'I should have rung her earlier, don't think I don't know that, I just couldn't think of anything to say to. her.' Stephen kept on wiping his hands as though trying to erase more than the stain of black oil, and Lindsay felt like crying. He looked so defeated.
'How bad is it?' she asked tentatively, and he grimaced, his eyes down.
'I'm wiped out.' He flung the rag into the back seat of the car and closed the bonnet, still without looking at her.
'Have you tried…' she began, and Stephen turned those weary eyes on her, their rims pink as though he had been crying. Her stomach turned over and she bit the inside of her lip.
'I've tried everything I can think of,' he said. 'Short of a miracle, I've had it—know any good miracle-workers?'
'Daniel,' she began, and Stephen laughed curtly.
'Has too much hard-headed business sense to be bothered with me. Do you think that didn't occur to me? No, I'll have to declare myself bankrupt, sell up everything and get a job.' He paused, his body wrenched by a deep sigh. 'If I can, if anyone will employ me—I know I wouldn't.' He walked round the car and Lindsay followed slowly. She had never expected to feel so deeply worried about Stephen, he had always been the one who worried about her; now their positions had been reversed and it made her feel uncertain of herself, she wasn't sure how to handle the situation, how to talk to him.
'Don't do anything in a hurry,' she said to his back. 'Wait for a few days…'
'Don't tell me something may turn up,' Stephen muttered. 'I can do without the bromides.' He opened the front door. From the kitchen they heard Alice talking to the children in a brisk, no-nonsense voice. Stephen sighed again. 'She's furious with me, and I can't blame her. I should have told her, but I just couldn't face it. I didn't have the guts.'
'She'll forgive you,' Lindsay assured him, hoping she was right.
'We'll have to leave this house, it will have to go,' he said. 'Alice will hate that, she loves this place.'
The kitchen door opened and he stopped talking. Alice ignored him, looking at Lindsay. 'Are you staying for supper?' It was very far from being an invitation and Lindsay hurriedly pretended to smile.
'I'd have loved to,' she lied. 'But I've got a date, I just called in to see how Stephen was.' Alice's face was stony; that remark didn't go down at all well. 'I must rush,' Lindsay added quickly, gave her brother a quick kiss on the cheek and fled. She felt resentful as she made her way back to her own flat. Alice was being very unsympathetic, why was she punishing Stephan when it must be so obvious that he was miserable? Lindsay had been angry with her brother herself, while he was missing, she' had understood then why Alice was so angry, but face to face with Stephen's helpless defeat, how could Alice go on being unkind to him?
When she got home, she stripped and had a cool shower, washing away the city dust and stale perspiration of the day, her thirsty skin drinking in the water through every pore. She towelled her hair lightly, slipped into a short white towelling robe and padded into the kitchen. It was far too hot to eat, she decided, looking into the fridge. She got herself a long, cool drink and went into the sitting-room, flinging herself down on the couch with a sigh.
What was she going to do? If she had ever had any hope that Daniel was lying it had evaporated in the face of Stephen's despair. She couldn't let her brother's firm and home be taken away from him if she could stop it, she owed Stephen too much; he had carried the burden of managing their home for years, he hadn't married until Lindsay herself had married, all his life he had been strong, responsible, hard-working. Now he needed her help—how could she refuse it?
As she sipped her drink the phone rang and she started nervously, almost swallowing a piece of ice. Putting down the glass, she went over to pick up the phone.
'Hallo?' Her voice sounded low and wary, she was afraid it would be Daniel, and she was only too right.
'Thought about it yet?'
A flare of rage went through her. 'I thought you gave me until Thursday to make up my mind?' '
'Just making sure you don't forget about it,' he said mockingly.
'As if I was likely to!'
'You have a genius for forgetting things,' he said, and the words carried a heavy load of sarcasm. There was a pause, then he asked drily: 'No date tonight? Or is Hill there?'
