with a girl he had been dating for months. He had discovered that while he was abroad for weeks Judy usually dated other men, and Gerard resented it.
‘You mean you never stray while you’re away?’ Judy had been cynically incredulous and when he’d insisted that he didn’t she just wouldn’t believe him. It had been the end of the affair. He had been badly hurt, jealous every time he imagined her with another man. It had left Gerard too sore to want to get involved with anyone else just yet.
The dark girl had invited him to one of their parties, the following weekend, but he had been busy and had forgotten all about it. The next time they bumped into each other coming or going from the mews she had softly reproached him. He had made his excuses, and she had relented gracefully. ‘Well, I forgive you this time! Look, we’re having another party next Saturday—try and come this time!’
‘I’m sorry, I’m just off to Brazil,’ he had said, smiling wryly back.
‘For TV?’ she had asked, admitting tacitly that she knew who he was—and Gerard had stiffened up. Were they inviting him because he was a celebrity, his face on TV every night, in the news? Gerard didn’t enjoy celebrity. He was a reporter, not an entertainer. He hated it when people were friendly to him simply because his face came into their homes every night. When he’d worked on a newspaper he had never got that sort of reaction. Newspaper reporters were anonymous, faceless people, on the whole. Nobody recognised you; when they found out what you did they were usually indifferent, unless they had an axe to grind about some report you had filed on them or their relatives.
‘That’s right.’ Irritated, he added, ‘By the way, can you and your friend keep the noise down in the evenings? I have to get to bed early and you seem to be up half the night playing rock music. It’s giving me a headache.’
She had looked at him sweetly. ‘Sure.’
They hadn’t, of course. In fact, he had a strong impression that they had turned up the volume after that, and they had stopped inviting him to their parties. If Gerard banged on the wall the volume went up even higher. If he went round to remonstrate with them the redhead looked at him as if he were a slug which was eating her lettuce.
A sudden hammering on his own front door made him jump. For a moment he couldn’t move, paralysed by shock. Oh, pull yourself together! he told himself contemptuously. This isn’t the Civil War; you’re back home again, in London, safe. Aren’t you the lucky one? What if you were still there?
His doorbell was ringing, loudly and persistently; someone had their finger pressed down on it. ‘Hello?’ someone called through the letter-box. ‘Oh, please be in, please…help me!’
Gerard made it to the door, pulled it open, his black brows jerking together in a scowl which made the girl outside back away instinctively for a second.
Gerard was a formidable sight: a big man, lean and sinewy, muscular but light on his feet when he had to move fast. He was a squash player, swam every day, when he had time he worked out at the gym near his newspaper office and quite often walked a good deal of the way to work, unless he was in a tearing hurry.
‘I’m—I’m sorry to bother you,’ stammered the girl on his doorstep.
‘You’re the girl who moved out!’ he said, recognising her.
‘Sara Ounissi,’ she said, nodding, but she was too upset for polite chat. ‘Please, I need your help,’ she added pleadingly. Her accent was foreign, although her English was very good. The name sounded Arabic. She had told him her name before—he was sure it hadn’t been Ounissi, though.
‘What’s wrong?’ he asked, resisting when she tried to pull him out of his home by the hand. He suspected a fight between the two girls and didn’t want to get involved.
‘I have to get into the cottage; she won’t let me in, but I know she’s there—I heard her moaning. I’m afraid she’ll die this time.’
‘Die?’ he repeated, taken aback. What had the two girls been fighting over? A man? This one looked so gentle: slightly built, although like her friend she was tall, with elegantly long-fingered hands and slender feet, hair the colour of jet, smooth skin, with a soft, golden sheen, her great, dark eyes like a doe’s, liquid and sweet.
‘Please come; don’t waste time asking questions,’ she wailed. ‘I’ve been trying to get her to answer, but she won’t.’
‘Maybe she isn’t in?’
‘Oh, yes, she is in there; I tell you I have heard her.’
‘You’ve quarrelled with her?’
‘No, no, you don’t understand…she’s very upset. She lost her TV contract this morning, a big advertising campaign, for Rexel, the cosmetics firm. Keira has been their “face” for the past year; you must have seen her on TV, putting on their makeup?’
His mouth twisted. ‘I rarely have time to watch TV.’ For the past three years he had been out of the country more often than he had been in it, and when he was at home the only programmes he watched were news and current affairs programmes.
‘But you are on TV every night!’ The dark eyes reproached him, accused him of hypocrisy, double standards. ‘TV is your business!’
‘Only the news!’ People increasingly confused news and entertainment, and it annoyed Gerard. He and his colleagues spilt their blood getting the news back to this country from war-torn parts of the world, and people watched as if it were all another adventure film, the blood just make-up. ‘And if I do catch a programme I never watch the advertisements,’ he said impatiently. ‘While they’re on I get myself a drink.’
The dark girl shrugged. ‘Well, Rexel is a big cosmetics firm and the contract was worth a lot of money. Her contract was up for renewal this week-and without warning they dropped her.’
‘That’s tough luck. I suppose she’ll miss the money? But aren’t her family wealthy? She won’t starve, surely? It can’t be a matter of life and death—’
Sara Ounissi interrupted fiercely, ‘That isn’t the point.’ She made a frustrated gesture with those long, delicate hands. ‘Keira takes rejections hard; they can trigger a violent mood swing. Her agent rang me to warn me she was devastated about suddenly being dropped by Rexel. Benny was my agent too; that’s why he rang me—I used to model. Fashion mostly—for magazines.’ She gave him an instinctive, faintly flirtatious look through her long, dark lashes. ‘Maybe you noticed me in one some time? But I gave it up when I got married last month. My husband doesn’t want me to go on modelling.’
Gerard’s brows rose; the women he worked with wouldn’t take kindly to being told to give up work by their husbands. ‘And you don’t mind that?’
She gave him a cool, dignified glance which resented the question. ‘His lifestyle will mean that I have a great deal to do at home; I wouldn’t have time to model as well. We travel a good deal; he has homes in Switzerland, the Gulf and Sussex. Luckily that was where I was this week. It took me ages to get up to London, and now she won’t let me in. I’ve been banging and calling for ages. I must get into the cottage—I suppose your key wouldn’t fit her front door?’
‘I hope not,’ Gerard said curtly. ‘I certainly wouldn’t want her letting herself in here whenever I’m away.’
The dark girl
