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‘Oh, don’t worry, I know what to expect. She is a very stubborn young lady.’
Gerard headed for work ten minutes later, to have his interview with the news editor, but as he drove through heavy traffic he couldn’t get her image out of his head—the wild tangle of red curls around that delicate white face, the bud-like breasts and long, long legs. She haunted him for the rest of the day.
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_59865aab-6a16-59ea-a1f9-3f798b31185f)
KEIRA was thinking about him too, hardly listening to the doctor as he examined her, sighing.
‘You’ve stopped putting on weight, haven’t you? Have you lost some more? You were doing so well, too. You must not let yourself slide backwards, my dear girl.’ His sing-song voice was gently sad; he never became angry, he just got sadder and sadder. Trying to make me feel guilty, thought Keira. And succeeding a lot of the time! Dr Patel was a great psychologist.
‘It just happened,’ was all Keira could say to him. She felt like death, and knew she must look it. She had seen the distaste in Gerard Findlay’s eyes and felt sick herself. He was the very last man in the world she would have wanted to see her in that condition. It had been a deep shock to find herself looking into his eyes. For a second she had almost thought she was imagining him, and then she had realised he was not a figment of her imagination, he was really there, and she had been shaken to her depths.
‘Just happened?’ the doctor repeated, shaking his head in disbelief. ‘Oh, please, Keira! We both know there is more to it than that!’
Keira looked at him helplessly, her face white, her eyes smudged and shadowy in that whiteness. ‘All right! I couldn’t cope. When I knew I’d lost that contract I felt so bad. I didn’t mean to let it happen. I came home and I was hungry; I started to eat, and the next minute…’
‘It triggered an attack.’ Dr Patel nodded. ‘It is insidious. Something makes you unhappy, you need the comfort of food, you start to eat and you can’t stop, but you are afraid of putting on weight, so you make yourself throw up. It is an endless circle. The only way out of it is understanding yourself and why it happens. As soon as you feel yourself losing control you must stop, go for a walk, go to see a film, ring up friends, visit people, do anything to distract yourself.’
‘I know, I know. Oh, and I tried so hard this last year; it hasn’t happened for months and months; I kept it under tight control, put on lots of weight.’
‘You needed to,’ the doctor said quickly, frowning at her. ‘Don’t start telling yourself you’re fat! You know that’s another trigger. The truth is, you’re still underweight for your height.’
He saw the evasion in her face and knew she didn’t really believe him; that was the problem with all bulimia sufferers—they couldn’t trust in what they saw in the mirror. They saw a very different reflection and they never believed what other people told them, either. Their obsession was too deep, as deep as their need for love and reassurance.
‘Keira, Keira,’ he said, shaking his head at her. ‘Believe me, you are too thin. My wife is a very sexy woman, most beautiful, and she would make two of you!’
That made her laugh and her face relaxed a little. ‘She wouldn’t thank you for that if she could hear you!’
Dr Patel’s eyes twinkled. ‘Oh, she would be flattered—in my culture being thin is not so prized as it is in yours. I like women to have round hips and breasts like watermelons. I don’t want to go to bed with someone with the figure of a boy. That doesn’t excite me at all.’ He grinned at her. ‘I am sorry, Keira, but you would have to put on a lot of weight before I would think you were as beautiful as my wife!’
Keira giggled, then said wryly, ‘But I’m a model, Doctor. I have to stay slim or I won’t get work. The camera puts pounds on you. That’s why I lost that Rexel contract—they thought I had put on too much weight.’
He looked irritated. ‘Then they are very silly people. You are much more beautiful now than you were a year ago! A little weight has improved you.’
‘Tell that to Rexel’s ad men,’ Keira said bitterly.
The doctor watched her shadowed face and sighed.
‘I wish I could have the chance! I would box their ears for them. Believe me, you have been looking much better lately. It is a great pity to ruin it now; you don’t want to have to go back to the clinic, do you?’
She shook her head, grimacing, remembering the regime in the private clinic to which her stepfather had sent her when her weight had got down so far that it had shocked her mother when she’d seen Keira again after a gap of eighteen months.
Keira had agreed to have medical help only because her mother was so distraught. Keira hadn’t really believed she was ill. The first month in the clinic had been a long struggle between her and the medical staff. It had taken some time before she had begun to listen to them, begun to understand what she had been doing to herself. Since then she had been through a bitter battle to start living a very different life, and she was angry with herself for having fallen back again.
‘That’s the last thing I want! I couldn’t stand going through that again!’ she assured the doctor, who smiled.
