by Janet Tanner
‘Frankly, I can hardly believe my eyes!’ Dinah blazed. ‘If this article is to be believed Reubens have come up with almost exactly the same idea for a range of bags as I had for my new line for next spring.’
‘I know. It’s odd, isn’t it?’
‘It’s worse than odd – it’s catastrophic. The idea should have been exclusive to Vandina. Absolutely right for our image but using totally different combinations of materials – natural fabrics, softwood handles, suede and leather trims. Now here are Reubens coming up with something very similar and releasing details of the range before we have. They’ve cut the ground right out from under our feet.’
‘It is pretty devastating,’ Liz agreed. ‘ But these things do happen.’
Dinah snorted angrily. It was true; in the constant search for something new it was not unheard of for two totally unrelated designers to hit on the same idea. Some claimed there was an almost psychic element at work, as if the designers were ‘ plugging in’ to the same ‘ideas pool’, others that it was simply the law of inevitability, it had to happen sometimes that two or even more individuals or companies would come up with a supposedly innovative idea simply because they were all desperately searching for something new – or, at least, something that had not hit the headlines for a very long time. There was, they claimed, nothing new under the sun, only ways of making it seem new.
Dinah was not sure she subscribed to either theory. Her success had given her a slight edge of arrogance, and as someone who had always been a setter of trends she had in her time seen a great many imitators. None of them had done anything to damage Vandina. The quality of their products set them head and shoulders above the rest of the market, and the fact that they were first with the bright new ideas made them unassailable. What did it matter if High Street chain stores followed where they had led with cheap and cheerful copies? They weren’t in competition for the same customers. But Reubens … that was a very different kettle of fish.
Reubens had erupted on to the scene just a couple of seasons ago and they clearly intended going after a slice of the Vandina market. At the time of their launch Van had still been alive and with his legendary business sense he had scented danger immediately.
‘There’s money behind this one,’ he had warned darkly. ‘I’m not sure yet who it is – they are keeping their heads down for some reason. It will come out eventually, of course – they can’t remain anonymous for ever. There’s always someone who will tittle-tattle. In the meantime we’d better watch out for them or we could find ourselves losing out.’
At the time Dinah had let it all wash over her. She didn’t like getting too involved with the business side. It inhibited her creativity to worry about competitors and market shares and all the hundred and one things involved in running a successful company. She was the ideas side of the partnership, Van could cope with the administration. He would see that Reubens were not allowed to become a threat, just as he juggled budgets and investments, expenditure and forward planning.
Now it seemed Reubens was threatening Vandina just as Van had predicted they would – but he was no longer here to troubleshoot on her behalf.
Damn Reubens for coming up with an idea so similar to hers that it stole all her thunder, damn them for causing her trouble just when she wanted an easy ride. She’d have to have a major rethink now on the spring lines. Since Reubens had already gone public it would only look as if she was copying them if she went ahead now with her plans. But the omission from the range would leave a gap unless she could come up with something to replace it, and she had already placed orders for some of the materials to begin manufacture. The orders would either have to be cancelled, with all the attendant problems of possible penalties, or she would have to come up with an idea for a different way of using them.
Damn, damn, damn! And all this would happen when Ros, her personal assistant, was away. Even without the Reubens fiasco she had a full day ahead of her. She did not need to check her engagement diary to know what was in it – an appointment with one of the union representatives to discuss a bonus scheme, a progress meeting with a director of the firm Vandina subcontracted to make certain items for their limited range of costume jewellery, and lunch with the chief buyer of one of Vandina’s most important customers. The lunch was unavoidable, of course – as a public relations exercise it was vital that she herself should take the buyer out to lunch and keep her champagne glass well filled – but Ros would have dealt with the jewellery company executive and sat in on the meeting with the union rep.
