The Trouble with Trent!

Why Alethea should have a sudden picture in her mind’s eye of tall, dark, sophisticated Trent de Havilland, she couldn’t have said. But she did not have time to wonder for long, because her mother, acid in every syllable, butted in to chide, ‘If by “special” you mean some man, then I hope to Heaven that Alethea has more sense!’

‘There wasn’t anyone special there,’ Alethea denied mildly. But, ridiculously, she found she wanted to smile as a voice in her ear reproached, How could you lie...?

The rest of the day passed off noisily—with only a short period of quiet when, exhausted, Polly had a nap. Alethea’s two older nieces were quite interesting when they weren’t squabbling. But she was glad to see Monday. Somehow, for all that life in the office was most often hectic, it seemed more tranquil than home.

She drove to work musing, at first not very seriously, that perhaps she should consider moving out. Maybe find a flat somewhere. Then, staying with the notion, she realised that there seemed to be a lot going for it. Maxine had seen neither hide nor hair of her husband since she had left him. They were in telephone communication; she knew that. Maxine shed floods of tears when she rang Keith, often about the non-appearance of the maintenance money he kept promising but which never materialised.

But it was all of a month now since Maxine had left him and had she had any thoughts of going back to him, then Alethea felt she would have seen some sign of them by now.

Life at home went from her mind the moment she arrived at the office she shared with Carol. There was the usual buzz about the place and, as ever, they were busy.

Carol was closeted with Mr Chapman around mid-afternoon when Alethea looked at the ‘Celebrations’ file she had opened to check what accounts might be outstanding. She came across the guest list.

Without fully realising what she was doing, she skimmed her gaze over the names. She halted at de Havilland. Halted, and paused for some moments, for while almost every other invitation had been sent to couples, the invitation to the man who had so elegantly waltzed her around the dance floor had been sent to Trent alone. ‘Mr Trenton de Havilland,’ she read—and was back in his arms, back on the dance floor, the music was playing, the...

‘Have you time to do this for me?’ Carol, who clearly had more than enough to do, if the paperwork in her hands was anything to go by, brought Alethea quickly back to earth.

‘Of course,’ she smiled obligingly, and went home that evening a little later than normal, but satisfied with her day.

She let herself in; the house was noisy. It seemed that the children were as boundlessly energetic and as vocal as ever. She earned herself another bruise as she knocked into a chest of drawers that stood in the hall simply because there was no other place to put it—and found she was again thinking, a little more seriously this time, that perhaps it might not be such a bad idea after all to find somewhere else to live.

Despite Polly being such a bad-tempered child, there was something quite loveable about her. She had such a beam of a smile, that it had them all forgiving her every misdeed. But there was no sign of that smile about her later in the evening when, around eight-thirty, she was brought downstairs so as not to disturb Sadie and Georgia who were already asleep. Polly had decided that she wasn’t going to go to sleep. She yelled and screamed, and held her breath, and quite terrified Alethea lest she never breathed again. So that when, at last, she finally exhausted herself and did fall asleep, the adults were feeling very much frazzled.

‘You must be hating like crazy the fact that we moved in and shattered the peace and calm of your life,’ Maxine opined as she flopped in a chair and gratefully accepted the cup of coffee Alethea handed her.

‘Nonsense!’ her mother decried stoutly. Alethea knew she never had wanted Maxine to leave home in the first place and was delighted to have her back again. Her mother was impervious, it seemed, to the chaos about her.

The phone rang and Maxine went to get up. ‘I’ll get it,’ Alethea volunteered, instructing herself to be polite if it was her uncaring brother-in-law calling to tell his wife why he wasn’t able to pay her any maintenance this week either.

But the call wasn’t for Maxine, nor was it for her mother. ‘Hello,’ Alethea said, into the receiver.

She went hot all over when, after a moment’s pause, a firm voice answered pleasantly, ‘Hello, Alethea, Trent de Havilland.’

She’d known that—even though she could not believe it. She had just known that it was his voice. ‘Oh, hello,’ she said lightly, and, feeling confused and jumbled up again and totally unlike her real self, asked, ‘What can I do for you?’

Perhaps he needed Mr Chapman’s home number to ring and thank him for Saturday, or something of that sort.

That, it transpired, was not the reason for Trent’s call. Her unflappable self disappeared when he came straight to the point of his call: ‘I’d like you to have dinner with me tomorrow. Are you free?’ he asked.

