instead, ‘What is this open day? Anything important?’
‘The best news I’ve had in six months, sweetheart!’ Alex abandoned all attempts to eat his breakfast, leaning back and smiling expansively. ‘Part of the studios will be open for members of the viewing public to meet the regular presenters and the back-room crews. It’s an annual thing but this year the board, in their wisdom, decided to throw a garden party, issuing the invitations as if they were made of diamond-studded gold. Much more exclusive. Backers and advertisers in the main with a sprinkling of showbiz names. A few selected members of the viewing public—they’ve been running a competition for the past three months. Twenty-five lucky winners received a couple of tickets apiece. Not forgetting the performers in, and writers of, the most successful series we produce. I wasn’t asked. Not until today! It’s a public-relations stunt, of course—make the viewers feel part of the network. Not to mention making the invited advertisers feel important.’
‘And you!’ Fen pointed out with an indulgent smile. His high spirits were infectious and at least last evening’s piece of rudeness hadn’t produced the backlash she’d expected. That made her conscience easier.
‘Ab—so—lutely!’ His blue eyes were gleaming like sapphires. ‘Clear up, would you, Fen? I’ll phone Jean and tell her the good news. The whole thing’s beginning to work like a dream. Oh, and—’ he was halfway out of the room before he turned ‘—we’ll have to scrub Tinkers tonight. Pity, but it can’t be helped. We’ll drive down to Tavistock this afternoon and be nice and rested for tomorrow’s high jinks. Be sure to pack something sexy to wear.’
By no stretch of the imagination could the simple, wrap-over amber silk dress be called sexy, Fen consoled herself as the Daimler Jean had given Alex for his last birthday swept over the Tamar into Cornwall.
She had happily dressed for the part she’d been allotted when they’d attended the first night and shown up afterwards at the restaurant. But for some unknown reason she could no more bring herself to dress the part of a femme fatale this afternoon than fly. Long sleeves looked demure enough and the narrow belt was tied tightly around her waist to ensure that neither the bodice nor the cleverly draped skirt would gape.
A floppy-brimmed hat in fine amber straw, festooned with huge cream silk roses, completed the ensemble and, emerging from the guest room in the Tavistock house, she had blinked in surprise when Alex, looking very elegant and Fred Astaire-ish in a morning suit, had told her, ‘You look fantastic!’
It was probably the hat, she decided edgily, not looking forward to the coming afternoon one tiny bit. Certainly nothing to do with the dress which covered her from her neck to just below her knees as effectively as a shroud.
‘Don’t forget to stick to me like glue,’ Alex said tersely as he slowed down for the turn-off on to a decidedly minor road. ‘I’m beginning to get butterflies. I’ll need you to hold my hand for that reason alone.’
He was beginning to look white around the mouth, Fen noted, giving him an narrow-eyed glance as the car swept between high hedges filled with the foam of Queen Anne’s lace and pink campion. It was a beautiful blue and green afternoon, as perfect as only an English early summer could be, and everything seemed to be going to plan, so why should the pair of them be so uneasy?
‘I’ve suddenly developed a split personality,’ he confided. ‘One minute I’m up in the air and thinking all this is a superb idea—especially when it’s bringing results—and the next I’m wishing we’d never started it. Trouble is, Fen, I can’t come to terms with the thought of being on the scrap heap, reduced to earning my crust advertising somebody’s frozen dinners in some ghastly commercial.’
About to point out that he didn’t need to work at all, that Jean’s fortune would keep them both in reasonable luxury for life, she thought better of it. Jean loved him to bits and wouldn’t begrudge a penny—as the gifts she showered on him so lavishly testified. But Alex had his pride. His ability to keep himself and support his wife was important to him.
‘But we won’t get anywhere if we back out now. And Jean would clobber us senseless if we did,’ he chuckled softly, his mood swinging again as he slowed down, looking for signposts.
Fen had imagined that the garden party would be held in some suitable spot near the main studios and the information that Saul Ackerman’s country home was to be the venue had only added to the niggling sense of unease she’d been suffering ever since she’d had to admit there was no backing out, no way of rejecting the invitation to attend.
Though it was more like a royal command, she decided edgily as the high hedges gave way to a wall of rough-grained quarried stone and then to a pair of massive iron gates flung open in well-bred invitation. Uniformed men who looked suspiciously like security guards directed them along a track that branched off from the main gravelled drive to an area of grassland that served as a temporary car park.
Big white vans bearing the distinctive Vision West logo left Fen in no doubt that the television crews would be prowling, getting the glittering occasion on film to be relayed to the viewers through the local news programme this evening. And there was well over a million pounds’ worth of motorised status symbols lined up on the crushed dry grass, she noted, which meant that everyone here was a ‘somebody’, and that sent her tension-reading up another couple of notches.
Just why had Saul Ackerman changed his mind and invited Alex along at practically the last moment? He couldn’t have had second thoughts about tossing him on to the scrap heap on the strength of a few scandal-mongering write-ups in the tabloids, surely?
Ducking her head as she got out of the car, she still managed to knock her hat to a rakish angle. Muttering under her breath, she righted it. She wasn’t used to wearing any kind of headgear; she felt like a mushroom. Hitching up her skirts, she spindle-heeled her way to Alex who was pocketing the keys to the Daimler, her tawny eyes wary as she told him, ‘I don’t want to spoil your moment of triumph, but have you stopped to wonder why you’re here? We never thought about the possibility of Ackerman being disgusted by what he must have read in the papers—he might not want to employ a man who is seen publicly to be cheating on his wife. We could be letting ourselves in for a highly public snub. Have you thought of that?’
‘Yes.’ Alex smoothed down his hair then took her hand and tucked it into the crook of his arm. ‘It’s always a possibility, but a remote one. Publicity and top ratings are the name of the game, and besides, he’s no saint. He’s rarely seen with the same woman twice. Whatever he is, I don’t think he’s a hypocrite.’
‘Is he married?’ Fen spiked her heels into the grass. For some unknown yet powerful reason she needed to know more about the man. A case of ‘know your enemy’, she supposed.
‘He was.’ Alex gave her a look that carried a hint of impatience. ‘But it ended very messily. There was someone else involved—there always was someone else involved during the short lifetime of that marriage. Do come on, Fen!’
More cars were arriving, sunlight glittering from their faultless bodywork, more frivolous hats and sleek-faced men in morning suits. Fen gave in and fell in step beside her uncle as they gravitated towards a gateway in the fuchsia hedge, a graceful figure in the amber silk that emphasised the slenderness of her hips and long, long legs, blissfully unaware that each step she took afforded the onlooker a tiny tantalising glimpse of creamy thigh and intriguing stocking-top.
Alex’s brief words had told her as much as she wanted to know about Saul Ackerman, and left her even less endeared to him than before. His poor wife was well rid of him; Alex had spoken of the marriage ending—so presumably that meant
