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‘I’m waiting!’
Oh, crumbs! Dumbly Yancie stared at him. If he’d only smile—he had rather an attractive mouth. She blinked. For goodness’ sake pull yourself together—had this man totally scrambled her brain?
‘I—er—can’t tell you,’ she managed falteringly.
‘What—the mileage scam or what you were doing being where you shouldn’t have been?’
Neither, actually. ‘There’s no great scam,’ she replied—well, you could hardly call fifty tiddly miles a scam.
‘So, what business did you have—other than the company’s business?’
Oh, honestly! Why didn’t he back off? Because he was it, that was why. He was the numero uno, the big cheese, and, having her on the end of his pin, he was enjoying making her squirm—and she didn’t like it. Had her errand been for herself, then, she conceded, she might very well have told him what she was about. But there wasn’t only herself to think about here—there was Wilf. Wilf had a wife and four young children. And, while Yancie was having to face that there was a very real danger here that she might be looking for alternative employment at any moment now, she just couldn’t wish the same fate on Wilf. She wouldn’t be able to live with herself if, through her, Wilf too was dismissed.
‘You’re not going to say?’
‘I—No,’ she mumbled.
Thomson Wakefield didn’t seem to have expected any other answer, but leaned back in his chair and, looking sternly at her, he questioned, ‘Just how badly do you want to keep your job?’
Yancie felt sick in the pit of her stomach. She was about to be dismissed, she knew it. ‘Very badly,’ she answered. ‘I really, really need it,’ she emphasised, in a last-ditch hope.
Thomson Wakefield’s look sharpened. ‘You have a family to keep—a child?’
‘I’m not married.’
He leaned back in his chair again, his look speculative. ‘You are acquainted with the facts of life?’ he queried.
Sarcastic pig; she didn’t need him to tell her that you could have a child without necessarily being married. ‘I know the theory,’ she replied, putting in more effort to stay calm. Though, at another of his long, steady stares, she felt herself go a bit pink—and saw him take in her blush, too. Well, it wasn’t every day, or ever for that matter, that she told a complete stranger that she was a virgin.
However, if her blush just now confirmed her statement for him, her ultimate employer did not comment on it either, but, with a quick glance to his watch, as if believing he had wasted more than enough of his precious time on her, Thomson Wakefield got to his feet. Yancie, too, was on her feet when at last he gave her the benefit of his deliberations.
‘You may keep your job, Miss Dawkins,’ he told her coldly.
‘Oh, thank—’
‘But…’
She might have known there’d be a ‘But’. ‘But?’ she stayed to enquire.
‘But you’re suspended—without pay—until you give me an answer to my question of what you were doing on that part of the motorway.’
Thanks for nothing! Yancie came close then and there to telling him what he could do with his job. Why she didn’t she couldn’t have said. Her glance, however, was as cold as his when, just before she walked to the door, she told him coolly, ‘I’ll see myself out.’
It was Saturday morning before she had got herself of sufficient mind to begin thinking of something other than that cold and unfeeling brute Thomson Wakefield. Suspended! He might just as well have sacked her. No way could she bring Wilf into this. No point in both of them looking for a new job.
And that, she knew, had to be her first priority. She was still adamant that she wasn’t going to touch a penny of the allowance which her stepfather paid into her bank account. But she had to face the fact that, even with Astra refusing to allow her to pay rent, having been absolutely astounded at Yancie’s suggestion that she should, just day-to-day living was costly.
By Monday Yancie had double-read every likely job in the situations vacant columns—there were not, she had to face, very many for women without experience in the workplace.
Though she knew in her heart of hearts that although, as Thomson Wakefield had pointed out, she had been in the job only a short while—and freedom aside—she felt she really didn’t want to work anywhere else but at the Addison Kirk Group.
She supposed it must have something to do with the people she worked with. Oh, not Thomson Wakefield; she didn’t care for him one tiny bit. If he was not exactly the grumpy old devil she had told him he was, then it couldn’t be said either that he was full of the joys of spring.
