Читать книгу The Baby Scandal - Cathy Williams - Страница 8

WHEN she arrived at work the following Monday morning, it was to find Alison in her office, door shut, which was a rare phenomenon, and, even rarer still, an atmosphere of hushed efficiency amongst the staff who had managed to pole up for work at a quarter to eight—an hour before their due starting time on a Monday, this was always limited to a handful, which increased as the week progressed.

She walked across to Janet Peters, one of the editors, opened her mouth to ask what was going on and, before she could get the question out, was greeted with a series of facial movements and twitches that left her a little confused.

‘Are you feeling all right, Jan?’ Ruth asked, concerned, and in reply Janet crooked her finger for Ruth to lean forward,

‘Guess who’s in with Alison…’ she hissed. ‘Hence the unnatural deathly quiet in this place…’

‘Franco Leoni, owner of Issues?’ Ruth hazarded, and then grinned when Janet fell backwards in her chair and stared at her with profound consternation.

‘How did you know?’

‘I knew…because…I am possessed of strange mystic forces that leave me with the uncanny ability to see into the other realm.’ She giggled and played with the blunt edge of one of her plaits, a sensible hairstyle that kept her hair away from her face though unfortunately made her look no older than twelve.

‘Be serious!’ Janet said sternly, by which time they had been joined by three others and the atmosphere was drifting inexorably back into cheerful, noisy confusion.

‘How did you know?’ Jack Brady asked, sitting on the desk and giving her a frank and open stare. Jack Brady, who looked only slightly older than twelve himself, with his freckles and thick fair hair, specialised in frank and open stares which fooled no one but the uninitiated.

‘He came here on Friday night, just as I was about to leave. Scared me to death as a matter of fact.’

‘Was that,’ Jack asked, frowning and tilting his head to one side, ‘before or after he asked you to lie prone on the desk so that he could have his wicked way with you?’

‘Before,’ Ruth said with a serious face. ‘I felt fine afterwards.’

‘Ruth Jacobs!’ Jack said, shocked. ‘You’re not supposed to say naughty things like that! Especially looking the way you do, all fetching, sexy innocence with those two blonde pigtails and big, tempting eyes…’ He playfully pulled the ends of both the plaits with his hands, so that she was more or less compelled to incline her body towards his, and it was while they were in this awkward stance, both of them laughing, that Alison’s door opened and there was a general flurry of scattered bodies as Franco stood and watched what was going on.

Ruth and Jack were the last to detach themselves from the situation.

‘An office hard at work,’ Franco said, pushing himself away from the doorframe and strolling towards them with the friendly expression of a barracuda on the prowl for food. ‘Such a reassuring thing to see—especially when I have just finished having a meeting with your boss to work out why the magazine isn’t doing as well as it should.’

He was dressed in a silver-grey suit, which he managed to transform into something elegant rather than functional, and a pale blue and white shirt with a dark blue tie. Very conservative, very traditional yet, on him, shockingly attractive.

Jack, who had been reduced to a state of tongue-tied embarrassment, launched himself into a comprehensive stream of apologies, which Franco, not bothering to look at him at all, waved aside.

He somehow managed to turn his broad back on the assembled eight members of staff now busily working at their desks, heads down, eyes focused, so that he could devote every scrap of uninvited attention to Ruth, who was the last one left still standing and with nowhere to conceal herself.

‘So,’ he said softly, which just succeeded in making his exclusion of the rest of the office from their conversation all the more complete, ‘does flirting list among your dogsbody jobs?’

‘I wasn’t…flirting!’ Ruth protested in a low, heated voice. ‘Jack was just…’

‘Playing with your hair…’

She tried to slide her eyes around him to see whether their tête-à-tête was being observed, but decided that she would rather not know.

‘That’s r-right…’ she stammered absent-mindedly, as her eyes flitted over the downturned heads and rapt faces staring at computer screens.

He clicked his tongue impatiently, ‘Would you mind looking at me when I’m talking to you?’ he snapped, sharply enough for her to literally jump to attention.

‘Of course!’ She nearly saluted, and then had to stifle a giggle at the thought of what his expression would be like if she dared do any such thing.

‘Do you recall our little conversation on Friday?’

‘Which bit?’ Ruth asked cautiously. Her smoky grey eyes wandered away as she tried to recall what they had spoken about. She knew that if she put her mind to it she would have no trouble at all, although the overwhelming impression that remained with her of that night, like a thorn driven deep into her side, was the unwelcome feeling of being bludgeoned into the ground by something much like a steamroller.

