Vacancy: Wife of Convenience

Had Colly secretly hoped that her father would still be as happy when Nanette backed away from whatever sort of relationship they had, then she was again staggered when, far from the relationship ending, Nanette showed her the magnificent emerald ring Joseph Gillingham had bought her, and declared, ‘We’re getting married!’

For the moment speechless, Colly managed to find the words to congratulate them. But when, adjusting to the idea that Nanette was to be mistress of her home, Colly mentioned that she would find a place of her own, neither her father nor Nanette would hear of it.

‘I’d be absolutely hopeless at housekeeping,’ Nanette twittered. ‘Oh, you must stay on to be housekeeper,’ she cooed. ‘Mustn’t she, darling?’

‘Of course you must,’ Joseph Gillingham agreed, the most jovial Colly had ever seen him. ‘Naturally I’ll continue to pay you your allowance,’ he added, with a sly look to his intended, making it obvious to Colly that her allowance—not huge by any means and which, with increasing prices, went to supplement the housekeeping—had been discussed by them.

The whole of it left her feeling most uncomfortable. So much so that she did go so far as to make enquiries about renting accommodation somewhere. She was left reeling at the rent demanded for even the most poky of places.

So she stayed home. And her father and Nanette married. And over the next few months her father’s new ‘kitten’ showed—when her husband was not around—that she had some vicious claws when things were not going quite her way. But she otherwise remained sweet and adoring to her husband.

Living in the same house, Colly could not help but be aware that Nanette had a very sneaky way with her. And within a very short space of time Colly was beginning to suspect that her new stepmother was not being true to her Joey. That Nanette plainly preferred male company to female company was not a problem to Colly. What was a problem, however, was that too often she would answer the phone to have some male voice enquire, ‘Nanette?’ or even, ‘Hello, darling.’

‘It isn’t Nanette,’ she would answer.

Silence, then either, ‘I’ll call back,’ or, ‘Wrong number.’

Colly could not avoid knowing that Nanette was having an affair when some months later she answered the phone to hear an oversexed voice intimately begin, ‘Who was the wicked creature who left me with just her earrings beneath my pillow to remind me of heaven?’

Colly slammed down the phone. This was just too much. Nanette, who was presently out shopping, had, so she had said, been out consoling a grief-stricken girlfriend until late last night.

When a half-hour later Nanette returned from her shopping trip Colly was in no mind to keep that phone call to herself. ‘The earrings you wore last night are beneath his pillow!’ she informed her shortly.

‘Oh, good,’ Nanette replied, not in the slightest taken aback to have been found out.

‘Don’t you care?’ Colly felt angry enough to enquire.

Nanette placed her carriers down. ‘What about?’

‘My father…’

‘What about him?’

Colly opened her mouth; Nanette beat her to it.

‘You won’t tell him,’ she jibed confidently.

‘Why won’t I?’

‘Is he unhappy?’

He wasn’t. Never a very cheerful man, he seemed, since knowing and marrying this woman, to have had a personality transplant. ‘He’s in cloud-cukoo-land!’ Colly replied.

Nanette picked up her clothes carriers. ‘Tell him if you wish,’ she challenged, entirely uncaring. ‘I’ve already—tearfully—told him that I don’t think you like me. Guess which one of us he’s going to believe?’

Colly very much wanted to tell her father what was going on, but found that she could not. Not for herself and the probability that, as Nanette so confidently predicted, he would not believe her, but because he was, in essence, a much happier man.

So, awash with guilt for not telling him, but hoping that he would not blame her too much when, as he surely must, he discovered more of the true character of the woman he had married, Colly stayed quiet.

A year passed and her father still adored his wife. So clearly Nanette was playing a very clever game and he had no idea that his wife had a penchant for flitting from affair to affair.

That was until—about six months before his sudden totally unexpected and fatal heart attack—Colly first saw him looking at Nanette with a little less than an utter doting look in his eyes.

He appeared only marginally less happy than he had been, though, but did during his last months spend more time in his study than he had since his marriage.

Her father had been a design engineer of some note and, though in the main largely retired, she knew from the top executives and first-class engineers who occasionally called at the house to ‘pick his brains’ that he was highly thought of by others in his specialised field.

And then, completely without warning, he died. Colly, in tremendous shock, could not believe it. She questioned the doctor, and he gravely told her that her father had suffered massive heart failure and that nothing would have saved him.

