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‘You’re suggesting that I don’t tell her? You think it would be better for her to go back to him without being aware of what he’s capable of?’ Harris questioned grimly.
‘She may well know, but love him enough to forgive…’
‘What he tried to do to you is unforgivable!’ Harris chopped her off harshly.
Mallon let go a shaky breath. ‘I—w-wouldn’t argue that,’ she had to agree.
The subject seemed closed. ‘Ready?’ he said. ‘We’ll go and get your clothes.’
Mallon suddenly had an aversion to putting on the dress that Roland Phillips had tried to tear from her. She knew then that she would never wear it again. She wouldn’t have minded borrowing a comb, but Harris wasn’t offering, and she wouldn’t ask. ‘I look a sight,’ she mumbled.
‘Do you care?’
It annoyed her that he too thought she looked a sight! He needn’t have agreed with her. ‘Not a scrap!’ she answered shortly, and, delaying only to put on her sodden sandals, she joined him at the door.
The nearer they got to Almora Lodge, though, and nerves started to get the better of her. So that by the time Harris had pulled up outside the house, she had started to shake.
‘You’ll come in with me?’ she questioned jerkily when all those terrible happenings began to replay in her head, refusing to leave. Suddenly she felt too afraid to get out of the car.
‘I’ll be with you most every step of the way,’ he replied, his expression grim.
The front door was unlocked. Harris didn’t bother to knock but, tall and angry beside her, he went straight in. There was no sign of Roland Phillips.
‘I’ll be one minute,’ Harris said. ‘If you see Phillips before I do, yell.’
Mallon waited nervously at the bottom of the stairs while Harris headed in the direction of the drawing room. She waited anxiously when he went from her sight. Then she thought she heard a small short sound that might have been a bit of a groan, then a thud—but she had no intention of venturing anywhere to find out what it was all about.
And, true to his word, barely a minute later Harris appeared. He was with her every step of the way too as they went up the stairs. He stayed close by while she packed her cases and retrieved her handbag.
She had been all knotted up inside, certain that at some stage Roland Phillips would appear, if only to find out who was invading his property. But she was back in the car sitting beside Harris Quillian—and had seen nothing of her ex-employer. She started to feel better.
‘Thank you,’ she said simply as they left Almora Lodge behind.
‘My pleasure,’ he replied, and at some odd inflection in his tone, almost as if it had been a pleasure, Mallon found her eyes straying to his hands on the steering wheel. The knuckles on his right hand were very slightly reddened, she observed.
‘You saw Roland Phillips, didn’t you?’ she exclaimed as the explanation for that groan and thud suddenly jumped into her head. ‘It wasn’t very nice of him to mark your hand with his chin like that!’ The words broke from her before she could stop them.
‘Worth every crunch,’ Harris confirmed.
Mallon turned sideways in her seat to look at him. Firm jaw, firm mouth, steady eyes; she was starting to quite like him. ‘You didn’t need much of an excuse to hit him,’ she commented, guessing that because, at heart, his sister wanted to get back with her husband, Harris had previously held back on the urge to set about Roland for the grief he had caused Faye. However, Roland’s behaviour today had given him the excuse he had been looking for.
‘True,’ Harris answered. ‘Unfortunately he was still half sozzled with drink, so I only had to hit him once.’ She had to smile; it felt good to smile. By the sound of it, Roland Phillips had gone down like a sack of coals.
Harris carried her cases up the stairs when they arrived at Harcourt House. The two habitable bedrooms were side by side. He placed her cases in the room as yet without a bed, and showed her the other room.
‘Faye has seen to it that there’s plenty of bed linen, towels, that sort of thing, so I’ll leave that side of it to you.’ And, when Mallon stood hesitantly in the doorway, he went on casually, ‘I’ll arrange for locks to be put on both these bedroom doors tomorrow.’ Then, taking up what was obviously his overnight bag, he announced, ‘Now I should think about leaving.’
Mallon began to suspect he had a heavy date that night. She wished him joy. She went downstairs with him, looking forward to the moment when he would be gone and she could change out of his clothes and into her own.
