The Unmarried Husband

His voice was icy cold, as was everything about him.

Jessica looked at him and felt a shiver of apprehension which she immediately slapped down.

His was a face, she thought, designed to stop people in their tracks. Everything about it was arresting. It wasn’t simply a matter of strikingly well-formed features. More what they revealed. An impression of vast self-assurance and intelligence. He was the sort of man, she thought, who was accustomed to wielding power, to having orders obeyed, to snapping his fingers and having people jump to attention. He was also younger than she had anticipated. Late thirties at the most.

What a shame he obviously couldn’t keep a handle on his own son.

Jessica smiled politely, keeping her thoughts to herself.

‘I take it you’re Anthony Newman?’

‘You haven’t answered my questions.’

‘I’m sorry to barge in on you like this, but I thought that the sooner we had a little chat, the better.’

‘If you don’t answer me right now,’ he said softly, leaning forward, ‘then I’m afraid I’m going to have to call a security guard and have you removed from the premises. How did you get in here?’

‘I took the lift up and walked down the corridor.’

‘I don’t have time for games.’

Neither, thought Jessica icily, do you have time for your son. Which is why I’m here in the first place.

‘I tried phoning you last night, but I was told that you were away on business and wouldn’t be back until this morning.’

‘Did Harry tell you where I worked?’

‘The man who answered the telephone did, yes.’

He didn’t say anything, but there was a look in his eyes that didn’t augur well for Harry’s fate.

What would he do? Jessica wondered anxiously. Sack the hapless Harry on the spot? Roast him over an open spit? Anything was possible. The Newman man looked like someone who ate raw meat for breakfast.

‘You’re not going to…do anything…are you?’ she asked, worriedly. ‘I mean…it wasn’t his fault… I implied that you and I were acquaintances…well, quite good friends, actually. I told him that you would be pleasantly surprised to see me…after all this time…delighted, in fact…’ Her voice trailed off, along with a fair amount of her momentum.

‘Now, why would you imply anything of the sort?’ He looked at her coldly and assessingly, and whereas anyone else might well have been trying to cast their mind back, wondering perhaps whether they knew who she was, she could tell that that wasn’t on his mind at all. This man knew quite well that he had never seen her in his life before.

Impressions of him, she realised, were mounting by the second, and none of them were going any distance towards putting her at her ease.

‘It seemed the quickest route to getting to see you,’ she said flatly, and his eyes narrowed.

‘Well, well, well. You don’t beat about the bush, do you?’

‘I have no reason to.’ She didn’t care for the look in his eyes, but was damned if she was going to be intimidated. She wasn’t easily frightened. Her past had strengthened her, and if he wanted to play mind games with her then he was in for a surprise.

‘If you’re after money, then I’m afraid you’ve taken the wrong route.’ He glanced down at some documents lying on his desk. Having made his deductions as to her reason for being in his office, his curiosity was giving way to indifference. In a minute, she suspected, he would look at his watch, yawn, then stand up and politely usher her to the door.

‘My company already contributes a sizeable amount towards charities.’ He linked his fingers together, dragged his eyes away from the document, and looked her over. ‘And a little word of advice here—if you want someone to give you a donation, the very last thing you should do is connive your way into their offices and try to catch them off guard. People generally don’t care for the element of deviousness involved.’

Jessica found that she was leaning forward in her chair.

‘I am not here in connection with a request for money, Mr Newman.’

His eyebrows flew up at that. ‘Then why are you here?’ Mild curiosity there, she saw. He probably thought that she would get back to the subject of money in a while, after a few byroads to try and divert his attention. A naturally suspicious mind.

‘I’m here about your son.’

That worked. It wiped all expression off his face. It was as though shutters had suddenly been pulled down over his eyes.

‘And you are…?’

‘Jessica Hirst.’

He frowned. ‘Well, Mrs Hirst…’

‘Miss.’

‘Well, Miss Hirst, whatever you want to discuss can be discussed on the school premises. If you’d care to see one of my secretaries, she’ll fix you an appointment. Frankly, I do think that it’s a bit unorthodox to barge your way into my offices.’ His frown deepened. ‘Why did you involve yourself in a ruse to get this address? Surely it’s on the school file?’

