Duelling Fire

‘—–swallowed the overdose?’ Sara completed the sentence ironically, and then got lithely to her feet, a slim tragic figure in a black track suit, her feet bare. ‘Don’t worry, Laura. It’s two months since he died. I’ve come to terms with the finality of his death, and I can take it.’

Laura sighed. She felt so helpless. If only there was some way she could be of some use!

‘Cheer up!’ Sara was speaking again, forcing a bright smile to her generous mouth. ‘Don’t feel sorry for me. I don’t feel sorry for myself—at least, only occasionally. And Aunt Harriet’s invitation is a godsend!’

‘Is it?’ Laura was not so sure. ‘Sara, what do you know about this woman, really know, I mean? Why, she’s not even your aunt, not any real relation at all. Just a cousin of your father’s.’

Sara shrugged, putting up her hands to lift the heavy weight of her hair from her shoulders. Watching her, Laura wondered if she had any idea how vulnerable she was. For twenty—almost twenty-one years—Sara had enjoyed the privilege of her father’s protection, first at boarding school, and later, as Sara herself had said, accompanying him on his travels about the world. Charles Shelley had been a freelance journalist, but freelance gambler would have suited him better, Laura decided ruefully. He was good at his job, very good, but as soon as he had any money, he couldn’t wait to spend it. Having known her since she was born, Laura’s own mother having acted as nanny to the baby Sara, Laura felt an especial sense of responsibility for her friend, and the fact that Sara had led what many people would have regarded as a very sophisticated life seemed in no way to have equipped her for the vagaries of this world. She had always enjoyed her father’s protection, he had idolised the girl—which made her lack of affectation that much more remarkable—and Laura sometimes wondered whether Charles Shelley had really intended to kill himself and leave Sara to fend for herself.

And now, out of the blue, the letter had arrived from Charles Shelley’s cousin, Harriet Ferrars, sympathising with her over her father’s death, and inviting her to go and live with her, as her friend and companion. Laura had never even met Harriet Ferrars. She had only rarely heard her name mentioned, and Sara herself knew nothing about the household in Wiltshire where she was expected to live. Laura found the whole idea rather suspicious, and she had lost no time in telling Sara so.

With another smile, Sara allowed her hair to tumble carelessly about her shoulders, and squatted before her friend compassionately. ‘Stop worrying,’ she ordered, her green eyes warm with affection. ‘I haven’t said I’m going yet, have I? And if I do go, and I don’t like it, I can always come back. You’ll take me in, won’t you? You won’t let me sleep on the streets.’

Laura clicked her tongue. ‘Sara, be serious! You know you have a home here as long as you want one. It’s a small flat, I know, but my work at the hospital keeps me out of it for long periods at a time, and if you wanted a bigger place, we could pool our resources.’

‘What resources?’ Sara asked teasingly, and then nodded. ‘Yes, I guess we could. I wonder how much a cleaner is paid these days.’

‘Sara—honestly!’ Laura shook her head. ‘With your looks, you could be a model.’

‘A model?’ Sara giggled and rose to her feet. ‘Oh, Laura, I wonder if you have any idea how difficult it is to become a model! There must be dozens of hopefuls, just like me, turning up at agencies every day, and besides, I’d be no good as a model.’ She grimaced. ‘My breasts are too big!’

Laura pursed her lips. ‘How do you know that?’

Sara ran exploratory hands down over her waist and hips. ‘I just know it. Laura, they like flat-chested ladies without too many bulges—–’

‘You don’t have bulges!’

‘Perhaps not.’ Sara glanced at her reflection in the convex mirror above the sideboard without approval. ‘In any case, I don’t see myself as a model, Laura. I’m more the cleaner type, honestly.’

Laura’s lips compressed as she looked up into Sara’s twinkling eyes. ‘But are you the companion type?’ she retorted. ‘That’s what you have to ask yourself. Can you honestly see yourself changing library books, or taking the poodle for a walk, or reading out loud from some ghastly romantic novel!’

‘As a matter of fact, I like romantic novels,’ replied Sara firmly. ‘And so do you, if the contents of your bookshelf are anything to go by.’

Laura looked vaguely discomfited. ‘I have to have something undemanding to read when I’m on night duty,’ she defended herself, and then broke into an unwilling smile as Sara caught her eye. ‘Oh, all right. So I’m a romantic, too. But do you really see yourself doing that sort of thing, week in and week out?’

‘That remains to be seen,’ remarked Sara lightly. ‘Laura, don’t be depressed. As I say, I haven’t made up my mind yet. But, if nothing more exciting comes along, the least I can do is give it a whirl.’

