Where Everything Seems Double by Penny Freedman (popular romance novels .txt) 📕

interrupts, suddenly animated. ‘Useless,’ he says, ‘that school. They’ve had nothing but supply teachers for science this year. Ruby’s a clever girl, she’s going to be a doctor. None of this going off to stage school. She’ll stay here and get her A levels.’

‘Her sister’s at a stage school,’ Susan explains. ‘One of the best – Alcott Park – you may have heard of it. She got a full scholarship and she’s doing very well.’ She gives her husband a quick look which is almost defiant. ‘Ruby was thinking… but her dad wants… and she is a clever girl.’

‘It’s this stage rubbish that caused all this – trouble,’ Neil says, and the blood is rising in his pasty face. ‘That nonsense on the lake. What’s it for?’

I wish we could sit down now that we have started talking. Instead we are standing around among the exhibits like characters in a badly directed play. Directors feel that they have to keep actors on the move, but who does that in real life when they are having a serious conversation, unless they are actually out on a walk? I look round but can see no chairs, so I move to a position between the two of them and hope to create a circle of a kind.

‘Is Ruby’s sister home for the holidays?’ I ask.

Neil gives a sort of low growl and Susan says, ‘No. Grace has got a part in a show. Not West End or anything but professional. The school put her up for it. They’re on a foreign tour for six weeks – Belgium and Holland, I think, and maybe…’

‘Are she and Ruby close?’

‘They were,’ Susan says, ‘but Grace is fifteen now, and she’s been away at the school for two years, and she’s quite grown-up now, so…’

I wait expectantly but she doesn’t go on. Why can’t she ever finish a sentence? Is it because she expects to be interrupted? I look at the two of them and I am amazed really that these two colourless parents could have produced two girls who yearn to perform. Maybe they are secret exhibitionists. Glass blowing, after all, is quite dramatic, with its white heat and its air of danger. I went once to a glass workshop in Sweden, where serious-faced, silent, Nordic giants moved around one another carrying molten glass with practised ease, and there definitely was an air of performance. Still, I am puzzled by these parents, not least because they don’t seem desperate enough. If one of my girls had gone missing like this I think I’d be out on the lake wailing like an Irish fairy woman. These two look sad and bewildered but I don’t sense a desperate fear about what has happened to their daughter.

I try shock tactics. ‘What do you think has happened to Ruby?’ I ask.

Neither answers. Susan turns away.

‘Neil?’ I ask.

‘It’ll be that Romanian boy,’ he says. ‘I’ve told the police. He’ll have her somewhere.’

‘Romanian boy?’

‘The one who was in her boat with her, he means,’ Susan says, although she still has her back to us. ‘The waiter at the hotel. Dimitri or something.’

‘But wasn’t he working that night?’ I ask. ‘I thought—’

‘That’s what he says, but the others will be covering up for him. They stick together, don’t they, that lot?’ Neil starts to move away as he says this, back towards his workshop.

‘You think he’s abducted her?’ I ask before he can disappear.

‘She gets ideas,’ he says enigmatically. ‘They do at that age.’

And he’s gone. Susan turns back to me once he has left.

‘Do you think she’s with Dumitru, Susan?’ I ask.

She gives me an odd look, more focused than she has been and almost pleading.

‘She’s only thirteen,’ she says.

‘You said that Eve was worried about Colin. You don’t think he’s involved?’

‘I don’t,’ she says. ‘I really don’t. And I’m sorry this is causing him trouble.’

We stand and look at each other rather helplessly, and I am thinking up some closing words when two blond heads look in through the doorway. Milo says nothing but Fergus is polite. ‘Good morning. We saw you there and we wondered if you have Freda with you.’

They are in their rowing gear, sweaty and cheerful with the glow of exercise and competition. Freda will be ecstatic to see them.

‘She’s down in your grandmother’s studio, potting,’ I say. ‘I’ll walk down with you.’

Freda is cradling a small pot with a fish design on it when we go into the studio. ‘It has a flaw,’ she says, ‘and I rescued it from being smashed.’

She points to the way a couple of the fish scales have dripped. ‘I think that’s what makes it special,’ she says.

‘That’s what I say about my home-made cakes,’ says Eve. ‘All right for amateurs but I’m supposed to be a professional.’

‘Don’t you think it’s lovely?’ Freda appeals to the boys and they go into a huddle while Eve takes me aside.

‘I’ve spoken to Dumitru,’ she murmurs. ‘He’s on duty in the bar but it’s quiet at the moment. You could have a quick word.’

Without waiting for me even to open my mouth, she calls across to the boys, ‘Look after things here for a bit, will you, chaps? I’m going up to the hotel with Gina for a moment.’

So saying, she bundles me out and starts to march me along the lakeside at a brisk pace. I stop dead.

‘Hold on, Eve. I’ve just had one meeting with people who didn’t know what I was there for and I’m not having another one. What exactly have you said to him?’

‘I’ve told him you’re a friend of mine, up here for a week’s holiday with your granddaughter, that you’re an English teacher and you’re happy to give him a bit of coaching because you’re a very kind person.’

‘Really? And you were able to say that with a straight face?’

‘Absolutely.’ She starts walking again. ‘Anyway,’ she calls over her shoulder, ‘it’s almost true. And I bet you’ll enjoy teaching him once you get started.’

She stomps off ahead