Read Online A Calculating Heart by Caro Fraser - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Caro Fraser
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professional attainments, he worked as assiduously as he had as a student. He bestowed on every ease and every client unstinting care and concentration, and it was a quality which marked him out as being the very best, brilliant in his field.
Yet today he found the seclusion hard to bear. Every lonely sound – the faint hum of the lift, the front door of the building closing as Mrs Gresham took her little dog for a walk, occasional traffic round the leafy square – seemed to highlight his sense of isolation. That story in the paper had made him feel marked out, vilified, and in today’s silent aftermath he had a sense of being set apart from humanity. He regularly worked from home, when he wanted utter peace and quiet, but today his solitude was different. It was enforced. He was in hiding, in retreat.
When the phone rang, he felt a welcome relief. It was the journalist friend whom he’d asked to try to run a piece undermining Melissa Angelicos’s recent story.
‘Just ringing to tell you to check the paper tomorrow. Rather helpfully, the Angelicos woman has apparently had a nervous breakdown. Gone to Italy with her sister for a bit of rest and recuperation. In quite a bad way, people tell me. So what I’ve written helps to suggest she’s an unstable fantasist.’
‘Excellent. Thanks for helping me out.’
‘I’ll call in the favour sometime. See you.’
Leo hung up. So Ms Angelicos had gone off to Italy with her nerves in shreds. The woman should be institutionalised. He glanced at the papers on his desk, and realised he didn’t have the heart for any more work. Instead, he wandered through to the pristine silence of the drawing room and went to the long window overlooking the square. There he stared across at the sun-dappled communal garden, where no children played, and where the clang of the metal gates marked the passage of the well-heeled, mainly elderly inhabitants of the Belgravia square. The only child who had ever played there was Oliver, on weekends when he came to stay. At the thought of his son, Leo’s heart lifted. He longed to see him on Saturday.
He stood there, reflecting. Babyhood had been the easy part with Oliver. Now the little boy was two, and growing conscious of the world around him, and his place in it. In another couple of years he would be moving into a world where life encompassed school, and sport and weekend activities, and friends grew as important as family. The pattern thus far established – of alternate weekends spent here or at Stanton – would have to expand to accommodate new aspects of Oliver’s life beyond nappies and buggies and high chairs. This flat was no good. Leo had never cared that much for it. He’d simply chosen it on impulse when he and Rachel got divorced, probably with the idea that he would go back to his former bachelor existence. A mansion flat in Belgravia wasn’t a suitable place to bring up a small boy.What he needed was a house, with a garden. Somewhere just like Stanton, but here in London.
The idea grew in him as he stood there. His sense of inertia vanished. He would find a house for himself and Oliver - and Camilla, for as long as that went on. He had sensed that she didn’t feel entirely at ease in the flat, with its pale carpets and high ceilings, tastefully lit pieces of modern art and immaculate furniture. It was no one’s idea of a proper home. On impulse, he looked up three local estate agents in Yellow Pages, and rang and asked them to send details of the kind of place he was looking for. A five or six-bedroomed family house in Kensington or Chelsea, with a decent garden. All right, such a place would cost a fortune, but what was he earning all this money for, if not to provide a home where Oliver would always want to come, and bring his friends to, as he grew up?
Charged with a new sense of domesticity, Leo decided to cook supper for himself and Camilla. He left the flat and headed for Tesco’s in Sloane Square. As he strolled
Yet today he found the seclusion hard to bear. Every lonely sound – the faint hum of the lift, the front door of the building closing as Mrs Gresham took her little dog for a walk, occasional traffic round the leafy square – seemed to highlight his sense of isolation. That story in the paper had made him feel marked out, vilified, and in today’s silent aftermath he had a sense of being set apart from humanity. He regularly worked from home, when he wanted utter peace and quiet, but today his solitude was different. It was enforced. He was in hiding, in retreat.
When the phone rang, he felt a welcome relief. It was the journalist friend whom he’d asked to try to run a piece undermining Melissa Angelicos’s recent story.
‘Just ringing to tell you to check the paper tomorrow. Rather helpfully, the Angelicos woman has apparently had a nervous breakdown. Gone to Italy with her sister for a bit of rest and recuperation. In quite a bad way, people tell me. So what I’ve written helps to suggest she’s an unstable fantasist.’
‘Excellent. Thanks for helping me out.’
‘I’ll call in the favour sometime. See you.’
Leo hung up. So Ms Angelicos had gone off to Italy with her nerves in shreds. The woman should be institutionalised. He glanced at the papers on his desk, and realised he didn’t have the heart for any more work. Instead, he wandered through to the pristine silence of the drawing room and went to the long window overlooking the square. There he stared across at the sun-dappled communal garden, where no children played, and where the clang of the metal gates marked the passage of the well-heeled, mainly elderly inhabitants of the Belgravia square. The only child who had ever played there was Oliver, on weekends when he came to stay. At the thought of his son, Leo’s heart lifted. He longed to see him on Saturday.
He stood there, reflecting. Babyhood had been the easy part with Oliver. Now the little boy was two, and growing conscious of the world around him, and his place in it. In another couple of years he would be moving into a world where life encompassed school, and sport and weekend activities, and friends grew as important as family. The pattern thus far established – of alternate weekends spent here or at Stanton – would have to expand to accommodate new aspects of Oliver’s life beyond nappies and buggies and high chairs. This flat was no good. Leo had never cared that much for it. He’d simply chosen it on impulse when he and Rachel got divorced, probably with the idea that he would go back to his former bachelor existence. A mansion flat in Belgravia wasn’t a suitable place to bring up a small boy.What he needed was a house, with a garden. Somewhere just like Stanton, but here in London.
The idea grew in him as he stood there. His sense of inertia vanished. He would find a house for himself and Oliver - and Camilla, for as long as that went on. He had sensed that she didn’t feel entirely at ease in the flat, with its pale carpets and high ceilings, tastefully lit pieces of modern art and immaculate furniture. It was no one’s idea of a proper home. On impulse, he looked up three local estate agents in Yellow Pages, and rang and asked them to send details of the kind of place he was looking for. A five or six-bedroomed family house in Kensington or Chelsea, with a decent garden. All right, such a place would cost a fortune, but what was he earning all this money for, if not to provide a home where Oliver would always want to come, and bring his friends to, as he grew up?
Charged with a new sense of domesticity, Leo decided to cook supper for himself and Camilla. He left the flat and headed for Tesco’s in Sloane Square. As he strolled
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