The House of Adriano Read Online Free Page B

the house, thanked the Misses Carstairs, collected Peter and went home, stopping only at the small corner newsagent to pick up a paper. While she went into the little kitchenette to prepare their dinner, Peter settled down on the floor with his toys.
    About ten minutes later: “Auntie Aileen, the wheel’s stuck.” Aileen came in, looked down at him quizzically. “You’re supposed to be the engineer of this family.”
    He grinned up at her roguishly and held out a toy lorry. Aileen fiddled around with it for a moment, but the wheels seemed to be well and truly stuck, so she handed it back with a helpless little shrug.
    “I think we’ll have to get the engineer to look at it.”
    Paul Renby was not an engineer, but he received so many of Peter’s toys to mend that he jokingly called himself that. Peter unfortunately had a great habit of taking things apart, not from any destructive urge, but from sheer, downright curiosity, to see what was inside, and then was not able to put them together again.
    “I’ll go and see him now,” he said, scrambling to his feet and making for the door before she had half realised what he intended.
    “Oh no, you don’t!” She caught him in full flight by the waistband of his shorts. “You’ll wait until after dinner.”
    Paul lived only next door, all alone, in another little flat, and Aileen half suspected that he deliberately encouraged Peter to visit him, knowing how persuasive a child could be. Peter had more than once asked her if Paul was going to be his uncle.
    Having settled him down on the floor with a batch of comics, she returned to the kitchen and silence reigned. Not for long, though. About five minutes later small footsteps pattered in.
    “I’m hungry.”
    Aileen looked down at him and smiled. “I won’t be long. Want to set the table for me?”
    They had dinner and washed up, just as they did on every other evening. Aileen settled down to read the paper first and found that Duarte Adriano once again intruded into her thoughts. It was hardly likely that he should not have done, because there was a photograph of him in the paper.
    Apparently a reporter had been sent down to find out if there was anything interesting, any story to be had, from new arrivals in the country that morning. The arrival of a Spanish Count seemed to have been interesting enough to mention, but he had not got very far with any story apparently. On being asked was he in Australia for a holiday and was the Condesa de Marindos going to join him, he had replied that he was in Sydney on a personal matter and there was no Condesa de Marindos for her to be able to join him. That at least answered the question of whether or not he was married. Aileen could not help smiling slightly at the thought that if Betty saw it, it would most certainly heighten that idiotic romantic interest of hers, then she dismissed him and turned her attention to the rest of the paper.
    After a little while she laid the paper aside to do some mending, listening to music from a portable radio she had bought when they first moved in, while Peter curled up on the couch with an adventure book.
    It was a satisfactory life, she thought contentedly, watching the smooth dark head bent over the book. Sometimes one of the neighbours’ children would come in for a short time during the evening and sometimes Peter would go out to their homes instead. Other nights Aileen would be washing or ironing, cleaning up the flat or perhaps, all her chores done, just sitting down with a book or a piece of embroidery. Occasionally she would go out in the evening with Paul, either to a cinema or a dance, and young Jill Conway, a teenager from nearby who was still at business college during the day and who did baby-sitting for a little income until she was able to go out to work, would take care of Peter for her. She never felt afraid of leaving him with Jill since the girl, young as she was, was reliable. In the mornings it was always a rush of