Читать книгу Levelling The Score - Пенни Джордан, Penny Jordan - Страница 6

‘JENNA, please … you’ve got to help me, there just isn’t anyone else. God, if only I’d listened to you years ago … You warned me what sort of brother I’ve got, but—’

‘Susie, come on, you’re exaggerating,’ Jenna interrupted her volatile friend. ‘Simon can’t stop you from marrying whoever you wish—nor force you into marrying someone against your will. You’re twenty-four, for God’s sake, and he is only your elder brother …’

‘He’s no brother of mine. Not any more,’ Susie responded theatrically. ‘Machiavelli would be a better name for him. God, to think I never guessed what he was up to, all the time he was shovelling that gross friend of his down my throat … go to the theatre … All the time I thought I was doing it to help Simon out with an old friend suffering from loneliness, and now I find out that Simon has been trying to marry me off to the guy.’

‘What’s he like?’ Jenna asked curiously.

Susie frowned, her blonde hair with its soft pink streaks standing up on end all round her small head. No matter how outlandish her clothes and hair-style might be, there was an unmistakable soft femininity about Susie that simply couldn’t be hidden. She had been having man trouble of one sort or another for as long as Jenna had known her, and that had been since they had both started senior school together when they were eleven years old.

‘Who, Simon? Come on, it isn’t that long since you last saw him … My twenty-first, wasn’t it? And he hasn’t changed that much … Men don’t, do they, not once they get over thirty … He still looks deliciously distinguished … especially when he’s wearing his court gear. He hasn’t gone grey, though, or anything like that. Odd, isn’t it, that he should have such dark hair, black as a crow’s wing really, and mine should be so fair … Ma reckons he inherited his colouring from a Cornish great-grandmother …’

Jenna subdued a faint sigh at her friend’s ramblings, and then interrupted firmly, ‘No, Susie, not Simon! What’s his friend like, the one he wants you to marry?’

‘You mean you will help me? Oh, my God, Jenna, I knew you would! I know it will work, the minute he sets eyes on you he’s bound to fall for you … It’s not fair … why couldn’t I be tall and slim, instead of small and round? And your hair, I’ve always yearned for dark red hair … it’s so … so …’

‘Red?’ Jenna supplied challengingly, with a gleam in her eyes, quite forgetting for the moment that as yet she had most definitely not made any commitment to help her friend rid herself of her unwanted suitor, no matter what Susie might choose to believe.

Her red hair was a constant source of irritation to her. People who didn’t know her constantly made reference to the temper they suspected must go with it. Others, normally women, asked her if it was dyed … It was a rather spectacular shade of dense, dark red. It went well with her creamy skin, although untypically her eyes were not gold or green, but a dark, true sapphire-blue.

All her life she had had pinned on her the label of a redhead’s infamous temper, and because of it she had cultivated a cool remoteness that outwardly at least she allowed nothing to shake.

The temper was there all right, but she hated being predictable. And if there was one person above all others who had the knack of arousing that temper it was Simon Townsend.

They had first met when she was twelve and he was nineteen. Susie had taken her home with her after school. An only child herself, she had been inclined to stand in awe of the elder brother Susie talked so much about, even before she had met him.

It had a been a summer’s afternoon, and they had arrived from school, hot and sticky. Simon, home from university, had been playing tennis, but he had come in looking cool and unflappable in his tennis whites, his dark hair slicked smoothly to his masculine skull, his eyes cool and unfathomable, making Jenna feel as though he was looking right into her mind and reading every single little thing that was hidden there.

So powerful was the memory of that meeting that she actually squirmed uncomfortably in her chair.

Susie, at last realising the whole of her best friend’s attention was not focused upon her, broke off in mid-sentence and stared at her, her brown eyes rounded and filling with tears.

‘Jenna, please … please help me. You don’t know what it’s like to be in love, the way Peter and I are …’

‘No, I don’t,’ Jenna agreed firmly. ‘Nor can I see why you don’t simply tell dear brother Simon to forget his empire-building plans and say you’re in love with someone else! Come on, Susie, he can’t force you into marriage with this friend of his … Your parents wouldn’t let him.’

