“You’re damned stubborn,” he murmured.

“If you say so.”

“Yes, I do. Not that you don’t look quite captivating with that pout.”

Had she been pouting? Jessica tried to rearrange her features into some semblance of calm. I’m still furious with you, she thought. I still resent it that you feel you can lecture me on my abilities as a mother—even if what you say is true….

But when she looked down, all she could see was the sprinkling of dark hair on his arms. When she breathed, she breathed in the aroma of his maleness. It was powerful, disorienting.

And she knew, before he kissed her, exactly what he was going to do.

CATHY WILLIAMS is Trinidadian and was brought up on the twin islands of Trinidad and Tobago. She was awarded a scholarship to study in Britain, and went to Exeter University in 1975 to continue her studies into the great loves of her life: languages and literature. It was there that Cathy met her husband, Richard. Since they married, Cathy has lived in England, originally in the Thames Valley but now in the Midlands. Cathy and Richard have three small daughters.

The Unmarried Husband
Cathy Williams

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ONE

THERE was the sound of the front door being opened and shut, very quietly, and Jessica woke with a start. For a few seconds she experienced a feeling of complete disorientation, then everything resettled into its familiar outlines.

She waited, motionless, in her chair, which had been soft enough for her to fall asleep on but too soft to guarantee comfortable slumber, so that now the back of her neck hurt and her legs needed stretching.

She watched as Lucy tiptoed past the doorway, and then she said sharply, ‘What time do you call this?’

Captured on film, it would have been a comic scenario. The darkness, the stealthy figure creeping towards the stairs, the piercing ring of a voice shocking the figure into total immobility.

Unfortunately, Jessica Hirst didn’t find anything at all funny about the situation. She hated having to lie in wait like this, but what else could she do?

‘Oh, Mum!’ Lucy attempted a placating laugh, which was too nervous to be credible. ‘What are you doing up at this hour?’

‘It’s after two in the morning, Lucy!’

‘Is it?’

‘It most certainly is.’

‘But tomorrow’s Saturday! I don’t have to get up early for school!’

Lucy switched on the light in the hall, and the dark shape was instantly transformed into a sixteen-year-old teenager. An extremely pretty sixteen-year-old teenager, with waist-length dark hair and hazel eyes. The gauche body of two years ago had mellowed into a figure, so that the woman could easily be discerned behind the fresh-faced child.

Where had the years gone? Jessica straightened in her chair, quite prepared to have this one out here and now, even though she felt shrewish and sleepy, and depressingly like the stereotyped nagging mum.

‘Come in here. I want to have a word with you.’

‘What, now?’ But Lucy reluctantly dragged her feet into the sitting room, switching on the overhead light in the process, and slumped defensively into the chair opposite her mother. ‘I’m really tired, Mum.’

‘Yet not so tired that you couldn’t find your way home earlier?’ Don’t raise your voice, she told herself, try to sound reasonable. Treat her the way you’d treat a possibly unexploded bomb. It seemed odd, though, because she could still remember a squawking, red-faced baby in nappies. And now here she was, sixteen years later, having it out with a rebellious teenager who at times might well have been a stranger. She couldn’t quite put her finger on when this transformation had taken place, but certainly in the last few months Lucy had altered almost beyond recognition.

Lucy sighed and threw her a mutinous look. ‘I’m not a child, Mum.’

‘You are a child!’ Jessica said sharply. ‘You’re sixteen years old…’

‘Exactly! And capable of taking care of myself!’

‘Do not interrupt me when I’m talking to you!’ Which brought another mutinous glare from under well defined dark brows. ‘You told me that you would be back by eleven.’

‘Eleven! None, but none of my friends have to be home by eleven! Anyway, I had every intention of getting back here by then. It’s just that…’

‘Just that what?’

‘You’re shouting.’

‘I have every reason to shout!’ She wanted to march over to the chair and forcibly shake some common sense into her daughter’s head. ‘Lucy,’ she said wearily, ‘you’re too young to be out and about at these sorts of hours in London.’

‘I wasn’t “out and about” in London, Mum. You make it sound as though I’ve been walking the streets! We went to watch a video at Kath’s house, and then afterwards…’

‘And then afterwards…?’ Jessica could feel her stomach going into small, uncomfortable knots. She knew that in a way she was lucky that Lucy would at least still sit and talk to her, where some others might just have stormed off up to bed and locked the door, but that didn’t stop her mind playing its frantic games.

She had read enough in the newspapers to be all too aware of the dangers out there. Drugs, drink, Lord only knew what else. Was Lucy sensible enough to turn her back on all of that? She thought so, she really did. But then, at two-thirty in the morning, it was difficult to cling onto reason.

‘Well, we went over to Mark Newman’s house.’ Lucy glanced sheepishly at her mother. ‘I wouldn’t have gone,’ she mumbled, ‘but Kath wanted to go, and Mark promised that he’d give me a lift back here. I didn’t want to get the underground back.’

As if that made it all right.

‘I gave you money for a taxi.’

‘I spent it on renting the videos.’

‘You spent it on renting the videos.’ Jessica sighed, feeling as though she was battling against a brick wall. ‘Wasn’t that a little short-sighted, Lucy?’

Lucy fidgeted and glared, and then muttered something about her pocket money being inadequate.

‘Inadequate for what?’ Jessica asked tersely, which met with no response this time at all. ‘I can’t afford to throw money at you, Lucy. I thought you understood that. There’s the mortgage to pay off, bills, clothes, food…’

‘I know.’

Lucy knew, but Jessica could tell from that tone of voice that knowing and accepting were two different things, and she could feel tears sting the backs of her eyes. Did Lucy imagine that she was economical because she wanted to be?

‘You could have telephoned me,’ she said eventually. ‘I would have come to collect you.’

No response. Lately this had been Lucy’s way of dealing with all unpleasant discussions between them. She simply switched off.

‘So Ruth let Katherine go?’ Jessica asked eventually.

‘She wasn’t there,’ Lucy admitted uncomfortably. ‘She and Mike have gone to visit some relative or other who’s recovering from a stroke.’

‘So who was there? Who gave you permission to go to this boy’s house? At that hour of the night!’

‘Her brother said it’d be all right. I don’t know why you’re in such a state about this, Mum!’

‘Mark Newman… You’ve mentioned that boy’s name in the past. Who is he?’ She decided, reluctantly, to let the question of permission from an adult drop. She didn’t see that it would get either of them anywhere.

Instead she frowned, concentrating on the familiar sound of that name, realising with a jolt that it had been on Lucy’s lips ever since her daughter had started being more interested in parties than in studying. Who the heck was Mark Newman? No one from her class, certainly. She knew the names of all the children in Lucy’s class, and that wasn’t one of them.

She swallowed back visions of beards, motorcycles and black leather jackets with names of weird rock groups embroidered on the back.

‘Well? Who is he, this Mark Newman character?’ Jessica repeated sharply. ‘Precisely?’

‘No one important,’ Lucy said flippantly, eyes diverted, so that Jessica instantly smelled a rat.

‘And where does this child live?’

‘He’s not a child! He’s seventeen, actually.’

