by Lucy Keane
The trauma of the accident had drawn them together, briefly, with a closeness they’d never had before. After his initial reaction of shocked disbelief, Charlie had at first withdrawn into himself. She suspected that he had been pressured by the role he felt obliged to play, as support to his sister. He had considered himself too old to cry like the boy he still was, and Amy herself, only just beginning to be aware of the problems of debt that faced them, hadn’t yet been able to come to terms with the full extent of the changes to their lives.
Then one night he had crept into her room as he had done when he was very young, giving in at last to his secret grief, and they had both cried until they had no more tears left. Neither had alluded to the incident afterwards, Amy chiefly because she guessed Charlie was walking a particularly precarious inner tightrope, and needed to believe he could cope without showing childish weakness. She hoped she would be there for him if he needed her, but he was making her feel increasingly inadequate. Most of the time she could do little but leave what appeared to be well enough alone.
Rasputin, a fat-faced tabby, wound himself round her ankles lovingly as she stood by the fridge, cereal bowl in one hand and felt-tip pen in the other.
‘Go away,’ she said, her mouth full of muesli, ‘you’ve been fed.’
Celery.
Walnuts.
Whipping cream.
Yet more butter.
The list was going to be endless. She’d have to ring Jess from the office to remind her to get the fish—and did they have any almonds? If she’d had time to contact her last night it would have made things easier, but the party she’d been catering for had gone on too late. She picked her way across the kitchen floor between piles of dishes—she’d been too tired to do them before she went to bed—and examined the contents of the store cupboard. No almonds. Back to the list.
There was an offended yowl from the cat.
‘Hell’s bells, Rasputin! Can’t you look where you leave your tail? Charlie! One more minute and I’ll be up with the wet sponge!’ What was it she was going to write down? Oh, yes, almonds… and cling film. She’d used the last of the roll on the quiches for the Horticultural Society—she must remember to ring Jess about those too.
She felt quite irritated that the bus was late, having made it to the stop against all the odds with one minute still to spare. Luckily it wouldn’t matter much at the other end, since she’d have nearly half an hour to kill before she could get into the offices in Wychford. Half an hour in the rain again.
Tomorrow, hopefully, would be a whole lot better. The timing with the buses would be more convenient and she wouldn’t have such a battle with Rip van Winkle—well, she would, but she needn’t feel so cruel about it. If she could just get through today without making a mess of it!
She’d liked the bespectacled Dennis, and Jacquie and Zoe had seemed friendly and helpful. In fact, there was only one fly in what could turn out to be some very acceptable ointment—Julius Prior. What a pity he had to be the one with all the power! But with any luck he might be out of the office seeing clients most of the time.
She had no idea why she felt so strongly about him. After all, he had given her the job. But somehow he seemed to pose a threat to her and she wasn’t sure why. He could fire her, yes, and he was going to be far more exacting than Dennis if she had to do any work for him, but that didn’t seem to account for it entirely. That uneasy mixture of business drive and humour had something to do with it, but she wasn’t sure what. Maybe it was simply that it was a bit unnerving to find herself working for a man who could be so obviously attractive, and was at the same time so very unavailable. Jacquie had said he didn’t notice other women, but that wasn’t entirely the impression she’d got.
Once off the bus in Wychford, she made her way slowly to the offices. There was no point hanging about in the drizzling rain. The shops, such as they were, weren’t open yet, and she might as well let the inconsiderate Mr. Prior know that not only was she at the office on time, but that he’d kept her waiting. It was only just past eight o’clock.
But to her surprise she’d hardly reached the doorstep before she recognised the tall figure striding up from the end of the street, raincoat flapping, briefcase in one hand and umbrella in the other.
‘Miss Thompson! I did say eight-thirty—or is this a “first morning” bid to impress the management?’
‘I hadn’t much choice,’ she said shortly. ‘The only bus I could get leaves my village at half-past seven.’ With a quick scattering of raindrops he shook the umbrella, collapsed it and handed it to her, almost, she thought, as though her sole purpose were to be standing there ready to take it from him! Then he fished in his pocket for the bunch of keys that unlocked the offices. She found herself looking at that cleft in his chin.
