Julia sucked her knuckles in an agony of indecision. Should she, or shouldn’t she tell him? One look at Hugh’s grimly harassed face persuaded her to favour cowardice. Her legs automatically set themselves in motion while her normally fertile brain failed her. Several metres on she looked back. Hugh was cutting the cake, that beautiful chocolate monstrosity! She groaned and looked wildly around for a hiding place. The pool!
Two swift steps, a leap and a nicely timed scream that became real as she hit the water. It was freezing! Icy water rushed into her heavy clothes, dragging her down. It filled her nose and mouth and she kicked frantically for the surface.
‘Help!’ Her cry sounded satisfyingly shocked and weak and she let herself go under again, glad her body seemed to be going numb. She came up and floundered by the side of the pool, relieved to see that Hugh had abandoned the cake in favour of rescue.
‘Take my hand,’ he ordered, reaching down and engulfing her frozen fingers in a fiery grip. The muscles in his arm bunched thickly under the sleeve of his blue suit as he began to pull, but as she reached her other hand up to grab him Julia saw Ann Farrow out of the corner of her eye. She was about to bite into a large piece of cake. Selfish bitch, thought Julia incredulously, I might be drowning for all she cares!
She could never afterwards decide whether her next action was accidental or not. She jerked hard on Hugh’s arm and, taken by surprise, he teetered on the edge— one more tiny little tug and …
He toppled as if in slow motion, sending up an enormous splash as he hit the water. He came up quickly, his face only inches from Julia’s, a picture of outrage.
‘What in the devil did you think you were doing?’ he demanded rigidly, through his teeth.
‘I’m t-t-terribly sorry,’ shivered Julia, her own teeth chattering quite violently. ‘I think I slipped.’
At least she had taken Ann Farrow’s mind off her stomach. She was there beside Hugh exclaiming with over-done sympathy as he heaved himself out of the water. Julia floundered out alongside, like a sprat beaching with a whale.
‘Hugh, I—’ she was stopped by the raising of a large, dripping hand.
‘I think you’ve said, and done, quite enough, Julia. Save your explanations for another time.’ He was shivering only a little, his immaculate suit soggily twisted, whereas Julia was vibrating like a tuning fork, her clothes plastered against the voluptuous curves of her body. On Julia, bedraggled looked sexy and the wind chill factor from Ann Farrow’s direction increased markedly.
‘Go and get dry,’ Hugh instructed, beginning to peel off his wrinkled jacket.
‘But—’ A strangled sound from the wet monolith in front of her made obedience advisable, so Julia backed apologetically away, making a darting detour to scoop up the cake under cover of Ann Farrow’s renewed expressions of concern. Julia doubted that they’d be thinking about tea for a while …
At dinner that night Hugh seemed his usual distant, cynical self over sweetbread vol-au-vents and buttery, herb-flecked roast chicken. Julia’s hopes rose. Perhaps he was willing to forgive and forget.
Unfortunately Richard, who had taken Olivia in to Whitianga for the day, chose that moment to thrust a large and shiny spanner into the quietly meshing works.
‘What on earth were you doing by the pool this morning, Julia?’ he asked, helping himself greedily to niçoise salad and sweet, hot, caramelised shallots. ‘We were just leaving when I saw you take a flying dive into the water. You weren’t even wearing your togs.’
All eyes focused on Julia as she gibbered through a mouthful of winter lettuce. ‘I … I … er, I lost my balance.’
‘No you didn’t,’ insisted Richard. ‘I saw you in my mirror. You jumped.’ He grinned wickedly; he knew, he just knew he was getting her into trouble. Sure enough:
‘You jumped?’ Hugh enunciated in slow, silky tones, that wound their way threateningly around the table. ‘Do you mean to tell me that you didn’t fall—you jumped!’
Julia studied the chicken bones on her plate for the answer to the mysteries of the universe. There was a thick silence at the table. Even Steve was looking at her with riveted attention, instead of his usual restless, darting manner. Taking a deep, steadying breath Julia raised her eyes to Hugh. His black pupils had narrowed to pinpoints surrounded by hoar frost. His face was in rigid stillness, pale except for the very tips of his neat ears, which were slightly flushed. Not from embarrassment, Julia realised, her heart pounding.
‘I … I …’ She desperately wanted to soften that frigid stare.
‘Don’t bother to deny it.’ The silk abruptly ripped to reveal the yawning steel trap beneath. ‘It’s written all over your guilty face. Perhaps you would care to enlighten me—us—as to your motives.’
‘I … it was a joke,’ she began weakly, into the awed silence, intending to make a clean breast of the whole episode.
‘A joke!’ He sounded utterly contemptuous, for which she couldn’t blame him. He cut across her attempt to explain. ‘And was it a joke that you hauled me in there with you?’ There was a stifled gasp from more than one at the table. ‘You embarrass me in front of a valued colleague for a joke? And do you intend to pay for the four hundred dollar suit you ruined … or don’t you find that quite so funny?’
Julia felt weighted to her chair by the force of his anger, all the more oppressive because it was so tightly contained.
‘That part was an accident,’ she mumbled, her anxious tongue tying itself up in knots. There was a lump in her throat and to her horror she felt close to tears. ‘You see, I…’
Crash! She, and everyone else, leapt as Hugh’s hand came smashing down on the table top. Dishes rattled, the chandelier above their heads trembled.
‘Don’t lie! And you can take that innocent look off your face—it never did impress me very much. How in the hell did you get your qualifications, let alone practise them? I cannot imagine how anyone with a modicum of sanity …’ here he threw a caustic look at his mother, who merely blinked at this new, electrifying Hugh ‘… could trust you in a position of responsibility. If you’re not careering dangerously around the countryside, or leaping uninvited into strangers’ beds, you’re indulging your infantile sense of humour—and you can stop snickering, Richard, because you’re just as bad.’ He returned to the attack, seemingly unconscious of the effect of his startling revelations on everyone else. ‘Yesterday it was climbing trees and playing Tarzan— yes, Julia, I could see you perfectly well from my window—today it’s pushing people into pools. What’ll it be tomorrow—a little bit of arson for fun!’
Julia’s urge to cry abruptly left her. Tarzan had been Richard’s idea and Charley and Ros had been there too. It had all been good, clean fun. Hugh might have a right to be annoyed, but not to harangue her in public with all sorts of irrelevancies.
‘At least I k