More than ‘sat in’, Dinah conceded. Though to all intents and purposes it was Dinah he was coming to see, it would have been Ros who would have stage-managed the interview, skilfully steering Dinah through the pitfalls of dealing with the union rep, who would at best be abrasive and disconcertingly disrespectful, at worst openly aggressive. Dinah hated confrontation. For her there was no excitement in the cut and thrust of fighting for the best possible deal, no satisfaction in the bluff and double bluff necessary to keep the workforce happy, or at least satisfied with their lot, and make the maximum profit for Vandina at the same time. Though thankfully George Pitman, the brash, hard-talking union man, didn’t seem to have realised it yet, every brush with him left her shaking with tension, her nerves in shreds. In his lifetime Van had shielded her from any unpleasantness and since his death she had relied on Ros more and more to do the same.
Why on earth had she chosen this moment to take an unscheduled holiday? Dinah wondered distractedly. She had never done such a thing before in all the time she’d been with Vandina, which she had joined as a trainee buyer six years previously. From the very beginning she had been impressive, studying for extra qualifications in economics and business studies to add to her degree in fashion design, and it had not been long before Van had spotted her potential and promoted her to the prestigious position of Dinah’s personal assistant. In all that time Dinah could never remember Ros not being there when she was needed and when Van had died so suddenly and shockingly she honestly did not know what she would have done without her. Ros was calm and efficient – Dinah could never once remember seeing her flustered or fazed – but she was also good at dealing with people. There was a confidence about her that inspired respect and she was wonderful at pouring oil on troubled waters. But most of all she was reliable. Unlike so many of the office staff Ros never seemed to be ill, and when she took holiday it was always planned well in advance and carefully scheduled to avoid the busy periods in Vandina’s calendar. Before she left Ros always made certain everything was set to run smoothly in her absence. There were no loose ends but a sheaf of copious notes for whoever was taking over from her to cover every eventuality.
Under her jurisdiction the whole office ran so smoothly that it was only when she was not there that Dinah realised just how much she actually did. And without her this last week had been absolute hell.
Dinah sighed. A small frown furrowed her forehead and she smoothed it out with two fingers. She couldn’t understand Ros taking time off like this. She had been utterly amazed when Liz had told her a week ago that Ros had rung in and said she needed to take some leave – amazed, and annoyed. Quite frankly it hadn’t occurred to her to wonder or worry about what was behind this totally uncharacteristic behaviour. She had been too annoyed at being left in the lurch.
Now, a week later, with chaos piling up around her, she was even more annoyed. How could Ros do this to her? Hadn’t she any sense of loyalty at all? She knew the suppliers had to be chased, she knew the union man was agitating. Surely there was no need for her to have absented herself so suddenly and for so long?
‘There’s no news of Ros, I suppose?’ she said now to Liz.
‘Not a word; I just can’t understand it. It’s not like Ros to go off like this. I’m beginning to be quite worried.’
‘Yes. Well. What’s worrying me at the moment is how on earth I’m going to cope today without her. And now, on top of everything else, this Reubens
business! It really is too bad!’
‘What is too bad?’
Liz jumped as the man’s voice spoke from the doorway behind her, and a sweet smile of pure joy erased Dinah’s frown.
‘Steve! I didn’t know you were coming in this morning!’
‘You can always count on me to surprise you.’ He grinned and the corners of his eyes crinkled engagingly. ‘You sound pretty browned off. Is something wrong?’
‘Everything. Just don’t ask.’
‘Anything I can do?’ Though he was speaking to Dinah he managed a sideways glance at Liz so that it almost appeared the offer was directed at her. Liz turned a little pink as she always did when he looked at her that way. ‘He is such a dish you wouldn’t believe!’ she had told her friends. ‘Fantastically good-looking and a real man too – you know what I mean! He used to be a diver on an oil rig in the North Sea. It’s hard to get more macho than that!’
‘Just come and talk to me for five minutes, Steve,’ Dinah said. ‘That alone will do me the world of good.’
