SILK WICKEDNESS 4

How often had her mother said that? And how often had Claudia replied, ‘Mum, you’d be a gift to any con-man with lovely manners and “good family” shoes.’

‘Sorry I’m a bit late,’ she said, taking the seat opposite. ‘The underground was murder. A heaving mass of humanity off to do its Christmas shopping.’

He put his FT on a spare chair. ‘You should have taken a cab.’

She nearly said, I’m trying to save money, not squander it, but desisted. ‘The traffic’s even more murderous than the tube. Last time I took a cab on a wet Saturday morning, the driver cursed all the way. He possessed the most colourful repertoire of curses, but since they were mostly muttered, I couldn’t quite catch them all. It was maddening.’

One corner of his mouth lifted in the half-smile she was beginning to associate with him. Did he ever smile properly? she wondered. Or was the other side of his mouth permanently fixed in world-weary mode?

‘Have a drink,’ he said.

There was no classic suit this time, and no suede jacket either. He was wearing what fashion editors call ‘city casual’ at its understated best: a jacket of charcoal-grey with a black polo shirt underneath.

She ordered a gin and tonic, which appeared with miraculous speed. As she sipped, Claudia studied both menu and ambience.

Paolo’s managed to combine city-chic with easy informality, quite unlike the hallowed-shrine atmosphere of the French place. Here you didn’t feel the chef would quiver with outrage if anybody asked for salt.

Her lips quivered as she remembered an incident in a similar hallowed-shrine place.

It did not escape him. ‘Something funny?’ he murmured, glancing up from his menu.

Should I tell him ? she wondered. Oh , what the hell. ‘I was thinking of that French place. A few months ago I was taken to a place very much like that by a very down-to- earth Aussie on my birthday.’

He raised his eyebrows in a ‘go on’ fashion.

Claudia’s quivers were rapidly turning into barely suppressed laughter. ‘The service was rather sniffy, and since he was paying an arm and a leg he was a mite put out. He ordered some incredibly elaborate dish, with a sauce that had probably taken fourteen hours to prepare, and then he called the head waiter over and said, ‘Where’s the ketchup, mate?’

The mere memory of Adam’s wicked expression and the shock-horror on the head waiter’s face was enough to bring her giggles to the surface. ‘I nearly choked to death, trying not to laugh. I had to go to the ladies’ and collapse.’

Guy Hamilton wasn’t laughing. He wasn’t exactly sniffily disapproving either, but the hint of amusement that flickered at his eyes and mouth was as dry as James Bond’s martini.

‘At least it didn’t spoil your evening. Behaviour like that would have had some people cringing with embarrassment.’

Her laughter died as if it had never been. Suddenly she was back on the pavement after that kissogram, his voice echoing in her ears. ‘How much were you paid to embarrass my guests and interrupt a passable dinner?’

‘Were they your parents, the other night?’ she asked. ‘I do hope it didn’t spoil their appetites.’

‘They were an aunt and uncle who live very quietly in Suffolk. My aunt is the kind of person who would rather have all her teeth pulled out than cause a scene.’

He said it crisply enough, but that didn’t stop her feeling awful. Especially when he went on, ‘She was too distressed to finish her meal. We left about fifteen minutes after you did.’

She swallowed hard. ‘I’m terribly sorry.’

‘I don’t hold you entirely responsible. You didn’t order it.’ He nodded towards her menu. ‘If we don’t order soon we’ll be here all afternoon.’

Suitably chastened, she cast her eye over lists of assorted diet-busters. The only trouble with Italian restaurants , she thought, is all the veal on the menu. If Guy Hamilton ordered baby veal, she would go off him instantly. Which might be no bad thing, in the circumstances.

‘Insalata di calamares , please,’ she said to the patient waiter. ‘Followed by petti di polio Alla Florentine.’ It was

chicken breasts in lovely, yummy, to-hell-with-the-diet butter. She and Kate never bought butter, as they’d instantly gorge themselves on baked potatoes swimming in it. Low-fat marge wasn’t nearly so tempting. ‘And a green salad.’

Once he had ordered his gnocchi verdi and friito misto di mare - no veal, thank heaven - she sat up straight and went into crisp and businesslike mode. ‘So shoot. What do you want me to do?’

He finished the Bloody Mary. ‘If you don’t mind, I’ll get some food down first. I negotiate better on a full tank.’

She stared at him, curiosity turning to exasperation. ‘Mr Hamilton, will you please stop these delaying tactics? You stalled in the office; you stalled on the phone. I’m beginning to think . . .’

