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.
When she had calmed down from her niggle of annoyance, Yancie started to feel quite excited about her interview tomorrow. So much depended on its outcome. And truly she was a good driver. She’d made a mistake, but she’d learned from it, and if only Thomson Wakefield would give her another chance…Now, what should she wear?
She had a wardrobe or two full of really wonderful clothes. Somehow, when she had never felt the need of a confidence boost before, Yancie now experienced the oddest desire to want to look her very, very best when she saw Thomson Wakefield tomorrow.
Which, she scoffed a minute or so later, was just so much nonsense—no man had the right to tilt her confidence a little, or even the merest fraction. She went and checked out a fresh uniform.
At eleven fifty-five the following morning Yancie, suited in her newly dry-cleaned uniform and crisp beige shirt, presented herself at Veronica Taylor’s office. Yancie had debated whether or not to wear her name tag, but thought, since Thomson Wakefield knew perfectly well who she was, that she wouldn’t bother. She had, in fact, been halfway out the door of the apartment when it had dawned on her that for someone desperate to be reinstated she was risking it.
So now, duly labelled, she sat in Veronica Taylor’s office while the PA rang through to the next-door office to inform her boss—their boss, with any luck—that Yancie Dawkins was there.
Anticipating that the great man would squeeze her into his busy schedule about two minutes before he went for his lunch around one, Yancie had barely read five pages of her book before he buzzed through to say he would see her now.
Yancie, wishing she’d spent her waiting time re-rehearsing the tale she was about to tell, quickly put her paperback in her shoulder bag and, feeling oddly nervous—which was totally absurd, she told herself—she went to the other door in the room, knocked briefly, and went in.
Thomson Wakefield was just as she remembered him. Today he wore a dark suit, striped shirt and, as he rose from his chair to indicate she should take the seat she had used a week ago, she saw he was as tall, and as nearly good-looking, as ever.
‘Good morning,’ she broke the silence that emanated from the non-talkative brute. ‘Er, afternoon,’ she corrected, crossing to the chair—not a glimmer of a smile! Here we go—it was like treading through sticky treacle. ‘Thank you for seeing me at such short notice,’ she heard herself say—creepy or what?
Yancie clamped her lips shut, and took the seat he offered; only the ever present knowledge of how much she wanted this job—nay, needed this job—prevented her from getting up and marching out again.
She looked at him. His glance flicked over her. If he observed her name tag neatly in place—and from the little she knew of him she suspected he missed little—he did not comment. In
