by Penny Jordan
Was she right? No, of course she wasn’t. Nothing was ever quite that simple …
Or was it just that he was refusing to accept that it could be that simple? Was it that somewhere, secretly, there was a hidden part of him that was afraid, that didn’t believe either that he could make a life for himself away from Hessler Chemie, or that Christie would be willing to share that life with him?
Was he in actual fact using Hessler Chemie as a means of protecting himself, while outwardly pretending to put his duty towards the responsibility his father had left him above his own needs?
He went straight home and stood for a long time in front of the window that overlooked the river, deep in thought.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
‘WHAT are you doing here? Or need I ask? I suppose Ma sent for you, did she?’
Saul watched, reading the storm signals flashing from the blue eyes that were so like his own, and also reading behind them a misery and fear that made his throat tighten with anguish and his muscles tense with the effort of restraining himself from reaching out to Josey and taking her in his arms.
In her eyes she was already an adult, her life and any decisions affecting it hers to make and not his, not even her mother’s any more; in his she was still a child, precious, vulnerable and very dearly loved.
All the way down the motorway he had been thinking about this moment; about how she would react; what she would say. What had he hoped for—that she would fling herself into his arms with a glad cry of ‘Daddy’?
Not even her bedroom was familiar to him any more; it wasn’t a child’s room, but a young woman’s; a stranger’s. This same stranger who was already distancing herself from him physically and emotionally and letting him know that he had no role to play in her life—that he had abdicated that position years ago.
‘I don’t know why she bothered wasting her time. Or yours.’ The sneer he knew so well was in evidence now. ‘After all, not even you, the great Mr Wonderful of the Davidson Corporation, can make them take me back. Being caught in possession of drugs carries a penalty of instant expulsion, you know.’
‘No, as a matter of fact I didn’t,’ Saul said evenly. ‘But, since you obviously did, it rather begs the question as to why you allowed yourself to be found with them, doesn’t it?’
Abruptly she focused on him, astonishment widening her eyes, and something else as well, something that came as a blessedly soothing and cool swell of hope after the heat and steam of his ex-wife’s hysterical fury.
It was all his fault, Karen had told him. He had never shown any interest in the children, never taken any responsibility for them, leaving everything to her … everything.
Everything bar paying the bills, he had been tempted to say, but he had restrained himself just in time. The last thing he wanted now was to get involved in a slanging match with Karen, and oddly, as he held on to his temper and tried to convince himself that her hysterical denunciation of both him and their daughter sprang more from maternal shock and concern than any real belief that Josey was actually guilty of any of the crimes she was now attributing to her, he could almost feel Davina at his shoulder; almost hear her quiet, calm voice steadying him, counselling compassion and the offering of an olive branch rather than a resumption of hostilities.
A little to his surprise, it had worked and he had been allowed upstairs to talk to Josey in private.
‘Although I doubt she will actually listen to you,’ Karen had told him ungraciously. ‘Still, I suppose the shock value of your actually turning up might do something to make her realise just what she’s done.’
‘You did know you would be caught, didn’t you, Josey?’ Saul pressed now, following his instincts more than any real knowledge of the situation.
She turned her head away from him, giving a shrug, which might have been an affirmation of his comment, or there again might not.
‘I know this other girl was a friend,’ Saul persisted, trying another tack.
‘Do you?’ She was instantly scornful. ‘How exactly do you know that? You don’t know the first thing about me.’
‘I know you’re intelligent,’ Saul retorted grimly. ‘Far too much so to be caught out openly carrying drugs …’
Suddenly she flushed, the hot colour making her seem heart-rendingly vulnerable to Saul. Again he was overwhelmed by his need to reach out to her and touch her, to draw her into his arms and tell her that somehow he would make everything all right, but he knew that that was the last thing she wanted him to do … the last thing she wanted to hear him say.
‘This friend … of yours—’
‘She isn’t my friend,’ Josey told him shortly. ‘I don’t have any friends.’
Saul frowned. Accordingly to Karen, Josey was an extremely popular girl. Karen was always boasting about the social set in which they moved, the friends Josey had made among them, normally using these friendships and the social events that resulted from them as a means of demanding more money from him. Josey played tennis; Josey skied in the winter; she went abroad to friends’ family villas in the summer.
The whole family had a membership at an exclusive local country club. Both Karen and Josey attended an up-market dance and exercise studio. Saul knew all this because he paid the bills.
Something warned him now to tread carefully … he felt helplessly lost, caught so off guard by her comment that he wasn’t sure how to deal with it. Was it just a wild emotive statement of the kind that teenagers made? ‘I haven’t any clothes …’ ‘Everyone else is allowed …’ ‘Everybody else’s parents let them …’ ‘No one else has to do as much homework,’ et cetera, or was there something deeper and far more important underlying her angry denial of his remark?
Before he could marshal his thoughts and say anything she suddenly burst out, ‘They all hate me at school. They laugh at me and call me a social climber; they say that everyone knows that Ma and Richard don’t have much money and that they’re just hangers-on.
