Beyond All Reason

by Cathy Williams

  Of course, she would have remembered if she hadn’t been consumed with her own problems. She would have heard other employees chatting about it, but she had been moving and working in her own little isolated world, battling with her emotional problems, and the party had been the furthest thing from her mind.

  She sat at her desk that evening, waiting for Ross to emerge from his office, which he did, and he looked across at her with a mixture of mild surprise and casual indifference.

  ‘I’ve been meaning to have a word with you,’ Abigail said, standing up as he moved towards the door to leave. He inclined his head politely, pausing with one hand on the doorknob, waiting for her to say what she had to say.

  ‘It’s about the Christmas party on Friday,’ she began uncomfortably.

  ‘What about it?’ Distant, civil, his dark eyes expressing little beyond restrained curiosity. Every time he looked at her like that, she felt as though a knife were slicing through her.

  ‘I’m afraid it completely slipped my mind, and I won’t be able to come. I’ve made other arrangements.’

  ‘You’ll have to cancel them. You’re my personal assistant and you are expected to attend.’

  ‘I don’t think that it would matter very much whether I attended or not,’ Abigail retorted, her voice rising. ‘I’m due to leave in four weeks’ time!’

  ‘I will expect to see you there,’ Ross informed her in a flat, icy voice that left no room for argument. He looked at his watch. ‘Is that all or was there something else?’

  ‘Nothing else,’ she said, pitching her tone to match his, and he nodded and left. She looked at the closed door with a tide of emotions rising in her: anger, hurt, bitterness. She wanted to scream at the invisible wall of silence that stood between them, even though she knew well enough that without that wall of silence there would still be a wall between them, but a wall of a different sort.

  Damn him, she thought angrily, why shouldn’t I go to this Christmas party? Why should I change my life because of him?

  The following afternoon, in a spirit of angry rebellion, Abigail left work early and spent three hours wandering through the shops, looking for that elusive dress that would raise her morale and show Ross Anderson that whatever had happened between them had had no effect on her, that she was as indifferent to it all as he was.

  She found the perfect outfit in jade-green. It had a high neckline and long sleeves, but it was close-fitting and seemed to hold a great deal of bold promise. She tried it on and it made her feel good anyway, so she bought it, spending far more than she had anticipated.

  Ross was not around the following day. Abigail arrived at work very early, cleared a great deal of paperwork, in between trying to show Mary the intricacies of the filing system, and at four-thirty they looked at each other with a conspiratorial smile.

  ‘It is the party tonight,’ Mary said with a giggle, ‘and we will only be leaving an hour early.’

  ‘Are you trying to corrupt me?’ Abigail asked sternly, but she had already decided that she would leave early provided she cleared her desk.

  ‘I need to spend quite a bit of time on my beauty routine if I’m to look presentable.’

  Abigail looked at her wryly. ‘I find that hard to believe.’

  Mary was tall, leggy, and with the sort of good looks that came from an attractive personality as well as an attractive face. She smiled a lot and, underneath the blonde hair, was good at her job and willing to work hard.

  Abigail tried not to think too hard about Ross, working with her replacement, building up the rapport which they had shared for so long and which had become the bitter bedrock of her life. It didn’t do to dwell on those things. It made her see too clearly the empty chasm stretching out in front of her.

  She would have to leave by seven, and she had a leisurely bath, washed and dried her hair, considered doing something daring with it and then decided against the idea, and finally changed into her outfit, which felt even more glamorous with the appropriate accessories than it had in the shop. She would never be a ravine beauty, but she intended making the most of what she had: her trim figure, her neat features.

  What a laugh even to imply that she would try and net a man for his money. With my unremarkable face, she thought, it would be quite a ridiculous notion. But Fiona hadn’t seen that. All she had seen was a face that had managed to get Ross Anderson into bed.

  There were already quite a few people at the ballroom by the time she arrived, faces that Abigail recognised, some well enough to speak to, others known only by sight. She didn’t look around for Ross. She allowed herself to meander from group to group, chatting amicably about her resignation, about needing a change of scenery, vague small-talk that wouldn’t raise eyebrows but would kill any seeds of curiosity which might be in the process of germination.

  She heard Mary’s voice before she saw her. It was a distinctive voice, deep for a woman, with a hint of laughter in it.

  ‘There’s Abigail! Abigail! Over here!’

  Abigail swung round and saw Ross long before her brain had registered the people to whom he was talking. He was in a superbly tailored dinner jacket and one hand was in the pocket of his trousers, while the other was holding a glass. She didn’t want to look at him, but it was very difficult. In any group, he was always the centre of attention. For a start, he was usually taller than everyone else, but also he had an air of vitality that made it hard not to focus on him.

  She edged politely into the group, and out of the corner of her eye she could see him watching her twisting the stem of the champagne glass in his hand.

  Mary, ebullient as ever, was holding court, while her boyfriend, a quiet, sandy-haired man, who looked older than he probably was because of his receding hairline, smiled and looked vaguely uncomfortable.

  During a pause in the conversation, one of the sales managers turned to her and said, smiling, ‘So, have you found another job yet, Abby?’

