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  ‘She’s gone home,’ Robert told her when the door was open and Sarah went inside. ‘She said she wasn’t paid to look after the likes of me and that I was getting on her nerves,’ he added woefully.

  The hall was low-ceilinged and beamed, with a polished wooden floor and an enormous cavern of a fireplace. It was immaculately clean and yet somehow unwelcoming.

  The oak coffer against the wall cried out for a pewter jug full of flowers, the floor for a richly coloured rug, and stairs with barley-sugar twisted and carved posts and heavily worn oak treads led to the upper storeys of the house. A window set halfway up them in their curve let in a mellow shaft of sunlight, and, even while she admired the heavy wrought-iron light fitting that hung from the ceiling, Sarah was wondering why no one seemed to have thought to fit the window-seat with a comfortable squashy cushion, and thinking how bleak the house looked despite its shining cleanness.

  ‘Are you here all on your own?’ she asked Robert as he took hold of her hand and started to tug her in the direction of one of the doors leading off the hallway.

  ‘Yes. My father’s gone to work.’

  ‘And Mrs Jacobs has left. Is she coming back?’

  ‘No.’ Robert shook his head. ‘She said she wasn’t going to set foot in this place again. At least not while I was here. Children are a nuisance, she said, and there are plenty of places she can work where she doesn’t have to put up with them.’ Tears suddenly brimmed in his eyes as he turned to look at her. ‘My father is going to be cross with me, isn’t he? But it wasn’t my fault that I spilt the milk. I slipped on the kitchen floor.’

  Sarah felt a mingling of anger and disgust. How could any father leave his child in the sole charge of a woman as plainly unsuitable as Mrs Jacobs, and how could any woman walk out on a six-year-old child when she knew there was no one to take charge of him, and when she must also know how vulnerable he was?

  Robert pushed open a door which Sarah saw led into the kitchen. Her frown deepened when she saw the pool of milk marking the stone floor, its surface ominously broken by shards of glass. Had Mrs Jacobs really left without cleaning up the broken glass? It seemed that she had.

  Quietly telling Robert not to go near the broken glass, Sarah set about cleaning up the mess.

  While she was doing so he started to explain tearfully to her how the milk had been spilt when he was pouring it into his breakfast bowl of cereal.

  The fridge from which he had taken the milk had a freezer section beneath it, and a handle surely far too high for the easy reach of a child of six.

  When she heard how he had dragged a stool across the floor and climbed up on it to open the door, apparently while Mrs Jacobs was sitting down drinking a cup of tea, she was so angry both with Mrs Jacobs and with Robert’s father that she felt it was just as well that neither of them was there for her to vent her anger on them.

  Surely the older woman must have realised the potential danger of a child of Robert’s age climbing on a stool to open a fridge door? And surely in any case the little boy should not have been left to get his own breakfast?

  Not wanting to pry and take advantage of his innocence, Sarah nevertheless had to ask him why Mrs Jacobs had not poured out the milk for him.

  ‘She said it wasn’t her job to feed me,’ he told Sarah. ‘And, besides, she was very cross. She said I didn’t deserve any breakfast after what I’d done yesterday. She said I ought to be whipped and locked in my room.’ His face grew shadowed and fearful. ‘You won’t…you won’t tell my father about the milk, will you, Sarah?’

  ‘Not if you don’t want me to,’Sarah assured him, mentally crossing her fingers. She had every intention of making sure that Gray Philips knew exactly what she thought of a man who left his child in the sole charge of a woman like Mrs Jacobs.

  It was almost lunchtime, and when she discovered that because of the accident Robert had not had any breakfast she opened the fridge and stared in disgust at its meagre contents. The freezer section below it was packed with microwave dishes and TV dinners, but there was nothing, as far as she could see, nutritious enough for a growing child…no fresh fruit, no fresh vegetables, nothing in the fridge that could in any way constitute the ingredients for a well-balanced healthy meal.

