An Excellent Wife?. CHARLOTTE LAMB
his life for ever. He hadn’t even thought of her for years. He didn’t want to think about her now.
What was this Kirby woman up to? Was this some sort of blackmail attempt? Maybe he should have got Miss Roper to call the police? Or the security firm he employed to check on dubious clients? He could easily find out everything he needed to know about this Kirby woman, from where she had been born to whether or not she took sugar in her tea. But why waste time and money? She couldn’t be any sort of problem to him.
Oh, no? Women can always be a problem, he thought grimly. Even someone as rational and sensible as Fiona did crazy things, like eating cheese when she knew it gave her migraine. Miss Roper was prepared to annoy him in spite of the very high salary he paid her, simply because she had a mother living at home when she could easily find her a nice, comfortable nursing home where she would be well taken care of day and night. Women might have good brains, might try to think calmly and reasonably, but they usually ended up thinking with their hearts instead of their heads.
His mouth was oddly dry; he needed a drink. Getting up, he walked over to a discreetly concealed cabinet in the oak-panelled wall.
Opening it, James selected a tumbler and poured himself a finger of good malt whisky, dropped ice cubes into the glass and shut the cabinet again, then walked back to his desk, nursing his whisky.
He rarely drank before the evening, apart from a glass or two of wine during lunch. He sat down, leaned back, sipping the whisky. He must put the whole stupid incident out of his mind and get on with his work.
He looked at his watch. Half an hour left; he might still finish the report before he had to meet Charles, if he wasn’t interrupted again. Finishing his drink, he turned his attention back to the closely typed pages.
He was on the final page when a confused noise began outside. James looked up, frowning. Now what?
Someone was shouting—it was Miss Roper’s voice, he recognised a second later with amazement, since he had never heard her shout that way before.
‘No, he doesn’t want to see you! Look, I’m sorry... You can’t go in there! Stop...’
The door fell open and bodies crashed through into his office. Three bodies, to be precise. Miss Roper. Her halfwitted assistant. And a third woman, who rolled across the floor in a flurry of arms and legs and fiery red hair in a tangle of tight, exploding curls, finishing up close to him.
James was so stunned that he didn’t even move; he just sat there behind his desk, staring down at her.
Clutching at a chair to stop herself falling, Miss Roper burst into stammering explanation, on the verge of tears.
‘I told her...said she couldn’t...she forced her way past me. I’m sorry, I did my best...she wouldn’t listen.’
Her assistant was already backing out, away from James’s terrifying presence, making gasping noises of panic and alarm. He took no notice of her, expecting nothing else from her by now, and in any case far too intent on the third person who had imploded into his room.
She was at his feet, quite literally, suddenly reaching out and attaching herself to his shoes with both hands, clinging on like a limpet.
‘I’m not going until you let me talk to you!’
James looked at Miss Roper again. ‘Is this who I think it is? The Kirby woman?’
‘Patience Kirby,’ said the girl, her slanty hazel eyes fixed on his face. ‘Please, Mr Ormond, just give me five minutes of your time, that’s all I ask. I won’t go until you do.’
‘Call Security, Miss Roper,’ James ordered, flintyhearted.
Miss Roper gulped and headed for her own office.
‘You might as well get up,’ James told the girl. ‘I am not listening to you. If you aren’t out of here in one minute my security men will carry you out. And let go of my feet!’ He couldn’t move with her tethered to him, except by dragging her along with him.
Her hands let go of his shoes, but she immediately shot up and clasped his legs instead, wrapping her arms around them. ‘Why won’t you listen to me?’
‘You tiresome female! Let go of me, will you? You’re making yourself ridiculous—this isn’t some soap on TV; this is real life and you are in serious trouble. I could have you arrested for forcing an entry and physical assault!’
‘I’ve got a message from your mother,’ she said, ignoring his threats.
‘My mother is dead!’ James heard the running feet of the security men along the stone floors in the corridor from the lift. Thank God, they would be here soon to end this embarrassing scene.
‘No, she isn’t, she’s alive.’ She bit her lip, frowning. ‘You didn’t really think she was dead, did you?’ The small face lifted to him had an annoyingly childlike look: heart-shaped, with large, beautifully spaced glowing eyes fringed by a ludicrous number of thick ginger lashes which shone in the sunlight like gold, a small nose and a wide, warm mouth. She wasn’t pretty, but she was oddly appealing. Not his type, of course; he preferred women to be elegant and coolly beautiful, with good brains, like Fiona, but he could imagine that boys of her own age might find this girl adorable.
‘My mother is dead!’ he insisted, his teeth snapping out the words.
‘Did your father tell you that? And all this time you’ve believed she was...? Oh, that’s terrible.’ Tears actually formed in those eyes. One began sliding down her cheek while James watched it incredulously.
‘Stop that!’ he muttered. ‘What are you crying about?’
‘It’s so sad...when I think of you... How could your father lie to you like that? Only ten years old, to be told your mother was dead! You must have been heartbroken.’
He had been. He remembered the coldness that had sunk into him, the misery and anguish, the sense of betrayal, of desertion. Of course, his father hadn’t told him his mother was dead. His father wasn’t a man given to telling lies. He had told him the cold, bitter truth.
‘Your mother has run off with another man and left us both,’ his father had said curtly. ‘You’ll never see her again.’
James had been taken off to stay with an aunt who had a bungalow at Greatstone, on the Kent coast, and had stood, day after day, on the beach, staring out at the grey, heaving waters of the English Channel, listening to the melancholy cry of gulls, the slow, sad whisper of the tide rising and falling on the sand. Whenever he heard those sounds something inside him ached, a stupid emotional echo of almost forgotten pain.
‘But she isn’t dead! She’s alive!’ said Patience Kirby.
‘She’s dead to me,’ James said tersely.
It was too late now for his mother to come back. He had spent a quarter of a century living without her; he had no need of a mother now.
Three security men burst into the room, big men in dark uniforms and peaked caps, ready to do battle with whatever they might find.
‘Get her away from me,’ James ordered.
The girl turned her small, heart-shaped face to them. They stared at her tear-wet eyes and trembling lips, then all three men shuffled their feet and looked sheepish.
One of them said uneasily, ‘Better get up, miss.’
Another offered her a hand. ‘Come on, miss, let me help you up.’
‘No, I’m not moving!’ she obstinately refused, shaking her head so that the red curls flew around like the petals of a flower in wind.
‘Well, don’t just stand there, pick her up!’ ordered James, and leaned down to loosen her grip on his legs.
Her hands were smaller than he had expected; soft little fingers curled around his like tendrils of vine around a tree and he felt a queer tremor in his chest. Clutching them, he stood up, pulling