You Owe Me

Slater’s smile was derisive. “Please yourself Chris,” he drawled mockingly. “I’d offer to take you, but I can’t leave Sophie, and she isn’t too keen on riding in the car.”

Chris frowned, but Sophie’s face bore out her father’s statement, she looked tense and frightened.

IT TOOK HER longer than she had anticipated to walk to the village—she had forgotten that she was no longer a teenager and accustomed to the almost daily walk. The estate agent expressed concern when she told him her intentions.

“But my dear Chris, the place has been empty for nearly two years…”

“I arranged for it to be kept cleaned and aired,” Chris reminded him frowningly.

“Which we have done, but the roof developed a leak during the winter, it needs completely rethatching. I have written to tell you,” he told her half apologetically, and Chris sighed, hearing the faintly accusatory note in his voice. “Using your aunt’s Mini is completely out of the question. I doubt you could even get it started. I’ve got a better idea. My sister has a small car which I know she won’t mind you borrowing. She’s in Greece at the moment on holiday, and won’t be back for several weeks. How long are you intending to stay in Little Martin?”

“I’m not sure yet,” Chris told him accepting his offer of the loan of a car, but refusing to allow him to book a room at the village inn for her. However bad the cottage was, she could stay there one night, surely? She was already befuddled with all the decisions she had had to make recently. Tomorrow she could decide where she was going to stay. It would have to be somewhere close to Sophie otherwise there would be no point in her visit.

After she had collected Susan Bagshaw’s small Ford and thanked Harold Davies for the loan of it, Chris drove straight back to Slater’s house. She had been longer then she expected and her heart thumped anxiously as she approached the house. Unbidden the memory of Slater’s warmly persuasive kiss made her mouth soften and her pulses race.

Stop it, she warned herself angrily. He had kissed her almost as a reflex action, his true feelings towards her more then clearly revealed in his attitude to her once he was properly awake. What was the matter with her anyway? She had been kissed by dozens of men since she left Little Martin. But their touch had never affected her as Slater’s had done, she admitted tiredly. Perhaps now that she was back in Little Martin, it was time for her to face up to the fact that she had never really overcome Slater’s rejection of her; that her feeling for him had never properly died; principally because she had never allowed herself a true mourning period. She had rushed straight from the discovery of his infidelity into the hectic world of modelling, refusing to even allow herself to think about what had happened. Had she really come back simply for Sophie’s sake, or had some instinct, deeper and more powerful than logic drawn her back, forcing her to face the past and to come to terms with it, because until she did, she would never really be free to love another man?

She could admit that now, just as she could admit how barren and empty her life was. All the things she had really wanted from life had been torn from her and so she had been forced to set herself alternative goals, but career success had never really attracted her; the values instilled in her by her aunt still held good. At heart she was still that same nine-teen-year-old. She wanted a husband and children, Chris admitted, surprised to discover how deep this need was, but Slater stood firmly in the way of her ever forming a permanent relationship with any other man; as did her life-style. The men she met were not marriage material. Disturbed by the ghosts she had let loose inside herself, Chris parked the car and walked towards the front door.

It was several minutes after she had rung the bell when Slater appeared. He had changed his clothes and in the checked shirt and jeans he could almost have been the Slater of seven years ago. Chris felt her muscles tense as he invited her in. As he stepped back her body brushed briefly against his in the close confines of the half-opened door. Her nerve endings reacted wildly, shivering spasms of awareness flickering over her skin, whilst she schooled her face to betray nothing.

“What happened to the Mini?” he asked once she was inside.

“Harold didn’t think it would start. He’s loaned me his sister’s car in the interim.”

“What did you do? Flash those sea-green eyes at him? You’ll have to be careful, Chris, this isn’t New York. Husband-stealing isn’t acceptable practice down here.”

Anger burned chokingly inside her. Who was he to dare to criticise what he assumed to be her way of life? After what he had done to her, how dare he…She bit back the angry retort trembling on the tip of her tongue. Tom Smith had warned her that should he wish, Slater could protest against and possibly overrule Natalie’s will. If she wanted to fulfil the role Natalie had cast for her she must try to maintain some semblance of normality between Slater and herself.

“Where’s Sophie?” she asked hesitantly, trying to fill the bitter silence stretching between them.

“In bed,” Slater told her, adding sardonically, “Children often are at this time of night. It’s gone eight, and she’s had a particularly tiring day. Meeting strangers always seems to have a bad effect on her.”

He had no need to remind her of her status, Chris thought tiredly. No one was more aware of it than she; it made her feel very guilty. There was something about Sophie that touched her almost painfully. Perhaps it was the physical resemblance to herself; the memories of the pain and loneliness of her own childhood, once her parents had died and before she realised the depth of the bond that could exist between her aunt and herself.