‘You don’t know Simon,’ Susie responded darkly. ‘It’s becoming a barrister that’s done it—all that power, it’s gone to his head. You know how persuasive he can be, Jenna, once he starts talking to me …’ She gave a tiny, but effective shiver, making Jenna remember rather wryly the fact that she had been one of the leading lights in their theatrical group when they were at school.

‘It’s all right for you,’ Susie continued miserably. ‘You’re so strong-willed, so firm in what you want to do. I’m not, and once Simon gets to work on me, I’m terrified that he’ll get me to agree to doing something I don’t really want to do … The problem is that he detests poor Peter, even though he’s only met him once … And just because Peter forgot to put his handbrake on and ran into the back of Simon’s car … Such a fuss about a piece of tin! Of course, that made Simon take against him right from the start, but I didn’t realise then just what he’d got in mind for me. Ma let it drop the other weekend when I went to see them. I told her that Peter and I were planning to go away on holiday together this year, and Ma said that she thought I would have been going to Canada with John … She got all flustered and het up about it, so I guessed there was something going on, and I got her to admit to me that Simon thinks I should marry John …’

‘I still can’t see why you need my help.’

‘You know me, I’m hopeless at confrontation scenes. You know how weak I am.’

Visions of the many disappointed young men she had had to send away from their front door in the days when they had shared university digs together came to Jenna’s mind …

‘Please, Jen! All I’m asking you to do is to cover for me while Peter and I go away … We need time to be alone … time together without Simon interfering. We’re going down to Cornwall. The folks still have the house down there … Remember it?’

Jenna did. Many years ago when she and Susie had both been in their early teens, she, and her grandmother who had brought her up after her parents’ death in an avalanche while they were on a skiing holiday, had spent several happy summer holidays with Susie and her parents at their holiday home in Cornwall, holidays made all the more pleasant because Simon had not shared them—he had been away at university, and then later undertaking his training for the bar.

It was a long time since she and Susie had holidayed together; the last time had been the summer they had left university, when they had travelled all through Europe together. On that occasion, too, she remembered Simon raising objections about their plans. Her mouth compressed slightly as she remembered this and other things …

Simon Townsend could sometimes be too sure of himself and the rightness of his own judgement for his own good. She had few fears that scatty, pretty Susie could ever be inveigled into marriage with anyone—she liked to play the field—but Susie was right about one thing. Simon was a very effective verbal opponent, and Susie, who disliked any kind of conversation that did not focus around fashion, was all too likely to give in to him, simply to keep him quiet.

‘What exactly is it you want me to do?’ she asked, disentangling herself from Susie’s fiercely jubilant hug.

‘I’m going to tell Simon that I’m staying here with you … He’s bound to ring you to check up on me. All I want you to do is to confirm that I’m here!’

‘And if my verbal confirmation isn’t enough?’ Jenna pressed.

It took Susie several seconds to work it out. ‘Oh, you mean if he wants to speak to me?’ A grin curled her mouth. ‘I’ve thought of the most delicious plan. It will completely fool him … I’ve made a tape.’

She delved into her huge shoulder-bag and fished out a small recorder complete with tape. ‘Look, I’ll play it for you. You pretend to be Simon, and then listen …’

Dutifully, Jenna did as she was instructed. When the tape ended she surveyed her friend with mixed feelings and a certain amount of wry resignation.

The tape was an ingenious idea, and Susie knew her brother well enough to be able to anticipate what line his conversation would take. The answers she had dictated on to the tape were vague and Susie-ish enough to be quite convincing.

‘See, you’ll have no problems,’ Susie told her proudly, pressing a button to rewind the machine. ‘I’ve thought of everything!’

‘Including Simon descending on me in person?’ Jenna asked drily.

‘Oh, he won’t do that, he’ll be on circuit. You know, travelling with the judges and things … how they do. He won’t be back in London for simply ages, and I’ll be back myself then …’

‘You’re sure this is only a holiday you and Peter are going on? You’re not running away to get married or anything like that, are you?’ Jenna demanded ominously.

