‘God, yes. He’s been like a rock. But young Ritchie has been working closely with him for the past year, and he’s the most likely candidate.’
Later, when her mother had gone up to bed, Tara said, ‘Dad, is it definite about Ian Ritchie? Has he been offered the department?’
Jim Lyndon was fixing the guard in front of the fire. ‘No, not yet. Why do you ask?’ His voice was quizzical. ‘Do you know of a better candidate?’
She swallowed. ‘I thought—Jack.’
‘Did you, my dear—or was the thought really his?’ He waited for a moment, his shrewd gaze fixed on her flushed, unhappy face, then sighed. ‘But I’m afraid I must disappoint you. Jack has yet to convince me and the rest of the board that he has the makings of a top manager. In the short term he hasn’t nearly enough experience, and is inclined to cut corners and take unnecessary risks as a consequence.’
She bit her lip. ‘I know you’ve never liked him...’
‘That’s not quite true. At the moment I’m trying very hard not to dislike him.’ He paused. ‘But I know how much it must have cost you to approach me like this, so I won’t be angry with you.’
He got up, dusting his hands. ‘However, I’ll say this before we drop the subject. Jack is still young, and it’s early days both in the company and your relationship. He has plenty of time to prove himself.’
She said fiercely, ‘And he will.’ She hesitated. ‘Dad—wouldn’t it be possible for him to be shortlisted—given an interview? It would encourage him so much.’
‘Oh, does he need encouragement?’ Mr Lyndon asked mildly. He gave a slight shrug. ‘It seems a pretty pointless exercise to me, but if it will make things easier for you I suppose I’ve no real objection.’
Jack was jubilant when he received the internal memo telling him he’d indeed been short-listed. He brought home a bottle of champagne and an extravagant bunch of red roses, which Tara accepted wanly, feeling like Judas.
He was so confident, she thought anxiously. So sure. She wished now that she hadn’t asked...
And afterwards, when Ian Ritchie’s appointment was announced, Jack seemed stunned, stonily incredulous. But when she went to him, tried to put her arms round him to comfort him, he turned from her almost menacingly, his face a harsh stranger’s.
He curtly rejected the meal she’d cooked and went out, for the first time not asking her to go with him.
And it was the small hours when he returned, sliding into bed beside her without noticing, apparently, that she’d been lying awake, waiting for him and worrying.
She told herself it was just disappointment. That he’d feel different—more optimistic—the following day. And then maybe she’d stop feeling that she was standing on the edge of some precipice—where all it would take would be one breath of wind to carry her over the brink and down to destruction.
But I was wrong, Tara thought now, staring into the darkness. Because the precipice was real, and it was there—waiting for me.
CHAPTER FOUR
S
HE didn’t want to do this, she thought. She didn’t want to remember. But the images were there, burning in her brain. Everything Jack had said. Everything he’d done.
For three years she’d fought to keep them at bay. Now the cupboard was open, and the skeletons were crowding upon her.
Nothing had ever been the same again after Jack failed to get the job, although she had done her best to persuade herself otherwise.
She’d tried to talk to him about it. ‘Jack—I did try—really.’
The dark eyes were bottomless wells of indifference. ‘Not hard enough, obviously.’
He hardly spent any time in the flat He was out nearly every evening, and when he joined her in bed he reeked of cigarettes and alcohol. Sometimes she even thought she detected the hint of a woman’s scent on his skin. Opium, she thought. Something she never used. And then silently berated herself for being paranoid.
What she could not pretend was that Jack still wanted her sexually. Whereas once he’d been unable to keep his hands off her, now he seemed to be doing his best to avoid all physical contact with her. And when, bewildered and unhappy, she tried to make a few shy overtures of her own, he turned on her almost brutally.
‘For God’s sake, Tara, I’m under enough stress right now without you hassling me for sex. Give it a rest, will you?’
If he’d struck her in the face she could not have been more shocked. She never tried again.
And self-censure wasn’t all she had to bear. Her immediate boss, Leo Southern, called her into his office and gave her a stinging dressing-down over her recent attitude to her work. ‘Sloppy’ was one word he used. And ‘ineffectual’.
‘When you joined us, Tara, you were keen—you were hot.’ He threw himself back in his chair and surveyed her, his mouth compressed. ‘Now half the time you don’t seem to be on the same planet. You’d better pull yourself together, and damned quickly.’
He saw the panicked look in her eyes, and his tone softened marginally. ‘Listen, take the rest of the day off. Do that exercise we sometimes give new clients. List your goals, and the positive and negative factors that affect them. Then work out how to eliminate the negative, however painful. I’ll see you tomorrow.’
She didn’t argue. She knew she was being given one last chance, and that she’d already blotted her copybook by bringing her private life into office hours.