Two weeks later, Sara began to regret those words as the jolting country train stopped at yet another junction. She had not known there were still trains like this, but Aunt Harriet’s instructions had been very explicit. ‘Change at Swindon,’ she had written, after Sara had acknowledged and accepted her kind invitation, ‘and then ask for the Buford connection. You’ll be met at King’s Priory, so don’t worry about your luggage.’

As the train jerked on again, Sara rested her head against the shabby upholstery and rehearsed what she was going to say when Aunt Harriet asked her about her father. She was bound to ask—everyone did. And it was best to have her story intact before she reached her destination. Of course, the circumstances of Charles Shelley’s demise were bound to be known to her. The papers had been full of the story. Well-known Foreign Correspondent Found Dead, one headline had boasted. Heroin addiction not ruled out.

But her father had not been a drug addict, Sara comforted herself disconsolately, gazing out unseeingly at the burgeoning hedges that marched beside the track. To her knowledge, he had never taken anything stronger than aspirin, and to suggest that he had was both cruel and libellous. Nevertheless, the fact remained that he had died from an overdose of morphine, and she had been too shocked and too grief-stricken to care much what the papers said. Her father was dead, the only parent she had ever known was no longer a living breathing being, and it wasn’t until after the funeral that her senses rebelled. She began to see that what he had done was unforgivable, and while it didn’t stop her loving him or grieving for him, it did help to steel her against the uncertainties of the future.

Laura had been a brick, and without her uncomplicated companionship, Sara didn’t know what she would have done. When she first arrived back from India, stunned and confused by her father’s sudden death in Calcutta, Laura had been the only person she could turn to, and in the weeks that followed she had earned Sara’s undying gratitude. It was she who had kept the unwanted reporters at bay, who had cared for and comforted the shattered victim of Charles Shelley’s suicide, and who latterly had encouraged Sara to regard the flat as her home.

But although Sara was tempted to let Laura go on looking after her, depending on her strength and letting her make all her decisions, gradually her spirit had reasserted itself. And when Harriet Ferrars’ letter arrived, she had realised that here was the opportunity to take her life into her own hands, and if she made an abysmal failure, then Laura could always say, ‘I told you so’.

The train was slowing again, and Sara resignedly checked the weathered sign that teetered unreliably in the brisk April breeze. King’s Priory, she read without interest, and then read it again with sudden apprehension. There was no mistake. This was the station Aunt Harriet had told her to alight at, and with a shivery sense of impatience she gathered her bags.

The carriage was almost deserted. It was one of those long cylinders, with a central passageway between rows of tables, and as there had been no one sharing her table, Sara had deposited her suitcases beneath it. She had three suitcases and an overnight bag, as well as her handbag and her vanity case, and although she had had Laura’s help at Paddington and a porter’s at Swindon, she saw with some trepidation that King’s Priory did not appear to boast any labour force other than the ticket collector.

Glad that her bag and vanity case had shoulder straps, she tugged the three suitcases and the holdall to the exit, and thrust open the door just as the guard was about to blow his whistle. Obviously few passengers ever alighted at King’s Priory, and he was quite prepared to send the train on its way after the briefest of stops possible.

‘You ought to have been ready to get out, miss,’ he grumbled testily, as she hauled her belongings down on to the platform. ‘This here train has a schedule to keep to, you know. It don’t wait here just for your convenience.’

Sara straightened from setting the suitcases to rights and surveyed the stout railwayman frostily. ‘What you’re saying, I’m sure, is that you don’t run these trains for the convenience of the passengers, isn’t that right?’ she enquired, copying her late father’s methods of intimidation.

The guard stiffened. ‘There’s no need to use that tone with me! Just because you nearly missed your stop—–’

‘I did not nearly miss my stop,’ Sara contradicted him smoothly. ‘However, I do have only one pair of arms, and as you can see, I have two pairs of suitcases.’

The guard muttered something under his breath, which she suspected had to do with the amount of luggage she was conveying, and then sniffed grudgingly. ‘Well—no harm done,’ he conceded, settling his cap more firmly on his head, and she acknowledged the faint reparation before tackling the trek to the barrier.

The man who had taken the tickets from the half dozen other commuters who had got out at King’s Priory watched without expression as she transferred herself and her luggage to the gate. Then, after he had punched her ticket, he turned away, and Sara was left to make her own arrangements in the departing draught from the train.

‘Thank you. Thank you so much,’ she muttered broodingly to herself, as she stepped through the barrier and surveyed the empty lane beyond. There was no sign of any vehicle, other than a beaten-up wreck occupying the yard behind the stationmaster’s office, and her lips tightened impatiently as she realised she didn’t know what she was going to do.

