‘What do you want me to do?’ she asked.
‘I can’t let her take him away for good, but if you leave she’ll do that,’ he said harshly.
She hesitated, torn. ‘I don’t think she really means that bit.’
‘When she makes a threat she carries it out.
‘But what use can I be?’
‘Stay here. Let him live with you and Hetta.’
‘But it’s you he wants.’
‘I’ll visit as often as I can.’
‘That’s not enough.’
He met her eyes. ‘Then I’ll move back in.’
‘Let us understand each other,’ she said in a voice that was steadier than she felt. ‘You wish me to be your housekeeper and child-minder.’
‘Whatever you want to call it,’ he said impatiently. ‘Does it matter?’
‘Yes, it matters. It will be impossible unless we define our precise relationship.’
‘Very well. Housekeeper and child-minder.’
‘And you will give me a proper contract of employment, defining my precise duties, and my salary?’
‘Very well.’
‘All right,’ she said very quietly. ‘I’ll do it.’
It would be hard. He saw her as a convenience. But at least now she need not leave him for a while. Her heart would break in the end. But not just yet.
Myra returned with coffee, which neither of the others wanted.
‘Got it all sorted?’ she sang out. ‘Jolly good. By the way, Andrew, Simon thinks you invited him. Don’t let him guess otherwise.’
‘Don’t worry, he won’t,’ Elinor said. ‘I’ll see to that.’ She was beginning to reappraise Myra.
Myra beamed at her. ‘I knew you wouldn’t let me down.’ She flicked open her cell phone. ‘Joe? You can come for me in fifteen minutes.’ She hung up. ‘I’ll go and say goodbye to Simon.’
She tripped away, apparently oblivious to the tension between the other two.
‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘I can’t think straight. She just sprung this on me-’
‘Well, maybe she needed to,’ Elinor observed lightly.
‘You’re on her side?’
‘I’m on your little boy’s side. I think he’s getting a raw deal. He’s much too quiet and docile for his age. When is he ever naughty?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘I’ll bet he never is. And he ought to be. Come on, let’s go.’ She headed for the door.
‘Where are we going?’
‘Upstairs, so that he can see you and Myra together, and know that you’re in complete accord about his being here. I think you should stand together, and if possible put your arm around her shoulders. And smile at her.’
‘That’s a lot to ask.’
‘It’s not really, but even if it is, he’s your son. Isn’t he worth the effort?’
‘Of course, but-’
‘Then do it,’ she said in a voice that brooked no argument.
She didn’t know what had made her take a high hand with him, unless it was the memory of Simon’s face, beaming at the sight of his father, but cautiously holding back.
He followed her unwillingly upstairs and along to the room that had been Simon’s and was now Hetta’s.
‘We’re staying here after all,’ she told her daughter. ‘You don’t mind coming in with me, do you? Then Simon can have his room back.’
‘It’s all right,’ the little boy said at once. ‘Hetta can have it, honest.’
‘No, it’s yours,’ Hetta responded.
‘You can have it.’
‘No,
‘No,
‘We’ll fight about it later,’ Elinor said.
She gave Andrew a determined look and he came forward. ‘How about staying here with me, son?’ he said. ‘Your mother and I thought it would be a good idea.’
‘Can I really, Daddy?’
The child’s eager face brought home to Andrew that Elinor had been right. It meant the world to Simon to think that his father wanted him. He put his arm awkwardly around Myra’s shoulder. ‘You don’t mind letting me have him for a while, do you?’
‘Not if that’s what you want,’ she responded.
‘It’s what I want.’
‘Is it what Simon wants?’ Elinor asked.
The little boy nodded so vigorously that it seemed as though his head might come off. Suddenly his world was full of sunshine, and his father regarded him with shock.
There was a ring on the doorbell below.
‘Time for me to go,’ Myra said. She gave Simon a hug, then Hetta. Then she turned her expectant gaze on Andrew, who dutifully pecked her cheek. Finally she enveloped Elinor in a scented embrace.
‘Thank you,’ she whispered in her ear. ‘Good luck.’
‘Trust me,’ Elinor murmured back.
Then she was gone, whisked away by her chauffeur in her glossy car.
‘Hetta, you and I will move your things while Simon catches up with his dad,’ Elinor said. ‘Why don’t you two go downstairs, and talk in peace?’
Andrew took orders from nobody except Elmer Rylance, and these days even Rylance usually deferred to him. But he sensed that Elinor knew what she was doing, and right now that made him grateful, so he followed his son downstairs and prepared to embark on a conversation where he knew he would be awkward and probably make mistakes.
Simon soon made it easier for him, smiling happily at having his father’s attention, and chattering of what he’d been doing in the last few weeks. Andrew watched him with a kind of aching delight that this sharp-witted, attractive child was his. Somewhere there must be a way to tell him so. But for all the precise, scientific, brilliant words that hummed in his brain, somehow he couldn’t locate the right ones for this.
But tonight a kind fate was with him. Simon was in a mood to interpret even his father’s silences as interest, and somehow they got through an hour without mishap. But he was relieved when Elinor came down to fetch the child to bed.
When she came down alone, twenty minutes later, she found him pacing restlessly.
‘You seemed to manage fairly well there,’ she said.
‘Mostly due to Simon. I don’t understand, he was so different to the way he normally is with me,’ he said.
‘Because Myra told him you invited him.’
‘She said that for her own reasons,’ Andrew said scornfully.
‘What does it matter what her reasons were? She said what he needed to hear, and it made him happy. All you have to do is catch the ball and run with it.’
‘If I’m taking advice I’d rather it was yours,’ he said curtly. ‘You seem more of a success as a mother.’
‘All right, think of Samson. You told me that night that you let your child patients believe their toys had stayed with them because that was what they needed to think. “It’s a deception, but it makes them happy.” That’s what you said. Why can’t you do the same for Simon?’
He stared. ‘Are you suggesting that I’m only pretending to love him? Because if so, you couldn’t be more wrong.’
‘Then tell him. If the love’s there,
‘It’s easy for you. You’d know how to say things like that, but I-’ He made a helpless gesture. ‘When I’m dealing with him I’m all at sea.’
‘But why? He’s a lovely child, and he adores you. Why can’t you just relate to him in the way that he