‘You don’t have a car?’
‘Well, I do, but it’s got something wrong with the engine at the moment.’
‘Can you trust your garage?’
‘Oh, yes.’ She could smell just the faintest whiff of aftershave and clean masculine soap on the sharp morning air, and wondered if his fiancée lived with him, and what it was like to be kissed goodbye by him in the mornings. She followed him into the hall, still carrying his umbrella. He seemed to have forgotten about it, unless that was part of her job too—to carry his things like a lackey. She half expected to be handed his briefcase as well.
‘Mind the paint tins. A good local mechanic is worth his weight in gold. Is yours in the village?’
‘Er—yes.’
There was no garage in Applecot, but it wouldn’t have made any difference even if there had been. She couldn’t possibly afford to have the car seen to. It had been parked off the road in a neighbour’s drive for the past four months. Maybe, when she’d fed a few salary cheques into her starving bank account, she’d have it looked at. Or if, by some wonderful chance, she and Jess got a couple of really lucrative weekend parties to cook for… But then there was the question of the road tax.
Once they were upstairs, Julius didn’t waste time, and issued a flood of instructions before either of them had got their coats off. Since cooking for parties was one long, juggling act, Amy automatically sorted the tasks into a table of priorities and had the coffee on before she started in the boardroom. Zoe, it appeared, had got through only half the required preparations the night before.
‘There was a last-minute crisis which involved a couple of letters to type after Jacquie had gone, so Dennis told me on the phone last night,’ he explained.
Amy had the feeling that the information wasn’t given to her merely out of interest—he was letting her know that sloping off with tasks incomplete was only tolerated in exceptional circumstances. It also gave the impression that business went on virtually twenty-four hours a day.
She was halfway through doling out directors’ reports round the table in the small boardroom when the phone rang. She could see through the open door that Julius was standing right next to it.
‘Answer that, will you?’ He gave a curt nod in the direction of the phone. He was frowning at the desk diary in his hand and even moved away from the shrill summons to stand at the window, his back to her.
Amy was taken aback. It wouldn’t have hurt him just to pick it up! Maybe this was a test? See how many jobs you can do at once, Miss Thompson! Score above average—anything over ten, shall we say?—and we’ll keep you on for the week!
Resisting the temptation to deal the remaining folders carelessly across the table like a deck of cards, she hurried to the phone. ‘Prior Harding Investments—can I help you?’
There was no time to ask or explain anything, because the caller was clearly used to rapid dictating over the phone, and after a peremptory, ‘Take this down…’ she found herself scribbling incomprehensibly on the nearest piece of paper. He could have been talking Ancient Greek for all the sense she could make of the information coming across the line—something about a take-over and diluting the stocks and something else a
bout a rights issue—or was it rites? Or even possibly writes? And then, ‘Let Julius know when he gets in, will you?’ She looked across helplessly at the man in question to find him watching her, the desk diary still open in his hands, and an unreadable look on his face.
‘Do you want to speak to—?’ she began into the phone, and then the unreadable look became all too legible.
A fierce frown drew the dark eyebrows together and he mouthed an unmistakable, ‘No!’
‘Er—I’ll tell him as soon as he arrives—’ she said into the mouthpiece, and then the line went dead. Whoever it was didn’t believe in hanging about.
‘Why the hell did you think I wanted you to answer the phone?’ he demanded. ‘Don’t ever tell anyone I’m here before you’ve asked me!’
She digested that. He crossed back to the desk. ‘Was it Bill Mortimer?’
‘I didn’t have time to find out—he—’
‘You have worked in an office before, Miss Thompson?’
It was just the tone he’d used telling Zoe to look up ‘hot’ in the dictionary the previous day, but this time his eyes were anything but amused. She knew then that her first impressions of him had been right: Julius Prior was going to be perfectly bloody to work for. Her own eyes flashed a sudden dangerous blue, and she said with acid sweetness, ‘Never with people who speak like machines!’ And turned on her heel.
