Equal Opportunities

Nor could she simply abandon her responsibility to him. Jen had been as close to her as if they were sisters. Closer in some ways. And she owed it to her friend to do the very best she could for Michael.

It would be easier once he was old enough to go to school…once she had her business firmly established. Already it was doing well, but not well enough for her to be able to sit back and relax. She would just have to hope that Camilla came up with someone suitable.

Michael was asleep…Very gently she removed him from her shoulder and walked over to the cot. Before she got there, he was awake, blue eyes regarding her with solemn regard, the baby mouth starting to pucker.

‘All right, you win,’ Kate told him wryly. They had been through this routine several times before. So often, in fact, that it was beginning to become a habit.

Not that she actually minded. There was something quite soothing about working in Michael’s room, at the desk that would one day be his, and he seemed to find her presence a calming influence. He didn’t even seem to mind the desk-lamp she used to illuminate her work.

Holding him against her shoulder with one arm, she went downstairs for her briefcase. The final details of the plans she intended to put before James were inside it. It was still four days before their meeting, but she wanted to be sure she had everything right.

Back in Michael’s room, she put him in his cot again. This time, as though he knew that he had won and that she would stay, he closed his eyes immediately.

Kate wasn’t fooled. She knew the moment she attempted to leave the room they would be open again, and he would start howling—that thin, fretful cry that tore at the nerves and penetrated so tormentingly every barrier raised against it.

She ought to be used to crying babies; after all, there had been enough of them at the children’s home.

She opened her briefcase and extracted her papers.

James Cameron’s supermarkets were in the main small stores in country towns—often shabby and run-down, from the information she had received. She had driven out to some of them to check on the location and size, as well as reading the reports he had given her, and she was going to suggest to him that, since he could not compete with the huge nationwide retailers, in order to make his image more up-market, he got away from the plate-glass-window image of supermarkets and instead went for something cosier and more countrified.

Bow windows with Georgian panes had been her first thought, as this would immediately give both a more up-market image and have a much warmer appeal to the shopper. At the same time she intended to recommend that, where his own lines of produce were concerned, he had the packaging changed in line with the slightly Victorian, country look of the stores. She had experimented with mock-ups of labels and packagings in a soft gingham check so that she could show him what she had in mind.

A new advertising campaign in line with this would all help to reinforce the new image. TV and radio slots with voice-overs in a warm, male, countrified accent. Posters and magazine ads concentrating on the wholefood appeal of certain lines.

What she had in mind would mean a radical rethink on some of the major lines the stores stocked, but since this would only be in line with the current interest in additive free, more healthy food, Kate thought that the two-pronged attack would have an increased chance of success.

It was gone eleven o’clock when she finished working. Her head was starting to ache, because the lamp she was using was not really strong enough for close work, but she hesitated to illuminate the room too brightly in case it disturbed the sleeping baby.

As she put down her pen, she could hear him making small, snuffly noises in his sleep. Strange how accustomed her senses were to him already after only four weeks; so much so that one night the momentary absence of them had actually woken her and she had rushed into his room to discover he had turned over and was lying with his face pressed into the bedding. There had been no real danger of him suffocating but, nevertheless, she was glad that her senses had alerted her to the hazard.

When Jen had asked her to be his godmother, Kate had never dreamed of what was to come. Poor little boy. She was really no substitute at all for his real mother, but she was that mother’s choice, and when he was old enough to understand she would make sure that he shared as many of her memories of Jen as he could.

She was only thankful that tomorrow was Saturday. Not that she normally took the day off. It had been her habit to go into the office and go through the week’s work. The two girls who worked for her were very good. Conscientious and hardworking, but it was not their business, not their future, not their success or failure. She had enjoyed those oases of time alone in the elegant but minute offices in Knightsbridge that cost her the earth, but that were worth it because of the cachet they gave her business.

Industrialists were snobs when it came to whom they used to sell their products, as she had soon discovered. They liked using agencies with smart upper-class reputations, and Kate had been quick to forge her own contacts with the prestigious advertising agencies.

Camilla had helped her there. Her husband was on the board of one of London’s most prestigious agencies, and through Camilla’s good offices she had made several strong and very valuable contacts.

Yes Camilla had been a good friend to her, right from the start when she had taken her on fresh from university with nothing but her degree and her determination to recommend her.

She had enjoyed those years with Camilla, but once Camilla had taken the decision to commit herself to Hugo and their family, Kate had known it was only a matter of time before her friend sold out, and rather than become a small cog in what promised to be a very large wheel Kate had taken the decision to set up on her own.

It had been the right decision, she was sure of that. The only decision, but as an employee of someone else might she not have been freer to spend more time with Michael?

It wouldn’t be for much longer. Another couple of years and she would have successfully established herself. Perhaps she could even then start working from home a couple of days a week. Right now that wasn’t feasible. She didn’t have a good enough reputation, but if she got this contract from James…

Another valuable introduction Camilla had given her.

