right in it. Rent not being paid, bills not met. Oh, no, tempting though he was, Vince was one of those things that would have to be put on the back burner.
With this resolve, and adopting her new persona as competent and sensible secretary to one of the thrusting new partners of Nichols & Co, solicitors, she took Vince his tea with a cool, polite smile.
As she struggled out of his arms and pulled down her sweater five minutes later, she made one last effort at salvaging her dignity.
‘Don’t think,’ she said, standing up and patting her curly hair down, ‘that you’re going to get the chance to do
that
again in a hurry.’
‘Tell me about it,’ said Vince with a smile. ‘Did you know you’ve got amazing legs?’ He lay back and yawned.
Felicity glanced at her watch. ‘God, I’m gonna be late! Help! Listen, don’t you go leading my brother astray. He’s going to be looking for a job today, right?’
‘Yeah, yeah.’ Vince reached up and pulled Felicity back down onto the sleeping bag.
While Felicity was busy making herself late for work, Rachel Dean, who was to be the fortunate recipient of Felicity’s secretarial services henceforth, was herself getting ready for her first day at Nichols & Co. She sat in the quiet of her pretty little kitchen in her Fulham flat, eating muesli and drinking Earl Grey tea, while the discreet voice of Radio 3 issued forth the news, followed by Haydn’s Symphony No. 29. She glanced at her watch, rose, and rinsed out her bowl and cup and saucer. She was a slender, fine-boned girl, quite tall, with a graceful hesitancy of movement. She was wearing a new suit for workthat day, fine grey wool with a faint pinstripe, a cream-coloured silk blouse, and her black, sleek hair was drawn smoothly back from her face.
She went into her bedroom – the bedroom which she herself had decorated in rose and white when she had bought the flat a year ago, working away at this and all the other rooms painstakingly at weekends, until each was perfect and to her liking – and shook out her bedding. Then she folded her silk nightdress and slid it beneath her pillow. She picked up her briefcase from beside the desk, on which stood a small computer and word processor, and went through into the living room. She surveyed its immaculate silence for a moment, then left the flat and went down to her car.
Little pangs of nervousness kept leaping up in her stomach as she drove to work. She felt just as she had on the first day at her new secondary school when she was twelve, fifteen years ago. But what was there to be nervous about? She had ability, she knew. That was why they had given her this partnership. It was only a salaried partnership, but time would change that. If she worked hard enough, got a big enough client base, they were bound to give her a share of the equity in a couple of years’ time. Nichols & Co had no female equity partners – she was determined to be the first. She lifted her chin slightly as she thought of this, and turned the car smoothly in to Commercial Road. The motivation was pride rather than ambition. And besides, what else was there in her life apart from work?
She parked her car – a smart little blue Fiat with a spotless interior; no litter of maps, paperbacks, cassettes and sweet wrappers – in the back streets of Shoreditch, and reached the offices of Nichols & Co in Bishopsgate at nine o’clock precisely. She gave her name to the receptionist, who smiled sweetly and said, ‘Oh, yes. You’re starting today, aren’t you? I’m a bit of a friend of Felicity, your secretary. She’s ever so nice.’ Rachelsmiled a small, chilly smile, still trying to quell the unreasonable little starts of nervousness inside. Well, thought Nora, this one’s a bit of an ice queen. And she stabbed a red-enamelled nail at one of the buttons on the switchboard.
‘Hello, Denise?’ said Nora, with practised nasal resonance. ‘Is Mr Rothwell in yet? Only I’ve got Miss Dean