The Secret Life of Lady Gabriella

He nodded, picked up her bag and handed it to her.

‘You must have washing,’ she continued-Miss Runaway Mouth of whatever year you’d care to mention. ‘If you leave it in the utility room, I’ll run it through the machine tomorrow.’

‘I do know how to use my own washing machine.’

‘Do you? How rare is that?’ When he didn’t respond to her pathetic attempt at humour, she said, ‘Well, the offer is there. I start very early, so I’ll be gone before you get up I imagine. But you’ll find all the basics-cereals, eggs, that sort of thing. For breakfast. Just help yourself.’

‘Food, washing. Anything else?’

‘Well, I’m in town most mornings, so if there’s anything you need just stick a note on the fridge door before you go to bed,’ she said, ignoring the edge to his voice that hadn’t been there a few moments earlier. ‘I can pick it up while I’m out.’

‘And shopping. Domesticity on tap,’ he said. ‘For a price.’

‘I’ll bet my time is cheaper than yours,’ she said, furious that he’d wilfully chosen to misunderstand her. There was no way she would expect him to pay for what little extra work he’d cause, and she certainly didn’t expect to be paid for picking up the odd steak with her own shopping. It was obvious, however, that he thought she was just trying to capitalise on his presence, or even ingratiate herself, when she was just being herself.

He couldn’t possibly think…

‘Sweatshop labourers in the Far East earn more an hour than the average writer,’he said. ‘Even most of the published ones.’

‘Fortunately, under normal circumstances, shopping and ironing come at domestic goddess rates, which are considerably above the minimum wage,’ she replied, doing her best to keep her tone civil.

‘And under abnormal ones?’

Apparently he could.

‘You’re the one with the big brain around here, Dr Faulkner. I suggest you work it out for yourself.’ She detached herself from his supporting grasp. ‘Goodnight.’

She didn’t linger in the kitchen. She had a kettle in her study, with a bottomless supply of instant hot chocolate-it would take at least two mugs and a raid on the biscuit tin to make her feel better after that nasty little exchange.

Did he think her story about Sean had been no more than a cheap bid for sympathy? That she would stoop to offering the full range of personal services to keep a roof over her head?

Damn it, now she had no choice but to leave.

She switched on the kettle, found a packet of double chocolate chip cookies and tipped them into the tin she kept in the top drawer of her desk.

Her plan had been to use the time she’d gained from missing out on the pub making a start on next month’s Milady column. In her last column she’d concentrated on the garden, describing-amongst other things-her ‘hands-on’ restoration of an ancient bench. Well, she’d made a start-enough to make her description of aching back and need for a manicure authentic. Sent a drawing of it and the stone trough, transformed from a sad pansy dump into something ancient and venerable and overflowing with fashionable ferns similar to one she’d spotted in a shady corner in a neighbour’s garden.

This month ‘Lady Gabriella’ was organising an al fresco dinner party for her anniversary, and her jottings were going to include the shopping, the preparations, the menu-all of which was going to strain simple Ellie March’s imagination to its limits; but not as far as imagining a proper smile, a hint of graciousness from Ben Faulkner.

Instead she found a copy of the local newspaper and started searching through the ‘Accommodation to Let’ column.

Ben didn’t hurry into the house. Ellie was bound to be in the kitchen, making a drink or a sandwich. Would no doubt offer to make him something.

Or maybe not.

She’d really got to him with her ‘balloon trip’ story, her dead husband-which had no doubt been her intention- and he’d had to reach deep for some way to stop her lively tongue. Make her drop the ‘Doc’, drop the ‘Ben’, revert to a very chilly ‘Dr Faulkner’. In the end she’d made it easy for him, with her eagerness to please, but, taking no chances, he put the car away and then went for a walk in the garden.

A grey cat appeared out of the darkness, mewed softly as it brushed against his legs, then, as a light came on at the highest level of the ridiculous little turret at the far end of the house-and, no, he was not in the least bit surprised that his romantically inclined house-sitter had claimed the most inconvenient part of the house as her own-it turned away, bounded up onto the water-butt.

He watched as the creature leapt lightly onto the roof of the porch before taking what was clearly a well- trodden path across the rising levels of the roof until, with a final leap, it gained the sill of Ellie’s open window.

He saw the animal pause, back-lit by the soft light, lift its head. Heard its soft chirrup. A disembodied hand stretched out to him, and its head butted into her palm before it stepped inside. For a moment Ben felt as if he, rather than Ellie March, was the interloper. As if, despite the soft warmth of the May night, he was standing out in the cold, looking up at a room filled with warmth and comfort.

That if she had been offering a warm bed as well as a warm heart in return for a roof over her head he was all kinds of a fool to have turned her down.

Ellie couldn’t concentrate. She’d looked up as Millie had appeared at her window, seen the distant shadowy figure of Ben Faulkner standing alone in the twilight of the garden, and the anger had seeped out of her.

He’d obviously been through a rough time. To come home and find himself invaded must have been the last straw.

This was his house and, tough as it was going to be to leave, she could no more impose herself on him against his wishes than fly to the moon. She’d leave him a note in the morning, tell him that she’d started looking for somewhere, that she’d move out as quickly as she could.

She was well into her second cup of chocolate, digging deep into the double-choc-chip cookies, when there was a tap on the door.

Ben heard a scuffle, the sound of drawer being slammed shut, then Ellie’s muffled voice saying, ‘Come in.’

He opened the door, ducked his head beneath the low lintel, stopped as he caught sight of the local paper open at the ‘Accommodation to Let’ section, the telltale circles around three or four of the small ads. She was, evidently, way ahead of him.

‘Am I disturbing you?’

‘Since the moment you walked into the library,’ she replied.

‘We have that in common, at least.’

‘Then why are you here? I have to tell you if you’re looking for anything other than a sachet of hot chocolate you’re going to be disappointed.’

He was here to tell her that he’d give her a month, six weeks at the most, to find somewhere else to live. That she appeared to be ahead of him had rather taken the wind out of his sails, and instead he looked around.

The room had once been his. A teenage bolthole, study, a private place of his own, where his father, his grown-up sister hadn’t been allowed. All a very long time ago.

The last time he’d been up here the room had looked tired, shabby. Abandoned.

All that had changed. Ellie had taken down the ancient curtains and left the deep window embrasure unadorned, so that the twilight sky was a deep blue arch. There were scented flowers in a cream jug with a red heart. A pinboard with a year-planner, postcards, notes, photographs of interiors, clothes, faces that had been cut from magazines. She’d brought up a colourful rug that had once been in the nursery, polished up the small desk. Thrown an embroidered shawl over the shabby sofa.

The effect was of a somewhat disordered but nevertheless inviting charm.

‘You’ve made this comfortable,’ he said, resisting the call of the sofa. He remembered exactly how it felt to stretch out on it wrapped around a girl…

‘I’ll put back the curtains before I go,’ she said quickly, seeing him glance at the window. ‘I took them down to wash them, and then decided I liked it better without.’

‘I’m surprised they didn’t fall to pieces.’

‘No! That’s not why…I was very careful.’