‘You’ve been very kind,’ she began as he accompanied her into the kitchen. ‘I don’t quite honestly know what I would have done if you hadn’t done a circle round and picked me up.’
‘You’re helping me too, remember,’ he said, and, taking out his wallet, he handed her a wad of notes. ‘In view of your past experience, I think it might be as well if you accepted your salary in advance rather than in arrears.’
‘I don’t want…’ she began to protest.
‘Don’t give me a hard time, Mallon. I’ve an idea you’re going to earn every penny—if only by keeping an army of builders supplied with tea and coffee.’ He smiled then, about the second time Mallon had seen him smile. This time it had the strangest effect of killing off all thought of protest. ‘While we’re on the subject of sustenance, fix yourself dinner from anything you fancy in the cupboards. It’s there for your use, so eat heartily.’ His glance slid over her slender figure, her curves obvious even in her baggy outfit. Mallon stilled, striving to hold down a feeling of panic. Then her large, deeply blue and troubled eyes met his steady grey ones, and he was no longer smiling. ‘You have a beautiful face, Mallon, and a superb figure.’ He brought out into the open that which she was panicking about. ‘And you’ve had one hell of a fright today. But, trust me, not every man you meet will be champing at the bit for your body.’
She swallowed hard. This man, while sometimes being curt with her, sharp with her, had also been exceedingly kind. ‘As in—n-not in a million years?’
He laughed then, and suddenly she relaxed and even smiled at him. She knew he had recalled without effort that he had answered ‘Not in a million years’ when she had earlier delayed leaving his car in fear that he too might have wicked intent. ‘Something like that,’ he answered.
‘Then go,’ she bade him, but, remembering he was now virtually her employer, ‘Sir,’ she added.
And he, looking pleased that her spirit seemed to have returned, was unoffended. Handing her his business card, ‘Contact me if you need to,’ he instructed. ‘You’ll be all right on your own?’ he questioned seriously. ‘No fears?’
‘I’ll be fine,’ she answered. ‘Actually, I’m suddenly starting to feel better than I have in a long while.’
Harris Quillian stared down at her, studying her. Then, nodding approvingly, he took up his overnight bag and his car keys. ‘I may be down on Friday,’ he said, and was gone.
Her sleep was troubled by dark dreams that night. Mallon awoke a number of times, feeling threatened and insecure, and was awake again at four o’clock, although this time dawn was starting to break. And, with the light, she began to feel a little more secure.
She lay wide awake looking round the high-ceilinged uncurtained room. As well as not having curtains, the room was as yet uncarpeted, but there was a large rug on the floor and, against one wall, a large oak wardrobe.
Mallon could tell that, once the building work was completed, furniture and furnishings installed, Harcourt House would revert to what had once been its former glory. She liked big old houses—she had been brought up in one.
Her eyes clouded over. She didn’t want to dwell on times past, but could not help but think back to her happy childhood, her loving and loved parents and the plans they had made for her future—all of which had turned to dust nine years ago.
She had been thirteen when she and her mother were wondering whether to start dinner without waiting for Mallon’s father. He’d been a consultant surgeon and worked all hours, so meals had often been delayed. ‘We’ll start,’ her mother had just decreed, when there had been a ring at the doorbell. Their caller had been one of his colleagues, come to tell them that Cyrus Braithwaite had been in a car accident.
The hospital had done everything they could to try and save him, but they must have known at the start from the extent of his injuries that they were going to lose him.
Mallon had been totally shattered by her adored father’s death; her mother had been absolutely devastated and completely unable to cope. With the help of medication, her mother had got through day by day, but Mallon could not help but know that Evelyn Braithwaite would have been happier to have died with her husband—that perhaps it was only for her daughter’s sake that she’d struggled on.
Some days had been so bad for her mother that Mallon would not consider going to school and leaving her on her own. The first year after her father’s death had passed with Mallon taking more and more time off school. Her studies had suffered and, having been at the top of her year, her grades had fallen; but she’d had higher priorities.
