‘True, but that doesn’t mean he won’t get good and interested if she plans to marry someone he doesn’t approve of.’
‘But why shouldn’t he approve of Cliff? Apart from being one of the nicest guys you could wish to meet, he’s well qualified, has a good job, and is more than able to support a wife.’
Elaine shrugged. ‘I have a feeling that he’ll need a lot more than that to be acceptable as husband material for Teresita. Just consider—since we’ve known her, how many paying jobs has she had?’
‘Only one,’ Nicola acknowledged. ‘The couple of weeks she spent here as receptionist.’
‘Right,’ said Elaine. ‘And were we surprised that other offers didn’t come her way—considering that as a receptionist she was a walking, talking disaster area?’
Nicola grinned, remembering the mislaid messages, misunderstandings, and interrupted telephone calls which had distinguished Teresita’s brief sojourn at the reception desk. No one had the least idea how she had ever got the job while the regular girl was on holiday, or how she had lasted in it for longer than five minutes, although Elaine had commented that the management had probably been too dazed by the whole experience to fire her.
‘No, we weren’t in the least surprised,’ she said, and hesitated. ‘But she does work.’
‘Social work—with the nuns—unpaid,’ Elaine pointed out. ‘And very estimable too. So, where does she get the money to pay her share of the rent, and buy all those gorgeous clothes that she has—all those little numbers from the boutiques in the Zona Rosa? Not to mention her jewellery.’
‘What about her jewellery? It’s rather flamboyant, but …’
‘It’s entitled to be flamboyant. It’s also real,’ Elaine said drily.
There was a small, shaken silence then Nicola said, ‘You must be joking.’
‘I promise I’m not. I have an uncle who’s a jeweller in Santa Barbara, and I spent some of my formative years learning to pick the fake from the real stuff. I’m not making any mistake.’
‘My God!’ Nicola put her hands to her face. ‘She lent me—she actually lent me her pearls that time we all went out to dinner.’
‘I remember,’ Elaine nodded. ‘They looked good on you.’
‘That isn’t the point,’ Nicola almost wailed. ‘Suppose I’d lost them—or they’d been stolen?’
‘You didn’t, and they weren’t, and they’ll be insured anyway,’ Elaine said reasonably. ‘But we’re getting away from the subject here. What I’m saying is that Teresita isn’t just a nice girl we met, who shares our apartment and cooks up the greatest enchiladas in Mexico. She’s also a rich lady, and if this guardian of hers knows what he’s doing, he’ll want to marry her money to more money, because that’s the way things are, so Cliff and she may have some problems. That’s all.’
It was enough, Nicola thought unhappily. She said, ‘Teresita’s of age, so there’s nothing to stop her getting married, if she wants to, and she does want to.’
‘Don’t sound so fierce! Okay, so she and Cliff are Romeo and Juliet all over again, and she is a very sweet gentle girl. No one would argue. But she’s led a very sheltered life. She was practically brought up by nuns, after all, and she’d still be living in that hostel if we hadn’t invited her to move in with us. I’m amazed that she ever agreed anyway, and she still trails round to the convent to see if there’s any mail for her each day because she’s scared her guardian may find out that she’s left—because basically she knows in her heart that if he cracks the whip she’ll jump, whether she’s of age or not.’ She paused, giving Nicola a quizzical look. ‘And if she dare not tell him she’s sharing an apartment in a good part of town with a couple of gringas, then just how is she going to break the news that she’s engaged to a norteamericano?’
‘It’s rather different,’ Nicola argued. ‘If he’d forbidden her to leave the hostel, she’d have been unhappy perhaps, but it wouldn’t have been the end of the world. But if he makes any objection to her marrying Cliff, then it will break her heart. She might have yielded to pressure over the apartment issue, but not over Cliff. I’m sure of it.’
‘Well, you have a touching faith in her will power which I don’t share.’ Elaine turned back to her paper-shredding. ‘I guess we’d better get on with the packing. The place already looks as if we’d moved out.’
‘Yes,’ said Nicola with a little sigh.
She hadn’t expected to enjoy her stay with Trans-Chem. She knew very little about the technicalities of chemical plants and their construction and was happy in her ignorance. She’d just been desperate for some kind of contract which would take her away from Zurich, and ensure that she wasn’t there to see Ewan marry the stolid blonde daughter of his company chairman.
Nor had she really expected to get the job, although she knew that the fact that she already spoke Spanish, garnered from an intensive course at the Polytechnic where she’d undergone her secretarial training, would stand her in good stead. Trans-Chem were after all an American company, and most of their personnel were recruited in the States, as Elaine had been.
But the job was offered to her, and she accepted with a growing excitement which helped to alleviate some of the pain and humiliation Ewan had made her suffer. She had fallen so deeply in love with him that it seemed impossible for him not to share her feelings. In fact, he did share them. He admitted as much, but it made no difference to his plans. Ewan intended to marry well, and a mere secretary earning her own living didn’t fill the bill as a potential bride at all. Although he did have other plans for her, as Nicola had shamingly discovered when finally he had been forced to tell her that his marriage to Greta was imminent.
She’d sat in the circle of his arms, feeling as if she’d been turned to stone, while part of her mind registered incredulously that he was telling her that his marriage needn’t make any difference, that it could even be an advantage. When the promotion which his future father-in-law had promised as a certainty finally materialised, then he would have Nicola transferred to his office as his own secretary. There would be business trips which they would make together, he’d said, and he would help her to find a bigger flat where they could be together as often as possible.
She sat there in silence, listening to his voice, to the confidence in it as he made his sordid plans, and wondered why he should have thought she would ever agree to any such thing, when they had never even been lovers in the generally accepted sense. She had often asked herself what had held her back from that ultimate commitment, and could find no answer except perhaps that there had always been a deep, barely acknowledged instinct which she had obeyed, warning her not to trust too blindly, or to give herself without that trust.
When she was able to think more rationally about what had happened, she knew she ought to feel relief that she hadn’t that particular bitterness to add to her disillusionment, but it had seemed cold comfort then, and still did.
She had come to Mexico determined not to make a fool of herself again, and her bitterness had been her shield, not merely against the Mexican men whose persistent attempts to flirt with her had at first annoyed and later amused her, but also against the mainly male American staff of Trans-Chem, many of whom would have shown more than a passing interest in her, if she had allowed them to.
Sometimes she wished she could be more like Elaine, who uninhibitedly enjoyed a series of casual relationships, and wept no tears when they were over. Nicola was aware that some of the men had privately dubbed her ‘Snow Queen’, and although it had stung a little at the time, she had come to welcome the nickname as a form of protection.
What she hadn’t