Levelling The Score

‘Including Simon descending on me in person?’ Jenna asked drily.

‘Oh, he won’t do that, he’ll be on circuit. You know, travelling with the judges and things … how they do. He won’t be back in London for simply ages, and I’ll be back myself then …’

‘You’re sure this is only a holiday you and Peter are going on? You’re not running away to get married or anything like that, are you?’ Jenna demanded ominously.

‘Of course not! You know me, I don’t want to get married for ages yet.’

Jenna knew when Susie was telling the truth.

‘No, I just want time to get to know him properly, Jenna, without Simon popping up all the time and spoiling things. You wouldn’t believe what he’s been like these last few weeks … I think he must be watching my flat, because the moment Peter comes round, Simon arrives. I’m twenty-four years old, and I’ve got big brother watching over me as though I was a child. It’s ridiculous,’ Susie fumed, ‘especially when you think of the girlfriends Simon’s had. He hasn’t exactly lived like a monk,’ she finished darkly.

Jenna didn’t try to argue with her. Only the other day, there had been a rather spectacular exposé of the latest bright star on the legal world’s horizon’s involvement with the ex-wife of a government minister.

For intensely personal and private reasons Jenna had studied the article closely and the photographs that went with it.

She hadn’t needed her friend’s rambling description of the lack of changes in her brother’s appearance to know what Simon looked like. Susie had been right, the dark hair was untouched by grey, the firm mouth with its curving, full underlip still curled in the same mocking smile, and his eyes … those chameleon, challenging green eyes that should have belonged to her, still carried their same message of chilly warning.

The woman photographed with him had been like all the other women who had passed through Simon’s life; blonde, soignée, sophisticated and very, very beautiful.

Would he marry this one? The gossip press seemed to think so. It wasn’t like the high and mighty Simon to marry someone else’s cast-off, she thought acidly. If she pictured him with a wife at all, it was with someone young and malleable, someone he could mould to his own desired pattern of what a wife should be.

‘What’s wrong?’ Susie demanded, adding succinctly, ‘Your eyes have gone almost black, they only do that when you’re fuming with someone. Anyone I know?’

When Jenna shook her head, Susie heaved a faint sigh.

‘There must be something wrong with you, Jen,’ she accused. ‘Look at you, you’re the most gorgeous-looking creature,’ she said generously. ‘Men buzz round you like bees round honey, and yet you ignore them all. When we were kids, I always thought you’d be the one who grew up and got married young …’

‘When exactly is it that you’re supposed to be going off on this holiday of yours?’ Jenna asked, ruthlessly cutting through her friend’s reminiscences.

‘Today! This afternoon … God, I wish I could see Simon’s face if he discovers the bird’s flown,’ she said with a chuckle.

‘Don’t laugh too soon,’ Jenna advised her darkly. ‘It can always be arranged …’

‘You won’t betray me, Jen. I know that … Once Simon—’

‘I can’t see why you simply don’t tell Simon what you’re doing.’

‘Because if I do, he’ll try to dissuade me. You know what he’s like.’ Susie gave a heartfelt groan. ‘The problem is, I’m so used to doing what he tells me that I’m frightened I’ll go on doing it, even when it isn’t what I want … Simon can be so—so compelling at times.’

‘Hero-worship,’ Jenna scoffed. ‘You should have grown out of that years ago.’

‘You don’t know how lucky you are not to have any brothers or sisters. Just you and your grandmother, and she’d never force you into doing anything you don’t want to do.’

Jenna could have pointed out to her that there were methods of enforcing one’s wishes other than those adopted by Susie’s elder brother, but she refrained, sensing that Susie would never understand the gentle, tender pressure one old lady with a longing to see her one grandchild ‘settled down’, as she called it, could bring to bear on that same grandchild.

Long after Susie had gone, blowing her a string of kisses and promising to get in touch, Jenna remained sitting in her armchair.

Her flat was small and pin-neat, furnished by ‘bargains’ she had acquired through her job as personal assistant to a very dynamic and go-ahead interior designer.

If she had had any sense, any sense at all, she would have refused to help Susie. Simon Townsend could be a very powerful adversary indeed, as she already had good cause to know. She closed her eyes and lay back in the comfortable chair.

