‘I wouldn’t have wanted to come within catching distance of your elbows. Or your feet, for that matter.’
She went silent for several minutes under the whooshing of water. When she emerged, wrapped in a huge white towel, Lisa was already dressed and combing her damp hair in the mirror. Tatiana put her head on one side, eyes bright with inquisitiveness.
‘You are so lucky, with hair like that. Pure gold and natural too.’ She added without a break, ‘Who were you kicking this morning?’
Lisa raised an eyebrow at her reflection. ‘Was it that obvious?’
Tatiana nodded. ‘A man, I suppose?’
‘Or two,’ said Lisa, only half joking.
‘Sounds complicated,’ said Tatiana, pleased. ‘Let’s have something decaffeinated and you can tell me all about it.’
Rather to her surprise, Lisa found herself doing exactly that. When she had finished, Tatiana looked at her in silence for a moment, narrow-eyed.
‘And you’re sure you gave this man no encouragement?’
‘Alec?’ Lisa sighed. ‘I’ve never thought so. We all had this agreement right from the start—no inter-house affairs. Everyone stuck to it.’
There was an ironic pause. After a moment Lisa flung up her hands in a token of surrender.
‘OK. OK. I thought everyone had stuck to it.’
‘You can’t make rules about feelings,’ Tatiana said largely. ‘Never works.’
Lisa looked mulish.
‘Believe me,’ Tatiana insisted. ‘When I was still dancing, we used to be on tour for months at a time. You always start off saying no attachments. But human nature wins every time.’
Lisa said something very rude about human nature.
‘No point in fighting it, though,’ Tatiana pointed out practically. ‘So—what are you going to do?’
Lisa sighed. ‘Look for somewhere else to live. Alec will never forgive me, and I—well, frankly I’m not too proud of the way I handled it. I got in a panic, I suppose. All that passion.’ And she pulled a face.
Tatiana, who was rather in favour of passion, was intrigued. ‘Attracted in spite of yourself?’
Lisa was startled. ‘Not a chance. Men are such idiots.’
‘Oh.’
‘I had my drama when I was eighteen,’ said Lisa grandly. ‘I got over it and grew up. Why can’t they?’
Entertained, Tatiana murmured something about human nature again. Lisa frowned.
‘Well, it’s a terrible bore. Now I’ll have to go house-hunting and I haven’t got the time. What’s more, my boss will start nagging me about getting what he calls a suitable address, and I almost certainly won’t have the money for that without mortgaging my underwear. And anyway, I just hate doing what my boss tells me.’
‘Ah.’
Tatiana was not only a teacher of ballet, she was a choreographer. Listening to Lisa, she had begun to perceive the story of a ballet. Now here was the dramatic pas de deux: the powerful man, the woman who fights him because she cannot admit the attraction between them.
‘What’s wrong with your boss?’ she said carefully.
Lisa was savage suddenly. ‘He doesn’t like it that a woman has the best trading results in the room. He couldn’t get out of promoting me, but he compensated by—’ Just the thought of Sam’s lecture made her choke with rage.
Tatiana made a few editorial amendments to her scenario.
‘Did he suggest you say thank you in the traditional way?’
‘What?’ Lisa looked blank for a moment. Then she understood. ‘Oh, no. He wouldn’t dare make a pass at me.’
Looking at her pugnacious chin, Tatiana could believe it.
‘So what did he do, then?’
‘He gave me a lecture on my style. Style! I made half the portfolio’s profits last quarter and he complains about my style!’
Tatiana was disappointed. She liked more passion in her drama. ‘What is wrong with your style?’
Lisa listed the points on her fingers. ‘Wrong address. Wrong clothes. Wrong friends.’
Tatiana began to see that this was a satisfactory drama after all.
‘He thinks you are not good enough for him,’ she deduced. She was indignant.
‘In bucketfuls,’ agreed Lisa. A shadow crossed her face. ‘And he’s not the first,’ she added, almost to herself.
Tatiana didn’t notice. She was thinking. ‘Do you want to rent or buy?’
‘Well, I’m renting at the moment—’
‘Because you could always have the garden flat in my house. As long as you aren’t determined to buy.’
‘—but I don’t want to have to go through—’ Lisa realised what Tatiana had said. ‘What?’
Tatiana repeated it obligingly.
Lisa shook her head, stunned. ‘I didn’t know—I mean I didn’t realise—I wasn’t fishing…’ she said, acutely embarrassed.
Tatiana was amused. ‘I know you weren’t. Why should you? You don’t know where I live, or that I have a flat to let.’
‘No,’ agreed Lisa, still slightly dazed.
‘Well, I have. Just round the corner from here.’ She paused impressively. ‘Stanley Crescent.’
‘Oh,’ said Lisa.
Tatiana waited expectantly. It was clear that something more was required. Lisa had no idea what. She felt helpless.
Seeing her confusion, Tatiana smiled. ‘It’s a very good address.’
‘Is it? I mean—I’m sure it is.’ Lisa was floundering. She said desperately, ‘I just don’t know much about this part of London.’
‘Secret gardens,’ said Tatiana in thrilling tones.
‘Sorry?’
‘When you walk through Notting Hill all you see are these great white terraces on both sides of the street, right?’
‘Right,’ said Lisa, puzzled.
‘Well, what you don’t know is that behind several terraces there are huge communal gardens. Big as a park, some of them. Mature trees, rose gardens, the lot. It’s like having a share of a house in the country.’
She waved her hands expressively. Quite suddenly, Lisa could see green vistas, trees in spring leaf, birds building nests, space. She gave a sigh of unconscious longing.
‘Like gardens, do you?’ said Tatiana, pleased.
‘Never had one. Don’t know,’ said Lisa.
But her dreaming eyes told a different story. Tatiana took a decision.
‘Move in on Monday.’
Lisa did.
It was a blustery day that blew the cherry blossom off the trees in a snowstorm of petals. Fortunately she didn’t have much to move. She installed her boxes in the sitting room of Tatiana’s garden flat, paid the movers and took a cab to work. She was at her desk by eleven.
She was greeted by a teasing cheer.
‘Hey, hey, half a day’s work today?’ said Rob, her second in command.
‘I moved