In Laura’s case, she had slipped back on her clothes with the nervous tension of a teenager being caught on the couch with her boyfriend when her parents should have been safely out. It was ridiculous, she told herself severely. They were both consenting adults. Which just went to bring home to her in all its ugly clarity the clandestine nature of their relationship. They were fine romping around in the sack just so long as reality didn’t manage to break through.
She peeped into the kitchen to find that Gabriel was nowhere to be seen, although Anna was sitting comfortably at the kitchen table, quietly composed with her fingers linked on the glass surface.
‘This is a ridiculous table to have in a kitchen, wouldn’t you agree?’ The dark-haired woman smiled and Laura relaxed and walked in. ‘I told Gabriel to get rid of it years ago, and, in all fairness, he agreed every time I mentioned it, but, like all men, did nothing about the advice.’
‘Hi.’ Laura smiled back cautiously, I’m sorry. We weren’t ...expecting you ...but it’s lovely to see you again.’ She hovered, not too sure what to say. Anna was right. Kitchens should be comfortable and chrome and glass did not constitute comfort, but it would have been ludicrous to embark on a conversation about a kitchen table. ‘Where ...where is Gabriel?’
‘I sent him out.’
‘You sent him out?’
‘To get some oil for my car,’ Anna explained. ‘The little red light started appearing on my way here and, being a woman, I have no idea how to put oil in.’ She shrugged and gave Laura a conspiratorial smile that suggested she was more than adept at putting oil in her car. ‘Besides, I wanted to talk to you without my cousin glowering in the background. Shall we have some coffee?’ She stood up and headed towards the cappuccino maker and began operating it in a professional manner, fetching coffee from one of the cupboards and mugs from a drawer.
‘You drove here to talk to me?’ Laura asked in bewilderment. ‘What about?’
How do you take your coffee?’
‘White, no sugar. Thank you.’ Laura sat down and tilted her chair so that she could look at what Anna was doing.
‘I needed to see Gabriel, actually. In fact, I telephoned the house, but you must have just left. The foreman there told me that you were heading down here. Apparently Gabriel had said that he was to lock up behind him because they were going to Berkshire and might not be back in time before they were due to leave. Naturally, I assumed that you would be coming here and I thought I would kill two birds with one stone. Discuss some business with Gabriel and also grab some time with you. Here you go, coffee almost as you would get it in a restaurant. Without the grated chocolate on top.’ Without giving Laura time to ponder the little issue of why Gabriel’s cousin wanted to talk to her, she rested the mug on the table and sat down.#p#分页标题#e#
She looked as stunning as she had done the first time
Laura had set eyes on her. Her brown hair was neatly tied back, though this time in a more casual French braid, to suit her more casual outfit of pale brown cord trousers, flat brogues and a cream, thin jersey top with a fine ribbed pattern running vertically down.
‘So. How is the house coming along?’
‘That’s what you wanted to discuss?’ Laura breathed a sigh of relief. ‘Well, Gabriel suggested that we do the easy bits first, so at the moment I’m working on updating the house.’ She grimaced and then smiled. ‘Nothing has been done on it for as long as I can remember. All the wallpaper is being stripped and a lot of the furniture will be replaced. I shall keep a few of the old pieces that belonged to Mum and Dad and then sell the rest, although a lot of it will fetch token amounts. There’s very little market for secondhand furniture these days.’
‘And how do you feel about it? You know, working and renovating a house that used to belong to you?’ Anna sipped some of her coffee whilst looking at Laura levelly over the rim of the mug.
‘I look on the bright side. That things could have been a lot worse for me. At least I have a roof over my head and, when my job at the stables is over, I should have saved sufficient money to get a small place of my own.’ Why did she get the feeling that they were skirting around an issue? Nibbling the appetiser in preparation for the main meal? And why did she get the feeling that the main meal was not going to be to her liking?
‘And Gabriel has moved in, I gather?’
Laura flushed and drank some of her coffee. ‘He said he wanted to be on hand so that he could have input into what was going on. He said that it would have been difficult to travel up when he was needed from London and that it was easier to communicate with his office via computer.’ She half expected Anna to give a snort of laughter at that, but was disconcerted to find that she just continued looking thoughtfully at her, as if weighing up something in her mind.