Alethea opened her mouth. ‘I...’ she began. Half of her head still believed this was a business call and she almost asked, In what connection? Rapidly she got herself together. Only he jumped in before she could formulate the words she wanted—in truth she didn’t know what they were!

‘Good,’ Trent stated, and, continuing every bit as if she had just accepted his invitation, he said, ‘I’ll call for you at seven.’

Alethea came rapidly out of the confusion his call had instigated. ‘Presumably you know where I live?’ she questioned faintly.

‘Goodnight,’ he said, and the phone went dead. Alethea stared at the receiver in her hand with astonishment. Had she just agreed to go out with the man who, it had to be admitted, seemed to have a knack of disturbing her previously unflappable self?

Apparently she had. Though, from what she could remember, he had given her very little chance to refuse.

CHAPTER TWO

BY MORNING Alethea had decided that she would ring Trent de Havilland and tell him that she was not going to go to dinner with him. She would tell him that she had been so surprised by his call, she hadn’t had a chance to recall a prior engagement. Into her mind loomed the thought of another evening of Polly deciding she did not want to go to sleep and, what was more, she was never going to steep—and if she wasn’t ever going to go to sleep, the whole world was going to hear about it.

Hating herself for thinking that it would be quite nice to have a tantrum-free evening, Alethea took her mother a cup of tea and went to her office, where she found time during the day only to discover that Trenton de Havilland’s home phone number wasn’t listed. With Mr Chapman dashing to various meetings, she had no chance to ask him if he had Trent’s number. Or, failing that, if Mr Chapman knew where Trenton de Havilland worked.

‘Bye, Alethea,’ Carol said when they parted in the car park twenty minutes after five.

‘Bye,’ Alethea smiled, and drove home with her tummy all of a flutter. She had been out on dates before, but only with men she had known for some while—and never with any man like Trent!

‘Dinner will be late,’ her mother greeted her. ‘We’ve had such a day of it.’

‘Polly playing up?’ Alethea guessed.

‘She’s been as good as gold.’ Her mother purred as if the high voltage tot had never ever known a temper tantrum. ‘We went to the house—it hasn’t been sold yet—and he was there.’

‘Keith?’

‘Who else? He’s been suspended.’

‘SEC have found out about the missing money?’ Her mother nodded. ‘They’re investigating. I couldn’t resist telling him a few home truths. He called me an interfering old bat! Can you imagine?’

There was more in the same vein. Eleanor Pemberton only broke off momentarily when Maxine came into the room, looking as if she’d been crying. Alethea guessed that her sister had heard more than enough of what her mother had to say on the subject of her husband, and broke in quickly, ‘Actually, I’m going out to dinner this evening, so I won’t be needing—’

‘With Carol?’ her mother asked sharply, her thoughts swiftly taken away from the man her other daughter had married.

‘No—er—a—an acquaintance.’

‘A male acquaintance?’ her mother fired at her before she could add more. ‘You never did get round to saying who phoned last night—is it him?’

‘Yes, actually.’

‘Hrmph,’ her mother grunted. ‘Do I know him?’ was the next question. Alethea had been through the third degree on several occasions before.

‘I’ll introduce you; he’s calling for me at seven,’ she replied, and quickly made her escape to go and shower and change, and to wonder why if, as she told herself, she did not want to go out with Mr Trenton de Havilland, she should feel so churned up; somehow she was very wary, yet at the same time she was experiencing a prickle of excitement at the prospect.

Alethea found it a rush to be ready on time. Sadie and Georgia came in to help—which added another five minutes.

A high-pitched squabble broke out between the two little girls when they both wanted to use her face powder at the same time. However, having separated them and placated them with a spray of perfume behind their ears, Alethea and her two ‘helpers’ finally left her room with one minute to go before seven.

She knew that, good manners aside, there was no way in which she was going to be able to avoid introducing her escort to her family, but she was hopeful of making that introduction as brief as possible.

It was not that she was ashamed of her family in any way. It was just that Trenton de Havilland was a very sophisticated man. She wanted him out of there before her mother attempted to give him the grilling which had been the fate of her other escorts.

‘Aunt Alethea gave us a squirt with her perfume...’ The girls rushed ahead of her into the sitting room—and stopped dead.

A prickle of apprehension had already started along Alethea’s spine as she followed them. She, too, stopped dead. Trent de Havilland had already arrived! The strained atmosphere spoke volumes.

How long he had been closeted with her mother and her sister and, for once, an angelic-looking Polly, Alethea had no idea. She hadn’t heard his car, though perhaps with Sadie and Georgia squawking in her bedroom that wasn’t so surprising.