‘Good girl. Then what you must do now is break this pattern before it starts. I think you should take a holiday, get away from the problems that have caused the recurrence.’
‘But now I’ve lost Rexel I’ll have to get other work, which means I must be in London.’
‘That can wait, my dear, believe me. The most important thing at the moment is for you to get back to the position you were in a year ago, feeling strong and sure of yourself. Going away will help you see things more clearly; from a distance everything will look different. Go somewhere sunny. Just relax and have fun, forget everything else. Eat three meals a day, never eat alone, don’t eat in between meals, but above all if you feel an attack threatening do something. Get a friend to go with you, stop you going near food. That little girl out thereSara, is it? Get her to go with you. And while you’re there go out all the time, keep busy, surround yourself with lots of people.’ He smiled at her. ‘You have broken the cycle once, my dear. Don’t let it re-establish itself.’
‘I won’t. Thank you, Dr Patel.’ Keira smiled at him. His soothing manner and understanding had made her feel more human.
When he had gone Sara came into the bedroom and sat on her bed. ‘What did he say?’
Keira told her and Sara nodded. ‘I think that’s very good advice. You haven’t had a holiday for ages, you’ve been working so hard.’
‘Rexel kept me busy,’ Keira said, her mouth turning down at the corners as she was reminded of the lost contract. She had hoped for so much from it—the constant appearance on TV had been making her face instantly recognisable everywhere she went. Being seen on magazine covers, or inside magazines, never had that sort of impact. Of course, she had known it couldn’t last forever, but she had hoped for another year, at least.
Sara gave her a sympathetic look. ‘I’m sorry, Keira—it must have been a terrible blow. But at least now you’re free to take other work, and after you’ve been the Rexel girl and on TV all the time for a year your face is famous—you’re bound to be offered lots of jobs.’
‘For a while, maybe. But I’m getting too old! You know how young you have to be in this business. In a few years the place will be overrun with girls of seventeen who’ll get all the jobs, and I’ll be out, finished. I’ll be lucky to get a job modelling clothes for home-shopping catalogues.’
‘You’re just depressed. You’ve got plenty of time to make it into the big league; you’re only twentytwo.’
‘I feel a lot older.’ Keira grimaced, her mouth turning down at the edges, then shot Sara an accusing look. ‘By the way, I’ve got a bone to pick with you.’
‘A bone?’ For once Sara’s brilliant grasp of English failed her; she stared blankly.
‘Gerard Findlay!’
‘Oh…’ Sara put one of her elegant little hands up to her mouth, giggling helplessly.
‘It isn’t funny! You know I hate the man—I certainly didn’t want him to see me looking like that! I could kill you!’
Sara looked apologetically at her. ‘Sorry, I was in a panic. I just needed…’
‘A man to tell you what to do!’ Keira finished for her, eyeing her with half-impatient amusement. ‘I know you; when a problem comes up you always scream for a man.’
‘They are so useful! I wasn’t brought up to break down doors; think what it would do to my nails!’
Keira looked at Sara’s long, beautiful manicured fingernails and laughed. Sara was smart, lively, very shrewd and down-to-earth, when she was with her own sex; but let a man walk into the room and she threw a switch, started fluttering her lashes, using a soft, sweet voice, acting dumb and helpless. And the really maddening thing, thought Keira, was that it always seemed to work; men loved it. Had Gerard Findlay liked it?
Sara added triumphantly, ‘And I was right: he got in here, didn’t he? And without having to break the door down. He is clever…’ She grinned. ‘As well as very sexy.’
Keira wished she could deny it, but much as she might dislike Gerard Findlay she couldn’t ignore his smouldering sexuality. The first time she’d seen him he had made an indelible impact with his black hair and angry grey eyes, that lean and powerful body. He was intensely male, and he made Keira deeply aware of her own sexuality. Everything female in her vibrated in response, as if buried deep inside her was a magnetic needle which quivered and swung towards the north pole of his masculinity.
‘I hate the man,’ she repeated, and Sara gave her a glinting, teasing smile.
‘That’s what you say.’
To her own fury, Keira felt her skin colour, glow hot. At that second the telephone rang. Deeply relieved to be able to change the subject, she said, ‘Could you answer that? Ask whoever it is to leave a name and number and I’ll call them back later.’
‘OK,’ Sara said, then, with a mocking flick of her lashes added, ‘Saved by the bell!’
Keira did not ask her what she meant. Sara was intensely intuitive, unfortunately. She picked up feelings and thoughts Keira did not want her to guess at; it was part of Sara’s strongly developed femininity, which was half instinctive, half learnt at her mother’s knee.
