a little afraid then, but Bevan had laughed at her. What was wrong with her? he had demanded. She was only taking the same kind of risk that men had to take all the time. ‘What is it with you women?’ he had challenged her. ‘You want equality and then when you get it…’
He had shrugged without finishing his sentence, but she had known what he was implying.
Bevan was inclined to be irritable and quick to make judgements. He lived a very high-powered existence as a dealer working in the City.
Charlotte had met him through a colleague and at first she had been a little put off by his manner, but he had pursued her so determinedly that she had not been able to help being flattered.
Their engagement was an unofficial, casual arrangement, more a declaration of an intent to marry once they had both achieved a certain status in their lifestyles than a formal betrothal.
Charlotte knew that her parents, especially her mother, were a little perplexed with this arrangement. An engagement, to her mother, meant a diamond ring and a date fixed for the wedding.
Charlotte had had neither the ring nor the date for the wedding, and now she had no fiancé either.
Broodingly she looked at the immaculately painted shiny black door. Once she opened it and went in she would be walking into a completely new life. Taking a retrograde step to a stage in her career she had thought she had left behind her years ago.
She was thirty-two years old. Too old to be going back to the bottom of the heap. But then, it was her own fault. She was the one who was responsible for her failure. She knew that.
‘You failed because you took on too many charity cases,’ Bevan had told her brutally when she had broken down in tears as she had told him the news that her accountant had told her that she could no longer go on. That she must cease business and that if she was lucky—very lucky—she might just…just be able to sell both properties for sufficient to clear the outstanding mortgages.
Was that it? Was it because she had perhaps unwisely taken on too many cases which, while worthwhile, she had always known would never pay their way? Or was it because she was simply not a good enough solicitor, that she had not worked hard enough, that she did not have the drive…the skill…the ability to attract the kind of clients she had so desperately needed to build up her cash flow? The kind of clients that the Daniel Jeffersons of this world seemed to have in abundance, she reflected miserably.
And why not? When you had been feˆted by every heavyweight national paper there was, when every serious magazine had run articles on you, and every pseudo-current-affairs programme had promoted and praised you, you would be inundated with people who wanted to give you their business.
As the old saying had it, nothing succeeded like success.
Which was why, in the middle of the worst recession for decades, Jefferson & Horwich were taking on new staff…which was why she was here, standing numbly on the doorstep of these premises, knowing that she ought to be grateful to whatever streak of compassion it had been which had persuaded Richard Horwich to take her on.
She was grateful, of course. But she was also angry, bruised, hurt and most of all bitterly aware of the way in which her failure contrasted with Daniel Jefferson’s success.
And he was only thirty-seven, five years older than she was herself, unmarried, good-looking—at least if the Press photographs of him were to be believed. She hadn’t seen him on television. She had been too busy trying to clear up the financial mess which had once been her business, bargaining with the building society and the bank for more time, until she had managed to find buyers for her properties. Her properties…their properties more like. Thank goodness they were now off her hands and both her mortgages repaid. At least she no longer had that problem to keep her awake at night.
No…but she also had no home of her own, and the unwelcome knowledge that she was having to go back to the beginning and start all over again. She grimaced bitterly to herself. No doubt she would look wonderful in her expensive, silly designer suit, grovelling to the partners, and being asked to make tea by the junior clerks.
Stop it. Stop it, she warned herself. Stop feeling sorry for yourself.
She took a deep breath and pushed open the door. Behind her, in the square, she heard a man wolf-whistle, probably at some passing young girl who had nothing more to worry her than which of her admirers she was going to go out with next, she reflected dejectedly.
As she disappeared inside the building, the man who had whistled turned and grinned at his companion.
‘Very tasty, Mr Jefferson. I don’t think I’ve seen that one before. New, is she?’
‘It looks like it,’ Daniel Jefferson agreed noncommittally as he waited for the stallholder to weigh out the cheese he had been buying.
He was going to see old Tom Smith this afternoon. Tom was still worrying about what would happen to his cottage and his bit of land when he died. He had no direct heirs, only several distant relatives on his wife’s side, and he was concerned because he wanted to make sure that young Larry Barker, the local teenager who had been so good about doing his shopping for him and calling round to give him a hand with his garden, should not go unrewarded for all his kindness.
Tom was very partial to their creamy local cheese, and so Daniel had stopped to buy him some.
So Charlotte French had actually turned up, had she? He had had his doubts when Richard had told him he had offered her the job.
He had read her CV, of course, and he was still not sure how well if at all she would settle down with them. That suit she had been wearing, for one thing…personally he didn’t mind how a woman or a man for that matter chose to dress, but unfortunately some of their clients did not hold the same views.
Despite all the publicity of the Vitalle court case, the majority of their business came from the same rather conservative and traditional segment of the population it always had come from. It was just that now they had a lot more of it, and extremely short-skirted, South Molton Street suits would not be the type of thing they would expect from a woman solicitor. At least not if they were to take her seriously.
He sighed a little as he crossed the square. He knew from her qualifications just how intelligent she was, but…
A PRETTY, smiling receptionist welcomed Charlotte when she walked in. She obviously remembered her from her interview and offered immediately to show her where she would be working and where the cloakroom was.
‘Oh, but is it all right for you to leave the front desk?’ Charlotte asked her uncertainly.
The girl smiled back at her.
‘Oh, yes, Mr Horwich said I was to show you where you’d be working when you arrived.
‘I’m Ginny, by the way,’ she introduced herself, stepping out from behind her desk.
‘That’s Mr Horwich’s room on the left,’ she told Charlotte, indicating one of the several closed doors off the corridor. ‘And this one is Mr Jefferson’s.’
Charlotte gave it a brief antagonistic glance. She had no doubt at all which of the partners had the most expensively equipped and luxurious office space.
‘And this is your office,’ Ginny told her, stopping so unexpectedly at a
