Escape Me Never

Cass smiled coolly. ‘A little problem at work.’ And that was putting it mildly, she added silently.

‘Well, I don’t know,’ Mrs Barrett said, vexed. ‘You’d think they’d leave you alone when you’re poorly.’

‘There’s no justice, Mrs B.,’ Cass said cheerfully. ‘But I’ll take care it doesn’t happen again.’ And how.

Her reunion with her daughter was everything she could have desired. Until they got back to their own flat, that is.

‘Mrs Barrett’s nice,’ Jodie remarked. ‘She lets me watch unsuitable things on television. She calls it “the box”.’

Cass’s lip quivered. ‘How do you know they’re unsuitable, madam?’

‘Because you always change channels when they come on. You think I don’t notice, but I do,’ Jodie said serenely. ‘Is that man coming back?’

Cass’s heart skipped a beat. ‘What—man?’ She tried to sound casual.

‘The one who came to see you. Mrs Barrett said he came again yesterday.’ Jodie’s face was angelic. ‘Is he going to be my Daddy?’

‘No, he is not,’ Cass said forcibly.

Jodie gave a heavy sigh. ‘I liked him.’

Cass gave her a long look. ‘Jodie—you didn’t say anything to him, did you?’

‘What about?’ Jodie didn’t meet her gaze—a bad sign.

‘About being your Daddy,’ Cass said desperately.

The answer was too long in coming. ‘No-o-o,’ Jodie said, slowly and evasively.

‘Jodie,’ Cass threatened.

Her daughter’s mouth trembled. ‘He didn’t mind, Mummy. He wasn’t cross.’ She ventured an appealing look. ‘He laughed.’

‘I bet he’s never stopped,’ Cass said savagely. ‘What on earth possessed you?’ She sighed, running a distracted irritable hand through her hair. ‘Never—ever say such a thing to a visitor again.’

‘Mrs Barrett said he was your boyfriend.’

‘Well, Mrs Barrett was wrong,’ Cass said with unwonted sharpness. She saw Jodie flinch, and gentled her tone. ‘Sweetheart, he’s a client—a very important man at my work. Not Daddy material at all,’ she added, trying to make a belated joke of it all.

‘He said he’d be honoured,’ Jodie said mournfully.

Cass could have screamed.

She supposed reluctantly, thinking it over later, that it was to his credit that he’d been kind to the child—let her down lightly. But it didn’t make her like him any better, or add relish to the prospect of having to face him again.

She was quite well enough to return to work on Monday morning. Roger was also back, delighted at the acquisition of the Eve account, but far more interested, Cass thought amusedly, in the lingering symptoms of ‘flu which he was convinced still afflicted him.

And when he’d disposed regretfully of his various aches and pains, he then wanted to discuss Rohan Grant. Compared with whom, even Roger’s health was a more acceptable topic, Cass thought crossly.

She steeled herself to answer his questions coolly and concisely trying not to give any of her personal feelings away.

‘And you don’t like him,’ Roger said when she’d finished, proving that she was no actress.

‘Do I have to?’ Cass asked rather sourly. ‘I wasn’t too keen on Randy Sid, King of the Stainless Steel Sink either, but it made no difference to the campaign.’

‘So you’d put the high-flying Mr Grant in the same category, would you?’ Roger gave her a thoughtful glance. ‘What happened Cass? Don’t tell me he made a pass at you,’ he added grinning.

‘All right, I won’t.’ She made a business of searching in her desk drawer for something.

‘You mean he did?’ He sounded almost awed. ‘Dear God.’ He whistled. ‘The guy’s supposed to have an eye for women, but he must have laser vision if he could penetrate that battle dress top, and all the other ethnic layers you’re usually cocooned in. How do you turn him on, Cassie? With the dance of the seven Greenham Common ponchos?’

‘Very amusing.’ Cass slammed the drawer, narrowly missing removing her own finger in the process. ‘I had no idea that my love life, or lack of it, was of such consuming interest to everyone here.’

Roger said quietly, ‘Actually, I was joking, but if I’ve offended you, Cass, then I’m truly sorry.’ He paused. ‘Has it happened at last? Has someone—some man really got to you?’

‘No,’ she said controlledly. ‘Why do you ask?’

He shrugged. ‘Because it has to happen sometime.’ He frowned swiftly. ‘Yet not, I’d have thought, with Rohan Grant.’ He gave her a troubled look. ‘He’s the big league, Cass. His reputation says he likes to love them and leave them. Any relationship with him would be high on passion and good times, but lacking in anything else, including longevity.’

She smiled coolly. ‘My sentiments entirely, so I’m in no danger.’ She picked up some of the papers on her desk. ‘This fireplace company. It seems to me the designs they want to feature in their ads are the really ugly ones. How can we explain that tactfully?’

She was passing Accounts on her way out to lunch later when a man came out. She recognised him as the one who’d spoken to her about the bill for her dress at the lunch party, and spontaneously they smiled at each other. He fell in beside her.

‘Have you given it to the jumble sale yet?’

She laughed. ‘I’m waiting for a good cause.’ She was trying to remember his name. They’d been introduced when he joined Finiston Webber just before Christmas. Lloyd, she thought. That was it—Lloyd Haswell.

He said, ‘Where do you go for lunch?’

She shook her head. ‘I rarely do. I cook in the evenings for myself and my daughter, and I generally use my lunch hours for shopping.’

‘Oh,’ he said. ‘I was going to ask you if you’d join me. There’s a pub I go to that does a marvellous steak and kidney pie. Unless, of course, you’re a vegetarian,’ he added doubtfully.

‘No,’ Cass said cheerfully. ‘I’m an unashamed carnivore still.’ She stole a fleeting look at him under her lashes. He was about her own age or slightly older, nice looking, slightly diffident in his manner. Almost as different from Rohan Grant as it was possible to get. She added, ‘Actually, I am quite hungry. I’m getting over ‘flu, and I haven’t felt like eating a great deal over the weekend.’

His face lit up. ‘Does that mean I have company?’

‘I’m afraid so,’ she returned gaily, refusing to feel guilty at his obvious pleasure. If the consensus of opinion was that she needed a man in her life, then she would have one, she decided coldly and clinically. Someone nice and inoffensive like this Lloyd, whom she could keep at arm’s length when it mattered. She wanted someone to be seen with; someone to convince Rohan Grant that he was wasting his time.

It might not be fair to Lloyd, she thought with compunction, but it wouldn’t do him any lasting damage either.

In the event, she found him good company, with a ready sense of humour. When he mentioned a new West End comedy, and said he was thinking of getting tickets, it was no hardship at all to agree to go with him.

They arrived back at the agency together, and she guessed that the news would spread rapidly. At one time she would have found this painful, but there were worse threats hovering over her now than a little office gossip.

When she got to her own office, Roger was there, just replacing the telephone receiver.

He said ‘McDowell’s been on from Eve.’ He paused. ‘He wanted to know if we’d definitely signed Tracey Kent for the perfume commercial.’