‘You want me to come back later, Miss Marshall?’ Liz asked, hovering.
‘Yes. Organise us some coffee, would you?’
Liz left and Dinah looked at the young man with pleasure, taking pride in his tall, fair good looks and the easy way he had with clothes – dark blazer, striped shirt, light-beige chinos, stylish handmade moccasins. He was, she thought, everything she could have hoped for and more. His presence calmed her edgy mood, his very existence made everything worthwhile.
The warmth inside her grew and spread, a special feeling that had not dimmed one iota since the day he had walked back into her life.
Her son. When she had parted with him as a baby, forced by circumstances beyond her control to give him up for adoption, she had never expected to see him again. Over the years she had thought of him often, imagining him growing up, wondering what he looked like and what he was doing, aching for him with a terrible overwhelming longing that was sometimes so fierce it was a physical pain. Nothing had erased the memory of when they had first placed him in her arms; the smell of him was a faint but unforgettable aroma in her nostrils, the feel of his small firm body nestled against her breast had filled her with love, the image of his soft baby face with its pursed-up mouth and unwinking blue eyes was imprinted on her heart. Not a Christmas had gone by but she had imagined what it would have been like if he had been there, she had pictured his excitement and wept inwardly that she could not share it, and each year on his birthday she had spent some time alone, reliving the day he had been born and weeping for the desperately frightened girl she had been then, faced with an impossible decision.
But she had kept it all to herself. Van, she had known, would be angry if he guessed at the way her thoughts ran.
‘If only I knew he was all right – that’s all I want,’ she had said once and seen Van’s face grow dark with impatience.
‘Of course he’s all right! And that isn’t all you want,’ he had replied. ‘If you had one bit of information you’d want more – and more. There would be no stopping it.’
She had known in her heart, even then, that he was right. What she really wanted was to have Stephen with her, to see him, to hear his voice, to hold him in her arms again. But it was a hopeless dream. She had no idea who had adopted him. Absolute confidentiality was part of the deal. She had no rights – none at all. In all likelihood she would go to her grave wondering about him.
She had accepted it, on a conscious level at least. She had given Stephen up, and as far as she was concerned that had to be the end of the matter. Yet the spark of hope had refused to die and she had continued to cherish the hope that one day, God willing, she would find him again.
And all the longing, all the silent prayers, had been answered. Steve’s letter had arrived shortly after Van had died. Dinah had been at her lowest ebb, stunned at the brutal way in which she had lost the man who had been so much more than husband and business partner for more than half her life. Grief was still raw, anger at the cruelty of fate and even a little anger at Van himself for leaving her so unceremoniously had just begun to manifest itself. Etched clearly in her memory was the way she had felt that morning, the morning that, though she had not known it at the time, was about to change her life.
She had been crying, she remembered, the sort of terrible tearing sobs that racked her body and turned her beautiful face haggard, and between the sobs she had railed at Van. Why hadn’t he gone to see his doctor about those chest pains? Why had he been so ready to dismiss them as the result of an overindulgence of rich food and fine wine? And why, most of all, had he decided to fly his plane that day? There had been no need for him to. He could easily have taken the company Lear jet to the meeting he was to attend and asked the professional pilot he employed to fly it. But Van loved his Cessna. He flew it whenever he could, so that at times the Lear jet and the professional pilot seemed like unnecessarily expensive additions to the Vandina budget.
He shouldn’t have done it! Dinah had wept. Any normal man would have realised his health was cracking up and allowed someone else to take some of the stresses and strains for him. But Van had not been any normal man. He was exceptional, his determination to remain in the driving seat as solid as the image his barrel-chested bulk portrayed. Van had made a success of himself and of her because of that determination; in the end he had died because of it.
At last Dinah’s spasm of grief had passed and she had gone downstairs, still pale beneath the foundation she had applied, her eyes still a little red and puffy from weeping. The mail had arrived and she had taken it with her into the drawing room where she had steeled herself to begin to wade through it.