‘Could I have your attention?’ he asked in a grim, irritable voice, and she shot him a nervous smile in response.

Did he realise that he had just raised his voice one or two decibels, and that in the small office all those downcast eyes were quietly boring a hole in the back of his neck, and that all those subdued voices would be eagerly anticipating his departure so that they could lay into her with a thousand and one questions?

Having never been the focus of gossip, the thought of it now was enough to bring Ruth out in a cold sweat.

She could hardly tell him to lower his tone, though, so she compensated by reducing the level of hers so much that he had to bend down to hear what she was saying.

‘I am paying attention, to every word you’re saying,’ she whispered furtively, feeling like a dodgy character in a third-rate movie.

‘I’ve spoken to Alison about my little proposition…’

‘What little proposition?’

‘Do you have any concentration span at all?’ he snapped.

He glared down at her. Most of the women he knew—had ever known, for that matter—achieved a near perfect complexion through generous, skilful application of make-up. This girl, staring up at him, her teeth anxiously worrying her lip, had the most perfect complexion he had ever clapped eyes on, without the aid of any make-up at all. God, he could feel his mind beginning to drift, again, and he glared even more ferociously at her, further maddened by the glaringly obvious fact that although she was hearing every belligerent word he was saying she wasn’t seeing him at all.

Who was that boy who had been playing with her hair? Was there something going on there?

He fought to impose a bit of self-control and managed a stiff, artificial smile which appeared to alarm the object of his attentions even more than his aggression had done a minute before.

‘Maybe we could continue this conversation in Alison’s office. A bit more private.’

‘Oh, yes!’ Ruth breathed a sigh of relief. She had just managed to accidentally catch Jack’s eye and had quickly looked away when he had grinned and winked at her.

‘After you,’ he said, stepping aside so that she could precede him.

Ruth, in her usual uninspiring attire of neat powder-blue skirt and long-sleeves blouse, was acutely conscious of his eyes behind her, following her movements. She was also conscious of Jack shooting her telling, questioning looks from where he was seated at an angle away from his desk, and with a sidelong glance she smiled at him and flashed him the smallest of waves. A conspiratorial wave that combined bewilderment at Franco Leoni’s inexplicable shepherding of her into Alison’s office and dread at what it indicated.

‘Mind if I have a word with Ruth alone?’ Franco asked, as soon as they were in the office, and Alison obligingly exited at speed, either relieved to be out of his presence or else frantic to obey his every command.

‘Take a seat.’ He indicated the black chair in front of the desk and Ruth sat down, only to find that he had remained standing, so that to look at him she had to crane her neck.

He strolled across to the bay window which opened onto the busy view of a London street in full swing, and, after idly staring out for a few seconds, he turned to face her, relaxing against the windowsill, arms folded.

‘I won’t be telling you anything that the rest of your colleagues will not hear for themselves very shortly, but the gist of my chat with Alison concerns what we briefly discussed last Friday evening. The magazine seems to have found itself in something of a rut. As you rightly pointed out, neither one thing nor another.’

Ruth felt a sudden warm glow at the unexpected compliment.

‘We have three talented reporters with good, solid styles of writing, but their subject matter is too disparate. Sport, fashion, natural disasters. Are you following me?’

‘Of course I’m following you. I’m not a complete idiot, you know!’ She felt a sudden flash of anger at his patronising attitude. Why had he called her in on her own to give this little speech? He hadn’t made it clear, unless it was to sack her, but she couldn’t really see why he would do that. Her contribution had nothing to do with the actual running of the magazine. She was a gofer, and a pretty good one at that, with lots of enthusiasm.

No, the only reason she could see for this one-to-one chat was to given him a chance of shooting down everything she said in flames. Maybe her soft nature was just too much of a temptation for a man like him. He simply couldn’t resist walking over her.

However soft she was, Ruth had no intention of being walked over. When pushed, there was a stubborn streak in her that made her dig her heels in and refuse to budge.

‘Sorry,’ he said, with a shadow of a smile. The apology, so unexpected, was enough to pull her down a peg or two, and she responded helplessly to the sincerity in his voice.

‘That’s okay,’ she said with a half-smile, lowering her eyes and then belatedly realising that all this timidity was no way to deal with this man. She looked at him fully and he stared back at her in silence for a few seconds.

‘I don’t suppose you were familiar with the magazine before we took it over?’