But the other people she worked with—other drivers, Wilf, the executives she chauffeured around—to a man they were all unfailingly pleasant. She thought of Thomson Wakefield—she did quite often. And why shouldn’t she? She wouldn’t have said he’d been unfailingly pleasant when he’d had the nerve to suspend her. She had never driven him—the possibility that she one day might didn’t enter any equation. She’d better carry on looking for another job.
It had been embarrassing returning to the transport section after that loathsome interview with him. Had she not left her shoulder bag in her locker Yancie felt she might have made a hasty exit without anyone being any the wiser.
Though, on reflection, she’d owed Kevin Veasey the courtesy of telling him he was going to be a driver short, if he didn’t already know. Fortunately it had been after five when she’d made it back down to the transport section and most of the staff had left for the weekend.
‘All right?’ Kevin smiled as she approached, and Yancie knew then, from his manner, that apart from being extremely curious that she had been called to the top floor he had no earthly idea of why.
‘Not exactly,’ she replied, and, a little shamefaced, was obliged to admit, ‘I’ve been suspended.’
‘You’ve been…’ Kevin stared at her in total surprise. ‘Suspended!’ he exclaimed. ‘What for?’
‘You don’t know?’ Clearly he didn’t—Thomas Wakefield had not reported her to her department head, it seemed. But then, he didn’t have to; he was handling it himself in his own beastly authoritarian way.
‘I’ve no idea,’ Kevin replied. ‘I was instructed not to allow you to drive any of the vehicles today and for you to report to Mr Wakefield at four, but…’
‘It’s a long story,’ Yancie said quietly.
‘You don’t want to tell me about it?’
Yancie shook her head. ‘I’d better go home.’
‘Keep in touch.’
She said she would, but couldn’t see that she would. It was highly unlikely that Thomson Wakefield would relent and see Kevin was informed that her suspension was over.
Tuesday dawned cold and bleak and Yancie, who normally had a very sunny temperament, owned to feeling a bit out of sorts. She made a meal of duck with a cherry sauce for herself and her cousins, and hid her low spirits as, being excellent friends as well as cousins, they chatted about all and everything until Astra, the career-minded one of the three, said she was off to her study.
‘And I’m off to try and make my peace with my mother,’ Fennia sighed.
‘That leaves me with the washing-up,’ Yancie remarked—and they all laughed.
‘Best of luck with your mother,’ Yancie and Astra said in unison.
‘I’ll need it!’
Yancie was in the kitchen when, ten minutes later, the telephone rang. So as not to have Astra disturbed if she was in the middle of something deeply technical on her computer, Yancie went quickly to answer it. Should the call be for either her or Fennia, then there’d be no need for Astra to be interrupted.
‘Hello, Yancie Dawkins,’ said her cousin Greville cheerfully, instantly recognising her voice. ‘How’s the job going?’
Oh, heck, she had pondered long and hard on whether or not to tell her super half-cousin that she’d been suspended, but was still undecided. But now—it was decision time!
‘Great!’ she answered enthusiastically. How could she possibly confess that she had so dreadfully let him down? ‘How are things with you? Still loving and leaving them?’ Greville had been divorced for a number of years and, having been badly hurt, now, while having women friends, was careful to steer clear of emotional entanglements.
‘Saucy monkey!’
She laughed. ‘Did you want Astra? Fennia’s out.’
‘Any one of you,’ he answered. ‘I’m having a party on Saturday if all or any of you want to come.’
‘We’d love to!’ Yancie answered for the three of them. Greville threw wonderful parties.
They chatted for a few minutes more, and Yancie, having managed to stay cheerful enough while talking to him, felt immediately guilt-ridden once she had put the phone down. She didn’t like the feeling.
Fennia came home in low spirits too—her mother hadn’t wanted to know. Yancie did her best to cheer her, telling her of Greville’s phone call and party invite. ‘Did you tell him?’
‘That I’m suspended? I couldn’t.’
Astra came out of her study and, when Fennia volunteered to make some coffee, it was Astra who insisted on making it.
All three of them went into the kitchen.
‘Greville’s having a party on Saturday—we’re invited,’ Yancie told her.
