Free Folly's Child by Janet Tanner Page B

I’m telling you …’
    â€˜Quit trying to protect me, Harriet.’ Hugo was standing in the doorway of his office. ‘I know you are only trying to help but the sooner we get this over with the better. I’ll see Mr O’Neill now. I have nothing to hide.’
    â€˜Dad!’
    â€˜You go home, Harriet. I’ll see you at dinner. And perhaps you’d warn Sally I might be a little late.’
    â€˜Dad!’
    â€˜Come this way, please, Mr O’Neill.’
    The door closed after them and Harriet could do nothing but glare at it impotently. Dammit, he deserved to be reported to whatever professional body insurance investigators belonged to and if he upset her father she’d see to it that he was.
    Still fuming at the insensitive arrogance of the man she turned and left the office.

CHAPTER FOUR
    In her room at Hugo’s Central Park triplex Harriet was dressed and ready for dinner. At home in London she rarely bothered with such irrelevances; here she knew it was expected of her and accordingly she had showered, dumped her travel-weary jeans into the laundry basket from which they would be rescued by a maid, washed, ironed and returned to her next day, and dressed herself in a loose silk jersey jacket and pants suit, simple and easy enough to please her yet enough of a transformation to satisfy her father and Sally.
    She was tired out now, her eyes ached from lack of sleep and jetlag, and she glanced longingly at the king-sized bed with its lace-trimmed peach silk sheets. Oh to be able to fall into it and sink into oblivion! But it would be several more hours yet before she could do that.
    Was her father home yet? she wondered. She was anxious to see him the moment he arrived, and make sure he was all right after the trauma of the interview with the insurance investigator. But when she went to the head of the stairs and looked down she could see that his study door was ajar and the house was quiet and she returned to her room. He had said he might be late, after all, and she decided to snatch a few more moments of privacy to recharge her batteries in the one place in the whole luxurious house where she was able to relax and feel she was her own person.
    What was it about unashamed luxury, Harriet sometimes asked herself, which made her feel so uncomfortable? Most people would be only to happy to be able to enjoy such surroundings. A top line interior decorator had been given a free hand when Hugo had bought the triplex two years ago and no expense had been spared – the walls were hung with some of Hugo’s collection of Old Masters, glowing against the background of watered silk, the shelves were lined with leather bound first editions which neither Hugo nor Sally would ever open, much less read, every nook and cranny was filled with treasures and objets d’art displayed on dainty pedestals. The sofas and chairs were deep and soft enough to fall asleep in, a fireplace was topped by an Adam mantel which Hugo had had flown out from England and everywhere there were fresh flowers – long stemmed hothouse roses, orchids flown in from Singapore, daffodils and narcissi and heavy perfumed hyacinths.
    But to Harriet the grandeur and studied comfort were somehow artificial, the atmosphere more reminiscent of a luxury hotel than a home. Perhaps, she thought, it was because she had never lived in this house. There was nothing to arouse childhood memories.
    Only in the room Sally had chosen especially for her was Harriet amongst familiar echoes of the past and she never entered it without feeling a wave of gratitude towards her aunt. Here, at Sally’s instigation, were many of the things Harriet remembered and loved from her childhood and growing-up years – the rosettes she had won with her pony, her graduation dress, her old collection of Osmond and Jackson records, her early attempts at photography, proudly framed, a pressed flower that reminded her of her first proper