down, uneasy in her own house, which was ridiculous. ‘You could have telephoned first.’ She turned to Anna, caught her eye and smiled. ‘How are you, Anna? Recovering from your first week at work?’
Anna made a valiant attempt to smile back but her eyes slid across to her father and the corners of her mouth turned down. It was a pout full of sulkiness. And, Tessa noted, she was back to wearing her neat, background clothes. A long-sleeved shift dress in brown, dark tights and flat brown shoes with a distinctive and recognisable thin gold designer band at the top.
‘I would have if I had had the opportunity, but coming here only became an option on the drive over. Didn’t it, Anna?’
‘I just don’t want to go to the theatre this evening,’ Anna said stiffly, ‘and I don’t know why you’re making such a big deal of it.’
Tessa wondered what this minor domestic tiff had to do with her, but she refrained from saying anything. Out of the corner of her eye, the vision in red vibrated in silence on the sofa, her body language screaming discomfort.
Curtis must have read her mind because he finally introduced the woman, Susie, his date. His attention was obviously not on her, though, because he immediately reverted to his daughter, frowning as he looked at her. ‘Anna insisted on the way over that we come here,’ Curtis said patiently. She couldn’t have imagined him ever getting cross with his daughter, with whom he was effusively affectionate, but he was cross now. ‘She threw a tantrum, in fact.’