so weak where his family is concerned?’
‘He loves them,’ Roberta stated simply. ‘And feels guilty for letting them all down, so he spends his life walking a fine line between pleasing himself and pleasing them.’ Her shrug said just how successfully he managed it most of the time.
‘Which gives you the unappetising role of being piggy in the middle.’ Jenny grimaced distastefully.
‘Gave me,’ Roberta corrected. ‘I’ve just resigned from the position, remember?’
‘You haven’t told him yet,’ Jenny wryly pointed out.
‘No,’ she agreed. ‘But I will.’
She had had enough.
‘Actually, I feel quite good!’ she suddenly announced. ‘Beneath the bitterness, of course.’ She acknowledged Jenny’s mocking look. ‘And that’s only there because I felt so humiliated tonight. But, other than that, I feel as if someone has lifted a big lead weight from my shoulders. I am no longer Solomon Maclaine’s hole-and-corner affair!’ she loudly declared. ‘Perhaps now I can begin to get some of my self-respect back.’
‘He’ll be around here looking for you as soon as he finds out you’re not at your flat,’ Jenny warned.
‘His flat,’ Roberta corrected, her soft cupid’s-bow mouth turning down cynically. ‘Mac provided me with that flat because a man of his standing has to maintain certain standards for his illicit affairs!’
‘Plus the fact that having me around here cramped his style!’
Roberta couldn’t help but smile at that. Built on Amazon proportions, with a full figure and the well-toned muscles of a trained physiotherapist, Jenny could frighten off any man with just a certain look!
‘Can I have my old room back?’ she begged her now.
‘Of course you can!’ Instantly Jenny’s softer side was gushing all over her. ‘Do you think you’ll sleep at all?’ she asked concernedly as Roberta got up from the chair.
‘No,’ she admitted. ‘But I’ll try anyway.’
Surprisingly, she slept quite well. Her head hit the pillow in her old single bed in her old familiar room that possessed none of the luxurious trappings Mac had surrounded her with in his personalised love-nest; his darkly attractive face loomed up into the darkness, wearing that rueful little smile he had offered her before his ex-wife had claimed his attention that evening, and, just as she was conditioning herself for a long night’s battle against the weakening effects of that smile, she dropped asleep and dreamed of nothing.
It was wonderful. Like being set free.
* * *
‘Joel’s been on the phone,’ Jenny informed her when she walked into the small kitchen the next morning dressed in one of Jenny’s tracksuits, a pale blue one with a creamy hood attached to the baggy top. ‘He wanted to warn you that, contrary to your opinion, Mac is on the war-path. He’s already phoned his place asking where you are.’
Roberta paused on a moment’s sharp surprise. So her manner last night had managed to get through to him, or he definitely would not have bothered ringing her.
‘Did he tell him?’ she asked casually, going to check if the coffee-pot was still hot.
Jenny shrugged. ‘He says not. But apparently Mac had been trying your number all night, and he’s gone from the puzzled to the worried to the bloody furious. Joel said he was spitting out all kinds of nasty insinuations that Joel found rather flattering since they seemed to team you and him together. But he swears he played it thick and said nothing other than that he dropped you off last night and that was the last he’d seen of you.’
‘Good old Joel,’ she murmured, thinking, So he’s decided to come down on my side, has he? She had wondered. Joel was Mac’s brother, after all. ‘I could do with a piece of toast,’ she remarked. ‘I didn’t eat a single thing at that lousy party last night.’
Jenny made a sound of impatience. ‘He’ll be ringing here at any moment,’ she cried. ‘What are you going to do about it?’
‘Me?’ Roberta paused as she was about to slip two slices of bread into the toaster. ‘I’m going to do nothing,’ she said, feeding the bread into the warming slots. ‘This is your flat. Your phone. You answer it.’
‘In other words, tell him a pack of lies.’
Roberta just shrugged, the strange calmness she had taken into sleep with her the night before still presiding this morning. ‘I thought you might rather enjoy the job,’ she said.
‘Oh, I will,’ Jenny murmured with relish. She had a thing about men of Mac’s calibre, having been heavily involved with one very like him herself once—with similar heartbreaking results. ‘But what if he decides to come barging round here to check?’ she wanted to know.
‘Come off it, Jenny!’ Roberta scoffed. ‘You know as well as I do that he daren’t leave Berkshire until every last one of his guests has left before him! No,’ she said grimly, ‘I’m safe until Monday. Which gives me time to clear my things from the flat before I have to face him.’
The toast popped up, and Roberta pampered herself by spreading a thick layer of butter on it before taking it to the table with her coffee.
‘You’re taking this all very calmly,’ Jenny observed. ‘I mean, Mac is supposed to be the man you fell head over heels in love with—threw all your high-falutin principles away for. Surely you feel some kind of grief for what you’re doing?’
Did she? Roberta bit into her toast while she thought about it. ‘Perhaps I’m suffering from shock,’ she decided finally, discovering that she was still feeling nothing whatsoever except that ice-cold determination which had come with her sudden decision last night.
The telephone began to ring. Something close to terror hit her spine, sending it jerkingly erect. Not so invulnerable, she acknowledged shakily as Jenny moved reluctantly across the kitchen.
‘Shut the door on your way out,’ Roberta called after her, calmly enough, and Jenny sent her a bewildered look before doing as she was told.
The moment the door closed, Roberta darted up and switched on the transistor radio. A Saturday morning pop show blared out, drowning out any hope of overhearing Jenny’s side of the conversation through the thin walls separating the kitchen from the sitting-room. She sat down again, shaking all over.
Feeling nothing, my foot! she scoffed at herself. She was a walking grenade with the pin half out.
But determined, she reminded herself grimly. Damned, wretchedly determined.
Jenny came back. ‘He seems more concerned about you than angry,’ she told her. ‘He can’t understand why you’re not where you’re supposed to be.’
‘So you suggested he look where?’
Jenny shrugged. ‘I reminded him that your parents were home and suggested that you could have gone there. He approved of that idea and rang off to check.’
‘Oh, that’s all right,’ Roberta
