Levelling The Score. PENNY JORDAN
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Her flat was small and pin-neat, furnished by ‘bargains’ she had acquired through her job as personal assistant to a very dynamic and go-ahead interior designer.
If she had had any sense, any sense at all, she would have refused to help Susie. Simon Townsend could be a very powerful adversary indeed, as she already had good cause to know. She closed her eyes and lay back in the comfortable chair.
The summer she had been fifteen, she had fallen madly and very obviously in love with Simon Townsend, but it had very plainly been made clear just how impossible were the foolish dreams she had been dreaming …
Her adolescent crush on him had faded as adolescent crushes do, but it had left behind a sense of bitterness and resentment, and antagonism towards him that Jenna had never lost, and which had made her weary and cautious in all her dealings with his sex.
In her heart of hearts she suspected that she had agreed to help Susie in her crazy plan because she would enjoy the opportunity of thwarting Simon.
For all her dizziness, Susie could be extremely astute. If she said that her brother was trying to foist one of his friends off on her, then she was probably quite right. Simon had always had a decided inclination to meddle in the affairs of others, an irritating ‘I know best’ attitude it would give her a great deal of pleasure to squash.
This time he wouldn’t be dealing with an immature, gauche fifteen-year-old, but a woman of twenty-four, well able to use the brain God had given her, and not afraid of meeting any man on equal terms.
The phone call which had preceded Susie’s early morning Saturday visit had disrupted her entire day. She had planned to go home and see her grandmother, but now it was too late.
The Gloucestershire village where Susie’s parents and Jenna’s grandmother lived was a quiet, remote place, but she often missed it. Susie had been right when she claimed that she had always imagined that Jenna would settle down first.
As a teenager, she had wanted nothing more than to fall in love, marry and raise a family in the familiar environment of the village. But teenagers grew up, and now the idea of marriage had lost a good deal of its lustre.
She had seen too many of her friends’ marriages dissolve under the pressure of modern-day living, and had grown to cherish her single state. No one in her wide circles of friends knew of the money she was carefully hoarding away, against the day when she could fulfil at least a part of her teenage dream.
When she had saved enough it was her ambition to return home; to buy herself a small cottage close to her grandmother’s, and start up her own business, offering a combination of services for which she knew there was a need, such as house-and pet-sitting, book-keeping and typing, gardening and cleaning.
It was her ambition to build up a private agency that would provide all of these services and more, and she was convinced that she could do it, once she had enough capital behind her.
Not even Susie knew what she was planning. To Susie her dreams would be mundane, boring even; Susie loved the bright lights of London, the glamour of the fashion world in which she moved. As an assistant director on a glossy magazine, she lived every minute of her life to the full and wouldn’t be able to understand Jenna’s desire to return home.
Her flat was on the ground floor of a small terraced house which belonged to a friend—a photographer who travelled a lot, and who was only too relieved to have a tenant as careful and reliable as Jenna.
The house possessed a small backyard, which she had transformed with several coats of white paint and a collection of terracotta pots and trellising, holding up a collection of climbing plants. She spent most of the afternoon pottering around in it, enjoying the warmth of the early summer’s day.
Craig was due back tomorrow. He had been working in the Seychelles on a fashion feature for Susie’s magazine.
A charismatic, sometimes moody man in his late thirties, he was involved in what seemed to Jenna to be a hopeless relationship with a married woman who was tied to a physically handicapped husband. But then, who was she to criticise other people’s relationships, she asked herself with a graceful shrug, when she deliberately held herself back from any form of emotional commitment?
Was it prudence that made her so cautious, or was it fear? She pushed the thought aside, not wanting to give in to the mood of introspection slowly enveloping her.
Crossly she blamed Simon Townsend for her unwanted thoughts. He had always had a disturbing effect on her, and apparently it hadn’t lessened.
If she had been so inclined, she could have been wryly amused by Susie’s defection. Her friend had played the doting sister for so long that Jenna had long ago given up trying to make her see that her adored brother was only a man.
On her way round the pretty town garden, she did pause to wonder how Simon himself would react to Susie’s rebellion. His opinions had held sway with his younger sister for so long, it would probably come as an almighty shock.
Susie’s parents, although darlings, were almost as much in awe of their elder child as Susie herself.
His father was a placid, kindly man, now retired, who had once taught at a local public school. His mother was the stronger character of the two, but without the bruising acidity of her eldest child.
As a teenager, still raw from the loss of her own parents, Jenna had grown to look on Susie’s mother and father as sort of adopted parents, just as Susie had come to look on Jenna’s grandmother as a member of her family.
A cool breeze sprang up, bringing goose-bumps to her arms. She went inside, showered and changed out of her jeans and T-shirt into a silky wraparound dress that emphasised the softness of her curves. Her hair hung down on to her shoulders, curling softly, her face—without make-up—oddly young and vulnerable. As she walked through her small sitting-room her eyes fell to the small tape recorder on the table beside the phone.
Well, Susie had made her escape. It just remained now for her to convince Simon that his sister was safely ensconced with her.
She was just about to start making her own early evening meal, when she remembered that she had promised to stock up Craig’s fridge. Susie’s visit had completely banished her promise from her mind. She glanced at her watch, and breathed a faint sigh of relief. There was still time to get what she needed from the shops.
A row of lock-up garages to the rear of the garden held her small Mini. She drove it with the same care and caution she applied to everything else.
Craig was a lazy cook, and so she stocked up on pizza, and a selection of cold meats and other delicacies from his favourite delicatessen.
If he followed his normal routine, the moment he returned he would head for his darkroom, where he would develop the prints he had taken on location, and he would only emerge once he had finished working, whatever time of the night or day that might be.
There was no sign of him when she got back and, using the key he had given her, she went up to his flat and put away her purchases, pausing to open the windows to let in some fresh air before going back down to her own domain.
The phone was ringing as she walked in, and she picked it up without thinking, half anticipating hearing Craig’s voice announcing that he was at the airport and on his way back.
Instead, Simon’s crisp, authoritative voice assaulted her unprepared ear-drum, her whole body tensing as she gripped the receiver.
‘Jenna, I understand Susie’s staying with you?’
‘Yes … yes, she is …’
‘Could I have a word with her?’
She stared blankly at the cream-painted wall of her sitting-room, and then thankfully remembered Susie’s tape.
‘Yes … Yes, I’ll just go and get her.’
She fumbled with the ‘on’ switch of the tape, and accidentally knocked it to the floor. When she picked it up the