The Innocent and the Playboy

by Sophie Weston

‘Not over till the fat lady sings,’ Hugh said peacefully. ‘Or until you let her go to whatever it is with Theo Judd.’ His interest in his sister’s love affairs was remote at best.

  Rachel bit her lip. ‘It’s an all-night party. Tell me honestly, Hugh—do you think I’m wrong?’

  Hugh took another mouthful of sandwich. His head shake was not an endorsement of her view. It was a refusal to get involved, and they both knew it.

  ‘You’re a great help,’ Rachel informed him.

  He was unrepentant. ‘I’m not my sister’s keeper, thank God. Send her back to the wild. That’s what she wants.’

  Rachel gave a little choke of laughter at this reference to his mother’s free-wheeling ménage in southern California. ‘But is it what your mother wants? I got the impression she was very busy. And what about Lexy’s schooling?’

  But Hugh was not to be drawn. He had expressed an opinion, which contradicted all his principles of nonalignment, and he was not to be drawn further.

  ‘I wish I knew what to do,’ said Rachel, more to herself than to him.

  He finished his doorstop. ‘Bin her,’ he advised, getting up and going. In the doorway a thought struck him. He looked back. ‘Better still, get yourself a man. We need someone to lay down the law round here.’

  He watched her stiffen. Before she could say anything he gave her a wide, wicked grin. Then he raised a hand and clattered off upstairs.

  ‘Male chauvinist pig,’ Rachel shouted after him.

  ‘Super Shark,’ he yelled back cheerfully.

  His door slammed. Rachel hoped he was getting on with his homework. She went back to review her store cupboard ruefully. She had spent the weekend working on her reconstruction plan. The need to eat had simply slipped her mind.

  The phone rang. It was the mother of Alexandra’s best friend, calling to form a parental alliance in the face of a new offensive on the all-night-party front. She had also been Rachel’s mentor in the last two difficult years since Brian had died.

  ‘Oh, hello, Gilly. Gosh, do I need some solidarity,’ responded Rachel with feeling. ‘Lexy’s not speaking to me and there’s no food in the house.’

  ‘I’ll be over in ten minutes,’ said her friend.

  She was as good as her word, bringing the remains of a substantial stew and a supermarket bag of staples.

  ‘Burning the candle at both ends,’ she diagnosed, stocking the refrigerator and making coffee as Rachel stuffed half a week’s dirty laundry into the washing machine. ‘What you need is staff. Alternatively get the monsters to do their own washing.’

  Rachel poured washing powder into a dispenser. ‘Hugh would. Though I’m not sure about the quality control. Lexy wouldn’t on principle.’ She slammed the door shut and programmed the machine. ‘Come on. Let’s go and take our coffee where we can’t hear the machinery of conscience.’

  They went into her study. Rachel took a pile of computer reports off the single comfortable seat and plumped up the cushions.

  ‘I like this room,’ said Gilly, settling down. ‘Books and a desk and a view of the garden. What more could a woman want?’

  Rachel perched on the ancient leather chair by her desk.

  ‘A reasonably stocked fridge,’ she said drily.

  ‘Yes, what happened there? You’re usually so efficient, I hate you.’

  Rachel sighed. ‘Too busy. Lexy would have reminded me normally, but she’s not speaking to me. Essential war despatches only, at the moment.’

  Gilly nodded. ‘All-night party? Susanna’s the same.’

  ‘Susanna doesn’t want to go with Theo Judd.’

  Gilly shuddered. ‘No, thank God. He’s a really nasty piece of work. Susanna thinks he carries a knife.’

  Rachel bit her lip. ‘So do I. I’ve seen it. But Lexy doesn’t believe me. Or she thinks it’s glamorous.’

  ‘What on earth does she think she’s doing?’

  Rachel pushed back her hair with a weary hand. She had not managed to put it up again all through the day. ‘You tell me. Looking for a father-figure, maybe.’

  ‘Theo? A father-figure?’

  ‘Well, he’s so much older-’

  ‘Alexandra’s father didn’t have designer stubble and a leather jacket with too many pockets,’ Gilly interrupted briskly. ‘Or no visible means of support—apart from running these terrible raves, of course. Peter thinks he’s a drug dealer.’

  Rachel gave her a disturbed look but did not say anything.

