‘My mother will be back soon. This arrangement was only temporary, I explained that.’

‘But I love it here, I love Izzy...’

‘We might still be able to persuade your mum to let you come over now and then to play with Izzy.’

The girl’s face crumpled and the huge brown eyes filled. Stevie reached for her hand and gave it a squeeze. ‘It’ll be all right,’ she said, ‘we’ll sort something out.’

Emma shook her head, letting fall a single tear. ‘You don’t know my mother.’

17

Stevie struggled to make conversation as she drove Emma home. ‘Is your father some kind of specialist?’ She shot a look at the girl sitting rigidly beside her. He had to be more than a GP to afford the Hitler’s-bunker by the river’s edge, she thought.

‘He’s supposed to be a plastic surgeon, specialising in the treatment of burns. He used to be famous for the work he did in war torn countries. Maybe you’ve heard of Christopher Breightling.’

Stevie mused over the name. Yes, it did have a familiar ring.

Emma’s top lip curled as she continued. ‘Now he’s into cosmetic surgery—there’s more money in it you see, and my mother has expensive tastes.’

Stevie smiled to herself. At the traffic lights she stopped and angled the rear vision mirror to inspect herself. She made a play of pushing up the skin of her forehead and stretching it away from her cheeks. ‘A handy man to know, maybe I’ll give him a call someday,’ she said, attempting to lighten the mood.

‘Don’t,’ Emma said with surprising vehemence.

Stevie glanced over at her as she took off from the lights.

‘Plastic surgery sucks. One more nip, one more tuck, then I’ll be perfect. People are never satisfied with what they’ve got. And only vain rich people can afford to have it done while the people who really need it, the people my father used to treat, don’t have a chance.’

‘I was joking.’

‘It’s not funny,’ Emma said. ‘People in the west spend too much time and money worrying about what they look like and then in the end you can’t tell what’s real and what’s fake.’

Christ, the kid will be preaching hell and damnation soon. Never satisfied with what they’ve got. Stevie untwisted her seatbelt and attempted to make herself more comfortable.

In the back seat Izzy played with a computer game. A series of beeps came as a welcome distraction.

‘How’re you going back there, Izzy?’ Stevie asked, for once wanting a conversation interrupted by her daughter

‘Good,’ Izzy answered. End of topic. Great.

‘And what does your mum do, apart from go out to lunch?’ Stevie glanced at her passenger.

Emma’s face screwed up with distaste. ‘She runs a modelling agency. And a school of etiquette.’

Stevie paused to digest this. ‘And I gather you don’t approve of either?’

‘You wouldn’t if you saw what went on there. Girls younger than Izzy turned into baby beauty queens by stupid mothers who wish they could change places’—Emma broke off, giggled and pointed to an old woman trundling down the footpath with a shopping trolley. ‘Hey, look Izzy, there goes old Mrs Do-as-you-would-be-done-by, the lady I told you about, the one with all the cats.’

Izzy wriggled in her harness with excitement. ‘The witch, the witch!’

‘She’s a good witch, remember, that’s why she takes in all those strays.’ Turning back to Stevie she rolled her eyes. ‘Sorry about that, my going on about cosmetic surgery and modelling schools I mean.’ She smiled. ‘Oh and that’s not really the old lady’s name, it’s the name of a character from the Water Babies—just part of an imagination game I play with Izzy.’

Stevie smiled back, but said nothing. What a strange kid you are, she thought. You know you’re strange and you play on people’s reactions to it too. Somehow she found herself liking the girl all the more for it.

Emma straightened as they came to her house. ‘Oh-oh, here goes nothing,’ she said, a thirteen-year-old again.

The black lacquered doors of the mansion opened as they pulled alongside the curb and a man stepped onto the porch. He seemed to be saying goodbye to someone inside. His head and shoulders disappeared from sight, the hidden movement suggestive of a kiss.

Emma shivered and slipped further down the car seat. ‘Oh shit,’ she breathed.

Stevie threw her a startled glance. ‘Who’s that?’

The girl twiddled quote marks in the air. ‘The family friend—my godfather. Please, let’s just stay here a moment, wait for him to leave.’

Stevie studied the man as he strode towards a black Porsche parked a little further down the road. Here was a man who knew he cut a dashing figure. His jaw jutted forward in a manner very like that of a male salmon, his longish brown hair was wet and curled carefully behind his ear. In his pink polo shirt, white pants and boaters without socks, he could have been sauntering down the road to the yacht club.

‘Actually,’ Emma said in a matter of fact tone, ‘he’s Aidan Stoppard and as well as my godfather he’s my parents’ accountant.’ Then she said casually, as if it were an afterthought, ‘He’s also my mother’s lover. He always visits when my father’s away.’

Emma shrugged her shoulders in response to Stevie’s gob-smacked look. Stevie wondered if she was being manipulated. Was the child making up stories, trying to provoke sympathy in order to avoid being dobbed in for her deceit? That must be it, she decided as she regarded the small, deadpan face. Mature beyond her years, Emma had already proved herself quite capable of manipulation and deception. Perhaps it was just as well the babysitting was coming to an end.

The Porsche took off with a throaty rumble at about twenty over the speed limit. Had she been in uniform, Stevie would have relished the job of booking that one.

‘C’mon Emma,’ she said, twisting around to the back seat and unclipping Izzy’s belt. ‘Time to face the music.’ Izzy held Stevie’s hand and skipped up the path towards the house with Emma dragging her heels behind them.

Miranda appeared a model of cool poise when she opened her door to find her daughter on the front step with a stranger and a small child. The only sign of surprise on the beautifully made up face was a deepening of the almost imperceptible lines between the startling violet eyes. ‘Emma, what an earth are you doing out here? I thought you were in bed.’

‘I need to get some homework done.’ Emma brushed past her mother, dragging her bag across the marble floor, leaving skid marks of dirt behind her.

The mother rolled her eyes. ‘Teenagers,’ she sighed.

Stevie said, ‘There seems to have been a bit of a misunderstanding, Mrs Breightling. I believe you’ve been under the impression that Emma has been doing some extra babysitting for Mrs Carlyle, when in fact she’s been working for me. She slept at my house last night and I thought you knew about it, but you obviously didn’t. I’ve come to apologise; it seems we’ve had our wires crossed.’

From somewhere within the house, Stevie heard the sound of footsteps scraping up a stone staircase.

Miranda Breightling pursed plump lips and touched her short, immaculately styled hair. ‘I’m afraid I lost control of Emma a long time ago. This is very embarrassing, you’d better come in, Mrs...’

Stevie put out her hand. ‘Just call me Stevie,’ she said. ‘Stevie Hooper.’

The woman flinched under Stevie’s firm grip. ‘I’m Miranda Breightling. Come in.’

Miranda glided ahead, a small woman, walking as straight as if she had a book balanced on her head. Stevie followed, trainers squeaking on the white marble tiles. A ditty of her father’s popped into her mind and the memory made her smile. When you use this marblehall, use the paper not the wall.

The house was more interesting on the inside than it was on the outside, although the ultra modern décor was not to Stevie’s taste. She preferred old things, things with warmth and character. More black lacquer doors to the right of the front entrance opened into a formal lounge dominated by an oversized cream modular couch. As she progressed through the house she discovered the soft furnishings to be the exception, not the rule; the place consisting mostly of wrought iron, stone and sharp angles. The kitchen contained more stainless steel than a hospital morgue. Light streamed in from a stained glass skylight in the adjoining family area. There was no evidence of a TV. A shiny black couch stood next to a blocked up fireplace.