She could have become used to the remoteness if she had never known the shared familiarity, if she had never seen the man behind the power. As it was, the week dragged past in an atmosphere of calm which had her feeling exhausted by the time Friday rolled around.
She wondered what had happened to Fiona. She hadn’t seen the other woman or taken any calls from her at work, but that didn’t mean that Ross had not returned to her, and the thought of that ate away inside her. Was she still prodding away? Insinuating in that sly way of hers? Hardening suspicions?
Two weeks after she returned from the cottage, and with only four left to go before she was released from the painful captivity of working for Ross, Abigail remembered the company Christmas party. The Christmas parties, which were usually held in one of the grander of the London hotels, never took place at Christmas. Over the years, most people had come to view them as the working version of a spring ball. Abigail herself had arranged the location, the food and the venue, but that had been months back, and she had completely forgotten about it until she opened her desk diary and found the reminder staring her in the face.
Of course, she would have remembered if she hadn’t been consumed with her own problems. She would have heard other employees chatting about it, but she had been moving and working in her own little isolated world, battling with her emotional problems, and the party had been the furthest thing from her mind.
She sat at her desk that evening, waiting for Ross to emerge from his office, which he did, and he looked across at her with a mixture of mild surprise and casual indifference.
‘I’ve been meaning to have a word with you,’ Abigail said, standing up as he moved towards the door to leave. He inclined his head politely, pausing with one hand on the doorknob, waiting for her to say what she had to say.
‘It’s about the Christmas party on Friday,’ she began uncomfortably.
‘What about it?’ Distant, civil, his dark eyes expressing little beyond restrained curiosity. Every time he looked at her like that, she felt as though a knife were slicing through her.
‘I’m afraid it completely slipped my mind, and I won’t be able to come. I’ve made other arrangements.’
‘You’ll have to cancel them. You’re my personal assistant and you are expected to attend.’
‘I don’t think that it would matter very much whether I attended or not,’ Abigail retorted, her voice rising. ‘I’m due to leave in four weeks’ time!’
‘I will expect to see you there,’ Ross informed her in a flat, icy voice that left no room for argument. He looked at his watch. ‘Is that all or was there something else?’
‘Nothing else,’ she said, pitching her tone to match his, and he nodded and left. She looked at the closed door with a tide of emotions rising in her: anger, hurt, bitterness. She wanted to scream at the invisible wall of silence that stood between them, even though she knew well enough that without that wall of silence there would still be a wall between them, but a wall of a different sort.
Damn him, she thought angrily, why shouldn’t I go to this Christmas party? Why should I change my life because of him?
The following afternoon, in a spirit of angry rebellion, Abigail left work early and spent three hours wandering through the shops, looking for that elusive dress that would raise her morale and show Ross Anderson that whatever had happened between them had had no effect on her, that she was as indifferent to it all as he was.
She found the perfect outfit in jade-green. It had a high neckline and long sleeves, but it was close-fitting and seemed to hold a great deal of bold promise. She tried it on and it made her feel good anyway, so she bought it, spending far more than she had anticipated.
Ross was not around the following day. Abigail arrived at work very early, cleared a great deal of paperwork, in between trying to show Mary the intricacies of the filing system, and at four-thirty they looked at each other with a conspiratorial smile.
‘It is the party tonight,’ Mary said with a giggle, ‘and we will only be leaving an hour early.’
‘Are you trying to corrupt me?’ Abigail asked sternly, but she had already decided that she would leave early provided she cleared her desk.
‘I need to spend quite a bit of time on my beauty routine if I’m to look presentable.’
Abigail looked at her wryly. ‘I find that hard to believe.’
Mary was tall, leggy, and with the sort of good looks that came from an attractive personality as well as an attractive face. She smiled a lot and, underneath the blonde hair, was good at her job and willing to work hard.
Abigail tried not to think too hard about Ross, working with her replacement, building up the rapport which they had shared for so long and which had become the bitter bedrock of her life. It didn’t do to dwell on those things. It made her see too clearly the empty chasm stretching out in front of her.
