The toothbrush clattered into the basin. Liza wiped her mouth on a towel, grabbed her coat and bag from the hall and almost fell over putting on her shoes.
‘I’m late late late.’ Whirling around, she planted a speedof-light kiss on Kit’s face, missing his mouth by an inch. 'Bye. Back by six.’
As she raced out to the car, almost sending a pensioner flying, Kit stood in the doorway and yelled, ‘What is it with you call girls nowadays? That was another crap kiss.’
Leo Berenger was at his desk when Kit turned up at nine for their meeting with a new firm of architects. The plans for the latest Berenger development, on the outskirts of Oxford, were already well underway. Leo had been studying the proposed drawings for a selection of four- and five-bedroomed Tudor-style properties since before breakfast and was impatient to bounce several ideas off his son before the architects arrived.
The last thing he needed to hear was Liza Lawson’s name.
‘No, no.’ The impatient wave of his arm swept several drawings to the floor. Dammit, hadn’t Kit got that woman out of his system yet? ‘I don’t want to meet her. Why the hell should I?’
Kit shrugged. He hadn’t seriously expected any other reaction.
‘No reason. We’re getting married, that’s all.’
Leo Berenger didn’t go in for double-takes. Yelling ‘You’regetting what?’ wasn’t his style. He simply shook his head and leaned back in his chair, his expression grim.
‘When?’
‘December.’
‘If you do, you’re a bloody fool.’
‘I don’t think so,’ said Kit. ‘I think I’m bloody lucky.’
‘I suppose she’s pregnant.’
‘No.’
‘So what’s she after, a share of all this when I kick the bucket?’ This time his irritated gesture encompassed the view from the windows, the offices occupying the whole of the top floor, the house itself. ‘Because I tell you now, she’ll have a bloody long wait.’
‘Dad.’ Wearily, Kit picked up the scattered drawings. Argument or no argument, the architects who had produced them would be here at any minute. ‘This has nothing to do with your money. I love Liza and I’m going to marry her.’
‘And nothing I say will make a blind bit of difference, I suppose.’
Was this his father’s way of acknowledging and finally accepting the situation? Kit wasn’t sure; all he knew was there needn’t be a rift between them.
Giving him the benefit of the doubt, Kit smiled slightly and said, ‘No. I’ll marry her anyway.’
He got no smile in return. The expression on Leo’s face was one of undiluted disgust.
‘Go on then, do it. Make your own mistakes, see if I care.’ He leaned forward in his chair and jabbed a solid finger at his son for emphasis. ‘Just don’t ever ask me again if I want to meet her.’
The meeting was over by eleven. Relieved, Kit saw the architects to their car. When he returned to the office, his father was barking instructions down the phone to one of the contractors, swigging black coffee and chewing his way irritably through a pack of Rennies.
‘Okay if I disappear for an hour or two?’ asked Kit, when he had hung up the phone.
‘You can disappear for the next twenty years if you want to.’
Kit decided to ignore this. He reached for his jacket.
The last Rennie was noisily crunched up and swallowed. ‘Don’t bother sending me an invitation to the wedding, by the way.’
His father was clearly still simmering with fury, his face red, his fists clenched on the desk. Kit wondered if he was about to have a heart attack.
To placate him, and maybe lower his blood pressure a couple of notches, he said, ‘Dad, it doesn’t have to be like this. If you got to know Liza, you’d understand—’
‘Christ almighty, what is this?’ Leo roared, thumping the desk with his hand. ‘Who d’you think we are, the bloody Waltons?’
So much for making an effort. Kit shrugged.
‘Fine, have it your way,’ he said shortly. ‘I’ll be back around one.’
Marriott’s was the smartest jewellery shop in Bath, occupying a prime position on one of the smartest streets. Inside, the decor was opulent and suitably restrained, all slate-grey velvet, gleaming silver and the kind of lighting that made the most miserable diamond chip glitter like the Koh-i-noor.
Not, of course, that Marriott’s went in for diamond chips, Kit thought wryly. He wasn’t likely to forget this fact either, since as a child – and with Christmas approaching – he had heard his mother say Marriott’s was her favourite shop. He had duly trotted along with his pocket money the following week and asked one of the assistants to show him some necklaces. Very sweetly refusing to accept Kit’s seventy-three pence, the assistant had popped a Bic biro into one of Marriott’s sumptuous satin-lined, slate-grey velvet boxes and sent Kit happily on his way.
Now he was browsing with rather more than seventy-three pence in his pocket, and just as well.
There were some pretty startling price tags on display.
One of the assistants approached noiselessly across the plush, pale-grey carpet.
‘Diamond rings ... er, engagement rings,’ Kit murmured, slightly embarrassed.