She hadn’t been thinking anything until then, but a ghastly thought had just plopped into her head - a thought so ghastly it momentarily paralyzed her. She’d had a similar sensation once before at a beachside tavema in Greece, when a cockroach had plopped from the overhead vines into her retsina.

He raised an enquiring eyebrow. ‘What?’

The cockroach had been a whopper, wiggling its beastly upside down legs and waving its feelers. Claudia glanced over her shoulder towards the door. Any minute now . . .

‘Expecting someone?’ he murmured.

His faint amusement only fuelled her suspicions. ‘Are you playing games with me?’

‘No.’

‘Can I have that in writing?’

‘No.’

You have my word as a gentleman? Well , we’ve all heard that before. A swirl of fresh air told her the door had just opened. She glanced over her shoulder again, but it was only a young couple with an umbrella. Don’t be ridiculous , she told herself. He wouldn’t.

Would he?

She scanned his face sharply for signs of malicious relish, but there was only a one-inch chasm appearing between his brows.

‘Claudia, if you’ve got a jealous swain who’s liable to charge in with a meat-axe and apply it to my head, would you kindly say so now?’

‘How could I ever have contemplated kissograms if I had a jealous swain?’

‘Then he’s not going to get the wrong idea if I ask you to pack a suitcase and come to the Arabian Gulf?’

She quite forgot to say there was no swain, jealous or otherwise. ‘The Arabian Gulft’

‘Muscat, to be precise. The Sultanate of Oman.’

A breathing space arrived with their starters, and she needed it. Once the waiter had gone, he said, ‘Now I’ve started, you might as well hear the rest. I have a business trip which I can’t postpone. My daughter, who has just been suspended from school, is counting the days till I go. She’s looking forward to a spell of unfettered freedom: sleeping all day, clubbing till breakfast-time, and hanging out with the kind of people who think it’s fun to do eighty miles an hour over Chelsea Bridge at four in the morning.’

At least I was wrong about the other thing , she thought, spearing a ring of squid. ‘Go on.’

‘I am not going to leave her unsupervised in London. Given her record, none of her schoolfriends , parents will have her. Therefore I have to take her with me. And I have a very hectic schedule. I won’t have time to keep an eye on her.’

Her fork had frozen halfway to her mouth. ‘And you want a minder? You want me to tag along as glorified nanny?’

‘That’s the general idea.’

She stared at him. ‘You must be off your head.’

He speared a plump green gnocchi pillow, dripping with melted Parmesan. ‘Merely desperate.’

She was beginning to sense a fireworks situation. There had been more than a touch of mischief in the kissogram - something a group of employees might inflict on a well- loathed boss.

He devoured more spinach pillows and went on, ‘As you may have gathered the other night, Anoushka gets a kick out of shocking people. In Muscat, she would revel in proving an embarrassment. Knowing I have highly placed connections, she’d get a grade A kick out of, say, causing a scene by sunbathing topless at the pool. Or getting herself arrested for wandering the streets in jeans cut off to her backside.’

Claudia took a sip of Soave, and then another. She could have done with the whole bottle, but gulping any kind of booze gave her hiccups. ‘What about that aunt and uncle at the restaurant the other night? Surely they could -?’

‘It’s out of the question. My uncle has high blood pressure.’

Nuff said. ‘Friends, then. Your friends, I mean.’

He shook his head. ‘Either can’t, or couldn’t cope if they did.’

She didn’t bother asking about other relatives, or the girl’s mother. If these were options he wouldn’t be asking a stranger. Maybe he had to ask a stranger because anybody who knew his daughter would have a nervous breakdown at the very idea of being responsible for her.

‘I couldn’t possibly undertake to keep her out of trouble. You’d need some bomb-proof old battleaxe from an agency. With handcuffs. In any case, she’d recognize me. How on earth would you expect her to pay any attention to a kissogram girl?’

‘That’s precisely why she might relate to you. She can’t relate to middle-aged women in tweed skirts who look as if they’ve never done anything remotely indiscreet in their lives.’

You've got a point there , she thought. But one correct point was hardly sufficient. ‘I can see you’re worried about leaving her, but lots of girls go through a wild phase. I know I did - out all night and taking lifts with boy-racer idiots and drinking too much and throwing up. My parents used to have pink fits with monotonous regularity, but I survived. We nearly all do, you know.’

A hint of half-amused impatience came into his voice. ‘Claudia, I am not what Anoushka would call a “prehistoric old fart”. I know all about misspent youth. I enjoyed one myself.’