She was still in shock the next day, when Nanette sought her out to show her the will she had found when sorting through Joseph Gillingham’s papers. It was dated a month after his marriage, and Colly soon realised that Nanette had been more looking for his will than sorting through, especially when, triumphantly, Nanette declared, ‘What a little pet! He’s left me everything!’ And, without any attempt to look sorry, ‘Oh, poor you,’ she added. ‘He’s left you nothing.’

That was another shock. Not that she had expected to be left anything in particular. Naturally Nanette, as his wife, if she were still his wife by then, would be his main heir. Colly realised she must have assumed her father would go on for ever; he was only sixty-eight, after all. And while he was not enormously wealthy, his income from some wise investing many years before was quite considerable.

It was two days after her father’s death that Colly received a fresh shock when Nanette barged into her bedroom to coldly inform her, ‘Naturally you’ll be finding somewhere else to live.’

Somehow, and Colly hardly knew how she managed it, she hid the fresh assault of shock that hit her to proudly retort, ‘Naturally—I wouldn’t dream of staying on here.’

‘Good!’ Nanette sniffed. ‘You can stay until after the funeral, then I want you out.’ And, having delivered that ultimatum, she turned about and went from whence she came.

Feeling stunned, Colly couldn’t think straight for quite some minutes. She had no idea what she would do, but heartily wished her uncle Henry were there to advise her.

Henry Warren was not a blood relative, but her father’s friend, the ‘uncle’ being a courtesy title. She had known him all her life. He was the same age as her father but, newly retired from his law firm, he had only last week embarked on an extended holiday. He did not even know that his friend Joseph had died.

Not that the two had seen very much of each other since Joseph’s remarriage. Her father’s trips to his club had become less and less frequent. And Henry Warren seldom came to the house any more. It was because of their friendship that her father had always dealt with a different firm of solicitors, believing, as he did, that business and friendship did not mix. But Colly’s first instinct was to want to turn to Uncle Henry.

But he was out of the country, and as her initial shock began to subside she realised that there was no one she could turn to for help and advice. She had to handle this on her own. She had no father, and no Uncle Henry—and Nanette wanted her out.

Hot on the heels of that realisation came the knowledge that she barely had any money—certainly not enough to pay rent for more than a week or two on any accommodation she might be lucky enough to find. That was if prices had stayed the same in the two years since she had last looked at the rented accommodation market.

She was still trying to get her head together on the day of her father’s funeral.

She clearly recalled seeing Silas Livingstone there—his name now known to her. How Nanette managed to look the grieving widow while at the same time trying to get her hooks into Silas Livingstone was a total and embarrassing mystery to Colly. He and another tall but older man had gone to his car and had left straight after paying their respects at the crematorium anyhow, so Nanette’s invitation to ‘come back to the house’ had not been taken up.

Having applied for a job with Livingstone Developments, Colly had done a little research into the company. And, on thinking about it, she saw that it was not surprising that the firm should be represented at her father’s funeral that day. Livingstones were not the only big engineering concern to be represented.

She came out of her reverie to watch Ellen Rothwell handle whatever came her way. Secretarial work, it was fast being borne in on Colly, was more than just being able to type!

She had known that, of course. But supposed she must still be suffering shock mixed in with stress, strain and grief for her father, as well as a helping of panic thrown in, that, on seeing the advertisement for a multilingual senior secretary, and believing she could fulfil the multilingual part without too much trouble, she had applied.

She watched Ellen Rothwell for another thirty seconds, and realised more and more that she must have been crazy to apply. Colly got to her feet, ready to leave, but just then the door to Silas Livingstone’s office opened and there he was, a couple of yards away—so close, in fact, that she could see that his eyes were an unusual shade of dark blue.

‘Come through,’ he invited, standing back to allow her to precede him into his large and thickly carpeted office. She was five feet nine—and had to look up to him. She had been about to leave, but found she was going into his office. He followed her into a large room that housed not only office furniture but had one part of the room—no doubt where he conducted more relaxed business—given over to a coffee-table and several padded easy chairs. He closed the door behind them and indicated she should take a seat to the side of his desk. ‘I was sorry about your father,’ he opened.

So he knew who she was? ‘Thank you,’ she murmured.

‘Columbine, isn’t it?’ he asked, she guessed, since he had her application form in front of him, more to get her to feel at ease before they started the interview.

‘I’m called Colly,’ she replied, and felt a fool when she did, because it caused her to want to explain. ‘I thought, since I was applying—formally applying—for the position with Mr Blake that I should use my full name—er—formal name.’ She was starting to feel hot, but did not seem able to shut up. Nerves, she suspected. ‘But Columbine Gillingham is a bit of a mouthful.’ She clamped her lips tight shut.