Ruth shook her head.

He went to the desk, but instead of sedately sitting on the chair he perched on the surface of the desk, so that he was still staring down at her—though from a lesser height, and infinitely closer.

‘It failed because there simply wasn’t enough money to pay any half-respectable reporter, and as a result, the articles were shallow and superficial. But, as far as I am concerned, the essence of the magazine was good. It dealt solely with topical problems. Drugs in the schoolyard, corruption in local politics, that sort of thing.’

‘Oh. Yes,’ Ruth said faintly, wondering what this had to do with her.

‘I think we need to drag it back to that formula, but handle it better than our predecessors.’

‘What does Alison think of your idea?’ Ruth asked, leaning forward to rest the palms of her hands on her knees and staring up at him.

The pigtails were a mistake. She had not expected to be confronted with Franco Leoni first thing in the morning or else she would have tried for a more sophisticated look. She could tell from the way that he looked at her that he was finding it difficult not to click his tongue impatiently at the image she presented.

‘Oh, she agrees entirely,’ he said. ‘In fact, she’s probably out there explaining all of this to your colleagues…’ he looked at her for a fraction longer than necessary ‘…and friends,’ he ended on a soft note, which made Ruth frown.

‘Well, I hope you don’t mind my asking, but why have you taken me to one side to explain all this when I could have been out there hearing it along with everyone else?’

‘Because…’ He inclined his head to one side and, worryingly, appeared to give the question quite a bit of thought. ‘Because there’s a further little matter I wanted to discuss with you…’

‘What?’ She inadvertently stiffened at the tone in his voice.

‘I think you could be a great deal of help in getting this magazine back on the straight and narrow.’

‘Me…?’ Ruth squeaked. She almost burst out laughing at that, and managed to contain the urge in the nick of time.

If he thought that she was, mysteriously, a wonderful and gifted reporter labouring under the disguise of a dogsbody, then he was way off target. The most she had ever written were essays at school, and she’d occasionally helped her dad to write the odd sermon for Sunday’s congregation.

Hard-hitting articles on topical issues were quite outside her realm of capability.

‘Yes, you. And there’s no need to sound so shocked. Don’t you have any faith in your abilities?’

‘I couldn’t write to save my life!’

‘Why not? Have you ever tried?’ There was curiosity etched on his dark, handsome face as he leant a little closer towards her while she continued to stare at him with frank disbelief.

‘Of course I have,’ Ruth said firmly, ‘at school. I managed to get my A level in English, but I certainly wouldn’t want to put it to the test by writing an article. And I fancy,’ she said with a slow smile, ‘that not very many readers would thank me for the effort either.’

‘So you never considered university?’

Ruth eyed him warily, wondering what this had to do with anything.

Franco, leaning towards her, felt his eyes stray to the blunt edges of her plaits, and he wondered what she would do if he took them and tugged at them, the way the boy in the office had. She certainly wouldn’t respond with laughter. Apprehension, more like it. The thought generated another surge of hot antagonism towards the young lad who was clearly on familiar enough terms with her to touch her hair, play with it.

Were they sleeping together?

He would find out. He would make it his business to find out. In fact, he would make it his business to find out everything he possibly could about this girl sitting in front of him, if only to sate his gnawing curiosity.

He felt another urge to make her notice him, and scowled at such an adolescent response.

‘No,’ she laughed. ‘I’m no brainbox. My only virtues are that I’m enthusiastic and I’m prepared to work hard.’

‘Really?’ he drawled. ‘Admirable virtues, I must say.’ His blue eyes lingered on her face, which turned crimson in response as the ambiguity of his observation sank in. ‘You blush easily. Is that because I make you feel uncomfortable?’ He was staring at her so fixedly that Ruth disengaged her eyes from his face. A fatal mistake, because as they travelled the length of his body, they came to his hands, resting casually over his thighs. Just a couple of inches higher and she could discern, beneath the fine silk of his trousers, the faint but unmistakable bulge of his manhood. The sight of it made her feel a little faint.

‘No,’ she denied quickly, staring back into his blue eyes. ‘I blush with everyone…no discrimination there, I’m afraid…I’m just hopeless when it comes to that kind of thing. Anyway, you never said what you wanted to talk to me about…’

‘Oh, didn’t I?’

‘No,’ she said drily, ‘you didn’t.’

He flashed her a smile. ‘Perhaps that’s because I’ve been beating about the bush trying to think of how best I can put my suggestion to you. And, before you ask, it has nothing to do with writing articles for the magazine.’