I bet you did , she thought, suddenly seeing him at nineteen or twenty, before that world-weariness had etched itself around his mouth. I bet you had a spark and a half. And you still have, come to that, and not that far under the surface either. If only . . .

‘I don’t expect her to live like some earnest social reject,’ he went on. ‘If she never wanted to go out I’d think there was something wrong with her. But she’s overstepped the limit too often and I have to make a stand. She was furious at being suspended from school. She was hoping to be expelled.’

Claudia almost choked on her last morsel of squid. Hoping he wouldn’t realize it was laughter rather than shock, she forced her lips into a pained expression and took another sip of Soave. ‘Excuse me.’

She was conscious of a sneaking admiration for An- oushka. How often she had longed to be expelled from the convent! How often she had daydreamed during boring geography lessons, thinking up outrageous escapades that would get her banished instantly! ‘Why was she suspended, or shouldn’t I ask?’

‘Not over lunch.’

Spoilsport.

They ate in silence for a little while, and she spent the time wondering a good many things about him. Divorced or widowed, and for how long? If divorced, whose fault had it been? Had he been playing around, or had his wife left him for another man? Or had she just been fed up because he was a workaholic? If he was divorced, why hadn’t the girl gone with her mother? Maybe he’d got custody because she’d run off with some wild and hairy rock singer? Or was he a widower? He wore no wedding ring, not that that meant anything.

Rings led her to hands. Hands were one of the first things she noticed in a man, and they could put her right

off. Dirty nails, flashy rings, fat, podgy fingers, thin, white, bony ones, damp, clammy-looking, crawly ones . . .

His were quite worthy of a Category Four rating. Firm and capable, the nails short and clean, they looked strong, but sensitive too. Equal to anything from chopping logs to activities requiring much more gentle artistry.

The main course arrived, and just as well. Her imagination had drifted into lazy, delicious speculation about just how sensitively those fingers would ease a bra-strap from a . . .

Claudia , for crying out loud , behave yourself.

‘This looks lovely,’ she said brightly, just as if food had been the only thing on her mind. What if he was one of those wretched men who knew ? She’d met such a man once - someone she’d long fancied from afar, but had tried not to show it because he’d loved himself so much.

On their first and only date he’d said smugly, ‘I knew you fancied me. I can always tell when a woman fancies me because of the way her pupils dilate when I talk to her.’

For half a minute she concentrated on the least erotic things she could think of: the state of the oven, and half an undigested mouse that Portly had sicked up on her bed. Its tiny, pathetic paws and minute kidneys had been perfectly visible on the duvet, making her feel quite ill.

This worked brilliantly. Feeling faintly queasy all over again, she toyed with her chicken, wishing the chef had not been quite so heavy-handed with the butter after all.

After a mouthful or two of assorted seafood, Guy Hamilton said, ‘You’ve gone very quiet. I hope that’s a good sign.’

Although she had more or less made up her mind that his offer was out of the question, something stopped her

saying so at once. Playing for time, she said, ‘You know nothing about me. If you don’t mind my saying so, it’s not generally the done thing to ask total strangers to look after one’s child.’

He looked her straight in the eye. ‘She’s not exactly a child, and I’m a very good judge of character.’

‘You mean you can’t find anybody else.’

‘That too.’

The restaurant was nearly full, the cheerful buzz of conversation and clinking glasses all around them. ‘Just out of interest,’ she said, ‘how exactly would you expect me to keep her from embarrassing you? I mean, suppose she decided to go into town in shorts? How would I stop her?’

‘She won’t be able to go anywhere. I’ve booked an out- of-town hotel - only a few miles out, but I won’t give her any money for taxis.’

‘So what’s she supposed to do all day?’

‘What do you think?’ He topped up her glass. ‘History. Maths. Biology. She thinks she’s won this round. She thinks I’m going to give in and leave her to hang around clubs for a fortnight. But she’s got another think coming. She’s coming with me, and she’s going to do her school- work. If she plays ball, she can have time off for the beach, the water ski-ing and so on. If she doesn’t, she’ll be bored out of her mind. And, believe me, the one thing Anoushka cannot tolerate is boredom.’

He raised his glass to his lips. ‘Cheers.’

Determination glinted in his eye like polished steel. Sooner you than me, Claudia thought, wondering what his not so hapless daughter would say when he told her she was getting on that plane. She was rapidly getting the impression of two brick walls, engaged in a fight to the death.

‘Cheers,’ she said, with no conviction whatsoever.