  ‘I thought I might have a month off work before I get anything fixed up,’ she said. She liked James Davies. He was in his forties, a calm, affable family man who inspired hard work in his staff without having to demand it. His wife, plump, with blonde hair and an easygoing disposition, was standing next to him, listening politely to their exchange. Abigail tended to meet her at office parties, as she did most of her colleagues’ partners.

  ‘Recovering from that slave-driving boss of yours, eh?’

  Abigail nodded politely and looked at Ross, who stared back at her with biting intensity. Everyone else seemed unaware of any tension in the atmosphere, but she could feel it, it was there in the hardness behind the black eyes.

  ‘You’re bound to miss it, though,’ Mary said, grinning. ‘You can’t work for someone for all that time and not miss it when you leave.’

  ‘There are lots of things I shall miss about the company,’ Abigail agreed non-committally, and Ross said, in a hard voice that was masked by a polite smile, for the benefit of everyone else,

  ‘But I’m sure Abby will bring her great talents to whatever job she takes up.’ He drank the rest of the champagne and stared at her with a savage little smile. ‘You do enter fully into your job, don’t you, Abigail? I’m sure whoever you work for will find that an enormous benefit.’

  Abigail smiled stiffly back at him.

  ‘I certainly hope so, Mr Anderson,’ she replied in a sweet, syrupy voice. Her eyes glazed over and she looked around her with the stiff smile still on her face. James and his wife drifted off in the direction of some of the sales crew, and the little group began breaking up, the way they tended to at office functions.

  ‘Drink?’ he offered before she could similarly slink away, and she shook her head without looking at him.

  ‘If you don’t mind,’ she said politely, ‘I think I might do the rounds. There are a lot of people here whom I won’t see again and I’d like to say goodbye.’

  ‘But I do mind,’ Ross said, and she looked up at him with acid surprise.

&nbs
p; ‘Do you? Why? Do you want to subject me to a few more insults while you have the opportunity?’ Her mouth twisted and she smiled even though it hurt. ‘Why don’t you circulate as well? Then you could tell everyone what great talents I’ll be taking to my new job, how much my new boss will be impressed with them!’ Her voice had started out full of biting emotion but she ended on a whisper.

  ‘Well, won’t they?’ he bit out. ‘You had a damned affair with your ex-boss and you slept with me——’

  ‘I never slept with Ellis!’

  ‘Where’s the difference between us?’ he ground out, ignoring her anguished interruption, twisting the stem of his glass in his long fingers.

  ‘This is pointless,’ she said, forcing herself to smile as a group of acquaintances walked past and waved at her.

  ‘Not to me, it isn’t.’

  ‘What do you want from me?’ she asked tightly, knowing that he was pushing her towards the awful confession that what she felt for him was second to none, and backing away from any such confession for dear life.

  ‘Oh, God,’ he said fiercely, raking his fingers through his hair.

  ‘It’s over. Why bother to do a post-mortem on it? Let’s just say that our relationship, if that’s not too exaggerated a word for it, died of natural causes.’

  He started to say something, his face savage, but it was an impossible place to talk. There were too many people swarming around them, too many eyes glancing in their direction, and he was as aware of that as she was. This crowd, which would later ruthlessly look for reasons behind her departure, were, for the moment, her allies, giving her cover, protecting her from a conversation she couldn’t cope with.

  She called out to someone passing by and any snatched privacy they had had was lost.

  Later, over dinner, she felt her eyes drifting to his stiff back, speculating furiously on what was going on in his head. He had been cold and offhand with her in the office but now there was barely concealed fury in him.

  From the round table where she was sitting, with seven other people, she glanced at him from under her lashes and tried to make polite conversation with the people around her.

  After the meal there was a disco. Everyone drifted out of the room so that the tables could be cleared away, breaking up into natural groups of friends, and for a while she lost sight of him altogether.

  When she next saw him, back in the dining-room which was now dimly lit and crowded with people, some dancing, others standing around and chatting over the music, she got a shock. He wasn’t alone. He was on the dance floor with Fiona. She had not been there for the meal but she must have arrived on the scene shortly after. Abigail looked at the figures on the dance floor and felt a sick feeling wash over her in a tidal wave.

  One of the men who worked in the sales department meandered over to her and, from what seemed a huge distance away, she heard him ask her to dance. He was smiling and waiting and not expecting to be turned down. Abigail knew him well enough; she knew most of the sales department pretty well because she dealt with them all so regularly, and she knew that Gary Chalmers was very fond of himself, so she made a light quip about his harem and how was it that he could fit her in, and received the expected chuckle of self-congratulatory modesty.

  She rested her head on his shoulder and closed her eyes, while Gary’s chatter swam around her and all she could think of was Ross and the ache in the pit of her stomach. When the music ended, she straightened and looked up to find him staring right at her. Let him think the worst, she decided recklessly. She kept one arm around Gary’s waist and the music continued with another slow song. She thought of Ross and Fiona, their bodies like one, she thought of him whispering into Fiona’s ear, his breath like a warm tickle on her face, she imagined what he was whispering, and felt her heart constrict.

