‘No, don’t bother, I’ve already wasted enough time. Just make sure it doesn’t happen again.’
‘It won’t,’ she promised, very flushed.
He couldn’t remember ever seeing her look so flustered before. She was always so neat and calm, a small sparrow of a woman with brown hair and eyes, who wore a lot of brown, too: brownish tweed skirts in winter, brown linen in summer, with crisp white shirts.
She wore grey and black, too, actually, but whenever James thought about his secretary he imagined her in brown. The colour expressed something essential in her personality. Brenda Roper was older than him by twelve years. When James had begun working at the bank, fourteen years ago, after leaving university, Miss Roper had been assigned to him by his father, then managing director, who had handpicked her from the various candidates, and she had been with James ever since.
In the beginning, when he’d been unsure about himself and struggling to find his feet in a family firm run by a dictatorial father, James had found her efficiency slightly intimidating, which was why he had insisted on calling her Miss Roper, instead of using her first name. Using surnames to each other had seemed to put their relationship on the right footing, made James feel more in charge, less of a newcomer.
They still continued the same polite formality today, although James knew that most of his executives were on first-name terms with their secretaries. From time to time James had hovered on the point of using Brenda Roper’s first name, but had always drawn back from changing a long-established and successful habit.
‘Why didn’t you tell me you were leaving the office?’ he demanded. ‘Anyone could have walked in here, could have stolen the cash from the safe or operated the computers, retrieved secret information from the private files, endangered one of our projects.’
‘Not without the code words, Mr Ormond,’ Miss Roper said quietly. ‘Nobody can hack into our private computers without those, and you and I are the only ones who know the codes. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you we were going out; I didn’t want to interrupt you.’
‘In that case, why did you both go? You should have left the halfwit behind. At least she can answer phones, even if she can never take a message properly.’
From the outer office they both heard a muffled squeak.
Miss Roper gave James a reproachful look. ‘Lisa does her best, Mr Ormond.’
‘It isn’t good enough!’
‘That isn’t fair. Believe me, she’s a capable girl, she works hard. It’s just that you make her nervous.’
‘I can’t imagine why!’
Miss Roper drew an audible breath, her eyes rounding into brown saucers. She opened her mouth as if to say something, and then the phone began to ring again so she moved swiftly to answer it, looking faintly relieved, like someone snatched from the brink of making a disastrous move.
James walked back into his own office, slamming the door behind him. He had a feeling they had both been rescued from a dangerous moment, too. Sitting down behind his wide, green-leather-topped desk again, he picked up the report he needed to finish studying before lunch. He had the ability to switch off his immediate surroundings and focus all his energy on his work without being distracted by thought of anything else, yet he was always very punctual for appointments. He would stop work at exactly the right moment in order that he should not be late for his lunch with Sir Charles Standish, one of his directors, with whom he needed to discuss the report he was reading.
Charles had once worked for the firm they were studying; he would be able to supply details this report did not contain. James liked to know everything about a company before he made up his mind about it. This particular company might be ripe for a take-over bid by one of the bank’s biggest clients, who had asked James for his opinion before they reached a decision. He could not afford to make a mistake.
Miss Roper came in with his coffee five minutes later and began to murmur another apology as she poured strong black coffee from the silver coffee pot on the silver tray, both of them inherited from his father who had always used them.
‘I really am very sorry you were disturbed,’ she said quietly. ‘I know you have a lot on your mind this week.’
Without looking up, James waved a dismissive hand. ‘Just make sure it doesn’t happen again. In future, there must always be someone on duty out there. I don’t pay you to have to answer the phones myself. You’ll be wanting me to type my own letters soon!’
‘You can’t type, Mr Ormond.’
James looked up then, eyes narrowed and wintry, flecked with ice. ‘Is that meant to be a joke, Miss Roper? Or was it sarcasm?’
‘No, it was simply a statement of fact,’ she said, without sounding contrite, and lingered by his desk, as if having more to say.
Impatiently James asked, ‘Well?’
‘A Miss Kirby is on the phone, sir, asking to speak to you.’
He frowned. ‘Kirby?’ The name was familiar but he couldn’t place it until he remembered the earlier call. ‘Patience Kirby?’
Miss Roper gazed at him with eyes that seemed to James to hold a secret, almost furtive smile. ‘Yes, that’s right, sir, Patience Kirby. Shall I put her through?’
He glared. ‘Do you know her?’
‘Me?’ She looked taken aback. ‘No, Mr Ormond, I don’t know her. I thought you did.’ The secret smile had disappeared from her eyes.
‘Well, I don’t. Who is she?’
‘I’ve no idea. I didn’t ask; I assumed it was a personal call.’
‘What gave you that idea?’
‘Miss Kirby did.’
‘Oh, did she? You don’t surprise me. While you were out I took a call from her, and that was the first time I heard her name.’
‘So, shall I put the call through?’
‘Certainly not. Find out what she wants and deal with it yourself.’
‘Yes, sir.’ Miss Roper backed out, closing the door.
James picked up his cup of coffee and sipped as he continued working. It was exactly the way he liked it, strong and fragrant. He always had his coffee at this hour, served in a delicate porcelain cup, white with a dark blue trim edged with gold, one of an early Victorian set which had belonged to his father before him. It was still complete, not a cup or saucer broken, and lived in a glass cabinet when not in use. Bank employees handled it with kid gloves. They knew how much it meant to James Ormond: one of the symbols of continuity in the bank, a link with his dead father and grandfather.
He always drank two cups, ate one thin shortbread biscuit from a flat silver box. He was a man of routine, established very early in life by his father, who had been a strict disciplinarian and who had trained his only son to run the merchant bank, Ormond & Sons, on precisely the lines Henry Ormond’s father had laid down some seventy years ago. They might now use new technology, electronic wizardry that made their work much easier, but in other ways nothing much had changed.
Their offices were in the City of London, within walking distance of the rambling outer walls of the Tower of London. From this floor James had a good view of the River Thames and a fascinating panorama of London, old and new. The glint of golden flames on top of the Monument to the Great Fire of London which had destroyed so much of the old city in the reign of Charles the Second, the dome of St Paul’s blocking in the skyline behind them, and in front of that the delicate spires of eighteenth-century churches crowded ever closer between the towering glass and concrete of late twentieth-century skyscrapers on both sides of the river.
James Ormond rarely looked at that view and barely saw it if he did occasionally glance out. He rarely looked up from his desk