It was the merest accident that Sara came to be in London, let alone working as a model. Her Arab parents had brought her to London when she was four because her father got a job with an Arab bank in Mayfair. When Sara was six, he had died, and her ravishing, still very young mother had stayed on in London because her brother worked in the same bank and was at hand to take care of his sister and her child.
Sara’s mother was young and beautiful; within a year she had married again, a client of the bank with an enormous fortune. Sara had lived in England ever since. At seventeen she had become a model and had been very successful. Her family made sure she never took her clothes off in front of a man, never modelled underclothes or swimwear, but that had not hindered her career. She had begun by working with one of her cousins, a talented young designer who modelled his clothes on her: Arab-inspired caftans and evening dresses, hooded cloaks that swirled around you as you walked, filmy loose white gauze trousers tied at the ankles. His clothes were romantic, visually exciting; he had helped make Sara’s reputation, she had begun to appear on magazine covers and was soon in great demand. When she’d retired from the profession to get married, aged twenty-one, a wail of regrets had gone up from the photographers and designers who liked to have her work for them.
Sara had been blithely indifferent. Oh, she had enjoyed modelling, but now she was eager to be a wife and mother. Sara always threw herself wholeheartedly into whatever she was doing, and loved variety, excitement, novelty—she got bored doing the same thing every day. What she wanted was constant change.
Keira frowned at the ceiling, her face as cold and white as the plasterwork above her. I wish I did, she thought, but change of any kind, in her work, in her private life, made her tense and nervous and there was nothing she could do to stop that kneejerk reaction.
While she was staying at the clinic she had undergone therapy which tried to get at the root of her eating disorder and made her aware that the various problems she had all stemmed from the same source, her childhood and the breakdown of the family which had changed her world forever at exactly the worst age, on the verge of puberty. It was one thing to realise something like that, quite another to be able to deal with it. You could re-train yourself where learned behaviour was concerned, but when you were dealing with the unconscious you could not use reason or persuasion; you were helpless to reach that submerged part of the mind.
She started, hearing Sara’s running feet on the stairs. The other girl came back into the room, flushed and smiling. ‘It was your mother.’
Keira tensed. ‘You didn’t tell her I’d had an attack?’
‘No. Although I know I ought to have—she’ll be furious when she knows I didn’t tell her.’
‘She’ll tell Ivo, and he’ll just use it as a stick to beat her with!’
Sara gave her a curious look. ‘You hate him, don’t you?’
‘He isn’t my man of the year, I’ll admit.’
‘Well, I told your mother you were out and would ring her back when you got in; don’t forget to do that when you feel up to it.’ She looked at her watch. ‘I’ll have to go; we’re having a dinner party tonight. I’ll ring you later to check how you are. If you need me, you know where I am.’
‘Yes,’ Keira said, then added quietly, ‘Thanks, Sara—for coming so quickly and…’ She made a wordless little gesture with her hands and Sara shook her head at her.
‘What are friends for? Be seeing you soon.’
* * *
In the newsroom of the TV company he worked for Gerard was arguing with the news editor, a large, shaggy-haired man with heavy eyebrows and a permanently harassed look.
‘I tell you there’s nothing wrong with me now; I’m as fit as you are.’ He gave the other man a furious look from head to toe, scowling. ‘Fitter, come to that!’
The other man, who was stones overweight, drank like a fish and smoked like a chimney, laughed.
‘Sure, you are, but I’m not a foreign correspondent, I’m a desk jockey, and I don’t need a doctor’s certificate before I come to work. I have to abide by the company doctor’s decision and he says you shouldn’t be sent into a war zone again, or put under any strain, because you’re still suffering from…’ He searched among the piled papers on his desk and pulled out one, pushed his spectacles up on his forehead and peered at the document. ‘Here it is…post-traumatic shock. That’s what you’ve got, Gerry, old son. You’re in post-traumatic shock and the company won’t be responsible for you if you go abroad. They don’t want to have to pay out huge sums of money in compensation if you crack up permanently next time.’
‘Damn fools!’ growled Gerard, but recognised that he had no hope of persuading the company to change their mind. Money was the bottom line with these people.
‘Listen, didn’t you do an art degree? Todd’s on to an interesting art story—it may develop into a full programme for current affairs, or just turn out to be a stock item for one of those nights when there’s no news. He could do with some help; why not work with him for a week and then have another check-up?’
Gerard gave a furious shrug. ‘Oh, very well. Where will I find him?’