‘Most probably,’ Jessica said calmly. ‘But, since I’m not a teacher at your son’s school, that wouldn’t have done me much good, would it?’

‘Then who the heck are you?’

Your son is a corrupting influence on my daughter.

Your son is leading my daughter astray.

I’m here to ask you to keep your wretched son away from my daughter.

‘My daughter is Lucy Hirst. Perhaps your son Mark has mentioned her to you?’

‘What the hell has he gone and done?’ His voice was as hard as steel. ‘No, Miss Hirst,’ he said heavily, ‘Mark hasn’t said anything to me about your daughter. At least, not that I can recall.’ He raked his fingers through his hair and looked at her without flinching.

‘Nothing at all?’ This time it was her turn to frown, and to wonder whether she hadn’t read the signs all the wrong way. Perhaps his name hadn’t been dropped into conversations as regularly as she had thought. Maybe she had been mistaken, and the boy was only some kind of acquaintance. Perhaps Lucy’s change of attitude had nothing to do with any malign influence at all, and was simply a matter of hormones and puberty kicking in later than she had expected. She had no experience of these things. She could hardly recall her own growing pains, although there had been no room in her disintegrating family life for growing pains to have much space.

‘As I said—not that I recall,’ he said with a hint of impatience.

‘Lucy’s mentioned him off and on for months…’

‘Well, if you tell me that my son knows your daughter, Miss Hirst, then I’ll take your word for it,’ he said, by way of response to that remark, and Jessica, who had been lost in her own thoughts, trying to work out whether she had made an utter fool of herself in storming into this man’s office full of accusations and demands for a solution, looked fully at him now.

‘Are you telling me that you wouldn’t know whether your son was seeing my daughter because you don’t communicate with him?’

She sounded like a lawyer, she realised. Working alongside them must have rubbed off on her in more ways than one.

‘Listen to me, Miss Hirst, if you think—’

The telephone buzzed, and he picked up the receiver and informed his secretary that no further calls were to be put through.

‘Look,’ he said, standing up, ‘this isn’t the right place to have this kind of…conversation. Ellie’s not going to be able to keep all my callers at bay.’

He was very tall, and without the desk acting as a shield his presence was even more overwhelming. She discovered that she was watching him, taking in the lean muscularity of his build, the casual air of self-assurance.

‘I’ll get my chauffeur to take us to the Savoy. We can discuss this there over a cup of coffee and rather more privacy. But I warn you now that my time is limited.’

Jessica nodded. She had planned on taking full control of the proceedings, as she had been taking full control of everything from as far back as she could remember.

Now she felt as though the rug had been pulled from under her feet, but with such dexterity that she was left feeling not unbalanced by the manoeuvre—more disconcerted by the speed.

‘Coming?’ he asked from the door, and she nodded again and stood up.

CHAPTER TWO

WHAT did he mean that his time was limited? Did that imply just right now, or could she read that as a general statement? She should have picked him up on that! Why on earth hadn’t she? Didn’t he see that this was just the problem? Limited time equalled maladjusted son, who was leading her precious daughter astray!

Jessica felt as though she was losing any advantage she might have had over the proceedings.

Ever since she had stepped into the man’s oversized office she had found herself confronted with someone who, even momentarily disconcerted, as he had been, was so accustomed to taking charge of things that he had automatically taken control of the situation. Leaving her utterly lost for words.

And now here she was, with a low table separating them and extravagantly laid out with pots of percolated coffee, cups and saucers and a plateful of extraordinarily mouth-watering little bites.

‘So,’ he said, crossing his legs and looking at her, ‘why have you seen fit to storm into my office and confront me? You might as well tell me right now what my son has been up to. If it’s what I think it is, then I’m sure we can settle on some sort of amicable arrangement.’

The wintry grey eyes revealed nothing. There was absolutely nothing about him that encouraged her to relax in any way at all, and she had to resist the impulse not to give in to an embarrassing display of nervous mannerisms. Her self-confidence had ebbed enough as it was, and she was determined that he did not become aware of that.

‘Why do you think I came to see you, Mr Newman?’ she asked, throwing the question back at him.

