The Innocent And The Playboy

Rachel lobbed the ruined tights into the waste-paper basket and smoothed her skirt.

‘Thank you for trying.’ She straightened up to face her image in the big mirror behind the hand basins and grimaced. ‘It’s not going to make much difference anyway. My hair needs surgery. I’ve lost too many pins to put it up properly.’

‘Then leave it loose.’

Rachel fluffed out the red-gold fronds doubtfully. ‘Not very professional.’

‘Better than everyone in the meeting sitting there wondering when it’s going to fall down,’ Mandy said, ever practical.

Rachel laughed suddenly. ‘You’re probably right. I don’t want to distract them from my beautiful corporate plan.’

She brushed her hair rapidly. Mandy gathered up the scatter of hairpins and silently laid out Rachel’s underused cosmetics. Most of the time Rachel wore no make-up at all unless she was going to some big business reception.

It was Mandy’s private opinion that this was a horrible waste. However, Rachel, although in general as friendly and informal a boss as you could wish for, did not encourage this sort of comment. Mandy could never quite work out whether this was because Rachel genuinely did not know how spectacular she could look when she tried. It seemed unlikely. Sometimes Mandy even suspected that Rachel knew quite well and was, for some obscure reason of her own, terrified by it.

Now Rachel made a face in the mirror, reaching out for the little make-up case. ‘Why is painting your face supposed to improve your confidence?’

Mandy perched on the edge of the vanity counter. ‘Because it makes you look more like a performer?’

‘You mean like a clown?’

‘Like a star,’ Mandy said reprovingly.

Rachel snorted and wrinkled her nose at her reflection. ‘Some hopes.’

So maybe her unawareness of her looks was real. But she had to know how high her professional reputation stood. So why did she not have more self-confidence? Someone somewhere must have done a real number on Rachel, Mandy thought.

She was too tactful to say so, however. Instead, she said, ‘Your confidence doesn’t need any boosting. Everyone in the bank knows how good you are at your job.’

Rachel laughed. ‘That isn’t the point. I’m the one who has to believe I’m good. That’s what confidence means. And after this morning—’ She broke off.

‘What went wrong this morning? Homework?’

Rachel ran a small make-up sponge under the tap before replying. A faint frown appeared as she brushed the sponge across the compressed block of pale tan colour.

‘No.’ She hesitated, then started to sponge on the light make-up with quick, angry strokes. ‘It’s Alexandra.’

Mandy nodded, unsurprised. She had worked with Rachel all through the last three traumatic years and she did not have to have the family tensions explained to her.

‘Being difficult, is she?’

Rachel put the sponge down. ‘She thinks she’d like to live with her mother,’ she said neutrally. ‘Her real mother, that is.’

Mandy was shocked. ‘And can she?’

‘I don’t know. Not unless her mother wants her, that’s for sure.’

‘She doesn’t?’

Rachel picked up a palette of eye-shadows and a small brush. She surveyed herself, hesitating.

‘Not up to now. That’s why Brian—’ She broke off abruptly and leant forward to paint discreet colour onto her eyelids. Mandy bit her lip. When Rachel mentioned her late husband it was usually a sign that she was deeply disturbed.

‘How old is Alexandra now?’ she asked, tactfully changing the subject.

Rachel gave her a pale grin in the mirror. ‘Fifteen going on forty. To judge by this morning’s performance, anyway.’

Mandy was surprised. ‘How quickly they grow up. I hadn’t realised.’

‘Nor, according to Alexandra, had I,’ Rachel said drily.

‘Ah,’ said Mandy, enlightened. She had younger sisters. ‘She wants to go to a rock concert and you won’t let her.’

Rachel’s face tightened. ‘Something like that.’ ‘They all do,’ Mandy said comfortingly. ‘It’s just a phase. I had some terrible fights with my father. You grow out of it.’

Rachel flicked the little brush over her other eyelid. ‘Do you? I never had any fights like that. Too much of a goody-goody. Never did anything my father wouldn’t like,’ she confessed.

Except once, said a small voice inside her. Except that last, fatal time when you brought the whole world down on everyone, just because you were determined to show Riccardo di Stefano and his kind that they could not hurt people with impunity.

It was a voice that had been whispering away for three or four days now. It reminded her that even the best-conducted adolescents could make some horrible mistakes. It was a voice she had silenced for nine years and it was disconcerting to find it coming out of the ether now. Especially as it had a disturbing tendency to take her difficult stepdaughter’s side in the present argument.

Mandy said comfortably, ‘I bet you did. You’ve just forgotten.’ She relieved Rachel of the eye-shadow and handed her a lipstick and lip-brush. ‘Alexandra just needs a good fight with authority at the moment. You happen to be the only major authority figure around. Hard on you, but it’s not the end of the world. What she needs is a man in her life.’

Rachel shuddered. ‘Don’t say that. She’s jolly nearly got one.’

Mandy was unperturbed. ‘We all had boyfriends.’

Rachel paused, the lip-brush arrested halfway to her mouth. Not me, she thought involuntarily. Is that why I’m so bad at dealing with Alexandra? Is it because I never went through the normal stages? Was I just too busy being a good little girl, working hard and winning prizes? Until... The voice again! Why on earth should it start up now when she needed all the confidence she could summon up?

She suppressed the voice, applied the lipstick, stepped back and looked at herself critically.

‘Well, that will have to do.’

Mandy nodded approval. In spite of the fact that Rachel paid very little attention to her appearance, when you had shining, naturally auburn hair and wide brown eyes, it did not make too much difference, Mandy thought without jealousy. A dash of modest eye-shadow and Rachel’s eyes turned the colour of Madeira wine.

‘You look gorgeous.’

Rachel sent her a harassed look. ‘I wish I looked tidy.’ She flicked irritatedly at the loose hair about her shoulders. ‘Tidy is efficient. Untidy—well...’

‘Philip knows you’re efficient,’ Mandy soothed.

‘It isn’t Philip I have to convince.’ She looked at her watch. ‘Being half an hour late isn’t going to help either.’

Mandy laughed and uncurled herself from her perch.

‘Don’t worry about it. The new boss man has changed all the meetings round, so no one knows who is due to speak when or on what. With a bit of luck no one except Philip will even know.’

Rachel was looking in the mirror, giving a last downward brush to her neat skirt, but this made her look round. ‘New boss man?’