Dangerous Interloper

No, she didn’t have anything specific in mind, she told the girl in the dress shop where she bought most of her clothes. A suit or separates, something smart, but perhaps not quite as businesslike as her normal choice of outfit.

‘I think we’ve got just the thing,’ the girl told her, smiling. ‘A range of separates made in Germany. Pricey, but very, very well-made.’

When she showed Miranda the rail of separates she had in mind, Miranda had to admit that the clothes were beautifully made, and highly desirable. They were also, as she had said, expensive.

‘Look, why don’t you try this on?’ the girl suggested, producing a two-piece suit in cool cream wool. The jacket was long-sleeved with a slightly scooped neckline. It fastened with a double row of buttons and should really, the girl told her, be worn buttoned up without a shirt beneath it. The skirt that went with it was plain and straight, and the jacket was adorned with a variety of gold-coloured letters in metal.

‘It’s very different,’ the girl told her, ‘very simple and smart, and yet at the same time rather eye-catching.’

‘Very,’ Miranda agreed, eyeing the suit uncertainly. It was rather more high-profile than she had had in mind.

‘Try it on,’ the girl suggested again. ‘If you don’t like it, I’m sure we can soon find something else.’

Uncertainly Miranda did so.

The suit fitted perfectly, and as she stepped out of the cubicle and caught sight of her reflection in the mirrors she tensed in surprise.

‘It looks very good on you,’ the girl told her easily. ‘But if you don’t feel comfortable in it… I know it’s rather different from your normal taste, but you did say… I don’t want to pressure you into having something you won’t enjoy wearing.’

Miranda gave a rueful smile. The suit might have been made for her, and, if the truth were known, once she had got over the shock of seeing her own reflection she had been forced to admit that the suit did look good on her.

‘It’s not going to be something I can wear too often,’ she murmured.

‘You mean people aren’t going to forget it!’ the girl laughed. ‘Well, if you like, after the wedding we could probably remove the gold letters which will make it rather less striking, and if you want to get rather more mileage out of it, well, I can show you some other things from the same range which will go with it.’

In the end, Miranda couldn’t resist not only buying the suit, but in addition a smart bright red light wool jacket to wear over the cream skirt, another skirt in black, a silk shirt embroidered with bright red metallic and gilt hearts, and then, as a final act of defiant extravagance, a large cotton sweater and matching knitted jacket from the same range with American baseball motifs embroidered in gold, red and black on a background of the same cream as her original suit.

She blenched a little as she paid the bill, but reminded herself that it was quite a long time since she had been so self-indulgent.

It was only when she had left the shop and was looking for somewhere to have her lunch before looking for suitable shoes and a bag to go with her outfit that she acknowledged to herself that, while she had been trying on her new clothes, it hadn’t been so much their usefulness for her lifestyle that had motivated her but the thought of Ben Frobisher’s seeing her wearing them.

She stopped in mid-stride, frowning crossly. She had thought she had left behind her the totally idiotic urge to dress to impress the male sex, or rather a specific member of it, when she left her teens.

Thoroughly disgusted with herself, she paused, half tempted to go back to the shop and say she had changed her mind.

Sighing faintly to herself, she told herself that she was being utterly and completely ridiculous. She had bought the clothes and she was just going to have to live with that fact.

As she hurried into a small Italian restaurant, which was one of her favourites, she wondered a little wryly to herself how her father was going to react to her turning up for work wearing the very striking knitted sweater and jacket with its baseball motifs.

She didn’t linger over her lunch. There were still shoes and a bag to buy, although that shouldn’t take long; she had discovered years ago that the most comfortable court shoes for her feet were a very plain style by Charles Jourdan which, despite their heels, could be worn all day long without causing either her feet or her legs to ache; she also had to find a hat.

Their town was such that no one would ever dream of turning up for a wedding bareheaded. Even the bystanders, who gathered outside the church to watch the bride and groom emerging, were invariably dressed in their best, their heads sporting their ‘wedding hats’, and little as she relished the idea, as the bridegroom’s daughter she would be expected to wear a hat with a capital ‘H’.