Oh, God, Jessica thought. An out of work labourer with nothing better to do than prey on young, vulnerable girls like Lucy. Probably a drug pusher. Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God. She could feel her hands, tightly clenched, begin to tremble.

‘And what do his parents have to say about this? Turning up at their house with a horde of young girls in tow?’ Why am I mentioning parents? she thought. He probably lives in a squat somewhere and hasn’t seen his parents in years.

‘There’s only his dad, and he’s never at home. And there weren’t hordes of young girls in tow. Just Kath and me.’

‘And where, precisely, is home?’

‘Holland Park.’

Which silenced some of the suspicions, but only momentarily. Holland Park might not be a squat in the bowels of the East End, but that said nothing.

‘Lucy,’ she said quietly, ‘I know you’re growing up, getting older, but life in the big, bad world can be dangerous.’

‘Yes. You’ve told me that before, Mum.’ Lucy looked down, so that her long hair swung around her face like two dark curtains, hiding her expression.

Whoever this Mark Newman was, couldn’t he see that she was just a child? Younger than he was, for heaven’s sake, and with a fraction of the experience, for all the obligatory black clothes and strange black boots, which Jessica had tried to talk her out of buying!

Her mind accelerated towards thoughts of sex, and skidded to a halt. She just couldn’t think of Lucy in terms of having sex with someone.

‘Boys, parties…all that can wait, Luce. Right now, you’ve got your studies. Exams are just around the corner!’

‘I know that! As if you ever let me forget!’

‘And I don’t suppose it’s occurred to you that a little study might go a long way towards your passing them?’ She could hear her voice raised in alarm at the possibility of her daughter rejecting academic education in favour of education of a different sort. Under the influence of the likes of Mark Newman.

‘Can we finish this in the morning? I’m really tired.’

‘Do you imagine that you will ever be able to do anything with your life without qualifications?’

‘You keep going on about this.’

‘Because it’s important! Because it’s the difference between going somewhere and remaining rooted to…to this…!’ She spread her hands expansively, to encompass the small sitting room.

Do you want to end up like me? she wanted to cry out. I made my mistakes, and I’ve spent a lifetime paying for them.

She didn’t want her daughter to go the same way.

But Lucy had switched off. Jessica could see it in the blank expression on her face. The conversation would have to be continued the following day, a semipermanent onslaught which she hoped would eventually have the effect of water dripping on a stone.

‘Go to bed, love,’ she said in a tired voice, and Lucy sprang up as though she had been waiting for just such a cue. ‘Lucy!’

The slender figure paused in the doorway, looking back over one shoulder.

‘I love you, darling. That’s the only reason I say these things. Because I care.’ She felt choked getting the words out, and once out they barely seemed to skim the depth of emotion she felt towards her daughter.

‘I know, Mum.’ There was a glimmer of a smile, a bit of the old Luce coming out. ‘Love you, too.’

It was after four by the time Jessica was finally in bed, but her thoughts would not let her get to sleep.

Every time she played over these arguments with her daughter in her head she thought back to those days of innocence, when watching Lucy growing up had been like watching a flower unfolding, each stage as fascinating and as beautiful as the one before. First smile, first step, first word, first day at school. Everything so new and uncomplicated.

Just the two of them, locked in a wonderful world. It was easy to forget all the bad times before.

She closed her eyes and realised that it had been a very long time since she had dwelled on the past. It was strange how the years blunted the edges of those disturbing times, until memories of them turned into fleeting snapshots, still sharp but without the power to hurt.

She could have been something. Something more than just a secretary working in a law firm. It didn’t matter that they gave her a lot of responsibility, that they entrusted her with a great deal of important work. It didn’t even matter that she had picked up enough on the subject to more than hold her own with most of the junior lawyers in the firm.

No. But for circumstances, she could have been one of them. A barrister. Well-read, treading a career path, moving upwards and onwards. Qualified.

Lucy might not appreciate the importance of completing her education, but Jessica was damned if she would let opportunity slip through her daughter’s fingers the way that it had slipped through hers.

Mark Newman. The name that had cropped up on several occasions. She racked her brains to try and locate when that name had first been mentioned. Had Lucy mentioned anyone else’s?

Jessica couldn’t remember, but she didn’t think so. No, Lucy had been happily drifting through with her schoolfriends, and her only show of rebellion had been her rapid change of dress code, from jeans and jumpers to long black skirts and flamboyant costume jewellery.

She could remember laughing with Kath’s mum at the abrupt transformation, astonished at how quickly it had marked the change from girl to teenager, quietly pleased that really there was nothing for her to worry about.

How on earth could she have been so complacent? Allowed herself to think that difficult teenagers were products of other people? That her own daughter was as safe as houses?

Her last thought as she drifted into sleep was that she would have to do something about the situation. She wasn’t going to sit back and let life dictate to her. She would damn well do the dictating herself.

It was only on the Sunday evening, after she had made sure that Lucy sat down with her books, after she had checked her work, knowing that her efforts at supervision were tolerated, but only just, after she had delivered several more mini-lectures on the subject of education—after, in fact, Lucy had retired to bed in a fairly good mood despite everything—that the idea occurred to her.

No point fighting this battle single-handedly.

She could sermonise until she went blue in the face, but the only way she could get Lucy back onto the straight and narrow would be to collect her from school and then physically make sure that she stayed rooted inside the house.

It was an option that she shied away from. Once down that particular road, she might find the seeds she had sown far more dangerous than the ones she was hoping to uproot.

No, there was a better way. She knew relatively little about Mark Newman, but she knew enough to realise that he was an influence over Lucy.

And Mark Newman had a father.

She doubted that she could appeal to the boy’s better instincts. A seventeen-year-old who saw nothing wrong in keeping a child of sixteen out until two in the morning probably had no better instincts.

She would go straight to the father.

Naturally, Lucy couldn’t be told. Jessica felt somewhat sneaky about this, but in the broader scheme of things, she told herself, it was merely a case of the end justifying the means.

Nevertheless, at nine-thirty, when she picked up the telephone to make the call, the door to the sitting room was shut and she knew that she had the studied casualness of someone doing something underhand.

It hadn’t helped that the man was ex-directory and she had had to rifle through Lucy’s address book to find the telephone number.

She listened to the steady ringing and managed, successfully, to persuade herself that what she was doing she was doing for her daughter’s sake. Most mothers would have done the same.

The voice that eventually answered snapped her to attention, and she straightened in her chair.

‘May I speak to Mr Newman, please?’

‘I’m afraid he’s not here. Who’s calling?’

‘Can you tell me when he’ll be back?’

‘May I ask who’s calling?’

‘An old friend,’ Jessica said, thinking on her feet. No point launching into an elaborate explanation of her call. She had no idea whose voice was at the other end of the phone, but it sounded distinctly uninviting. ‘I haven’t seen Mr Newman for years, and I just happened to be in the country so I thought I’d give him a ring.’

‘May I take your name?’

‘I’d prefer to surprise him, actually. He and I…well, we once knew each other very well.’

It suddenly occurred to her that there might be a Mrs Newman on the scene, but then she remembered what Lucy had said—‘there’s only his dad’—and she must be right, because the voice down the line lost some of its rigidity.