'No, he isn't,' Lindsay snapped, then wished she had lied—Aston made a good cover, but she hated herself for using him as one. Quickly she said: 'But he may come round later.' It was true enough, Aston had said he might call in at the flat some time that evening. He was having dinner with one of his suppliers, if the evening ended early Aston would try to get to see her, but if the other man felt like talking for hours over drinks, Aston wouldn't make it.
'You looked very pretty last night,' Daniel said softly, and she felt a shudder run down her spine. 'That dress suits you, green is your colour, it makes your eyes look brighter.' His voice seemed to stroke her skin, she despised herself for trembling.
'I'm surprised you noticed—you seemed too busy looking into your girl-friend's eyes. How did you pick her up? Don't tell me you've started manufacturing soap?'
'Miaow,' he mocked, laughing, and she was furious with herself for coming on like a jealous woman.
'I met her to talk business,' Daniel said, and Lindsay laughed angrily.
'You don't expect me to believe that? Nobody talks business with a blonde sex kitten over a lengthy dinner.'
'Carolyn used to model for us before she went into acting,' he told her. 'We're trying to persuade her to do some more work.'
'What sort?' Lindsay asked sarcastically. 'And where? The bedroom, by any chance? Auditioning her last night, were you?'
'Careful,' he drawled. 'Your claws are showing, pussycat.'
Lindsay flung the phone down and walked away. The angry exchange had been bitterly familiar, how many times had she heard herself sniping at him like that over some other girl? She had never seemed able to stop herself, the jealousy had sprung up inside her and she had been shaking with it, she had wanted to scream, hit him, slap the other girl. When they were alone the black emotion had come pouring out of her, and only afterwards when she had calmed down had she been able to think clearly. Then she had felt sick, ashamed, shabby, and she had hated herself.
She wrapped her arms around her body, bent over, fighting the stabbing knives of misery that were tearing at her. Her jealousy had ruined her marriage, she had been so uncertain of herself, of Daniel, she hadn't been able to believe he could really love her and she had despised herself. The intensity of her feelings for him left her scared, she was terrified that someone else would take him away from her. She was so ordinary, so young and unsophisticated, how could she hope to hold a man like him? Every time he looked at anyone else, every time another woman looked at him, fear had tormented her. She had told herself that Daniel had only married her because she wouldn't sleep with him, and she had waited for him to wander away to fresh woods and pastures new. She knew the sort of life he had led before they married, he was far too attractive to be content with one woman, she knew he must be bored with her.
It had been so easy to convince herself, their marriage hadn't a hope of success from the start. When she left him, she hated him for the pain she had suffered for months, the pain which refused to die down even after their divorce, but over the past year she had managed to evict him from her mind. It hadn't been easy, some nights she had wallowed in grief only to get up next day and despise herself for giving way to an outworn emotion. Aston had helped, dating him had given her other things to think about. Why had fate brought Daniel Randall back into her life?
She finished her drink and watched a programme on TV to take her mind off Daniel. Aston didn't show up, presumably his supplier had had other plans. At ten o'clock, Lindsay went to bed and lay in the darkness giving herself a stern lecture. She was not going to get involved with Daniel Randall again. He was bad for her, it made her ill to feel jealous, and if she let herself think about him she would st
art being jealous of every girl he saw. She couldn't reach the source of her jealousy with her reason, it didn't respond to logic; it was bitter, obsessive, destructive, and she refused to let it take her over again.
Chris didn't arrive at the office next morning until after eleven. He wandered in, sleek and lithe in his usual jeans and shirt, moving at his normal pace and Lindsay glanced up from a desk covered with, paper. 'Good heavens, don't say you've decided to do some work?'
He sleepily propped himself against her door. 'Anything happen?'
'The sky fell in, that's all.'
He surveyed her through lowered lids, unexcited. 'Any casualties?'
'Charles rang. He sounded like a man in a state of panic. He wanted to know when you meant to get off your chair and do something to find The Face.'
'Did he ask where I was?'
'What do you think?' Lindsay leaned back in her chair and smiled at him. 'I told him you were out hunting for the girl of his dreams.'
Chris put two fingers to his lips and blew her a kiss, and she laughed, shaking her head at him.
'He also asked if you'd have lunch with him,' she pointed out. 'So that he could harangue you on the subject for a few hours.'
