One Desert Night - By Maggie Cox Page 0,6

I’ve succeeded in getting, I still feel very much a junior in this trade, Dad.’

‘I understand, dear. But don’t be in such a hurry to get somewhere. This “trade,” as you call it, is a lifetime’s passion for most who enter into it, and you never stop learning and discovering things you didn’t know before. You’re still so young… How old? Remind me?’

‘Twenty-nine.’

‘Good God!’

His exclamation made Gina giggle. ‘How old did you think I was?’ she playfully challenged him. At least he wasn’t looking so down and distracted now, she noticed.

The greying eyebrows made a concertina motion. ‘In my mind I always remember you at round about five years old…reaching a sticky exploring little hand towards the papers on my desk. Even then you had an interest in history, Gee-Gee.’

Dumbfounded, Gina stared hard, ‘Gee-Gee?’

‘It was my pet name for you. Don’t you remember? Your mother thought it highly amusing that a distinguished professor of antiquities and ancient history should have the imagination to come up with something like that.’

‘Here.’ There was a lump in her throat the size of an egg as she handed him the letters she’d found on the mat.

‘What’s this?’

‘Your post…looks like it’s been accumulating for days. Why didn’t Mrs Babbage bring it in for you?’

‘What?’ The pale blue gaze was distracted again. ‘Mrs Babbage resigned last week, I’m afraid. Her husband had to go into hospital for a major operation and she wanted to be able to visit him as often as she could. Under the circumstances, she couldn’t keep her job here. Anyway, I shall need to interview for a new housekeeper.’

Reaching out her hand, Gina laid it briefly on his shoulder. She was shocked to feel how little flesh covered it beneath his shirt. ‘That’s the third housekeeper you’ve lost in a year,’ she commented worriedly.

‘I know. Must be my sparkling personality or something.’

Ignoring the droll reply, Gina gazed at him, seriously concerned. ‘What have you been living on for a week? Not much, by the looks of it. Why didn’t you tell me about this when I rang you, Dad?’

For a moment the expression on her father’s long thin face reminded her of a small boy who had been reprimanded by a teacher and told to stand at the back of the class. The lump inside her throat seemed to swell.

‘Didn’t want to worry you, dear… You’re not responsible, you see. It’s my own stupid fault that I never took the time to learn how to cope with the domestics… Head always in some book or other, you see. Since your mother went I don’t seem to have the heart for much else. People thought I was a cold fish when I didn’t cry at her funeral. But I cried inside, Gina…’ His voice broke, and moisture glazed the pale, serious eyes. ‘I cried inside…’

She hardly knew what to say—how to respond. It was as though a stranger sat in front of her—not the remote, self-contained, preoccupied man who was her father. The man she would have been hard put to it to say had any feelings at all.

Patting his bony shoulder again, she gave it what she hoped was a reassuring squeeze. ‘Why don’t I make us both a nice cup of tea? We’ll have it in the living room, then I’ll nip out to the supermarket to get you some supplies for the fridge.’

‘Are you in a hurry tonight, Gina?’ The moisture beneath the pale eyes had been dashed away, and now his eyes glimmered with warmth…affection, even.

‘No, I’m not in a hurry. Why?’

‘Would you—I mean could you stay for a while? We could—we could talk. You could tell me a bit more about your work at the auction house.’

Was this some kind of breakthrough in their difficult and sometimes distant relationship? Why now, when it had been three years since she had lost her mother? Had it taken him that long to realise that he’d really loved Charlotte? That he loved his daughter?

Gina didn’t know right then whether she felt hopeful or angry. Shrugging off her raincoat, she folded it over her arm, then crossed to the still open study door. ‘I don’t have to rush off. I’ll go and put the kettle on. Why don’t you go into the living room and make up the fire? The house is chilly.’

In the kitchen, staring at the peeling paintwork and the cupboards that she guessed were as bare as Mother Hubbard’s, Gina filled the kettle at the sink and plugged it