‘I see. Mr Newman should be back early tomorrow morning. He’s flying in from the States and going straight to work.’

Jessica chuckled in a comfortable, knowing way. ‘Of course. Well, he hasn’t changed!’ It was a good gamble, and based entirely on the assumption that men who travelled long haul only to head straight to the office belonged to a certain ilk.

‘Perhaps you could tell me where he works? It’s been such a while. I’m older now, and the memory’s not what it used to be. Is he still…where was it…? No, just on the tip of my tongue…” She laughed in what she hoped was a genuine and embarrassed manner, feeling horribly phoney.

‘City.’ The voice sounded quite chummy now. He rattled off the full address which Jessica dutifully copied down and secreted in her handbag.

And tomorrow, Mr Newman, you’re in for a surprise visit.

At ten past ten on Sunday evening, sleep came considerably easier.

She made her way to the City offices as early as she could the following morning, after a quick call to Stanford, James and Shepherd, telling them that she needed to have the day off because something unexpected had turned up, and then the usual battle with the underground, packed to the seams because it was rush hour and coincidentally heading into the height of the tourist season.

She had dressed for the weather. A sleeveless pale blue dress, flat sandals. Yet she could still feel the stifling heat seeping into her pores. Temperatures, the weather men had promised, were going to hit the eighties again. Another gorgeous cloud-free day.

She wished that she could close her eyes and forget all these problems. Go back to a time when she’d been able just to whip Lucy along to the park for a picnic, when the nearest thing to defiance had been a refusal to eat a ham sandwich.

She allowed herself to travel down memory lane, and only snapped back to the present, with all its worrying problems, when her destination confronted her—a large office block, all glass and chrome, like a giant greenhouse in the middle of London.

Inside it bore some resemblance to a very expensive hotel foyer. All plants and comfortable sitting areas and a circular reception desk in the middle.

Jessica bypassed that and walked straight to the lifts. She knew what floor the Newman man was located on. She had managed to prise that snippet of information from the unwelcome recipient of her phone call the evening before, still working on the lines of the wonderful surprise she would give him by turning up, and shamelessly using a mixture of charm and flirtatiousness to wheedle the information from him.

The man, she had thought since, would never have made a security guard. Did he dispense floor numbers and work addresses to every caller who happened to telephone out of the blue and claim acquaintanceship with his employer?

But she had been grateful for the information, and she was grateful now as the lift whizzed her up to the eighth floor.

Receptionists, she knew from first-hand experience, could be as suspicious as policemen at the scene of a crime, and as ruthless in dispatching the uninvited as bouncers outside nightclubs. Paragons or dragons, depending on which side of the desk you were standing.

Stepping out on the eighth floor was like stepping into another world.

There was, for starters, almost no noise. Unlike the offices where she worked, which seemed to operate in a permanent state of seemingly chaotic activity—people hurrying from here to there, telephones ringing, a sense of things that should have been done sooner than yesterday.

The carpet was dull green and luxuriously thick. There was a small, open-plan area just ahead of her, with a few desks, a few disconcertingly green plants, and secretaries all working with their heads down. No idle chatter here, thought Jessica, trying to think what this said about their bosses. Were they ogres? Did they wield such a thick whip that their secretaries were too scared to talk?

She slipped past them, down the corridor, passing offices on her left and pausing fractionally to read the name plates on the doors.

Anthony Newman’s office was the very last one along the corridor.

Strangely, she felt not in the least nervous. She had too many vivid pictures in her head of her daughter being led astray by the neglected son of a workaholic for nerves to intrude. If people couldn’t rustle up time for their children, then as far as she was concerned they shouldn’t have them.

She knocked on the door, not in the least anticipating that the workaholic Newman person might be involved in a meeting somewhere else, and her knock was answered immediately.

Jessica pushed open the door, hardly knowing what to expect, still fuelled by a sense of fully justified parental concern, and was immediately confronted by a large expanse of carpet, an imposing oak desk, and behind that a man whose initial appearance momentarily made her stop in her tracks.

The man was on the phone. His deep voice was barking orders down the line. Not loudly, but with a certain emphatic quietness that made some of her sense of purpose flounder.

She looked at him as he gestured to her to take a seat, and was unwillingly fascinated by the curious, disorientating feeling of power and authority he seemed to give off.

Had she been expecting this? She realised that at the back of her mind she had anticipated someone altogether less forbidding.

It was only when she was seated that she became aware that he was watching her with an equal amount of curiosity. He continued talking, but his cool grey eyes were focused on her, and she abruptly looked away and began inspecting what she could see of his office from where she was sitting.

Not much. Not much, at any rate, that didn’t include him in the general picture.

‘Who,’ he said, replacing the telephone and catching her while her attention was focused on a painting on the wall—an abstract affair whose title she was trying to guess—‘the hell are you? What do you want and how were you allowed into my office?’

His voice was icy cold, as was everything about him.

Jessica looked at him and felt a shiver of apprehension which she immediately slapped down.

His was a face, she thought, designed to stop people in their tracks. Everything about it was arresting. It wasn’t simply a matter of strikingly well-formed features. More what they revealed. An impression of vast self-assurance and intelligence. He was the sort of man, she thought, who was accustomed to wielding power, to having orders obeyed, to snapping his fingers and having people jump to attention. He was also younger than she had anticipated. Late thirties at the most.

What a shame he obviously couldn’t keep a handle on his own son.

Jessica smiled politely, keeping her thoughts to herself.

‘I take it you’re Anthony Newman?’

‘You haven’t answered my questions.’

‘I’m sorry to barge in on you like this, but I thought that the sooner we had a little chat, the better.’

‘If you don’t answer me right now,’ he said softly, leaning forward, ‘then I’m afraid I’m going to have to call a security guard and have you removed from the premises. How did you get in here?’

‘I took the lift up and walked down the corridor.’

‘I don’t have time for games.’

Neither, thought Jessica icily, do you have time for your son. Which is why I’m here in the first place.

‘I tried phoning you last night, but I was told that you were away on business and wouldn’t be back until this morning.’

‘Did Harry tell you where I worked?’

‘The man who answered the telephone did, yes.’

He didn’t say anything, but there was a look in his eyes that didn’t augur well for Harry’s fate.

What would he do? Jessica wondered anxiously. Sack the hapless Harry on the spot? Roast him over an open spit? Anything was possible. The Newman man looked like someone who ate raw meat for breakfast.

‘You’re not going to…do anything…are you?’ she asked, worriedly. ‘I mean…it wasn’t his fault… I implied that you and I were acquaintances…well, quite good friends, actually. I told him that you would be pleasantly surprised to see me…after all this time…delighted, in fact…’ Her voice trailed off, along with a fair amount of her momentum.

‘Now, why would you imply anything of the sort?’ He looked at her coldly and assessingly, and whereas anyone else might well have been trying to cast their mind back, wondering perhaps whether they knew who she was, she could tell that that wasn’t on his mind at all. This man knew quite well that he had never seen her in his life before.

Impressions of him, she realised, were mounting by the second, and none of them were going any distance towards putting her at her ease.

‘It seemed the quickest route to getting to see you,’ she said flatly, and his eyes narrowed.