‘Just what I could do with,’ Astra declared. ‘Thanks for taking the call—I was up to my ears in complicated calculations. Did you tell him?’
Yancie knew her cousin didn’t mean had she accepted for the three of them. ‘I couldn’t,’ she admitted, and was plagued all night when her guilty conscience kept her awake. Greville had always been there for all three of them—she owed it to him, after all he had done, to keep her job.
Fennia’s duty in going to try to put things right with her mother reminded Yancie the next day—not that she needed any reminding—that she had certain duties too. And, though she didn’t think of her stepfather as a duty, she went, by public transport, to see him.
Her journey was extremely bothersome in that it involved a tube, a train and a bus. Though when her very pleased-to-see-her stepfather said he wanted her to come home and to forget about the car ‘trouble’, that he’d buy her another one, Yancie found she could not accept.
‘You’re a darling,’ she smiled, giving him a hug, ‘but I couldn’t.’
‘Not even to make me happy?’
‘Oh, don’t!’ she begged.
‘I’m sorry,’ he apologised at once. ‘I never thought I’d resort to emotional blackmail. Come and tell me how your job’s going. Your mother rang wanting to speak to you, by the way.’
‘You didn’t tell her I was working!’
‘What—and get my ears chewed off for my trouble?’ He chuckled. ‘Coward though I am, I let her think you were still living here.’ He thought for a moment, and then added, ‘Have you seen her lately?’
‘Not for a week or so,’ Yancie replied.
But Ralph was patently anxious. ‘What shall I say if she comes here looking for you?’
Yancie full well knew, her mother being a law unto herself, that she would turn up at her ex-husband’s home if the idea occurred to her. ‘I’ll go and see her,’ Yancie decided.
‘Since you’ve obviously got the day off, you could go today,’ Ralph Proctor hinted. ‘You could take my car.’
Yancie looked at him and grinned. ‘You’re scared,’ she teased. ‘Scared she’ll call.’
‘Heaven alone knows where I got the nerve to ask her to marry me. Nor, when our marriage ended, found the nerve to insist you live with me.’
‘You’ve got it when it counts,’ Yancie told him softly.
She stayed and had lunch with him, his housekeeper seeming a very pleasant woman. And after lunch, his suggestion that Yancie borrow his car seeming a good one, she drove to her mother’s imposing house some ten miles away to visit.
‘You didn’t ring to say you were coming!’ Ursula Proctor greeted her a shade peevishly. Yancie’s mother was fifty-two but could easily have passed for ten years younger. She was beautiful still, so long as everything went her way. Today, on seeing her daughter unexpectedly, her mouth tightened expressively. ‘I shall be able to spend fifteen minutes with you—I’ve an appointment with Henry. You should have phoned. I’m not here just waiting on the remote off-chance that you might drop by when the whim takes you, you know. And what are you doing with Ralph Proctor’s car?’
Yancie guessed that Henry was probably her mother’s hairdresser. After ten minutes with her, however, Yancie knew exactly why neither she nor her stepfather had mentioned to her parent that not only was she living elsewhere, but that for a few weeks she’d had a job. It was not so much cowardly as making for easier living. Her mother had the ability to carp endlessly about matters which other people took in their stride.
After returning her stepfather’s car Yancie made her way back to Astra’s apartment partly wishing that she hadn’t left it that day. While her mother hadn’t seemed particularly pleased to see her, her stepfather had. He wanted her to go back to live with him and for her to use the allowance he was still insisting on paying into her bank. But she couldn’t. How could she possibly—how could she possibly return? It was just beyond her to touch a penny of his money after what Estelle had said.
Pride demanded she earn her own money from now on. The only problem with that was that she didn’t have a job—and nothing she had seen in the situations vacant column which she was capable of doing was work that she wanted. Added to that, for all her stepfather had apologised for attempting emotional blackmail, Yancie was awash with guilt because she felt she couldn’t go back to living in her old home with him. When she added all that guilt to how she had let Greville down after he had obtained that driver’s job for her, Yancie’s spirits sank even lower.
