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Not that she was waiting for him to ring, that wasn’t why she was staying close to the phone. When she got back to work and got down to the article then she would have to contact him, and by then she would have recovered from the schoolgirl crush that was still filling her nights with fevered dreams.

But she met him again on the last weekend of her holiday, at the press showing of an exhibition of sculpture. The artist was beginning to make his name in rugged rock carvings, and Pattie remembered reading that Duncan had bought some of Jack Saker’s early work. She had wondered if Duncan might be at the exhibition, but she had gone along because she was interested in the sculptures herself.

As she walked into the gallery she looked for Duncan, and in that moment all her self-deception vanished. She had come hoping to meet him, for no other reason, and when she saw him in the middle of a group at the far end of the room, she knew that she had been searching for him ever since they parted.

The room was fairly crowded, but when he turned and looked at her nothing in the world could have kept her from him. She almost started running. She could feel herself drawn like steel to a magnet. He never moved, he didn’t even smile, but his power over her was frightening.

I love him, she thought, and the realisation filled her with dismay. I really love him, but what he feels for me isn’t strong enough to make him walk across this room.

Duncan
didn’t come to meet Pattie. Instead he turned away for a moment almost as though he would rather not have seen her, and that stabbed her to the heart, but she couldn’t hold back, and by the time she reached him he was smiling.

They were being watched, but she didn’t care, although she still had enough wit left not to make a spectacle of herself and keep her greeting light. ‘Hello there,’ she said, with a big bright smile. ‘I didn’t expect you back in town just yet. I thought you’d be at the lodge for weeks yet.’

She thought he was glad she hadn’t thrown her arms around him, because he relaxed and grinned at her, his voice as cheerful as her own. ‘Oh, I made very good time with the work, got on very well.’

‘With no distractions?’

He laughed. ‘No more chimneys setting on fire, you mean?’

‘What else?’ Pattie ached to get really close to him. She wanted to touch him so badly, but a number of the folk here knew him and some knew her, and this meeting was going to be talked about, so she stood with folded arms, head back, trying to look nonchalant.

‘I didn’t know you were interested in Saker’s work,’ he said.

‘I’m a journalist, I go where I’m sent.’ She hadn’t been sent to cover this exhibition. She had flashed her press card at the door, but she had come for her own reasons.

‘So you do,’ he said. ‘You were sent to interview me and look where that landed you!’ They shared the joke, smiling into each other’s eyes, then Duncan said, ‘Come and meet Saker,’ and put her hand through his arm.

Pattie gripped a little, to reassure herself that there was muscle and bone beneath the sleeve and this wasn’t just another dream. She pretended she had moved awkwardly and needed to steady herself, but holding on to Duncan was making her weak at the knees. If he kissed her now she would have clung to him in a passionate embrace for as long as the kiss lasted, and she wouldn’t have given a damn about the staring faces. Nor for the cameras.

‘There he is,’ said Duncan. A man with a bushy beard was waving his arms at the biggest piece of rock in the gallery. He had quite an audience already, and Pattie said, ‘How about you telling me about them? You must know what they’re about. You’ve bought some, haven’t you?’

‘A couple of small ones,’ he said. ‘I like rocks. They’re attractive creatures.’ He stroked the nearest piece and when Pattie looked closer she could see the skill of the carver, because it was still a rock and yet it had an animal quality, as if the spirit of the rock peered out. Once she started discovering the hidden figures and faces it became like a game. They went from one exhibit to another and it was fun. Being with Duncan anything would have been fun. She was very talkative, very at ease.
‘What happened about my car?’ she asked.

‘It’s still where you left it. It’s still snowy up there, don’t you ever listen to the weather reports?’

‘No too often. What about my letters? I left them behind. Did they get posted?’

‘They did. Did your article get written?’

‘Not yet. I’m back at work on Monday, then I shall start on it’ He gave her an old-fashioned look and she grinned. ‘Would you care to censor?’

‘Too right I would,’ he said.

So she would have a perfect excuse for seeing him again, and she had to turn her head to hide the elation that must be shining in her eyes. ‘This is my favourite,’ she said. ‘The cat rock.’ It was apricot-coloured—Cotswold stone, hunched, with the suspicion of a feline smile and slanting eyes. She couldn’t make up her mind whether it was malignant or friendly, but it was one hundred per cent watchful. Once you had stared straight at it its gaze seemed to follow you.