‘Well, well, well. You don’t beat about the bush, do you?’

‘I have no reason to.’ She didn’t care for the look in his eyes, but was damned if she was going to be intimidated. She wasn’t easily frightened. Her past had strengthened her, and if he wanted to play mind games with her then he was in for a surprise.

‘If you’re after money, then I’m afraid you’ve taken the wrong route.’ He glanced down at some documents lying on his desk. Having made his deductions as to her reason for being in his office, his curiosity was giving way to indifference. In a minute, she suspected, he would look at his watch, yawn, then stand up and politely usher her to the door.

‘My company already contributes a sizeable amount towards charities.’ He linked his fingers together, dragged his eyes away from the document, and looked her over. ‘And a little word of advice here—if you want someone to give you a donation, the very last thing you should do is connive your way into their offices and try to catch them off guard. People generally don’t care for the element of deviousness involved.’

Jessica found that she was leaning forward in her chair.

‘I am not here in connection with a request for money, Mr Newman.’

His eyebrows flew up at that. ‘Then why are you here?’ Mild curiosity there, she saw. He probably thought that she would get back to the subject of money in a while, after a few byroads to try and divert his attention. A naturally suspicious mind.

‘I’m here about your son.’

That worked. It wiped all expression off his face. It was as though shutters had suddenly been pulled down over his eyes.

‘And you are…?’

‘Jessica Hirst.’

He frowned. ‘Well, Mrs Hirst…’

‘Miss.’

‘Well, Miss Hirst, whatever you want to discuss can be discussed on the school premises. If you’d care to see one of my secretaries, she’ll fix you an appointment. Frankly, I do think that it’s a bit unorthodox to barge your way into my offices.’ His frown deepened. ‘Why did you involve yourself in a ruse to get this address? Surely it’s on the school file?’

‘Most probably,’ Jessica said calmly. ‘But, since I’m not a teacher at your son’s school, that wouldn’t have done me much good, would it?’

‘Then who the heck are you?’

Your son is a corrupting influence on my daughter.

Your son is leading my daughter astray.

I’m here to ask you to keep your wretched son away from my daughter.

‘My daughter is Lucy Hirst. Perhaps your son Mark has mentioned her to you?’

‘What the hell has he gone and done?’ His voice was as hard as steel. ‘No, Miss Hirst,’ he said heavily, ‘Mark hasn’t said anything to me about your daughter. At least, not that I can recall.’ He raked his fingers through his hair and looked at her without flinching.

‘Nothing at all?’ This time it was her turn to frown, and to wonder whether she hadn’t read the signs all the wrong way. Perhaps his name hadn’t been dropped into conversations as regularly as she had thought. Maybe she had been mistaken, and the boy was only some kind of acquaintance. Perhaps Lucy’s change of attitude had nothing to do with any malign influence at all, and was simply a matter of hormones and puberty kicking in later than she had expected. She had no experience of these things. She could hardly recall her own growing pains, although there had been no room in her disintegrating family life for growing pains to have much space.

‘As I said—not that I recall,’ he said with a hint of impatience.

‘Lucy’s mentioned him off and on for months…’

‘Well, if you tell me that my son knows your daughter, Miss Hirst, then I’ll take your word for it,’ he said, by way of response to that remark, and Jessica, who had been lost in her own thoughts, trying to work out whether she had made an utter fool of herself in storming into this man’s office full of accusations and demands for a solution, looked fully at him now.

‘Are you telling me that you wouldn’t know whether your son was seeing my daughter because you don’t communicate with him?’

She sounded like a lawyer, she realised. Working alongside them must have rubbed off on her in more ways than one.

‘Listen to me, Miss Hirst, if you think—’

The telephone buzzed, and he picked up the receiver and informed his secretary that no further calls were to be put through.

‘Look,’ he said, standing up, ‘this isn’t the right place to have this kind of…conversation. Ellie’s not going to be able to keep all my callers at bay.’

He was very tall, and without the desk acting as a shield his presence was even more overwhelming. She discovered that she was watching him, taking in the lean muscularity of his build, the casual air of self-assurance.

‘I’ll get my chauffeur to take us to the Savoy. We can discuss this there over a cup of coffee and rather more privacy. But I warn you now that my time is limited.’

Jessica nodded. She had planned on taking full control of the proceedings, as she had been taking full control of everything from as far back as she could remember.

Now she felt as though the rug had been pulled from under her feet, but with such dexterity that she was left feeling not unbalanced by the manoeuvre—more disconcerted by the speed.

‘Coming?’ he asked from the door, and she nodded again and stood up.

CHAPTER TWO

WHAT did he mean that his time was limited? Did that imply just right now, or could she read that as a general statement? She should have picked him up on that! Why on earth hadn’t she? Didn’t he see that this was just the problem? Limited time equalled maladjusted son, who was leading her precious daughter astray!

Jessica felt as though she was losing any advantage she might have had over the proceedings.

Ever since she had stepped into the man’s oversized office she had found herself confronted with someone who, even momentarily disconcerted, as he had been, was so accustomed to taking charge of things that he had automatically taken control of the situation. Leaving her utterly lost for words.

And now here she was, with a low table separating them and extravagantly laid out with pots of percolated coffee, cups and saucers and a plateful of extraordinarily mouth-watering little bites.

‘So,’ he said, crossing his legs and looking at her, ‘why have you seen fit to storm into my office and confront me? You might as well tell me right now what my son has been up to. If it’s what I think it is, then I’m sure we can settle on some sort of amicable arrangement.’

The wintry grey eyes revealed nothing. There was absolutely nothing about him that encouraged her to relax in any way at all, and she had to resist the impulse not to give in to an embarrassing display of nervous mannerisms. Her self-confidence had ebbed enough as it was, and she was determined that he did not become aware of that.

‘Why do you think I came to see you, Mr Newman?’ she asked, throwing the question back at him.

‘I have neither the time nor the inclination for games, Miss Hirst. I assumed that you were going to tell me precisely that. Wasn’t that your reason for barging unannounced into my office?’ She stared at him without flinching, and eventually he asked, impatiently, ‘Has my son got your daughter into any sort of trouble? Is that it?’

Jessica didn’t answer. She decided that the best course of action was to get him to plough his way through this one instead of encouraging her to do all the talking. If a solution was to be engineered, it would have to be a two-way road; he would have to be prepared to travel his fair share of the distance.

‘Is she pregnant?’ he asked bluntly, and Jessica could feel hot colour rush into her face. The question, with all its implications, was almost an insult.

No, Lucy was not pregnant! She knew that. Why would this man jump to that conclusion? The answer came to her almost as soon as she had asked herself the question—because it was the most obvious cause of concern to a mother. Because boys will be boys. He certainly didn’t seem to be shocked by the assumption.

‘And what exactly would your solution be if that were the case, Mr Newman?’

‘I’m a wealthy man, Miss Hirst. I would be prepared to accept any financial difficulties that might arise.’

‘In other words, she would be paid off.’

‘Naturally paternity would have to be proved.’

Was this how wealthy people operated? she wondered. Throw enough money at a problem and, hey presto, no more problem? His approach was so cold, so emotionless, that she could feel every muscle in her body tightening in anger.

