Fire With Fire

‘Never mind what she says,’ Emma broke in, ‘Just tell me what’s got you in such a state. He didn’t ask you to pose for him did he?’ she guessed, darting a frowning look at her sister. Despite her plans to marry David Camilla had always had a yen for the glamour of a ‘Hollywood’ type existence. It was just as well she lacked the ambition to do anything other than daydream about it, Emma decided, hiding her relief at Camilla’s vigorous shake of her head. Camilla simply did not have the determination to succeed in such a dangerous world.

‘No … no … nothing like that.’ She bit her lip. ‘Promise you won’t be cross, and that you won’t breathe a word to David. He’ll never marry me if he finds out.’

‘Good heavens, what on earth have you done?’ She asked it light-heartedly not wanting Camilla to see her concern. Snippets of gossip she had heard and read about Drake Harwood were coming back to her. He had made it the hard way, grafting for every penny of the first few thousand pounds he made; working on a building site until he had enough to start up his own contracting firm. From then on he had gradually built up his empire until now at thirty-four he was considered one of the shrewdest and most dangerous businessmen around.

Macho magazine was just a small part of that empire, she recollected, something he had acquired when he took over Scanda Enterprises. She recollected reading somewhere that it had a pretty poor circulation and that he had been challenged by a rival magazine owner to beat their figures.

No doubt the whole thing was simply a publicity ploy she reflected cynically, certainly the supposed ‘rivalry’ had gained them both a good deal of newspaper space, but how much of an interest he intended to take in what was only a small part of his empire she didn’t really know. Certainly if he intended to use girls like Fiona as his models he wouldn’t do much to improve circulation.

‘So, you went to this party with Fiona,’ Emma pressed, ‘and…’

‘And I don’t remember anything else until the next morning,’ Camilla gulped tearfully, ‘when I woke up in a strange bedroom and …’

‘An even stranger man in bed beside you?’ Emma supplemented drily. ‘Mrs Turner’s going to love that.’

‘No … no I was in bed on my own … in a room of my own,’ Camilla protested. ‘I must have had too much to drink … either that or there was something in them, but Emma, I was so frightened … I just had to get out of that house … I kept thinking what if David could see me now, so …’

‘So …’ Emma prompted.

‘Well, I was still fully dressed, so I just got up and went downstairs. There was no one about, but there was a car outside—a red Ferrari, and the keys were in it … so I … I took it…’

‘You did what?’ Emma stared at her. ‘But Camilla you don’t drive. You’ve always hated it … you don’t have a licence …’

‘I know, but I was so terrified of being found there … I daren’t ring for a taxi … I had to leave … and I do know how to drive … but the car was so big …’

Closing her eyes Emma forced herself not to interrupt.

‘Don’t tell me,’ she said at last. ‘You hit something?’

‘A stone bollard,’ Camilla admitted. ‘You see it was very early in the morning—there wasn’t any traffic, but I saw this milk cart coming and I panicked. I hit the kerb and then this bollard …’

‘And …?’

‘I just got out and ran. Eventually I found a taxi, and I went back to the flat … Fiona wasn’t there, but when she came in I told her what had happened, and she told Drake Harwood, and he’s threatening to sue me for stealing his car and smashing it up …’

Fresh tears started to fall. ‘It will be in all the papers and everyone will know I spent the night there. David will find out and he’ll never marry me … His mother wouldn’t let him.’

Emma suspected that she was right. She gnawed thoughtfully on her lower lip, silently condemning both her sister and Fiona as a pair of stupid fools.

‘Haven’t you been to see Drake Harwood, and tried to explain? I’m sure if you told him the full story …’

Camilla shuddered. ‘You haven’t met him. He’s dreadful … So uncouth. Fiona thinks he’s exciting … but I didn’t like him. I couldn’t go and see him Emma, I just couldn’t … but his solicitor has already written to me. He wants me to pay for the damage to his car, otherwise he’s going to sue … and I can’t afford it.’

‘So what do you want me to do about it,’ Emma asked, already mentally bowing to the inevitable.

Tears were transformed into a radiant smile as Camilla turned towards her. ‘Oh Emma, I was hoping you would help me. Couldn’t you go and see him … Explain …’

‘Explain what?’ Emma asked drily. ‘That you don’t want your mother-in-law to know that you spent the night in one of his beds and then stole his car. … And what about paying for the damage Camilla?’

‘He doesn’t need the money, he’s filthy rich,’ Camilla said sulkily, ‘he’s just doing this because I wouldn’t pay any attention to him …’

‘Ah … You mean he fancied you and you gave him the cold shoulder? Umm, I can see that in those circumstances he might not be prepared to let you off the hook so lightly.’

‘But you will try and do something … you will go and see him?’ Camilla pleaded. ‘There’s still a month to go to the wedding and this letter says if I don’t pay for the damage within seven days, legal action will be taken.’

The man could always simply be trying it on, Emma thought, but then given his reputation and his tough upbringing it might not be wise to assume so. ‘Camilla are you sure this marriage to David is what you really want,’ she asked slowly. ‘You know you ought to be able to tell him about this, to …’

‘To ask him for several thousand pounds, a month before we get married?’ Camilla asked bitterly. ‘Yes I could tell David, Emma, but he would tell his mother and I could just imagine her reaction. You know she doesn’t want him to marry me, and yes, I do want to marry him. Can’t you see, I’m not like you, I don’t want a career or to be independent. I just want to live quietly and comfortably…’

The accent probably being on the latter, Emma thought drily, but refrained from saying so. ‘Let me look at the letter,’ she requested.

