office. They look good, they sound good and they mesmerise the men they pretend to work for into thinking they’re privileged to employ them. Well, I’m not impressed by glamour—give me substance every time. Someone with a bit of grit in her character.’
Good grief—she might have chosen the girls for their looks and charm rather than their skills, but they hadn’t been that bad. ‘Nonsense. Admit it, Max, you’re the problem here. Why should my girls put up with your bad temper and your unreasonable working hours?’
‘For the money, sweet sister? Or have you simply been giving them the opportunity to have a crack at mending my broken heart?’
‘You don’t have a heart.’
‘You know that and I know that, but if you can find a girl who can manage a decent rate of shorthand I might be prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice.’ He paused. ‘At least until Laura’s mother has recovered sufficiently for her to come back to work. I don’t care what she looks like and I certainly don’t give a damn who she went to school with—’
‘Max Fleming, you have got to be the most impossible, infuriating—’
‘I know,’ he said, cutting her off in full flow. ‘My faults are legion. If I promise to try and reform will you send me someone competent? Just for a few days while I finish this report for the World Bank?’
‘I should leave you to type it yourself with two fingers, then you wouldn’t be so—’
‘Or are you going to admit defeat?’
‘It’ll take more than you to bring me to that, big brother. I’ll have someone with you tomorrow. But this is your last chance. If this one walks out on you, you’re on your own.’ Amanda Garland frowned as she hung up, then turned to her own secretary. ‘What on earth am I going to do with him, Beth?’
‘Stop playing matchmaker and offer the poor man a competent secretary?’ she said with a grin. ‘Although where you are going to find someone who can take shorthand at the speed of light by tomorrow could be harder than getting him back to the altar. We’re booked solid.’
‘Didn’t we have a CV the other day from a girl in Newcastle? She had some incredible speed.’
‘Mmm. Jilly Prescott. You said that she didn’t have the look to be a Garland Girl, Amanda,’ she said doubtfully, glancing at the photograph as she passed over the girl’s CV.
‘My brother has had his quota of Garland Girls for this year. He’s going to have to take what he can get.’
Beth looked unconvinced. ‘She’s awfully young. He’ll chew her up and spit her out before lunchtime.’
‘Maybe.’ Amanda Garland was thoughtful. ‘Maybe not. He thinks our girls are more concerned with image than effort—’
‘That’s because you will send him all the pretty ones—’
‘Well, he won’t be able to say that about Jilly Prescott.’ She regarded the photograph of a very ordinary-looking young woman with a mop of thick dark hair that would stuff a mattress. ‘He wants someone with grit in her character.’ She glanced at Beth. ‘Northern women are supposed to be gritty, aren’t they?’
‘If you think he’ll come to heel like a puppy, Amanda, you don’t know your brother as well as you think you do.’
‘It’s worth a try.’ And her mouth softened into a smile at the thought of what a little grit might do, cast into the smoothly oiled wheels of her brother’s life. She tossed the photograph back at her secretary. ‘Check out her references. If they hold up, call her and tell her to be here first thing tomorrow morning.’
Jilly Prescott dialled her cousin’s number. It rang three times before an answering machine cut in with, ‘Hi, this is Gemma. I can’t come to the phone right now, but if you leave your name and number I’ll call you back.’
‘Bother!’ Jilly pushed back an untidy wedge of dark hair from her forehead.
‘Problems, pet?’ her mother enquired, hovering anxiously in the doorway, making sure Jilly didn’t chatter. She hated anyone making long distance calls.
‘No. I’ve got her answering machine, that’s all,’ she replied, waiting for the familiar beep. ‘Gemma, this is Jilly. If you’re there please pick up the phone, it’s urgent.’ She waited for a moment on the off chance that her cousin might just be at home—willing her to be at home. Why did Gemma have to be out tonight of all nights? She continued, ‘I’m just calling to tell you I’ve got a job in London and I’m catching the early morning train into King’s Cross. I’ll call you when I get to London.’ She hung up and turned to her mother. ‘It’ll be all right,’ she said, with more confidence than she was feeling. ‘She said I could stay any time.’
Her mother looked doubtful. ‘I don’t know, Jilly. What if she’s away?’
‘Of course she isn’t away—it’s January, where would she go in January? She’s out shopping, I expect. She’ll call back later and even if she doesn’t I’ve got her office number. It’ll be all right, honestly.’ The Garland Agency was the best in London and it wanted her. It wanted her tomorrow and who knew when she would get another chance like this? ‘I’d better get on with my packing.’
‘I’ll go and run an iron over your best blouse, then,’ Mrs Prescott said. Jilly knew her mother didn’t want her leaving home, certainly not to stay with Gemma, and keeping busy was her way of hiding it, which was why Jilly didn’t point out that she was more than capable of ironing her own blouse. ‘Heaven knows what you’ll look like when you have to take care of yourself.’
‘I’ll manage.’
‘Will you?’
‘I’ve been ironing my own clothes since I was ten, Mum.’
‘I didn’t mean that.’ She paused. ‘Just promise me that if anything goes wrong, if Gemma can’t put you up, you’ll come straight home.’
‘But—’
‘There are always other jobs, Jilly,’ she said, and waited. A promise given to her mother was not something to be undertaken lightly. If she promised to come home, she would have to do just that. But, after all, what could possibly go wrong?
‘I promise, Mum.’
There was an awkward little silence. Then, ‘I suppose you’ll be looking up Richie Blake?’
‘I expect so.’ As if they didn’t both know that it was the one reason she wanted to go to London.
‘Yes, well, he’s a big man now. He might not want to be reminded of home.’
‘We were friends, Mum. Good friends.’ She still remembered the moment she had first set eyes on him, a pathetic new boy, small for his age, with white-blond hair and glasses held together with sticky tape. A bunch of bigger lads had been giving him a hard time and, despite the fact that she was a year or so younger than him, she’d rounded on them, given them a piece of her mind, standing over him like a mother hen with its feathers all ruffled.
After that she’d been stuck with him. Maybe that was why she’d seen more