‘They even knew that Ma had to get me a second-hand blazer from the school’s “good as new” sale last year.’
Saul’s frown deepened, anger welling up sharply inside him. He had paid for new items of school uniform for both children less than twelve months ago … new, not second-hand … or at least he had thought he had. Karen’s compulsion to keep moving in the right circles had obviously over-reached Richard’s income and had taken most of her ex-husband’s financial support, too.
‘Ma doesn’t see it. She thinks everyone accepts us … that no one notices that she and Richard never pay for anything … that they always have to angle for invites everywhere. Last winter she practically asked the Conrads outright to take me skiing with them. I could tell they didn’t want me along. Fiona Conrad loathes me. She didn’t speak to me once the whole time we were away … I’m sure it’s her who told everyone about my blazer.
‘I hate that school. I hate being there. They’re all snobs.’
‘Is that why you wanted to be expelled?’
Saul’s quiet question seemed to stun her, as though she had actually forgotten he was even in the room with her. She flushed again, her body tense and defensive.
‘What do you care, anyway?’ she muttered bitterly. ‘You’re only here because Ma sent for you.’
‘That’s not true, Jo.’
He saw the way she looked at him … a quick, wary look that made his whole body ache.
‘Your mother didn’t send for me … I came because I wanted to. Because you’re my daughter.’
‘And you didn’t want me disgracing you … right?’
‘Wrong,’ he told her equally equably.
Slowly, cautiously he felt he was beginning to make his way on to firmer ground, but she was still very wary of him, and he doubted she would have let him this far into her confidence or into her life if she had not been so obviously shocked and distressed.
‘I came because you’re my daughter and I love you,’ he told her softly.
For a moment h
e thought she was going to walk out on him. He held his breath, knowing that if she did there was nothing he could do, but to his relief she stayed, her acid, ‘Yeah, sure you do,’ so full of contempt and anger that it made his eyes burn with the weight of his own guilt for all the years and all the ways he had failed to do enough to show her that what he had said was true.
An hour later he left, to book himself into a local hotel and to ring Alex to warn him that he still could not say when he would be able to return to work.
‘Why the hell not?’ Alex demanded savagely.
‘Because my daughter … my children need me,’ Saul told him.
‘What? Look, let’s get one thing straight, Saul: you work for me, and when I say jump, you damned well jump, otherwise—’
As he listened to him suddenly Saul knew that he had had enough. ‘Not any more, Alex.’
He said the words so quietly, so calmly, that it was several seconds before the other man picked up on their meaning.
When he did he exploded into a volley of angry curses, accusing Saul of trying to manipulate and threaten him, of overvaluing himself and his importance, but Saul wasn’t really listening. When he had said those fatal quiet words, he had actually experienced an almost physical sensation of sliding free of an enormous burden.
He felt, he realised, almost light-headed … euphoric … as dizzy with relief and wonder as a child.
Alex was still cursing him, still threatening him with what he would do to him and the revenge he would take on him, when Saul quietly replaced the receiver.
* * *
Over the next few days he put the skills he had learned as a negotiator and arbitrator to good use, persuading Karen to reserve judgement and to allow Josey a little breathing-space, asking Josey to question whether she actually wanted to hurt her mother by revealing to her the gossip she had picked up at school.
‘I had to be hurt by it,’ Josey told him bitterly.
‘But you have other things in your life, Jo. Other goals,’ he had told her gently. ‘Your mother doesn’t. Her social standing—or what she believes to be her social standing—is very important to her.’
‘Very important! It’s her god,’ Josey had told him bitingly.
He had been to Josey’s school and had seen the headmaster, who had unwillingly confirmed much of what Josey herself had told him.
‘We try to discourage that kind of attitude, but when one child is so very obviously in different circumstances from the majority of her peers … We do have other pupils from more modest financial backgrounds, but you see, they don’t—or rather their parents don’t …’ He had broken off, looking both embarrassed and irritated.
‘Their parents aren’t trying to push themselves into a world where they aren’t welcome, is that it?’ Saul had offered grimly.
‘I could perhaps overlook what happened and take Josephine back.’
‘No,’ Saul told him decisively.
He had a shrewd idea that the man had known quite well that the drugs hadn’t belonged to Josey, and he had been forced to admit that her academic work was excellent; that she was, in fact, Oxbridge material.
Saul had no idea whether or not his daughter wanted to go on to university, nor indeed what she wanted to do with her life, but one thing he did know, and that was that she needed to be with people who accepted her as their equal, and she was not going to find it here in this school.
‘I’m awfully sorry,’ the headmaster began uncomfortably.
‘So am I,’ Saul agreed. ‘For you. It doesn’t matter how much information you manage to cram into their brains, does it? Their hearts, their emotions, their souls will always remain small and mean.’
The other man flushed. ‘We live in a very materialistic society. There isn’t a lot I can do. They copy the attitudes and morals of their parents.’
‘Who all worship the great god money?’ Saul asked. ‘Well, I want more for my children than that. Much, much more. I’m only sorry that Josephine had to go through this to make me realise what was happening.’