  The bread-bin, when she found it, held half a loaf of dry, unappetising white bread, although the biscuit barrel was well stocked. Sarah turned away from this in disgust to announce firmly, ‘Robert, you and I are going to do some shopping.’

  It was warm enough for Robert to go out in his shirt and shorts, but before they left Sarah found an envelope in her handbag and wrote down a brief note on it, leaving it propped up on the kitchen table in the unlikely event of Mrs Jacobs’s alerting Gray Philips to the fact that she had left Robert on his own and his coming home to ensure that he was safe.

  Since she had no keys to any of the doors, she had to leave the back door unlocked, and as they drove away she prayed that no one would break into the house while she was gone.

  In their nearest market town they had a good selection of food stores, so there was no need for her to drive as far as Ludlow.

  After they had parked the car and collected their trolley she asked Robert what he liked to eat, and was pleased to discover from his answers to her questions that his mother had obviously been very strict about a healthy diet.

  However, when she made some comment about his mother, he shook his head and told her, to her surprise, ‘But I didn’t live with Mummy and Tom. I lived with Nana. There wasn’t room for me at Mummy’s house, and besides…’ He scowled and dragged his toe along the floor, telling her gruffly, ‘Tom didn’t like me. Peter’s father liked him,’ he added wistfully, causing Sarah to cease her inspection of the shelves and pause to look at him, asking questioningly,

  ‘Peter?’

  ‘He was my friend at school,’ Robert told her. ‘He lived with his mummy and his daddy. His daddy used to play with him. He was teaching Peter to play football,’ he told her enviously.

  Poor little scrap. Sarah ached to pick him up and hug him and to tell him that it wasn’t his fault, that he had just been unlucky in the adult males in his life, because she could see the fear in his eyes, the belief that it was somehow his fault that first his mother’s lover and then his own father had rejected him.

  It seemed odd, though, that, after going to all the trouble of obtaining sole custody of him and refusing to allow his father to see him, his mother should then allow him to live full-time with his grandmother.

  She was frowning a little over this as she scanned the shelves. She had plenty of cash with her, money she had brought with her when she had arrived from the city and which so far she had had no need to spend, thanks to the generosity of her cousin. According to Sally and Ross, Gray Philips was a wealthy man, and certainly wealthy enough to provide his son with a proper diet, so there was no need for her to scrimp on her purchases.

  She could only marvel at the quality and training of a housekeeper who apparently was content to feed a grown man and a growing child on pre-cooked frozen microwave meals. There was nothing wrong with such things for emergencies or days when cooking was inconvenient or impossible, but as a sole source of food…

  As she paused to ask Robert if he liked fish she tried not to contemplate how Gray Philips was likely to view her interference.

  Her shopping complete, she and Robert headed back to the car. He was chattering to her about his grandmother as they did so, and Sarah could tell how much he missed her—more, it seemed, than he missed his mother, but then, if he had lived with his grandmother…It would account for that oddly old-fashioned air he had about him at times, that grave, almost too adult manner that set him apart from the other children of his age that she knew.

  Once they were back at the house she was relieved to find that there had been no intruders, but neither, it seemed, had Mrs Jacobs changed her mind and returned.

  Had the woman no sense of responsibility, to leave a six-year-old child completely o
n his own?

  After she had made Robert some lunch and seen him clean his plate she asked him if he knew what time his father normally came home from work. One thing was certain: there was no way she could leave Robert here on his own, which meant that she would have to wait with him until Gray Philips returned.

  Robert shrugged his shoulders in response to her question. His father, it seemed, came home at a variety of different times, and she was appalled to discover from his artless chatter that more often than not the boy had been left by the housekeeper to get his own supper and get himself ready for bed, Mrs Jacobs having apparently threatened him that he would be in serious trouble if his father came home and found him still up.

  The housekeeper seemed to have reinforced Robert’s fear of his father by using Gray as a threat against him, but, angry as she was with the other woman, Sarah was even more angered by Gray Philips himself. Surely anyone with an ounce of sense must have known what was going on…must have seen what was happening? Which meant either that Gray Philips couldn’t be bothered with his son, or, even worse, simply didn’t care.