‘Then what?’

‘Like I said to you, I think we need to get back to hard-hitting articles, the sort of stories that people are interested in and can identify with.’ He rubbed his chin thoughtfully with his finger, then stood up and began pacing through the room, as though his brain needed the physical movement to work clearly. ‘And I intend to lead by example.’

‘Oh?’ Ruth felt like someone who had accidentally strayed into a maze and was in the process of getting more and more lost.

‘I intend to tackle the first article myself—get a feel for what’s out there and what our best vantage point is when it comes to reporting it…’

‘I thought you were a businessman,’ Ruth said, aware that she must have missed something vital but not too sure what it could be.

‘I have lots of strings to my bow,’ he murmured, waiting for her to ask for clarification and then disproportionately irked when she simply nodded and informed him that diving in the deep end and doing some reporting himself sounded a very good idea to her.

‘Was that your intention when you bought the magazine?’ she asked, and he frowned his incomprehension at her question. ‘I mean,’ she elaborated slowly, ‘to get involved in the reporting side of things. Must make quite a change from working in an office…’

‘I don’t work in an office!’ he growled. ‘I run companies.’

‘I know. But from the inside of an office.’

‘Yes, admittedly, I have a desk, and all the usual accoutrements of my trade, but…’

‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be rude.’

He muttered something inaudible under his breath and wondered how on earth he could have such chokingly erotic fantasies about someone whose eyes barely rested on him long enough to establish that he was a man. Never mind an immensely rich and powerful one.

‘I just wondered,’ she ploughed on, ‘whether your decision to get involved has to do with your boredom at the office…’

This time the indecipherable noise was somewhat louder and more alarming.

‘I’m sorry,’ Ruth said a little desperately, wondering how she had managed to put both feet in it with such apparent ease. ‘I forgot. You don’t work at an office. Well, you more or less own the office, and you’re not bored. I’m sorry. I don’t know why I said what I did. I must be tired. It’s been an awfully tiring weekend.’

‘Has it? Doing what, Ruth?’ he asked slyly. ‘Are you and that boy out there involved? Because I tell you from now that I don’t encourage office romances. The first thing to suffer is usually the work.’

‘What?’ Ruth asked, appalled at his sweeping assumptions. How had they swerved off onto this topic anyway? She thought that they had been discussing his idea to do a spot of reporting. Now here they were on the subject of her personal life, and her non-existent love-life at that.

‘I asked you whether—’

‘I heard you! No! Of course not! Jack and I are friends! I wouldn’t dream of… No…’

Franco tried not to smile with satisfaction. He couldn’t have explained why, but from the minute he had come upon the two of them in the office, clearly at ease with one another, he had been determined to find out what was going on. The surprise on her face at the thought of being romantically involved with the boy was enough to persuade him of the honesty of her reply.

In some part of him he could feel that this was getting out of hand. Mild interest was fine, but she was getting under his skin, making him want more of her… He shifted his position and abruptly sat down, because his body was responding to her with its now familiar obstinate refusal to obey the commands of his head.

‘Good, because for what I have in mind romantic involvement is not such a good idea.’ He glanced up at her and asked casually, ‘You’re not involved with anyone, are you? I mean, no lovers on the scene?’ He knew that he was shamelessly exploiting his situation, taking advantage of his position to prise answers out of her that he wanted to know and she, quite possibly, did not want to reveal, but he blithely squashed any guilt.

‘No!’ Her face was flushed and she fought down her instinctive embarrassment at his forthrightness to say, somewhat belatedly, ‘And you have no right to ask me questions like that. What I do in my private life is…’

‘I know, I know…’ he said, ready to apologise now that he had heard what he needed to know. ‘And I’m deeply sorry at having to intrude into your privacy, but my proposition… I want you to work alongside me on a certain project I have in mind.’

Ruth thought that she must have misheard what he had said, but, when no further clarification was forthcoming, she said, with a regretful smile, ‘I thought I’d made it perfectly clear. I’m hopeless at writing. I don’t think I’d be any good at all.’

‘You won’t be asked to write anything. I intend to commence a new series of insights into twenty-first-century life in this so called civilised country of ours by running a selection of interviews with young girls who find themselves lured into teenage prostitution.’

At what point, Ruth wondered, was she supposed to roar with laughter at this outrageous idea of his? Or at least outrageous if he intended to include her in it.

