Chapter 2
Moira Parker regarded the grim set of her boss’s jawline, the determined way in which he strode through her office to his own, and thought it was probably a good thing that Mr. Arbuthnot, his two-thirty, was late. Clearly the last meeting had not gone well.
She stood up, smoothing her skirt, and took his coat, which was speckled with rain from the short walk between his car and the office. She placed his umbrella in the stand, then took a moment longer than usual to hang the coat carefully on the hook. She had worked for him long enough now to judge when he needed a little time alone.
She poured him a cup of tea—he always had a cup of tea in the afternoons, two cups of coffee in the mornings—collected up her papers with an economy born of years’ practice, then knocked on his door and walked in. “I suspect Mr. Arbuthnot has been held up in traffic. Apparently there’s a big jam on the Marylebone Road.”
He was reading the letters she had left on his desk earlier for his signature. Evidently satisfied, he took his pen from his breast pocket and signed with short, abrupt strokes. She placed his tea on his desk and folded the letters into her pile of papers. “I’ve picked up the tickets for your flight to South Africa, and arranged for you to be collected at the airport.”
“That’s the fifteenth.”
“Yes. I’ll bring them through if you’d like to check the paperwork. Here are the sales figures for last week. The latest wage totals are in this folder here. And as I wasn’t sure you would have had time for lunch after the car manufacturers’ meeting, I’ve taken the liberty of ordering you some sandwiches. I hope that’s acceptable.”
“Very kind, Moira. Thank you.”
“Would you like them now? With your tea?”
He nodded and smiled at her briefly. She did her best not to color. She knew the other secretaries mocked her for what they considered her overattentive manner with her boss, not to mention her prim clothes and slightly stiff way of doing things. But he was a man who liked things done properly, and she had always understood that. Those silly girls, with their heads always stuck in a magazine, their endless gossiping in the ladies’ cloakroom, they didn’t understand the inherent pleasure in a job well done. They didn’t understand the satisfaction of being indispensable.
She hesitated briefly, then pulled the last letter from her folder. “The second post has arrived. I thought you should probably see this. It’s another of those letters about the men at Rochdale.”
His eyebrows lowered, which killed the small smile that had illuminated his face. He read the letter twice. “Has anyone else seen this?”
“No, sir.”
“File it with the others.” He thrust it at her. “It’s all troublemaking stuff. The unions are behind it. I won’t have any truck with them.”
She took it wordlessly. She made as if to leave, then turned back. “And may I ask . . . how is your wife? Glad to be back at home, I should say.”
“She’s fine, thank you. Much—much more her old self,” he said. “It’s been a great help for her to be at home.”
She swallowed. “I’m very pleased to hear it.”
His attention was already elsewhere—he was flicking through the sales figures she had left for him. Her smile still painted on her face, Moira Parker clasped her paperwork to her chest and marched back out to her desk.
Old friends, he had said. Nothing too challenging. Two of those friends were familiar now, having visited Jennifer in the hospital and again once she had returned home. Yvonne Moncrieff, an elongated, dark-haired woman in her early thirties, had been her friend since they had become close neighbors in Medway Square. She had a dry, sardonic manner, which stood in direct contrast to that of the other friend, Violet, whom Yvonne had known at school and who seemed to accept the other’s cutting humor and droll put-downs as her due.
Jennifer had struggled initially to catch the shared references, to gauge any significance from the names they bandied between them, but she had felt at ease in their company. She was learning to trust her gut reactions to people: memories could be lodged in places other than the mind.
“I wish I could lose my memory,” Yvonne had said, when Jennifer confessed how strange she had felt on waking up in the hospital. “I’d walk off into the sunset. Forget I ever married Francis in the first place.” She had popped over to reassure Jennifer that all was in order. It was to be a “quiet” dinner party, but as the afternoon had worn on, Jennifer had become almost paralyzed with nerves.
“I don’t know why you’re flapping, darling. Your parties are legendary.” She perched on the bed, as Jennifer wriggled in and out of a succession of dresses.
“Yes. But for what?” She tried to rearrange her bust inside a dress. She seemed to have lost a little weight in the hospital, and the front puckered unattractively.
Yvonne laughed. “Oh, relax. You don’t have to do a thing, Jenny. The marvelous Mrs. C will have done you proud. The house looks beautiful. You look stunning. Or, at least, you will if you put some damned clothes on.” She kicked off her shoes and lifted her long, elegant legs onto the bed. “I’ve never understood your enthusiasm for entertaining. Don’t get me wrong, I do love going to parties, but all that organizing.” She was examining her nails. “Parties are for going to, not for having. That’s what my mother said, and frankly, it still stands. I’ll buy myself a new dress or two, but canapés and seating plans? Ugh.”
Jennifer wrestled the neckline into shape and stared at herself in the mirror, turning to the left, then the right. She held out her arm. The scar was raised and still angrily pink. “Do you think I should wear long sleeves?”
Yvonne sat up and peered at her. “Does it hurt?”
“My whole arm aches, and the doctor gave me some pills. I just wondered whether the scar would be a bit . . .”
“Distracting?” Yvonne’s nose wrinkled. “You probably would do better in long sleeves, darling. Just until it fades a little. And it’s so cold.”
Jennifer was startled by her friend’s blunt assessment but not offended. It was the first straightforward thing anyone had said to her since she had come home.
She stepped out of the dress, went to her wardrobe, and rifled through it until she found a sheath in raw silk. She pulled it off the rail and gazed at it. It was so flashy. Since she had been at home she had wanted to hide in tweed, subtle grays and brown, yet these jeweled dresses kept leaping out at her. “Is this the kind of thing?” she said.