  Once she and Robert had washed up from lunch she telephoned Sally and explained the situation, adding that she felt she had to stay with Robert until his father returned.

  ‘Yes, of course you must,’ Sally agreed firmly, denying that it would cause her any problems if Sarah kept her car. When Sarah explained to her what she had found when she had arrived at the house, Sally told her, ‘Well, I’m not entirely surprised. Mrs Richards was here this morning, and she was saying that Mrs Jacobs is the last woman fit to have charge of a small child. Apparently she detests children.’

  After she had replaced the telephone receiver Sarah reflected that Gray Philips, as a local, must surely know of his housekeeper’s reputation, and yet he had still left her in charge of his son.

  Unwilling to stray too far from the house in case Gray Philips returned, Sarah spent the afternoon in the garden with Robert. He was an intelligent child, if perhaps a little over-sensitive and in need of a slightly more robust attitude towards life. That was probably because he had had no adult male in his life to pattern himself on, Sarah reflected as Robert chattered openly about his life before he’d come to live with his father, and confirmed that he had been living with his grandmother and not his mother and that, moreover, it did not seem as though he had actually seen a great deal of his mother.

  At six o’clock they went inside, and at her suggestion Robert went upstairs for a bath before she made his supper. He insisted on her going with him, and a little reluctantly she did so. She didn’t want Gray Philips to come back and think she was prying round the house.

  For that reason she had kept strictly to the kitchen, firmly suppressing any temptation to open the doors into any of the other rooms.

  But now, with Robert pleading with her and insisting that he would not have a bath unless she came with him, she reluctantly followed him upstairs on to the wide-galleried landing with its polished board floor and its dark portraits.

  Against one cream wall was another oak chest, just as bare of any touch of homely warmth as the one downstairs, and, remembering the profusion of flowers she had seen in the garden, she itched to be able to gather up some of them so that their rich colours broke up the sombreness of the house.

  Two passages led off the landing. Robert grasped her hand and took her down one of them, stopping outside the door at the end of the passage and then opening it.

  His bedroom was large, and surprisingly thoughtfully and well equipped for a boy of his age. There was a large toy cupboard against one wall, a desk and chair, a comfortable single bed with a duvet on it depicting Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles. Beyond the bedroom was a door which Robert told her led to his bathroom.

  The bathroom was as well equipped as the bedroom, with a shower as well as a bath, but there was a dirty rim round the bath and a pile of damp towels on the floor.

  ‘Mrs Jacobs said she wasn’t cleaning in here ‘cos I was a bad boy,’ Robert told her when he saw Sarah looking at the towels. His face clouded suddenly as he added almost tearfully, ‘At Nana’s I had my special things in the bathroom, my frogs and my boat, but Mrs Jacobs threw them all away. She said they were only for babies.’

  Sarah’s heart ached for him as she was torn between her feelings for Robert and her fury at the other woman’s unbelievable lack of compassion and understanding.

  ‘Never mind. Perhaps we could make a paper boat for you to sail for tonight,’ she suggested, adding, ‘It won’t sail very well, though.’

  Instantly Robert’s face lit up. ‘Could we really do that?’ he asked her, so obviously thrilled by her suggestion that she laughed.

  ‘Yes, if we can find some paper,’ she assured him.

  Instantly his face fell.

  ‘I haven’t got any paper. Mrs Jacobs took it all away because she said it was making a mess. There’s some in the study, though. We could go down and get it.’

  Sarah hesitated. The last thing she wanted to do was to start rooting around in someone else’s house, knowing how much she would hate another person invading her own privacy, and yet she had promised Robert, and if he knew where the paper was…

  The study, as he called it, was more of a small library, complete with library shelves and an impressive stock of leather-bound books.

  A huge partner’s desk dominated the floor space, even if the computer terminal on it looked slightly out of place.

