‘I-I-’ she stammered.
‘Go with him and make yourself useful,’ Hale said, speaking through gritted teeth. ‘I shall have things to say to you later.’
She collected her bag and hurried to catch up with them. Joey watched her, eyes wide, smiling. Then he put up his hands and spelled out, ‘Come too.’
‘Yes,’ she said, clearly. ‘I’m coming, too.’
‘Then let’s go,’ Carson said.
CHAPTER THREE
ON THE journey, nobody spoke. Sitting in the rear, with Joey, Gina could only see the back of Carson’s head. It had a forbidding look. The child seemed simply content to have her there. Gina was trying to calm herself, battling with traumas she had thought would never trouble her again.
For a while she’d been back in the old nightmare of childhood, hemmed in by silence and misunderstanding. It was a prison from which she’d hoped she’d escaped, but suddenly the walls had been there again. Now she was struggling with herself. She didn’t want to return to that prison, and yet Joey’s need was so great…
What was she thinking of? she wondered. This was one brief visit, and then she would never see either Joey or his father again.
She was bitterly disillusioned by Carson. Was it only yesterday that she’d thought she detected charm and kindness beneath his gruff manners? Goodness, had she been wrong about that!
The truth about him was that he was as prejudiced about deafness as anyone else, and furious at the fate that had given him a deaf child. To blazes with him! she thought stormily.
She realised that the little boy was trying to catch her attention, spelling out some words. She answered with her fingers, and they chatted in silence for the rest of the journey.
She soon recognised the part of London where they were heading. It was a place where rich men chose to live to show their status, with broad, tree-lined streets and large detached dwellings standing well back from the road. She’d once arranged the purchase of a house like one of these, and knew that they cost a million.