Lovestruck

Sam gave her a cold stare. ‘You wouldn’t think that was funny if you were a man!’

Sobering, Natalie nodded. ‘Sorry, yes, I know it can be serious for adults—poor Mr Sartfield. Let’s hope he doesn’t get any long-term effects.’

‘I spent a couple of hours with him only last week,’ Sam said, his hand rubbing one side of his face. ‘Mumps is very contagious, isn’t it? I wonder when the infectious period starts?’

‘I should ring your doctor,’ Natalie said, getting up.

‘I think I will. Hey, where do you think you’re going?’

‘Lunch.’ She wanted to get away before he could stop her, but in her hurry she tripped over her chair and couldn’t stop herself sprawling helplessly across the carpet To her fury she heard Sam laugh, then he bent, put an arm round her waist and hauled her to her feet.

‘That will teach you not to be in such a hurry!’ he said, still holding her, looking down into her face.

The fall must have knocked all the breath out of her body; she could feel her heart driving like a steamhammer inside her chest. She couldn’t meet his gaze; she simply pulled free from him. The last thing she wanted was for Sam to think she was flushed and breathing fast because of him! It was only the shock of falling over. Nothing to do with him at all.

She had dropped her bag when she fell. Bending to pick it up, she crossly realised that she had made an enormous run in her tights, right down the front from her knee to her slender ankle.

‘Oh, no!’ she muttered. She couldn’t go around with a run like that in her tights for the rest of the day. Before she went down to the canteen for lunch she would have to go out to buy some new tights.

‘What’s the matter?’ Sam asked, looking down at her legs. ‘You’ve got a run in—’

‘I know,’ she said curtly. ‘Can I go to lunch now?’

‘Oh, very well! But be back on time!’

She didn’t bother to answer that. It was already ten past one; she was taking her full hour, whether he liked it or not.

There was a useful corner shop just across the street, which did a good line in cheap tights. Although Natalie was well-paid she had learnt thrift at her mother’s knee and was always looking for ways to save money. She needed to; she had a mortgage on a small studio flat whose windows looked down over the harbour. That took far too much of her monthly salary and Natalie had to budget carefully where clothes and food were concemed. She never bought anything without being sure she couldn’t get it cheaper somewhere else.

Emerging two minutes later, tights safely stowed in her jacket pocket, Natalie ran back to the radio station as a car, a little red Ford saloon, drew up outside. Not even glancing at it, Natalie hurried past, intending to change her tights in the powder room next door to the canteen, only to stop in her tracks as someone called her.

‘Natalie!’

She spun, her sleek dark hair swinging against her cheeks, and felt her stomach sink as she recognised the woman emerging from the red car. Her once dark hair silvery, her figure no longer quite so slim, although she dressed in a traditionally elegant fashion that made a tendency to weight less obvious, Mrs Erskine was still a very attractive woman.

She had lost her husband when Sam was only sixteen—why had she never married again? Natalie wondered vaguely as she said, ‘Hello, Mrs Erskine! Sam has been trying to get in touch with you all morning!’

Tartly, Sam’s mother said, ‘I should think so, too! He ought to be ashamed of himself. Why did I have to hear about your engagement from someone else? He should have rung me first thing this morning! I tried ringing him but there was never any reply.’

But she smiled, too, and for the first time Natalie realised that her eyes were almost identical to Sam’s, a brighter grey, perhaps, yet the shape of them exactly the same. The bone structure of her face was more delicate, but there was a strong similarity in the way their eyebrows had that winged angle and the way they both smiled.

Putting an arm around Natalie, Mrs Erskine kissed her warmly on both cheeks. ‘But it’s wonderful, Natalie! I couldn’t be more pleased. If he had let me choose a girl for him it would have been someone just like you! He has gone out with some quite appalling girls in the past, but Sam’s taste has obviously improved!’

Laughing, flattered, secretly very touched, but knowing she had to quickly get in her explanation, Natalie stammered, ‘That’s very nice of you, Mrs Erskine, but...’

