Brother and Sister (24 page)

Steve turned, and went back to his desk. It was covered with papers, papers he had not attended to, requests, complaints,
estimates, invoices, papers that just at this moment represented an aspect of life which had no savor to it at all. He would,
he decided, leave them. He would leave them just as Titus would leave them, and instead, just as Titus would do, he would
pick up the telephone and make contact again with the essence of things.

He looked at the phone in his hand. Then he dialed the flat.

"Hello," Polly's voice said at once, and imperiously.

"Hello, darling—"

"Oh," Polly said, "it's you."

"Yes."

"It's Daddy," Polly said over her shoulder, and then in her former tone, and quickly before Nathalie could take the phone
from her hand, "Have you finished your work?"

Steve looked round him, down the length of the room, up into those mysterious and remote old beams above his head.

"Yes," he said, "yes, I rather think I have."

There was a pause, and then Polly said briskly, "Well, you'd better come home then," and put the receiver down.

A NOTE ON THE AUTHOR

Author of eagerly awaited and sparklingly readable

novels often centered around the domestic nuances and

dilemmas of life in contemporary England, Joanna

Trollope is also the author of a number of historical

novels and of
Britannia's Daughters,
a study of women

in the British Empire. In 1988 she wrote her first novel,

The Choir,
and this was followed by
A Village Affair, A

Passionate Man, The Rector's Wife, The Men and the

Girls, A Spanish Lover, The Best of Friends, Next of

Kin, Other People's Children, Marrying the Mistress

and, most recently,
Girl From the South.
She lives in

London and Gloucester shire.

A NOTE ON THE TYPE

The text of this book is set in Linotype Sabon, named

after the type founder, Jacques Sabon. It was designed by

Jan Tschichold and jointly developed by Linotype, Monotype

and Stempel, in response to a need for a typeface to be

available in identical form for mechanical hot metal

composition and hand composition using foundry type.

Tschichold based his design for Sabon roman on a font

engraved by Garamond, and Sabon italic on a font by

Granjon. It was first used in 1966 and has proved an

enduring modern classic.