‘This is a very good school,’ the headmaster protested, flustered and starting to lose his self-control.
‘No,’ Saul corrected him drily. ‘It’s a very expensive school.’ As he stood up he gave the other man a thin smile.
* * *
Karen protested, of course, as he had known she would, when he insisted that he wanted to talk to Thomas about his schooling and when he told her that he intended to allow Josephine to choose for herself where she would continue her education.
‘You can’t do that. She’ll probably end up at one of those dreadful comprehensives,’ she had wailed, but Saul had refused to listen.
He had also been cynically amused at the speed with which both Karen and Richard had acceded to his request that he be allowed to take both children away on holiday with him for a month.
‘But what about your work?’ had been Karen’s only comment.
Saul didn’t tell her that he no longer had any ‘work’. He didn’t want to have to deal with another fit of hysterics.
Josephine was still holding him at a distance; still wary of him, but he had a gut feeling that he was making some progress, even if all he had managed to do was to arouse her curiosity about him; even if the only reason she had agreed to go on holiday with him was simply that it was another means of escape from a situation which had plainly become intolerable to her.
He was taking them to Provence, to a small out-of-the-way village where he had hired a small house.
He rang Christie to tell her about it and to warn her that, since the cottage had no telephone, she would not be able to contact him there.
‘Did you give my note to Davina James?’ he asked her, and then wondered if she would pick up on the tension he himself could hear so clearly in his voice.
If she did it was not obvious to him.
‘Yes. I gave it to her.’
It was only his pride … that and the knowledge that it would be totally ridiculous for a man of his age to start behaving like a besotted teenager, craving possession of every detail of the minutiae of his beloved’s most mundane actions, that stopped him from demanding to know what she had said, how she had reacted … how she had looked, and Christie herself sounded rather preoccupied, as though her mind was on other things, he recognised as he said goodbye and hung up.
* * *
Davina leaned back in her chair, stretching her spine and trying to ease the tension out of her neck. The whole of her desk was covered in papers, most of them containing columns of figures.
She closed her eyes and then opened them again, wincing at the pain in her neck as she studied the figures she had just finished working on.
If she used all the funds in Gregory’s accounts, if she got a good price for the house, if Leo had really meant what he had said about making her a loan, if the bank could be persuaded to continue with their overdraft facilities, if by some miracle they could just hang on until this legislation Saul had described to her became a reality, maybe … just maybe there was a chance that the company could keep going.
But for how long, and as what? Davina shook her head. She dared not even think about beginning to look that far ahead; the thought of Carey’s continuing in its present form, the knowledge of what the company was founded on revolted her; but for the sake of those who depended on the company for their living she could not afford the self-indulgence of that revulsion.
He shouldn’t have told her, Leo had said remorsefully, but she had shaken her head and had told him honestly, ‘No, I’m glad you told me.’ And she was glad.
She pushed her chair back from her desk and stood up.
As she did so, the phone started to ring. She picked it up automatically.
‘I have a call for you,’ a girl announced, ‘from Sir Alex Davidson.’
‘Ms James … Davina?’
Davina tensed, instinctively disliking and mistrusting something in his voice.
‘I thought
it might be opportune for you and I to have a little chat. I’ve already taken the liberty of speaking with your bankers. Sensible chaps on the whole, bankers, don’t you find?’
Davina’s tension increased as she listened. Beneath the outward good humour she could easily sense his contempt and hard-edged determination.
‘Obviously you’ll have taken their advice on our offer for your shareholding in Carey’s.’
‘I have listened to it,’ Davina agreed and then bit her lip, angry with herself for falling into the trap of betraying the fact that the bank had advised her to accept his offer. Still, she comforted herself, he probably already knew that from Saul Jardine, if no one else. ‘However, as I told Mr Jardine, there are certain conditions I would want to see fulfilled before I could agree to any sale.’
Sir Alex laughed. ‘My dear girl, this is real life, not a fairy-story. Naturally, none of us wants to put people out of work, but I’m afraid …’
As she stared at the figures in front of her and listened to the oily self-satisfaction, the gloating almost, she could hear oozing from his voice Davina made up her mind.
‘Sir Alex, I think I could save us both a lot of wasted time if I told you now that I am not prepared to sell out to you,’ she interrupted him.
Her voice might sound calm, but she was most definitely not, she recognised as her hand suddenly started to tremble with the enormity of what she had done.
‘As I explained to Mr Jardine—’
‘Saul Jardine is no longer employed by Davidson’s,’ Sir Alex told her grimly. ‘And by the time I’ve finished with him he’ll be lucky if he manages to find a job sweeping roads. You’re dealing with me now, Ms James, and, let me tell you, I know exactly what state your company is in. You can’t trade for another week without help; you’re virtually bankrupt and we both know it.’ Davina could hear the menace in his voice; her hand felt slippery with sweat where she was holding the receiver.
Saul had warned in his letter,
Make no mistake, Alex means to have Carey’s, and he won’t care what methods he has to use to acquire it. It’s almost a pity that Hessler’s aren’t in the market for the company.