‘You know,’ she said, ‘I could live with that.’ She put her hand on the head, and he covered her fingers with his own and her heart swelled with delight.

‘Ah,’ he said, ‘but could it live with you?’

‘Are you suggesting I’d be hard to live with?’ She had been so happy that she was babbling anything that came into her head, but after she heard herself say that she flushed scarlet, especially when Duncan said, ‘I wonder.’

He was joking, of course, he hadn’t wondered anything of the sort, but he looked down at her and asked quietly as though it was a serious question, ‘Everything all right?’

‘With me? Sure, I’m fine. Except for this snuffly cold you might have noticed.’

‘That’s what you get for running around barefoot putting out chimney fires!’

She said breathlessly, ‘I loved every minute of it,’ and he asked,

‘What are you doing this evening?’

She started to say, ‘Not a thing,’ then clapped a hand to her mouth and mumbled, ‘Damn, damn, damn, I’ve got Michael and his mother coming.’

‘That sounds cosy.’

She had been avoiding Michael’s family ever since her return from Yorkshire. But today his mother was in town, doing some shopping, and she had invited herself round to Pattie’s for the evening. Pattie wasn’t looking forward to it. She knew there would be a heart-to-heart, even with Michael hovering around, because in Mrs Ames’ book nice girls never got themselves into gossip columns.

‘Can’t you put them off?’ Duncan suggested.

‘Oh, I wish I could,’ she said fervently. ‘But I don’t think she’d enjoy being paged through Harrods and told to go home for her tea. I could see you tomorrow.’

Duncan looked regretful. ‘I can’t manage tomorrow.’

‘Oho!’ Pattie made a knowing face. ‘With the pretty little fair-haired girl that Gran Brunton mentioned?’

He must have heard about that, or perhaps it was just that he knew who she was talking about, because he laughed and shook his head, and she mimicked Janet’s quick embarrassed voice, ‘As Janet said, “Oh,
Gran
, that was last
summer
, you know
Duncan
.”’

He went on laughing, ‘Nice to have friends,’ and she said,

‘Could I phone you? Because I’ve had my holiday and I won’t really know what my schedule is until I get back into the office on Monday morning.’ She felt that she had done very well so far and she mustn’t show how much she cared.

Duncan drove her home and she pointed out her window on the first floor. ‘That’s mine, number three. Will you come up for a coffee or a drink?’ She had been going to ramble on ‘or anything’, but that sounded like an open invitation, and it might not be a good idea to have Duncan too much at home when Michael and Mrs Ames arrived. All the same she was disappointed when he declined, explaining, ‘I’ve got to get back to the exhibition.’

Pattie hated seeing his car go. She had never before felt this urge to race after a car that was pulling away from the kerbside, like the impulse to ask the Bruntons to put her down so that she could run back to Duncan. She thought, I’m hooked. He doesn’t know it, and he mustn’t know, but that’s why pretending to joke about the fair-haired girl was so hard, because it hurts like murder to feel that I’m sharing him.

But she had been lucky. She had come across Duncan without phoning him or obviously chasing him, and he had asked her for a date. She would ring him on Monday, and tonight she would be friendly and welcoming to Michael and his mother.

She had always looked more like Michael’s sister than his girl, and that was a relationship she could handle, if she could persuade Michael to settle for it. There never had been very much more. They had said they were in love, their friends had considered them lovers, but with Michael, Pattie had never come across anything like the passion and pain that Duncan aroused in her.

She had small pastries and sandwiches and a quiche for tea, and she stood at the window and saw the taxi arrive on the dot of six. Mrs Ames got out, while Michael paid the taxi and followed her to the front door loaded with shopping. From the number of parcels she had had a good day.

Pattie opened her door and Mrs Ames came at her, offering a cool cheek for a kiss. Usually she bestowed the kiss herself, so this meant that Pattie was out of favour. ‘You’ve been papering, then,' said Mrs Ames, eyeing the living room. ‘It’s charming. Very nice. And Michael says you did it all on your own.’

Michael certainly hadn’t helped.. Not that Pattie had wanted him to. He had looked in one evening and then gone off in a huff when a splash of paste landed on his suit.

