Most of the time she managed to forget all of that: mother, London and that other life. It was nearly eight years ago, after all. Then a train crash had taken her mother’s life and, along with it, every familiar thing in Holly’s schoolgirl existence. It sometimes seemed to her that ever since, wherever she was, she had been a stranger passing through.
The mirrored doors of the elevator reflected back just how much of a stranger. These days she hardly recognised herself. She had shot up on long colt’s legs. Her mid-brown hair had lightened. Now in some lights it almost looked gold. It was still uncontrollably curly. So she kept it long and plaited it for work. Now in her dungarees and baseball cap she looked like a gawky schoolboy.
Here in Paris she had been reborn as a delivery boy, she thought wryly. For the time being.
Her mother, she now realised, had tried to prepare her for life’s unpredictability.
‘Everything’s temporary, Hol,’ she would say, over and over.
All these years later, Holly could recall her huge eyes. Even when she was laughing with her daughter they had always seemed sad.
‘You’ve got to look after yourself,’ she would mutter, hugging Holly to her suffocatingly. ‘Nobody else will.’ And then, when she was exhausted, beyond laughter or sadness, ‘Forgive me.’
Of course Holly had not known there was anything to forgive then. Or nothing more than half her class had to forgive, chiefly the frequent absence of an overworked career mother. She had never known her father. She could not guess that her mother had left a message for him in her will.
But she had. A shocked and grieving Holly had found herself tidied up and transferred to his millionaire’s home in the American mid-West before she knew what was happening to her. So that was when she had discovered for herself the other great truth her mother had bequeathed her: ‘You can’t trust a man, except to break your heart.’
Holly gave herself a mental shake. That was all behind her now. Well behind her. The father she had never really known was dead. The stepsister who had been affronted by her very existence was far away; five years and a whole continent away.
And if that meant that Holly was alone—well, fine. If her heart was lost in ice floes at least no one could get at it. She was footloose and solitary and safe.
Congratulating herself on her successful life planning, she hefted the boxes into a more comfortable position and started to plod off along the miles of deep-piled silence to the offices of the International Disaster Committee.
‘Thank you, gentlemen,’ said the Chair. ‘You have given us a lot to think about.’ It was dismissal.
Jack bit back a protest. He had not yet covered half the topics he had prepared. There should have been plenty of time. He had established that Armour Disaster Recovery was scheduled to present their case through lunch. But that had been before Ramon’s outburst. The Chair did not like emotion. Jack sympathised—and knew when to cut his losses.
He rose to his feet. ‘Thank you, Madam Chair.’
Ramon Lopez stared up at him in disbelief. ‘We can’t just leave. The committee—’
‘Has our paper,’ Jack supplied smoothly. He took hold of Ramon’s chair behind his back and gave it a sharp tug. ‘And of course we will be available to answer any questions that they have. You have my number?’
The Chair consulted the business cards she had set out in front of her place at the conference table. She was very professional.
‘Yes, thank you, Dr Armour. I am sure we will have plenty of questions. It will be very helpful if you can keep yourself available.’
‘You’ve got it,’ said Jack. His charm was easy and quite false, though hopefully only Ramon detected it. He patted his pocket and looked round with a friendly smile. ‘Thank God for mobile phones.’
The committee laughed uneasily, one eye on Ramon. It looked as if the passionate Spaniard was not going to move. They braced themselves for a nasty scene.
But Jack was not a personality it was easy to withstand and he was the boss. In the end, Ramon went. Muttering under his breath, but he went. He took the briefcase Jack thrust at him and followed him out of the room.
Once outside in the corridor, he let out an explosive breath.
‘Hell! Why didn’t I keep my mouth shut?’
Jack was checking that his mobile phone was switched on. He did not look up.
‘You’ll know better next time.’
‘It’s all my fault. I shouldn’t have lost my temper. I should have used sweet reason, like you.’
Jack did look up then. His eyes gleamed with humour. ‘Oh, I don’t know. You sure impressed them when you thumped the table.’
Ramon was on the point of collapse. ‘I have cost us everything. Everything.’
‘Forget it,’ said Jack at last, exasperated. ‘We’ll just have to manage the negotiations differently, that’s all.’
Ramon shook his head wonderingly. ‘Does anything ever faze you?’
Jack laughed. ‘Every setback is an opportunity if you look at it the right way,’ he said, maliciously quoting Ramon’s favourite management guru.
Reluctantly Ramon smiled. ‘Like the New York photographer who wants to take your portrait?’ he retorted, malicious in his turn.
The Armour Recovery e-mail system had been buzzing with the tales of columnist Rita Caruso as the boss’s latest conquest.
‘Oh, you’ve got onto that one, have you?’ said Jack, resigned.
Ramon’s sense of humour was in recovery. ‘Can’t wait to see it.’
Jack snorted and put his telephone back in his pocket. ‘You’ll wait a long time.’
Ramon was all innocence. ‘But you were the one who said we needed publicity.’
‘Not that sort.’
“‘Public awareness of the long-term effects of natural disasters is zero”,’ Ramon chanted.
It was the paragraph on donor fatigue from the report they had left with the committee. He had redrafted the paragraph a zillion times until Jack was satisfied with it. So he knew it by heart, as he now demonstrated.
“‘After the immediate emergency, journalists move on. But more people die in the aftermath of most disasters than in the period of first impact. We must do everything we can to reverse this.”’ He smiled. ‘Doesn’t include some pretty pictures for a lady who fancies you?’
Jack cast his eyes to heaven. Or at least to the over-illuminated ceiling of the plushest corridor in Paris.
‘Come on, man. I’ll sell myself to a bunch of bureaucrats if that’s what it takes to get the job done. I draw the line at stud pics,’ he said brutally.
Ramon was startled. ‘Stud pics?’
‘Caruso’s a photo-journalist with Elegance magazine.’
‘So?’
‘They’re only interested in fashion, sex and gossip. Frankly, I was surprised they bothered to send anyone along to Ignaz.’
Ramon stared. ‘How do you know what Elegance magazine is interested in? When did you have time to read anything except work?’
Jack looked faintly uncomfortable. ‘You only have to look at the news-stands at airports.’
‘Since when did you cruise the women’s magazines stands?’ said Ramon in disbelief.