‘That is, if she wanted to keep the baby at all. There are other options, as you well know.’

‘Abortion?’

‘You make it sound like a crime. But Mark is only seventeen years old, and your daughter… How old is she?’

‘Sixteen.’

‘Sixteen. Barely out of childhood herself. A baby could well ruin her life.’ For the first time he threw her a long, speculative look that took in everything, from the neat little blue dress, well tailored but beginning to show its age, to the blonde bob, to the flat sandals—her only pair of summer shoes, bought in a sale over two years ago. Her wardrobe wasn’t bulging at the seams, but everything in it was of good quality, made to last.

The only problem with that was that eventually those made to last items began looking a little stale. Right now she felt downright old-fashioned, and the reason, she knew, lay in those assessing grey eyes.

‘You barely look old enough to have a daughter of sixteen.’

‘What are you trying to say, Mr Newman?’

‘How old were you when you had her?’

‘That’s none of your business!’

‘You expect me to sit back in silence and allow you to lecture me on the behaviour of my son without asking you any questions?’ He poured himself a cup of coffee, sat back, and regarded her unsmilingly over the rim of the cup.

Jessica was deeply regretting her impulse to seek this man’s help. He had no intention of co-operating with her and he never would have. He was typical of that breed of person who throws money at their children and assumes that that does the trick. She had seen examples of them often enough where she worked. Parents with too much money and too little time, who sat upright on chairs in the law offices, bewildered by a child who had been brought in for driving a stolen car, or causing damage to property. How could he do this to us? was their invariable lament. After all we did for him!

‘Let’s just get one thing straight, Mr Newman.’ She refused to call him Anthony. ‘My daughter is not pregnant.’

‘Then why the hell didn’t—?’

‘I make that clear from the start?’ She looked at the unyielding face. ‘Because I was curious to hear precisely how you would have handled such a problem.’

‘And I take it from that stony expression on your face that my reply was not what you would have wanted to hear?’

‘Very good, Mr Newman.’

‘The name is Anthony! Will you stop calling me Mr Newman? I’m not conducting an interview for a job!’

Jessica reddened and looked away.

‘And what would have been your solution to that particular little problem, Miss Hirst? How would you have suggested that I deal with it?’

‘It’s irrelevant, since Lucy isn’t pregnant.’

‘Why don’t you answer my question?’ He leant forward, resting his elbows on his knees, and subjected her to intense, cool scrutiny. ‘I’m interested in your answer.’

‘I have no idea.’

‘Maybe you would have suggested that I encourage my son to adopt the mantle of fatherhood at the age of seventeen? Marriage as soon as possible?’

‘It’s always preferable for a child to have both parents.’

‘And does yours? I take it that she doesn’t, since you’re not a “Mrs”.’

‘No, there’s just me.’

‘What happened?’ he asked, after a while, and Jessica looked away, feeling cornered but not quite knowing how to extricate herself from the situation.

‘There was never a potential husband, if you must know.’

He didn’t say anything, and she could well imagine what sort of sordid possibilities were going through his head.

‘I’m afraid it just didn’t work out quite the way that I’d imagined it.’

‘I see.’

‘Do you, Mr Newman?’

‘Shall I tell you what I see, Miss Hirst?’ He paused, though not long enough for her to reply, then he leaned forward slightly, and his voice when he spoke was grim. ‘I see an anxious young mother who’s desperate that her daughter doesn’t repeat the same mistakes that she made. That’s fair enough, but I really don’t think that you’ve looked at the whole picture, have you? You’ve somehow got it into your head that my son is to blame for your daughter’s behaviour, and I’d be interested in finding out how you arrived at that conclusion.’

The tables had been turned. She had hoped to surprise this man into some sort of favourable response, or at least shared sympathy. But sympathy didn’t appear high on his list of virtues, and every word he had just spoken was tantamount to an attack.

‘I’m not blaming you in any way,’ Jessica informed him, her face burning with anger. She took a deep breath. She was here, he wasn’t going to suddenly vanish like a bad dream, and she might just as well make the best of the situation. ‘You’re right: I’m worried about my daughter and I’m desperate enough to approach someone I’ve never laid eyes on in my life before.’ Fortunately. ‘I don’t know that your son is responsible for Lucy’s change of attitude…’

‘But you’re more than willing to jump to the conclusion…’

‘I’ve put two and two together!’

‘And come up with…what…Miss Hirst? Three? Five? Sixteen?’

‘Maybe!” Jessica exploded, keeping her voice down, though she would have loved to yell her head off. ‘But then again maybe not! I’m willing to take the chance because I can see my daughter going off the rails bit by bit, and I have no idea how to stop the downward trend!’ Her jaw ached from anger and frustration, and a refusal to allow tears to blur the issue.

‘Over the past few months she’s changed,’ Jessica continued in a calmer tone. ‘Become difficult. More and more parties, sneaking back into the house at all odd hours. Her schoolwork’s taken a back seat. It’s only a question of time before her grades start to suffer.’ She looked him straight in the eye. ‘Lucy doesn’t have the advantages of money to tide her through, Mr Newman. She has her brains, but her brains are nothing without her willingness to use them, and right now I’m very much afraid that she might decide not to.’

‘What did you have in mind when you came to see me, Miss Hirst?’ The coldness had given way to something else, although for the life of her she didn’t know what. His expressions, she was fast realising, were difficult to read. He could be thinking anything. But at least he seemed prepared to hear her out.

‘I thought perhaps that you could have a word with your son, Mr Newman. I’ve tried talking to Lucy on numerous occasions, but she switches off.’

‘And you think that that would achieve anything?’

‘It would achieve more than what’s being achieved at the moment, Mr Newman. Right now, I’m more or less living on a battlefield. Occasionally there’s a cease-fire, but it never lasts very long, and they seem to be getting increasingly shorter.’

‘You still haven’t told me why you think my son’s responsible. Surely your daughter has lots of friends? How do you know that she isn’t being led astray by someone else?’

‘I know all of my daughter’s friends.’

‘All of them?’

‘To the best of my knowledge. I mean, obviously I have no definite proof that your son is behind Lucy’s change.’ In a court of law, she thought, I’d already have lost the case. ‘I haven’t overheard him forcing her to rebel, I haven’t found letters from him encouraging sabotage. But his name’s been on her lips ever since she started…ever since…this…problem arose.’

‘You make my son sound like some sort of subversive force to be reckoned with.’ He laughed shortly, as though the notion was utterly ridiculous. As though, she thought suddenly, he was vaguely contemptuous of his son. ‘Have you met him?’

‘No, but…’

‘Then you should reserve judgement until you do, Miss Hirst. What, incidentally, do you think is going on?’

‘I honestly don’t know,’ Jessica admitted. ‘It’s just that your son seems to be very influential over my daughter’s life at the moment.’

‘Do you think they’re sleeping together?’ he asked flatly, and she threw him a long, resentful stare.

‘It’s a possibility, I suppose.’ Not one that she was willing to indulge in, but the truth had to be faced.

‘Would your daughter tell you if they were?’