Hadn’t she told him that she was a vicar’s daughter?

She could no more work on such a project than she could strip off all her clothes and streak through a football ground.

‘No, I’m very sorry, but I can’t…’

‘Why not?’

‘I’m afraid I’m totally unsuitable for any such assignment,’ she amended, smiling. ‘Not the right kind of girl at all…’

‘Why don’t you let me be the judge of that?’

Wasn’t he listening to a word she was saying?

‘What do you think the right kind of girl is?’ he asked, walking towards her and then stopping directly in front of her, so that now she had to virtually bend her neck backwards to see his face.

‘B-Bold, brassy,’ Ruth stammered. ‘Self-confident. Perhaps you should ask Jan to do it…’

‘That’s not the sort of girl I have in mind for this at all,’ he said, brutally bulldozing her input without qualm. Then he leaned forward and propped himself up against her chair, gripping either side so that she found herself suffocatingly trapped by him. ‘In fact,’ he continued softly, his face close enough now so that she could feel his warm breath against her cheek and see the dark flecks streaking the blue irises of his eyes, ‘the minute I laid eyes on you I knew that you were the woman I wanted…’ He paused, relishing her discomfort. ‘For the job.’

At last he stood back, massaging the back of his neck with one hand before taking a more orthodox position on the chair behind the desk.

‘My parents…’ she protested weakly.

‘Would, I’m sure, like to see you spread your wings. It is why you came to London, isn’t it? Wasn’t that what you told me?’

Ruth glared at him, resenting the fact that he had homed in on a passing remark and was now capitalising on it to justify what he wanted her to do.

‘You’re a big girl now, Ruth,’ he pressed on mercilessly. ‘Time for you to stop running to Mummy and Daddy whenever you need to make a decision. Time for you to face the big, bad world out there and stop trying to hide away from it.’

‘I am not trying to hide from anything.’ Ruth dug her heels in stubbornly. ‘I am just being realistic. My background hasn’t prepared me for dealing with a job of that nature…’

‘So what do you intend to do with your life? Has it ever occurred to you that the most interesting challenges in life are also often the most threatening?’

He was conscious that what he was trying to do was toe a very delicate line. On the one hand he wanted to coerce her into accepting his offer, into working with him. Partly because he genuinely thought that she would be well suited to what he had in mind; partly because the temptation of being close to her was virtually irresistible. On the other hand he was aware that if he pushed too hard she would set her soft mouth in that mute, obstinate line, avert her eyes and simply not budge an inch.

‘I’m not going to ask you to do anything dangerous, Ruth,’ he said in a gentler voice, resisting the urge to steamroller her into doing what he wanted, even though he knew full well that, underneath the shy exterior, this woman was probably immune to being steamrollered. ‘I just know that we’ll be dealing with young girls, asking them questions of a personal nature. They would respond to you far more quickly than they ever would to someone brash and self-assertive. You’re gentle and calm enough to draw confidences out of the kind of girls we’ll be dealing with, and—who knows?—you might even sway one or two of them to reconsider the road they’ve chosen.’

Ruth went pink. She couldn’t help it. She could feel her soft nature being played on by a master musician, but then he was right. She couldn’t run away from everything that had a ring of adventure or risk about it.

He could see the indecision in her eyes and pressed on smoothly, effortlessly, tasting victory. ‘Most of our work will be done at night, which is why it’s important that you don’t have a partner. I wouldn’t want to be accused of taking you away from your loved one. You’ll be able to work here normally a couple of days a week, but you might find that as your body adjusts to working by night you just want to sleep during the days. And it won’t be an assignment that lasts for ever. Two weeks at the most, probably less. Just enough time for us to gain an accurate picture of what’s happening to our young people out there and what’s being done by the government to put an end to it.’

‘Why are you so keen to get involved?’ she asked, buying time while she mulled over the possibilities in her head. ‘Any one of your reporters out there would be more than capable of handling the job.’

‘I like to lead from the front.’ He shot her a wry smile. ‘And maybe you’re right about that remark you made to me about being bored.’ He shrugged expressively and tried to look humble. ‘I have all that I could ever need—or want, for that matter. I started out as a reporter myself, you know.’

He linked his fingers behind his head and leaned back into his hands, staring broodingly up at the ceiling. ‘First on a provincial newspaper, ferreting out dirt and scandal, then on a city newspaper as a financial reporter. Good fun and, as it turned out, a useful passport when I decided to branch out and play around with the money markets myself. Since then I’ve made my money and now—who knows?—maybe I fancy getting back to my roots. Or maybe what I’m looking for is a little…’ he leveled his eyes to hers ‘…excitement.’