Her father had been dead two years when her mother had met Ambrose Jenkins. He was the antithesis of Mallon’s father: loud where her father had been quiet, boastful where her father had been modest, work-shy where her father had been industrious. But, at first, he’d seemed able to cheer her mother, and for that Mallon forgave Ambrose Jenkins a lot. She’d found she could not like him, but had tried her hardest to be fair, recognising that because she had thought so much of her father she could not expect any other man to measure up.
So when, within weeks of meeting him, her mother told her that she and Ambrose were going to be married, Mallon had kissed and hugged her mother and pretended to be pleased. Ambrose had had a twenty-seven-year-old son, Lee. Mallon had found him obnoxiously repellent. But, for her mother’s sake, she’d smiled through the wedding and accepted that Ambrose would be moving into their home.
What Mallon had not expected was that Lee Jenkins would move in too. By then she was a blossoming fifteen-year-old, but, instead of being proud of her beautiful blonde hair and curvy burgeoning figure, Mallon had been more prone to hide her shape under baggy sweaters and to scrape her hair back in a rubber band. For never a day had seemed to go by without her stepbrother making a pass at her.
To say anything about it to her mother, after the most unhappy time she had endured, was something Mallon had found she just could not do. Though she had to admit that she’d come close that day Lee Jenkins came into her room just as she had finished dressing.
‘Get out!’ she screamed at him—a minute earlier and he would have caught her minus her blouse!
‘Don’t be like that,’ he said in what he thought was his sexy voice, but which she found revolting, and, instead of leaving her room, he came further into it and, grabbing a hold of her, tried to kiss her.
She bit him—his language was colourful, but she cared not. Once he let her go and she was free of him, she wasn’t hanging about.
She was badly shaken, and wanted to confide in her mother. But, somehow, protective of her still, Mallon could not tell her. Instead she took to propping a chair under the knob of her bedroom door at all times whenever she was in there on her own.
Then, horror of horrors, her mother had been married for only a year when her stepfather cast his lascivious glance on Mallon. At first she couldn’t believe what her eyes and instincts were telling her. That was until the day he cornered her in the drawing room and, his eyes on her breasts, remarked, ‘Little Mallon, you’re not so little any more, I see.’ Coming closer, his slack mouth all but slobbering, he demanded, ‘Got a kiss for your stepdaddy?’
She was revolted, and told him truthfully, ‘I’m going to be sick!’
She was sick, and later sat on her bed and cried, because she knew now, more than ever, that she could not tell her mother. Her parent would be destroyed.
Mallon sorely wanted to leave home. It wasn’t home any more anyway. But money, which she had never had to particularly think of before, had been tight for some while. She knew that her father had left them well provided for, but only a few days ago her mother had suggested she might like to take a Saturday job, and Mallon had asked if they were having some temporary financial problem. Her mother had replied, ‘I’m afraid it isn’t temporary, Mallon, it’s permanent,’ and had looked so dreadfully unhappy Mallon had been unable to bear it.
She knew without having to ask where all the money had gone. Ambrose Jenkins had been spending freely, too freely, the money her father had invested. Incredibly, there was little of it remaining.
Lee Jenkins was as work-shy as his father, and had to be a constant drain on what resources her mother had remaining. Determined not to be a drain on those resources herself, Mallon left school and got herself a job.
As jobs went it wasn’t much: a clerical assistant in a large and busy office. But, for her age, it didn’t pay too badly. Though it wasn’t sufficient to pay rent as well as keep her should she attempt the enormous step she wished to take and leave home.
The following two years dragged miserably by, and when she saw how badly her mother’s marriage was faring, Mallon was glad she had not left home. Her mother started to realise what a dreadful mistake she had made in marrying Ambrose Jenkins, but did not seem to have the strength to do anything about his by then quite blatant philandering ways. Mallon knew her mother was suffering. But, feeling powerless to do anything about it, Mallon wanted to be there to support her when she finally did cry Enough!
