A Matter Of Trust

‘I’ve already warned her to expect us.’

Leigh had always been able to coax her into doing what she wanted, Debra admitted as she got into Leigh’s car and secured the seatbelt.

Elsie Johnson’s house was the next but last in a row of substantial Victorian houses in the suburbs of the city.

Leigh parked outside it with a flourish of gear-changing and sharp braking that made Debra wince a little.

All the houses in the row had short front gardens enclosed by a low communal wall, and from what Debra could see all of them were well maintained. It was the sort of quiet, respectable middle-class area that one would not normally have associated with the kind of situation Leigh had described to her, but if the man was as cold-blooded in his deliberate seductions as Leigh had implied then he probably found the area’s respectability an asset.

‘He won’t be in now,’ Leigh told Debra as she saw her glancing at the end house. ‘He’s taking Ginny out for the day. Her parents are afraid to refuse to let her see him in case she leaves home before they can help her to see just what kind of man he is.

‘At seventeen, she’s still barely more than a child still…at least, she is compared with him, a man in his mid-thirties. I hate that kind of man.’

‘Yes,’ Debra agreed vehemently. ‘So do I.’

She followed Leigh up to the front door.

Elsie Johnson had obviously seen them arrive because she opened the door before they could knock.

Half an hour later, as they drove away, Elsie having assured herself that it would be safe to leave her home in Debra’s care, Leigh turned to Debra and thanked her.

‘I suspect she thinks you’re much more trustworthy than me. You always did have the gift of inspiring confidence in people.’

‘Probably because they realise that, unlike you, I’m not going to do anything rash or reckless,’ Debra told her with a smile.

Leigh laughed.

‘I’ve got the tape and everything else you’ll need in the boot. I’ll give them to you when I drop you off. It will only be for a couple of days. I’ll be back from London on Wednesday. I really am grateful to you, Debs. If we can get this contract to vet job applicants for Driberg’s it will make all the difference to us.’

Debra pulled a face.

‘I’m not sure if I approve of large companies using private agencies to vet potential employees.’

‘I understand how you feel,’ Leigh agreed. ‘But it’s a fact of commercial life these days, and if we don’t get the commission then someone else will, and I have two growing daughters to support. Don’t tell me that none of your clients has ever hinted that you might help them find a loophole in the tax laws,’ Leigh added.

‘We aren’t that kind of firm,’ Debra told her firmly. ‘The advice we give our clients is always strictly within the terms of the law.’

Or at least it had been, Debra reflected later on when she was on her own and thinking over her conversation with her stepsister.

Would that continue to be the case now that the small old-fashioned firm she had worked for for the last three years had been amalgamated with a much more modern, thrusting Chester offshoot of a large multinational firm of accountants?

The multinational was putting in a new partner. None of them had met him yet, although they had all heard the rumours and whispers about how dynamic he was; about how determined he was to ensure that the new amalgamated firm would run efficiently and profitably. There had been no suggestion that jobs would go, but still there was an air of tension and uncertainty in the office, and Debra had been rather looking forward to her short break, especially since over the past few months she herself had been particularly busy, having had to take on the workload of a colleague who had left unexpectedly and not been replaced, in addition to working for her own clients.

She had planned to spend her time doing nothing more mentally demanding than working in her garden and redecorating her spare bedroom, but wryly she admitted that she could not really have refused to help Leigh out. Despite their differences, the two women were good friends, and Debra knew that in the same circumstances Leigh would have been the first to offer to help her.

The arrangement was that she would drive over to Elsie Johnson’s in the morning just before Elsie was due to leave for her sister’s, and that she would stay at the house until Leigh returned from London to relieve her on Wednesday.

If her stepsister’s business continued to expand they would need to think of taking on extra staff, Debra mused as she packed. Both Leigh and her partner were adamant about preferring to take on only other women. They were not a tough, macho agency, Leigh had pointed out when Debra had gently reminded her that in doing so they could be accused of discrimination. The reason they were getting so many small commissions from other women was perhaps because it was a female-based agency and because, as women, they understood all too well how other members of their sex felt about male betrayal.

‘Jeff helped out and he’s a man,’ Debra had pointed out.

‘That was different,’ Leigh had overruled her, adding that Jeff only helped them out as a favour. He didn’t work for them.

In the morning Debra was careful to make sure that she arrived at Elsie Johnson’s exactly on time.

As she had expected, she found the older woman was packed and waiting for her, a relieved expression touching her face as she opened the door to her.

Inside the house was shadowy and dark, the hall filled with old-fashioned Edwardian furniture.

Mrs Johnson was meticulous about security. Both outer doors had security chains as well as double locks; all the windows had locks as well, and Mrs Johnson herself reminded Debra of a timid little field-mouse, all nervously twitching whiskers and tensely anxious little body.

She would ring every evening, just to make sure that everything was all right, she told Debra before getting into her waiting taxi.

It was just as well that Leigh’s clients were wealthy, Debra reflected later as she made herself a cup of coffee in the immaculately tidy kitchen. It was they who were paying Mrs Johnson for the use of her house, and paying her very generously as well.

Cautious and orderly by nature, Debra did not, as she suspected that Leigh would have done, find the immaculate tidiness of the house constricting.

She had brought all her own food supplies with her, and once she had had her coffee she unpacked her case in the small spare bedroom.

From upstairs she had a completely unrestricted view of the next-door house and rear garden, and if she left the landing window open she could, additionally, hear cars arriving at the front of the house.

Her instructions from Leigh were relatively simple. All she had to do was to monitor and then log down on the tape-recorder the details of anyone who visited the house.

Leigh had also provided her with a camera.

‘Just in case we really get lucky and he brings one of his other women here,’ Leigh had told her.

In any other circumstances Debra might have balked a little at such an intrusion of anyone’s privacy, but she agreed with Leigh that a girl of seventeen, madly in love and totally obsessed with her lover, was in a dangerously vulnerable situation, and she could well understand Ginny’s parents’ concern for their daughter.

Before she had left, Elsie Johnson had told her nervously that there had been a good deal of commotion next door during the previous evening, raised voices, doors slamming, that kind of thing; but today all was peace and silence.

Debra had brought some work with her to help pass the time…not office work.

The previous summer she had accidentally become involved with a semi-private, semi-council-sponsored scheme which had involved individuals giving some of their spare time to young teenagers whom the council had in care.

It had been through a friend of a friend that Debra had originally heard of the organisation, and now she was a very committed member of the group, giving up a couple of evenings a month plus odd days at weekends to spend at the home.

The object of the exercise was to provide the teenager with someone with whom they could hopefully form a bond on a one-to-one basis, someone who, while not being their parents or having any authority over them, could help them with their problems in an adult way.

Debra was still in touch with the fourteen-year-old Amy, who was now back with her mother, and she was presently trying to form a bond with Karen, who had been taken into care having been abused by her stepfather, a withdrawn and obviously desperately unhappy girl. It made Debra’s heart ache with compassion and sadness to see the look of despair and misery in her eyes.

If and when she ever managed to break through Karen’s isolation, she hoped that she could do as she had done with Amy—take Karen out for small treats and help her to re-establish herself and to feel less institutionalised.

Now Debra was making a list of the problems she confronted in trying to make contact with Karen, and opposite these problems she was writing down the solutions she might find to them.

It wasn’t easy; she found working with the teenagers emotionally and mentally draining, but the counselling and courses that all members of the group took had helped her to understand the children’s problems and how best she could help them.

It was seven o’clock before she saw any sign of movement from next door.