Welcome to Paradise by Jill Tahourdin Page B

gales. Through the drawn curtains she could see the sun rising in splendour, in a sky all rosy and honey-gold. It did indeed look like a lovely day.
    To amuse her Mrs. Murray took her out shopping, gave her coffee in a fashionable store which was putting on a mannequin show of spring fashions, and drove her back in time for lunch. Her plane was to leave at three.
    A Zephyr car was standing outside the Murray’s door when they drew up there. Mrs. Murray said, “A visitor. Who can it be? I wonder.”
    Alix glanced at it indifferently. Richard’s car had been a Zephyr, she remembered. What fun that drive in it had been.
    As she followed Mrs. Murray towards the drawing room she heard her give a little scream of pleasure.
    “Richard! My dear boy! What a delightful surprise! What are you doing here?”
    “I’ve come to lunch, if you’ll have me,” said Richard’s pleasant voice. “I’m on my way to Salisbury to see this chap who’s holding down my job till I’ve finished down here. Flying by this afte r noon’s plane as a matter of fact.”
    “But what an extraordinary coincidence. Alix is here. And she’s going by the afternoon flight too.”
    “Is she?” Richard asked calmly. “Then we can travel up together, can’t we, Alix? Fun, m’m?”
    Alix moving forward in something of a daze, sank gratefully into the chair Richard had pulled forward. Her knees, unaccountably, felt suddenly weak. She glanced up at him to thank him, and looked hurriedly away again. She didn’t want to meet that look in his eyes. A look of warm delight. Of—love. ( Had she only imagined that nearly-inaudible “I love you so much?”) Though he must have been driving for some hours, he looked fresh as the morning. He looked on top of the world. He had the air of one who had never had it better. Alix didn’t know whether her uppermost feeling was indignation because she couldn’t help suspecting that this sudden journey of his had something to do with herself, or relief because now she wouldn’t be making her first flight alone.
    She wasn’t, had she known it, alone in her suspicions. Mrs. Murray—who was the sort of pretty, roundabout, motherly woman of whom people meeting her said at once, “Isn’t she a darling?” — had the keenest possible nose for Romance; and she scented it now.
    Surely, she thought, it was the oddest thing —unless romance had something to do with it—that Richard should be flying to Salisbury today of all days?
    She pricked up her ears when Richard asked with a grin, “And how was the bus ride, Alix? Not too bad, I hope?”
    She cried merrily, “Bus ride! My dear Richard, if you could have seen the rich limousine in which she arrived! Complete with uniformed chauffeur too. Bus indeed!”
    She realised, in the moment’s silence that followed, that she had dropped a brick. Richard’s face had seemed to close up. His pleasant mouth looked quite grim. And Alix was decidedly pink. She was offering a hurried explanation—though one of her favourite precepts, learned from her father, was “Never explain.”
    “I’d actually booked on the bus. But then it turned out that Mr. Gore’s car was coming in to P.E., and my aunt insisted that I should take the offer of a lift.” Which if it wasn’t absolutely true, at least couldn’t be classified as a downright lie; and it did have the effect of defrosting Richard’s face. He looked, in fact, quite pleasant as he answered carelessly, “Why not? You’d have found the bus’s conducted tour a bit tiresome, I expect.”
    Ah-ha, thought Mrs. Murray. So the owner of the big car is a rival. The plot thickens.
    “You could have driven Alix over yourself if only you’d known, couldn’t you?” she suggested naughtily. But Richard wasn’t to be drawn. He said, “Yes, couldn’t I?” and forthwith engaged Mr. Murray in talk about something quite different. Man talk. Mrs. Murray turned away from it to Alix.
    “Such fun that you’ll have Richard’s