What Women Want, Women of a Dangerous Age: 2-Book Collection. Fanny Blake

Pleased with the result, she went to find him in the bathroom. To her surprise, the door was wide open. There was no sound of running water from inside, no steam misting the windows, as it did after the shower had been used. The blue and grey towels sat neatly folded, untouched. Turning to go downstairs, she noticed that Tony’s shoes were no longer where she remembered him slipping them off by the radiator in the hall. She couldn’t hear him opening cupboards, trying to find what he needed to make tea in a strange kitchen.

      There was a good reason for that, as she discovered when she reached the ground floor and could see along the hallway to the long kitchen. Tony wasn’t there. He had gone. Gone without waking her, without saying goodbye.

      Mystified, not to say disappointed, Bea decided to make herself a cup of tea to have in the bath where she would ponder this turn in events. Why would he have gone off without saying anything the night before? It didn’t make sense. Perhaps he had thought that mention of an early meeting the next day would interrupt the enjoyment of the moment. He had been right. She stood on her tiptoes and stretched, confident that he’d call her later in the day. Waiting for the kettle to boil, she began planning what they might do that evening. Or was that rushing things? But going that fast seemed to be working for Ellen, so why shouldn’t it for her?

      Except that, clearly, it hadn’t. The rosy glow that had enveloped her on waking began to evaporate as realisation dawned. The bastard had legged it and, worse than that, he’d gone in the middle of the night with no explanation. She cast her mind back, trying to find one for him. Had he disguised his real reaction to her body? Had gravity, food, drink and childbirth taken the toll she feared? Should she have had the Brazilian she’d been meaning to endure and hadn’t quite got round to? Perhaps she was even more out of practice than she’d thought and it had showed. What had been so good for her might not have been so good for him after all. But he had touched her, reassured her, even complimented her.

      Puzzling over how someone could say the things he had without meaning them, her fury was compounded when she found the bathroom door locked. Could it be? Her hopes rose for a moment as she knocked – quite gently so as not to wake Ben. No reply. She tried again, louder this time.

      ‘What d’you want?’ Ben’s voice boomed through the glass panel.

      Disguising her disappointment, Bea yelled, ‘For God’s sake, hurry up. You know I’ve got to go to work.’

      Work. The day ahead rushed towards her, tsunami-like. This morning she was having her first official meeting with Adam to discuss ‘the future of the editorial department’. Being late was not an option. A headache that had until that moment been distant thunder on the horizon began to rumble unerringly in her direction.

      ‘Ben!’ she yelled again, rapping on the glass.

      ‘OK, Mum. OK.’ Ben unlocked the door and shambled out. ‘Chillax.’

      ‘If you say that to me once more, I’ll . . .’ For once words failed her as she pushed past him into the room that, minutes ago, had looked unused. Now it looked as if a whirlwind had blown through it. The pile of towels had been knocked to the floor beside an open magazine that lay half hidden by Ben’s discarded T-shirt and pants. The basin was dotted with black stubble, the razor left lying by the toothpaste tube, which was leaking into the soap dish. Bea started the shower and, with a heavy sigh, pulled off a bit of loo paper to mop up the splashes on the floor round the toilet where Ben had missed – again. No amount of asking, telling, shouting or begging seemed to make any difference. Every day started in the same old way, except that this one was even worse than usual, thanks to Mr bloody Castle.

      By the time she was strap-hanging on the tube, already wilting in the heat, Bea realised she had made a big mistake in the wardrobe department. The cotton shirt she remembered looking so great on her the previous summer and that had still looked great when she was standing quite still in front of the mirror this morning was now straining dangerously across her bust while her shoes, fashionably pointed, gripped the joints of both her big toes in separate agonising vices. However, her Nicole Farhi deep blue cotton jersey skirt was nothing short of perfect.

      The insult (which was how she now saw it) dealt by Tony Castle had insinuated its way to the back of her mind where it lay temporarily dormant as she concentrated on the morning ahead, going over how she was to protect her staff’s and her own jobs. Equally dormant were her concerns about how Ben might be spending his day and about her mother. She couldn’t afford to let anything or anyone deflect her focus. As she saw it, everyone who worked with her did a valuable job and didn’t deserve to lose it. They were relying on her to speak up for them and she would.

      *

      With the shirt problem righted with a large safety-pin (unpleasantly reminiscent of a nappy-pin) supplied by one of her younger colleagues, and unable to feel her feet, Bea knocked on Adam’s door and went in to face the enemy as the ten o’clock reminder beeped on her phone.

      He barely glanced up. ‘Just one moment while I finish going through these figures.’

      Rude, but at least it gave Bea time to sit down and assess her surroundings. In the couple of days he’d been there, Adam Palmer had made his mark, insisting that he take over Stephen’s office from day one. Not a popular decision with the rest of the staff, who felt that after so long with the company Stephen hardly deserved to be so humiliated. He, however, had been unbothered by the move. ‘What does it matter to me, Bea? It’s just an office. I’ll be out of here in a few weeks. I can see that he wants to make an impression and, let’s face it, I did have the best office in the building.’ Over the weekend, Stephen had moved into a smaller one on the other side of the open plan. Now that the axe had fallen, a change had come over him. Already, he looked like a man with a weight removed from his shoulders. He no longer wore a slightly anxious, distracted expression, as if something terrible was about to happen unless he did something to divert it. All those budgetary worries he had carried about with him for years had been parcelled up and passed on to Adam. He had been in the office as little as he could get away with as he silently prepared his exit. Bea was already missing his ready friendship.

      She looked across the empty table to the bookshelves, where Stephen’s accumulation of Coldharbour’s titles had already been thinned so that the recent better-selling ones were standing face out to impress any visitor. Beside them were a select few that Adam had presumably been responsible for at Pennant, all having had an enviable stint on the bestseller list. Nothing like driving your success home where it’s not wanted, thought Bea. On the walls he’d hung a couple of modern prints and on his desk stood a large, framed snapshot of an attractive woman, all blonde pony-tail and cheekbones, and a freckle-faced curly-haired boy of six or seven.

      So, like attracts like, thought Bea, as at last Adam looked up from his papers. She saw a lean aquiline face with steely grey eyes that appraised her for a moment before a slight smile was allowed to cross his lips. Beneath his casual but expensive striped open-necked shirt there was the suggestion of a well-worked-out body. A copper wristband sat just below the dark leather strap of his square-faced TAG Heuer watch. As he stood up to walk round the desk to join her at the table, she couldn’t help noticing his jeans (with a crease), silk socks and soft tan leather loafers.

      ‘So, you’re Bea Wilde.’ Far from unfriendly, his tone was more matter-of-fact.

      Bea braced herself. ‘Yes. I’m the publishing director, as I think you probably know.’

      ‘I certainly do.’ He leaned across the table towards her and got straight to the point. ‘Would you say you’ve done a good job here?’

      ‘Yes, I would.’ Bea’s hackles rose in preparation to defend herself.

      ‘Let’s see. What was the last book you were responsible for that made the bestseller list? Remind me.’ He leaned forward. No smile now.

      ‘Jan Flinder’s A Certain Heart.’

      ‘My point. That was spring last year. Why nothing since then?’

      ‘You know as well as I do that that’s an impossible question to answer. We’ve had a couple that made it close, others we had high