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‘Buy a kilo of rice and get the latest palace dirt thrown in.’ Amer gave a short laugh. ‘What are they saying?’
Hari ticked the rumours off on his fingers. ‘Your father wants to kill you. You want to kill your father. You have refused to marry again. You are insisting on marrying again.’ He stopped, his face solemn but his lively eyes dancing. ‘You want to go to Hollywood and make a movie.’
‘Good God.’ Amer was genuinely startled. He let out a peal of delighted laughter. ‘Where did that one come from?’
Hari was not only his personal assistant. He was also a genuine friend. He told him the truth. ‘Cannes last year, I should think.’
‘Ah,’ said Amer, understanding at once. ‘We are speaking of the delicious Catherine.’
‘Or,’ said Hari judiciously, ‘the delicious Julie, Kim or Michelle.’
Amer laughed. ‘I like Cannes.’
‘That shows in the photographs,’ Hari agreed.
‘Disapproval, Hari?’
‘Not up to me to approve or disapprove,’ Hari said hastily. ‘I just wonder—’
‘I like women.’
Hari thought about Amer’s adamant refusal to marry again after his wife was killed in that horse riding accident. He kept his inevitable reflections to himself.
‘I like the crazy way their minds work,’ Amer went on. ‘It makes me laugh. I like the way they try to pretend they don’t know when you’re looking at them. I like the way they smell.’
Hari was surprised into pointing out, ‘Not all women smell of silk and French perfume like your Julies and your Catherines.’
‘Dolls,’ said Amer obscurely.
‘What?’
‘Has it occurred to you how many animated dummies I know? Oh they look like people. They walk and talk and even sound like people. But when you talk to them they just say the things they’ve been programmed to say.’
Hari was unmoved. ‘Presumably they’re the things you want them to say. So who did the programming?’
Amer shifted his shoulders impatiently. ‘Not me. I don’t want—’
‘To date a woman who has not been programmed to say you are wonderful?’ Hari pursued ruthlessly. He regarded his friend with faint scorn. ‘Why don’t you try it, some time?’
Amer was not offended. But he was not impressed, either.
‘Get real,’ he said wearily.
Hari warmed to his idea. ‘No, I mean it. Take that girl down stairs in the lobby just now.’
Amer was startled. ‘Have you started mind reading, Hari?’
‘I saw you looking her way,’ Hari explained simply. ‘I admit I was surprised. She’s hardly your type.’
Amer gave a mock shudder. ‘No French perfume there, you mean. I know. More like dust and cheap sun-tan lotion.’ A reminiscent smile curved his handsome mouth suddenly. ‘But even so, she has all the feminine tricks. Did you see her trying to pretend she didn’t know I was looking at her?’
Hari was intrigued. ‘So why were you?’
Amer hesitated, his eyes unreadable for an instant. Then he shrugged. ‘Three months in Dalmun, I expect,’ he said in his hardest voice. ‘Show a starving man stale bread and he forgets he ever knew the taste of caviar.’
‘Stale bread? Poor lady.’
‘I’ll remember caviar as soon as I have some to jog my memory,’ Amer murmured mischievously.
Hari knew his boss. ‘I’ll book the hotel in Cannes.’
It was not a successful visit to the pyramids. As Leo expected, Mrs Silverstein insisted on walking round every pyramid and could not be persuaded to pass on the burial chamber of Cheops. Since that involved a steep climb, a good third of which had to be done in a crouching position, the older woman was in considerable pain by the end of the trip. Not that she would admit it.
Ever since Mrs Silverstein arrived in Egypt on her Adventures in Time tour, she had wanted to see everything and, in spite of her age and rheumatic joints, made a spirited attempt to do so. When other members of the group took to shaded rooms in the heat of the afternoon, Mrs Silverstein was out there looking at desert plants or rooting affronted Arabs out of their afternoon snooze to bargain over carpets or papyrus.
‘The woman never stops,’ Roy Ormerod complained, looking at the couriers’ reports. ‘She’ll collapse and then we’ll be responsible. For Heaven’s sake get her to slow down.’
But Leo, joining one of the party’s trips, found she had a sneaking sympathy for Mrs Silverstein. She was a lively and cultivated woman with a hunger for new experience that a lifetime of bringing up a family had denied her. She also, as Leo found late one night when the local courier thankfully surrendered her problem client and retired to bed, had a startling courage.
‘Well, it’s a bit more than rheumatism,’ Mrs Silverstein admitted under the influence of honey cakes and mint tea. ‘And it’s going to get worse. I thought, I’ve got to do as much as I can while I can. So I’ll have some things to remember.’
Leo was impressed. She said so.
‘You see I always wanted to travel,’ Mrs Silverstein confided. ‘But Sidney was such a homebody. And then there were the children. When they all got married I thought now. But then Sidney got sick. And first Alice was divorced and then Richard and the grandchildren would come and stay…’ She sighed. ‘When Dr Burnham told me what was wrong I thought—it’s now or never, Pat.’
Leo could only admire her. So, instead of following Roy’s instructions, she did her best to make sure that Mrs Silverstein visited every single thing she wanted to see in Egypt, just taking a little extra care of her. It was not easy.
By the time Leo got her back to the hotel she was breathing hard and had turned an alarming colour. Leo took her up to her room and stayed while Mrs Silverstein lay on the well-sprung bed, fighting for breath. Leo called room service and ordered a refreshing drink while she applied cool damp towels to Mrs Silverstein’s pink forehead.