‘Did you get some lovely things?’ Pattie asked, but Mrs Ames was not being sidetracked. ‘I think so,' she said. ‘But I'm dying for some tea,' and no sooner had Pattie poured her a cup than she was enquiring, ‘Whatever were you doing in Yorkshire last week, getting yourself snowed up in hunting lodges?'

‘I went to interview the man,' Pattie said doggedly, ‘but my car crashed and the snow came.'

‘And you were up there all alone, just the two of you and nobody else?' Michael had hardly raised the matter again, but his mother was determined to get the facts.

‘Nobody,' said Pattie, and Mrs Ames gave a little trill of laughter.

‘It’s lucky that Michael isn’t the jealous type. Some men wouldn’t have liked that at all.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous, Mother,’ said Michael, tolerantly testy, and Pattie wondered if he was being big about this because he really considered her above suspicion or because he didn’t care that much. She was beginning to learn how savagely real jealousy could lacerate. Duncan and she were hardly more than friends yet, but if they ever did become close she would be primitively possessive. She wouldn’t be able to help it. She had no claim on him, but already she hated his other women, whoever they were.

‘What was it like in this hunting lodge?’ Mrs Ames asked, reaching for a petit four, and Pattie described the big room and knew that she would remember it until her dying day, and went on, ‘It was practically a ruin when Duncan first came across it. He rebuilt it, he did a lot of the work himself.’ Then she saw from Mrs Ames’ expression that there had been too much admiration in her voice, but all the same she added enthusiastically, ‘He made a really super job of it.’

‘And upstairs?’ probed Mrs Ames.

‘Two rooms,’ said Pattie. She didn’t say, ‘One bed,’ but she looked straight at Michael’s mother, who was obviously wondering if Pattie had slept alone. For two pins, thought Pattie, I’d tell you that after Duncan I’m never going to want any other man.

The atmosphere was becoming very highly charged and Michael’s head jerked from one woman to the other. His mother hadn’t recovered from her initial astonishment at learning that Pattie had spent most of last week all alone with, a man whose photographs looked dark and sexy and dangerous, and Michael could foresee trouble right now. Pattie seemed quite changed from the calm unruffled girl he knew. There was something fiery and defiant about her and he feared that if she spoke the words would be explosive.

He wished profoundly that his mother had not insisted on coming. He never had believed in looking for trouble, and now he was desperately anxious to avert a scene. He began to talk about the weather— would the winter never end? Then he asked what was in the sandwiches and had Pattie watched the late TV movie last night?

He continued the small talk until the moment of confrontation seemed over, while Pattie held back the giggles. Of course it wasn’t funny. Mrs Ames was pretty sure that the girl who might have been marrying her son had behaved shamelessly. Michael didn’t want to know, but Mrs Ames was going to get to the heart of the matter and it would take more than Michael to stop her.

All through tea he did most of the talking. He was usually on the silent side, but now he worked hard to control the conversation, while every time there was a pause Mrs Ames would clear her throat and hark back to Yorkshire. It seemed she knew the moors well, although from Michael’s startled look Pattie was confident that this was the first he had heard of that.

‘Where exactly was the hunting lodge?’ Mrs Ames asked. Pattie explained, tracing an invisible map with fingertip on the table top, while Mrs Ames nodded, tight-lipped. ‘I thought I’d read somewhere that it was right off the beaten track, miles from anywhere. So how did you manage to find it?’

Here came the cross-examination. Michael gave a croak of protest and Pattie said sweetly, ‘I was up there last summer.' She felt rather wicked about that, seeing Mrs Ames’ open mouth and jabbing finger preparatory to a triumphant, ‘Aha, so it wasn’t your first visit!’ But before Mrs Ames could speak Pattie explained, ‘On holiday with some girls from the office. One of them pointed out the lodge as we passed on the road. I remembered where it was.’

‘And he wasn’t expecting you?’

Pattie shook her head and Michael started to talk about his last summer holiday, and that was how it went on. After tonight Pattie decided she owed it to Michael to tell him she couldn’t see him again. She thought he would take it calmly although his mother would be indignant for him, but she couldn’t tell him now, and the crazy game continued. Mrs Ames worrying away like a dog with a bone, Michael getting shriller, and Pattie feeling hysterical laughter rising painfully.