‘I’m not sure. I’d like to think that she would, but I really just don’t know.’ It all sounded so vague. Impulse had made her take action, but these questions made her realise that what she felt was so instinctive and nebulous that she could hardly blame him if he refused to cooperate. Aside from which, he was a father, after all, and no one liked the implication that their child was a corrupting influence, least of all when the implication came from a perfect stranger.

‘Maybe,’ she suggested helpfully, ‘you could just tell Mark to back away a little, leave her to get on with her life…?’

‘He’s seventeen years old,’ he told her. ‘He’s hardly likely to relish me telling him what he can and can’t do.’

‘You’re his father!’

‘That doesn’t necessarily mean that he’ll bow his head and listen to a word I say to him,’ he informed her tersely. ‘You’re an intelligent enough woman.’ He made it sound as though he had his suspicions about that. ‘I’m sure you know precisely what I’m trying to say.’

‘That you won’t do a damn thing to help. That you’ll allow your son to ruin Lucy’s life.’

“‘Ruin”’s taking it a bit far, isn’t it?’

‘No, it is not!’ This time it was Jessica’s turn to sit forward, her hands tightly clenched. She had first-hand experience of what happened when your life suddenly veered off at a tangent and you were left to pick up the pieces. Mark and her daughter might or might not be sleeping together, and if they weren’t then she was going to make damn sure that they didn’t. Accidents happened, and accidents could change the whole course of your life.

‘Look,’ she said, in a more controlled voice, ‘all I’m asking you to do is have a chat with your son—tell him to wait until Lucy gets a little older if he wants to see her.’

‘Maybe send him off to a boarding school somewhere just to make sure?’

‘I could do without your sarcasm, Mr Newman.’

‘And how do you intend to control your own daughter? How do you know that if Mark obliges and disappears from the scene altogether she isn’t going to find another focus of attention?’

It was a sensible enough question, but Jessica still resented him asking it. She stared at him speechlessly, and he looked back without flinching.

‘Well?’ he asked silkily.

‘Of course I don’t know!’ she exploded furiously. ‘But I prefer to cross that bridge when I get to it.’

They both sat back and regarded one another like adversaries sizing up the competition.

‘I’ll compromise with you,’ he said eventually. ‘I’ll talk to Mark, with you and your daughter present. That way there’ll be less of an atmosphere of confrontation and more an air of discussion.’

Jessica stared at him. She hadn’t banked on this solution being proffered, and she suspected, judging from the look on his face, that he had only suggested it on the spur of the moment, to get her off his back.

‘Would they agree to that?’ she asked finally, and he shrugged.

‘Possibly not.’

‘In which case, at least you can say that you tried…?’

‘That’s right,’ he said with staggering honesty.

‘Where do you want this meeting to take place?’ Jessica asked, making her mind up on the spot. What he offered was better than nothing.

‘I can reserve a private room at a restaurant in Hampstead. Thursday. Eight o’clock. It’s called Chez Jacques, and I know the owner.’

‘I can’t afford that restaurant, Mr Newman.’ She voiced the protest without even thinking about it, but she had read reviews of the place and the prices quoted were way out of her reach.

‘Fine.’ He shrugged and began standing up, and she glared at him.

‘All right.’

He sat back down and looked at her.

‘But we don’t make it an arranged meeting,’ she said, deciding that his manipulation had gone far enough. ‘I don’t want Lucy to think that I’ve been manoeuvring behind her back…’

‘Which you have been…’

She ignored that. ‘So we meet by accident. It’ll be tricky persuading her to go there, but I’ll make damn sure that we turn up.’

‘Why should it be tricky? Doesn’t she like going to restaurants? Is this part of the teenager phase you say she’s going through?’

‘Lucy and I don’t eat out very often, Mr Newman— Anthony. I take her somewhere on her birthday, and we usually go out on mine, but it’s not a habit…’

He frowned, trying to puzzle this one out. ‘You surely can’t be that impoverished, if your daughter’s at private school…?’

‘Private school…? Whatever gave you that impression?’

‘Isn’t that where she met my son?’

‘No, it isn’t. I work as a secretary in some law offices. My pay cheque, generous though it is, manages to cover the mortgage and pay the bills and buy the essentials. However, it doesn’t quite run to private schooling.’

She hoped that she didn’t sound resentful of her state of affairs, or else defensive, but she had a suspicion that that was precisely how she sounded. And she also had a suspicion that that was precisely how he saw her. Wealthy people often led an insular life. They mixed in social circles where foreign travel was taken for granted, as were expensive meals out, best seats at the opera, and cars that were replaced every three years.

Anthony Newman had just been brought face to face with one of those more lowly creatures who didn’t lead the charmed life. It wasn’t apparent in his expression, but she found herself reading behind the good-looking, detached exterior, even though she was appalled by this inverse snobbery.

She wondered whether he was horrified by the thought of his son mixing with a girl from the wrong side of the tracks. There was nothing in his manner to suggest any such thing, but then he struck her as a man who was clever at concealing what he didn’t want the world to see.

He signalled for the cheque, and was irritated when she made an attempt to settle her half of the bill.

‘Right. So that’s settled then. Eight at Chez Jacques. Thursday.’

‘Unless you change your mind and decide to have a quiet word with Mark.’

‘Naturally.’

But he had no intention of changing his mind, and when they parted company outside the hotel she wasn’t quite sure whether she had done the right thing after all, or not.

She was also taken aback at the reaction he had provoked in her. She had gone to his office to ask for his help, one parent to another. Now she found herself thinking of him, and not simply as a parent. She found herself thinking of him as a man, and a disturbing one at that, although she couldn’t put her finger on the reason why. She just knew that his face kept popping up in her head.

For nearly seventeen years she had steered clear of any involvement with the opposite sex. She worked amongst them, went out for drinks occasionally with some of them, in a group, but she was careful never to get involved. Never to get involved was never to be hurt. It was a self-taught lesson. She had her daughter—life would only be complicated if she allowed a man to intrude.

And the decision had hardly cost her dear. In all those years she had never met anyone who had tempted her with the possibility of romance. A few had tried, and she had kindly steered them away. It hadn’t been difficult. Most men were frankly unwilling to get involved with a ready-made family unit anyway.

Anthony Newman, however, was in a league of his own. He wasn’t like any man she had ever met in her life before. Something about him had aroused a certain curiosity inside her, made her wonder for the first time what she had missed out on during all these years of self-imposed celibacy.

She had to remind herself that curiosity killed the cat.

She was sorely tempted to phone and cancel the dinner arrangement. She knew that he would not have objected. But that, she realised, would have amounted to running away, and it was ridiculous because she didn’t even know what she would have been running away from.

He was hardly going to pounce on her, was he? As it was, he had only suggested the arrangement with reluctance, and no doubt he would have been very happy never to clap eyes on her again.

On Thursday morning, just as Lucy was about to head off to school, and Jessica was busy in the kitchen, trying to do twelve things at once before she set out to work, she said, casually, ‘By the way, don’t arrange anything for this evening. We’re going out.’

She could tell from the silence behind her that she might as well have announced that they were departing for a last-minute trip to the moon.

‘Going out? Going out? Going out where?’

