‘I’m going out with a man for Pete’s sake! I am over the age of twenty-one. I make my own decisions. Do you know the last time I had a night out? A nice man is taking me out to dinner, and then we may go dancing. And you have nothing to say about it.’
Confronted by her glittering eyes and the hair falling in wispy curls over her forehead, Gino held up his hands and backed off.
‘Fine,’ he said. ‘Fine. I’ll get out of your way.’
He eased himself quietly out of the door. Left alone, Laura picked up a tea towel and hurled it angrily into a corner.
She ordered the dress by telephone next morning and it arrived two days later. The whole family demanded to see it, and she paraded up and down for them, turning this way and that like a model.
‘Oh Mummy, you do look pretty!’ Nikki sighed.
There was a murmur of confirmation, and Mrs Baxter said, ‘Now you book that hairdressing appointment without delay.’
Gino alone said nothing.
The date with Steve was set for three days ahead. In the afternoon she drove into town to the hairdresser. But when she returned it was raining cats and dogs, and she sat in the car, staring out helplessly.
The whole boarding-house family, watching from the window, saw her predicament.
‘Right, this calls for clever tactics,’ Gino said. ‘I’ll go out with the umbrella, Nikki, you stand at the door and make sure it’s wide open.’
Nikki nodded like a trusty lieutenant, and took up position at the front door, while Gino snatched the big umbrella from the hall stand and darted down the steps, fighting to open it, and getting soaked.
At the car door a little dance took place as he fought to keep the umbrella over her head as she emerged, lock the car door, then shepherd her up the stairs and through the door.
At last the operation was complete and they could all congratulate themselves.
‘You look fantastic!’ Nikki declared breathlessly.
Gino, rubbing his sodden hair with his handkerchief, grunted. She did look fantastic. She looked the way she ought to look, the way she would look all the time if she didn’t have to spend her whole life working and worrying.
Now she had the chance of a break and he’d tried to spoil it for her.
‘You look lovely,’ he said, emerging from the handkerchief.
She turned. ‘Do I really?’ she asked, beaming at him but half pleading too, as though his opinion mattered most.
‘Wonderful,’ he said quietly.
‘I’ll just get supper, and then I can put on the dress.’
‘You can’t cook supper,’ he said, appalled. ‘The heat will send your hair floppy. Stay out of the kitchen. I’ll do it.
Gino’s pasta had become an institution, and for the next hour the kitchen was cheerfully chaotic. Laura came downstairs just as they finished eating, and silence fell.
Now she had not only the hairstyle, but make-up and the dress, which came into its own with the proper extras. Her eyes seemed a deeper blue, and there was a gleam of excitement in them.
‘How do I look?’ she asked, twirling.
‘He won’t have anything to complain of,’ Gino observed.
There was a general outcry against this moderate praise, but he ignored it, taking his jacket from a hook and saying, ‘Your carriage awaits, Cinderella.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘You said he was collecting you at the pub, so I’ll drive you there. Luckily it’s stopped raining.’
There was no sign of Steve when they reached The Running Sheep. Laura left the car and stood on the corner, and Gino got out to wait with her.
‘Prince Charming is supposed to be on time,’ he observed.
‘Don’t start. He probably got held up in traffic.’
‘I’m just pointing out that on a first date it’s usual to pay the lady the compliment of being punctual.’
‘I don’t know why you’re so tetchy.’
‘I’m not tetchy,’ he said too quickly.
‘Yes, you are, you’ve been tetchy for days. It’s not like you.’
‘You don’t know what’s like me. Actually I’m a monster of ill-temper.’
‘Funny I didn’t notice that at the start.’
‘I was pretending, in order to fool you because I needed a cheap room. Now I’m reverting to my true nature. Just wait and see.’
‘Oh, you’re impossible. I can’t talk to you when you’re in this mood.’
‘Well, you don’t need to talk to me,’ Gino pointed out. ‘Your prince has arrived, ten minutes late and looking anxious, as he ought.’
‘I’ll thump you in a minute.’
‘Not you. It would disarrange your hair. Have a wonderful evening.’
She laughed and kissed his cheek, then ran across the road to where Steve’s sleek car had drawn up.
‘Hm!’ said a voice at Gino’s side.
‘Hello, Tess. I didn’t see you there.’
‘Obviously. Very interesting, that was. Perhaps I should go away again.’
‘Meaning? Meaning?’
‘You and her.’ Tess folded her arms and looked up at him, teasing. ‘You should have warned me you were in love.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘I was watching you. You were a having a jealous fit.’
‘That is my landlady,’ he said in a repressive voice.
‘So she may be, but you were still having a jealous fit.’
Gino breathed hard. ‘Come into the pub and we’ll have a long talk. It’s time we got your love life back on track.’
‘I think your love life’s more interesting,’ she said cheekily.
‘I don’t have a love life.’
‘Well, that’s not how it looked-’
‘Let’s get inside. I need a drink.’
He spoke edgily, for he was beginning to wonder how much more of Tess’s company he would have to endure.
In the event his sufferings were short-lived. That evening Perry decided to assert himself. He stormed into the pub threatening dire retribution if ‘this sort of thing’ didn’t stop at once.
Gino meekly agreed that ‘this sort of thing’ had gone on long enough, and retired from the field, leaving Perry triumphant and Tess ecstatic.
He could have gone straight home, but instead he set out in the other direction. By the time he returned home he’d walked five miles.
There was no sign of Laura, but he hadn’t really expected that. Steve Deyton looked the kind of man who knew how to give a woman a good time, especially one who was so starved of a good time as Laura, he thought with a kind of rage.
Just why this should make him furious he wasn’t quite sure, but she was vulnerable and Nikki was vulnerable and, as a good brother and uncle, he was going to watch out for them both.
He decided to be sensible and go to bed. But however hard he tried to sleep, one ear insisted on staying awake, listening for the sound of a car. And at last he heard one draw up outside.
He fought temptation for a good two seconds before sliding out of bed to go and stand at the window.
Steve Deyton had just switched the light on inside the car and Gino could clearly see him, talking to Laura. She showed no hurry to get out, but stayed there, leaning back against her seat, listening to him. She looked relaxed and beautiful.
