By almost eight o’clock it was done. Moira surveyed the empty office, made glittering and festive through her efforts, smoothed her skirt, and allowed herself to picture the expressions of pleasure on people’s faces when they walked back through the door in the morning.
She wouldn’t get paid for it, but it was the little gestures, the extras, that made all the difference. The other secretaries had little idea that a personal assistant’s job was not just a matter of typing personal correspondence and making sure the filing was in order. It was a far greater role than that. It was about making sure that an office didn’t just run smoothly but that the people within it felt part of . . . well, a family. A Christmas postbox and some cheerful decorations were what ultimately tied an office together, and made it a place one might look forward to coming to.
The little Christmas tree she had set up in the corner looked nicer there. There was little point in having it at home, now that there was no one but her to see it. Here it could be enjoyed by lots of people. And if someone happened to remark on the very pretty angel at the top, or the lovely baubles with the frosted crystals, she might tell them casually, as if it had just occurred to her, that those had been Mother’s favorites.
Moira put on her coat. She gathered up her belongings, tied her scarf, and placed her pen and pencil neatly on the desk ready for the morning. She went to Mr. Stirling’s office, keys in hand, to lock the door, and then, with a glance at the door, she moved swiftly into the room and reached under his desk for the wastepaper bin.
It took her only a moment to locate the handwritten letter. She barely hesitated before she picked it up and, after checking again through the glass to make sure that she was still alone, she smoothed out the creases on the desk and began to read.
She stood very, very still.
Then she read it again.
The bell outside chimed eight. Startled by the sound, Moira left Mr. Stirling’s office, placed his bin outside for the cleaners to empty, and locked the door. She put the letter at the bottom of her desk drawer, locked it, and dropped the key into her pocket.
For once, the bus ride to Streatham seemed to take no time at all. Moira Parker had an awful lot to think about.
Chapter 7
AUGUST 1960
They met every day, sitting outside sun-drenched cafés, or heading into the scorched hills in her little Daimler to eat at places they picked without care or forethought. She told him about her upbringing in Hampshire and Eaton Place, the ponies, boarding school, the narrow, comfortable world that had made up her life until her marriage. She told him how, even at twelve, she had felt stifled, had known she would need a bigger canvas, and how she had never suspected that the wide stretches of the Riviera could contain a social circle just as restricted and monitored as the one she had left behind.
She told him of a boy from the village with whom she had fallen in love at fifteen, and how, when he discovered the relationship, her father had taken her into an outbuilding and thrashed her with his braces.
“For falling in love?” She had told the story lightly, and he tried to hide how disturbed he was by it.
“For falling in love with the wrong sort of boy. Oh, I suppose I was a bit of a handful. They told me I’d brought the whole family into disrepute. They said I had no moral compass, that if I didn’t watch myself no decent man would want to marry me.” She laughed, without humor. “Of course, the fact that my father had a mistress for years was quite a different matter.”
“And then Laurence came along.”
She smiled at him slyly. “Yes. Wasn’t I lucky?”
He talked to her in the way that people tell lifelong secrets to fellow passengers in railway carriages: an unburdened intimacy, resting on the unspoken understanding that they were unlikely to meet again. He told her about his three-year tenure as the Nation’s Central Africa correspondent, how at first he had welcomed the chance to escape his failing marriage, but hadn’t adopted the personal armory necessary to cope with the atrocities he witnessed: Congo’s steps to independence had meant the death of thousands. He had found himself spending night after night in Léopoldville’s Foreign Correspondents’ Club, anesthetizing himself with whiskey or, worse, palm wine, until the combined horrors of what he had seen and a bout of yellow fever almost ended him. “I had something of a breakdown,” he said, attempting to emulate her light tone, “although no one is impolite enough to say so, of course. They blame the yellow fever and urge me not to go back.”
“Poor Boot.”
“Yes. Poor me. Especially as it gave my ex-wife yet another good reason not to let me see my son.”
“And there I was, thinking it was that little matter of serial infidelity.” She laid her hand on his. “I’m sorry. I’m teasing. I don’t mean to be trite.”
“Am I boring you?”
“On the contrary. It’s not often that I spend time with a man who actually wants to talk to me.”
He didn’t drink in her company, and no longer missed it. The challenge she posed was an adequate substitute for alcohol, and besides, he liked being in control of who he was when he was with her. Having spoken little since his last months in Africa, afraid of what he might reveal, the weaknesses he might expose, he now found he wanted to talk. He liked the way she watched him when he did, as if nothing he might say would change her fundamental opinion of him, as if nothing he confided would later be used in evidence against him.
“What happens to former war correspondents when they become weary of trouble?” she asked.
“They’re pensioned off to dark corners of the newsroom and bore everyone with tales of their glory days,” he said. “Or they stay out in the field until they get killed.”
“And which kind are you?”
“I don’t know.” He lifted his eyes to hers. “I haven’t yet become weary of trouble.”
