Escape from Desire

‘Would you mind if I rang Malcolm from the office?’ Tamara asked him. ‘He doesn’t know I’m back yet.’

‘He doesn’t?’ He looked at her. ‘What’s the matter with the man? Why wasn’t he waiting at the airport to sweep you off to …’

‘To his parents’ house?’ Tamara submitted wryly. ‘That isn’t Malcolm’s style.’

‘I know,’ Nigel agreed unrepentantly. ‘The man’s a complete stuffed shirt—a museum specimen. The thing is …’ he studied Tamara with an abstract gaze, ‘this is the first time I’ve heard you acknowledge as much. Having second thoughts? Holiday romance?’

‘Concentrate on your new scoop,’ Tamara told him firmly.

‘Aha! She doesn’t deny it. Now what, I wonder, does that mean?’

‘It means,’ Tamara told him, refusing to be flustered, ‘that like any other woman I like keeping men guessing.’

As Nigel was to tell his wife that evening, it was the first time he could ever remember his cool in-control assistant behaving like a woman. ‘She’s in love,’ he told her, ‘you mark my words.’

Pauline Soames, who had met Tamara on several occasions and felt vaguely sorry for her, laughed.

‘Of course she is,’ she agreed. ‘She’s engaged, isn’t she?’

Tamara knew that Malcolm didn’t like her to ring him at his office. Punctilious in such matters, he had once told Tamara that it set a bad example to the rest of the staff, and she, she was appalled to remember, had gravely agreed.

Like a butterfly emerging from a chrysalis she could hardly reconcile the repressed, unresponsive creature she had been with the woman Zach had brought to life.

Malcolm’s secretary, the daughter of friends of his parents, with an almost painfully upper-class voice, informed her that Malcolm was still in New York.

‘He’ll be ringing me this afternoon,’ she added. ‘Can I give him a message?’

Having asked her to ask Malcolm to call her as soon as he could Tamara went back to work. At four o’clock Nigel announced that he had had enough. Since he had spent the last thirty-five minutes doodling on his blotter and staring at the phone with a concentration that could have fractured steel, Tamara could only conclude that matters were not going according to plan.

‘Shall I hang on, just in case?’ she offered, glancing at the phone. ‘If you’re expecting a call.’

‘I was, but something tells me it won’t be coming through—not today anyway. No, you go home, Tamara. You look all in,’ he told her untactfully. ‘Completely washed out.’

She did, Tamara acknowledged ruefully ten minutes later, as she examined her reflection in the cloakroom mirror.

It was that time of the day when most of the afternoon shoppers were on their way home and the commuters had yet to leave their offices, and so Bond Street was relatively empty as she walked down it heading for her Tube station.

Today, for some reason, the Elizabeth Arden salon which she had passed almost every day for the last few years without sparing a second glance seemed to draw her attention as she remembered the faces of the attractively made up girls she had seen that morning and compared them with hers.

Without being aware of moving she had stepped inside. Had the girl behind the reception desk been more intimidating and less attractive she would probably have fled, but to her astonishment she found her tentative enquiries answered with a reassuring smile and the information that she was lucky—they had a cancellation and one of their make-up experts could give her a lesson right away.

Something she had not expected was that the ‘expert’ would be male; and an extremely attractive male at that.

When she had accepted his invitation to sit down he studied Tamara’s face in absolute silence for several minutes before pronouncing,

‘Your bone structure is excellent and like many Englishwomen you have a good skin, but you’ve neglected it. This blue eyeshadow is far too hard for you.’

With deft movements he removed the make-up Tamara had applied, leaving her skin soft and supple, turning to a vast array of cosmetics concealed in the clinically clean units lining the small make-up room.

‘First we use foundation—not the sort you were using. It’s too thick—too heavy. Your skin must breathe, that way its true beauty will show through.’

He applied the make-up with a damp sponge, so thinly that Tamara was astonished to see how the liquid transformed her skin, giving it a soft pearly sheen.

The hour that followed was a revelation. She could hardly believe that the infinitesimal amount of soft lilac eyeshadow Pierre used had been all it took to make her eyes seem so large and almost amethyst in colour.

‘Subtlety is the key,’ Pierre advised her warningly. ‘Your eyes are magnificent—like the eyes of a startled fawn. Before you leave I will dye your lashes for you; they’re dark already, but darkening them a shade further will help to dramatise their size.’

Blusher gleamed softly along cheekbones suddenly far more prominent than Tamara remembered, a soft slick of lipstick as pretty as any worn by the girls she had seen that morning completing the effect.