‘I have neither the time nor the inclination for games, Miss Hirst. I assumed that you were going to tell me precisely that. Wasn’t that your reason for barging unannounced into my office?’ She stared at him without flinching, and eventually he asked, impatiently, ‘Has my son got your daughter into any sort of trouble? Is that it?’

Jessica didn’t answer. She decided that the best course of action was to get him to plough his way through this one instead of encouraging her to do all the talking. If a solution was to be engineered, it would have to be a two-way road; he would have to be prepared to travel his fair share of the distance.

‘Is she pregnant?’ he asked bluntly, and Jessica could feel hot colour rush into her face. The question, with all its implications, was almost an insult.

No, Lucy was not pregnant! She knew that. Why would this man jump to that conclusion? The answer came to her almost as soon as she had asked herself the question—because it was the most obvious cause of concern to a mother. Because boys will be boys. He certainly didn’t seem to be shocked by the assumption.

‘And what exactly would your solution be if that were the case, Mr Newman?’

‘I’m a wealthy man, Miss Hirst. I would be prepared to accept any financial difficulties that might arise.’

‘In other words, she would be paid off.’

‘Naturally paternity would have to be proved.’

Was this how wealthy people operated? she wondered. Throw enough money at a problem and, hey presto, no more problem? His approach was so cold, so emotionless, that she could feel every muscle in her body tightening in anger.

‘That is, if she wanted to keep the baby at all. There are other options, as you well know.’

‘Abortion?’

‘You make it sound like a crime. But Mark is only seventeen years old, and your daughter… How old is she?’

‘Sixteen.’

‘Sixteen. Barely out of childhood herself. A baby could well ruin her life.’ For the first time he threw her a long, speculative look that took in everything, from the neat little blue dress, well tailored but beginning to show its age, to the blonde bob, to the flat sandals—her only pair of summer shoes, bought in a sale over two years ago. Her wardrobe wasn’t bulging at the seams, but everything in it was of good quality, made to last.

The only problem with that was that eventually those made to last items began looking a little stale. Right now she felt downright old-fashioned, and the reason, she knew, lay in those assessing grey eyes.

‘You barely look old enough to have a daughter of sixteen.’

‘What are you trying to say, Mr Newman?’

‘How old were you when you had her?’

‘That’s none of your business!’

‘You expect me to sit back in silence and allow you to lecture me on the behaviour of my son without asking you any questions?’ He poured himself a cup of coffee, sat back, and regarded her unsmilingly over the rim of the cup.

Jessica was deeply regretting her impulse to seek this man’s help. He had no intention of co-operating with her and he never would have. He was typical of that breed of person who throws money at their children and assumes that that does the trick. She had seen examples of them often enough where she worked. Parents with too much money and too little time, who sat upright on chairs in the law offices, bewildered by a child who had been brought in for driving a stolen car, or causing damage to property. How could he do this to us? was their invariable lament. After all we did for him!

‘Let’s just get one thing straight, Mr Newman.’ She refused to call him Anthony. ‘My daughter is not pregnant.’

‘Then why the hell didn’t—?’

‘I make that clear from the start?’ She looked at the unyielding face. ‘Because I was curious to hear precisely how you would have handled such a problem.’

‘And I take it from that stony expression on your face that my reply was not what you would have wanted to hear?’

‘Very good, Mr Newman.’

‘The name is Anthony! Will you stop calling me Mr Newman? I’m not conducting an interview for a job!’

Jessica reddened and looked away.

‘And what would have been your solution to that particular little problem, Miss Hirst? How would you have suggested that I deal with it?’

‘It’s irrelevant, since Lucy isn’t pregnant.’

‘Why don’t you answer my question?’ He leant forward, resting his elbows on his knees, and subjected her to intense, cool scrutiny. ‘I’m interested in your answer.’

‘I have no idea.’

‘Maybe you would have suggested that I encourage my son to adopt the mantle of fatherhood at the age of seventeen? Marriage as soon as possible?’

‘It’s always preferable for a child to have both parents.’

‘And does yours? I take it that she doesn’t, since you’re not a “Mrs”.’

‘No, there’s just me.’

