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If something did fall on him out of the sky she wondered if it would surprise him. Well, it would of course, but how much? Nothing much seemed to surprise Marc Hammond. Not much surprised Robin either; she was used to the unexpected happening around her. Half the time she didn’t know why it happened, and most of the time she didn’t know how to deal with it. He’d said that she was a time bomb, but of all the men she had ever met Marc Hammond was the one who seemed to pack so much dynamic energy that she couldn’t imagine life would ever be calm around him.
The difference was that he could handle trouble. In court he had the reputation of rarely losing a case, of being a born fighter, a born winner. But he’d lost the little tussle with Maybelle today. A stubborn old lady had got her own way and that made Robin smile.
Just for a moment she hugged herself, her shoulders shaking with silent laughter. Then she sobered rapidly, because what on earth was there to grin at in having Marc Hammond lined up against her?
She knew where she was as soon as she woke. She had slept soundly and if she had dreamed she couldn’t remember. But she remembered where she was and what had led up to her being here, and she was going to be so careful today. She wanted to keep this job, and from here on it wouldn’t be Robin’s fault if things didn’t work out.
Elsie met her in the hall when she came downstairs. ‘I take up her tea eight o’clock most mornings,‘ said Elsie. It was ten to eight now. ‘There’s tea in the kitchen and he wants to see you in the garage.’
‘Marc?’
‘Of course.’
What did he want with her now? He had agreed yesterday to take her on trial, and the trial had hardly started yet so she must still be in the clear, unless he had decided he couldn’t have her in the house after all.
She had butterflies in her stomach as she went from the kitchen across the narrow passage to a door that led into the garage.
There was plenty of room in there for two cars. Furthest away was Marc Hammond’s dark red Mercedes. The door of Mrs Myson’s car was open and Marc Hammond stood beside it. ‘You wanted to see me?’ she asked.
‘Yes. This is the car you’ll be driving.’
Mrs Myson’s, of course. He got in on the passenger side and leaned over to open the door for the driver, and she gulped. ‘Am I chauffeuring you?’
He said wearily, ‘You don’t imagine I’ll let you take the wheel with her until I’ve seen for myself how you handle a car? And I’ll want to see that licence.’
She got in reluctantly. ‘Of course you will,’ she said. ‘I wouldn’t expect you to take my word for anything.’ She must not snap. She must stay cool and speak civilly.
‘Put it down to my lifestyle,’ he said. ‘I don’t take much on trust.’
He would be a poor lawyer if he did, but this was personal, and, considering she didn’t get that much practice, she was a good driver. She’d show him she could ferry Maybelle Myson safely and without fuss wherever she wanted to go.
She checked the controls. Five-gear manual; she’d learned on one of those. She was not as composed as she would have liked to be; she was slightly psyched up, so that her cheeks were flushed and she had to remember to breathe slowly.
She didn’t have to look at him though. She would keep her eyes on the road and concentrate on her driving. He pressed the button to open the garage doors and she turned on the ignition, went into gear, braked in front of the garage and moved smoothly up the curved drive to the entrance. She stopped there to check the road. Morning rush-hour traffic was streaming past. It could be a little while before there was a safe opening and she sat, hands on the wheel. ‘Which way?’ she asked.
‘Into town.’ Good, she thought; it would be easier to slip into the traffic than to cut across it.
But suddenly she was hit by a staggering jolt of physical awareness of the man sitting beside her. Being in the same room as Marc Hammond was traumatic enough. In a car the nearness of him hit her so hard that she nearly reeled from it.
She was fiercely conscious of the length and the strength of his body. It felt as if he was leaning across her and it was his arm, not the seat belt, holding her down, his hand on her breast.
‘Waiting for your favourite colour?’ he drawled, and there must have been times she could have moved out if she hadn’t been so poleaxed. There was a gap now and she fumbled the controls, jerking and juddering into the traffic stream, and she heard him sigh at that.
