"I'm OK, Mum, just seem to have gone down with one of these viruses."
She spoke carefully, making her voice as blank as she could.
"Not enough to knock me off my feet but enough to make concentrating at a word processor impossible."
"Do you want me to come round? Fetch Hannah? Anything?"
"No, no, thanks. Everything's under control. A few days at home and I'll be fine, and I don't want you to catch anything." She forced a modicum of warmth into _her voice.
"Forty-eight hours and I'll be as right as rain." As right as rain? What a stupid banality, she thought bitterly.
"Are you sure?" Her mother was unusually persistent. "I'm not stupid,
Lydia, and I am your mother. It isn't anything to do with that man, is it?
Wolf Strade?"
"That man'? For a moment Lydia felt a flood of wild hysterical laughter well up inside.
"That man' had effectively battered through all her de fences and shattered the self-esteem of the last few years into fragments. It was everything to do with him. And still she loved him more than life. She took a deep breath.
"No, of course not."
There was a pregnant silence on the other end of the phone that lengthened.
It was an attribute of her mother's that she could be scathingly disbelieving without saying a word.
"Well, perhaps it is, but I can't talk about it now. Another time," she added desperately.
"You know best." Her mother's voice was disapproving but resigned.
"Well, if you're sure I can't help in any way... Give me a call if you change your mind."
"I will. Thanks, Mum."
"Goodbye, Lydia."
"You know best." Her mother's words taunted her after she had replaced the receiver. But she didn't, did she? She didn't know anything any more.
She thought about how he had come to the house, his explanation regarding
Elda. So he was free. at the moment. Perhaps it would have been better to take the brief affair he had wanted? At least that way she would have had memories, if nothing else. Now there was just an empty void where her heart should have been.
And Wolf? Her heart thudded as she pictured him in _his office, barking orders at the new secretary and immersed in work as usual. It wouldn't take him long to forget she even existed--if he still remembered, that was.
She ignored the doorbell at first. She needed time to pull herself together before she collected Hannah, and a door-to-door salesman was the last person she felt like coping with right now. They were renowned in this district and normally she could remain polite and firm, but today she wo
uldn't be responsible for her actions if they tried a hard sell. In fact the urge to bite and scream and kick at something, anything, was shockingly fierce. But they were persistent.
She'd give them that. After a full minute of the bell ringing, with the sort of offensive determination that hit a raw spot deep inside, she suddenly leapt up and flew to the door, wrenching it open with a ferocious scowl that froze as Wolf removed his hand from the button.
"Hello." He made no attempt to move.
"Hello." She didn't either.
They stared at each other in silence for taut seconds before she forced words through her numb lips.
"I thought you were at the office." It was inane, but his appearance following so closely behind her thoughts was shattering.