Payment In Love

‘I’ve got a couple of tickets for the Phantom. I thought you might like to see it.’

The total unexpectedness of his invitation took her breath away. She remembered reading somewhere that tickets for the fantastic Phantom of the Opera show were impossible to find and, if she was honest with herself, she would have loved to go, but not with Kyle.

‘I’m sorry, I can’t,’ she told him, not without a certain amount of satisfaction. ‘I’ve got something else on tonight.’

There was a long pause, during which Heather had time to ask herself why Kyle should want to take her out and to wonder exactly what sort of macabre game he was playing with her. Then he said, sardonically, ‘I see … where will you finish your evening off, I wonder, his place or yours? It must cramp your style, surely, living at home. Or do you make sure that all your lovers …’

She had slammed down the receiver before she had thought about what she was doing. She was literally shaking with rage and chagrin. How dared Kyle infer that she was making use of her father’s illness to bring a man home? How dared he imply …

Shakily she sat down, trying to calm herself. He was not deliberately trying to taunt her, she told herself, he was simply assuming that she lived her life in the same way that he lived his.

Not even the peacefulness of her tea-time walk with Meg had the power to fully restore her to normal.

Her mother rang when she got back to say that her father was making slow progress. They chatted for a while and then she rang off. As she replaced the receiver, Heather frowned. There was a note of constraint in her mother’s voice, almost as though she was concealing something from her. Her heartbeat increased in tempo, her skin chilling with fear. Could her father be worse than she thought? She looked at the phone, longing to pick it up and call her mother back, and yet knowing she couldn’t.