In the end, she found one in a small shop hidden down a side-street. Made of closely woven shiny black straw, it went perfectly with her suit, although when she saw the Frederick Fox label inside it her heart sank a little.

On her return journey to her car she happened to pass a bookshop with a window-display of the latest bestseller by one of her father’s favourite crime writers. On impulse she went inside to buy it for him.

There was a long queue for the till, and apparently some kind of problem with the equipment, since two girls were trying to change the roll of paper inside it and apparently not succeeding. As she waited Miranda glanced absently at the books to the side of her. A title suddenly glared out at her: ‘Your Dreams. Their Meaning and Interpretation.’

Almost before she had realised what she was doing, she had reached for the book. She wasn’t going to buy it, of course. Such stuff was all nonsense. She would just look at it… flip through it while she waited for the queue to move. But, before she had barely opened the book, the fault with the cash register was rectified and the queue started moving so rapidly that, when she moved forward, Miranda discovered she was still clutching it.

There was nothing else for it now. She would have to buy it. Self-consciously she presented it to the cashier with her other purchase, but the girl was totally uninterested in what she was buying, being intent on dealing with the long queue.

Once outside the shop, Miranda wondered why on earth she hadn’t simply taken the book back and replaced it on the shelf. All right, so she would have lost her place in the queue… but so what?

Well, it was too late now. Just as well it hadn’t been very expensive.

On her way home she detoured to call on Helen and show her her wedding outfit.

‘It’s fabulous,’ Helen approved. ‘And so nice to see you buying something young and flirty.’

‘Flirty?’ Miranda stared at her.

‘Well, not flirty exactly,’ Helen corrected herself. ‘More… more…’

‘Eye-catching,’ Miranda supplied drily for her.

‘Yes. That’s it… eye-catching. By the way, has your father mentioned to you that we’ve invited Ben Frobisher to the wedding?’

‘Yes, he has,’ Miranda told her repressively, adding firmly, ‘Helen, all this gossip that’s been going around about the two of us is just that, you know—gossip.’

‘Well, yes. I know that. But… well, at the golf club do I couldn’t help noticing how interested he was in you.’

Ben, interested in her? Helen was letting her imagination and her own romance with her father go to her head.

‘I don’t think so,’ she told Helen dismissively. ‘It was business, that’s all.’

‘Really?’

The look Helen gave her made Miranda wonder a little uncomfortably if Helen too had heard about that kiss, and if so…

‘I really must be going,’ she told her hastily, scooping up her purchases and heading for the door.

* * *

SHE SPENT WHAT was left of the daylight working in her garden, happily digging and weeding as she marvelled at the perseverance and strength of nature, crooning away contentedly to herself as she recognised, among the growing perennials in her border, familiar o

ld friends.

The delphiniums she had bought and so carefully nurtured all through the previous summer, protecting them from the attentions of the voracious slugs which seemed to inhabit her border, were making good strong plants, repaying her care and attention with their new growth, and there were the granny’s bonnets, just a froth of blue-green leaves at the moment, but later in the year their impossible fine stems would carry the delicate nodding heads of the pretty trumpet-shaped blue and pink flowers.

When it started to grow dusky, she realised she had stayed out far later than she had intended. She was grubby and tired, and no doubt by tomorrow her back would be aching, but right now she felt more relaxed and in harmony with herself than she had in a long time.

She was still humming under her breath when she kicked off her wellingtons and walked into the kitchen. On the table in front of her was the book she had bought.

She tensed and stared at it, all the joy and peace draining out of her.

If she had any sense she would throw it away right now. But for some reason she didn’t. Instead, she skirted the table as though the book were about to pounce on her and hurried upstairs to shower and get changed.

She would make herself a light meal, and then she would settle down for a nice relaxing evening. An evening which she was not going to allow to be invaded by any disruptive thoughts about Ben Frobisher.