Adored by Tilly Bagshawe

Author:Tilly Bagshawe
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Suspense
ISBN: 9780446617536
Publisher: Orion
Published: 1999-12-31T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER THIRTY

Henry Arkell woke up with the sort of hangover he couldn’t remember having had since his stag weekend in Dublin twelve years ago.

As soon as he reached consciousness, he got out of bed and staggered into the bathroom, where he spent the first fifteen minutes of his Sunday morning throwing up.

“Can I get you anything, darling?” shouted Muffy.

She was sitting up in bed with her Rosamund Pilcher novel and a cup of tea, being distracted by the sound of her poor husband’s retching.

“Yes. My shotgun,” quipped Henry, who reappeared in the bathroom doorway looking white as a sheet. He’d tried to take some Alka-Seltzer, but was unable to keep it down. There was nothing to do but go back to bed—preferably forever.

Crawling back under the duvet, he pulled the covers up over his head and groaned. Just then Madeleine came bounding into the room, clutching her Malibu Barbie and demanding to be allowed into her parents’ bed for a snuggle.

“No!” barked Henry, whose head felt like it was exploding. “Go and watch cartoons, Maddy. Daddy’s not feeling very well.”

“But I always snuggle on Sundays, don’t I, Mummy?” she protested.

“You do, darling, yes,” said Muffy, putting down her novel and mug with a sigh and getting up to deal with her daughter. So much for her weekend lie-in. “But Dad’s very tired this morning. Why don’t you come downstairs with me and you can help me make some brekka?”

“All right,” said Madeleine, pulling off her pajama top and scratching her rounded baby’s tummy absentmindedly. “It’s very smelly in here anyway. Poo-eee!” She pinched her nose in disgust. “Barbie doesn’t like it when it’s smelly.”

Muffy laughed and shooed her into the children’s bathroom to brush her teeth, before opening all the casement windows to allow the crisp, fresh April air to dispel Henry’s alcohol fumes. Maddy was right, the room smelled like an Irish pub on New Year’s Day.

She was worried about Henry. He’d gone to London last night for some sort of crisis meeting with Nick Frankl. Evidently, the crisis had been worse than he’d expected, since he’d arrived home at a quarter to five in the morning, in a black cab, smashed out of his mind.

Muffy had to get up and empty the petty-cash tin from the farm office, as well as her handbag, both swearing tins, and Charlie’s piggybank to pay the cabbie his two-hundred-and-eighty-pound fare, which God knew they could ill afford at the moment, before beginning the arduous task of helping Henry upstairs, out of his suit, and into bed.

Normally she would have made him sleep on the sofa and spent the next day furiously ignoring him. But he seemed to have been under so much pressure recently, and his moods had gotten darker and darker to the point where she was afraid that any show of anger or rejection from her might push him over the edge into real depression.

Tying up the belt on her ancient Laura Ashley dressing gown, she went downstairs to start breakfast, knocking on the boys’ door as she went past.

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