‘Of course not! You know me, I don’t want to get married for ages yet.’

Jenna knew when Susie was telling the truth.

‘No, I just want time to get to know him properly, Jenna, without Simon popping up all the time and spoiling things. You wouldn’t believe what he’s been like these last few weeks … I think he must be watching my flat, because the moment Peter comes round, Simon arrives. I’m twenty-four years old, and I’ve got big brother watching over me as though I was a child. It’s ridiculous,’ Susie fumed, ‘especially when you think of the girlfriends Simon’s had. He hasn’t exactly lived like a monk,’ she finished darkly.

Jenna didn’t try to argue with her. Only the other day, there had been a rather spectacular exposé of the latest bright star on the legal world’s horizon’s involvement with the ex-wife of a government minister.

For intensely personal and private reasons Jenna had studied the article closely and the photographs that went with it.

She hadn’t needed her friend’s rambling description of the lack of changes in her brother’s appearance to know what Simon looked like. Susie had been right, the dark hair was untouched by grey, the firm mouth with its curving, full underlip still curled in the same mocking smile, and his eyes … those chameleon, challenging green eyes that should have belonged to her, still carried their same message of chilly warning.

The woman photographed with him had been like all the other women who had passed through Simon’s life; blonde, soignée, sophisticated and very, very beautiful.

Would he marry this one? The gossip press seemed to think so. It wasn’t like the high and mighty Simon to marry someone else’s cast-off, she thought acidly. If she pictured him with a wife at all, it was with someone young and malleable, someone he could mould to his own desired pattern of what a wife should be.

‘What’s wrong?’ Susie demanded, adding succinctly, ‘Your eyes have gone almost black, they only do that when you’re fuming with someone. Anyone I know?’

When Jenna shook her head, Susie heaved a faint sigh.

‘There must be something wrong with you, Jen,’ she accused. ‘Look at you, you’re the most gorgeous-looking creature,’ she said generously. ‘Men buzz round you like bees round honey, and yet you ignore them all. When we were kids, I always thought you’d be the one who grew up and got married young …’

‘When exactly is it that you’re supposed to be going off on this holiday of yours?’ Jenna asked, ruthlessly cutting through her friend’s reminiscences.

‘Today! This afternoon … God, I wish I could see Simon’s face if he discovers the bird’s flown,’ she said with a chuckle.

‘Don’t laugh too soon,’ Jenna advised her darkly. ‘It can always be arranged …’

‘You won’t betray me, Jen. I know that … Once Simon—’

‘I can’t see why you simply don’t tell Simon what you’re doing.’

‘Because if I do, he’ll try to dissuade me. You know what he’s like.’ Susie gave a heartfelt groan. ‘The problem is, I’m so used to doing what he tells me that I’m frightened I’ll go on doing it, even when it isn’t what I want … Simon can be so—so compelling at times.’

‘Hero-worship,’ Jenna scoffed. ‘You should have grown out of that years ago.’

‘You don’t know how lucky you are not to have any brothers or sisters. Just you and your grandmother, and she’d never force you into doing anything you don’t want to do.’

Jenna could have pointed out to her that there were methods of enforcing one’s wishes other than those adopted by Susie’s elder brother, but she refrained, sensing that Susie would never understand the gentle, tender pressure one old lady with a longing to see her one grandchild ‘settled down’, as she called it, could bring to bear on that same grandchild.

Long after Susie had gone, blowing her a string of kisses and promising to get in touch, Jenna remained sitting in her armchair.

Her flat was small and pin-neat, furnished by ‘bargains’ she had acquired through her job as personal assistant to a very dynamic and go-ahead interior designer.

If she had had any sense, any sense at all, she would have refused to help Susie. Simon Townsend could be a very powerful adversary indeed, as she already had good cause to know. She closed her eyes and lay back in the comfortable chair.

