Читать книгу Stranger Passing By - Lilian Peake - Страница 7

‘HAVE you noticed?’ Maureen Hilson commented that afternoon. ‘Customers have been coming in in their droves.’ She smoothed back her greying hair. ‘I’ve hardly had time to breathe, let alone comb these beautiful locks of mine.’

‘I noticed. What’s more,’ Crystal added happily, ‘not only have people come in and looked around, they’ve also actually bought things.’

Maureen smiled, glancing at the rose bowl glinting attractively on a pink-tinted glass stand. ‘I suppose you could say that we didn’t get the prize for the highest sales for nothing.’ She sighed. ‘If only the company wasn’t insisting on closing all the shops down. The chief executive—what did they say his name was?’

Crystal looked up from feather-dustering necklaces and picture frames. Did Maureen really not know? ‘Akerman,’ she informed her. ‘Brent Akerman.’ She rolled the names around her tongue, as they had been rolling around in her head almost every minute of every hour since she had slept in his arms. ‘Brent’, he’d signed himself in that note—and ‘Crystal’, he’d called her. She had put the slip of paper, which he had obviously torn from his notebook, in a drawer among her most treasured possessions.

‘Mr Akerman—that’s right,’ said Maureen, mopping up some spilt liquid from the ‘make up your own perfume’ section. ‘You—er—’ She looked askance at Crystal. ‘You wouldn’t—er—have any influence with that very handsome male, would you, dear?’

Crystal swung around, duster held aloft. ‘What do you mean?’ Had she been seen ushering him, her hand on his elbow, through the rear entrance and helping him into her car? Had there been spies watching her house to note the time Brent had left?

Mentally she shook herself, telling herself not to think such melodramatic thoughts about a completely innocent situation.

‘Well,’ Maureen qualified a little defensively, ‘Roger told us that when he looked for you yesterday evening he found you and Mr Akerman in a cosy twosome in a corner of the hotel garden.’

‘Twosome? Myself and the chief executive of Worldview International?’ Relief made Crystal smile. ‘Roger’s got to be joking!’ She added truthfully, ‘Mr Akerman was telling me how jet lagged he was, that’s all, and how often he—well, commuted on business to other parts of the world.’

Maureen nodded. ‘Ah. I thought Roger was making too much of it. Crystal, dear, I think he’s jealous. I’m sure our Roger fancies you.’

‘Oh, no,’ Crystal returned, dismayed. ‘It’d spoil our business relationship if he does.’ Seeing Maureen’s puzzlement, she explained, ‘He’s a nice bloke, but if he tries to get more than friendly I won’t be able to keep my promise to help him out with his written work.’

‘What’s wrong with him, Crystal? A lot of girls would love to have him around.’

‘Yes, well, I’m not one of them. I’ve had enough of the opposite sex for a long time to come. The man I thought for months was the one for me called me on the day he’d promised to buy me a ring and told me he’d found someone else. It’ll take me a long time to trust another man the way I trusted Mick Temple.’

‘I understand how you feel,’ Maureen sympathised. ‘I met him once, remember, when he called to take you to a meal.’ She shook her head. ‘I could sense that underneath that smooth talk he was a no-gooder.’

After a reflective pause Crystal went on, ‘Anyway, even if I’d had any influence with the chief executive, what good would it have done?’

‘It’s just that I was going to suggest you might ask him to make an exception of our branch of Ornamental You. Especially as our sales figures outdid everyone else’s.’

‘You mean, ask him to allow this branch to continue to trade, but close all the others down?’ Crystal shook her head. ‘I don’t think it would be practicable. And I don’t think for a minute that he’d even consider it. You’d realise what a hard man he really was if you’d heard him talk as he talked to—’ She pulled herself up sharply. ‘Talked to me last night about his private feelings,’ she had been going to say.

‘Of course,’ she amended hurriedly, ‘you did hear him speak, didn’t you? At the meeting yesterday evening. Well, there was no “give” in the man, was there? Only the tired old “this hurts me more than it hurts you” routine.’

‘Ah, well.’ Maureen shrugged disappointedly. ‘It was just a thought. Although how I’m going to provide for my mother as well as myself when I lose this job, I just don’t know. As a semi-invalid, she needs so many little extras to help her. Also, jobs don’t exactly grow on trees these days.’ She sighed. ‘All the same, you’d think it would count, wouldn’t you? After all, you and I—we did—’

‘Achieve the highest sales,’ Crystal took her up sympathetically. ‘I don’t know how I’m going to be able to pay my rent, but, unlike you, I’ve only got myself to worry about.’