  ‘Why else would a man his age want to hang around with a bunch of fifteen-year-olds?’ said Gilly unanswerably.

  Rachel put her hand over her eyes. ‘That’s what I’ve been asking myself. But when I say it to Lexy—’

  ‘She thinks she’s old enough to choose her own friends.’ Gilly nodded.

  ‘And points out the age difference between Brian and me.’

  Gilly whistled. ‘Shrewd move.’

  ‘No one said she wasn’t bright,’ said Rachel bitterly. ‘She doesn’t work. Her exam results are appalling. But she’s bright enough, if she’d only choose to do something about it.’

  ‘And you’re elected chief torturer to make her do just that?’

  ‘That’s about the size of it,’ Rachel agreed.

  Gilly shook her head. ‘Don’t even try. You’re on a hiding to nothing.’

  Rachel leaned back and closed her eyes briefly. ‘Hugh says the house needs a man to introduce some discipline.’

  Gilly stared. ‘Are you pulling my leg?’

  Rachel opened her eyes and shook her head.

  ‘My stars.’ Gilly looked at her friend cautiously. ‘Is there—er—anyone that Hugh has in mind?’

  For no reason at all, Rachel thought of Riccardo di Stefano. She looked quickly down at her coffee. ‘No.’

  ‘Oh.’ Gilly sipped coffee and debated. ‘It’s a long time since Brian died. You’re very young to lock yourself into contract stepmotherhood.’

  Rachel shook her head again. This was a conversation they had had before.

  ‘No time,’ she said briefly.

  Gilly was sad. ‘Oh, Rachel. Still?’

  Rachel looked away, feeling a fraud. All their friends thought her marriage to Brian Gray had been a highly romantic union between a middle-aged man and his friendless young au pair. When he’d died, they’d tiptoed around her grief as if the last great love affair had come to an end.

  She had never been able to tell any of them that it had not been like that. It had been a marriage of convenience from first to last. Brian had been her greatest friend. She had liked him and trusted him and gone to him for advice when she had felt she could trust no one else in the world. But neither of them had ever been remotely in love.

  And when she’d married him he’d already known he was dying.

  Rachel had found him alone in the kitchen one night after the children had gone to bed. He’d looked at his wits’ end. That was when he’d told her.

  ‘I’ve been talking to Angela. She doesn’t seem to be able to take it in. She’s very busy with her new life, of course. Which doesn’t include the kids. She keeps saying something will turn up.’ He banged his fist on the counter-top. ‘But it won’t. All I’ve got is maybe a year to find a solution.’

  He had had two years in the end. And the solution had been Rachel.

  She had never regretted it. She knew that it had not been a one-sided relationship. Brian had given her support in her education and, eventually, her career. He had helped restore her shattered confidence. And he had provided the best reason in the world for her lack of relationships with men.

  Now that reason was gone. So either she had to find another one or face up to experiences she had been running away from for nine years.

  She said with an effort, ‘I’m a contract career lady too.’

  Gilly took the hint. ‘Alexandra was saying. Long hours?’

  Rachel sighed. ‘I thought it was going to be just for this single project. You know—a few weeks doing eighteen-
hour days and then back to normal. Only, it isn’t working out quite like that.’

  ‘It never does,’ said Gilly wryly. ‘Whenever Peter does any of these one-off assignments, he always ends up with more work at the end of it.’ Her husband was an executive in a multinational company.

  ‘Well, unless I’m very careful, it looks as if that’s exactly what’s going to happen to me,’ Rachel said gloomily.

  Gilly was scornful. ‘Careful? Huh! What can you do about it? If they’ve realised you can work round the clock, they’ll jolly well make sure you carry on doing it.’

  Rachel knew that, on the basis of her experience as the wife of a seriously successful senior manager, Gilly knew what she was talking about. On the other hand, Rachel had been gaining some experience of her own since she’d started at Bentley’s. She allowed herself a small private smile.

  ‘Well, maybe not.’ Rachel swirled her coffee round in its mug. ‘There are a couple of male egos that might be brought round to seeing things my way. If I approach them in the right way.’

  Gilly looked at her with awe. ‘You know the right way?’

  Rachel looked up. Her eyes danced suddenly. ‘I have a working hypothesis. I’ll let you know if it works.’