The summer she had been fifteen, she had fallen madly and very obviously in love with Simon Townsend, but it had very plainly been made clear just how impossible were the foolish dreams she had been dreaming …

Her adolescent crush on him had faded as adolescent crushes do, but it had left behind a sense of bitterness and resentment, and antagonism towards him that Jenna had never lost, and which had made her weary and cautious in all her dealings with his sex.

In her heart of hearts she suspected that she had agreed to help Susie in her crazy plan because she would enjoy the opportunity of thwarting Simon.

For all her dizziness, Susie could be extremely astute. If she said that her brother was trying to foist one of his friends off on her, then she was probably quite right. Simon had always had a decided inclination to meddle in the affairs of others, an irritating ‘I know best’ attitude it would give her a great deal of pleasure to squash.

This time he wouldn’t be dealing with an immature, gauche fifteen-year-old, but a woman of twenty-four, well able to use the brain God had given her, and not afraid of meeting any man on equal terms.

The phone call which had preceded Susie’s early morning Saturday visit had disrupted her entire day. She had planned to go home and see her grandmother, but now it was too late.

The Gloucestershire village where Susie’s parents and Jenna’s grandmother lived was a quiet, remote place, but she often missed it. Susie had been right when she claimed that she had always imagined that Jenna would settle down first.

As a teenager, she had wanted nothing more than to fall in love, marry and raise a family in the familiar environment of the village. But teenagers grew up, and now the idea of marriage had lost a good deal of its lustre.

She had seen too many of her friends’ marriages dissolve under the pressure of modern-day living, and had grown to cherish her single state. No one in her wide circles of friends knew of the money she was carefully hoarding away, against the day when she could fulfil at least a part of her teenage dream.

When she had saved enough it was her ambition to return home; to buy herself a small cottage close to her grandmother’s, and start up her own business, offering a combination of services for which she knew there was a need, such as house-and pet-sitting, book-keeping and typing, gardening and cleaning.

It was her ambition to build up a private agency that would provide all of these services and more, and she was convinced that she could do it, once she had enough capital behind her.

Not even Susie knew what she was planning. To Susie her dreams would be mundane, boring even; Susie loved the bright lights of London, the glamour of the fashion world in which she moved. As an assistant director on a glossy magazine, she lived every minute of her life to the full and wouldn’t be able to understand Jenna’s desire to return home.

Her flat was on the ground floor of a small terraced house which belonged to a friend—a photographer who travelled a lot, and who was only too relieved to have a tenant as careful and reliable as Jenna.

The house possessed a small backyard, which she had transformed with several coats of white paint and a collection of terracotta pots and trellising, holding up a collection of climbing plants. She spent most of the afternoon pottering around in it, enjoying the warmth of the early summer’s day.

Craig was due back tomorrow. He had been working in the Seychelles on a fashion feature for Susie’s magazine.

A charismatic, sometimes moody man in his late thirties, he was involved in what seemed to Jenna to be a hopeless relationship with a married woman who was tied to a physically handicapped husband. But then, who was she to criticise other people’s relationships, she asked herself with a graceful shrug, when she deliberately held herself back from any form of emotional commitment?

Was it prudence that made her so cautious, or was it fear? She pushed the thought aside, not wanting to give in to the mood of introspection slowly enveloping her.

Crossly she blamed Simon Townsend for her unwanted thoughts. He had always had a disturbing effect on her, and apparently it hadn’t lessened.

If she had been so inclined, she could have been wryly amused by Susie’s defection. Her friend had played the doting sister for so long that Jenna had long ago given up trying to make her see that her adored brother was only a man.

On her way round the pretty town garden, she did pause to wonder how Simon himself would react to Susie’s rebellion. His opinions had held sway with his younger sister for so long, it would probably come as an almighty shock.

Susie’s parents, although darlings, were almost as much in awe of their elder child as Susie herself.

His father was a placid, kindly man, now retired, who had once taught at a local public school. His mother was the stronger character of the two, but without the bruising acidity of her eldest child.

As a teenager, still raw from the loss of her own parents, Jenna had grown to look on Susie’s mother and father as sort of adopted parents, just as Susie had come to look on Jenna’s grandmother as a member of her family.

