Page 48 of The Secrets of Dragonfly Lodge
‘I don’t completely understand the narrative myself, but Mum dropped out of school at fifteen. Became your typical hippy flower child. I never met my father. He was some bloke she hung out with for a while in a London squat, then lost touch with afterwards.’ He sighed. ‘My grandfather apparently was heartbroken. He died when I was small and I didn’t see much of Nancy when I was growing up.’
‘That’s really sad.’
‘Yes, it is. Nancy hasn’t told me very much about when she was younger, just that there’s this man from her past. He’s a very well-known scientist apparently – a giant in his field. I don’t know who he is. It’s not a world I’m familiar with. The thing is, he’s very litigious and he has powerful friends. In fact, I don’t fancy the chances for your book if you reveal whatever it was he did.’
‘So you don’t actually know who he is or what happened?’
‘No.’
She stared at him, nursing her glass, her thoughts whirling, then smiled.
‘What?’ He met her gaze, his eyes troubled.
‘Are you jealous?’
He wrinkled his brow. ‘Jealous of who?’
‘Me. That Nancy is telling me stuff that she hasn’t told you?’
‘God, no.’ His words lacked sincerity.
‘You are,’ she said, teasing, then frowned at her thought. ‘Why d’you think she hasn’t opened her heart to you about this?’
‘I’ve literally no idea.’
‘Perhaps,’ she said carefully, ‘it’s because you’re a man and she thinks you wouldn’t understand.’
He blinked and considered this, but said nothing.
Stef couldn’t help feeling a pang of victory, but then that faded. She mustn’t make an enemy of Aaron. She didn’t want to, that was certain, not when they’d started to get on well. A shame, she thought, looking down at her hands, that there was this antagonism between them, as she had to admit that she was beginning to find him very attractive.
They sat in silence for a while, then he asked her if she’d already eaten. She had, she said. She’d had supper with her mother to keep her company. She didn’t add that it was partly to keep a clear head so that she wouldn’t make a fool of herself.
‘I’ll have something later. Another drink?’
‘Something soft. I’ll get them.’
Up at the bar, waiting to be served, a text pinged on her phone and she glanced casually at the screen. It was from Pippa. She frowned and clicked on it, then stiffened. She paid for the drinks without noticing what she was doing and carried them back to the table as if in a dream.
‘I can’t stay long,’ she told Aaron, sinking into her chair. ‘My sister’s arriving at any moment.’
‘I thought she wasn’t expected until tomorrow. Is something wrong?’ he asked, concerned.
‘You could say that.’
She explained that Pippa had left her husband.
Twenty-Seven
It took over an hour for Stef to get Jack and Jess into bed. Pippa had arrived with them at nine-thirty and, attuned to the fact that something was wrong, the twins whinged and fought for their mother’s attention. Pippa was a heap of misery and hardly responded, so Stef took the children outside to the field, where for twenty minutes they ran around agreeably enough in the wet grass with Baxter and a tennis ball. By the time she’d given them a bath and hot chocolate, they were getting sleepy, so she herded them into bed, playing Solomon to the impossible judgement of who should occupy the upper bunk. Jack, on top by virtue of promising to lend Jess a particular computer game, fell asleep in the middle of the story Stef read them, leaving Stef to soothe Jess, who’d more immediately picked up that something in her world wasn’t right.
‘Why’s Mummy so cross?’ she asked. ‘She told Jack to “shut up” and that’s rude.’
‘She’s upset about something, darling. Sometimes when we’re upset we say or do things we don’t mean.’
‘What’s she upset about?’
‘I don’t know exactly, but it’s nothing that you or Jack have done.’ Stef wondered whether to tell Jess anything further, but decided against it. How did one speak to four-year-olds about parental squabbles? She didn’t know. She and Pippa had been older when their parents’ marriage deteriorated.
