‘And you think it suits me a lot, don’t you?’

‘Since you’re virtually my employer now, it wouldn’t be proper for me to answer that question.’

‘And do you always do what’s proper?’

‘You know I don’t. That’s why I’m in trouble at work-because I told you off.’

Suddenly his attractive smile broke out. ‘Say what you like. I won’t tell on you.’

She couldn’t help answering the smile. ‘I’m going to put Joey to bed. Why don’t you make that phone call?’

‘Whatever you say.’

She came down half an hour later, having seen Joey nod off contentedly. Carson was waiting for her. ‘Can we talk?’

‘I’m afraid it’ll have to be later. If I’m going to stay here I’ve got to dash home and get some clothes.’

‘Will you be long?’

‘I’ll try not to be. A couple of hours, maybe.’

‘I’ll drive you-no, I can’t leave Joey alone, can I? It’s a pity he’s already in bed-’

‘Carson,’ she said gently, ‘sooner or later you’re going to have to learn to be alone with him.’

‘Yes.’ He grimaced. ‘I don’t come out of this very well, do I?’

‘You’re trying to do your best.’

‘My best seems to consist of clinging onto you. I guess he’s not the only one holding your hand.’

‘Well, I have a very steady hand,’ she assured him. ‘I’ll be back as soon as I can.’

Her little flat was a world away from Carson’s luxurious mansion, but it was her own, and when she’d hastily packed a suitcase she gave a regretful glance around.

‘Just a couple of days,’ she assured herself. ‘Then I’ll be back.’

The streets were clear and she managed the journey fairly quickly. Even so, she arrived to find him standing in the porch, watching for her anxiously.

‘Joey awoke and found you gone,’ he said. ‘He thought you’d abandoned him. I tried to reassure him, but I-I can’t reach him.’

From behind him Gina could hear moaning. She hurried past and saw Joey sitting on the stairs, his arms wrapped around his knees, rocking back and forth in misery. Tears poured down his face, and at first even she couldn’t get through to him.

She took hold of his shoulders, and at last she managed to get him looking at her.

‘I’m here,’ she said clearly. ‘Joey, I’m here. I haven’t gone away.’

He began to sign but he was too overwrought to organise himself and the attempt collapsed. He tried to speak. Gina listened carefully while he repeated the words again and again.

‘What’s he saying?’ Carson asked desperately.

‘He says he awoke and I wasn’t there,’ Gina interpreted at last.

‘But I was,’ Carson shouted.

She signed. Daddy was here.

Joey shook his head violently, pointing at Gina.

‘Don’t tell me,’ Carson said heavily. ‘I guess I understood that.’

‘I’ll take him back to bed.’

It took time to calm Joey down, but at last he was ready to attend quietly while she explained where she’d been. When he heard that she’d collected clothes for a stay he brightened.

Stay, he signed happily.

‘Just for a few days.’

Stay.

She sighed and left it there. This wasn’t the time to tell him that she would leave when Mrs Saunders returned. Let him be happy while he could. She waited until he was asleep, kissed him, and crept out of the room.

Carson was waiting outside. ‘I’ve put you in this room next to Joey,’ he said. ‘It’s a bit small but it has a connecting door to him.’

‘That’s ideal.’

The bed was stripped, but Carson showed her the airing cupboard, found sheets and blankets for her, and, to her surprise, even helped her make up the bed.

‘You have a talent for this,’ she said, observing his neat corners.

‘My mother made sure I did, or it was a clip round the ear. She taught me how to make coffee, too. I’ll have some ready downstairs, when you’re finished in here.’

She went down a few minutes later to find him in the living room, with freshly perked coffee on a low table.

‘Is he all right?’ he asked.

‘Yes, fast asleep.’

‘Now that you’re here.’

She settled down and gratefully took the coffee he handed her. He watched her quizzically while she sipped it.

‘Perfect,’ she said.

‘I told you, I’ve been well trained.’

An uneasy silence fell between them.

‘I’ve always prided myself on being on top of every situation,’ he said at last. ‘In business, that isn’t hard. But this-’ He sighed. ‘I don’t know.’

‘How did you ever get in this state? Why don’t you know him better?’

‘You don’t have to tell me that I’m to blame-’

‘I’m not trying to apportion blame,’ she insisted. ‘I just want to help Joey. He seems to think I have the answers, but I don’t really.’

