Time For Trust

Only one or two of her prospective clients had ever remarked that surely modern fitted carpets would be both warmer and cleaner, and these clients had always proved to be the difficult ones—the ones to whom her work was something that had newly become fashionable and who really had no true appreciation of its history and art.

Downstairs she had a small, comfortable sitting-room with windows overlooking her tiny front garden and beyond it the main road that ran through the village, and a good-sized kitchen-cum-dining-room-cum-sitting-room which she had furnished mainly with antiques picked up here and there from various sales.

Only the kitchen cupboards were modern, and that was because the lack of space forced her to make the maximum use of every corner. Solid oak and limed, they had been built by a local craftsman and added a pleasing lightness to the low-beamed ceilinged room.

A scrubbed farmhouse table divided the kitchen area of the room from the sitting area. She had retained the open fireplace, and alongside it against the wall was a comfortable sofa draped with a soft woollen blanket and covered with tapestry cushions.

The stone floor was warmed by a collection of rugs, but the thing that struck strangers most forcibly about Jessica’s home was the startling amount of vibrant colour. Those who had only met her outside her home assumed that, because she chose to wear camouflage colours of beige, olive and taupe, her home would echo these subtle but sometimes dull shades. Instead, it was full of vibrant rich reds, blues, greens and golds put so harmoniously together that the surprised visitor came away with the sensation of having been exposed to something exceptionally alive and warming.

No one was more aware of dichotomy between her habitat and her personal mode of dress than Jessica herself. Once, as a child, she had pleaded with her mother to be allowed to have a rich ruby velvet dress. She could see it in her mind’s eye now, feel the delicious warmth of the supple fabric, smell its rich scent. Her mother had been aghast, controlling her own distaste for the dress by gently pointing her in the direction of another one in muted olive Viyella. And she had learned then that little girls who were going to grow up to run a merchant bank did not dress in rich ruby velvet.

Now out of habit rather than anything else she still wore those same colours gently dictated by her mother. Not that clothes interested her anyway—not in the way that fabrics, colours and textures did. Clothes were simply the means one used to protect one’s body from heat and cold…and, in her case, to provide her with the protection of anonymity.

No one would look twice at a slender young woman, unremarkable of face and figure, dressed in dull, practical clothes. No one would pick her out as a target…a victim…

Her parents had never understood her decision to come and live and work in Avon. They had pleaded with her to change her mind, but she had remained steadfast, and she had had the report of her doctor to back her up. Peace and tranquillity, relief from pressure, a need to recuperate and gather up her mental strength—that was what he had advised.

That had been five years ago. Now her parents accepted, albeit reluctantly, that she lived a different life from theirs.

Her mother had never given up trying to coax her back to London. Every few months she had a fresh attempt—still hoping, perhaps, for that all-important grandson—but Jessica shied away from the commitment that marriage involved. She was free for the first time in her life, and that was the way she intended to stay. Marriage meant responsibilities, duties, putting others’ feelings first…She didn’t want that.

In her hall she picked up her parcel and let herself out into the small front garden. The sun was warm, but the air cool once she stepped into the shadows. She paused to admire the dwarf Michaelmas daisies she had planted much earlier in the year. Their rich massing of purple, mauve and lilac pleased her and she bent to touch their petals gently. Gardening was her second love, and she planted her garden in much the same way as she worked on her tapestries, but with the artist’s fine eye for colour and form.

The post office was the only shop in the village; the nearest garage was ten miles away in the small market town, and the post office was very much the focus of village life. Mrs Gillingham, who ran it, knew all the local gossip and passed it on to her customers with genial impartiality. Jessica interested her. It was unusual for so young and pretty a woman to live so very much alone. Martha Gillingham put her single state down to a broken romance in her past, romantically assuming that it was this relationship which had led to her arrival in the village and to her single state.

She was quite wrong.

Jessica had never been in love. Initially because there had never been time. At university she had worked desperately hard for her degree, terrified of disappointing her parents’ hopes for her, and then when she joined the bank everyone had known exactly who she was—the daughter of the bank’s chairman—and that knowledge had isolated her from the other young people working there.

And then, after what had happened, the last thing on her mind had been falling in love. She liked her single state and was content with it, but something in the speculative way Mrs Gillingham always questioned her about her private life made her feel raw and hurt inside, as though the postmistress had uncovered a wound she hadn’t known was there.

Not that there was anything malicious in her questions. She was just inquisitive, and over the years Jessica had learned to parry them with tact and diplomacy.

Today she had the attention of the postmistress to herself. She was just waiting for her parcel to be weighed when she felt the cold rush of air behind her as the door opened.

The postmistress stopped what she was doing to smile warmly at the newcomer, exclaiming, ‘Good morning, Mr Hayward! Are you all settled in yet?’

‘Not yet, I’m afraid.’

The man had a deep, pleasant voice, and even without looking at him Jessica knew that he was smiling. She had heard from the milkman about this newcomer who had moved into the once lovely, but now derelict Carolean house on the outskirts of the village, but so far she hadn’t actually met him.

‘In fact, I was wondering if you could help me,’ he was saying, and then added, ‘but please finish serving this young lady first.’