She read it quickly, sifting through the legal verbiage to the nitty-gritty, and when she had done so, she could see why Camilla was in such a panic. Drake Harwood wanted and intended to have his pound of flesh. Well she would just have to try and find some means of persuading him otherwise.

‘You won’t tell him the truth will you?’ Camilla begged. ‘I wouldn’t put it past him to tell one of his newspaper friends and then it will be all over the papers.’

‘I hardly think the fact of your crashing his car merits such coverage Camilla,’ Emma told her mildly. ‘You’re getting things a little out of perspective.’

‘You don’t know how furious he was about his car.’ She shuddered. ‘Fiona says he had only just bought it … You haven’t met him Emma. You don’t know what he’s like. He isn’t like us. He’s…’

‘The proverbial rough diamond?’ Emma asked, her mouth twisting. ‘Oh grow up Camilla and don’t be so silly, otherwise you’ll end up like Mrs T.—a dyed-in-the wool snob. I’ll go and see him for you, and I’ll do what I can to calm him down. How do you intend to pay him back though? Could you manage monthly instalments from the allowance David is giving you?’

‘I suppose so … I don’t suppose you could persuade him to forget the money completely … I mean,’ she wheedled, when Emma’s mouth compressed, ‘it isn’t as though he needs it.’

‘Maybe he doesn’t need it, but you do owe it to him Camilla,’ Emma told her bitingly, ‘and in your shoes I should be only too anxious to pay it back and get it off my mind …’

‘Oh you always were too “goody two shoes” to be true,’ Camilla snapped crossly. ‘David says you’re a real schoolmarm type and that that’s why you’ve opted for a career instead of marriage …’

‘Oh does he?’ Emma was thoroughly incensed, both by her sister’s stupidity and by her smug assumption that once Emma had done her dirty work for her she could forget all about her responsibility for the accident.

‘Well, let me tell you that I’d choose a career over marriage to David any day of the week … he’s about as exciting as … as cold rice pudding …’

She regretted the words when Camilla got up and ran out of the kitchen, telling herself that she should not have taken her irritation out on her sister. Camilla was so absurdly sensitive to criticism, so much so that she occasionally wondered if the younger girl didn’t use her ‘sensitivity’ as a weapon to get her own way. She glanced down at the solicitor’s letter again, and frowned. She might as well get the ordeal over as quickly as possible. She picked it up and went through to her father’s shabby study, quickly typing out a letter on his ancient machine, requesting an interview with Drake Harwood.

She had to go to London next week for her interview anyway, and with a bit of luck she might be able to combine the two appointments. She only hoped for Camilla’s sake she was able to come to some arrangement with him. He couldn’t be expected to forego the cost of the repairs altogether, and Camilla was selfish and blind to think he should, but if she could persuade him to accept payment by instalments … if she could perhaps explain the reasons behind Camilla’s rash behaviour. She sighed, remembering that her younger sister had bound her to silence. She would just have to play it by ear, she decided, sticking a stamp on the envelope and sealing it.

‘Now remember, don’t try any clever stuff, just be your natural self.’

Emma grimaced as she listened to her boss Robert Evans, giving her instructions concerning her forthcoming interview. ‘And remember we’ll all be rooting for you here. You’ve got more than a fair chance Emma… You’re goodlooking, poised, intelligent, and you’ve got a personality of your own that comes across on the screen.’

Emma knew that everything he said was true, but even so she felt tensely anxious. She wanted to succeed at this interview, as much for Robert’s sake as her own. He had been the one to give her first ‘on screen’ chance when she came to Television South. He had helped and encouraged her giving her the self-confidence to project herself well. He was forty-five and a burly, dark-haired man with a pleasant sense of humour and a keenly ambitious drive. Emma liked and admired him, and knew that if she had not been the person she was, or if her liking and respect had been less strong she could quite easily have been persuaded into an affair with him.

She admired him for his faithfulness to his wife—a quiet, serene woman she had met on several occasions. The temptations in a job like his must be never-ending and yet from somewhere he found the strength to resist them. Emma liked that in him. Her own strong moral code was due more to her own inner beliefs than being a vicar’s daughter—their father had never tried to impose his faith on either her or Camilla; perhaps because she had had to grow up without a mother and be responsible for Camilla, Emma had formed her own moral code, based on her observations of life around her.

Her own self-respect was all important—without it she believed it was impossible for any human being to function properly. After all one had to live with oneself and her keenly honed ability to be self-critical was far sharper than any outside criticism she might have to face. An affair with a married man would be both messy and ultimately painful, but apart from that she could never feel completely comfortable in a relationship with someone else’s husband, and then there was always the nagging doubt that having been unfaithful to her, how could he be expected to stay faithful to a mere mistress … No … such a role was not for her. She was acutely distrustful of sexual attraction; people so often mistook it for ‘love’ with disastrous results. She herself had never met a man she wanted so intensely that the need to make love with him over-rode everything else. Camilla thought her cold, even frigid, Emma knew differently but she respected her body sufficiently to listen to what it told her; and it told her it would never be happy with anything less than the best.

She had had menfriends; often dating people who worked for the television company, but always terminating the relationship when it threatened to get too intense. She had the reputation of an ambitious career woman, but it didn’t worry her. Her career was important to her because it was a way of proving to herself her own ability but if she ever met a man who could fire both her emotions and her body; someone to whom she could give love and respect and who felt the same way about her, she suspected that all the energy she poured into her career would then go into her relationship with him. Sometimes the inner knowledge of her own intensity worried her; everyone thought she was so cool and controlled, but she didn’t have chestnut hair for nothing. Her emotions were there all right, it was just that she had learned young the wisdom of leashing them under her own control.

She gave her boss a brilliant smile. ‘I think everything’s under control … right down to a new outfit for the big occasion.’