  Two large bay windows overlooked the gardens, their leaded lights glinting in the evening sunshine. The window-seats in the bays were covered in faded damask, the fabric adding a comfortable homely touch to an otherwise austere room.

  The paper, it seemed, was kept in the bottom drawer of the desk, but when Robert tried to open it it was too heavy for him.

  A little unwillingly Sarah got down on the floor beside him to add her efforts to his.

  ‘What the hell’s going on in here?’

  Sarah froze as she heard the angry male demand, feeling Robert creep closer to her as his father’s anger reached out to engulf both of them.

  Feeling like a thief caught in the act of stealing something, Sarah turned round slowly, wishing she was standing up and not kneeling down; not a good position in which to defend herself, and certainly not a good position from which to confront someone…especially not a someone who was standing over her, glaring furiously down at her, and apparently putting the very worst kind of construction there could be on what she was doing.

  ‘We were looking for some paper so that we could make a boat to sail in the bath.’

  Robert’s uncertain, nervous little voice broke the hard silence.

  Both adults focused on him but with very different expressions. Sarah’s was soft and tender, her hand going out instinctively to touch his cheek, to offer him some kind of comfort and reassurance, while his father’s, if anything, became even more grim and irritable.

  ‘You were what? Would you mind explaining to me what’s going on here?’ Gray Philips demanded, turning to Sarah. ‘And where the hell is Mrs Jacobs? She was supposed to stay with Robert until I got back.’

  At her side Sarah felt Robert start to tremble and knew immediately that he feared his father would blame him for the fact that the housekeeper had left.

  Without allowing herself to dwell on Gray Philips’s reaction to what she was doing, she touched Robert gently on the arm and said softly to him, ‘Robbie, you go upstairs and get ready for bed while I talk to your father, will you?’

  He was more than glad to obey her suggestion, scrambling to his feet and almost running through the door and up the stairs.

  Once she was sure he was out of earshot Sarah got to her own feet. She had taken off her shoes when she had kneeled down on the floor and they were a couple of feet away from her. Wishing she had them on for the extra inches they gave her, she drew her body up firmly and tilted her chin, defiance and determination mingling in the look she gave the man watching her.
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br />   His silence was, if anything, even more intimidating than his original anger, but there was no reason for her to be intimidated by him. He, after all, was the one who was responsible for Robert…who had left him, a child of six years old, alone in the house without any form of adult supervision.

  Reminding herself of this brought little comfort, but it did enable her to say defiantly, ‘It seems that Mrs Jacobs has left…’

  CHAPTER THREE

  SARAH’S heart was pounding far too rapidly. There was a long, long silence before Gray Philips made any kind of response to her statement, but during that time the mental messages that passed between them were as fiery and volatile as a box of firecrackers, and even before he demanded savagely, ‘What?’ Sarah knew that he was blaming her for the house-keeper’s defection.

  ‘She left before I got here,’ she told him quickly, and then, fearing that he would transfer blame to Robert, added bitingly, ‘I should have thought that as Robert’s father the very least you could have done was to ensure that you left him in the charge of someone caring and responsible and not a woman who everyone knows can’t stand children.’

  She saw from his expression that her goad had hit home. His eyes hardened and then glittered with dislike, but before he could say anything Sarah continued angrily, ‘Do you realise that she wasn’t even feeding him properly? He hadn’t had any breakfast. There wasn’t a scrap of food in the house suitable for a child of his age, and—’

  ‘You have been busy, haven’t you?’

  The softly venomous words silenced her, with all that he wasn’t saying. The look he gave her reduced her to the very worst kind of prying Nosy Parker and made her writhe with self-guilt and mortification. What was I supposed to do, she wanted to challenge him, let Robert starve? But she had too much pride to attempt to defend herself. The real guilt was, after all, his and not hers, she assured herself.

  ‘If you were so concerned for Robert’s welfare surely the most sensible thing would have been to ring me?’

  The words dripped acid that corroded her composure.