While Mallon was doing everything she could to cold-shoulder both father and son without her mother being aware—which would only make her even more wretched—it was not her stepfather’s habit of staying out nights and weekends, and coming home only to be fed and laundered, that brought things to a head. But money.
Both the Jenkins men were out that Wednesday when Mallon came home from work and found her mother in tears. ‘Oh, darling!’ Mallon cried, going over to her. ‘What’s the matter?’
Plenty, she learned in the next five minutes. Ambrose and her mother were splitting up, but that, it seemed, was not the reason for her mother’s despair. But, as she explained, because she had foolishly listened to Ambrose Jenkins eighteen months ago when as near penury as made no difference, he had told her of a business venture that would almost immediately earn them double. It would, however, mean a quite substantial investment.
Evelyn Jenkins was not used to working with money, she had never needed to. But, aware that something needed to be done to get them solvent once more, she had been persuaded to borrow, using their lovely home as collateral.
It had all ended in tears. The upshot being that now, eighteen months later, the business venture had folded. With no more money forthcoming, Ambrose was leaving, and even the house no longer belonged to her mother. ‘We’ve got to leave here,’ her mother wept. ‘This lovely house your father bought for us!’
Oddly then, though maybe because having reached rock bottom the only way was up, and perhaps aided by thinking of her gentleman former husband, Evelyn Jenkins seemed to gather some strength. Mallon could only guess at the inner torment her parent must have been through before she had confided in her. But the next morning, before Mallon could say she intended to take the day off work and start to look for somewhere to rent, her mother was telling her how she intended to contact a firm of lawyers that day to see if there was anything to be done.
Mallon hurried home that night to hear that John Frost, the head of the firm her father had always used, and who knew the family, had initially dealt personally with her mother. After a detailed check of all the paperwork he had passed the opinion that she had been criminally advised, had put a doubt on the fact that the money had been invested anywhere but in Ambrose Jenkins pocket, and had concluded that Evelyn Jenkins had a case for suing him.
Since, however, that man appeared to not have any money, there seemed no point whatsoever in taking that route. ‘I think I would rather divorce him,’ she decided. Mallon could only applaud her decision.
There followed months and months of upset. Ambrose wanted to behave like a single man, but didn’t want to be divorced, apparently, and so was as obstructive as he knew how to be; which was considerably.
Although divorce was not John Frost’s speciality, and he had handed the case over to someone whose subject it was, John Frost was always there to smile and encourage when her mother went to his offices to pursue the matter of the protracted proceedings.
Mallon and her mother moved into a tiny flat, the rent of which took quite a chunk out of Mallon’s salary. She was not complaining—it was a joy not to have to live under the same roof as the Jenkins duo. A joy not to have to continually be on her guard against the loose-moralled, lascivious pair.
Her mother’s divorce was finalised on Mallon’s twentieth birthday. John Frost, by now something of a friend, took them to dinner to celebrate.
Finances were extremely tight and her mother did try to support herself, but she had never had to work outside of the home, and it was all too apparent that she neither enjoyed nor was cut out to stand in a shop serving all day, or to sit in an office trying to get to grips with a computer. Mallon couldn’t bear it—her father would have been utterly distraught that life should have treated his beloved Evelyn this way.
‘You don’t have to go out to work, you know,’ Mallon insisted. ‘We can manage.’
Her mother looked uncertain. ‘I have to contribute something. It isn’t fair…’
‘You do contribute. You’re a wonderful homemaker.’
‘But…’ Evelyn Jenkins tried to argue, but Mallon could see that her heart wasn’t in it. And eventually, with Mallon using every persuasion she could think of, her mother gave in—and for about eighteen months more they limped along on Mallon’s salary.
Then suddenly everything started to improve. Mallon and her mother went out to dine with widower John Frost a few times, and invited him to their small flat in return. It didn’t take much for Mallon to see that John was keen on her mother, and Mallon liked how protective he was with her.
The next time he asked the two of them to dine with him Mallon found a convenient ‘work’ excuse at the last minute, and left it to John Frost to persuade her mother that he would be equally delighted to take her out without her daughter.