‘Going out for a meal, actually.’ She turned around, wiped her hands on the kitchen towel, and looked at her daughter. ‘People occasionally do things like that.’

‘People may do things like that, but we don’t!’

Lucy’s eyes were narrowed with suspicion. Her knapsack was half-open and slung over one shoulder, and her long hair was gathered over the other. At sixteen, she was already a couple of inches taller than her mother, and she didn’t look like a child. Sixteen. Jessica thought that she looked like an adult of twenty going on thirty something. It was frightening where all the time had gone.

‘I thought it might make a nice change,’ Jessica said, refusing to be provoked.

‘Why?’

Jessica could feel the familiar irritation gathering up inside her, and she swallowed it down and smiled.

‘Because it’s been a rough few months for us. You’ve got exams on the horizon. I thought it might be nice to eat out for a change.’

Lucy shrugged and looked suddenly bored with the conversation. ‘Okay.’

‘So please be home on time!’ Jessica told the departing back, a remark which didn’t even warrant a response. Lucy was already out of the door and on her way.

By seven-thirty, Jessica was bathed and dressed and waiting in the sitting room for her daughter, who still had not shown up from school. She had taken a magazine to read, so that she could at least pretend to herself that her frame of mind was still relaxed, but the magazine lay unopened on her lap, and her fingers were clasped together.

Now, she thought wearily, there would be another shouting match, and they would arrive at the restaurant with tempers frayed, if they got there at all. Lucy might just not turn up at all.

But turn up she did. Five minutes later. In a rush, and full of apologies.

‘Honestly, Mum, I completely forgot. I had to go to the library to check out something for English lit, then I wanted to see Mr Thomas about some maths homework, and by the time I looked at my watch it was after six!’ She said this in the voice of someone who was amazed that time could play such a dirty trick on them. ‘When do we need to leave?’

‘In five minutes. The taxi’s booked…’

‘Okay.’

Jessica sat back, closed her eyes and felt like someone who had been caught in the path of a wayward tornado. She heard the sound of the shower, rushed footsteps, followed by the slamming of cupboard doors, then Lucy appeared in the doorway dressed in a long black skirt, a pair of ankle boots with laces which had seen better days, and—where on earth had that T-shirt come from?

‘You can’t go dressed like that,’ Jessica told her flatly, standing up. ‘It’s a proper restaurant, Luce, not a burger bar. And that T-shirt is at least ten sizes too small for you. What about that striped cotton shirt I gave you last Christmas? You could tuck it into the skirt and put on some proper sandals.’

‘Not again! Stop nagging me!’

‘Don’t you take that tone of voice with me, my girl!’

‘I’m not twelve any longer, Mum!’

‘I’m only trying to get you to look a little…’

‘More conventional?’ She said that as though it were a dirty word.

‘If you like, yes. At least tonight.’

‘I like this outfit. I feel relaxed in it.’

Jessica sighed out of pure exasperation. There was no time left to argue the toss.

‘Well, let’s just say that I’m not happy with the way you look, Lucy.’

‘You’re never happy with the way I look.’

Here we go again, Jessica thought. Another brief exchange of words developing into an all-out battle. Theoretically, this meal out should have been a relaxed one, but as they were driven to the restaurant she could feel the atmosphere charged with tension. One word on the subject of time-keeping, or dress, or school—or anything, for that matter—and Lucy, she knew, would retreat into moody silence.

‘How was school today?’ she asked eventually, at which Lucy gave a loud, elaborate sigh.

‘You’re not going to start going on about homework again, are you, Mum? Not the old boring lecture about the importance of education?’

Jessica felt a prickle of tears behind her eyes.

‘I’m just interested, honey.’

‘School was as boring as it usually is. Mrs Dean said that it’s time we made some decisions about what subjects we want to study in sixth form.’

Jessica held her breath. ‘And what have you got in mind?’

‘Maths, economics and geography.’

Jessica tried to conceal her sigh of dizzying relief. She had been sharpening her weapons for this battle for quite some time now, making sure that she was well prepared for when Lucy announced that she had decided to quit school at sixteen and get a job in a department store.

‘If,’ her daughter said casually, ‘I bother to do A levels at all. Most of the girls are just going to try and find jobs. Kath’s thinking about a computer course. One of those six-month ones. There are always jobs for people who know how to use computers.’

‘We’ve been through all this before,’ Jessica said, closing her eyes, feeling exhausted. ‘You’ll get much further in the end if you go on to university, get a degree…’

‘While all my friends are out there, earning money…’

‘Life isn’t just about tomorrow, Lucy. You’ve got to plan a little further ahead than that.’

‘Why?’

Jessica gave up. They had been through this argument so many times recently that it gave her a headache just thinking about it.

The taxi pulled up outside the restaurant, and Lucy said, incredulously, ‘We’re eating here?’

‘I thought it might be fun to splash out for a change.’ she thought of Mark’s father and felt a flutter of nervous apprehension spread through her.

‘We can’t afford it,’ Lucy said, stepping out of the car and eyeing her mother and the restaurant dubiously. ‘Can we?’

‘Why not?’ Jessica grinned. ‘You only live once.’ And Lucy giggled—an unfamiliar, endearing sound.

Virtually as soon as they walked in Jessica spotted them—seated in silence at a table in the far corner of the room, partially hidden by some kind of exotic plant. She wouldn’t have noticed them if she hadn’t immediately glanced around the dark, crowded restaurant, looking. Lucy still hadn’t seen them. She was wrapped up in excitement at the prospect of eating in a proper restaurant, where waiters hovered in the background and the lighting wasn’t utilitarian.

‘You should have said that we were coming here, Mum! I would have worn something different.’

‘I did mention…’

‘Yes, I know!” Lucy hissed under her breath, as they were shown to their table, her eyes downcast, ‘but you always tell me that I don’t dress properly.’

‘You look stunning, whatever you wear,’ Jessica murmured truthfully, fighting to keep down the sick feeling in her stomach as they moved closer to where Mark and his father were sitting, still in complete silence. She didn’t dare glance at them. She didn’t want her eyes to betray any recognition, not even fleetingly. Was he looking at her? she wondered.

She had put a great deal of thought into her outfit. A knee-length dress with a pattern of flowers on it, belted at the waist. It was the sort of dress that could be dressed up or dressed down, and because she had never made the mistake of wearing it to work it still had that special ‘going out’ feel to it that she liked.

She found herself wondering what sort of image she presented, and was immediately irritated with herself for the passing thought. She frankly didn’t give a jot what Anthony Newman thought of her. To him, she was a sudden and inconvenient intrusion. To her, he was merely the means towards an end. It was irrelevant whether he found her attractive or not.

They were about to sit down when Lucy gave a stifled gasp, and Jessica followed the direction of her eyes with what she hoped was polite interest.

‘Are you all right?’ she asked, playing the part. ‘You’ve gone bright red.’

‘Fine. Yes. I’m fine,’ Lucy muttered, flustered. She sat down and chewed her lips nervously, darting quick glances at the table behind them. Mature though she looked sometimes, she still had that childish lack of control over the expressions on her face. Jessica could read them like a book. Her daughter had been surprised at the sight of Mark Newman, then deeply embarrassed. Now she was wondering whether she should acknowledge him or not. He still hadn’t seen them. His back was to them and his father, after a quick, indifferent glance at them, was now sipping his glass of wine and consulting the menu in front of him.