As always there were many letters of condolence, each one a fresh knife-wound in Dinah’s heart. It was good of people to write, of course, and one day she felt sure the words of praise that they heaped on Van would be of some consolation to her. But at present reading them was painful, a terrible reminder of what she had lost.
One letter bore an Aberdeen postmark. She did not recognise the handwriting, but then plenty of the letters had come from people she had never even heard of, business acquaintances of Van’s, old school friends, even complete strangers who had simply read of the tragedy in the newspapers and felt moved to write to his widow. Mostly they were kind letters – the few spiteful ones she had quickly consigned to the wastepaper basket.
For some reason Dinah had hesitated over the letter with the Aberdeen postmark. Intuition, perhaps? No, that was putting it too strongly. But there had been some kind of knowledge hovering on the very edges of her consciousness before the cloak of grief had descended once more, dulling her senses. Then she had torn the envelope open and extracted the sheet of paper inside. Fairly cheap paper, written on with a ballpoint pen. She glanced at the address. Epsilon Rig, Forties Field. An oil rig? Who had Van known who worked on an oil rig?
She had begun to read the letter and suddenly she was shaking, the use gone out of her hands so that the paper almost fluttered and fell.
The letter was from a young man who said he was her son. He had always known he was adopted, he wrote, and a year earlier he had applied for his original birth certificate and discovered that she was his mother. At the time he had done nothing about it. He had been too afraid she would not want anything to do with him. But now he had read in the newspapers that Van had died and he wondered if there was anything he could do to help. Perhaps he was being presumptuous but he did so much want to meet her. Was there any possibility that she might feel the same way?
Was there a possibility? Never in all her life could Dinah remember having experienced such a rush of joy as she had felt then. It lifted her, catapulting her into a whirlpool of emotion that left her breathless. In that moment she was afraid as well as wildly elated – afraid of meeting the son she had not seen since he was just two weeks old, afraid she would be unable to cope with the situation, afraid of what he would be like, afraid she might not live up to his ex
pectations, or he to hers.
But those fears had all been unfounded, she thought now, looking at Steve smiling at her across her paper-strewn desk. He was everything she had hoped for – and more. And thank God he had not simply visited her and then vanished again as she had been so afraid he might. She couldn’t have borne to lose him twice.
‘So – what’s worrying you, Dinah?’ he asked now, sitting down opposite her in one of the blue leather chairs she disliked so heartily and stretching his long legs. ‘Is it business?’
‘It’s always business,’ Dinah said. ‘But just for now, don’t let’s talk about it.’
He raised an eyebrow in a lazy, quizzical gesture.
‘Suit yourself. But remember, if there is anything I can do you only have to say the word.’
Dinah nodded. ‘I know. And whether you realise it or not, that really is one of the most important things.’
He looked doubtful. She saw it in his startlingly clear light-blue eyes. Where had those eyes come from? She sometimes wondered.
‘It’s the truth,’ she told him and knew that it was.
Ros’s absence, the anxiety about the meetings that were scheduled for the coming day, even the Reubens business all paled into insignificance beside this one very important fact of life.
Steve was here. After almost thirty years of separation they were together again. And set against that yardstick nothing else mattered.
Chapter Four
The Inter-European Airways jet was approaching Bristol Airport, coming in low over the Somerset countryside. Maggie looked out of her window, peering down at the patchwork of fields dotted with houses and farms, the dark clumps of trees, the blue expanse of water that made up the Chew Valley lakes. They were valleys, she remembered, that had been artificially flooded to make reservoirs to provide water supplies for the city and the surrounding areas. Beneath one of them was an entire village, houses, pub, church. The people who had once lived there still felt bitter and sad about what had happened; in times of drought when the water receded they gathered at the edge of the lake and walked down on to the dry caked mudflats trying to make out the tower of the church and pointing out the spot where their house had been to anyone who would stop and take an interest.
