The Daughter of Night Read Free Page B

if she had been battling verbally with him for hours and hours, and reaction was setting in so that her slender body shook with tremors of cold and exhaustion. Wearily, she lit the middle bar of the gas fire, went into the microscopic kitchenette and started to make a pot of tea.
    Her mouth was dry and her head was beginning to ache, so, while the kettle was boiling, she hunted through her bag for a couple of aspirins and, at last, sat down on the rug before the fire with her tea, to stare wearily at the glowing element, paying no attention to the hisses and whistling pops which the fire emitted. It always did that. Now she had to think.
    Quietly she went over in her mind the contents of her bedsit. There was nothing here that could give him a lead, of that she was sure. Here she was Hester Marsh who lived alone, there were no traces of her past life, nothing which would lead anywhere but to this rather dreary little, place. That was good; she didn't want anybody else involved. Her musings were interrupted by a ring on the doorbell and for a moment every muscle in her body tightened in fear that it might be him again, come back to torment her some more, but there was a second ring and a third, which meant it was safe, and she scrambled to her feet to go and open the door.
    It was only her landlady, who could be garrulous at times, and evidently this was going to be one of them.
    'Everything all right, Miss Marsh?' The woman's face was filled with curiosity. 'I didn't know whether I should let your visitor up, but he seemed to know you—had your name off pat and he looked quite respectable…'
    'Quite all right,' Hester manufactured a smile, 'But his visit delayed me a bit,' she indicated her robe. 'I was just going to take a shower when he arrived.'
    'Looked like one of those lawyer fellows.' The landlady seemed determined to learn as much as she could and Hester knew from experience that she would ask questions until she had some sort of tale that satisfied her.
    'Mmm,' she nodded, and smiled again. 'A small bequest, nothing much, not even worth a visit to his office, but you know how these legal people are, they have to satisfy themselves that I am who I am even if it's only a matter of a few pounds. And now,' she started to close the door, 'if you'll excuse me, I've got a date tonight and I'm late already.'
    The landlady went off downstairs with sufficient misinformation to keep her happy for the rest of the week, and Hester closed the door and went back to the fire, slumping down on the rug and feeling sorry for herself.
    Trust Vilma to make things as awkward as possible! It would have been so simple for her to pay up and keep quiet, but as Hester had told Demetrios Thalassis, Vilma wasn't like that. She'd got away with so many things in her life, she was greedy and couldn't bear to part with a penny, so Hester might have known she'd try to frighten her daughter off and she'd nearly succeeded.
    But Hester was convinced that everything would be all right now. Tonight, she'd been taken by surprise; she had been expecting quite a battle with Vilma, but she hadn't allowed for having to fight that battle with an unknown quantity like Demetrios Thalassis. Even so, she grinned weakly to herself, she hadn't done so badly. In any other circumstances, Flo would have been proud of her!
    Flo! Hester stared into the fire, remembering her foster-mother. Dear Flo, warm, kind and loving, with a maternal complex as big as the dome of St Paul's. Flo, who could never have a child of her own because of a rhesus negative blood factor, and Hester had always thought herself to be Flo's child. She'd known all about Mia, Flo's orphaned niece who had been adopted and come to live with them when she, Hester, had been five, but herself she had always thought of as really belonging.
    It wasn't until she was eighteen that Flo had explained about her own fostering, and Hester had been angry at the thought of another, unknown mother. She could remember