  She was so miserable that she was hardly aware of her feet keeping step with Gary’s. She was hardly aware when people began leaving. Ross, in keeping with his position, would be the last to leave, and Fiona would doubtless be at his side, declaring to the world that they were an item.

  Poor Gary, she thought after a while, four straight dances in a row when his harem was patiently waiting.

  She moved to join a group of girls, secretaries like herself, and when it seemed a decent enough time to leave, she stood up and made an unobtrusive exit.

  There was a mass of people queueing at the cloakroom and she looked at them with a sinking feeling. Then, rather than join the queue and be obliged to contribute to the raised voices and high laughter, she went across to one of the chairs which had been pushed against the wall and sat down. She felt incredibly weary.

  ‘I thought you might be here,’ a voice said from over her, and Abigail looked up. When most people were beginning to look a bit tattered at the edges, Fiona still managed to look glamorous and impeccably made up. Didn’t that sleek tailored blonde hair ever become dishevelled? Abigail looked at her with dislike and wished that she would just go away.

  ‘I didn’t expect to find you here. I thought that you might have had a bit more pride, but then I hardly expected you to be still working for Ross. I thought that you might have found that an untenable position, but then types like you hang on until you’re physically thrown overboard.’ Fiona wasn’t looking at her. She was staring around with a bored expression, her mouth pursed and discontented. In ten years’ time, Abigail thought, she would have the lines of a woman who was never satisfied with life, not that that afforded her a great deal of satisfaction.

  ‘You’re wasting your little digs on me,’ she said without emphasis. ‘I won’t be provoked into a slanging match with you over anyone, so why the hell don’t you flap away and find another victim for those vampire teeth of yours?’

  A spasm of fury crossed Fiona’s face and she gave Abigail the full brunt of her glacial blue eyes.

  ‘I told Ross about you,’ she said. ‘But I can see it didn’t work or else you wouldn’t still be cluttering up his life and his office, so there’s something else I want to say to you, and if you feel anything for him at all, you’ll listen.’

  ‘Go away,’ Abigail repeated with restraint.

  ‘You wouldn’t want to see him dragged through the mud, would you?’ Fiona asked coldly. ‘I’ve booked a room in the hotel for the night.’ Her mouth curved into a feline smile. ‘I thought Ross might appreciate not having to take a taxi back to his apartment. Perhaps we could continue this conversation there? It would be infinitely more private.’

  ‘What do you mean, dragged through the mud?’ Abigail asked, and was granted another reptilian baring of the teeth.

  ‘I thought so. In love enough to care for her man’s reputation even when the man in question wants nothing further to do with her. Touching.’

  ‘If Ross wants nothing further to do with me, Fiona,’ Abigail pointed out reasonably, ‘why are you making such a big fuss? Why are you trying so hard to make sure that I’m no longer around?’

  The controlled reptilian smile splintered into a look of rage.

  ‘I think we need to have a little chat, my dear,’ she said. ‘I think you need to find out exactly what’s on the line if you don’t clear out.’

  ‘Oh, very well,’ Abigail said between her teeth, because the last thing she wanted to do was cause a scene here and they were heading rapidly in that direction.

  They both left, walking quickly and silently towards the lift, then along the richly carpeted corridor to Fiona’s room. It was small but exquisite, with tastefully decorated walls and a great deal of antique furniture which was thoughtfully positioned to make the most of a limited amount of space. There were no clothes anywhere, no sign that the room was occupied apart from a Louis Vuitton holdall on the bed.

  Fiona didn’t bother to close the door. She left it ajar and strode into the room, turning to face Abigail with her hands on her hips.

  ‘I’ve been watching you,’ she said venomously, keeping her voice low. The upper classes, Abigail thought irrationally, nev
er raised their voices when they argued, did they? They conducted rows in the hushed tones that people normally used in libraries. ‘When I heard that you had decided to leave Ross’s company, I thought that I would be rid of you, but I watched you tonight, and I’m not a fool. All that cheek-to-cheek dancing, just where Ross could see you. Do you think that I wasn’t aware of the little game you were playing?’ There was hatred in the eyes and the curl of the mouth.

  ‘What game?’

  Fiona laughed and there was an angry, uncontrollable edge to the laughter. ‘You’re still trying, aren’t you? Still trying to get him, never mind the fact that I told him all about you and your manoeuvring. Well, it won’t work.’

  ‘You lied to him.’

  ‘Yes,’ Fiona agreed, ‘I lied, but all’s fair in love and war.’

  Abigail was beginning to revise her opinions on the upper classes and their noise levels during an argument, because Fiona’s voice was rising steadily, as was her colour.

  ‘You’re wrong about——’ she began, but she didn’t get very far.

  ‘He was annoyed to see me there this evening! Furious! He told me that it was all over between us, and it’s all your fault!’ She took a step forwards and Abigail thought, Help! She eyed the half-open door with a strong desire to run.

  ‘I’m sure you’re wrong,’ she murmured soothingly, which was the wrong approach.

  ‘Don’t patronise me! You might think that you’re clever, leading him on with a little lovemaking, coming here tonight with your coy smiles, but you’re not. You’re just making a complete fool of yourself!’