A Suitable Mistress

It was, she discovered as she stood in front of it later, larger than she had anticipated. For the first time she acknowledged a certain nervousness underneath the defiant desire to succeed.

She had expected something altogether smaller—a little building, in need of renovation because of its slow decline into debt. She hadn’t realised quite how drastic its kiss of life had been.

The office block was a large, three-storeyed building which seemed to consist mostly of glass—smoky-grey glass. There was a stream of people hurrying in. Suzanne stood for a while in the cool summer sunshine and watched the figures being absorbed one by one into the bowels of the glass building; then she took a deep breath and joined the throng.

She had brought her briefcase with her, partly so that she could carry in a couple of accountancy books and one law one, and partly because the briefcase had been given to her by her father as a present and she wouldn’t have dreamt of going into any job without it, even if the job had involved manual labour on a building site. It was her good-luck charm.

She laid it protectively on her lap as she sat in the reception room and waited to be summoned.

It was, she thought, very American in its decor, or perhaps the places where she had worked before—small, fairly stuffy offices—were just very English in their shabbiness.

There was a feeling of space and light and a great many plants everywhere. The three large paintings on the wall were all abstract, their colours strong and defined, red, orange and blue lines that swept across the canvases, conveying a message which, Suzanne thought, was lost on her. She personally preferred paintings which contained things that were recognisable—scenes of mountains or lakes or forests which seduced you into closing your eyes and imagining that you were far away from the hustle and bustle of the twentieth century.

To the far right from where she was sitting was a bank of four lifts. Angela Street, she thought, would emerge from one of those, and reluctantly she allowed herself to give free rein to the curiosity which had been gnawing away at her ever since she had drawn her conclusions on Dane’s relationship with Angela.

She had told herself that it was pointless speculating on the American, because she really couldn’t care one way or another whether he was sleeping with her, proposing to marry her, or even planning a brood of miniature Dane Sutherlands, but still she wondered what the other woman was like.

Would she be like the girls he used to bring back to the house? Small and pretty and with smiling, awed eyes that followed him around wherever he went?

Suzanne had observed them all from a distance, occasionally hearing more about them from her brother who had found it all wildly exciting, and she had hated them all.

She was still absorbed in her trip down memory lane when she saw a mousy-haired girl with earnest eyes approaching her, and she stood up and held out her hand.

‘Miss Street?’ she asked hesitantly, and the girl’s pale, thin face broke into a smile.

‘One of Miss Street’s secretaries,’ she explained, leading the way to the lift while Suzanne followed in her wake. ‘And she likes to be called Angela, by the way. She says that there shouldn’t be barriers between boss and secretary.’