‘I think I should call a doctor,’ she said worriedly.
Mrs Silverstein shook her head. ‘Pills,’ she said. ‘In my bag.’
Leo got them. Mrs Silverstein swallowed three and then lay back with her eyes closed. Her colour slowly returned to normal.
The phone rang. Leo picked it up.
‘Mrs Silverstein?’ said a harsh voice she knew all too well. Even when Roy Ormerod was trying to be conciliating he sounded angry. ‘I wonder if you can tell me where Miss Roberts went when she left you?’
Leo braced herself. ‘This is me, Roy. Mrs Silverstein wasn’t feeling well, so I—’
He did not give her the chance to finish.
‘What the hell do you think you’re doing? I told you to stop that old bat going on excursions, not give her personal guided tours. You should be back at the office. And what do you mean, leaving me a message that you won’t be at the dinner, tonight? You’ve got to be there. It’s part of your job….’
He ranted for several more minutes. Mrs Silverstein opened her eyes and began to look alarmed.
Leo interrupted him. ‘We’ll talk about this at the office,’ she said firmly. She looked at her watch. ‘I’ll come over now. See you in half an hour.’
‘No you won’t. I’m already—’
But she had cut him off.
‘Trouble?’ said Mrs Silverstein.
‘None I can’t handle.’
‘Is it my fault?’
‘No,’ said Leo.
Because it was not. Roy had been spoiling for a fight ever since she first arrived from London.
Forgetting professional discretion, Leo said as much. Mrs Silverstein looked thoughtful. She had met Roy.
‘And he doesn’t like it that you’re not attracted to him,’ she said wisely.
Leo stared. ‘What? Oh, surely not.’
Mrs Silverstein shrugged. ‘Good at your job. Independent. Clients like you. All sounds too much like competition to me, honey.’ She struggled up among the pillows. ‘The only way you could put yourself right with the man is by falling at his feet.’
Leo stared, equally fascinated and repelled.
‘I hope you’re wrong,’ she said with feeling.
There was a knock at the door. Leo got off the side of the bed.
‘That must be your lemon sherbet.’
But it was not. It was Roy. His eyes were bulging with fury.
‘Oh, you were calling from the desk,’ said Leo, enlightened.
He brushed that aside. ‘Look here—’ he began loudly.
Leo barred his way, giving thanks for the carved screen behind the tiny entrance area. It masked the doorway from Mrs Silverstein’s view.
‘You can’t make a scene here,’ she hissed. ‘She’s not well.’
But Roy was beyond rationality. He took Leo by the wrist and pulled her out into the corridor. He was shouting. He even took her by the shoulders and shook her.
An authoritative voice said, ‘That is enough.’
They both turned, Leo blindly, Roy with blundering aggression.
The speaker was a man with a haughty profile and an air of effortless command. A business man, Leo thought. Someone who had paid for expensive quiet on this executive floor and was going to see that he got what he paid for. The dark eyes resting on Roy were coldly contemptuous.
Roy did not like his intervention. ‘Who are you? The floor manager?’ he sneered.
Leo winced for him. On the face of it, the stranger’s impeccable dark suit was indistinguishable from any of the other business suits in the hotel. But Leo’s upbringing had taught her to distinguish at a glance between the prosperous and the seriously rich. The suit was hand tailored and, for all its conservative lines, individually designed as well. Add to that the air of being in charge of the world, and you clearly had someone to reckon with.
But Roy had never been able to read nonverbal signs.
He said pugnaciously, ‘This is a private conversation.’
‘Then you should conduct it in private,’ the man said. His courtesy bit deeper than any invective would have done. ‘You have a room here?’
‘No,’ said Leo, alarmed at the thought of being alone with Roy in this mood.
For the first time the man took his eyes off the belligerent Roy. He sent her a quick, cool look. And did a double take.
‘Mademoiselle?’ he said blankly.
Leo did not recognise him. She tried to pull herself together and search her memory. But Roy’s shaking of her seemed to have scrambled her brains.
Meanwhile, the fact that the stranger seemed to recognise her had sent Roy into a frenzy.
‘You want to be careful with that one, friend,’ he said. ‘She’ll stab you in the back as soon as look at you.’
Leo’s head spun as if she had been shot. All she could think of was that Roy must have found out who her father was.
‘What?’ she said hoarsely.
The stranger sent her a narrow-eyed look. ‘It is perhaps that I intrude unnecessarily,’ he said, his accent pronounced. ‘Mademoiselle?’
Leo shook her confused head.
Roy snarled, ‘You’re fired.’
Leo paled. She could just imagine what her father would say to this news.
‘Oh Lord,’ she said with foreboding.
This time the stranger did not bother to look at her.
‘Your discussion would benefit from a more constructive approach,’ he told Roy austerely.
Roy snorted. ‘Discussion over,’ he snapped. He sent Leo one last flaming look. ‘You don’t want to come to the dinner tonight? Fine. Don’t. And don’t come near the office again, either. Or any of my staff.’
Leo began to be alarmed. She shared an apartment with two of his staff.
‘Roy—’
But he was on a roll. ‘And don’t ask me for a reference.’
Leo was not as alarmed about that as he clearly thought she should have been. When she said, ‘Look, let’s talk about this,’ in a soothing voice, two bright spots of colour appeared on Roy’s cheeks.
He took a hasty step forward. Leo thought in a flash of recognition: He is going to hit me. It was so crazy she did not even duck. Instead she froze, panicking.
