Special Treatment

What did it matter now? There could be nothing between them any more. She had made that abundantly clear to him.

Her flat wasn’t large enough for David to stay. It only had one small bedroom, so he had returned to Leicester, telling her that he would be back at the weekend and that they would sit down and make plans for their future together.

Only, before he came back, she had had another visit. This time, from David’s wife. Susannah knew her by sight, a small blonde woman, who looked permanently harassed.

The sight of her body, bloated by a very obviously advanced pregnancy, had shocked Susannah even more than her visit. Wordlessly, she had allowed her to walk into the flat, to sit down and to tell her in a savagely bitter monotone that David was demanding a divorce and leaving her with their unborn child. At first, Susannah hadn’t been able to take it all in. David’s wife pregnant … carrying his child? She wasn’t completely naïve; she knew that men—for a wide variety of reasons—made love to women for whom they felt little or no emotion. But this child must have been conceived before she had left for London, and now David wanted to pretend that it had never happened. He wanted to turn his back on his wife and child and simply walk away from them. In that moment, Susannah knew that no matter what she felt for him, she couldn’t marry him.

Looking into Louise’s white, bloated face, she wasn’t sure which of them she pitied and despised the most: Louise, for wanting her husband so desperately that she was prepared to beg like this for him, David, for being so weak that he had allowed his wife to become pregnant and then discarded her, or herself, for not realising the weakness that lay behind that charming smile of his. Well, she realised it now. Aunt Emily had once said to her, when Susannah asked her why she had never married, that she had never found a man she considered worthy of her respect and her trust. Susannah had laughed then, as teenagers do, not understanding what her aunt was telling her, but she understood it now. She loved David, and wanted him, but she did not respect him; she could never lean on him, never trust him.

The interview that followed was burned into her heart for all time. David had pleaded with her, wept tears of frustration and regret, but somehow she managed not to weaken. She had no idea whether or not he intended to go back to his wife. Somehow, she felt that he would, and she sincerely pitied the other woman for all that her life with him would probably be.

She told herself that she had had a narrow escape, that she was the fortunate one, that hers had been the choice, but somewhere deep inside her she still ached and wept for the love she had lost.

And it had been in that mood of bitter self-contempt and misery that she had gone to the Sunderlands’ ‘do’ on Saturday evening.

The Sunderlands were the closest thing she had to godparents. Neil Sunderland had been at school with her father. She had spent many holidays with the family, both at home and abroad, and now that their own two sons were married and living away from home, one in Canada, the other in Australia, she made a point of visiting Neil and Mamie just as often as she could.

Neil had retired earlier in the year from the merchant bank of which he was a director, and they had given up their London house and moved to a small village on the outskirts of Gloucester. Susannah had visited them there several times during the summer and, even though it was the last thing she felt like doing, she knew she would have to go to Mamie’s sixtieth birthday party.

Paul and Simon and their respective wives and children were all coming over for the occasion. Susannah was expected to stay the weekend; the house was a large one, with an extensive garden, and Susannah already knew all about the lavish plans for Mamie’s party.

Mamie was half-American, which accounted not just for her name, but very probably for her love of life as well. She and Aunt Emily did not get on, and no wonder, Susannah reflected wryly—they were as different as chalk and cheese. She could not imagine any girl brought up by Mamie worrying about the ethics of going to bed with a man to whom she was not married!

She got up clumsily, cursing the lack of space in her office; uncomfortably aware of the fact that using Aunt Emily for an excuse for her lack of sexuality was taking an easy way out. She could feel the starkness of a mood of deep introspection crowding in on her, like a winter’s afternoon obliterating the light. How she resented this side of her nature, this dark, and sometimes frightening, gloom that came down over her without warning, engulfing and possessing her.

No doubt, like her temper, it went with her hair, and so perhaps it did, part of a Celtic heritage, like her pale delicate skin and stormy green eyes.