Evidently, King’s Priory was just a country halt, used for the most part, she suspected, by farmers and the like. There was no pretty village street opening up beyond the station, no taxis, not even a bus stop that she could see, and her heart sank miserably at this unwelcome prospect. Aunt Harriet—or perhaps she should say Miss Ferrars, right now the familiar appellation seemed less than appropriate—had known what time she was due to arrive. Surely she could have ensured there was someone available to meet her, even if it was only a taxi Sara herself would have to pay for.

She sighed, and glanced back at the station. It was quite a pretty halt, she conceded reluctantly. There were anemones and violets growing among the stones that made a kind of rockery at the back of the platform, and tulips still grew between the posts of the signpost, a vivid splash of colour in the chilly air of late afternoon. If only she did not feel quite so alone, she thought with a sudden rush of misery, but she quickly quelled the unworthy feeling as purely one of self-pity.

The welcome sound of a car’s engine rapidly dispelled her dejection. There was no one else waiting, and surely no other train due. The person who was driving the car had to be coming for her.

The car that eventually ground to a halt beside her was not at all the kind of vehicle Sara had expected. Used to the rather sedate tastes of her father’s contemporaries, she had assumed her aunt would drive a Rover or perhaps a Volvo, or some similar kind of comfortable saloon. The sleek red Mercedes that confronted her was of the two-seater sporting variety, and even as she acknowledged this, she saw to her regret that the man levering himself from behind the wheel was far too young to be Harriet Ferrars’ husband—had she had one! Obviously she had been mistaken in imagining this was her transport, but she couldn’t help the unwilling awareness that the driver was giving her a more than cursory appraisal. Indeed, his interest bordered on the insolent, and Sara turned her long green eyes in his direction, and returned his stare with deliberate arrogance.

He really was quite something, she conceded reluctantly, even while she resented his intrusion into her life. Lean and dark and indolent, with harshly attractive features which were so much more distinctive than mere good looks, he had a lithe sinuous physique that complemented the leather jacket and tight-fitting jeans he was wearing. He was tall, too, though not angularly so, and Sara was not unaware of his powerful shoulders and the hard muscularity of his thighs.

He slammed the car door and came round the bonnet without removing his eyes from hers, and Sara’s gaze faltered in the face of such blatant audacity. Just who the hell did he think he was? she asked herself indignantly, and summoned a freezing hauteur to combat his brazen effrontery.

‘I guess as there’s no one else around, you must be Sara Shelley,’ he remarked, as she was preparing her set-down, and her jaw sagged disbelievingly. ‘Is this all your luggage?’ he added with a wry grimace. ‘Or is the rest coming by carrier?’

Sara gathered herself abruptly. ‘This is all,’ she replied stiffly. ‘Did—did Miss Ferrars send you? I don’t believe she mentioned you.’

‘She wouldn’t.’ The man unlocked the boot and began heaving her cases inside. ‘And sure, it was Harriet who sent me. Belatedly, as you’ll no doubt have gathered.’

He sounded as if he hadn’t wanted to turn up here at all, and Sara could only assume he must be the son of some friend of Aunt Harriet’s. Or perhaps he was another relative, she reflected thoughtfully, then coloured when she realised he had finished stowing the cases and was waiting for her to get into the car.

She was glad she was wearing trousers as she subsided into the passenger seat. At least she didn’t have to worry about keeping her skirt over her knees, although she doubted that her escort was aware of the consideration. Having disposed of the introduction, he seemed indifferent to her feelings. He had neither apologised for being late nor apprised her of his identity, and Sara resented the unspoken assumption that she should be glad that he had come at all.

The Mercedes’ engine fired at the first attempt, and the sleek vehicle nosed its way out of the station yard. There were wild flowers growing in the hedges, and the faint smell of early broom in the air, and determining not to let his attitude disconcert her, Sara made an effort to be polite.

‘How—how is Miss Ferrars?’ she enquired, folding her hands in her lap, and as she did so, she realised how little she really knew of her father’s cousin. She hardly remembered the brief occasions they had met, all of them when she was only a schoolgirl, and more interested in the dolls and icecreams than in the lady who had provided them. The visits Harriet Ferrars had made to Sara’s school had been few and far between, and in the latter years she had not come at all. Her father had excused her on the grounds that ‘Harriet has problems of her own,’ although what those problems were he never specified. And once Sara had left St. Mawgan’s, she realised shamefully, she had never even thought of ‘Aunt’ Harriet—until the letter arrived.

‘She’s okay,’ her companion said now, glancing sideways at her. ‘Just as autocratic as ever. Or don’t you remember anything about those outings you made together?’

Sara moistened her lips. ‘I—remember the cream teas.’

‘Yes.’ The curve of his lips was faintly derisive. ‘I guess you would. Harriet always thought that everything had a price.’