  ‘If it works, patent it,’ Gilly advised, getting up. She kissed Rachel briefly on the cheek. ‘Don’t bother about the casserole. Alexandra can bring it back any time.’ She went.

  Rachel went to her room and climbed out of her city suit. She hung it up in her understocked wardrobe and put on jeans and a roomy sweatshirt.

  There was no sound from Hugh’s room, which meant he was wearing his earphones. Rachel gave silent thanks. She knocked quietly at Alexandra’s door but was not really surprised when there was no answer. Alexandra was making a point of her right to privacy at the moment.

  Rachel went back to the kitchen and geared herself up for phase two of the working day. She checked the washing machine, put Gilly’s stew in the oven and started peeling potatoes. Normally she hated peeling potatoes but today she attacked them with a will, as if they were personal enemies. As the peel fell away, she felt an almost bloodthirsty satisfaction.

  ‘Take that,’ she said, gouging a particularly stubborn eye out of one of the larger potatoes.

  ‘Talking to yourself now?’ said a voice from the doorway.

  Rachel looked up. Her stepdaughter had finally emerged from her room and was draped gracefully against the doorjamb. She was wearing a skintight tube-dress that showed an enticing acreage of pale-skinned bosom and ended halfway down her upper thighs. She was presumably going out.

  Rachel bit back her immediate reaction and gave Alexandra a pleasant smile. Dealing with corporate raiders all day gave you some grasp of tactics at least.

  ‘Hi. Hungry?’

  ‘I was,’ returned Alexandra, no mean tactician herself. ‘But when you were so late I thought you weren’t coming back this evening. So I’ve made other arrangements.’

  Silently Rachel cursed Riccardo di Stefano. If he had not kept her at bay in her office after that meeting, she would have finished her day’s work at a reasonable time and been home when she’d said she would be. Not that that would have prevented Alexandra from making a bid to go out with Theo. But at least it would have meant she did not have an excuse handed to her on a plate.

  Rachel skewered another eye out of the potato with quite unnecessary viciousness.

  Not looking at Alexandra, she said, ‘Where’s he taking you? And when is he picking you up?’

  A faint frown crossed her stepdaughter’s face. In matters of detail Theo was proving difficult to pin down. Rachel had discovered this by accident and was using her awareness of it sparingly.

  Now Alexandra shrugged elaborately. ‘No special time. I said, Let’s just hang out.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Rachel.

  She quartered the potato, dropped the pieces in the salted water with the rest and put the pan on to boil. She rinsed her hands and dried them. ‘Pity,’ she remarked to the wall. ‘Gilly’s stew smells good.’

  ‘Gilly likes cooking,’ Alexandra pointed out. She managed to make this indisputable truth into a rebuke.

  ‘She’s also got a cordon bleu qualification,’ said Rachel, stung.

  ‘You could have done a cordon bleu course if you’d wanted. It was you who wanted to do that MBA and have a career in banking. Daddy would much rather have had a proper wife who made food look nice.’

  ‘So much for the feminist influence in the younger generation,’ muttered Rachel. ‘Stop nagging, you little reactionary. Your father wanted me to have the chance to do work that interested me. Just as he wanted you to,’ she added with point.

  Before his last session in hospital, Brian had mounted a fierce campaign so that Alexandra could study the physics course she’d wanted rather than the biology course that had suited the school curriculum. He had won. It had been good to see his triumph, especially as Alexandra had been delighted with the defeat of authority in the shape of her formidable headmistress.

  Reminded now, Alexandra looked uncomfortable. Rachel pursued her advantage ruthlessly. ‘By the way, how is school going?’

  Alexandra regarded her beadily. ‘If you’re asking whether I’ve done my homework, the answer’s yes.’

  ‘I wasn’t, actually. If I wanted to know the state of your homework, I would ask,’ Rachel said levelly.

  She reached for the gardenia-scented hand cream which Alexandra had bought her for Christmas when they’d still been in relative harmony—before Theo had appeared. She began to smooth it over her fingers. The potato water had given them the texture of old prunes.

  ‘It just occurs to me that I’ve got to go to your PTA meeting next week. I could do with some advance. briefing.’

  Alexandra watched. Eventually she burst out, ‘You mean you actually think you’ll get there this time?’

