Free The Steppes of Paris by Helen Harris Page A

some inroads into this. You’re young enough not to need to worry about cholesterol.”

 
    He supposed, with hindsight, that he had thought it was a bit too good to be true not to have heard anything out of the Iskarov family for the first three or four weeks he lived in their flat. Certainly, when they did make contact, he was conscious that he had been waiting for it, “braced for it” was the term.
    One evening, into the semi-permanent silence of his living-room, the telephone rang. He was so little expecting it that he actually jumped, a reaction which disgusted him because in all his previous existences the telephone had always rung for him with healthy frequency. Expecting that it could only be Henry, or perhaps a call from England, he answered in English, “Hello?”
    “ Allo? Allo? Mister Wenwright?” came Mademoiselle Iskarov’s flustered voice.
    “Ah,” he said awkwardly. “Bonsoir.” Did she always sound, he wondered, as though things were falling in chaos about her ears? Her fluster was infectious.
    “Bonsoir,” she replied, he felt just a trifle stiffly and sorely, as though she had interpreted his formality as a rebuff. “I hope I’m not ringing at a bad time?”
    “No, no, it’s fine.” And then, completely unnecessarily, he found himself adding, “I’ve been out quite a bit. I hope you haven’t been trying?”
    “No, no, I haven’t. In fact, I did mean to ring you before, but I’ve been so busy. I wanted to ask how you were getting on. Is everything all right in the flat?”
    ‘No,’ Edward retorted to himself. ‘No, it isn’t. I’ve set up a Buddhist temple here, you see, and there have been a few complaints about the chanting.’
    “Yes, fine,” he answered shortly.
    There was a pause. “Will you be in later on? Are you busy? I’d like to come round if you’re not in the middle of something.”
    Edward controlled his indignation. “What’s the problem?”
    “No problem,” Mademoiselle Iskarov said laughingly. “I just want to see that everything’s all right, that’s all; that you have everything you need. I would have come before only I’ve been utterly snowed under. I’ve got a second set of keys for you, in case you need them, and some spare bulbs for those old lamps in the living-room. They’re a funny kind; you’ll never find them anywhere.”
    While he sketchily cleaned up the living-room, and the remains of more than one day’s dinner from the kitchen, Edward reproached himself for his immediate acquiescence. It went, of course, without saying that Mademoiselle Iskarov was coming to check up on him; the keys and the light bulbs and the salt which she had rather bizarrely mentioned were a transparent pretext. He would put up with it this once, for the sake of harmonious relations, but he was not going to let her make a habit of it.
    He was spared the complicated decision of whether or not to do anything to improve on his appearance by the front-door bell ringing a bare five minutes after he had put the phone down. He had expected half an hour or so’s grace, the time it took to walk the distance, but obviously Mademoiselle Iskarov must have come by car or taxi.
    She stood on his doorstep, smaller than he remembered her, and rather stylishly swamped by a bulky red fur coat. Almost in the same instant that he admired the effect of the fur, it occurred to him that it really wasn’t quite cold enough for fur and that if she had come by car it was, in any case, ridiculous.
    Her arms were loaded with packages. She gasped at himurgently. “Take them, take them. I’m about to drop the light bulbs,” and as he gingerly extricated the top parcels from her pile, she explained wryly, “I brought a few things I thought you might need.”
    He showed her into the living-room and, somehow she was the sort of woman to whom you did that, he helped her a bit self-consciously off with her enormous coat.
    “Do sit down,” he said and, he realised afterwards, with