'What did you tell him?'
'That I thought you had an appointment.'
'So I do,' said Chris, ruffling his blond hair thoughtfully as he stared at her. 'And so do you, my angel.'
'Do I?' She leaned over to flick open her desk diary. 'I haven't written it down—who with?'
'Me,' he said. 'We're going to have a long, quiet lunch and put our thinking caps on…'
'I thought you had yours on already,' she said, glancing down at the pile of work she had in front of her. 'Chris, I've got to get all this stuff done.' She had been working flat out since nine o'clock that morning, but she didn't seem to have made any dent in the work which had been piling up in her in-tray for days. None of it was urgent, which was why she had left it untouched for so long, but it had to be done sooner or later, and she was in the right mood to be efficient.
'It can wait,' Chris said as he strolled away. Lindsay glared after him—that was the motto he lived by, everything could wait and usually did. What was amazing was that he got away with it. Problems he left unsolved seemed to solve themselves, letters that didn't get written ceased to be necessary, people he ignored went away without complaining. He was just born lucky, she decided.
'Lady on the phone, came out in a rash after using Moonglow Seventy-Nine,' her secretary said on the intercom, and, sighing, Lindsay picked up the phone, her voice automatically becoming soothing, horrified, sympathetic.
She had no sooner put down the phone again than her door opened and one of Vivons sales team came in to complain about the way complaints were handled by the office. 'I'm sick of promising we'd look into it,' he said, perching on her desk and picking up her pen. She watched him doodling with it on a spare piece of paper as he talked.
'I'll give the complaints section a talking-to,' she promised.
'Don't forget,' he said, sliding off the desk. He looked at her with appreciation and gave a coaxing grin. 'Have lunch with me and we'll discuss it further.'
'Sorry, I have a date.' Lindsay put out her hand. 'Thank you.'
He was putting her pen into his jacket pocket. Blankly, he said: 'What?'
'Pen,' she said.
'Oh, sorry, just habit,' he said, handing the pen back with his eyes on the smooth, curve of her figure from her high, rounded breasts to her slim hips. He backed out, talking and staring. Lindsay made a face at the door after it had shut behind him. He had a fantastic sales record, buyers ate out of his hand, and she could see why: he responded to women like a man in a desert spotting an oasis, and most buyers working with cosmetics were women, it was not a male territory. Lindsay found it irritating, to try to work with a man who couldn't stop looking at her figure. Given half a chance, he would use his hands as well as his eyes, he was a bottom pincher and an arm fondler. Her. secretary came in, flushed, and wailed: 'I'm black and blue! I should get danger money!'
'Sorry, Ann,' said Lindsay, laughing. 'Next time he comes in, keep the desk between you,' and Ann said she would remember that.
Lindsay dictated several letters, read a few of the snarling memos which their managing director was fond of despatching around the building, then tried to get back to her paperwork, only to have Chris saunter in and ask: 'Coming?'
'It isn't lunchtime already!' she protested, looking at her watch. It was almost one o'clock. 'Where's the morning gone?' Lindsay moaned, pushing back her chair and getting up. 'I haven't done anything!'
'You should be organised,' Chris told her. 'Like me.' He yawned, his thumbs in his jeans back pockets, and she eyed him with suppressed fury. A lot of the paperwork she was wading through should have gone to him, but if it had, he would have dealt with it by the simple method of screwing it up and chucking it into the nearest wastepaper basket.
'I'm going to the cloakroom,' she announced with dignity, and walked out. The office was almost empty, everyone else had gone to lunch, only the office junior remained at her desk, eating an apple and drinking a low-calorie orange juice.
As Chris and Lindsay left five minutes later, the girl smiled at them, gazing at Chris with wide-eyed eagerness. Everyone in the office liked him, he had a smile for everyone, but then they didn't have to do his work for him, they didn't have to run around in his wake dealing with all the problems Chris decided to ignore.
