‘I’m sorry,’ Laurie hoped she sounded suitably contrite. ‘I had no idea UK pensions regulations could be so fascinating.’
Laurie had never actually heard someone snort before, but that was the only possible description for Dad’s response. She looked at the clock. Had he and Jess really been sitting there waiting for her all this time? Laurie remembered the bags she’d passed in the hall and groaned to herself. ‘Look, I really am sorry. I’ll just be five minutes packing my stuff.’
Laurie sat in the back of Dad’s old Fiesta, feeling like a naughty child ignored by its parents. Her efforts to make conversation had been rewarded with answers whose shortness left her in no doubt that she remained in disgrace. Dad gave all his concentration to the road, as if split-second reactions might be required, although they were currently travelling at a speed no faster than a brisk walk. That was Laurie’s fault too, she knew. This was all traffic that had built up in the last hour or so; if they had left when Dad wanted, they would have been well clear of London by now. As for Jess, her ostentatious thanks when Dad carried her luggage and held the front passenger door open for her had been evidence of some kind of recovery from her morning blues. Now, however, she seemed to be asleep.
Left alone with her thoughts, Laurie thought about what she had found out that day: specifically, about pension-fund deficits and the employer’s responsibility to cover them. She really hadn’t been lying when she said she found it fascinating. It reminded her a bit of the work she’d been doing with Michael. But what was the source of William Pennington’s interest?
A plane passed overhead, so close that its undercarriage seemed in danger of clipping the trees that lined the motorway. Without Laurie noticing, they had got as far as Heathrow already. The road was still busy, but at least it was free flowing. They stood a chance of making it home for supper. Perhaps that was why the atmosphere in the car seemed slightly warmer. Dad and Jess had turned on the radio, and were listening to the news. Laurie leaned forward to listen along with them, sticking her head between the two front seats. Dad glanced across at her, and then, with his eyes back on the road, said, ‘So, tell me what you found out.’
The edge to Dad’s voice told Laurie that she was not yet entirely forgiven, but she also knew he would not have asked at all if he wasn’t interested, so she took the question at face value. ‘Pensions. I’m trying to work out why William Pennington suddenly got interested in them a couple of months ago.’
‘Planning his retirement? That sort of thing?’
‘The sort of books he was reading were more detailed than that. They were more like what somebody in charge of a pension fund would read. Makes me wonder if he was thinking about going in that direction himself.’
Jess laughed, and that was a good sign in itself. ‘Listen to the two of you, nattering on about pensions. Anybody would think you were a pair of OAPs, the way you’re going on.’
‘Sorry Jess,’ Laurie was smiling herself now, as she injected a note of fake pomposity into her voice, ‘but it’s never too early to start planning these things, and Dad here isn’t so far off his free bus pass himself.’
‘Thank you for that darling, but there’s life in me yet.’
Laurie was going to reply, but Jess beat her to it. Her ‘Anybody can see that,’ somehow left no room for a rejoinder.