Dorothy Eden by Eerie Nights in London

Author:Eerie Nights in London
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

13

HARRIET WENT INTO THE flat wearily. It was the same as it had been when she had left it, filled with the scent of lilac, deadly quiet.

Millie said nothing had happened. There had been no callers and no telephone messages.

“Not even a word from Fred,” she said, and her lip quivered. “It’s all so awful, I could die.”

Harriet looked at the time and realized she could just catch Len on the telephone before rehearsals started. She explained that she had flu, and then had to endure five minutes of indignation and threats of dismissal before he calmed down and told her to take four aspirins ever four hours, and if incipient flu was the reason for her bad performance yesterday he would forgive her.

She went into the bathroom and found Mrs. Blunt’s note. “You need more bath soap. If you get that new French kind, don’t waste it on the children.”

Mrs. Blunt, she said to herself, when my children come home they may use my expensive soap or anything they please. Just, please God, let them come home.

It seemed years ago since she had gaily bought a new hat and enjoyed wearing it.

The time was two o’clock. Another six hours to wait. The gloom of the gray day had deepened. The wind had strengthened and whined, like a muffled puppy, in the chimney. It looked as if it were going to snow.

Flynn had asked if she minded him talking to Fred and his mother, and also to Millie. She had assented wearily, knowing that this would achieve nothing. Which was exactly what happened. They all reiterated what they had already told Harriet, and Millie once more became a sodden heap of misery. There was only one thing Harriet could do, and that was to live through the six hours until eight o’clock. To live without thinking, if possible, of what the children were doing, whether they had eaten, whether Arabella was having her afternoon nap, whether Jamie was escaping trouble…

Or thinking of Zoe’s half-made wedding dress, all her hopes spread on a table in a shabby, depressing, anonymous room.

Of what Grandmother Lacey in Boston would think of her care of Joe’s children… Or of what Joe himself would think.

Or of what one would do if Jamie and Arabella had disappeared as completely and finally as Joe had…

The telephone did not ring again. Flynn came up once to ask her to have tea with him, because he insisted that food was vitally important in a crisis. But Millie, at the prospect of being left alone again, threw her such a stricken look that Harriet suggested Flynn having tea with them. This he agreed to do, and sat opposite her, his face turned to her as if he were watching. He had dropped his earlier efforts to make idle conversation in order to distract her and was almost completely silent. But it was comforting, somehow, having him there. The flat did not seem quite so empty.

When he left it was six o’clock. Unbelievably as it seemed, time was passing.

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