Deceit. [COMPLETED.]

Chapter 28

'I always wondered what happened to nanny, whether she was still working. She's probably retired by now. Boarding school was okay but our head mistress was too strict and there was no life in the place. I was moved on to a ladies college of excellence when I was eighteen and that was when I met old Mr Williams.'

Her eyes lit up at the mention of his name. She leant forward and placed her arms on the table.

'He was in his late fifties and a grounds keeper for the college. I caught him one morning dancing with a rake. An old floppy hat was on its handle and he was swaying this way and then that, and when I asked him what he was doing, he stopped, bowed politely to me and said in a very refined manner that he was dancing with a Lady Aubrington, the heiress to the duke of Cumberland and they were doing a waltz.'

She sat back and a glazed look suddenly appeared on her face.

'I sat on the lawn. It was a beautiful day. I remember the air was warm but the grass was cool to the touch and I watched him dance and it was as if I had been reborn and from that moment I was determined to find myself again.'

Max continued to talk throughout our meal. I learnt that she had had a rocking horse when she was young and that she had received a rosette for horse riding once. She was passionate about animals and once kept a pet rat.

'A rat?'

'Yes,' said Max. ' I found it in the stables one day and I asked to keep it. Daddy said no as usual, I had to kill it but I didn't. I hid it and often took it out for walks when no body was around.'

It sounded a lonely life. As a child at least. Not too dissimilar to mine although I clearly didn't walk in the same circle of friends as she did but there had been many times when I too had hidden myself away happy to be in my own little world and my own kingdom had been a very wide expanse of thickets on the edge of a field which when chopped and shaped into an arch made for a very secluded cave. I had many an adventure in that cave.

It was close to midnight by the time the table was eventually cleared and at no time did the conversation ever revert to her mother's death nor once did we talk about her dad.

'So why haven't you married?' I asked.

She leant back wistfully. 'I nearly did once,' she answered. 'His name was Isaac. A wonderful, decent, fun loving man whose only crime was being in the wrong place at the wrong time.'

I looked across puzzled. Max explained.

'He was the gardener's son. The one I told you about. I would often see him helping his father and he always had a smile on his face and always said hello whenever I walked by.'

This was a side to Max I had not seen, a deeper side to her character I felt privileged in getting to know.

'I dropped my books one morning and he stopped to pick them up. We were a whisker away from each other and I just knew. I just knew that he was the one.'

A gardener's son. Who would have thought it?

I felt a little guilty to be quite honest. I don't know why but I had never, until now, connected her with ever wanting to socialise with what most people in our country would have called the lower class and then I should have known better because here she was talking to me and taking me out to dinner when I was clearly lower class too.

I asked what had happened only to be told that he had died.

'Oh I am sorry.'

Her honesty caught me off guard. I was being invasive and I immediately apologised. It brought about a moments silence which I filled by asking the waiter for some more wine. We waited and said nothing to each other and it was only after the waiter had gone, did Max speak. She sounded distant, her eyes focusing on the darkness that was Paris at night.