On the work front matters were looking up too. Mallon had made steady progress and was rewarded with promotion to another department. With the move came a very welcome raise in salary which meant that she and her mother could begin to renew the odd item here and there that had worn out. While not riches—they still had nothing in the bank—her pay rise made life just that little bit easier.
With her move to a new department Mallon met two people she would be working with. Natasha Wallace, a pleasant if plain girl of about her own almost twenty-two years, and Keith Morgan who was three years older.
Mallon became friends with both of them. And, with John Frost and her mother seeing just a little more of each other—John taking care not to rush Evelyn—Mallon started to go out and about with Natasha; sometimes Keith would go with them.
Mallon had been well and truly put off men by the behaviour of Ambrose and Lee Jenkins, and while it did not particularly bother her she just could not see herself entering into any kind of a relationship with any man.
Which was why it came as something of a surprise to her that, four months into her friendship with Natasha and Keith, she began to realise that she had some quite warm feelings for Keith. Feelings which, to her further surprise and pleasure, she discovered were returned.
They did not always go out as a threesome. When Natasha started to put in some extra practice for a violin exam she was about to take, Keith and Mallon went out more and more as a twosome.
Even now as she lay wide awake in Harris Quillian’s bed Mallon felt sick in her stomach as she recalled how, only three months ago, their feelings for each other starting to take over, she had been on the brink of committing herself to a very intimate relationship with Keith Morgan.
It had started on a Saturday when Natasha had been busy with her music and Mallon and Keith had been to the cinema. Keith had been kissing Mallon goodnight when he’d suddenly begged her to go away with him. ‘I want to go to bed with you—you must want the same,’ he urged. Oh, help—it was such a big step! ‘You know you want me as much as I want you.’
She said no, but week after week for the next two months he again and again urged her to go away with him. Then one Saturday he told her he loved her. It was what she needed to hear.
She agreed, albeit, it was with a rather shaky ‘Y-yes,’ that she answered.
Keith didn’t waste any time and told her on Monday that he had arranged their romantic tryst for the coming weekend, and would pick her up from her home on Saturday morning.
Why couldn’t she tell her mother? Her mother had met both Keith and Natasha and would have understood. Mallon later wondered—could it be that at heart she had known that something was not quite right? But just then she managed to convince herself that, after the dreadful years her mother had endured, and with everything going so right for her just now—she seemed to be spending more and more time with John Frost—she did not want to give her parent the smallest cause to worry about her.
Mallon made her way home from work on Friday and made up her mind to tell her mother that night. For heaven’s sake, Keith would be calling for her in the morning!
Her mother wasn’t in but had left a note saying that John had phoned and had particularly wanted to discuss something with her, so could she meet him later that afternoon? She didn’t think she would be late back.
Mallon hoped not. She was on edge, and knew that feeling wouldn’t go away until she had told her mother her plans. When each hour ticked away and her mother didn’t appear, Mallon guessed that John had taken her mother to dinner.
Which proved correct when, just after ten, John Frost brought her mother home. ‘Um—we’ve got something to tell you,’ Evelyn Jenkins said, but didn’t have to—Mallon could see the joy they shared with each other.
‘We’re going to be married,’ John could hardly wait to tell her. ‘Is that all right with you, Mallon?’
She hadn’t seen her mother looking so happy in years. ‘You know it is!’ Mallon beamed, and forgot all about Keith Morgan when she went over and the threesome embraced.
John had brought some champagne in with him and they talked for an age as the newly engaged couple shared with Mallon that they had steadily got to know each other over the years, and saw not one single reason to wait. They would marry next month and Mallon would give up the flat.
‘Give up the flat?’
‘Your mother will be moving into my home, Mallon,’ John answered. ‘It’s my wish that you move into my home too.’
‘Thank you,’ she answered, not wanting to blight this happy time for them. But she somehow knew, much as she liked John and much as she would miss her mother dreadfully, that her place was not in her mother’s new home. This, after all she’d been through, was a special time for her mother.
