did you? Come to that, what are you doing here? Why aren’t you back home with Rashid? How did you both get in here?’
‘Benny rang me,’ Sara said uneasily. ‘He was worried about you.’
‘Benny!’ The green eyes glittered. ‘I might have known! Wait till I get hold of him!’
‘He cares about you.’ Sara looked pleadingly at her. ‘So do I, Keira. I’m sorry you lost the contract.’
‘I don’t want to talk about it!’ She threw Gerard a hostile look. ‘And you still haven’t told me why he’s here—what on earth possessed you to involve him?’
‘I couldn’t get in, but I knew you were in there; I heard you at one point. I was desperate, Keira; I thought his front door key might fit your door.’
‘You can be so daft!’ muttered Keira, scowling.
‘Sorry,’ Sara said softly. ‘I was upset. Gerard was very helpful; he suggested I got another key from the agent—that hadn’t occurred to me; I was too upset to think properly. Men always seem to be able to think clearly, however upset they get.’ She gave Gerard an admiring smile.
Keira snorted. ‘Don’t butter him up! He’ll be purring in a minute.’
‘It was clever of him,’ Sara said. ‘I drove round to the agent’s, but when I got back Gerard had already managed to open the door and was up here with you.’
Keira turned her eyes back to Gerard. ‘How…?’
‘I slipped the lock with a credit card,’ he admitted coolly.
She was outraged. ‘I could call the police and have you arrested for that! That’s burglary.’
‘I thought I might be saving your life! Your friend gave me the impression you could be dying.’
A voice called from downstairs and Sara said with relief, ‘Dr Patel!’ She went out, called, ‘Come up, please, Doctor.’
Keira looked coldly at Gerard. ‘Thank you for all your help,’ she said sarcastically. ‘Goodbye. Shut the front door behind you and if you ever burgle my house again I really will call the police, however good an excuse you think up!’
He got up. ‘Thanks for the gratitude. Next time you try to kill yourself I’ll just let you go ahead, don’t worry.’
He passed the doctor on the landing. ‘The best of luck; you’ll need it, with her,’ he told him, and the startled man gave him a stare, then a sudden, amused grin.
‘Oh, don’t worry, I know what to expect. She is a very stubborn young lady.’
Gerard headed for work ten minutes later, to have his interview with the news editor, but as he drove through heavy traffic he couldn’t get her image out of his head—the wild tangle of red curls around that delicate white face, the bud-like breasts and long, long legs. She haunted him for the rest of the day.
KEIRA was thinking about him too, hardly listening to the doctor as he examined her, sighing.
‘You’ve stopped putting on weight, haven’t you? Have you lost some more? You were doing so well, too. You must not let yourself slide backwards, my dear girl.’ His sing-song voice was gently sad; he never became angry, he just got sadder and sadder. Trying to make me feel guilty, thought Keira. And succeeding a lot of the time! Dr Patel was a great psychologist.
‘It just happened,’ was all Keira could say to him. She felt like death, and knew she must look it. She had seen the distaste in Gerard Findlay’s eyes and felt sick herself. He was the very last man in the world she would have wanted to see her in that condition. It had been a deep shock to find herself looking into his eyes. For a second she had almost thought she was imagining him, and then she had realised he was not a figment of her imagination, he was really there, and she had been shaken to her depths.
‘Just happened?’ the doctor repeated, shaking his head in disbelief. ‘Oh, please, Keira! We both know there is more to it than that!’
Keira looked at him helplessly, her face white, her eyes smudged and shadowy in that whiteness. ‘All right! I couldn’t cope. When I knew I’d lost that contract I felt so bad. I didn’t mean to let it happen. I came home and I was hungry; I started to eat, and the next minute…’
‘It triggered an attack.’ Dr Patel nodded. ‘It is insidious. Something makes you unhappy, you need the comfort of food, you start to eat and you can’t stop, but you are afraid of putting on weight, so you make yourself throw up. It is an endless circle. The only way out of it is understanding yourself and why it happens. As soon as you feel yourself losing control you must stop, go for a walk, go to see a film, ring up friends, visit people, do anything to distract yourself.’
‘I know, I know. Oh, and I tried so hard this last year; it hasn’t happened for months and months; I kept it under tight control, put on lots of weight.’
‘You needed to,’ the doctor said quickly, frowning at her. ‘Don’t start telling yourself you’re fat! You know that’s another trigger. The truth is, you’re still underweight for your height.’
He saw the evasion in her face and knew she didn’t really believe him; that was the problem with all bulimia sufferers—they couldn’t trust in what they saw in the mirror. They saw a very different reflection and they never believed what other people told them, either. Their obsession was too deep, as deep as their need for love and reassurance.
‘Keira, Keira,’ he said, shaking his head at her. ‘Believe me, you are too thin. My wife is a very sexy woman, most beautiful, and she would make two of you!’
That made her laugh and her face relaxed a little. ‘She wouldn’t thank you for that if she could hear you!’
Dr Patel’s eyes twinkled. ‘Oh, she would be flattered—in my culture being thin is not so prized as it is in yours. I like women to have round hips and breasts like watermelons. I don’t want to go to bed with someone with the figure of a boy. That doesn’t excite me at all.’ He grinned at her. ‘I am sorry, Keira, but you would have to put on a lot of weight before I would think you were as beautiful as my wife!’
Keira giggled, then said wryly, ‘But I’m a model, Doctor. I have to stay slim or I won’t get work. The camera puts pounds on you. That’s why I lost that Rexel contract—they thought I had put on too much weight.’
He looked irritated. ‘Then they are very silly people. You are much more beautiful now than you were a year ago! A little weight has improved you.’
‘Tell that to Rexel’s ad men,’ Keira said bitterly.
The doctor watched her shadowed face and sighed.
‘I wish I could have the chance! I would box their ears for them. Believe me, you have been looking much better lately. It is a great pity to ruin it now; you don’t want to have to go back to the clinic, do you?’
She shook her head, grimacing, remembering the regime in
