know! But—men!’
They laughed. They’d roomed together, the three cousins, at boarding-school. They’d shared each other’s secrets, mopped up—in the early days—each other’s tears when their mothers had hopped from relationship to relationship. Stable backgrounds—forget it! They’d had so many ‘uncles’, it had needed a young mind to keep up with it.
They’d tried hard not to be judgmental, but it had been just a touch embarrassing not knowing which ‘uncle’ had been coming with their mothers to pick them up at each term-end.
Aunt Delia was the rock they’d each leaned towards. Aunt Delia had been ten years old when her widowed mother had remarried, and in three years had produced three daughters. It was the younger girls’ dreadfully strict upbringing, Aunt Delia had explained, by a father who seemed to have few sensitivities, that was responsible for the way each of her half-sisters, in turn, had rebelled. Yancie’s mother apparently had been well ‘off the rails’ before Yancie’s father had been killed. Fennia’s mother was twice married—and on the lookout for husband number three. And Astra’s mother had twice divorced and was at present living with someone.
With that kind of a background, the three cousins had been sixteen when, fearing they might have inherited some wayward gene from their mothers, they had vowed that they were going to guard with everything they had against turning out like their mothers. They wanted nothing of their mothers’ explosive and sometimes quite awful relationships which—in the main—brought nothing but disaster.
To date, six years on, it hadn’t been a problem. In general the cousins had nothing against men. And so far, thank goodness, none of them had felt the smallest inclination to be wayward where men were concerned. Though it was true that if they ever went out on a date and did dip their toes in unchartered, experimental waters it was mainly with someone fairly safe whom they’d known for ages—usually the brother or relation of someone with whom they’d been at boarding-school.
Yancie drove to work the following morning growing more and more comfortable with her lot. She was still in frequent telephone contact with her stepfather—who now employed a housekeeper—but she still had no wish to return to live in the same house as Estelle. Yancie enjoyed living again with her cousins. Fennia, despite her business training, thoroughly enjoyed the job she had found working with toddlers in a day nursery, and Astra, the most academic of the three of them, was working all hours as a financial adviser, and loving it.
Yancie drove into the vast garages of the Addison Kirk Group and exchanged her uniform jacket and neat shoes for a pair of Wellingtons and an over-large overall.
The men she worked with were getting more and more used to seeing her about the place. But even though—as she unreeled the water hose prior to tackling the wheel arches on yesterday’s Mercedes—she knew she must look a sketch in her present outfit it still didn’t prevent one courageous colleague from commenting, ‘You still look terrific even in that get-up!’
She had no wish to be thought stand-offish. ‘You reckon?’ she answered.
‘There’s no substitute for style—and you’ve got it, plus,’ he stated, and looked so serious, she had to laugh—which caused him to ask her for a date.
Her laugh faded. ‘I never mix business with pleasure,’ she replied, and turned away to concentrate on turning the water on.
She was happily absorbed in her task when Wilf Fisher, one of the mechanics and a family man, came over to thank her for going out of her way to drop a spare electric kettle off to his mother yesterday.
‘It was a pleasure,’ she assured him, though it had been a fifty-mile round trip on which she headed as soon as she’d seen Mr Clements safely to his destination.
‘I couldn’t have got it to her before tomorrow otherwise,’ he explained again. ‘And, well, quite honestly, the wife does get a little bit fed up with me having to drive up there to sort the old dear out all the time.’
Yancie sympathised; she knew all about mothers and their urgent summonses. ‘Think nothing of it,’ she smiled. ‘Any time.’
Wilf went on his way, clearly feeling better for her offer of ‘Any time’, and Yancie, her smile fading, fell to thinking how, if she hadn’t been where she shouldn’t yesterday, then she wouldn’t have had that run-in—very nearly literally—with Mr Aston Martin.
She owned that the near calamity had truly unnerved her. For all she had made light of it to Fennia, and to Astra too when she had come home, Yancie had not been able to get to sleep last night for thinking about it. She had so nearly caused a very serious accident. And, to make matters worse, when the driver of the other car had followed her to remonstrate with her, what had she done but called him a grumpy old devil and accused him, totally falsely, of being in the wrong lane?
She had been in the wrong, Yancie knew that. Apart from the fact the ‘grumpy old devil’ wasn’t old at all—why couldn’t she get the memory of his face out of her head? She knew she’d know him again anywhere—not that she would see him again. She must have been in a panic yesterday when she had thought that he’d find out more about her from the car registration number. Records of that nature were difficult to access, weren’t they? And, in any case, everything about him had spoken of him being some kind of executive. This morning she doubted he’d have time to bother contacting the police about an accident that had never happened.
Yancie usually had quite a few driving jobs on a Friday. But this Friday, although she caught Kevin Veasey looking over to her several times, he didn’t have even one task for her.
She kept busy, however, washing cars, going for sandwiches or running any other errand anyone wanted doing. Then at three o’clock, to her delight, she got the plummiest job of them all. Word had come down, from the head of the whole outfit, no less, that her presence was requested on the top floor at four o’clock.
She had never driven Thomson Wakefield before. Indeed, she had never so much as clapped eyes on him. In fact, having worked for Addison’s for three weeks now, she had been beginning to suspect—to the blazes with any sex discrimination law—that old Mr Wakefield would die rather than let some female drive him.
But, not so! Why she thought Thomson Wakefield must be old, she couldn’t have said. Probably because it didn’t seem likely that someone still wet behind the ears would have the honour of holding his exalted position.
But what was she bothering her head with such thoughts for? He wanted her to drive him—her! Inwardly beaming, Yancie, after her car-washing activities, would have loved to have taken a shower before she presented herself on the top floor.
Not to worry, though; she had a fresh shirt in her locker, and a quick freshen-up of her make-up and a comb run through her shoulder-length ash-blonde hair, and she’d be as good as new.
It puzzled her when, at half past three, hair combed, fresh lipstick applied, she went and asked Kevin what car she would be driving and he replied he’d had no instructions yet about where she was going. His instructions were that she present herself at four.
‘I’ll sort a vehicle out when I come back,’ she decided. Given the choice, she fancied the Jaguar, but, of course, Mr Wakefield might have his own preference.
Yancie made her way to the top floor with her head filled with speculations on how far afield the chief man might want to be driven. Working overtime never bothered her, so if he had it in mind to be driven up to Scotland that was all right by her—though
