Beyond Compare

‘Yes. Drew Hammond. He and Rosamund have dated since they were at school, just like Howard and me. I thought they would have married years ago. He’s bound to be devastated. Mind you, I always thought they were an odd couple. Rosamund likes the social scene and plenty of glitz, and of course her parents encourage her. Her mother wants to join the local county set. Drew isn’t a bit like that. He’s a farmer… Very down to earth.’

‘Sounds interesting,’ Jan commented. ‘I like down-to-earth men.’

‘Oh, everyone likes Drew, but he’s hardly the stuff to make your pulses race.’

‘Well, if you feel you have to put in an appearance and congratulate the happy couple, I suggest you do so dressed for the occasion. Plenty of glitz and to-hell-with-you glamour!’ she elucidated when Holly looked questioningly at her.

‘I haven’t bought a new dress in ages. I was saving up for…’

Her lower lip trembled and Jan said hastily, ‘No more tears, love. You’re better off without him, honest. I never liked him. Look, we’re fairly quiet this week. Why don’t we both take half a day off tomorrow and go shopping? I need something new myself. Luke’s got an important client to entertain next week, and he wants me to dazzle him with glamour.’

Luke was Jan’s husband. A solid, dark-haired man of medium height with a smile that could raise female temperatures at fifty yards. Holly had initially found his very male sexuality slightly intimidating, a fact that hadn’t escaped Jan. Her new employee’s shyness had come as a pleasant change after a succession of very forward young women who had spent more time flirting with her husband than doing their work. As an accountant, Luke had a major interest in his wife’s business, but he also had other clients—important and very wealthy clients, as Holly knew.

Two days later, her new dress carefully packed away in its nest of tissue paper, Holly climbed into her small car for the journey north to Cheshire.

The last time she had made this journey had been with Howard when they went home last Christmas. Now it was October. Next year he would be marrying Rosamund. She wanted a June wedding, he had told Holly, sublimely unaware of her own feelings.

Her small foot depressed the accelerator slightly. Surely he must have known how shocked she would be? They had always been a couple, right from leaving school. She had followed him to university and then later to London, both of them working and thriving on the busy atmosphere of the capital. All right, so maybe he had treated her casually at times—breaking dates, forgetting to phone—but his job as a salesman took him abroad at short notice. Anyway, their relationship was of such long standing and so secure… So secure, in fact, that she had lost him to someone else. To that scheming, horrid Rosamund Jensen with her baby-blue eyes and blonde curls.

Holly flipped her own dark bob back off her face with a defiant gesture. She hadn’t slept properly since Howard had broken the news to her, and she had lost weight. Still, that was no bad thing. She wasn’t plump, precisely, but there was no way she was as ethereally slender as Rosamund. But Howard couldn’t love her, she reflected stubbornly. He was just dazzled by her… dazzled by her parents’ wealth as well.

She bit her lip, remembering how shocked she had been to hear him reeling off an impressive list of Rosamund’s parents’ possessions. The villa in Spain, the boat, the cars… Howard, of all people, who had always been so amusingly witty about people like the Jensens.

Well, she might not have wealthy parents, she might not have blonde hair and blue eyes and stand five foot nine in her bare feet, but in her new dress, the vivid red silk showing off her curves, the skirt just short enough to be cheekily eye-catching, she would at least have the self-confidence to pretend that she was. However, as she drove, her full mouth drooped and her hazel eyes grew pensive. What hurt most of all was that Howard had said nothing to warn her. Not one word. No, he had let her continue to believe that he loved her. And that hurt, but, womanlike, she found excuses for him, blaming her own thoughtlessness in not realising that something was wrong, in not giving him the opportunity to be honest with her.

But she hadn’t given up yet; she would get him back. He would soon grow tired of Rosamund and her parents, she reflected fiercely. So fiercely, in fact, that a fellow driver, overtaking her, fell back in startled confusion, thinking the frown was for him and rather startled to see it on such a pretty and feminine face.

While she might be naïve where the male sex was concerned, when it came to the practicalities of life, and especially where they involved her career, as Jan had noted with approval, Holly was totally competent.

She had planned her trip home to Cheshire with the same meticulous attention to detail with which she planned her working days.

She had over a month’s holiday due to her, having volunteered to work all through the summer when the rest of the small staff wanted time off, partly because Howard had also been too busy to take a holiday, and partly because it was her nature to want to be helpful to others. She had seen how busy Jan was, and since they had now entered a period of pre-Christmas calm Jan had been quite happy to agree to Holly’s making a long weekend of the trip.

The small village had no hotel, but the local pub let rooms occasionally, and since Holly was well known to the landlord and his wife they had quite happily agreed to put her up.

She left London after the rush-hour had eased, conscientiously ringing Jan first to check that no rush job had occurred between her leaving the office the previous evening and setting off this morning.

‘If I had just two more girls like Holly, running this business would be a doddle,’ Jan commented to her husband when she replaced the receiver. ‘She’s a real treasure, and not just because she’s a first-rate artist.’

‘Mmm… with quite a flair for design as well.’