She would have to leave by seven, and she had a leisurely bath, washed and dried her hair, considered doing something daring with it and then decided against the idea, and finally changed into her outfit, which felt even more glamorous with the appropriate accessories than it had in the shop. She would never be a ravine beauty, but she intended making the most of what she had: her trim figure, her neat features.
What a laugh even to imply that she would try and net a man for his money. With my unremarkable face, she thought, it would be quite a ridiculous notion. But Fiona hadn’t seen that. All she had seen was a face that had managed to get Ross Anderson into bed.
There were already quite a few people at the ballroom by the time she arrived, faces that Abigail recognised, some well enough to speak to, others known only by sight. She didn’t look around for Ross. She allowed herself to meander from group to group, chatting amicably about her resignation, about needing a change of scenery, vague small-talk that wouldn’t raise eyebrows but would kill any seeds of curiosity which might be in the process of germination.
She heard Mary’s voice before she saw her. It was a distinctive voice, deep for a woman, with a hint of laughter in it.
‘There’s Abigail! Abigail! Over here!’
Abigail swung round and saw Ross long before her brain had registered the people to whom he was talking. He was in a superbly tailored dinner jacket and one hand was in the pocket of his trousers, while the other was holding a glass. She didn’t want to look at him, but it was very difficult. In any group, he was always the centre of attention. For a start, he was usually taller than everyone else, but also he had an air of vitality that made it hard not to focus on him.
She edged politely into the group, and out of the corner of her eye she could see him watching her twisting the stem of the champagne glass in his hand.
Mary, ebullient as ever, was holding court, while her boyfriend, a quiet, sandy-haired man, who looked older than he probably was because of his receding hairline, smiled and looked vaguely uncomfortable.
During a pause in the conversation, one of the sales managers turned to her and said, smiling, ‘So, have you found another job yet, Abby?’
‘I thought I might have a month off work before I get anything fixed up,’ she said. She liked James Davies. He was in his forties, a calm, affable family man who inspired hard work in his staff without having to demand it. His wife, plump, with blonde hair and an easygoing disposition, was standing next to him, listening politely to their exchange. Abigail tended to meet her at office parties, as she did most of her colleagues’ partners.
‘Recovering from that slave-driving boss of yours, eh?’
Abigail nodded politely and looked at Ross, who stared back at her with biting intensity. Everyone else seemed unaware of any tension in the atmosphere, but she could feel it, it was there in the hardness behind the black eyes.
‘You’re bound to miss it, though,’ Mary said, grinning. ‘You can’t work for someone for all that time and not miss it when you leave.’
‘There are lots of things I shall miss about the company,’ Abigail agreed non-committally, and Ross said, in a hard voice that was masked by a polite smile, for the benefit of everyone else,
‘But I’m sure Abby will bring her great talents to whatever job she takes up.’ He drank the rest of the champagne and stared at her with a savage little smile. ‘You do enter fully into your job, don’t you, Abigail? I’m sure whoever you work for will find that an enormous benefit.’
Abigail smiled stiffly back at him.
‘I certainly hope so, Mr Anderson,’ she replied in a sweet, syrupy voice. Her eyes glazed over and she looked around her with the stiff smile still on her face. James and his wife drifted off in the direction of some of the sales crew, and the little group began breaking up, the way they tended to at office functions.
‘Drink?’ he offered before she could similarly slink away, and she shook her head without looking at him.
‘If you don’t mind,’ she said politely, ‘I think I might do the rounds. There are a lot of people here whom I won’t see again and I’d like to say goodbye.’
‘But I do mind,’ Ross said, and she looked up at him with acid surprise.
‘Do you? Why? Do you want to subject me to a few more insults while you have the opportunity?’ Her mouth twisted and she smiled even though it hurt. ‘Why don’t you circulate as well? Then you could tell everyone what great talents I’ll be taking to my new job, how much my new boss will be impressed with them!’ Her voice had started out full of biting emotion but she ended on a whisper.