‘What happened?’ he asked, after a while, and Jessica looked away, feeling cornered but not quite knowing how to extricate herself from the situation.

‘There was never a potential husband, if you must know.’

He didn’t say anything, and she could well imagine what sort of sordid possibilities were going through his head.

‘I’m afraid it just didn’t work out quite the way that I’d imagined it.’

‘I see.’

‘Do you, Mr Newman?’

‘Shall I tell you what I see, Miss Hirst?’ He paused, though not long enough for her to reply, then he leaned forward slightly, and his voice when he spoke was grim. ‘I see an anxious young mother who’s desperate that her daughter doesn’t repeat the same mistakes that she made. That’s fair enough, but I really don’t think that you’ve looked at the whole picture, have you? You’ve somehow got it into your head that my son is to blame for your daughter’s behaviour, and I’d be interested in finding out how you arrived at that conclusion.’

The tables had been turned. She had hoped to surprise this man into some sort of favourable response, or at least shared sympathy. But sympathy didn’t appear high on his list of virtues, and every word he had just spoken was tantamount to an attack.

‘I’m not blaming you in any way,’ Jessica informed him, her face burning with anger. She took a deep breath. She was here, he wasn’t going to suddenly vanish like a bad dream, and she might just as well make the best of the situation. ‘You’re right: I’m worried about my daughter and I’m desperate enough to approach someone I’ve never laid eyes on in my life before.’ Fortunately. ‘I don’t know that your son is responsible for Lucy’s change of attitude…’

‘But you’re more than willing to jump to the conclusion…’

‘I’ve put two and two together!’

‘And come up with…what…Miss Hirst? Three? Five? Sixteen?’

‘Maybe!” Jessica exploded, keeping her voice down, though she would have loved to yell her head off. ‘But then again maybe not! I’m willing to take the chance because I can see my daughter going off the rails bit by bit, and I have no idea how to stop the downward trend!’ Her jaw ached from anger and frustration, and a refusal to allow tears to blur the issue.

‘Over the past few months she’s changed,’ Jessica continued in a calmer tone. ‘Become difficult. More and more parties, sneaking back into the house at all odd hours. Her schoolwork’s taken a back seat. It’s only a question of time before her grades start to suffer.’ She looked him straight in the eye. ‘Lucy doesn’t have the advantages of money to tide her through, Mr Newman. She has her brains, but her brains are nothing without her willingness to use them, and right now I’m very much afraid that she might decide not to.’

‘What did you have in mind when you came to see me, Miss Hirst?’ The coldness had given way to something else, although for the life of her she didn’t know what. His expressions, she was fast realising, were difficult to read. He could be thinking anything. But at least he seemed prepared to hear her out.

‘I thought perhaps that you could have a word with your son, Mr Newman. I’ve tried talking to Lucy on numerous occasions, but she switches off.’

‘And you think that that would achieve anything?’

‘It would achieve more than what’s being achieved at the moment, Mr Newman. Right now, I’m more or less living on a battlefield. Occasionally there’s a cease-fire, but it never lasts very long, and they seem to be getting increasingly shorter.’

‘You still haven’t told me why you think my son’s responsible. Surely your daughter has lots of friends? How do you know that she isn’t being led astray by someone else?’

‘I know all of my daughter’s friends.’

‘All of them?’

‘To the best of my knowledge. I mean, obviously I have no definite proof that your son is behind Lucy’s change.’ In a court of law, she thought, I’d already have lost the case. ‘I haven’t overheard him forcing her to rebel, I haven’t found letters from him encouraging sabotage. But his name’s been on her lips ever since she started…ever since…this…problem arose.’

‘You make my son sound like some sort of subversive force to be reckoned with.’ He laughed shortly, as though the notion was utterly ridiculous. As though, she thought suddenly, he was vaguely contemptuous of his son. ‘Have you met him?’

‘No, but…’

‘Then you should reserve judgement until you do, Miss Hirst. What, incidentally, do you think is going on?’

‘I honestly don’t know,’ Jessica admitted. ‘It’s just that your son seems to be very influential over my daughter’s life at the moment.’

‘Do you think they’re sleeping together?’ he asked flatly, and she threw him a long, resentful stare.