And it hadn’t helped having Hazard Maine ripping into her like that. It was the worst of bad luck that he should have spotted that yawn she had tried to smother behind her hand.

Of course, she hadn’t found what he was saying boring—quite the contrary. How could anyone be bored when listening to a diatribe against the skills of an editorial staff among which one numbered? It hadn’t just been to cover up that she had accused him of wanting to behave like a traditional new broom. She had been so happy working for Richard. Susannah scowled, wondering for how long she would be given the opportunity to continue working for the magazine. Hazard Maine didn’t like her. To judge from his lecture to them this morning, he didn’t like any of them. He had attacked the magazine, throwing them all off guard, warning them that he intended to make changes. But surely those cold grey eyes had rested on her face just momentarily longer than they had on anyone else’s?

To her horror, she had had to stifle another yawn. This time, he hadn’t even attempted to soften his contempt.

‘Work comes first for anyone who wants to succeed on this magazine, Ms Hargreaves,’ he had told her crisply. ‘That being the case, I suggest you either change your job—or your lover.’

She had flushed scarlet, mortified by the ripple of amusement that ran through the room, and all too aware of the speculative glances of her male colleagues. She had a reputation for being cool and unapproachable. Her private life was something she never discussed at work, and with one short sentence Hazard Maine had created an image of her life-style that was totally false, and yet which she was completely unable to correct.

She knew why he had picked on her, of course. Her full mouth tightened angrily. He might be a big man in size, well over six foot and athletically muscled, but he certainly wasn’t in spirit. To hold what had happened on Saturday against her like that … Of all the bad luck! She had never imagined—but then why should she? Neil and Mamie moved in completely different circles from those she inhabited. She had never dreamed …

But then, the weekend had gone disastrously wrong, right from the start …

She sat back in her chair, trembling.

CHAPTER TWO

SHUTTING THE DOOR of her flat behind her with her shoulder, Susannah put down the box she was carrying. Her arms ached and she flexed them gratefully. A quick cup of coffee, change into her travelling clothes and then she could be away.

Trust Mamie not to warn her until the last minute that it was going to be a formal ‘do’. White tie and tails, no less! She had been lucky to be able to find a dress to fit her at such short notice. She was only a size eight, and the dress hire shop she had rung up in a state of panic had told her that they stocked very few extra-small sizes.

The dress she had chosen was quite plain. She wasn’t in the mood for dressing up in anything eye-catching. She wasn’t in the mood for anything other than her own company, if the truth were known, but if she failed to turn up Mamie would pick and question until she had got at the truth, and the last thing she wanted was for worldly, sophisticated Mamie to know what a fool she had made of herself.

They had an odd relationship—sometimes friends, sometimes enemies—and there were times when Susannah envied Mamie’s daughters-in-law the oceans that separated them from her inquisitive tongue. And yet she knew Mamie loved her.

‘Don’t be frightened of life,’ she was always urging her. ‘Jump in and enjoy it.’

‘Susannah isn’t the jumping-in type. We British aren’t,’ Neil had palliated, and yet somehow even his kind words left a slight sting.

A sting that was intensified now. How much of her rejection of David had to do with what she genuinely believed to be right, and how much was because she was terrified of the implications of committing herself to him? Was it because Emily had always held her firmly at a distance that she herself was unable to allow anyone to get close, really close to her?

Angry with herself, she hurried into her bedroom, pulling a brush through her tangled curls, and quickly changing out of her jeans and sweatshirt into the separates she had bought for herself the previous week.

At first sight, pink and black might not seem the best choice of colours for a redhead, but she had the colouring to get away with them, and the pink was of that soft, intensely feminine variety that made those who could not wear it gnash their teeth with envy.