‘He’s working out of Annexe Three—you’ll need a pass; security is pretty tight at the moment. Hang on; I’ll ring him and warn him you’re on your way and he’ll alert Security.’
Todd Knight was a short, ginger-haired man in his early thirties; he was the news team’s art and antiques expert but doubled up by reporting on certain crime stories when they touched on his specialist subject.
He welcomed Gerard with open arms. ‘Good to have you aboard, man! I could do with some help with this stuff; I’m absolutely swamped with leads and I can’t follow them all up personally. You’re a godsend.’
Gerard grinned at him, accepting the mug of black coffee Todd offered him. ‘Glad to be of some use for a change. So, what’s it all about?’
‘The underground trade in stolen art and antiques.’ Todd gestured to the walls of the office on which hung photographs and drawings. ‘All these disappeared during the past two years. They’re important works, most of them—worth millions. None of them resurfaced, so where are they? Who took them, and who bought them from the thieves?’
Gerard frowned, wandering around the room, peering at the snapshots. ‘This is police work, surely—they have a squad which specialises in following up these cases.’
‘Of course they do, and they are, but I’m working on an idea for a programme; I believe international collectors are involved in a crime ring, employing criminals who are given exact orders—told what to snatch and how much will be paid when the painting is delivered. It’s being organised on a huge scale, Gerard, and it’s a worldwide scam.’
Gerard whistled. ‘That could make some programme! Hey, I know this painting…it was hanging in a gallery in the South of France; it’s a Cézanne.’
‘Right—it vanished a year ago, hasn’t been seen since. There’s a strong lead over in France, in Provence; I was thinking of going over there soon to see what I can dig up.’
‘You can count me in for that—a few days in Provence sounds great; I think I’m going to enjoy this job!’ grinned Gerard. ‘Oddly enough, I was going to ring you today anyway—I wanted to ask you a few questions.’
Keira half slept, half daydreamed for several hours and then got up and showered, got dressed. It was twilight by then, early evening. She forced herself to think about supper, and decided to have a little scrambled egg, followed by a banana. Her stomach still felt queasy but she knew she had to re-establish a light eating pattern at once.
She went downstairs, almost jumping out of her skin when her doorbell rang loudly just as she reached the tiny hallway.
She hesitated, but she couldn’t pretend not to be in because she had only just switched on the hall light.
‘Who is it?’ she asked, close to the door.
‘Gerard Findlay,’ said the deep, familiar voice, and she closed her eyes. It would be him, wouldn’t it?
‘What do you want?’
‘To talk to you. Open this door; I don’t like talking through it with half the street listening. Of course, if you don’t mind everyone hearing what I say to you…’ He paused significantly, and she bit her lip, flushed with anger. He knew very well that she wouldn’t want anyone eavesdropping, especially if he meant to talk about what had happened earlier that day.
Reluctantly, she slipped the catch and opened the door, very tense as she faced him. He looked her up and down with those hard grey eyes, taking in everything about her, from her faintly damp red hair, tied up with a black ribbon at her nape, down over her slender figure to her pale bare feet. She had not bothered to put on make-up and was wearing a black sweater and jeans. She looked, thought Gerard, like a boy, and yet there was something so intensely feminine about her mouth, naturally full and pink, as velvety as a hedgerow rose, so that he couldn’t help wondering what it would taste like, how it would feel if he kissed it. His gaze wandered to that wild, tumbling hair; she had tried to tame it by tying it back but it suited her better free—he was tempted to catch hold of it, pull off the ribbon and let the hair fall around her face, before running his fingers through it, burying his face in the curling strands.
Keira stared back at him angrily—how dared he look her over like that?
‘Well?’ she demanded, her chin lifted in a defiant movement.
‘Feeling better?’ he asked casually.
She nodded without a smile, her expression offhand, which, if he had known her better, he would have known meant that she was ill at ease and desperately trying to hide it.
‘I’m fine. You said you had something to say. Could you be quick? I’m very busy.’
His lids half lowered at that, a sardonic gleam in his eyes as he surveyed her.
‘Going out?’
She hesitated. ‘I might.’
‘Dressed like that?’ His glance ran over her again with open amusement, but underneath that he was reacting very differently. He kept telling himself she was too skinny for his taste, but the truth was he found those small, high breasts sexy, even though the baggy sweater half hid her body—the body he had been remembering all day, the body he had carried in his arms and found as light as a child’s yet with considerable sensual impact.
‘I shall change if I go out,’ she coldly told him. ‘You still haven’t told me what you wanted to say.’
He shrugged. ‘I just wanted to check you were OK.’
