Endless Night / Бесконечная ночь. Книга для чтения на английском языке

�You’ve got it badly, I can see that. It’s the thing I always feared, that you’d choose the wrong girl.’

�Wrong girl! Hell!’ I shouted. I was angry.

I went out of the house and I banged the door.

Chapter 7

When I got home there was a telegram waiting for me – it had been sent from Antibes.

Meet me tomorrow four-thirty usual place.

Ellie was different. I saw it at once. We met as always in Regent’s Park and at first we were a bit strange and awkward with each other.

I had something I was going to say to her and I was in a bit of a state as to how to put it. I suppose any man is when he comes to the point of proposing marriage.

And she was strange about something too. Perhaps she was considering the nicest and kindest way of saying No to me. But somehow I didn’t think that. My whole belief in life was based on the fact that Ellie loved me. But there was a new independence about her, a new confidence in herself which I could hardly feel was simply because she was a year older.

One more birthday can’t make that difference to a girl. She and her family had been in the South of France and she told me a little about it. And then rather shyly she said:

�I – I saw that house there, the one you told me about. The one that architect friend of yours had built.’

�What – Santonix?’

�Yes. We went there to lunch one day.’

�How did you do that? Does your stepmother know the man who lives there?’

�Dmitri Constantine? Well – not exactly but she met him and – well – Greta fixed it up for us to go there as a matter of fact.

’

�Greta again,’ I said, allowing the usual exasperation to come into my voice.

�I told you,’ she said, �Greta is very good at arranging things.’

�Oh all right. So she arranged that you and your stepmother —’

�And Uncle Frank,’ said Ellie.

�Quite a family party,’ I said, �and Greta too, I suppose.’

�Well, no, Greta didn’t come because, well —’ Ellie hesitated, �– Cora, my stepmother, doesn’t treat Greta exactly like that.

’

�She’s not one of the family, she’s a poor relation, is she?’ I said. �Just the au pair girl, in fact. Greta must resent being treated that way sometimes.’

�She’s not an au pair girl, she’s a kind of companion to me.’

�A chaperone,’ I said, �a cicerone, a duenna, a governess. There are lots of words.