As she travelled back on the underground she knew she had to get things sorted out with Jack. Her job was precious to her. She couldn’t afford to jeopardise it. And she couldn’t lose Jack either. She had to fight for both of them.
She would begin by telling him how much she loved him, she thought. Offer to do anything that would change their life back to the way it had been. After all, there was no place for pride in love.
And Jack’s pride had been hurt too, she realised sombrely. Perhaps he thought she wouldn’t want him any more, now that he’d failed. She needed to show him how wrong he was. How much faith she had in him.
We should get married, she thought. Face the world united. I can talk him round. I must.
As she approached the apartment block she glanced up, and saw with shock that one of their windows was slightly open.
How did that happen? she wondered, quickening her step. Which of us was the last to leave this morning? It must have been me, yet I’m sure I checked the windows. I always do.
She went up the stairs to their floor, two at a time. As she fitted her key into one of the safety locks she tensed, because it wasn’t fastened. In fact the whole door was on the latch, she realised, pushing it open and wondering sickly what scene of devastation she was going to find.
But the living room looked just the same as usual. Or did it? She looked around slowly, registering Jack’s overcoat lying across the sofa, a bottle of wine halfdrunk on the coffee table. A pair of high-heeled shoes abandoned carelessly underneath it. Not hers.
There was the sound of a door opening, and she turned to see Jack emerging from the bedroom. Their bedroom. He was wearing his red silk dressing gown, the sash loosely knotted round his waist, and beneath it he was naked. He had a cigarette in one hand, and in the other he was carrying two empty wine glasses by their stems.
When he saw Tara, he checked, his brows lifting sharply.
‘Well, well,’ he said softly. ‘What a charming surprise. And so opportune. At least I don’t have to do your packing for you.’
Her throat felt parched suddenly. It was difficult to articulate the words. ‘Packing? I—I don’t understand what you mean.’
‘Yes, you do, darling.’ He was smiling at her. ‘I’m revoking your temporary tenancy here. Giving you notice to quit. And the sooner the better.’
‘Quit?’ She stared at him. ‘You—want me to—leave?’
Jack sighed with exaggerated patience. ‘And you’re supposed to be such a bright girl,’ he said mockingly.
‘But you can’t—I can’t...’ She swallowed. ‘This is some awful joke. It must be.’
‘No joke.’ He shrugged. ‘Just a game that I’ve become bored with. But I was prepared to go on playing while there was a chance you might push me up the corporate ladder. But I now know that’s not going to happen, so I’ve found a new playmate. And you, my sweet, are surplus to requirements—in bed and out of it.’
She said hoarsely, ‘You don’t mean this. You can’t. Jack, don’t say such things. I love you. We love each other.’
‘Correction,’ he said. ‘I loved the fact that you were the boss’s daughter, and that you could be useful to me. But you blew it.’ He smiled at her, and for the first time she saw the cruelty beneath the facile charm.
‘We were going to be married.’ The words were wrung from her.
‘So we were,’ he agreed. ‘I’d have even made that sacrifice for a seat on the board. But to tell you the truth I’m rather glad your father cancelled my entry. It was going to be a hell of an act to sustain. You’re terribly earnest, you know, darling, and a bit of a drag sexually. Oh, you were a novelty at first, but that soon wore off. And no amount of girlish enthusiasm is ever going to equal natural-born talent.’
The pain had been there from the moment she saw him walk out of the bedroom and realised what was happening, but she’d managed to hold it back. Now, she felt its teeth snap into her, taking hold and tearing at her, flesh and spirit.
Yet somehow she managed to lift her head. ‘In that case, I’d better get my things.’
‘Exactly.’ He poured some more wine into the glasses. ‘You realise, of course, I have a guest.’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry to have intruded.’
‘As a matter of interest, why are you here?’ He drank some wine, watching her. ‘You haven’t got the sack, too, I hope.’ He saw the shock on her face, and laughed. ‘Oh, yes, I was “let go” last week. Some kind of rationalisation programme, I gather, which only involved me. They offered me salary in lieu of notice, plus a sweetener, and I took it. A mate of mine is running some mining company out in Brazil, and I’m going to join him, just in case you were concerned about me,’ he added.
‘I’m not,’ she said. ‘My sympathies are with Brazil. The rainforest has enough problems already.’
‘A kitten showing her claws?’ he asked unpleasantly. ‘Don’t try and play rough with me, darling, or you’ll get hurt.’
She was hurt already. She was disintegrating, bleeding to death. How-could he not see that?
‘I’ll ask Julie to wait in the bathroom while you clear out,’ he went on. ‘I’d be grateful if you’d hurry. She’s forgotten more about sex than you’ll ever know, and I’m keen to jog her memory again.’