Ruth, inexperienced, marvelled at how he could invest a single word with so many hidden, tantalising possibilities.

‘Have you told Alison about your idea…for me? I wouldn’t want to rub anyone’s back up the wrong way…’

‘Absolutely,’ he said expansively, bringing the palms of his hands to rest on the desk and adopting a businesslike expression. ‘Alison thinks it’s a fabulous idea, and she’s going to rally the other reporters to start working on similar contentious issues so that we can pull something together for the issue due at the end of next month. When you’ve finished your stint with me, you’ll be pulled into a more responsible position—maybe occasionally working alongside one of the reporters as back-up.’

‘Oh!’ Ruth said breathlessly, a little awed by the suggestion of such a tremendous promotion.

‘Naturally, this unexpected change of job will be reflected in your pay.’ He whipped a sheet of paper from underneath a paperweight on the desk and waved it in the air, talking at the same time. ‘An immediate increase in your salary, to be followed by another increase in three months’ time if you prove yourself up to your additional responsibilities—if, indeed, you want additional responsibility.

‘All you have to do…’ he leant across the desk and rapped his finger imperiously at the bottom of the sheet of paper ‘…is sign here…’ He produced a fountain pen, seemingly from thin air, and handed it to her before she could open her mouth to protest at the sudden speed of things.

Ruth’s eyes scurried over the closely typed page, briefly taking in the description of her new role, containing an undignified gasp at the enormity of her salary increase.

‘At the bottom,’ he said. ‘Your signature. And then everything’s formalised.’

‘I’m still not sure…’ she said on a deep breath, shifting her eyes away from the piece of paper in front of her with its frightening promises of adventure and money and excitement.

‘Of course you are,’ he said gently. ‘Apprehensive, but sure.’

Ruth frowned, uncertain whether she cared for his ten-second summary of her reaction and then irritated because he was right.

He looked at his watch. ‘You’re not putting your life on the line with this assignment,’ he urged her, raking his long fingers through his hair. ‘A week—and if you hate it, believe me, I won’t force you to carry on. But give yourself the chance to see whether this kind of thing appeals to you.’

A few more seconds of hesitation and then she put her name at the bottom of the piece of paper. Okay, so she wasn’t signing her life away, but the minute she pushed the piece of paper across the desk back to him she felt as though she was signing something away, though what she wasn’t too sure.

Or maybe it was just that trace of smugness tugging the corners of his mouth that made her feel just a tad nervous about what she had agreed to. She was very nearly tempted to snatch the piece of paper out of his hands, rip it into a thousand pieces and then hustle back to her desk. But, with a speed that left her wondering whether the man was a mind-reader, he folded the paper in half, stuck it into his open briefcase, which was perched on the side of the desk, and decisively slammed it shut.

‘Now that’s all settled,’ he said, standing up and shrugging on his jacket, ‘just one or two suggestions before we start work on Wednesday.’

‘On Wednesday?’ she squeaked.

‘Why waste valuable time? No point meeting here. Meet me at The Breakfast Bar in Soho. Here’s the address.’ He scribbled it down for her and she took the paper from him. ‘Eight p.m. sharp. I gather it’s where a lot of young girls hang out when they hit London for the first time. It’s cheap, in the centre of things, and has a reputation for being a useful place to meet people.’

‘How on earth did you find all that out?’

‘I’m clever and talented. Hadn’t you noticed?’ he said in a silky voice, addressing, as it turned out, her downturned head. ‘Anyway,’ he continued crisply, ‘just a couple of suggestions.’

That got her attention. She looked up at him with her peach-smooth skin and wide grey eyes, now holding a hint of a question in them.

‘Dress casually. Jeans, trainers, nothing too…formal. If anything, you’ll want to blend in with some of the girls we’ll be meeting…that way they’ll be more relaxed and more expansive about revealing themselves to a couple of reporters…’

‘How do you know they won’t laugh in our faces and walk away?’

‘I think, actually, they’ll either be flattered or relieved that someone’s taking an interest in them.’ He was by the door now, hand on the doorknob. ‘The way we’ll play this is: questions in the night, and the following evening we’ll debrief over dinner before we start again.’ He smiled at her. ‘And don’t be scared. I’ll look after you.’