‘It’s fine,’ she says, and means it. ‘But I won’t be able to have dinner with you tonight. I’m about to go and see her, and I’ll want to stay until the end of visiting hours.’
The day after their last dinner he had invited her out again, and she had agreed immediately, only thinking later that she was probably meant to make him wait. Except she’s never known the rules of courtship – she’s never had to – and he didn’t seem to judge her harshly for that. Rather, he had sounded delighted when she’d accepted.
‘I understand,’ he says. ‘May I ask how you’re getting to the hospital?’
He knows she doesn’t drive – she told him the other night.
‘On the bus,’ she says. ‘I can walk to Spit Junction and get a bus from there.’
‘On the bus?’ He sounds almost shocked. ‘And walk … Spit Junction is a long way from your home.’
‘I walk up to Mosman Junction all the time. It’s only another ten minutes from there.’
She hears him take a breath. ‘I’d like to drive you, if that’s all right.’
Margot blinks a few times, trying to understand what he’s saying. He wants to come here, pick her up and take her to the hospital?
‘Why?’ she says.
‘Won’t it make things a little easier for you?’
‘Well … yes.’ The walk-plus-bus would take over an hour, and the walk alone will make her sweat in this summer heat. ‘But I don’t mind taking the bus.’
‘Imind you taking the bus,’ he says firmly.
This is confusing. Why would he be worried about her taking the bus? Margot doesn’t understand.
‘A lady shouldn’t have to take the bus,’ he goes on. ‘I would be much happier if I could drive you.’
There’s something in his statement that fires a recognition within her: her father used to say something similar, about how her mother was a lady. It was never about her mother being delicate, but about the care he wished to take of her as a way of showing his esteem and affection. Margot never questioned it, so she shouldn’t really question it now. Stephen wishes to take care of her and she should let him.
‘Thank you,’ she says. ‘That would be lovely.’
‘I can be there in an hour. I’ll just need to do a couple of things here first.’
She looks at her watch: it is two o’clock. That means he’ll be closing his shop early for her. She’s touched that he would do that.
‘Thank you,’ she says again. ‘I’ll be ready.’
Just after three he pulls up outside. Margot doesn’t wait for him to come to the door but descends to the street, wearing the least shabby summer dress she has in her wardrobe.
‘Oh, you’re here,’ he says, looking slightly disappointed. ‘I would have come up.’
‘I so appreciate you coming at all,’ she says as he opens the passenger door for her. ‘I didn’t want to inconvenience you further.’
‘Margot,’ he says, straightening, ‘it would never be an inconvenience.’
Unused to such solicitousness, Margot takes her time to buckle up her seatbelt, feeling somewhat overwhelmed. In the space of a few short weeks she’s gone from having no connections other than Lavinia and feeling as though her life was, if not over, then halfway there, to having a gentleman driving her around Sydney and telling her that he cares about her.
She suspects it’s all some sort of joke. The world simply cannot be this kind. It wasn’t kind to her brothers. Or to her parents. Why should it be kind to her?
Yet when they arrive at the hospital, Stephen parks the car and offers her his arm as they walk together into the large building. He asks about Lavinia’s ward at the reception desk, then offers Margot his arm again as they take the elevator up.
When they reach the nurses’ desk he mentions Lavinia’s name, then turns to Margot. ‘I’ll wait for you out here,’ he says, nodding to a row of empty chairs nearby.
‘You don’t …’ But she doesn’t finish, because she thinks she already knows what he’ll say: that he wants to give them some time alone. That he doesn’t want to intrude.
‘Thank you,’ she says. ‘I really appreciate your help today.’