She tried not to look at the rumpled bed as she emptied drawers into her cases, piling the clothes and possessions on top of each other without regard. The scent of Opium hung heavy in the air, and she knew she would hate its fragrance until her dying day. She left her keys on the coffee table and went out, closing the door quietly behind her.
She hailed a passing taxi, and told it to take her to her parents’ house in Chelsea.
The driver glanced at her in his mirror. ‘You all right, gal?’
‘Yes,’ she said, tears chasing themselves down her white face. ‘Never better.’
Tara sat bolt upright in bed. She was shaking and her cotton shirt was clinging to her damp body, as if she’d been startled into wakefulness from some dreadful nightmare.
She pushed back the covers, and, stumbling slightly, went over to the window, drawing back the curtains. The sky was silver with daylight, and there was a faint mist rising from the river. Riding silently at anchor,
Caroline
looked like a ghost ship, but she was there, and only too real, Tara thought broodingly.
She sat down, resting her folded arms on the window-sill.
She knew exactly why the past had come back to haunt her. The reason was sleeping in his cabin, a stone’s throw away, out on the water.
Adam Barnard had imposed himself on her life—impinged upon her consciousness in a way that no man had been permitted to do since Jack.
Never again. That was what she’d kept telling herself in the stunned, heartbroken weeks that had followed their break-up. No man is ever getting that close to me again.
Every ugly word he’d spoken had seemed to crawl like acid over her skin. She had hardly been able to bear to look at herself in the mirror. Drab, she’d thought, boring, undesirable. She would carry them, stamped on her, like the brand of Cain her whole life through.
She had not simply fallen for Jack. She had trusted him, believed in him, so his betrayal had been total.
When he had gone, the truth slowly began to emerge. People who had kept silent in view of her obvious happiness had come shamefacedly forward, Anna among them.
‘Babe, I did warn you—at my father’s birthday party. Dad said he was a bad lot from the first. All flash and no substance.’
Tara hadn’t argued with her. After all, she’d thought wearily, even if Anna
had
completed her warning, would she have believed her?
Julie had not been Jack’s first act of infidelity by any means, and he’d jeered openly at Tara’s gullibility for believing him when he’d said he was working late, or attending weekend seminars.
‘You know I hate to leave you, sweet, but it’s for our future,’ he’d used to whisper to her ardently, and the memory left her shaking and nauseated.
Her parents had been wonderful, her mother openly distressed when Tara had insisted on going back to work the day after she’d arrived at the Chelsea house in a state near collapse.
‘I need to work,’ Tara had told her bluntly. ‘That way I don’t have to think.’
Coldly, single-mindedly, she’d thrown herself into her career. Within a year she’d gained promotion, and an appropriate pay rise. She’d found her flat, decorated it, and furnished it slowly and with care. Finally she’d acquired Melusine.
A career—a life—a companion. Who could ask for anything more?
She’d believed she was totally self-sufficient—‘fireproof’ even—and now here she was, dizzy with lust over the first attractive man to cross her path, she derided herself.
Except, of course, that wasn’t strictly true. Not by any means. She’d met men every day of her life over the past years, who were more charming, more glamorous than Adam Barnard would ever be.
And, quite apart from Becky’s well-meaning efforts, she’d had plenty of opportunities to embark on new relationships. But she’d always steered clear, retreating behind her barrier of cool reserve when someone threatened to come close.
It wasn’t difficult. She only had to recall the devastation that Jack had left behind him.
She was afraid of being hurt again. Of being used. Of being savaged and abandoned.
And, most of all, of being found out. Of being exposed all over again as dull—unlovable—undesirable.
Because love—or what passed for it-hurt. That was what she needed to remember. All she needed to remember. She could never again allow herself to become the broken thing of three years ago.
She’d worked hard to gain control of her life—of herself—and she wasn’t going to jeopardise that for a passing attraction, however potent.
She’d created her own safety net—a private hedge of thorns around herself. And if Adam Barnard knew what was good for him he’d stay on his own side of it.
Not that she’d given him a chance to do otherwise. Now that she’d recognised the potential danger he could pose, she would deal with it.
And eventually he would grow tired of the cool, unchanging civility. The lack of response, unsmiling, even uncomprehending, to his advances.
And, like the others, he would move on. Find some other warmer, more willing lady. Leave her in peace.
Only this time peace might not be so easy to come by, a sly voice whispered in her head.
Sighing, she got to her feet and went downstairs, with Melusine weaving round her legs. She poured the cat some milk, then filled the kettle and set it to boil. She took a carton of orange juice from the fridge and drank a glassful, gasping at its cold tartness against her throat.