She was on a straight road, going along by the river, heading for the roundabout just outside the town, She kept a steady speed and a safe distance behind a red car, but she was gripping the wheel so tightly that her knuckles whitened. She imagined she could hear him breathing. She couldn’t, but she could smell the faintest tang of aftershave that seemed to be going right to her head, and the heavy breathing was her own.
She tried to block him out but that didn’t work. Just by sitting close to her, his eyes rarely leaving her, he was turning her into a gibbering wreck. She had never felt such an urge before to beg, Leave me alone...give me space...
‘Elsie hasn’t met you before, has she?’ he asked her.
‘No, I’m sure we haven’t met.’ She was surprised that her voice sounded nearly normal.
‘Just seen you around and wondered who you are?’
‘Maybe,’ she said.
‘She could have seen your photograph in the Herald.’
Approaching the roundabout, traffic slowed to a snail’s pace, and she nearly bumped the red car in front. She braked just in time and stared stonily ahead.
Earlier this summer there had been a festival of sound and light in the old airfield—a three-day rave with enough noise and excitement to annoy some of the more conventional locals. And when New Age gatecrashers had turned up, and the police had had to deal with the hassle, there had been enough action to fill several pages in the local weekly.
Robin had gone along that day with friends, for the music. They’d paid for their tickets, danced and enjoyed themselves, and Robin, who was gorgeous to look at and a graceful dancer, had caught the eye of a press photographer. Although she and her group had been well away from the skirmishing her picture was taken and she hadn’t realised that.
There had been no names given in the caption on the front page but there had been Robin Johnson, hair flying, making—in one of Aunt Helen’s favourite phrases—‘a right spectacle’ of herself.
Everyone seemed to have seen it. Marc Hammond obviously had, and probably believed that Robin had been stoned out of her mind, although she had never touched drugs in her life.
She went very slowly round the roundabout. She wasn’t driving well but she was taking special care, and she had enough spirit to enquire tartly, ‘Do you keep my press cuttings?’
There was only that photograph but it sounded blasé, and he said, ‘If I’d known Maybelle was going to take this unaccountable fancy to you I might have done. Or at least followed your progress. It wouldn’t have been difficult. You must stand out wherever you go.’
So do you, she could have told him. I’ve seen you when you haven’t seen me, and got out of the way before you looked round because you always make me want to run.
They were in the high street now and she asked, ‘Shall I drop you at the office?’
She wondered who would remember the few days she’d worked there when she drew into the car park to put Marc Hammond down, but he said, ‘Go onto the motorway.’
‘How far are we going?’
‘I’m not abducting you.’
It was nerves that made her gulp, ‘No danger of that while I’m at the wheel.’
He said drily, ‘No danger any time.’
He made her feel stupid. She couldn’t rid herself of the stress that was turning into creeping paralysis, so that, by now, she was driving like a nerve-racked learner. All through town cars were jostling for position, slowing down as passengers jumped out, then gaining speed again, all in fits and starts, and her hands and feet were clumsy. She could feel sweat on her forehead, and the palms of her hands were slippery, as he sat beside her, saying nothing, not even in body language, when she screeched a gear change.
She had driven through this town and manoeuvred slickly with the rest of them. She had never had an accident. But this morning she was waiting for a crash to happen, and yet she was supposed to be a natural driver.
Uncle Edward had taught her. Not in this town, where they might have been recognised, but waiting for Aunt Helen to be out of the way then driving to other towns, like conspirators, with Robin tucking her hair under a headscarf, giggling while she did it.
Uncle Edward had got her through the test and since then she had driven him sometimes when he was alone, and had driven friends’ cars. She loved driving. Well, she had done until this morning, but this trip was drawn-out torture.
Somehow she managed to get through town and onto the motorway without scraping Mrs Myson’s car. She was going by the book, trying to pretend it was her driving test again, although with Marc Hammond in the seat beside her it felt more like that old Arabian tale—the executioner with you while you carried a brimming chalice through the streets. One drop spilt and you were dead. One wrong move and the chop.