A group of young women entered, asking each other’s advice as to what to buy. Then they consulted Crystal and Maureen. As they left with their purchases one of them said, ‘We saw a report in the local paper that all the Ornamental You shops are closing. Is it true? Because if it is it’ll be a real blow.’

‘It’s true, I’m afraid,’ said Crystal sadly.

‘Well, we’re at college, and dozens of us come here to buy birthday and Christmas presents because your prices are so reasonable compared with other stores.’

‘Hey,’ said another, ‘let’s get together, girls, and try and scrape up enough cash to buy this shop.’

Filing through the door, they laughingly agreed it was a good idea, although one commented, ‘Count me out. I’ve hardly got a big enough grant to keep myself in food and textbooks, let alone going into the red through trying to move into big business!’

‘Now that’s an idea,’ declared Maureen when they had gone. ‘If you and I pooled our savings... No?’ as Crystal shook her head. ‘No, I guess not. But the idea’s a good one.’

Other customers drifted in, and by the end of the day Crystal and Maureen were delighted to discover that their takings were higher than ever.

That evening, tucking her aching feet beneath her, Crystal curled up on the sofa she had shared with Brent and for the twentieth time read the note he had left for her.

What if she took his words at face value? It then became a straightforward thank-you note, which she supposed was perfectly reasonable in the circumstances.

On the other hand, if she allowed herself to read not only between the lines, but also between the words, especially that last sentence, the slip of paper acquired a glow, the note itself becoming heavy with hidden meaning, with unspoken declarations of love...

Admonishing herself for her sentimentality, for sheer stupidity in embroidering the facts until they became the stuff of fiction, Crystal put the note aside. Then she took it up again and held it in case it blew away in some errant draught.

Head back, she felt her wayward thoughts conjure up the feel of Brent’s arms around her, the brush of his lips across hers... Her common sense brought her sharply back to the present and she began to wonder...

Would Maureen’s idea of her making a last-minute appeal to Brent Akerman have any effect? Would their more than close encounter last night make him more willing to listen to her and perhaps put him on their side? After all, sleeping in a man’s arms, even though she had only been seated beside him on a sofa, must surely count for something more than if she’d merely been on nodding terms with him?

She seized a cushion from behind her and hugged it close. ‘Mr Akerman,’ she could say, ‘it’s been suggested to me by Maureen Hilson, my colleague—and I thought it was a very good idea—that you might allow...the company might allow...’

Yes, that should be OK, but how to contact him? By post? Or maybe she could fax a letter? The father of one of her friends had a machine in his home for business purposes. No, sending a letter that way would be too risky. If someone saw the faxed copy and discovered what she was trying to persuade Brent Akerman to do—save one shop from extinction, even though all the others were closed down—it might well stir up trouble and also damage her case immeasurably.

Should she ring Head Office and ask for him personally, taking the risk of being snubbed by his secretary? Or should she go and see him?

See Brent Akerman again? Her heart leapt, then dived. The chief executive of Worldview International wouldn’t even consider setting aside two minutes, let alone half an hour of his time to discuss what would be to him such a trivial matter.

Plumping up the cushion, she turned to replace it when her eye caught a glimpse of a piece of patterned material that seemed to have partly hidden itself beneath the sofa.

Crystal extracted it with care, holding it up.

Before her startled eyes the tie Brent had been wearing the evening before unfolded itself. He had, she remembered, removed it in the course of those hours they had spent together, the thought of which even now made her pulse-rate accelerate. After dropping the tie he must have accidentally pushed it under the sofa.

Now she had a reason for seeing him again. So what if it might be simpler to push it into an envelope and post it to him? But that was something she couldn’t do, because she didn’t know where he lived. Nor could she send it by post to his office. She imagined the expression on his secretary’s face as she opened an envelope addressed to her boss, only to find that it contained a folded tie that belonged to him. And that it had come courtesy of one of the firm’s lady employees!

Crystal picked up the phone next morning. ‘Maureen, I’m going to take up your suggestion. About Worldview making an exception of our shop.’ The fact that she would also be returning Brent’s tie was a secret she would keep forever. ‘Yes,’ she went on, ‘I’m going to try to storm the bastion—Head Office—and fight my way through to the boss of bosses—’