Yes, she had much to thank Camilla for, and she would have even more if Camilla found her a suitable nanny, she acknowledged tiredly as she snapped off the light and tiptoed quietly out of the room.

CHAPTER TWO

OLD habits died hard, and it had been a firm rule of the children’s home where Kate had been brought up that everyone got up at six-thirty.

Even now, when she could have stayed in bed, she found it impossible, and in consequence, however late her night, she was invariably wide awake at six-thirty the next day.

This Saturday was no exception, and as she lay in bed listening to Michael’s burblings on the intercom, she reflected wryly on the days when all she had to do when she first got up in the morning was to organise herself for her prebreakfast run. Now she didn’t run, but what she did do, rain or shine, was to put Michael in his pushchair and walk him to the park, so that they could both enjoy the freshness of the new day.

The park was small and Victorian, with formal flowerbeds and trees. There was a muddy pond in the centre of it, normally deserted in the early morning, apart from one or two moth-eaten ducks, soliciting shamelessly for food.

This morning, as he did every morning, Michael showed his approval of their outing by clapping his hands and laughing happily while Kate zipped him into his ski-suit.

She herself had pulled on jeans and a sweatshirt. She had discovered within the first week of having Michael that her pencil-slim designer skirts and silk shirts were not ideal wear around a very young child, and so she had been forced to go out and comb the chain-stores in search of something more sensible.

Half a dozen pairs of jeans, plus an assortment of sweatshirts, had been the ultimate answer. Knowing Michael’s propensity for covering them both in sticky mess, she no longer wondered at most young mothers’ apparent uniform of jeans and tops. Running a brush through her hair, she gathered it up in a ponytail and snapped a band round it, before pulling on her anorak.

It wasn’t easy to manoeuvre the pushchair down the stone steps, but she had developed a knack for dealing with them now. The street was deserted and quite dark still, but that didn’t bother Kate; she liked the solitude of the early morning city, when most of its inhabitants were still in bed.

In the park the ducks quacked in welcome, but she didn’t do more than pause to watch them. The object of the exercise was not just fresh air for Michael, but physical exercise for her as well, and that involved pushing the pram briskly ten times round the park and then back home.

Once there, she would put Michael in his high chair and make them both breakfast. Michael would probably throw most of his on the floor, and she would be lucky if she could even manage to drink her coffee before it got cold.

She was a dedicated career woman, with precious little security, a huge mortgage, a very new business to develop and no one to rely on but herself. Add to that the fact that she was solely responsible for a nine-month-old baby, the very last kind of responsibility she had ever wanted, and it seemed incredible to Kate that she should feel so absurdly happy. So happy, in fact, that once they had finished their exercise and she was heading back to the house, she stopped to blow kisses into the pram, causing Michael to laugh delightedly, and the man watching her from the other side of the road to frown.

That must be the nanny, Garrick reflected, watching as Kate skilfully negotiated the steps and unlocked her front door.

He had come here on impulse, a little surprised to discover it was so close to his own apartment.

He had spent the previous evening studying the file David Wilder had given him. On the face of it there was no logical reason why Kate Oakley should refuse to hand the child over to him. She was a career woman first, second and third; that much was plain. The kind of woman who would never willingly saddle herself with a child, and he should know…

His mouth twisted bitterly as he remembered Francesca. He had met her when he was twenty-three, and a very naïve twenty-three he had been, too.

Fresh on the London scene and working for a firm of merchant bankers, he had met Francesca at a disco. They had dated for two months before they slept together. Although they had been the same age, it had disconcerted him to discover that her sexual experience was far greater than his own, but he had accepted it when she told him that she had had a previous long-standing relationship with someone else. A relationship that was now over.

Six months later they were engaged. Six weeks after that Francesca had married someone else.

It had been then that he discovered how much she had lied to him. There hadn’t been any long-standing relationship with someone, just a series of very brief affairs with a good many someone elses…men in the main much older and wealthier than Francesca herself.

Calvin Harvey had been one of those previous lovers. A married man now divorced—an extremely wealthy, once married man, who now wanted as his second wife Garrick’s fiancée. And Francesca hadn’t hesitated.

‘But surely you understand, darling,’ she had pouted when Garrick, white-faced and disbelieving, had finally realised that she meant what she was saying. ‘It was fun with you and me, but marriage…Honestly, darling, can you see me as the wife of a poor man?’

‘I wanted you to be the mother of my children,’ Garrick had protested despairingly. He could hear her laughter still. Shrill and acid.

‘A mother? Oh, my poor dear Garrick, what an idiot you are! I shall never have children. Such a bore…and it ruins one’s figure. Don’t worry, darling, it needn’t end between us. Calvin has business interests abroad and he’s away an awful lot. I’ll ring you.’

And so she had, but only once. By then he had realised the truth about her and he had told her in plain and blistering English exactly what she could do with her favours and her much-used body. It had given him some temporary relief to his heartache. What a fool man was that he could realise exactly what a woman was with his mind, and yet not stop wanting her with his body. But all that was behind him now.