She stayed in the slow lane for just over a mile and she thought, At this rate this could go on for hours. She enjoyed speed and she was safe at the wheel. She pulled out when she could, and she put her foot down, and the engine purred as she took them up to the legal limit.
But she was still jumpy, and when a box shifted on the seat behind she half turned her head. The car swerved slightly and a driver alongside gave a furious honk on the horn.
Marc put a quick, steadying hand over hers on the wheel and said, ‘Let’s live,’ and she jerked as if she had been burned. Then she snatched her hand from his and the words shot out.
‘Oh, God, you make me so nervous.’
‘I wonder why?’ he said, but it was because he crowded her, knocking her off an even keel, and that was something else that was not fair. ‘Turn at the next exit and go back,’ he said, and she was so sure she’d failed the test and had nothing more to lose that there was an immediate improvement in her driving.
It was not up to her usual standard but she was giving an adequate performance and he said nothing. Neither did she, until she was driving into the garage. Then she said, ‘Do I get a little list telling me why I’ve failed?’ as if she didn’t care, although, of course, she did.
‘No,’ he said, ‘but don’t put in for your advanced test.’ That was nearly a joke. ‘I suppose you’re better than she is. Not that that’s saying much.’
He wasn’t sending her packing yet, although he was rating her pass a very near thing. She got out of the car as he climbed into the Mercedes and drove smoothly away up the drive, stopping to check the road. She stepped outside before the garage doors closed and she watched him now, and thought how she would love to hear a good loud thump and crunch when he did turn out of the drive. It didn’t happen, of course, and, shut out of the garage, she went through the side-gate to the back of the house.
It was a big garden—a wilderness tamed and tended, the turf cropped to velvet softness, flowers in irregular beds, trees growing in a copse. She would almsot have worked here for nothing to have had the freedom of this garden, with the old red-brick wall around it and the seat under the horse-chestnut tree.
The back door led into the kitchen, where Elsie was sitting at the table with a man about her own age and a younger woman. The man had a mug of tea, the women had willow-pattern cups in front of them, and Elsie said, ‘This is Robin. She’s going to drive Miss Maybelle around. Morag and Tom.’
Tom looked like a gardener and Robin said, ‘That is a beautiful garden.’
‘Aye,’ said Tom.
‘She’s in the breakfast room,’ said Elsie. ‘She said to tell you as soon as you got back. Been with Marc, have you?’
‘Yes,’ said Robin. If it had been less of an ordeal she would have said he had been checking her out as a driver, but she had made such a mess of that that she didn’t want to talk about it.
‘First door down,’ Elsie said, and as she went out of the kitchen Robin saw them all lean forward, putting their heads together, and she was sure they would all start talking about her.
Mrs Myson was sitting at a table near a window overlooking the garden. She had two opened letters and she looked up, smiling, as Robin walked in. ‘Tea or coffee?’ she said.
‘What have you got?’
‘Tea.’
‘That would be nice.’ The cups and pot were here. There was muesli, toast, marmalade, and that was fine. Anything would have been good with the garden out there and Mrs Myson sitting opposite instead of Aunt Helen.
As she sipped tea Robin said, ‘I’ve just had a driving test. He wanted to be sure I was safe.’
‘I’m sure you passed with flying colours.’
‘I only just passed. I really am quite a good driver but I didn’t do so well this morning. I was nervous.’
Mrs Myson seemed to understand that. ‘Marc can be overpowering and he is a very good driver himself. He’s a rally driver.’ It wouldn’t have surprised Robin if he’d been a racing driver. ‘He pilots a plane too,’ said Mrs Myson.
Robin said gaily, ‘He must take some keeping up with. How do his girlfriends manage?’ She wasn’t really interested, just joking.
Mrs Myson’s eyes danced. ‘Often they don’t, but they try, my dear, they try.’ Her laughter was infectious and Robin laughed with her.
After breakfast, with Mrs Myson in the passenger seat, Robin was an excellent driver. She judged her speeds, foresaw other drivers’ antics, gears slipped in smoothly and she even found parking spaces.