The summer she had been fifteen, she had fallen madly and very obviously in love with Simon Townsend, but it had very plainly been made clear just how impossible were the foolish dreams she had been dreaming …

Her adolescent crush on him had faded as adolescent crushes do, but it had left behind a sense of bitterness and resentment, and antagonism towards him that Jenna had never lost, and which had made her weary and cautious in all her dealings with his sex.

In her heart of hearts she suspected that she had agreed to help Susie in her crazy plan because she would enjoy the opportunity of thwarting Simon.

For all her dizziness, Susie could be extremely astute. If she said that her brother was trying to foist one of his friends off on her, then she was probably quite right. Simon had always had a decided inclination to meddle in the affairs of others, an irritating ‘I know best’ attitude it would give her a great deal of pleasure to squash.

This time he wouldn’t be dealing with an immature, gauche fifteen-year-old, but a woman of twenty-four, well able to use the brain God had given her, and not afraid of meeting any man on equal terms.

The phone call which had preceded Susie’s early morning Saturday visit had disrupted her entire day. She had planned to go home and see her grandmother, but now it was too late.

The Gloucestershire village where Susie’s parents and Jenna’s grandmother lived was a quiet, remote place, but she often missed it. Susie had been right when she claimed that she had always imagined that Jenna would settle down first.

As a teenager, she had wanted nothing more than to fall in love, marry and raise a family in the familiar environment of the village. But teenagers grew up, and now the idea of marriage had lost a good deal of its lustre.

She had seen too many of her friends’ marriages dissolve under the pressure of modern-day living, and had grown to cherish her single state. No one in her wide circles of friends knew of the money she was carefully hoarding away, against the day when she could fulfil at least a part of her teenage dream.

When she had saved enough it was her ambition to return home; to buy herself a small cottage close to her grandmother’s, and start up her own business, offering a combination of services for which she knew there was a need, such as house-and pet-sitting, book-keeping and typing, gardening and cleaning.

It was her ambition to build up a private agency that would provide all of these services and more, and she was convinced that she could do it, once she had enough capital behind her.

Not even Susie knew what she was planning. To Susie her dreams would be mundane, boring even; Susie loved the bright lights of London, the glamour of the fashion world in which she moved. As an assistant director on a glossy magazine, she lived every minute of her life to the full and wouldn’t be able to understand Jenna’s desire to return home.

Her flat was on the ground floor of a small terraced house which belonged to a friend—a photographer who travelled a lot, and who was only too relieved to have a tenant as careful and reliable as Jenna.

The house possessed a small backyard, which she had transformed with several coats of white paint and a collection of terracotta pots and trellising, holding up a collection of climbing plants. She spent most of the afternoon pottering around in it, enjoying the warmth of the early summer’s day.

Craig was due back tomorrow. He had been working in the Seychelles on a fashion feature for Susie’s magazine.

A charismatic, sometimes moody man in his late thirties, he was involved in what seemed to Jenna to be a hopeless relationship with a married woman who was tied to a physically handicapped husband. But then, who was she to criticise other people’s relationships, she asked herself with a graceful shrug, when she deliberately held herself back from any form of emotional commitment?

Was it prudence that made her so cautious, or was it fear? She pushed the thought aside, not wanting to give in to the mood of introspection slowly enveloping her.

Crossly she blamed Simon Townsend for her unwanted thoughts. He had always had a disturbing effect on her, and apparently it hadn’t lessened.

If she had been so inclined, she could have been wryly amused by Susie’s defection. Her friend had played the doting sister for so long that Jenna had long ago given up trying to make her see that her adored brother was only a man.

On her way round the pretty town garden, she did pause to wonder how Simon himself would react to Susie’s rebellion. His opinions had held sway with his younger sister for so long, it would probably come as an almighty shock.

Susie’s parents, although darlings, were almost as much in awe of their elder child as Susie herself.

His father was a placid, kindly man, now retired, who had once taught at a local public school. His mother was the stronger character of the two, but without the bruising acidity of her eldest child.

As a teenager, still raw from the loss of her own parents, Jenna had grown to look on Susie’s mother and father as sort of adopted parents, just as Susie had come to look on Jenna’s grandmother as a member of her family.

A cool breeze sprang up, bringing goose-bumps to her arms. She went inside, showered and changed out of her jeans and T-shirt into a silky wraparound dress that emphasised the softness of her curves. Her hair hung down on to her shoulders, curling softly, her face—without make-up—oddly young and vulnerable. As she walked through her small sitting-room her eyes fell to the small tape recorder on the table beside the phone.