and a small kitchen.
‘Last year we made up two snooker teams. Men versus women, and the women won.’ She gave a small giggle, and then when Charlotte didn’t respond she flushed and said uncertainly, ‘Well, if you’re sure there’s nothing you need…’
Charlotte smiled automatically and shook her head, watching as the door closed behind her.
No, there was nothing she needed. If you discounted her own business, her own home, her self-respect, her pride, her future and her fiancé.
Idly she noticed the way she had put Bevan last. Had she always known that he would turn out to have feet of clay? That when it came to it he would not want to stand by her…that he had only wanted her while she was successful, while she enhanced his own image of himself? Had he ever loved her as he had claimed to do? And, even worse, had she really ever loved him—the way her father and her mother loved one another, for instance?
She moved over to the window and stood looking down into the square; a man was approaching the office door. He was tall and broad-shouldered, his thick dark brown hair glinting in the sunshine, and he moved energetically, lithely.
He was wearing an extremely conservative dark blue suit. She could see the crisp white edge of his cuff beneath the sleeve of his jacket. It was the kind of suit worn by a professional man. An accountant…a solicitor…Her heart gave a small fierce bound as he paused on the step and then looked up towards her window, almost as though he was aware of her scrutiny.
She recognised him immediately, of course, even though the only photographs she had seen of him had been grainy and flat. In the flesh she was much more physically aware of the strength of maleness, of his bone-structure, the strength and the power of him.
The suit he was wearing might be that of a traditional conservative man, but the body beneath it was unequivocally tough and male.
She took a hasty step back into the room, her face flushing as she pushed angry fingers into her hair, flipping it back off her face.
Her hair was the only thing she had refused to change when Bevan had insisted on helping her to update herself. It was straight and thick, with the glossy sheen of good health, its dark red colour completely natural, although people sometimes refused to believe it. She wore it in a shoulder-length bob, its silky richness in striking contrast to her pale skin and blue-green eyes.
Bevan had wanted her to have expensive courses of sunbed treatment to tan her skin, complaining that being so pale was unfashionable and unattractive, but she had always refused, pointing out to him the dangers that pale-skinned people like herself suffered from over-exposure to either natural or artificial tanning rays.
Perhaps she should have seen the warning signs then and recognised that Bevan wanted her for the image he believed she could project rather than for the person she actually was. She had certainly discovered very quickly that, once the image, the trappings of success, had gone, Bevan had gone as well.
All right, so maybe once she had recovered from the shock she had found that her pride was more hurt than her heart, but even so…It would be a long time before she trusted a member of the male sex romantically again.
What galled her the most was that Bevan had been the one to pursue her, showering her with flowers, flattering her with outrageous compliments. And at the same time trying to change her, she reminded herself wryly.
Her parents and her sister believed she was better off without him and she knew that they were right. Like the practice, her house, her expensive car, Bevan was a luxury she could no longer afford.
At least the only debt she had outstanding now was her bank overdraft. The only. Her mouth twisted a little, worry shadowing her face, her full lips tightening as she fought to control her feelings.
She had resisted fiercely at first when her parents had insisted on her living at home rent free; to have to return home to live in the first place at her age was galling, almost humiliating, despite the fact that she loved and got on well with her family, but, as they had gently pointed out, she had a large overdraft to repay and it was silly to have to spend money on rented accommodation while bank interest rates were so high.
Even the small second-hand car she was now using to travel the fifteen or so miles to this, her new job, had been provided by her father. Tears pricked her eyes briefly as she remembered how ashamed and miserable she had felt when he had given it to her. It wasn’t that she particularly regretted losing the bright red BMW sports model she had previously been driving. In point of fact she had come to find it too ostentatious and had felt acutely uncomfortable driving it. No, what hurt was knowing that she had failed; that she was as dependent on her parents as she had been as a student; perhaps even more so.
Not that either they or Sarah, her elder sister, had done anything to suggest that they felt anything but sympathy for her, but sometimes even sympathy was hard to bear.
She felt so guilty, she recognised, and so ashamed. She had allowed herself to be carried away by Bevan’s grand schemes without thinking them through properly. She had behaved foolishly and over-confidently and she had no one to blame for her present plight but herself.
But what hurt most of all was that anyone knowing what had happened to her must surely suspect her of being professionally incompetent in some way, and, even at the same time as she was fiercely grateful to Richard Horwich for giving her this job, she was almost resentful in some ways of what she suspected must have been a charitable impulse on his part.
With so many newly qualified solicitors looking for jobs, what had made him take on her, someone who had already shown how inefficient she was?
Her father had told her that she was too hard on herself; that she had simply, like others, ridden the crest of a financial wave which had retreated, leaving her high and dry. Maybe, but not everyone had been caught out by the roller-coaster of the sharp rise in the property market and its subsequent downturn.
Look at Daniel Jefferson, for instance. Her heart sank a little. She just hoped that she wouldn’t have to come into too much contact with him. It was perhaps illogical of her to feel so…so antagonistic towards him, so resentful almost, and it was also unlike her, but her normal good humour seemed to have become eroded over the last six months or so. She felt raw and vulnerable, unable to stop herself repeatedly going over and over what had happened, wishing she had seen what was coming and protected not just herself but those of her clients to whom she had given her services free of charge as well. Yes, it was a great pity she had not had the foresight that Daniel Jefferson seemed to exhibit to such spectacular effect. He obviously, unlike her, had an eye for a successful cause, she decided moodily.
Look at the way he had taken on the huge Vitalle conglomerate and achieved such a spectacular success…
She heard a door opening and the sound of someone moving about in the adjacent office, and quickly sat down at her own desk. Daniel Jefferson had obviously arrived to start on his day’s work.
What would it be today? she wondered bitterly. Some high-profile court case that would win him further acclaim; the preparation perhaps for a television interview? She had read in one of the papers how impressed the Press had been by the way he had handled his interviewers. Some people were like that, courting publicity, thriving on it. She remembered the small humiliating piece she had seen in the local paper describing the closing-down of her practice, pointing her out as one of the victims of the recession.
She had to put the past behind her, her father had told her gently, adding that there was no disgrace in having tried and failed; that he would rather she’d had the courage to do that and to admit her failure than had opted for the safety of a job in some large corporation.
But Charlotte couldn’t help remembering how proud her parents had been of her when she had first qualified. Somehow now she felt she had no right to their pride, and that she certainly had no right to the respect and trust of her colleagues.
While she was lost in these unhappy thoughts her office door opened. She tensed, blinking away the tears that had been threatening and struggling to stand up, cursing as