  This was an unexpected attack. Rachel gaped.

  ‘I’ve only missed one,’ she protested. ‘I couldn’t help that. The Malaysian deal. I told you.’

  ‘Two others,’ corrected Alexandra. ‘The one before Christmas—you said it was only a social. And then Hugh’s last one.’

  ‘I didn’t. I—’ Rachel stopped, remembering. She grew indignant. ‘The plane was late. I got there in the end.’

  ‘Not in time. Hugh particularly wanted you to talk to Mr Templeton about him doing Russian and Mr Templeton had gone.’

  ‘I talked to his tutor,’ said Rachel defensively.

  ‘His tutor’s a silly old prat who thinks clever boys do Greek, not Russian,’ said Alexandra, with her usual grasp of essentials. ‘Hugh needed you to tell him to bog off. You didn’t and now he’s lumbered.’

  One of Alexandra’s great strengths as a tactician was to point out the genuine shortcomings of the adults in her life. While they were feeling properly guilty, they forgot the substance of their original argument. Rachel reminded herself of this.

  ‘I’ll talk to Hugh about it,’ she said.

  Alexandra looked annoyed. But she was shrewd enough to recognise that her move had been countered. She shrugged.

  ‘So how is school going?’ said Rachel, returning with an effort to the subject in hand.

  For a moment Alexandra seemed almost uncomfortable. Then she said airily, ‘Oh, boring. But I survive.’

  ‘Well, congratulations.’ Rachel’s tone was dry. ‘Now tell me the truth.’

  Alexandra sent her a look of dislike. ‘What has Gilly been saying?’

  Trained by experience, Rachel concealed her surprise. She raised her eyebrows. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘She promised she wouldn’t split,’ said Alexandra with disgust. She glowered but decided to expand. ‘It’s nothing. I just told the Hornbeam I wasn’t wasting my time doing stupid maps for history prep.’ She snorted. ‘You’d think we were five instead of fifteen. Tracing paper and coloured pens at our age. I ask you.’

  ‘I see.’ Rachel folded her lips together in an attempt to cur
b instinctive laughter. On the whole she was successful. ‘And what did Mrs Hornbeam say?’

  Alexandra shrugged. ‘Stamped and screamed and threatened thumbscrews,’ she said indifferently.

  Rachel nodded. ‘I see. Standard stuff.’ She took some more hand cream and applied it absorbedly. ‘And how did it happen to come to Gilly’s notice?’

  ‘Oh, Susanna didn’t do her map-making either. The Hornbeam told Gilly I was a bad influence.’

  This seemed to afford Alexandra considerable satisfaction. Rachel comforted herself with the fact that Susanna’s parents could not share the form mistress’s opinion or they would not be allowing their daughter to spend all her free time with Alexandra. She put down the bottle of gardenia hand cream with resolution, however.

  She said carefully, ‘You and Susanna are growing up. You need your personal space, I know. And you can do without people like me telling you how to run your personal relationships. I accept that. But when you’re young—’

  The doorbell rang. Alexandra had been beginning to look mulish but the sharp ring wiped the frown off her face. She stopped even pretending to listen to Rachel.

  ‘Theo,’ she said, her face lighting up.

  ‘You can make mistakes that take so much getting over, it’s out of all proportion to the fun you had in the first place.’

  But Alexandra had already flown to the door. After a moment, Rachel gave a twisted smile. She was not entirely sorry. If Alexandra had been listening she would have demanded an explanation. Rachel was not sure that she had one. Not without explaining Riccardo di Stefano. She did not think she could bear that. Surely there was a limit on the self-immolation required of a stepmother?

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  RACHEL sighed and followed in her stepdaughter’s wake, bracing herself to give stern warning on being home before eleven. It was not needed. It was not Theo Judd on the doorstep. It was the only visitor who was more unwelcome.

  ‘Rachel,’ purred Riccardo di Stefano, stepping past an open-mouthed Alexandra and taking both Rachel’s hands in his. ‘So good to see you relaxed at last.’

  It was like a nightmare, Rachel thought. She was utterly unprepared. She had no arguments to get rid of him and no possible excuse for leaving the house herself. In her jeans, with the rumble of the washing machine behind her and the kitchen full of the smell of Gilly’s good stew, it was obvious that she had settled down for a family evening at home.