really mean that? You never could tell with women. Most of them couldn’t be trusted. They would swear blind they didn’t want something, when all the time it was the very thing they did want. Like babies. Goodness me, no, they’d protest. Whatever would I do with one of those? And half the time they’d be glued to the Mothercare window. Same with marriage. Who’d want to be married these days? they would claim. It’s a perfectly meaningless institution. Only a piece of paper … oh look, what a gorgeous ring! And I just love white weddings, don’t you?
Jade, to be fair, hadn’t been like that so far, and they’d been living together for nearly six months. But then, he had made things crystal clear to her from the start. Since his first shot at marriage had been such a failure, he told her, he believed that ‘open’ relationships were a safer bet, and had gone on to explain exactly what he meant by that. He was nothing if not honest.
‘I love you, Jade,’ he’d said, ‘but to be perfectly frank with you I can’t promise to be completely faithful. I’m not that kind of man. I need to feel free to – er – engage in other relationships from time to time. Nothing permanent, mind. Just the odd fling. I’d always come back to you …’
Seeing Jade’s startled expression – the involuntary parting of her lips, the narrowing of her cat-like eyes – he had hastened to reassure her. ‘Of course, it would work both ways. You’d be free, as well, you know. To go with other guys.’ Jade said nothing.
‘And if, on the odd occasion,’ he blustered on, since he appeared to have blown his chances and had nothing more to lose, ‘if on the odd occasion the opportunity of a swap came up – you know, at a party or something – well, it could be great. Really. It would. I mean – have you ever tried it? Afterwards you compare notes. And that’s the best part of it, you know, telling each other about different experiences – in bed – and – God,’ he’d wound up, hastily adjusting his trousers, ‘I’m getting horny just thinking about it.’
Two plates of venison arrived and Oliver stubbed out his cigar. ‘Our not being married hasn’t bothered H J up until now,’ he told Jade.
‘H J?’
‘Holy Joe. Big boss. Jocelyn Hemmingway-Judd.’
‘Oh, him. Well, no, maybe not, who knows?’ She shrugged, so that her baggy cotton sweater slipped to one side revealing a naked shoulder. ‘But it might have affected your promotability without your realising it. In his eyes –’ she made her own goggle ‘– I presume, we’re living in sin.’
Oliver waited while the barman finished glugging wine into their glasses. ‘Living in sin,’ he muttered in disgust. ‘What a load of cock. It’s the job that counts, surely? The way you do it; the results you achieve.
‘Cheers, Tony,’ he dismissed the barman, and began to attack his food. But his mind was still with H J.
‘Perhaps this new guy’s not married,’ Jade said in an attempt to lighten his mood. ‘He could be gay, you know. H J wouldn’t be happy about that.’
Oliver considered the matter. He would like to think it a possibility, because Jade was right: H J wouldn’t be able to stomach that. ‘Now how am I supposed to know whether Benson’s gay or not? I’ve not even met him yet. If it’s anything to go by, word’s come down from London to the women in our office that he’s quite fanciable. The secretaries are wetting their knickers in anticipation.’
‘Really?’ Jade grinned. She had become inured to Oliver’s coarseness. ‘I thought you said he was old.’
‘Not too old for that, apparently. Even you might fancy him.’ Oliver chewed, emptied his mouth, and stabbed the air with his fork. ‘Hey, that’s not a bad idea!’
‘What?’ Jade had a quick brain, but couldn’t follow his thoughts on this occasion.
‘Well, how about –’ he began to chuckle at his idea ‘– how about we invite him over to dinner when he moves down here and that you get on rather well with him – follow my drift? And then, when he’s nicely drooling over you and making a complete arse of himself, it’s somehow spread around the office that he’s been pestering his junior’s girlfriend. Even tried to force himself on her. Hey presto! One disgraced sales director’s booted back to the smoke. And then yours truly steps in to fill his shoes.’
Jade let out a gasp, nearly choked on a sip of wine, and sat back fanning her face. ‘Oliver B Knox! Really! You’ll be the death of me.’
‘It would be worth trying it on, though. Think of the extra money.’
‘Only you could be so daft as to dream up such a preposterous scheme.’
‘Full of imagination, I am. And it isn’t all that daft. Or original really, as you must know in your line of work. Women are doing it all the time, aren’t they – claiming harassment and rape, and no one can prove a thing?’
Jade glanced coldly across at him. ‘I hope you aren’t suggesting that women make up things like that – just for revenge or compensation? And in any case, you know I’m not allowed to handle that type of work.’
Jade never missed a chance to air a grievance about her job: she wasn’t yet a qualified legal executive and, as soon as she was, she wanted to go on from there to become a solicitor. It was a long, hard, highly competitive road on which she had set herself – especially having to work and study at the same time – and all the experience she was gaining at Hart, Bruce and Thomson’s was in conveyancing. She longed to move on to more interesting work; saw herself as the star role in court dealing with the more contentious side of the law – criminal, perhaps, or marital. Something to sink her teeth into.
‘Jade,’ the doddery old senior partner was always telling her, ‘you cannot run before you can walk.’ Some days she felt like kicking him out of the way; she would soon show him her mettle.
Oliver still had his gleaming black eyes fixed on her. ‘Would that be a definite “no” then?’ he prompted. ‘Do I take it you don’t want to play at being a femme fatale?’
He waited for her to say something, but she carried right on with her meal, wrapped up in her own private world. She obviously didn’t think he deserved an answer. Which was a pity. He was rather taken with the idea himself.
Marjorie sat up in bed trying to read her library book while waiting for Philip to return from taking his parents home. What a ghastly evening it had been. Normally she would have been halfway through her latest thriller by now, but with the day’s events blotting everything out she was stuck on page three and had no idea of the plot. She kept staring up at the wallpaper, not seeing it. But all she could think of was Bristol.
Bristol? Oh, no, no, no. Not now. Not when she was on the verge of an exciting new challenge in her life – one that she needed with increasing desperation the more she thought about it all.
After years of looking after Phil and the girls – enjoyable though that had been – she yearned to exercise her brain, to use her skills, and to achieve, in doing so, a degree of personal satisfaction. More than that: she had a deep-down need to assert herself and prove to Phil that she wasn’t as dependent on him as he’d always seemed to think, that she was an
