Whirlwind (18 page)

His hand dropped, he stared at her as if bewildered, then turned and walked out of the flat, banging the door behind him. He was angry with her because she had made him see the plain truth. He was angry with her because she wouldn't let him have his cake and eat it. If she hadn't sent him away altogether, he would have kept trying to seduce her into bed with him, and she was too much in love to be sure of her own will-power. He might have succeeded one day, and that would have been a disaster for her.

She was achingly sorry for him; Laird was in an emotional muddle and hurting himself as much as anyone else. But she had to protect herself; she had already suffered enough over him, she couldn't bear any more.

T
HE PLAY'S
run ended a fortnight later and the cast separated with a mixture of regret and relief; some of them would meet again when rehearsals began for the West End run, but the others were either still hunting for new jobs or had been lucky enough to get work and eager to start. All of them had enjoyed doing the play, but they were all looking forward to a rest from the daily performances. Long runs were tiring and in the end could be boring; they hadn't reached that stage quite yet, but Dame Flossie said she had begun to get restless.

'I'm going away to the sun for a few weeks, dears. See you in July,' she said at the party to celebrate the last night, and later asked Anna if she had fixed up any work yet.

'My agent says there's nothing around, but Joey is sending me along to an advertising agency on Monday. They're looking for someone to do a TV commercial. Lots of competition, of course, but who knows? I might be lucky, it's worth a try.'

'Oh, always have to go, darling, you don't know what you can do until you've tried,' Dame Flossie agreed.

Patti was going down to Sussex to spend two weeks with her parents since she would not be starting at the drama school until the new term in September, and she felt like spending some time in the country.

'Come with me, there's plenty of room,' she had told Anna, who had been tempted but after a struggle with herself had refused, very regretfully. Her rent for the riverside flat was heavily subsidised by the Montgomery family; she did not want to accept any more at their hands.

'I'd better stay in town in case I get a call from my agent,' she excused herself, and Patti grimaced.

'I suppose so. It would have been fun, though. Will you come down and visit at weekends, Anna? There are fast trains and we'll meet you at the station in Hastings and drive you to the village, and get you back.'

'I'll try,' Anna conceded, but secretly she preferred not to run the risk of seeing Laird on one of these weekends. 'I'll let you know,' she added hurriedly. 'At the moment I don't know what I'll be doing.'

She had not set eyes on Laird since the warm May afternoon when they quarrelled in the flat. Anna had told him to stay away from her and he had obviously taken her at her word. She kept telling herself it was a great relief, she didn't want to see him, but she knew she lied.

She had missed him every minute of every day and ached to see him—just once, even at a distance. It disturbed her to hunger for a glimpse of him. but she couldn't reason herself out of it. He had embedded himself under her skin, a sharp, nagging thorn, she could not cut out. The harder she tried, the deeper she seemed to drive it.

Patti left for Sussex on Sunday, catching a train before lunch, and Anna had the flat to herself for the first time. The pleasure she felt was a little spoilt because it rained all that afternoon, but on the Monday the weather turned hot and humid. For her visit to the advertising agency she wore a new white cotton dress, crisp and cool and elegantly styled. She wore her hair casually but had spent a long time coaxing it into exactly the shape she wanted, and her long, slim legs looked their best in filmy nylons. Her fragile white high-heeled sandals were Patti s; she had lent them to Anna for the occasion, and they were perfect with the new dress.

As she had expected, there was a number of other girls waiting in the reception area, all of them looking more glamorous than Anna felt. Their eyes skimmed over her hurriedly, shrewdly, assessing her as a threat. They gave her bright, false smiles, tension in the lines around their eyes and mouths. Anna hated that aspect of her profession—auditions, competition, the emotional see-saw of hope and rejection. The room reverberated with nerves scraped raw, the voices too lively, the faces unconvincingly cheerful.

Why do we do it? she brooded as she sat on the rather hard chair, her body assuming a smooth pose which was far from relaxing. From time to time someone would wander past into an inner room in which the interviews were being held and all the girls would sit up, smiling, willing the man to notice them. One by one the girls were called. Anna felt like going home when her name was suddenly called and she got up, flustered, dropping the folder of photographs and press notices that her agent had told her to bring along.

The interview was short and, she found, humiliating. The three men behind the desk looked at her folder, asked her questions, made her stand up and turn around, asked her to walk across the room, then back, and stared and stared in a way which set her teeth on edge.

'Well, we'll test you,' one of them said, a pencil between his teeth, flicking over the pages of a thick diary. 'Let's see . . . the studio is free on Thursday at three. OK for you?'

'Yes,' Anna said at once. 'What will you want me to do?'

'We'll tell you then. Wear casuals—jeans will do, or dungarees. We'll supply the clothes for the actual filming, of course, but-we'd like to get an idea of how you look in casual gear.'

'What sort of commercial is it?' asked Anna.

'Didn't your agent tell you? Oh, no, Joey Ross suggested you, didn't he?' The men glanced at each other, grinning in a way Anna resented. 'The product's unimportant. We're just going to test you to find out if you're photogenic. Three o'clock, Thursday, at our studios—the secretary outside will give you the address. Don't be late or you'll miss your chance. We have a lot of tests to do that day.'

On the way back to her flat Anna pondered on the grin the men had exchanged—had they decided that Joey was pushing her because she was his latest girlfriend? She should have realised people might jump to that conclusion.