Jessica pretended to ignore her daughter’s agitation. Eventually Lucy said, under her breath, ‘I just recognised someone, that’s all.’

‘Really?’ A waiter handed them menus and took an order for aperitifs. ‘One of your teachers?’

‘No!’

‘One of your schoolfriends?’ She looked at her daughter over the top of the menu. ‘I didn’t think that there was anyone here under eighteen apart from you.’

‘No one that you know, Mum,’ Lucy mumbled, diving into the menu and frowning savagely.

‘Oh.’

‘He hasn’t seen me.’

‘He…?’

‘Don’t look around. You’ll just make it obvious!’

‘Why don’t you say hello if you know him, whoever he is?’ Jessica asked with studied indifference.

‘He’s wearing a jacket!’ She made that sound like a sin, and Jessica did her best not to smile.

‘How awful!’

‘Very funny, Mum.’ She stared at the menu, still red-faced and frowning. ‘I suppose I’d better say hi.’

Jessica nodded, holding her breath. ‘Good idea, darling.’ She placed the menu to one side, having read precisely nothing on it. ‘Silly to be antisocial.’

CHAPTER THREE

A FLURRY of introductions. Jessica did her best to appear politely interested, but she was keenly aware of Anthony Newman, the casual, masculine elegance of his body, as he half stood to shake her hand, the feel of his fingers briefly against hers.

‘My daughter’s mentioned you,’ she said, turning to face Mark and scrutinising him for signs of corrupt youth. There were none. He was the unformed younger version of his father. No hard edges yet.

‘Is that good or bad?’ he asked, grinning awkwardly, and she forced herself to smile back in return.

‘Horrendous, I should think,’ his father drawled. ‘The last thing this child needs is the presence of boys in her life.’

‘I’m sixteen,’ Lucy said stiffly. ‘And I meet boys every day, Mr Newman. My school’s co-ed.’

‘A mixed blessing, I should think.’ Anthony looked at Jessica and she felt herself flush, even though the glance was polite and cursory. ‘At least from a parent’s point of view.’

‘I’m afraid there was no choice…’

‘Anyway, why don’t you two join us? Unless you’re expecting someone else…?’

‘We couldn’t!’ Lucy said quickly.

‘We’d love to.’ Jessica looked vaguely around her. ‘Would they object…?’

‘Why on earth should they?’ Anthony stood up to pull a chair for her, and at the same time he beckoned to one of the waiters and informed him of the change in seating arrangements.

Even in a matter as small as this there was that authority in his voice that she had noticed a few days ago. A natural air of command which assumed that no arguments would be forthcoming.

Another flurry of sitting down. Poor Lucy looked so dismayed at this change of plan that Jessica almost felt sorry for her.

Was there ever any embarrassment as acute as teenage embarrassment? Jessica looked kindly at her daughter, who was glaring at the empty wineglass in front of her while attempting to mutter a conversation with Mark, and felt suddenly matronly. An ageing, frumpish matron in a flowered dress, gauche in the presence of a man whose interest in her barely rose beyond strictly polite.

She adored Lucy, but where on earth had all that hopeful youth gone?

She felt as though she had been staring at her future one minute, and then the next minute looking over her shoulder at a future long since vanished. In between had been the tricky juggling job of child-rearing and work, hardly time to plan ahead, and no time at all to look behind.

Was that what life was all about? Forgetting what dreams were all about?

She looked under her lashes at Anthony, who was doing his charming best to coax a response out of Lucy, and felt a sudden flare of resentment.

She had been perfectly happy, more or less, until now. For some reason he made her think about her life, and not just her life but the limitations within it. Nothing at all to do with money, more to do with the image she had of herself.

He made her, she realised with annoyance, feel dowdy. Dowdy and mumsy. The sort of woman he might stand and chat to politely at a school gathering, before escaping with a sigh of relief back to his world of glamorous women who had the time and money to pamper themselves.

The conversation had moved on from hobbies—a polite question from Anthony had met with an equally polite answer from Lucy—‘None’. Now he was initiating the familiar school conversation, and getting, Jessica noticed with amusement, much the same lack of response as when she tried to initiate it herself.

‘School’s deadly,’ Lucy was saying now, tucking into her starter with the enthusiasm of someone who hadn’t eaten in several weeks. ‘Same old routine every day. I’m surprised some of the teachers don’t collapse from the sheer boredom of it all.’

‘I remember feeling precisely like that when I was your age,’ Anthony said, struggling not to smile. He glanced at Jessica, and they shared a very brief bond of parental understanding.

‘Really?’ Lucy dragged her attention away from her food for an instant to subject him to a witheringly sceptical stare.

‘It gets better in sixth form,’ Mark told her.

‘If I ever get there,’ Lucy muttered under her breath. ‘I’m thoroughly fed up with school at the moment. Heaven only knows whether I can face another two years of it.’

‘Let’s not discuss this here,’ Jessica said sharply.

‘Why not? Kind of makes a change from discussing it at home all the time. Besides, Mark agrees with me, don’t you, Mark? We happen to think that discipline isn’t necessarily the best way of learning. Doesn’t allow for creativity.’

‘That certainly sounds a familiar line of argument.’ Anthony shot his son a dark, unreadable stare, and was met with a sullen, unresponsive look in return.

Jessica quietly closed her fork and spoon, and wondered what on earth had possessed her to succumb to this madcap idea of joining forces with Anthony Newman.

As far as good ideas went, it left a lot to be desired. After Anthony’s initial lukewarm reception, here they were, seated in one of the more expensive restaurants in London, waging war. They might as well have gone to a fast-food bar—at least the crockery wouldn’t have been breakable.

Lucy, having scraped every morsel of food from her plate, was staring at Mark and Anthony with her face cupped in the palm of her hand, seemingly enjoying the terse exchange of words. Lord knows, Jessica thought, what sort of beneficial effect this evening was supposed to be having on her.

‘You don’t understand, Dad,’ Mark was saying in a laboured voice. ‘You spend all your life cooped up in an office, and you think that that’s the only valid contribution a person can make to society.’

‘You’re talking absolute rot,’ Anthony replied with an edge of anger. ‘As usual.’

‘Anything you don’t agree with, you consider absolute rot.’

Oh, God, Jessica thought, wondering whether she could conceivably excuse herself and spend the next hour in the Ladies. In a minute, they’ll be coming to blows.

‘We’re not here to argue.’ Anthony sat back in his chair, sipped his wine, and smiled cordially at Jessica, who raised her eyebrows in disbelief at this sudden change of attitude. ‘Tell me what you do, Jessica.’ He linked his fingers together, regarded her with bland interest, and waited.

‘Mum works for a bunch of lawyers.’

‘I’m sure your mother is capable of answering for herself,’ Anthony said.

Mark met Lucy’s eyes with sympathy. ‘He’s always like that. Bossy.’ They began chatting in subdued voices while the waiter cleared away the debris, and Jessica smiled rather wildly back at Anthony.

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