A cool breeze sprang up, bringing goose-bumps to her arms. She went inside, showered and changed out of her jeans and T-shirt into a silky wraparound dress that emphasised the softness of her curves. Her hair hung down on to her shoulders, curling softly, her face—without make-up—oddly young and vulnerable. As she walked through her small sitting-room her eyes fell to the small tape recorder on the table beside the phone.

Well, Susie had made her escape. It just remained now for her to convince Simon that his sister was safely ensconced with her.

She was just about to start making her own early evening meal, when she remembered that she had promised to stock up Craig’s fridge. Susie’s visit had completely banished her promise from her mind. She glanced at her watch, and breathed a faint sigh of relief. There was still time to get what she needed from the shops.

A row of lock-up garages to the rear of the garden held her small Mini. She drove it with the same care and caution she applied to everything else.

Craig was a lazy cook, and so she stocked up on pizza, and a selection of cold meats and other delicacies from his favourite delicatessen.

If he followed his normal routine, the moment he returned he would head for his darkroom, where he would develop the prints he had taken on location, and he would only emerge once he had finished working, whatever time of the night or day that might be.

There was no sign of him when she got back and, using the key he had given her, she went up to his flat and put away her purchases, pausing to open the windows to let in some fresh air before going back down to her own domain.

The phone was ringing as she walked in, and she picked it up without thinking, half anticipating hearing Craig’s voice announcing that he was at the airport and on his way back.

Instead, Simon’s crisp, authoritative voice assaulted her unprepared ear-drum, her whole body tensing as she gripped the receiver.

‘Jenna, I understand Susie’s staying with you?’

‘Yes … yes, she is …’

‘Could I have a word with her?’

She stared blankly at the cream-painted wall of her sitting-room, and then thankfully remembered Susie’s tape.

‘Yes … Yes, I’ll just go and get her.’

She fumbled with the ‘on’ switch of the tape, and accidentally knocked it to the floor. When she picked it up the tape was running, but no sound was emerging. She stared at it in horror. Something had gone wrong!

She trembled as she picked up the tape machine, the fact that Simon was still waiting to speak to Susie forgotten as, to her horror, she saw that the ‘erase’ button of the tape was depressed.

How had it happened? A fluke of mischance, catching it as it had fallen? Or had Susie—scatty, lovable, Susie—depressed it by mistake?

She would never know; what she did know was that Simon was going to be unable to speak to his sister.

She picked up the receiver and took a deep breath, forcing her voice to sound as light and careless as possible as she said calmly. ‘Simon, I’m sorry. I’ve just been out to the shops … Susie’s in the bath and apparently likely to be there for some time. She says she’ll ring you later …’ She crossed her fingers childishly and added, ‘Are you going out this evening, or …?’

She was taking a chance on the fact that since it was a Saturday evening Simon was sure to be going out somewhere or other with his new lover.

There was a pause, and then when he spoke there was a certain unnerving grimness about Simon’s voice as he responded curtly, ‘Yes … yes, as a matter of fact, I shall be going out.’

He rang off before she could say anything else, leaving her feeling idiotically shaken and extremely unnerved.

What was the matter with her? He was only a man, as she had so often remarked to her friend. She must be getting as soft as Susie to let him get to her like this.

Ah well, it was over now. Simon had quite obviously accepted the fact that Susie was staying with her, and her friend had no doubt made good her escape with the unfortunate Peter, of whom Simon appeared to disapprove so heartily.

She could relax and put the Townsend family firmly out of her mind. She had no plans for the evening; there were friends she could have gone out with, but it had been a hectic week with her boss returning from a week in the South of France, where he had been supervising the final details of a property he had been commissioned to work on. And on his return a dozen or more impatient clients had been waiting to see him.

She was suffering from the pleasurable tiredness that came from having worked hard, both physically and mentally, and she was looking forward to a lazy evening with a tray of tempting nibbles, a pot of strong coffee and the latest Sidney Sheldon to keep her company.