‘Really?’ Barbara said sceptically. ‘Does that mean you’ll do your own dirty work?’
The little spark of temper flashed in his eyes, but he was still half smiling. ‘Meaning?’
‘Meaning if you’ve got half a dozen girlfriends you don’t want to see any more you should tell them it’s over, not tell your secretary to tell them you’re in a meeting. Do unusual circumstances mean that usually you’ve only got one or two to brush off, or that you’re dealing with that yourself these days?’
There—maybe that would show Ruth what he was really like.
Annoyingly, her shot seemed to have misfired. Charles raised an eyebrow.
‘Is that what’s bothering you? I don’t remember who I was seeing then, but I don’t think I was trying to brush anyone off. I tell women not to call me at the office; I don’t have time for social calls if I’m working on something, but if you don’t like a polite lie you can tell the truth. I’ll let you know if there’s anyone I want to talk to.’
It should have been a relief that there was still no one serious. As far as she knew, there never had been. Well, in a way it was a relief. But she was chilled by his indifference, just as she’d always been.
His parents had sent him back to England to stay with her family for his last two years of school. Within days the phone had been ringing off the hook. Barbara hadn’t been surprised. She’d never seen anyone as handsome as the new guest—of course all the girls at school had wanted to call him. But because she was living in the house she’d seen the dark, handsome face change expression as he picked up the phone; seen it stiff with boredom, stifling yawns; seen him glance at the clock, make monosyllabic replies, reach for the remote control of the TV, change channels for the football.
Sometimes she’d picked up the phone herself. A girl would ask, elaborately casual, if Charles was there. ‘I’ll go and see,’ Barbara would say.
Charles would mouth, ‘Who is it?’ And sometimes, when she’d told him, he’d shaken his head or given a thumbs-down. It had been terrifying to see how little he cared, how bored he was by the adoration he won so easily, and it seemed she’d always known, as long as she’d known him, that she must never let him know what she felt.
She’d teased him and pestered him and mocked him as if she’d really been his little sister, and he’d enjoyed it in a funny kind of way—perhaps because it had made a change from the uncritical worship he’d got from girls his own age. Maybe he’d even liked her, a little, before it all went wrong.
‘It’s not the only thing I don’t like about it,’ said Barbara. ‘This could go on for months. You know I hate the idea of a permanent job; I don’t like to work anywhere for more than a couple of weeks—let alone with someone who thinks ten hours is a short working day. If I’ve worked a month I think I deserve a holiday. At least as a temp I can go away whenever I feel like it. Give me one good reason why I should give all that up to be sworn at for eleven months out of twelve by you.’
‘money,’ said Charles.
‘I don’t know how much you’re offering,’ said Barbara, ‘but it’s not enough. No can do. I’m going to Sardinia next month; I’ll send you a postcard—“Having a wonderful time, stay where you are.”’
‘How much do you want?’
‘You wouldn’t want to pay it,’ said Barbara.
This was too much for her mother. ‘Barbara!’ she protested. ‘Charles needs your help! Surely it’s not too much to ask you to put off travelling just until he has this project on its feet? He’s just like one of the family—you should be glad to help him.’
‘I’d have thought I’d be the last person he’d want to help him,’ Barbara blurted out before she could stop herself. ‘It didn’t do him much good the last time I tried.’ She met his eyes defiantly; she remembered, even if he didn’t.
Her mother looked blank. Charles gave her a sardonic look. Oh, he remembered, all right. ‘I wouldn’t say that, exactly,’ he said coolly. ‘I wouldn’t be where I am today if you hadn’t.’
‘Fine,’ said Barbara. ‘Then I don’t owe you anything.’
‘I don’t think I’d say that either,’ said Charles. ‘I think you still owe me, don’t you?’
‘Then I’ll pay you some other way,’ said Barbara. ‘You’re impossible to work for, and I want to see Sardinia before I die, and the answer is no. Why does it have to be me, anyway?’
‘Because you can take shorthand at a hundred and eighty words a minute.’
‘So can thousands of others.’
‘And type a hundred words a minute.’
‘Ditto.’
‘And because you’ve frittered away your time ever since you left school, travelling around whenever you could get out of the country and working your way through the entire “Teach Yourself” series from Albanian to Zulu.’
‘Is there really a Teach Yourself Zulu?’ asked Barbara, diverted. She’d bought Teach Yourself Yoruba once, on impulse, but hadn’t got round to reading it.
‘I don’t know, but if there is you can read it on your lunch-break.’
‘You don’t give lunch-breaks.’
‘And because this project is going to run into a lot of problems,’ he went on, just as if she hadn’t spoken. ‘Logistical problems, a lot of them--just getting people on the phone at the same time, or in the same place, and making sure everybody’s got the relevant information in a form they can understand so everyone knows what everyone is talking about when they get together. I want to hand that over to someone else, and I’ve never seen a problem you couldn’t get over or around.’
He ran an impatient hand over his cropped black head, scowling. ‘I could go through a recruitment agency and come up with someone with a slew of As at A level, or a degree in a couple of the languages, or star-spangled secretarial qualifications—or maybe a mixture of the above—and still end up with someone who’d come trailing back to me because some fax machine in Vladivostok is on the blink, or because all the hotels in Kiev are closed for the winter...’
The ice-green eyes met hers suddenly, without the trace of a smile. It was hard to believe the man who was speaking now had been the carefree, handsome boy she’d once known.
‘I hadn’t realised you’d disliked working for me so much last time, but it doesn’t matter—I still need you. I can’t afford to have a secretary who’s emotionally involved; at least you shouldn’t have any problem maintaining a purely professional relationship. Work out how much it’s worth to you to put up with my bad temper and my girlfriends and my habit of forgetting about lunch, and do it for the money.’
Barbara’s mother was staring at him in dismay. ‘But Charles, dear,’ she protested. ‘I’m sure Barbara doesn’t dislike you—we all think of you as one of the family. People aren’t always very polite to members of their family, you know—I used to have terrible rows with my brother, who could be absolutely exasperating, but it didn’t mean we weren’t fond of each other.’
A faint frown of impatience creased his brows at the intervention, then was gone.
‘Well, it seems I can be exasperating, at any rate,’ he said. The smile that warmed his face was for Ruth’s benefit only. ‘I expect you remembered the fondness after the rows, though, so let’s not embarrass Barbara by asking her to agree to the