Escape from Desire

‘IT’S going to be fantastic,’ Nigel exclaimed with a satisfied sigh as he replaced the final sheet of typescript. He had been reading the first three chapters of Zach’s novel, and although it was only a week since Tamara had returned to London, her part in the preparation of the typescript seemed to belong to another lifetime.

She felt she could never do enough to show Nigel how grateful she was for his prompt action on that final, dreadful day of her stay with Zach. Competently and cheerfully he had whisked her away from the scene of her humiliation without giving either Zach or Malcolm any opportunity to question her.

‘You’re looking better,’ he approved when he had finished reading. ‘How are you feeling?’

‘Fine,’ Tamara assured him. She was beginning to get over the early morning nausea which had made her life such a misery in the first weeks of her pregnancy and although as yet there was scant outward alteration to her body, inwardly she was aware of the baby’s growth, and the knowledge filled her with a warm inner glow. She caught sight of a newspaper on Nigel’s desk and her colour faded a little as she saw the photograph of Zach and Julie, and the caption beneath it.

‘Zach’s plans for his house are beginning to catch the attention of the Press,’ Nigel commented. ‘Have you heard anything from him since you left?’

‘Ought I to have done?’ Tamara parried lightly.

There was pity and something else—admiration perhaps—in Nigel’s eyes as they surveyed her downbent head.

‘Not really, I suppose, but I thought he might have wanted to thank you for the excellent work you put in on his manuscript. It can’t have been easy, rushing it through so quickly.’

‘It wasn’t,’ Tamara agreed, thinking of the afternoon she had fallen into an exhausted sleep over her work and how she had woken up to find Zach in her room.

About Zach himself she tried hard not to think, but it wasn’t always easy. Sometimes the memory of him would sneak up on her unawares, her mind forming a mental image of him and superimposing it on whatever she was doing.

Later in the afternoon the phone rang. Tamara picked up the receiver absently, then shock jolted through her as she recognised Zach’s voice as he asked to be put through to Nigel.

The conversation lasted a good twenty minutes, and when it was over Nigel came into her office, raking fingers through his hair, his expression perturbed enough to make her heart thud erratically.

‘Anything wrong?’ she queried. ‘He hasn’t changed his mind about the book, has he?’

‘No, nothing like that. He wants you to go back and work for him,’ Nigel told her baldly. ‘Oh, it’s all right,’ he assured her when he saw the consternation in her eyes. ‘I told him it wasn’t on; that I was too busy to manage without you.’ He wasn’t going to add to Tamara’s worries by telling her that Zach had more or less held him to ransom over the completion of the manuscript on time if he refused to send Tamara down to work for him. ‘Apparently he’s got some bee in his bonnet about no other secretary being able to produce work of the same high standard as yours. You know how difficult some authors can be,’ Nigel reminded her ruefully, speaking from personal experience. ‘If everything isn’t exactly to their liking they can’t work.’

What was more to the point was probably that Zach had been unable to find someone he could browbeat into working as hard as she had done, Tamara thought irately; or someone he could derive so much pleasure from taunting. She had noticed that quite often after he had been particularly savage with her his output of work almost doubled; something to do with a sudden extra flow of adrenalin into the bloodstream, perhaps.

‘Don’t worry,’ Nigel comforted her a second time. ‘I’ve told him there’s just no way I can spare you to work for him right now. I even offered to try and find him a replacement, so you’d better get on to some of the agencies and see what they can come up with. I know it’s none of my business, but are you sure he’s indifferent to you, Tamara? Bearing in mind what you told me it seems strange that he should want you working for him.’

‘He enjoys tormenting me,’ Tamara said bitterly. ‘I suppose it’s his way of punishing me, because wanting me made him aware of a weakness in himself and he despises weakness.’

‘Mmm. Well, I don’t suppose we’ll hear anything more about it now. Get James Deacon on the phone for me, will you, I want to talk to him about the dust jacket for the new Brian Balfour.’

* * *

London was sweltering under a minor heatwave. It had begun just after Tamara returned to London, and so far had lasted five days. Listening to the weather forecast as she dressed, Tamara heard that the weather was likely to break during the day with violent thunderstorms late in the afternoon.

Outside in the street, the heavy oppression and sultry heat reminded her sharply of St Stephen’s. Because of the heat she was dressed more casually than usual in a thin tee-shirt that moulded the slightly fuller curves of her breasts and hugged her narrow waist, and a toning button-through skirt made of comfortable heat-resisting cotton.

Nigel gave her an admiring smile when she walked into his office. ‘You look cool and fresh,’ he exclaimed enviously. In contrast he was dressed in a formal although lightweight suit, its jacket discarded to lie haphazardly on top of the filing cabinets, his tie loose and the top button of his shirt unfastened.

‘I’ve got a board meeting at ten,’ he told Tamara, ‘but it shouldn’t take more than an hour.’

With Nigel out the office was relatively quiet. Tamara dealt briskly and efficiently with the half dozen telephone calls she received, and then remembered the letter the postman had handed her as she stepped out of the flat that morning.

The handwriting, on expensive cream notepaper, was unfamiliar. She studied it for a moment before opening the envelope.

The letter was from Dot Partington, and guilt smote Tamara as she remembered promising faithfully to keep in touch with her. The letter was long and chatty, bringing the older woman vividly to mind. To make reparation for her earlier forgetfulness, Tamara extracted some of the notepaper she kept in her desk and started to write back.

In her letter Dot had asked if Tamara and Malcolm had yet set a date for their wedding. Rather than lie, Tamara wrote back that her engagement was off, without specifying why, explaining that she had given Malcolm his ring back on her ret

urn from holiday.

The letter was finished long before Nigel returned from his meeting, which had gone on longer than anticipated. When he walked in he was frowning.

‘Something wrong?’ Tamara queried, knowing that he liked using her as a sounding board for his frustration when the caution of the other board members got too much for him.