‘She wasn’t,’ Johnny dispassionately said. ‘I could tell. She couldn’t be bothered. But Alex is okay; I like him.’ He found the TV zapper and flicked through the channels. Pippa’s heart sank as he settled on a noisy, blaring cartoon.
It was a relief to her when the Room Service waiter knocked on the door and wheeled in a table on which were spread a silver-covered plate of food, a bowl of ice cream nestling in crushed ice, to keep it cool, and several small bottles of cola.
She signed for the food and tipped the waiter, who left, while Johnny sat up to the table. Pippa tied his napkin round his neck, suspecting its protection for his clothes would be very necessary.
‘I’ll just go through to my own room,’ Pippa said as he picked up his burger and took a bite. ‘If you need me, give me a shout.’ She didn’t think she could stay to watch him eat; melted cheese and tomato ketchup had already spilled out of the burger bun and on to the napkin.
‘Uh-huh,’ Johnny said, turning up the TV and feeding chips into his chewing mouth.
Pippa left the connecting door open in case Johnny needed her, then settled down on her bed with a book she had brought with her: a paperback detective story by one of her favourite authors. It wasn’t easy to concentrate on the pages, though, with the boom of Johnny’s TV in her ears.
After a while she went back to see how he was doing and found him sprawled on the floor on his tummy. Pippa rearranged the table and wheeled it out of the suite, left it in the corridor, then rang Room Service to ask them to collect it.
‘Why don’t you get into your pyjamas now and watch TV in bed?’ she suggested to Johnny, who enthusiastically agreed. ‘Better wash and clean your teeth first,’ Pippa casually added, an idea to which he was less enthusiastic.
‘You don’t want your daddy to see you with tomato ketchup all over your face, do you?’ she gently said, and he grimaced horribly.
‘Oh, okay, then.’ He went into the bathroom and was back a minute later. ‘Can I have a shower?’
‘Of course.’
He was in the bathroom for twenty minutes. Pippa wondered a little anxiously what he was doing in there, and hoped he wouldn’t leave the room looking as if a bomb had gone off, but eventually he emerged looking very clean in his pyjamas and climbed into one of the twin beds, clutching the TV remote control.
Pippa turned off the main light but left his bedside lamp lit. ‘I’ll be in the next room if you want me,’ she said, leaving him. ‘Goodnight, Johnny.’
‘Goodnight, Pip,’ he said, then gave her a grin. ‘Do you mind if I call you Pip?’
‘All my life people have called me Pip.’ She smiled, not adding that she hated the name.
Going through into her own bedroom she changed rapidly into the cocktail dress she had brought with her; a delicate fantasy of different shades of green silk and chiffon, falling to her mid-calf in a flurry, with a scooped neckline and tiny frilled sleeves. She found a silver chain in her bag, from which hung a dark green stone and a silver tassel. Around her throat it gave exactly the right touch to the outfit.
She knew she would never hold a candle to Renata’s blonde magnificence, but at least she looked her best, she decided.
A quarter of an hour later, Randal let himself into the suite and found Pippa reading, curled up on the sitting room couch. She lifted her head to survey him expressionlessly, and he in turn contemplated her with what she saw with a gulp of shock to be rage. His grey eyes were molten steel, his mouth taut.
Breathing thickly, he finally erupted, ‘What the hell do you think you are doing up here? We were supposed to be having dinner with Renata and Alex; we’ve been waiting for you for half an hour.’
‘Sorry, I was taking care of Johnny and I forgot the time,’ she apologised anxiously. He looked so angry it made her mouth dry and her heart beat harder.
‘Where is Johnny?’
‘In bed, watching TV.’
He turned on his heel and stalked through into his own bedroom. The burble of the TV stopped, the faint gleam of light was switched off, then he came back.
‘He’s asleep.’
‘Oh, good, I expect he was very tired after all the excitement of today,’ she said, getting up and collecting her handbag. ‘But we had better leave a low light on in here, and the door open so he can see it, in case he wakes up alone in the dark and gets scared. I explained to him that he could ring Reception and ask for us to be paged, if he needs us.’
‘Good idea,’ approved Randal. ‘Did he eat?’
‘Burger, chips and ice cream—yes, quite a lot. And he had a shower. After he was in bed I thought I’d better stay within earshot, in case he needed me.’
‘You’re very thoughtful.’
‘I remember how scared I was of the dark when I was nine.’ She shrugged dismissively. But there had been nobody to come to her rescue, then; her foster parents had dismissed her fear of the dark as childish, and told her to pull herself together.
Randal took her arm and hurried her towards the door. ‘It was me who needed you, downstairs, helping me to put up with Renata.’
He did not say thank you, she noted—no Thank you for looking after my little boy; no Thank you for going to so much trouble on my behalf! All he was doing was complaining because she hadn’t been downstairs with him to protect him from his ex-wife. Men were incredibly selfish creatures.
‘I couldn’t be in two places at once!’
He urged her into the lift, which started with a jerk