The dress, her case and the present she had bought for Mamie were all speedily packed into her Fiesta, the flat locked up and the alarm set. She should be there in time for lunch. The afternoon would probably be taken up with a multitude of last-minute tasks for Mamie, and then there would only be the evening to be got through. Thank God, Mamie knew nothing about David … David … Even now, part of her wished …

What? she derided herself. That by some magic process he could miraculously be free? But he wasn’t free, and she didn’t think she could live with herself or him, knowing that he was prepared to turn his back on his child. Susannah wasn’t sentimental where children were concerned, but she had been brought up to recognise the importance of facing up to one’s responsibilities. And, if she was honest with herself, she didn’t know how she would cope with loving a man who had already previously committed himself to another woman.

Stop thinking about him, she admonished herself. It’s over …

Easier said than done, but one look at her face would alert Mamie to the fact that something was wrong, and then she would pry and question, and Susannah really didn’t think she was capable of dealing with Mamie’s curiosity, however well meant.

She tried to think about something else—about the praise Richard had given her for that piece on the siege victim. He had been enthusiastic and flattering about her talent. He had prophesied that she would go far. But Richard was leaving and Hazard Maine was taking his place. What would he be like, this American who had spent his life between continents, when he wasn’t reporting from some war-torn part of the globe?

She had read up his biog. They all had, once they had known that he was taking over the editor’s chair. He was thirty-four years old, ten years older than she was; unmarried. That had surprised her until she remembered that he had been a war correspondent, and war correspondents rarely married. He had edited papers in New York and Sydney, and now he was going to head Tomorrow, MacFarlane’s most prestigious publication.

Jokes had flown round the office about ‘wild colonial hicks’ and ‘clever New York hacks’, but none of them really knew what they were going to have to face. He had a formidable reputation; he was coming in with the power to hire and fire at will, to make his own rules and to do what he wished with the magazine. They had heard that much on the grapevine. Just as they had also heard that, at first, he had turned down the job, claiming that he was a newspaper man and that magazines, no matter how highly prized, did not interest him.

At least, that was the gist of what he had said. Rumour had it that his actual phraseology had been considerably more earthy!

Apart from being rather in awe of his professional reputation, Susannah had no strong feelings about Hazard Maine. She had run out of feelings of any kind. She simply felt she wanted to be left alone to pick up the pieces of her life. She knew that she was going to miss Richard. One or two of the staff had teased her about him, but no one who knew Richard could ever seriously imagine that his interest in her was anything other than professional.

Richard was very much in love with his wife. He had to be to give up a job he loved to take one in which he had very little interest but, as he had told Susannah, he felt he owed it to Caroline.

‘Newspaper men don’t make good husbands, she says, and she’s quite right. Now that the boys are growing up, they need me around. At the moment, I only really see them at weekends, and then not always as much as I should.’

Like her, Richard had been brought up with what was now considered an old-fashioned code of ethics. Susannah liked and admired him. She knew she was going to miss him, as a boss and as a mentor.

Neil and Mamie’s ‘new’ home was a seventeenth-century manor house, approached by a narrow curling drive that hid the stone façade with its mullioned windows from view right until the last moment.

Mamie, with typical American energy and enterprise, had had the inside almost completely gutted since moving in. Experienced and expensive designers had been brought in, and Susannah, who had rather liked the original shabby comfort of the place, was not particularly looking forward to seeing the changes they had wrought.

Several cars were already parked in front of the house, and she reversed her Fiesta into a small space left to one side of a large and very new-looking Jaguar saloon. She always parked next to new cars if she could. It meant the owners were likely to be that bit more careful about opening their doors on her paintwork, or so she always hoped.

The front door opened as she walked towards it and Mamie hurried out to embrace her. The soft tweed skirt, the pastel cashmere sweater, the pearls, all of them were perfectly co-ordinated, and so obviously chosen to fit in with their wearer’s background, that Susannah had to suppress a faint grin. Typical Mamie!

‘You’re too thin,’ she was told firmly. ‘And too pale. What have you been doing with yourself?’

‘Working,’ Susannah told her. ‘And, as for being too thin, I thought no woman could be that.’