‘Miss Thompson.’
She hadn’t even got to the boardroom door. Keeping a tight hold of her temper, and arranging her most consciously bewitching smile, she turned back. His tone warned her that it hadn’t been the wisest remark she’d ever made, given the circumstances. The best thing to do would be to apologise, even if she didn’t mean it.
The expression changed on his face as she looked at him—it hadn’t exactly been anger she glimpsed, but the harder lines visibly softened.
‘Look,’ he said, ‘even if it is your first morning and I can’t afford to have you walk out before we’ve even started, I did warn you there wasn’t time for holding anybody’s hand in this company.’
She said guardedly, ‘I don’t want anybody to hold my hand, thank you.’
One dark eyebrow quirked slightly. ‘What a pity,’ he said. ‘That’s rather a waste.’
The sudden change of meaning was disconcerting. It wasn’t what she’d been led to expect by Jacquie—veiled reprimand one minute and sexual innuendo the next. She didn’t like the flirtatious tone, not from him anyway. It seemed dishonest, but she didn’t stop to analyse further.
‘Would your fiancée like you making that sort of remark?’ she asked pointedly. She might as well let him see straight away that she knew what the score was.
For a moment he looked surprised, and displeased. ‘Gossiping already, Miss Thompson?’
‘It wasn’t the kind of information I asked for, no.’ There was a loaded silence while he looked at her and she returned the stare. She was getting off to a very bad start; could you sack someone merely on incompatibility grounds? At the rate she was going, she wouldn’t even get the chance to walk out first. She lowered her eyes, unwilling to meet the look in his any longer. Then she said, with deliberate meekness, ‘Shall I get back to those directors’ reports?’
‘Any chance of coffee before you do?’
It wasn’t the reply she expected, but she felt an instant sense of relief. It signalled that he wasn’t going to give her her marching orders yet!
I’m not cut out for this sort of job, she thought. I don’t like being at someone’s beck and call, and I’d much rather be working for myself, whatever the problems. Roll on the day Jess and I open our own restaurant!
Coffee… If she didn’t have something hot and sweet to drink soon, she’d die! She thought regretfully of the half-eaten bowl of muesli still on top of the fridge. She’d never had time to finish it.
Julius followed her to the cubby-hole that passed as a kitchen; equipped with fridge, a small microwave and an electric kettle, it could cope with anything from iced drinks for the unexpected guest to hot lunches for the directors in times of crisis. She was conscious of him standing in the doorway, and wished he’d go away. She could feel him behind her, as though he were some sort of magnet and she were covered with a lot of little steel prickles that instantly bristled in his direction. It was a weird sensation.
The percolator had finished fizzing to itself and she poured out two cups, and then looked at him with just the merest hint of a challenge.
‘I am allowed to have some, aren’t I?’
‘Of course. What time did you have breakfast if you had to catch a seven o’clock bus?’
‘Oh, not too early,’ she said dismissively. She wasn’t going to mention the fact that ‘breakfast’ had been more of an idea than an actuality. ‘Milk?’
‘Please. No sugar.’
Her hand touched his as she passed him his cup, and his own drew back involuntarily, almost as though she’d given him a tiny electric shock. She stared at him in surprise, her slanting blue eyes wide.
‘You’re frozen!’ he exclaimed. ‘Why don’t you put some more clothes on?’
She shrugged. ‘Oh, I’m always cold in the winter. And we don’t have central heating at home. I warmed up a bit on the bus, but it’s faded now. Don’t the radiators work in this building?’
‘They’re programmed to come on at about nine. Are you sure you’re all right? I don’t want you fainting from hypothermia or anything—especially not today. There’s too much going on.’ She felt uncomfortable under his critical gaze. ‘You’re too thin. You should eat more.’
‘That’s what Jacquie said yesterday, and I assured her I eat like a horse.’ When I get time, she added mentally.