He sank easily into the gentle rhythms of the Riviera: the long lunches, the time spent outdoors, the endless chatting with people of whom one had only limited acquaintance. He had taken to long walks in the early morning, when once he had been dead to the world, enjoying the sea air, the friendly greetings exchanged by people not bad-tempered with hangovers and lack of sleep. He felt at ease, in a way he had not for many years. He fended off telegrams from Don, threatening dire consequences if he didn’t file something useful soon.
“You didn’t like the profile?” he had asked.
“It was fine, but it ran in the business section last Tuesday, and Accounts wants to know why you’re still filing expenses four days after you wrote it.”
She took him to Monte Carlo, spinning the car around the vertiginous bends of the mountain roads while he watched her slim strong hands on the wheel and imagined placing each finger reverently in his mouth. She took him to a casino, and made him feel like a god when he translated his few pounds into a sizable win at roulette. She ate mussels at a seafront café, plucking them delicately but ruthlessly from their shells, and he lost the power of speech. She had seeped into his consciousness so thoroughly, absorbing all lucid thought, that not only could he think of nothing else but no longer cared to. In his hours alone, his mind wandered to a million possible outcomes, and he marveled at how long it had been since he had felt so preoccupied by a woman.
It was because she was that rare thing, genuinely unobtainable. He should have given up days ago. But his pulse quickened when another note was pushed under his door, wondering if he’d like to join her for drinks at the Piazza, or perhaps a quick drive to Menton?
What harm could it do? He was thirty, and couldn’t remember the last time he had laughed so much. Why shouldn’t he enjoy briefly the kind of gaiety that other people took for granted? It was all so far removed from his habitual life that it seemed unreal.
It was on the Saturday evening that he received the telegram telling him what he had half expected for days: his train home had been booked for tomorrow, and he was expected at the Nation’s offices on Monday morning. When he read it, he experienced a kind of relief: this thing with Jennifer Stirling had become strangely disorienting. He would never normally have spent so much time and energy on a woman whose passion was not a foregone conclusion. The thought of not seeing her again was upsetting, but some part of him wanted to return to his old routines, to rediscover the person he was.
He pulled his suitcase from the rack and placed it on his bed. He would pack, and then he would send her a note, thanking her for her time and suggesting that if she ever wanted to meet for lunch in London, she should telephone him. If she chose to contact him there, away from the magic of this place, perhaps she would become like all of the others: a pleasant physical diversion.
It was as he put his shoes into the case that the call came from the concierge: a woman was waiting in reception for him.
“Blond hair?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Would you mind asking her to come to the telephone?”
He heard a brief burst of French, then her voice, a little breathless, uncertain. “It’s Jennifer. I just wondered . . . if we might have a quick drink.”
“Delighted, but I’m not quite ready. Do you want to come up and wait?”
He tidied his room rapidly, kicking stray items under the bed. He rearranged the sheet of paper in his typewriter, as if he had been working on the piece he had wired across an hour earlier. He pulled on a clean shirt, although he didn’t have time to do it up. When he heard a soft knock, he opened the door. “What a lovely surprise,” he said. “I was just finishing something, but do come in.”
She stood awkwardly in the corridor. When she caught sight of his bare chest, she looked away. “Would you rather I waited downstairs?”
“No. Please. I’ll only be a few minutes.”
She stepped in and walked to the center of the room. She was wearing a pale gold sleeveless dress with a mandarin collar. Her shoulders were slightly pink where the sun had touched them as she drove. Her hair was loose around her shoulders, a little windblown, as if she had driven there in a hurry.
Her gaze took in the bed, littered with notepads, the near-packed suitcase. They were briefly silenced by proximity. She recovered first. “Aren’t you going to offer me a drink?”
“Sorry. Inconsiderate of me.” He telephoned down for a gin and tonic, which arrived in minutes. “Where are we going?”
“Going?”
“Have I time to shave?” He went into the bathroom.
“Of course. Go ahead.”
He had done this on purpose, he thought afterward, made her party to the enforced intimacy. He looked better: the sick man’s yellow pallor had left his skin, the lines of strain had been ironed from his eyes. He ran the hot water, and watched her in the bathroom mirror as he lathered his chin.
She was distracted, preoccupied. As his razor scraped against his skin, he watched her pace, like a restless animal. “Are you all right?” he called, rinsing his blade in the water.
“I’m fine.” She had drunk half the gin and tonic already, and poured another.
He finished shaving, toweled dry his face, splashed on some of the aftershave he had bought from the pharmacie. It was sharp, with notes of citrus and rosemary. He did up his shirt and straightened his collar in the mirror. He loved this moment, the convergence of appetite and possibility. He felt oddly triumphant. He stepped out of the bathroom and found her standing by the balcony. The sky was dimming, the lights of the seafront glowing as dusk fell. She held her drink in one hand, the other arm laid slightly defensively across her waist. He took a step closer to her.
“I forgot to say how lovely you look,” he said. “I like that color on you. It’s—”
“Larry’s back tomorrow.”
She drew away from the balcony and faced him. “I had a wire this afternoon. We’ll be flying to London on Tuesday.”