Heading For Trouble!. Linda Miles

Kavanagh disappeared upstairs she tried to think of a way of delicately warning Elaine—‘You remember your party the Christmas before last, the one where Richard Kavanagh walked into a door? I was the door’—and gave it up in despair.

      He was back in twenty minutes, having changed into a white jacket and trousers and a pale green shirt, open at the neck. Morgan had grown up with boys who took it for granted that the tougher you were, the more torn and battered your clothes were; she found this combination of casual elegance and confident masculinity rather unnerving. While she was thinking about this Elaine walked up to Kavanagh and kissed him lightly on the mouth.

      Morgan tried not to goggle. Was Elaine actually romantically involved with him, then? Or was this just one of those kisses that people in show business threw around as a casual social gesture?

      Even as she puzzled it over, Kavanagh made it just slightly more than a gesture, if that was how it had been intended, by just barely bending his head, responding and at the same time fractionally lengthening the kiss. And somehow the very casualness of the embrace showed just how unquestionably these two handsome, stylish people belonged together—it was like watching Cary Grant kiss Grace Kelly.

      ‘Sorry to keep you waiting,’ Kavanagh murmured, while Morgan fought down a ridiculous sense of chagrin. As a child she had admired but not envied Elaine’s golden-haired prettiness, priding herself instead on protecting the sister two years behind her, and on rivalling the boys for daring and toughness and complete indifference to clothes. But somehow daring and toughness didn’t stand her in very good stead these days; somehow her sister’s unabashed femininity gave Elaine an armour that Morgan couldn’t hope to match.

      Elaine made some offhand remark and they headed for the dining room. Morgan caught sight of herself in the mirror above the sideboard; her eyes were still misty pools, her mouth still had that wistful smile, but the lovely mask gave her none of the confidence she’d hoped for. She didn’t feel feminine or glamorous; she felt a fraud who was about to be unmasked at any moment.

      This uneasy feeling was soon compounded, for the minute they sat down the children returned to that delightful subject—Morgan’s escapades.

      Leah ladled out soup, Morgan’s father filled glasses, and the Terrible Twins launched yet again into the story of the tyre.

      ‘Morgan’s always doing that kind of thing,’ boasted Jenny, with pride. ‘She abseiled off the church tower for a bet—’

      ‘And when Mick tried it he broke his arm!’ burst in Sarah with the punchline.

      ‘She went over the falls in a punt—’

      ‘And Steve almost drowned!’

      ‘She was in a motorcycle rally when she was fifteen!’ said Ben, determined to get in this marvellous fact before one of the others did. ‘And she jumped out of a parachute.’

      ‘And lived to tell the tale,’ said the visitor. ‘Naturally. I trust she visits the graves of Mick and Steve from time to time?’

      Morgan glowered at him, A little smile was tugging at the corner of his mouth; he obviously thought that she was completely ridiculous. And then, just when she thought things couldn’t possibly get any worse, her irritation gave way to horror as the children all but blew her cover.

      ‘She jumped out of an aeroplane, with a parachute,’ said Sarah. ‘Ben gets everything wrong. And she raised seven hundred pounds for A Child’s Place—isn’t that wonderful?’

      Morgan held her breath. The brilliant, penetrating grey eyes rested on her thoughtfully. ‘Well, there’s obviously a lot more to your sister than meets the eye,’ he remarked in an ironical tone that made her want to hit him.

      And then, to her dismay, he went on, ‘Is A Child’s Place some sort of charity, then? I don’t think I’ve heard of it.’

      ‘Morgan teaches there,’ said Jenny. ‘It’s for poor little homeless children who don’t have a school of their own.’ She paused to admire the pathetic image conjured up by her words, and Richard Kavanagh pounced like a wolf—but not, of course, on the innocent little child who had spilled the beans.

      ‘Surely there can’t be much call for that?’ he said. ‘Anyone with a child has top priority for housing—’

      ‘Yes,’ said Morgan, who had been through this argument hundreds of times. ‘But sometimes people get put in places that don’t mesh very well with ordinary schools... We try to help children make the most of whatever time they have before they’re moved somewhere else, instead of just expecting them to fit into a timetable set up to cover a whole school year, where if they fall behind it’s just too bad—’ She broke off, dismayed at where her enthusiasm was leading her. How much had he been told at that ghastly party?

      ‘Yes, I see,’ said Kavanagh. ‘That makes much more sense—it’s a good idea. I’m surprised no one has thought of it before; isn’t anybody else doing anything?’

      ‘No,’ said Morgan.

      ‘Are you sure? I seem to remember hearing of something very similar some time ago—I can’t remember the name, but—’

      ‘Why don’t you put your research department onto it?’ said Morgan. ‘I’m sure if they dig around enough they can find someone to say it’s completely superfluous. After all, there are two sides to every question, and if not you can always invent one just to be sure of being impartial.’

      If she hadn’t been so nervous she would have been amused by the look of blank astonishment which greeted this outburst. But before he could reply Elaine threw herself into the conversation with the aplomb of the experienced chat-show host, and for the next hour the talk remained firmly fixed on current events. Elaine’s versatility on her breakfast show was nothing to the brilliance she showed now—she seemed to know about everything.

      Morgan fought down another pang of regret at the contrast between her own gaucheness and Elaine’s maturity. The whole point of having the man here was to give Elaine a chance to show her paces. She glanced down the table to see what sort of impression Elaine was making, and dropped her eyes hastily. He might be arguing with Elaine, but the cool grey gaze was still fixed unwaveringly on Morgan’s face.

      Just for an instant she felt a shameful, delicious frisson at his unexpected interest. But then cold sense pointed out the frightening, unflattering truth. He suspected something.

      Presently she sensed that he had looked away, and in spite of herself she found her eyes drawn slowly back down the table. Sure enough, the hawk-like face was now turned to Elaine. And now that she was no longer the centre of attention she had the opportunity to observe him at leisure.

      Even after more than a year she remembered well enough the contrast between the television image and the real thing. The physical toughness of the man, which you wouldn’t have guessed from the talking head, made it easier to understand how he had talked his way into and out of a series of guerrilla hide-outs for an early, notorious season of Firing Line. So, oddly enough, did a charisma so strong that it was almost palpable. She could imagine him impressing men who lived by a code of unrelenting machismo—and then charming the socks off them.

      What she hadn’t remembered, because she hadn’t previously had a chance to see it, was his rather terrifying talent for being at ease with just about every subject under the sun. Here he was, talking, unbriefed, on subjects that Elaine had presumably worked up—and still he had her on the hop.

      But even as Morgan admitted, grudgingly, that he probably had the most powerful mind of anyone she’d ever met, even as she laughed, reluctantly, at his irreverent wit at the expense of the world’s movers and shakers she found herself gritting her teeth.

      Again and again he deployed the same tactic, putting forward a controversial, even shocking suggestion ‘for the sake of argument’, and then leaving Elaine to struggle to show why it was wrong. When watching this move on television Morgan usually shouted at the screen. Now, while her sister fought off humiliation at the hands of a man she seemed to care about personally