‘Then guard your cables. My kids had one and, I promise you, they can chew through anything.’
‘Oh, great. Better make that an hour while I make sure that at least my study is a hamster free zone.’
He might not be totally convinced about the hamster, but he wasn’t prepared to take any chances.
Miss Iphegenia Lautour might have a ridiculous propensity to blush for a grown woman. He wasn’t, however, about to overlook the possibility that she could have let loose a small furry friend in order to provide herself with a legitimate excuse for searching his apartment.
Why pretend when you could do it for real?
An answer immediately offered itself. Why would she complicate things with livestock?
A real hamster would, sooner or later, be found. Maybe too soon. An imaginary one, on the other hand, would provide her with endless opportunities to return.
Just how clever was she? The image might be pure innocence, but the eyes had glowed with something that had warned him not to take any chances.
He’d be well-advised, he decided, not to take anything for granted, but to assume the worst.
Ginny, too agitated to be able to concentrate, didn’t make it to the Underground station before she abandoned all thoughts of work. Instead, she bought a sandwich and a carton of coffee and retired to a small park where she tossed crumbs to the sparrows, putting off the evil moment when she’d have to call Sophie and let her know that she’d failed.
But eventually she ran out of sandwiches and time.
She dug out her cellphone, keyed in the number. Her call was answered with an alacrity that suggested Sophie had been sitting with the phone in her hand.
‘What happened?’ she demanded without preamble.
There was no soft answer. ‘I’m sorry, Sophie, but his desk was locked. I tried to find a key but when I went upstairs…’ She hesitated. Did she want to entertain Sophie with her encounter with Richard Mallory? Definitely not. ‘I was interrupted.’
‘Interrupted? Who by?’ she demanded.
‘It’s fine, Sophie. No problem.’
‘Oh.’ For a moment Ginny had the feeling that she was disappointed. ‘Well, that’s good, isn’t it? You can have another try tomorrow.’
No! ‘Look, why don’t you just own up? Surely Richard Mallory will understand? You can’t be the first person ever to delete a file.’
‘You don’t understand! I should have backed it up! I should have made copies! I should—’
‘Sophie! Pull yourself together!’ Heavens, she’d never been in this kind of state about a job before. She must be really desperate to keep it. ‘It has to be in the system somewhere. Can’t you flutter your eyelashes at one of those clever young men who work for him?’
‘No! This is a serious job and I want to keep it. I can’t admit to messing up. Besides, it’s not that easy. Go poking around in the memory of the mainframe and alarms get triggered off. The man is paranoid about security.’
‘Well, thank you for telling me that,’ Ginny said drily.
‘What? Oh…’ Then she laughed. ‘Oh, I see what you mean. You’re safe enough in his apartment. He wouldn’t expect anyone to break in there, would he? And it’s not as if it’s his precious secret development stuff you’re after.’
‘But would he believe that?’
‘He’s never going to know. I’ve told you, it’s his sister’s wedding anniversary and he’s playing happy families in Gloucestershire.’
Maybe that’s where he should have been, but he’d clearly been distracted by a pair of silk clad legs…
‘Listen to me, Ginny. It is absolutely vital that you get that disk. I have to prove to my father that I can keep a job.’
‘Why?’
There was a pause, then a sigh, then Sophie said, ‘He’s had enough of subsidising me, that’s why.’
Something she’d never have to worry about, Ginny thought. But what she’d never had, she’d never miss. ‘Hasn’t he threatened to cut you off without so much as a brass farthing at least half a dozen times since you left home? You know he doesn’t mean it.’
‘He does this time and it’s all my sister’s fault,’ Sophie added.
‘What’s Kate done to deserve the blame?’
‘She got married. To a wealthy barrister. A man who will, in the fullness of time, inherit a title and a country estate. It’s put ideas into Daddy’s head. He’s compared the cost of a wedding against the cost of supporting me and decided a wedding makes more economic sense in the long term. He’s actually got some chinless wonder lined up and panting to take me off his hands.’
‘Does he have a title and country estate to look forward to?’
‘Does it matter if he hasn’t got a chin? I have three choices, Ginny. Marry him. Marry someone else. Or support myself.’
‘Tough choice,’ Ginny said.
But Sophie didn’t get sarcasm. ‘The worst!’ she exclaimed. ‘All that’s saving me from a fate worse than death is this job…’
‘He might not be a chinless wonder, Sophie. He might be, well, jolly nice.’
‘Of course he’ll be “nice”. I don’t want “nice”, I want…’ She stopped abruptly. ‘I mean, really, Ginny, would you marry someone your father had picked out for you?’ Then, ‘Oh, damn! I’m sorry…I didn’t mean…’
Oh, rats! Now Sophie felt guilty.
‘It’s okay,’ Ginny said quickly. ‘Don’t fret.’
Despite the fact that they were total opposites in just about every respect, they’d bonded on their first day at school. It had been Sophie who, as the social queen of the class, had saved her from the fallout of being given the kind of name that no five-year-old should be saddled with.
As the solitary child of a feminist scholar—dismissive of playgroups and nursery schools—Ginny had little experience of mixing with children of her own age. She hadn’t realised that her name was odd until she ran into the cruel ridicule of the classroom.
Sophie had recognised a born outsider and, for some reason neither of them had ever quite fathomed, had taken her under her wing. Maybe it was the attraction of opposites. She hadn’t questioned it at the time, too grateful that since everyone wanted to be part of Sophie’s charmed circle the teasing had instantly stopped.
While her odd background, a lack of interest in the latest fashion, boys or parties and an inclination for solitary study had meant that she’d never actually been part of the group, she’d never been an outsider after that, at least not at school.
And