He took her to lunch at a small back-street restaurant that took its time over serving you and didn't seem to mind how long you took to eat your meal. The menu was limited and Italian, groaning with calories. Lindsay skipped past the tempting pasta and ordered melon, then chose a main course of chicken with a side salad. Chris ate his way through a banquet, rich in sauces and highly spiced, but then he always did eat without caring about calories and got away with it. He was as thin as a rake, it wasn't fair.
Sighing, Lindsay slowly ate her melon while Chris twirled spaghetti on his fork. 'This is delicious, you should have had some,' he told her.
She averted her eyes. 'Are we really going to discuss The Face? Have you had any new ideas?'
'I'm hoping some will come,' he said, his eye roving over the other tables. 'What we want is a new face…'
'Someone who isn't a professional model, you mean?' Lindsay asked, and he looked back her, blue eyes blazing.
'Why not?' he stopped talking, stared at her fixedly. 'Like you,' he said. 'You're the sort of girl I'm looking for—a girl with a vital, alive face, someone special but not artificial.'
Lindsay laughed, her green eyes vivid with amusement. 'You'll never sell that idea to Charles, he'll send you to the funny farm.'
Chris put down his fork, his face alight. 'I'm serious, I just looked at you properly and you're terrific. Bone structure sensational, eyes beautifully spaced, good nose…'
'Hey, do you mind?' She was beginning to get alarmed, she did not like being analysed feature by feature, even though Chris was being heavily flattering. She knew he was using only the best butter, he didn't mean those things, and it made her feel uncomfortable.
'Sexy mouth,' he said, taking no notice. 'Nice rounded chin, slim neck.'
'Stop it!' she protested, very flushed, then, as his eyes moved lower and he opened his mouth, 'I mean it—you can stop right there.' She did not want to hear his description of her breasts, the way he was looking at her made her feel like a slave on the auction block, she objected to his stare and his personal comments.
'What's the matter?' he asked, all innocence. The blue eyes were open and frank, smiling at her. 'I'm perfectly serious.'
'Don't be so ridiculous,' Lindsay muttered.
'It came to me in a flash,' said Chris, looking quite excited for him. 'I looked at you and I knew… you're The Face.'
CHAPTER SEVEN
'I don't think that's funny,' Lindsay said.
Chris leaned towards her, his fingertips drumming on
the table. 'But don't you see—it could be you? It could be her.' he flung out a hand at the small, dark waitress who was serving the next table. 'It could be that tall blonde over there. It could be anyone.'
She relaxed. 'Well, obviously…'
'Hang oh,' he said impatiently. 'I haven't finished my point. We're not looking for a professional model, we're looking for an ordinary girl. So where do we look?'
Lindsay thought, frowning. 'Well, I suppose…' She hadn't got a clue.
'We run a competition,' Chris, said triumphantly.
Her mouth parted on a gasp, and he laughed at her expression, nodding.
'That's right, a Competition,' he repeated. 'For our girl, The Face, the girl who could be anyone in the country.' He was talking faster than she had ever heard him talk before, his words tumbling over each other to get out. 'Anyone who wants to enter will have to buy one of our products to get an entry form. They have to send in their photograph and…'
'My word!' Lindsay had caught fire from him, she was so staggered she couldn't think of anything else to say, so she said: 'My word !' again, and he laughed, highly delighted.
'Think Charles will like it?'
'He'll eat it,' she said without a shred of doubt, 'It will be terrific publicity, it will sell products like hot cakes and we'll get an entirely new face out of it, someone special is bound to be thrown up by a campaign like that.' She looked at him with admiration. 'You're a genius!'
Chris relapsed into his normal torpor, smiling lazily. 'You've noticed at last! I wondered how long it would take for the light to dawn.'
'Did it just come to you in a flash?' Lindsay asked curiously. 'I mean… just now? Did you really just think it up or…'
'I've had it hovering around, my mind,' he admitted. 'Ideas are like that sometimes, you just catch a glimpse of them out of the corner of your mind's eye, then they're gone, but if you sit round without worrying and wait—they come back.'
'So that's what you're doing for most of the day,' she said drily. 'Just waiting for ideas. I've often wondered.'
The Sex War Page 9