The first stop was the cat rescue centre, home of the woman who ran the accounts, to deliver a box of tinned cat food. Mrs Myson stayed in the car while Robin knocked on the front door and handed in the box to a plump woman with a pussy-cat smile.
‘This will be very welcome,’ said the woman, and waved to Mrs Myson, sitting in the car at the kerbside. ‘Thanks ever so much,’ she called, and said to Robin, ‘She’s a wonderful woman.’
‘I think so,’ said Robin.
After that she drove Mrs Myson around the country lanes until lunchtime, when they stopped at a thatch-roofed pub called the Cottage of Content. Neither had been there before but the name was inviting, and inside there were dark beams and white ceilings and walls, and they had a very good vegetable soup and fluffy omelettes.
When they’d finished their coffee Robin asked, ‘Do you want to go home now?’
Mrs Myson shrugged. ‘I suppose so, unless you’ve any other suggestions.’
‘Well, I would like to do some shopping.’ She had a month’s wages in advance in her purse. ‘I need some make-up, and I thought, perhaps, a dress.’
‘What a good idea,’ said Mrs Myson. ‘Broadway has some nice shops; we’ll go there.’
As they left the dining room more than one head turned to watch the tall, aristocratic old lady and the tall, beautiful girl.
They took their time wandering up and down the main road of the tourist town. They stopped to look into windows of antiques shops, art galleries, upmarket boutiques. Robin bought inexpensive make-up, undies and a T-shirt, then spotted a dress that seemed reasonably priced in a window and asked, ‘What do you think?’
‘Let’s see it,’ said Mrs Myson.
It was just what Robin wanted—simple and stylish, drop-waisted, a perfect fit that rested lightly on her hips, in a silky material in a coppery shade. In the same shop she bought a pair of low-heeled black patent leather pumps, and when she went to pay was told that Mrs Myson had done so already.
This had to stop. After the bracelet this was all it needed to convince Marc Hammond that Robin was a grabber. She said, ‘Oh, no!’ but Mrs Myson had already left the shop and the car was only a few minutes away.
Robin said, ‘I can’t let you do this,’ when she caught up with her. ‘I must pay myself.’
‘We’ll talk about it later.’
Later Robin would hand over the money to Mrs Myson and say thank you, but it was getting late and high time that Robin was driving her home. In the car Robin asked, ‘Are you all right? This hasn’t been too much for you?’
‘I’ve really enjoyed myself,’ said Mrs Myson. ‘Some very enjoyable things have happened to me this afternoon. In the dress shop the manageress said to me, “What a pretty girl your granddaughter is.”’
‘Oh!’ Robin found herself blushing. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘I was flattered.’ Mrs Myson laughed delightedly. ‘And when we were walking along almost every man we passed turned to look again. I saw them reflected in the windows.’
‘Oh, that,’ said Robin.
‘You’re used to it,’ Mrs Myson teased, ‘but it’s a long time since it happened to me. Women always turn and stare when I’m with Marc but today the men did, and if they thought I was your grandmother perhaps they thought, That’s where she got her good looks from.’
Robin suspected that the old lady was talking nonsense to stop her arguing about the bill in the dress shop, but it was fun, and although Robin was determined to settle that account later the journey passed in listening to a chat show on the radio, with Mrs Myson saying every five minutes or so, ‘Don’t they talk a load of rubbish, these politicians?’
The Mercedes was in the garage when Robin backed her car in. ‘Marc’s home,’ said Mrs Myson happily, and all the fizz went out of the day for Robin. The door from the garage going into the side-passage was unlocked, and they came into the house through the kitchen.
‘We’re home,’ Mrs Myson called, and Elsie came down the stairs at the same time as Marc Hammond came into the hall.
‘You haven’t been overdoing it?’ Elsie sounded accusing and Mrs Myson smiled.
‘We’ve had a lovely time. We went shopping in Broadway.’
‘So I see,’ Marc Hammond said wryly. Robin was carrying two large red shiny bags with ‘Sandra’s’ in black flowing script across them. ‘Not for you, I imagine.’
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