Читать книгу Old Dogs, New Tricks - Linda Phillips - Страница 6

Oliver Knox checked his watch. Why did Jade always have to be late? She’d turned being late into an art form. And there was no excuse this time. He knew her aerobics class had finished punctually.

Having completed his routine in the gym he’d stopped on his way to the changing room to peer through the glass panel in the studio door. The advanced aerobics session had been drawing to a close and the class – mostly women but there were a few men – had been sitting cross-legged on mats. They had reached the stage where they rolled their heads round on their necks with their eyes closed, which meant they hadn’t much more to do. He knew that soon after that the instructor would creep over to her tape recorder, switch off the snippet of classical music to which her flock was supposed to relax, and clap her hands. Then – rather stupidly, Oliver thought – everyone else would start clapping too, smiling foolishly at each other as though they had just been brought out of hypnosis.

He had stood admiring Jade for some time, for she was by far the most beautiful girl there, even with her long blonde hair scraped into a knot on top of her head. Her stylish aerobics gear – lime green crop-top with black cycle shorts – flattered her superb figure, and her amazing legs went on for yards before they ended at the ridiculously expensive trainers she’d bought last Saturday. In comparison to the other women she was an Aston Martin among a car park full of Ladas. Even the teacher appeared clumsy beside her.

Grinning to himself, and rippling his developing chest muscles – the work-outs were certainly doing the trick – Oliver had slipped away for a shower. Then he had gone on to the club bar in the basement, ordered himself a lager, and waited.

He was on his second pint before Jade turned up. She glided into the chair opposite him smiling her dazzling smile and tossing her freshly-washed hair. But by then Oliver had forgotten his pride in her; he had sunk into a brooding mood.

‘You’ll be late for your own effing funeral,’ he told her. He was sitting with his chin propped on one hand, a small cigar poked between the second and third fingers, and was unaware that he appeared to her to have smoke coming through the top of his boot-polish-black head.

‘Oh dear,’ she soothed, trying not to smile, ‘have we had a hard day?’ She leaned across the table and pecked his pouting lips.

Oliver glared at her all the more. He hated not being taken seriously. ‘It was going all right until I heard about Benson, but then–’

‘Benson?’ She plucked up the little menu, glanced over it and transferred her attention to the ‘Specials’ listed on the wall. ‘I don’t think I know Benson. I’m going to have the venison this time. What’ll you have? Oh, and some of that lovely wine we had the other day. Which one was it, do you remember?’

‘The most expensive one on the list,’ he growled. ‘Have you seen my Gold Card statement? It came in yesterday’s post.’

‘No.’ Jade turned down the corners of her mouth. ‘My Visa was bad enough. Why should I want to know about yours? Horrors! But so what? I could eat a whole horse.’

She studied the menu more closely, but she’d already made up her mind. She called out her order to the barman – whom they both knew well since they spent at least two, and often three, evenings at the country club – and sat back looking around.

Oliver grew more disgruntled at this blatant lack of attention. ‘You do know who Benson is. Philip Benson. Remember? I told you all about him. He’s one of the London mob. A rather significant one.’

‘Oh. Yes. Of course.’ Jade looked faintly put out. ‘Well, I beg your pardon, Olly, but I can’t be expected to remember everything. My head’s full of company law at the moment.’ But she was wasting her breath. It was no excuse, as far as Oliver was concerned, that her law exams were less than a year away and that there was such a lot to cram in: she should have remembered who Benson was.

Oliver had made a lot of fuss about Spittal’s restructuring plans over the past few months. He had been fully counting on promotion to sales director in place of Platt, who was retiring. Instead, although yet to be officially confirmed, it looked as though this bloke Benson might be coming down from London to take the job and Oliver would have to stay put as his assistant.

‘There’s no justice in this world,’ Oliver complained into his glass of lager before tipping the contents down his throat. ‘No justice at all. I mean, he’s fifty, for God’s sake. Why would they want to keep on an old wrinkly like him?’

Jade decided it would be prudent not to speak her mind. It was obvious that the powers-that-be thought Benson the more able man.

‘You know what your MD’s like,’ she reminded him. ‘He’s hopelessly old-fashioned. Moralistic. Stuck in his ways … He’s bound to go for an older man, isn’t he? One of the old school.’

‘Well, I only hope he knows what he’s playing at, bucking current trends. And how the hell did I come to be lumbered with an anachronism like that? I tell you, Jade, if I’d known what the set-up would be like I’d never have joined this firm.’

‘Your time will come, Olly.’ Jade put out a comforting hand.

‘Oh yes. When I’ve one foot in the grave and no teeth.’

Jade hooked one side of her hair behind her ear. ‘I suppose …’ her blue-green eyes flickered over Oliver’s face ‘… I suppose this Philip Benson’s a married man?’

‘How the hell would I know? Though come to think of it maybe he is. There was a discussion in the office as to where he might live, and someone suggested that one of those big new houses on the Brightwells estate might suit him. Personnel are sending him the details, anyway.’

‘God, no!’ Her eyebrows arched. ‘Not that hellhole. He’d have to be out of his skull.’

‘Yeah!’ Oliver managed a smile; it amused him to think of his new superior, whose guts he already hated on principle, coming to live with the plebs. True, some of the houses were quite desirable if you liked that kind of thing; but the ambience was all wrong. Brightwells was nothing but a huge town over-spill. Accommodation for the masses. A sprawling nonentity hastily thrown up to meet the ever-growing demand for executive-type housing.

Oliver dragged at the cigar and blew the smoke over their heads. ‘So I suppose he must be married,’ he concluded, ‘if they think he needs a place like that. What difference does it make, anyway?’