She owed it to Greville to try to hang onto her job. After his efforts on her behalf he didn’t deserve that she should tell him—and soon knew she must—that she had been suspended. Suspended, too, not by her immediate boss but by none other than the top man himself!
She wanted that job, she truly did. Because the hours could be somewhat erratic, the job paid well. Oh, if only she wasn’t’ suspended! Oh, if only she had some other reason she could give other than she had gone fifty miles out of her way—leaving aside her cutting up the top of the top brass in the process—to deliver a spare kettle to Wilf Fisher’s mother.
At dinner that night Fennia and Astra were interested in hearing about her day. Yancie told them of her visit to her stepfather, and, because Fennia was having difficulties with her mother, made light of the not very good reception she’d had from her own. And swiftly changed the conversation.
‘How about your day?’ she asked her cousin. ‘Did all go well at the nursery?’
Fennia’s reply was that they’d had a near disaster when one of the toddlers, who was inseparable from her fluffy elephant called Fanta, had mislaid it. ‘Poor mite, she was inconsolable—she’d never have gone to sleep tonight without it.’
‘But you did find it?’
Fennia’s smile said it all. ‘I was nearly in tears myself when Kate decided to inspect the backpack of one of our little trouble-makers.’
‘And all was revealed?’
‘He’d got his own soft toy—but he wanted Fanta.’
Yancie got up the following morning, said goodbye to her two cousins when they went off to work, and tried not to think of the notion which had come to her and which returned to pick at her again and again. It was unthinkable, she told herself—frequently.
And yet time, which had never previously hung heavily on her hands, was doing so now. Between them the cousins kept the apartment immaculate, so, having done what few chores there were, Yancie had plenty of time in which to wonder, Would it be so very wrong? And, for goodness’ sake, who was she hurting?
No one, came the answer. The moment was born out of nowhere and before she knew it she was picking up the phone and dialling the Addison Kirk number.
‘Veronica Taylor, please,’ she requested firmly, when the phone was answered, and in next to no time she had Thomson Wakefield’s PA on the line asking if she might help her. ‘Oh, hello,’ Yancie said cheerfully, while quite well aware that Veronica Taylor must know she’d been suspended, not prepared to flounder before she got started. ‘My name’s Yancie Dawkins; you may remember I saw Mr Wakefield last Friday—I wonder if I could have a word with him?’
‘I’m afraid that’s impossible.’
Drat! Yancie dug her heels in. Suddenly it was of paramount importance that she speak with the man that day. ‘If he’s in a meeting, perhaps you’d ask him to call me back,’ she requested. Silence at the other end, and somehow Yancie gained the impression that men as busy as the boss of Addison Kirk were not noted for ringing the hoi polloi from the lowly transport section. That thought annoyed her—who the dickens did he think he was? She wasn’t used to such treatment! ‘Or, failing that, I’m free this afternoon; I could come in to see him,’ she offered magnanimously. Since Yancie knew she was going to lie her head off, she would by far prefer to do it over the phone—if he was so busy, why waste his time seeing her personally?
‘I’m afraid Mr Wakefield’s time is fully booked today. If you’d like to hold on for a moment.’ Yancie held on and a minute or so later the PA was back, and it soon transpired she had been to see the man himself when she said, ‘If you’d care to look in tomorrow, say around midday, Mr Wakefield will try and slot you into his busy schedule.’
‘I should be prepared to wait?’ Should I bring sandwiches?
‘Mr Wakefield is an exceptionally busy man,’ Veronica Taylor answered pleasantly.
So why didn’t he just pick up his phone now? It was ridiculous that she should have to go and sit there and, remembering the last time, wait and wait. He was in his office so why didn’t he just pick up his perishing phone and let her get her lies said, done and over with now? But, Yancie reminded herself, she wanted her job back; she truly, truly did. And if this was what she had to do to get it, so be it. ‘I’ll be in tomorrow—around midday, as you suggest,’ she said nicely, adding a polite goodbye—and realised that yet again, without even having spoken with him, Thomson Wakefield had managed to disturb her equilibrium.