The faint touch of reproof in his voice startled Jessica, giving the words far more than the form of mere good manners.

She turned round instinctively and was confronted by a tall, almost overpoweringly male man, dressed in jeans similar to her own and a thick sweater over a woollen shirt, his dark hair flecked with what looked like spots of white paint, and a rather grim expression in his eyes.

There was something about him that suggested that he wasn’t the kind to suffer fools gladly. All Jessica knew about him was that he had bought the house at auction, and that he was planning to virtually camp out in it while the builders worked to make it habitable.

He had arrived in the village only that weekend, and had apparently been having most of his meals at the Bell, the local pub, because the kitchen up at the house was unusable.

She had heard that he worked in London, and that being the case Jessica would have thought it would be more sensible of him to stay there at least until such time as his house was habitable.

Mrs Gillingham had finished weighing the parcel, and, summing up the situation with a skilled and speedy eye, quickly performed introductions, giving Jessica no option but to take the hard brown hand extended to her and to respond to his quick ‘Please call me Daniel,’ with a similarly friendly gesture.

‘Jessica Collingwood…’ His eyebrows drew together briefly, as though somehow he was disconcerted, the pressure of his grip hardening slightly, and then he was relaxing, releasing her and saying evenly, ‘Jessica—it suits you.’

And yet Jessica had the impression that the flattery was an absent-minded means of deflecting her attention away from that momentary tense surprise that had leapt to his eyes as he’d repeated her name.

Mrs Gillingham, eyeing them with satisfaction, went on enlighteningly. ‘Jessica makes tapestries, Mr Hayward. You’ll have to go and look at her work,’she added archly. ‘It’s just the sort of thing you’re going to need for that house of yours.’

Jessica gritted her teeth at this piece of arch manipulation and hoped that Daniel Hayward would realise that this arrant piece of salesmanship was not at her instigation.

It seemed he did, because he gave her a warm, reassuring smile and then said ruefully, ‘Unfortunately, before I can hang any tapestries on them I’m going to have to have some walls. This…’ he touched his hair gingerly ‘…is the result of an unsafe ceiling collapsing on me this morning.’ His face suddenly went grim and Jessica shivered, recognising that here was the real man, the pure male essence of him in the hard, flat determination she could read in his eyes.

‘I’ve sacked the builder I was using for negligence, and I was hoping you might be able to give me the names of some others from whom I might get estimates…’

Mrs Gillingham pursed her mouth, trying not to look flattered by this appeal. ‘Well, there’s Ron Todd. He does a lot of work hereabouts…and then there’s that man you had to do your kitchen, Jessica. What’s his name?’

‘Alan Pierce,’ Jessica informed her, helplessly being drawn into the conversation, wanting to stay and bask in the warm admiration she could read so clearly in Daniel Hayward’s lion-gold eyes, and at the same time wanting desperately to escape before she became helplessly involved in something she sensed instinctively was dangerous.

‘Oh, yes, that’s it…Well, he’s very good. Made a fine job of Jessica’s kitchen. You ought to see it…’

Numbly Jessica recognised that she was being given a very firm push in the direction Mrs Gillingham had decided she was going to take.

No need to enquire if Daniel Hayward was married or otherwise attached. Mrs Gillingham was a strict moralist, and if she was playing matchmaker then it could only be in the knowledge that he was single.

Helplessly, torn between anger and a strange, sweet stirring of excited pleasure, she found herself stumblingly inviting Daniel to call round and see how Alan Pierce had transformed her two small, dark rooms into her large, comfortable living kitchen.

‘But, of course…you must be busy…and…’

He started to say that he wasn’t, when suddenly the post office door banged open.

A man came in, masked and holding a gun. He motioned to them all with it and said gutturally, ‘Over there, all of you!’

Mrs Gillingham was protesting shrilly. At her side, Jessica was dimly conscious of Daniel Hayward’s protective bulk coming between her and the man, but he couldn’t protect her! Nothing could. It was her worst nightmare come back to haunt her. She started to tremble, dragged back into that time in the past—that awful, unforgettable day that had changed the whole course of her life…

CHAPTER TWO

JESSICA had left for work at eight o’clock as she always did. She liked to arrive at the bank at the same time as the other staff. Her father arrived later, his chauffeur dropping him off outside the bank’s premises at about nine-thirty.

There was nothing remarkable about the day. It was late March, cold and blustery still, with no real hint of spring. She was wrapped up against the cold wind in the navy wool coat which seemed to be the uniform of ambitious, career-minded young women, her hair styled sleekly in the expensive bob that her parents liked so much, its colour subtly enlivened by monthly visits to an expensive Knightsbridge hairdresser.

Beneath her coat she was wearing a navy businesslike suit and a striped cotton blouse which more resembled a man’s shirt than a woman’s.

On her feet she had good quality, low-heeled leather pumps, and when she got on the tube she mingled anonymously into the crowd of similarly dressed young women.

The bank, like others of its kind, was situated inside that part of London known as the ‘City’, several streets off Threadneedle Street, taking up a prominent corner position in a small square.