“I don’t know exactly why you’ve come here Chris,” he added tautly, “But Sophie isn’t a toy to be picked up, played with for a while, and then put down when you’re bored. She’s a very vulnerable, unhappy little girl.”

“She’s also my only living relative,” Chris said unsteadily, “and I feel I owe it to Natalie to do whatever I can for her.”

“Is that how you see her?” he jeered unkindly. “As a responsibility? She’s a responsibility it’s taken you damn near six weeks to acknowledge, Chris. Sophie doesn’t need that sort of half-hearted, guilt-induced interest.”

“I’ve only just received Tom Smith’s letter,” Chris protested angrily.

“Why? Or is it that you only return to your own address at six weekly intervals, just to check that it’s still there?”

His inference was plain and dark colour scorched Chris’s face. Let him think what he wished, she thought bitterly. Let him imagine she had a score of lovers if that was what he wanted. Why not? It was far better than him knowing the truth. That there hadn’t been a single lover, because in her heart she was still aching for his lovemaking…still grieving for what she had lost.

“I didn’t want you here,” she heard him saying curtly to her, “but Natalie did appoint you as Sophie’s joint guardian, although I think we both know that can’t have sprung from any altruistic impulse.”

Hard eyes impaled her as she swung a startled face towards him. But then why should she be so surprised? Naturally Natalie would have told him how much she hated her. After all in the early days at least they had been deeply in love; in love enough for him to have discarded her in the cruellest and most painful way he could. “I suppose Natalie did resent the fact that she looks like me,” Chris agreed bleakly.

Slater’s face was grim. “In the circumstances it hardly endeared the child to her,” he agreed, and Chris frowned a little. At times he had a manner of speaking about Sophie that seemed to distance her from him, almost as though the little girl were not his daughter, and yet there was such an obvious bond of affection between them. Before she could question him further about his remark he went on to say, “Tom Smith seems to think you might be able to reach Sophie, and so does John Killigrew, the doctor in charge of her case at the hospital. Sarah and I aren’t so sure.”

Sarah? Chris’s heart pounded. Was this the explanation for Natalie’s suicide. Did Slater have another woman?

“Sarah?” she questioned lightly, avoiding his eyes, in case he read in them what she was thinking. Much as she had cause to resent her cousin, she could only feel sympathy with her, if she too had suffered the pain of being rejected by Slater. At least in her case all he had destroyed was her ability to love and trust, while in Natalie’s…

“Sarah is the psychotherapist in charge of Sophie’s case. Such behaviour isn’t entirely unknown in children and generally springs from a deep-seated trauma. Until we discover what that trauma is it is unlikely that she will speak, although there are various ways in which we can encourage her, but if you do intend to stay and help, Sarah will brief you on these herself.”

Chris stared at him nonplussed. “I thought the trauma was obvious,” she said unsteadily. “Sophie has lost her mother in the most distressing way…Surely that…”

“Sarah doesn’t believe that is the cause and neither do I.” He was almost brusque, turning slightly away from her so that his face was in the shadows. “Sophie and Natalie did not get on. Natalie spent very little time with the child.”

Chris was not entirely convinced.

“Why did Nat commit suicide?” she asked him abruptly.

He swung round, the shadows etching the bones forming his face, stealing from it every trace of colour. His eyes glittered febrilely over her as he studied her, his body tense with an emotion she could not define.

“Tom Smith has already told you. She was mentally disturbed.”

“You don’t seem particularly concerned.” It was a dangerous thing to say, and she almost wished it unsaid when he continued to stare at her.

“What is it you want me to say Chris?” he demanded bitterly at last. “Natalie and I elected to go our separate ways a long, long time ago. My main concern now is Sophie. She’s already suffered enough at the hands of your cousin. I don’t intend to let you increase that suffering. Just remember that while you’re here I’ll be watching every step you take. Do anything that affects Sophie adversely and you’ll be leaving.”

“I’m not leaving Little Martin until I see Sophie running about, laughing and chattering as a six-year-old should,” Chris retaliated fiercely, the commitment she had just made half shocked her, almost as though she had been impelled to take the first step down a road she hadn’t intended to traverse. Slater was still watching her and fantastically, despite his cold eyes and grim mouth she had the impression that he was pleased by her reaction, although she could not have said why. Imagination, she told herself sardonically. Slater could have no reason at all for wanting her to stay.

“That’s quite a commitment you just made,” he told her softly. “Are you capable of seeing it through I wonder?”

She bent to pick up her case pushing the honey blonde cloud of hair obscuring her vision out of the way, impatiently, as she stood up to face him.

“Just watch me,” she told him grimly.

She was outside and in the car before she realised that she had not made any arrangements for the following day. A quick mental check informed her that it would be Friday—how travelling distorted one’s sense of time—that meant that Slater would be working. She would call on him early in the morning and tackle him about what access she could have to Sophie. Feeling as though she had cleared at least one obstacle, she put the car in gear and set out for the cottage.

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