Читать книгу A Woman Named Coral - Jane Huxley - Страница 12

ONE

An Enigmatic Question

She opened her eyes to a slice of sun flickering on the pillow.

“Tom,” she groaned. “Please close the shutters. I’m trying to sleep.”

There was no answer from the other side of the bed. A vague Vétiver-scented haze from Tom’s pillow pervaded the air. A moment later her husband’s loud baritone bellowed from downstairs.

“Missy, are you awake? Come down! You’ll never guess who’s here.”

She knew at once it was her stepson, gorgeous Stefan, whose name alone suggested he was intriguing and adventurous – a sailor dangling from the mast of a storm-tossed ship.

“Coming,” she sang, as she slipped into the bathroom, brushed her hair and inspected her face, lips and almost transparent black négligé.

“Hello, darling,” she said, as she offered him her cheek.

Stefan brushed it with his lips and his green eyes twinkled with amusement as they paused on the seductive hand placed across the breasts of his father’s wife.

Irresistible, Missy thought, gazing at the eyes, the perfect patrician nose, and those sensual lips that suggested a perpetual craving for a kiss.

“Straight from Kabul,” Tom announced, “where he had been sent by The Daily Telegraph.”

As a freelance journalist, Stefan spent most of his time in remote parts of the world, which he laughingly explained as a way to escape the drab English winter.

“Coffee and croissants,” Tom announced, as Missy set three places at the kitchen table. A moment later he addressed his son in a voice that was a trifle uncertain, “You want to tell her, or shall I?”

“Tell me what?” Missy asked.

“There has been another sighting,” Tom said.

Missy looked at him, then at Stefan, as if she thought the comment was absurd.

The so-called “sighting” referred to the lost daughter of Tom’s friends, the Harringtons, who had died almost twenty years earlier in a mudslide in the northern province of Ancash, in Perú.

Their bodies had been recovered days after the avalanche, but that of their six-year old daughter had never been found. There was something hopeful and pathetic about the rumours and “sightings” that sprouted from various different sources from time to time.

“Another sighting?” Missy asked in a bored voice.

“This one is different.” Tom said.

“In what way?”

“The source,” Tom told her. “Professor Greene, a friend of the Harringtons, has met the young woman in Lima.”

“What is she like?”

“Blond and beautiful, which is most unusual if her parents are brown skinned Indians from the Sierra.”

“Strange story,” Missy said.

“But life goes on,” Tom explained. “The girl is now in her late twenties and married to a prominent member of Peruvian society.”

“So,” Missy concluded. “All’s well that ends well.”

“Hasn’t ended yet,” Tom said. “In fact, it has barely begun.”

Missy turned to her stepson, who was drinking his coffee and eating his second croissant. “What do you think of all this?” she asked.

“Don’t know,” he said. “May be worth trying to find out.”

“Which is exactly what’s going to happen,” Tom said. “Because Stefan is going to Perú, on assignment from The New York Times.”

“What a strange coincidence,” Missy blurted.

“Not really,” Stefan said. “I’m doing a piece on San Marcos University. While I’m there, I don’t mind looking up Professor Greene, who has given Father this information.”

“Oh, dear,” Missy sighed. “With men the only way to win the battle is to agree with their most preposterous whims.” A brief pause before she continued, “But, anyway, will you stay and have lunch with us?”

“I’m afraid I can’t,” Stefan said. “I’m expected in Hampstead. Mother wants to see me before I go to Perú.”

“Dear Frances,” Missy said, with a reptilian smile. “Give her my best, will you?”