He was pleased with the startled look he’d provoked. He enjoyed startling the constable.
‘Joe! At last. We’d almost given up on you. And you bring us your colleague. Boys! Come and meet the young lady I’ve been telling you about, the one who’s helping Joe with our problems.’
Sandilands walked into the sitting room, tugging Lily along with him. He released her in order to go and have his hands squeezed by Cassandra Dedham, who rustled over in pearl grey silk, clinking jet and a waft of Mitsouko to kiss him on each cheek in the continental fashion. An anxious appraisal told him that the widow was looking surprisingly bobbish.
The two boys looked on for a moment, tender and amused. Then, the older one in the lead, they advanced on Lily.
‘We’ll introduce ourselves, miss,’ he said. ‘Once Mama gets Commander Sandilands in her sights she loses track of mere mortals like us! We shall have to entertain ourselves. I’m John and may I present my brother William, though we call him Billy.’
‘No, we jolly well don’t! Not now I’m fourteen!’ came the mock rebuke.
Joe listened until he heard Lily making sociable noises and beginning to chatter with the boys and he decided it was safe to come off watch. His assistant had been struck by a fit of unaccustomed shyness as they entered the room and had nearly bolted. But, now, smiling with these two, she appeared calm again. And she was in safe hands. They had impeccable manners, the pair of them. And, in their different ways, they were thoroughly nice chaps. A credit to Cassandra’s upbringing. The admiral seemed never to have quite managed to ruin their lives, thanks largely to his prolonged absences at sea, Joe reckoned. Out of the corner of his eye, he was pleased to see them reacting in a coltish way to the easy laugh and big eyes of a pretty girl.
And why not? With her yellow frock and shock of yellow hair, Lily looked like a sunflower in the gloomy room, he thought. She raised the spirits. John, serious and competent at seventeen, was a good head taller than Lily, Billy on eye level. Joe checked covertly for signs of distress in the sons and saw none. In fact Billy, he would have said, was a little over-excited for a Sunday teatime, and so soon after his father’s death. He was talking loudly, even laughing with Lily.
Cassandra caught his concern. ‘Goodness. The little ones will be asking permission to play with their marbles on the carpet next,’ she said indulgently. ‘I’ve just sent Sebastian to organize a pot of fresh tea. On Sundays we mostly do our own fetching and carrying. There’s only Eva left scurrying around. Darjeeling suit?’ Cassandra broke off to perform her duties. ‘There are still lots of sandwiches left and we haven’t set about the cake yet. I sent out for your favourite, Joe — a Fuller’s walnut. Ah, here’s the tea.’
The door was opened by a flustered Eva who stepped aside to make way for a gentleman dressed in mourning and carrying a heavy tray.