‘You know there must be a good-sized untapped market in the north for our kind of service. I’ve been thinking… wonderingif we should perhaps consider opening up somewhere like Chester, and putting Holly in charge.’

‘Expanding, you mean? Well, it’s certainly worth thinking about. Why don’t you talk it over with her when she comes back? It might be a good idea to send her north for a few days so that she can canvass around and find out the best venues.’

‘Yes, I think I will. I just hope this weekend isn’t going to be too difficult for her. What on earth she sees in that—that idiot, I’ll never know. I’ve told her she’s better off without him, but somehow or other she’s managed to convince herself that he’s the love of her life. Do you know that she’s been going out with him, if you can call it that, virtually since leaving school? Apart from the odd casual date at university, he’s been her only serious boyfriend. It seems incredible when you think how sexually sophisticated the average teenager is these days.’

‘Stop worrying about her. You’re like a mother hen with one chick.’

‘Yes… I suppose you’re right.’

Holly would have been touched had she known of her employer’s concern. She liked Jan and found it easy to work for her. She was something of a perfectionist, and the other girls often rebelled against her strictness, but Holly, educated at an old-fashioned local school with firm ideas about discipline and authority and fully backed up by local parents, found nothing to cavil at in her employer’s attitude.

It was a pity that her own parents were in New Zealand. She could have stayed at home with them, and been cosseted by her mother’s spoiling. She hadn’t seen them since they had emigrated, and that had been over a year ago. Perhaps she ought to think about saving up and visiting them next year.

The thought brightened her mood a little, her spirits lifting a little further when she found that the motorway was relatively free of heavy traffic.

She made good time, not bothering to stop for lunch until she was off the motorway, stopping her car on a leafy back road which curled its way from Nantwich to Chester, tucking the neat little Escort carefully off the road on a convenient patch of gravel.

The car belonged to the company and was provided for her exclusive use. She kept it immaculate both inside and out, polishing it lovingly each week, and having it regularly serviced, unlike the other girls.

She had visited the garage the previous evening, filling up with petrol and having her tyres checked. One of the garage staff had done that for her, and, surprised by his thoughtfulness, she had given him a tip.

The crusty bread and fresh cheese she had brought with her tasted heavenly eaten in the warmth of the late October sun. Beyond the hedge stretched fields in varying shades of dun gold and soft green until they merged into the violet grey of the Welsh hills.

The fields closest to her, empty of their crops, looked stubbly and bare; as she ate, a rabbit emerged from a small stand of trees and sat up on its hind legs looking round, until the sound of a tractor in the distance made it scuttle for the safety of its burrow.

The air, free of petrol fumes, tasted clear and fresh, and Holly felt the familiar calm that being in her childhood habitat always brought.

She loved London: its vitality, its busyness, its unique blend of ancient and modern, its frantic pace that never seemed to slow down. But she loved this as well: this peacefulness and tranquillity, this sense of time moving at a much more relaxed pace. Close her eyes and it was easy to imagine the dull tramp of Roman legions on their way to Chester.

Reluctantly packing away the remains of her lunch, she got back in the car. Home was less than half an hour away now.

The village had remained surprisingly unchanged, perhaps because it wasn’t close enough to any of the industrial centres to attract commuters.

Her own father had made a comfortable living for himself as a solicitor in the nearby town of Nantwich, and, although her parents had never aimed to be in the same wealthy bracket as Rosamund’s, her childhood had been a comfortable one with a happy blending of firmness and indulgence that had left her with an appreciation of the merits of being financially independent.

Holly didn’t look for wealth from life; to be rich held no appeal for her. What she wanted was marriage to a man she loved and who loved her; a man who would understand and appreciate her need to keep her independence and fulfil herself through her career.

When and if they had a family, that career would take second place, but would never be totally abandoned. A woman these days needed something of her own, and Holly liked the feeling of pride that came with her work.

Of course, when she had visualised this future, she had fully expected that Howard would be that husband.

But Howard was engaged to someone else.

It was a mistake. It had to be. Howard would come to his senses and realise that she was the one for him; and when he did, she would be waiting for him.

She restarted the car and pulled out into the lane. Fifteen minutes later she was approaching the outskirts of the village, the familiar pattern of the countryside of her childhood and teenage years taking shape around her. Those fields to her right belonged to Drew Hammond, Rosamund’s exboy-friend. How was he feeling right now? Much the same as she was herself, Holly guessed.

Deep in thought, she didn’t see the sprinkling of glass in the road until it was too late, grabbing hold of the wheel of her small car as she desperately tried to steer it, despite its punctured tyre.

Her actions were automatic and instinctive, but even so she couldn’t help expelling a sigh of relief when her car actually slid to a halt.

Not one, but two tyres were punctured, she discovered. The most sensible thing to do would be to walk to the village and ask the garage to collect her car for her. The safety triangle was in the boot underneath all her luggage, but conscientiously she opened it and rummaged for it.

Totally engrossed in what she was doing, and still suffering slightly from shock, she was deaf to the sound of the approaching vehicle, and didn’t even realise she was no longer alone until she heard a calm male voice asking, ‘Need any help?’

‘Drew!’ She looked at him in astonishment.