‘We were so proud of him when he was born,’ Carson recalled. ‘It was a few years before he began to lose some of his hearing.’

‘He did have some hearing, then?’

‘Yes. The doctor gave him a hearing aid, and we hoped that might do the trick. I thought Brenda was a good mother until things went wrong. Her career was taking off, and she didn’t spend a lot of time with Joey, but she seemed to dote on him when she was here, and we had an excellent nanny.’

‘How much time did you spend with him?’ Gina asked gently.

‘I was away a lot, building up the business. But when I came back-he grew so fast-if you could have seen him then-such a strong, clever child. Everybody envied us-’

He closed his eyes suddenly. Gina held her breath and didn’t speak. She could tell that he’d gone away from her, back to the time when the world had been bright with hope, before calamity had fallen on him.

‘I used to think about him as I was driving home,’ he went on, still with his eyes closed. ‘My little boy-my son-but better and stronger than me. He’d smile when he saw me, and I felt there was a secret understanding between us-a kind of promise for the future.’

He opened his eyes and saw her looking at him in consternation. ‘I’m saying the wrong thing, aren’t I? But I don’t know why.’

She shook her head. It would take too long to tell him. Besides, didn’t all new fathers see their sons as extensions of themselves? Valuing them as individuals came later. But in this case a tragedy had got in the way.

‘What happened then?’

Carson threw himself back against the leather of the sofa and stared up at the ceiling.

‘For a while he seemed to be doing well. He started to make sounds. Some of them even began to sound like words. He was fighting it. But he was losing. When we took him back to be assessed again we found his hearing had worsened. The answer was another hearing aid, stronger. But it happened again, and again. Always the power being turned up as his hearing slipped away, until, about a year ago, he became profoundly deaf. Now he hears nothing, and he’s lost all the progress he seemed to have made.’

‘So you stopped seeing him as a promise for the future,’ she couldn’t resist saying. ‘And became ashamed of him.’

He sat up. ‘Damn you, no! I was never ashamed of him.’

‘Are you proud of him?’ Gina asked remorselessly.

‘How can I be-? I’m sorry for him.’

‘Then don’t be. Why should you pity him? He’s got a really good brain. When he does finger-spelling, he never makes a mistake. Every word is spelled perfectly, even the difficult ones. How old is he, eight?’

‘Nearly. In a few weeks.’

‘Not even eight, and he has a reading age of at least twelve.’

‘Yes, his teachers say the same. They all tell me how bright he is in a patronising way, as though that makes it all right. Can’t any of you see that it makes it worse? It’s a hard world out there. I’ve discovered that for myself. And he’s going to have to survive in it. God knows how!’

She sighed, understanding his confusion. This was a man who’d fought to impose his will on the world, and largely succeeded. But only in business. Fate had given him a son who was poorly equipped for life’s battles, and he didn’t cope with that fact very well.

‘Perhaps you’d better tell me a little about his school,’ she suggested.

‘He goes to a special place, near here, for children with disabilities. They’ve taught him signing and lip-reading, and they’re supposed to teach him to talk as well, but he’s not making much progress.’

She nodded thoughtfully. ‘He talks almost like somebody who’s never heard a human voice.’

‘That’s what baffles me. He must have heard something when he was young.’

‘Yes, but he was too little to understand what he was hearing. When he was old enough to make the connection, the sounds had faded. I doubt if he remembers them now. So he never learned properly because children learn to talk by imitating what they hear.’

Privately she thought there might be another reason: that Joey, too old and wise for his years, had reacted to his mother’s desertion and his father’s incomprehension by abandoning the effort to talk and retreating into his own world-a world of water, sharks and shells, where he was king.

But she kept this to herself. It would be cruel to throw it at Carson when he was struggling to do better. And she already knew that Joey could be tempted out by someone he saw as a friend.

‘It’ll take time, and encouragement,’ she said carefully. ‘If he knows that you don’t like the way he talks, he’s got no incentive to try.’

‘How can he possibly know?’

‘Do you really think he hasn’t sensed it? He knows a lot more about you than you do about him. What a pity you haven’t taken more interest in him.’

‘How dare you say I take no interest in him? He’s had the very best of everything-’

Gina lost patience. ‘I’m sure he’s had the best that money could buy,’ she said sharply. ‘It’s a pity you can’t buy parents, so that he could have had the best of them, too.’