‘It’s a possibility, I suppose.’ Not one that she was willing to indulge in, but the truth had to be faced.

‘Would your daughter tell you if they were?’

‘I’m not sure. I’d like to think that she would, but I really just don’t know.’ It all sounded so vague. Impulse had made her take action, but these questions made her realise that what she felt was so instinctive and nebulous that she could hardly blame him if he refused to cooperate. Aside from which, he was a father, after all, and no one liked the implication that their child was a corrupting influence, least of all when the implication came from a perfect stranger.

‘Maybe,’ she suggested helpfully, ‘you could just tell Mark to back away a little, leave her to get on with her life…?’

‘He’s seventeen years old,’ he told her. ‘He’s hardly likely to relish me telling him what he can and can’t do.’

‘You’re his father!’

‘That doesn’t necessarily mean that he’ll bow his head and listen to a word I say to him,’ he informed her tersely. ‘You’re an intelligent enough woman.’ He made it sound as though he had his suspicions about that. ‘I’m sure you know precisely what I’m trying to say.’

‘That you won’t do a damn thing to help. That you’ll allow your son to ruin Lucy’s life.’

“‘Ruin”’s taking it a bit far, isn’t it?’

‘No, it is not!’ This time it was Jessica’s turn to sit forward, her hands tightly clenched. She had first-hand experience of what happened when your life suddenly veered off at a tangent and you were left to pick up the pieces. Mark and her daughter might or might not be sleeping together, and if they weren’t then she was going to make damn sure that they didn’t. Accidents happened, and accidents could change the whole course of your life.

‘Look,’ she said, in a more controlled voice, ‘all I’m asking you to do is have a chat with your son—tell him to wait until Lucy gets a little older if he wants to see her.’

‘Maybe send him off to a boarding school somewhere just to make sure?’

‘I could do without your sarcasm, Mr Newman.’

‘And how do you intend to control your own daughter? How do you know that if Mark obliges and disappears from the scene altogether she isn’t going to find another focus of attention?’

It was a sensible enough question, but Jessica still resented him asking it. She stared at him speechlessly, and he looked back without flinching.

‘Well?’ he asked silkily.

‘Of course I don’t know!’ she exploded furiously. ‘But I prefer to cross that bridge when I get to it.’

They both sat back and regarded one another like adversaries sizing up the competition.

‘I’ll compromise with you,’ he said eventually. ‘I’ll talk to Mark, with you and your daughter present. That way there’ll be less of an atmosphere of confrontation and more an air of discussion.’

Jessica stared at him. She hadn’t banked on this solution being proffered, and she suspected, judging from the look on his face, that he had only suggested it on the spur of the moment, to get her off his back.

‘Would they agree to that?’ she asked finally, and he shrugged.

‘Possibly not.’

‘In which case, at least you can say that you tried…?’

‘That’s right,’ he said with staggering honesty.

‘Where do you want this meeting to take place?’ Jessica asked, making her mind up on the spot. What he offered was better than nothing.

‘I can reserve a private room at a restaurant in Hampstead. Thursday. Eight o’clock. It’s called Chez Jacques, and I know the owner.’

‘I can’t afford that restaurant, Mr Newman.’ She voiced the protest without even thinking about it, but she had read reviews of the place and the prices quoted were way out of her reach.

‘Fine.’ He shrugged and began standing up, and she glared at him.

‘All right.’

He sat back down and looked at her.

‘But we don’t make it an arranged meeting,’ she said, deciding that his manipulation had gone far enough. ‘I don’t want Lucy to think that I’ve been manoeuvring behind her back…’

‘Which you have been…’

She ignored that. ‘So we meet by accident. It’ll be tricky persuading her to go there, but I’ll make damn sure that we turn up.’

‘Why should it be tricky? Doesn’t she like going to restaurants? Is this part of the teenager phase you say she’s going through?’

‘Lucy and I don’t eat out very often, Mr Newman— Anthony. I take her somewhere on her birthday, and we usually go out on mine, but it’s not a habit…’

He frowned, trying to puzzle this one out. ‘You surely can’t be that impoverished, if your daughter’s at private school…?’