‘My dear, I mean every word of it!’

Flushed, Natalie said, ‘Thank you, but I’m afraid you’ve got the wrong impression...you see, it isn’t true—’

She never got to finish the sentence. Mrs Erskine interrupted again, laughing. ‘Of course it is, Natalie! You’re perfect for him. You’ve been the perfect secretary; he says so himself. Whatever sort of fool Sam has always been where women were concerned, at least he had the good sense to value you! And so did we... Me and my girls, Jeanie and Marie, we said to each other when we first met you that you would make Sam a wonderful wife, but we never dared hope he’d have the sense to ask you. I’m so thrilled that he finally did.’

She paused, and, pink as a geranium, Natalie sadly told her, ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Erskine, but we’re not...not engaged. It was just a joke last night, at the party, you see—we’re not engaged at all.’

Mrs Erskine stared back at her incredulously. ‘Not?’

Natalie shook her head, looking away. ‘I’m afraid not,’ she said, wishing she were somewhere else. Why had she let Sam talk her into breaking the news to his mother?

‘But it said in the newspaper...’ Mrs Erskine seemed to be having a problem taking it in.

Natalie sighed. ‘I know, there were some press people at the party—we had forgotten they were there—they weren’t in on the joke. They took it seriously... they thought it was for real...but we were just having fun and...’

‘Fun!’ Mrs Erskine erupted furiously. ‘I don’t see anything funny at all. I’ve just spent the morning organising a party for you—an engagement party. I’ve rung dozens of people...friends, relatives...and caterers, and ordered flowers and a big cake, and booked at the hotel... Hours of work, talking on the phone, driving around to see people! And now you tell me it was just a joke!’

Natalie whispered, ‘I’m so sorry.’ If Sam had appeared at that moment she thought she would have hit him with something very hard. How dared he do this to her? This was his mother, he had caused the problem—why was Natalie having to cope with the consequences?

‘Sorry!’ Mrs Erskine looked at her with rage in her eyes. ‘Sorry! What good is an apology to me? You’ve made me look a complete idiot, both of you. Everything is organised...’ She put both hands to her hair as if she was about to pull it out by the roots. ‘Oh, heavens, what on earth am I supposed to do? Ring everyone back and say, Sorry, it was just a joke? Everything is cancelled, just forget it? Do you really think they...the hotel, the florist, the caterer—any of them...are going to be amused?’

Put like that, Natalie could think of nothing to say. She bit her lip, gazing at Sam’s mother with embarrassed sympathy.

‘They will probably demand that I compensate them for their disappointment. A cancellation fee is quite usual these days, to stop people wasting their time—and I could hardly blame them if they suspected me of being a silly time-waster, now, could I?’

Feebly, Natalie murmured soothingly, ‘I’m sure they’ll understand when you explain.’

‘Of course they won’t! It’s going to be very awkward making all these calls—quite apart from the time wasted on both sides I’m going to feel very small.’

Before she could stop herself, Natalie said, ‘I’ll ring them and explain’ This afternoon, from the office—and as to any cancellation fees, well, if there are, Sam can pay. This is all his fault, anyway. Let him pay.’

She couldn’t keep a note of bitterness out of her voice and his mother looked sharply and thoughtfully at her.

‘You’re right’ Let him pay!’ she slowly said, then looked at her watch. ‘I tell you what, Natalie, let’s go and have lunch somewhere nice—how about the Sea King’s Cave, that seafood restaurant down on the harbour? Their seafood platter is delicious, and brilliantly presented on crushed ice with seaweed dressing-I love it, and so low-calorie, too. We can have lunch and talk, make out the list of people who must be rung immediately—all the professional people. I’ll deal with the family and the friends myself. I couldn’t ask you to make those calls.’

‘I’d love to, but Sam wants me back in the office by two, and there wouldn’t be time, I’m afraid,’ Natalie regretfully told her, glancing at her own watch. Twenty past one now! She would have to rush just to have lunch in the canteen—let alone eat down at the harbour.