He watched her, fascinated as Jacquie had been by the way she spooned the customary sugar into her cup. ‘Do you usually drink it like that?’
‘Energy,’ she said succinctly. This was getting to be a replay of her trip to the Wistaria Tea Rooms, except that she’d quite enjoyed talking to Jacquie. She wished Julius would go away and get on with whatever it was he’d come in early to do. She couldn’t get rid of the impression that he was just waiting for her to make another mistake.
Once the other two secretaries had turned up—on the dot of nine o’clock—she felt more secure. Her hour with Julius had put her straight in the firing line. At least she could shelter behind them now. One small point in Julius’s favour, though—he had turned on the heating early. Perhaps he had felt the cold too?
It didn’t take long to discover that gossip was the lifeblood of the office. Jacquie and Zoe took every opportunity to exchange the latest items and share them with Amy who, with heaps of typing inherited from her predecessor—the one who had walked out—would have appreciated the time to get on with it; she was no expert typist. But everything, from Dennis’s wife phoning because she had to take the dogs to the vet to what Julius had said to Zoe when she went into his office to take a letter, was discussed in detail.
And it was the subject of Julius that really got them going—when, and where, he’d next take his fiancée out to lunch, what they’d eat, why she hadn’t turned up at all last week, whether they’d had a row… Amy was convinced by the end of the morning that there was not much left to find out about the blonde, rich twenty-two-year-old Fiona Harper-Maxwell, who had only met Julius a matter of weeks before they’d got engaged. She felt she knew Mrs. Harper-Maxwell intimately too, because she was organising the wedding. The way Jacquie described it, it sounded like a military campaign.
‘She came here once with Fiona,’ Zoe confided, loitering past Amy’s desk in the reception area while the board meeting was in progress. ‘She’s pretty terrifying— smiles a lot while her eyes kind of drill through you. Poor Julius—what a motherin-law! And Fiona looked quite sheepish while she was around.’
Lunch was even more of an ‘idea’ than breakfast had been as far as Amy was concerned, because although she got her statutory hour she was forced to spend it trawling the sup
ermarket for the ingredients for dinner that evening. Jess worked flexi-time in a bank in Oxford, and although she was finishing work earlier than Amy she wouldn’t have time to do much shopping if she was to beat the traffic queues and get to Wychford to pick up Amy on the dot of five. They usually did most of the cooking at Jess’s, which was more convenient, and prepared the last-minute stuff on site.
They were definitely cutting things a bit fine for this evening. It was lucky the menu was so simple—it was just the quantities that seemed enormous—or perhaps that was because they were having to stock up on a lot of basics. She eyed the four bulky supermarket bags stacked by her desk in the reception area with some misgiving. There was nowhere else to put them. Apart from the fact that they wouldn’t make the best of impressions on any visitor, she didn’t want to have to field enquiries as to why she found it necessary to buy so much food at once, especially if it was going to have to be a recurring feature of her days at Prior’s. The less any of them knew about her freelance catering business, the better.
It was the middle of the afternoon before she had time to retrieve her sandwiches from her handbag. They were squashed very flat and to save time she decided to eat all three as a sort of triple-decker; the peanut butter and cream cheese were OK together, but the jam wasn’t such a good idea.
Typing with one finger, monster sandwich in hand and her mouth full, she looked up with dismay as a figure appeared on the stairs.
Of course, it had to be. Not Dennis, whom she’d hardly spoken to all day, but Julius.
He stared at her in silence for a full ten seconds, taking in the supermarket carriers, one of which had keeled over to release a chocolate cake—Charlie’s favourite—and a couple of packets of biscuits. Then he said, ‘I give you a lunch-hour precisely for the purpose of putting food into your mouth, Amy. What happened to you between one and two o’clock today?’
At that moment Jacquie emerged from Dennis’s office carrying a document and went to one of the filing cabinets.
Amy chewed and swallowed quickly. ‘I had a lunch-hour,’ she said in a tone of careful apology. ‘I’m sorry, it’s just that—’