‘Well … I was just wondering. Perhaps it helped him get the job. I mean –’ she hurried on ‘– it might count with your MD, mightn’t it, whereas … now don’t look at me like that, Olly, I’m not advocating that you and I should be married, even after your divorce has gone through.’ She flushed, tossing her hair again. ‘You know I’m not.’

Olly regarded her carefully. Did she really mean that? You never could tell with women. Most of them couldn’t be trusted. They would swear blind they didn’t want something, when all the time it was the very thing they did want. Like babies. Goodness me, no, they’d protest. Whatever would I do with one of those? And half the time they’d be glued to the Mothercare window. Same with marriage. Who’d want to be married these days? they would claim. It’s a perfectly meaningless institution. Only a piece of paper … oh look, what a gorgeous ring! And I just love white weddings, don’t you?

Jade, to be fair, hadn’t been like that so far, and they’d been living together for nearly six months. But then, he had made things crystal clear to her from the start. Since his first shot at marriage had been such a failure, he told her, he believed that ‘open’ relationships were a safer bet, and had gone on to explain exactly what he meant by that. He was nothing if not honest.

‘I love you, Jade,’ he’d said, ‘but to be perfectly frank with you I can’t promise to be completely faithful. I’m not that kind of man. I need to feel free to – er – engage in other relationships from time to time. Nothing permanent, mind. Just the odd fling. I’d always come back to you …’

Seeing Jade’s startled expression – the involuntary parting of her lips, the narrowing of her cat-like eyes – he had hastened to reassure her. ‘Of course, it would work both ways. You’d be free, as well, you know. To go with other guys.’ Jade said nothing.

‘And if, on the odd occasion,’ he blustered on, since he appeared to have blown his chances and had nothing more to lose, ‘if on the odd occasion the opportunity of a swap came up – you know, at a party or something – well, it could be great. Really. It would. I mean – have you ever tried it? Afterwards you compare notes. And that’s the best part of it, you know, telling each other about different experiences – in bed – and – God,’ he’d wound up, hastily adjusting his trousers, ‘I’m getting horny just thinking about it.’

Two plates of venison arrived and Oliver stubbed out his cigar. ‘Our not being married hasn’t bothered H J up until now,’ he told Jade.

‘H J?’

‘Holy Joe. Big boss. Jocelyn Hemmingway-Judd.’

‘Oh, him. Well, no, maybe not, who knows?’ She shrugged, so that her baggy cotton sweater slipped to one side revealing a naked shoulder. ‘But it might have affected your promotability without your realising it. In his eyes –’ she made her own goggle ‘– I presume, we’re living in sin.’

Oliver waited while the barman finished glugging wine into their glasses. ‘Living in sin,’ he muttered in disgust. ‘What a load of cock. It’s the job that counts, surely? The way you do it; the results you achieve.

‘Cheers, Tony,’ he dismissed the barman, and began to attack his food. But his mind was still with H J.

‘Perhaps this new guy’s not married,’ Jade said in an attempt to lighten his mood. ‘He could be gay, you know. H J wouldn’t be happy about that.’

Oliver considered the matter. He would like to think it a possibility, because Jade was right: H J wouldn’t be able to stomach that. ‘Now how am I supposed to know whether Benson’s gay or not? I’ve not even met him yet. If it’s anything to go by, word’s come down from London to the women in our office that he’s quite fanciable. The secretaries are wetting their knickers in anticipation.’

‘Really?’ Jade grinned. She had become inured to Oliver’s coarseness. ‘I thought you said he was old.’

‘Not too old for that, apparently. Even you might fancy him.’ Oliver chewed, emptied his mouth, and stabbed the air with his fork. ‘Hey, that’s not a bad idea!’

‘What?’ Jade had a quick brain, but couldn’t follow his thoughts on this occasion.

‘Well, how about –’ he began to chuckle at his idea ‘– how about we invite him over to dinner when he moves down here and that you get on rather well with him – follow my drift? And then, when he’s nicely drooling over you and making a complete arse of himself, it’s somehow spread around the office that he’s been pestering his junior’s girlfriend. Even tried to force himself on her. Hey presto! One disgraced sales director’s booted back to the smoke. And then yours truly steps in to fill his shoes.’

Jade let out a gasp, nearly choked on a sip of wine, and sat back fanning her face. ‘Oliver B Knox! Really! You’ll be the death of me.’

‘It would be worth trying it on, though. Think of the extra money.’

‘Only you could be so daft as to dream up such a preposterous scheme.’

‘Full of imagination, I am. And it isn’t all that daft. Or original really, as you must know in your line of work. Women are doing it all the time, aren’t they – claiming harassment and rape, and no one can prove a thing?’

Jade glanced coldly across at him. ‘I hope you aren’t suggesting that women make up things like that – just for revenge or compensation? And in any case, you know I’m not allowed to handle that type of work.’

Jade never missed a chance to air a grievance about her job: she wasn’t yet a qualified legal executive and, as soon as she was, she wanted to go on from there to become a solicitor. It was a long, hard, highly competitive road on which she had set herself – especially having to work and study at the same time – and all the experience she was gaining at Hart, Bruce and Thomson’s was in conveyancing. She longed to move on to more interesting work; saw herself as the star role in court dealing with the more contentious side of the law – criminal, perhaps, or marital. Something to sink her teeth into.

‘Jade,’ the doddery old senior partner was always telling her, ‘you cannot run before you can walk.’ Some days she felt like kicking him out of the way; she would soon show him her mettle.

Oliver still had his gleaming black eyes fixed on her. ‘Would that be a definite “no” then?’ he prompted. ‘Do I take it you don’t want to play at being a femme fatale?’

He waited for her to say something, but she carried right on with her meal, wrapped up in her own private world. She obviously didn’t think he deserved an answer. Which was a pity. He was rather taken with the idea himself.