It was annoying to know they thought that, but it wasn't true, so it didn't really matter, she told herself, but in spite of that it niggled, and she was in a defensive, uptight mood on the following Thursday when she went along to the studio at which she was to be tested. It had been a considerable relief to be told to wear casual clothes, since she had little else; she had put on jeans and a cotton T-shirt, getting a number of glances from men in the street as she walked past. Anna ignored them all, eaten with nerves over the test she was to do.

There was a very pretty girl at the reception desk in the studio. She gave Anna a stare as sweet as icecream and as cold.

'Can I help you?'

'I'm here to do a film test,' Anna mentioned the name of the man who had sent her and the girl continued to stare, picking up the telephone with one hand.

'Mr Tomkins? She's here.'

Anna heard the voice at the other end asked brusquely, 'Who?'

'The girl for the Montgomery test,' the receptionist said.

Anna turned to stone on the spot. From a long distance she heard the receptionist talking; Anna just stared at her pink mouth moving, as if she was trying to lip-read.

The girl got up, behind her desk, backing with an alarmed expression on her face. Suddenly her voice came into Anna's ears, which had been deaf for a long time.

'Look, are you crazy or something?'

That was when Anna heard herself muttering. 'Bastard, bastard . . . ' She shut her mouth hurriedly and turned and ran, leaving the receptionist gazing after her, no doubt with relief.

Anna only had one idea in her head; she wanted to get to the Montgomery building and get her hands round his throat and squeeze until he stopped breathing. How dared he set that up? No wonder the two advertising agency men had grinned at eachother. They weren't guessing, they
knew
that Laird Montgomery had fixed it for her to get a TV commercial, and she couldn't blame them for thinking his reasons were purely personal, because Anna knew they were. Laird was still trying to buy her. The price kept going up; she ought to be flattered about that. First red roses, then a luxury flat and now a part in a TV commercial. For his firm, of course! They didn't normally advertise on television, or, at least, she had never seen an advertisement —had he set one up simply to trap her? It would be an expensive business for him, but then Laird was rich, he could afford to indulge his whims.

How dared he? she thought again with yearning violence. I'll kill him. How many other people know now? The people at the advertising agency, at the studio . . . they'll talk, of course. They're bound to! It would get around and a gossip columnist might pick it up and print it. Oh, God, I'll kill him, Anna promised herself, as she jumped into a taxi and gave the address of his office building.

Traffic was heavy, people making their way back to their offices after late lunches sat in taxis simmering with irritation, one eye on a watch while they stared at the other taxis jammed in around them. It took Anna half an hour to get to Laird's office block.

She shot through the huge plate-glass doors and was at' once confronted by a man in gold-braided uniform. 'Can I help you, miss?'

'I want to see Mr Montgomery,' Anna told him through her teeth.

She was surprised when he did not seem surprised. 'Yes, miss,' he told her blandly. 'Will you come this way?'

Suspiciously Anna followed him across the marble floor, her footsteps echoing and bouncing off marble walls and a high, white ceiling, into a lift. She watched him press the button. They were going to the floor just below the penthouse, all right. The lift shot upwards and Anna frowned, her mind working at the speed of light.

Her arrival was not unexpected. Laird had known she would come here. How? Her eyes hunted around the lift, her brows knitted. Of course, the studio must have rung the advertising agency and they must have rung Laird and he had guessed she would rush round here, burning with fury. He had told his doorman to watch for her and bring her to him. It was another trap!

'I've changed my mind,' she said to the startled doorman, her hand shooting out to press the button for the ground floor.

'Careful, miss!' the man said, barring her way.

'I want to go back down!'

The lift doors opened and Laird stood there. Anna backed away into the furthest corner of the lift. 'Will you please take me down again?' she said coldly to the doorman.

He was already walking out of the lift in obedience to Laird's jerk of the head. Anna leapt to the button panel, but too late. Laird was in the lift with her and the lift doors were closing.

'I will not go to the penthouse!' she hissed between her teeth.

Laird's hand hovered over the button; he stared at her, those grey eyes darkened with some emotion, the black pupils dilated and glittering. He was in his formal city clothes—dark jacket, pinstriped trousers, highly polished black shoes, a dark tie on a crisp white shirt. He looked expensive and exclusive and a million light years out of her orbit. She wished she had never met him; she dragged her eyes away from him because it hurt to look at him.

'Either we talk in the penthouse or my office —make up your mind!' he said, and the deep tones of his voice did something drastic to her heartbeat.

'Don't give me orders!' she muttered, her eyes lowered so that she wouldn't be exposed to the danger of seeing him.

'You came here to see me. What did you want to say?' He sounded so cool; the bare-faced effrontery almost took her breath away. Almost, but not quite.

'You know very well what I came here to say!' she burst out, shaking with fury. 'How could you do it? I've never been so humiliated in my life!'

'I only wanted to help!' Laird said, and the defensive note in his voice did nothing to soothe her, but while she was choosing the right words to throw back at him, the lift suddenly began to move.

Anna lurched sideways and Laird caught her, his arm going round her waist. She slapped his hand down, fizzing with rage.

'What did you do? Where's the lift going?'

He looked up at the illuminated numerals above the door. 'Down,' he said drily. 'Somebody must have rung for it on a lower floor.'

As he said that the lift came to a halt, the doors opened and two men walked in, glancing at Laird and hurriedly smiling.

"Afternoon, sir.' They were obviously surprised to see him.

Laird answered calmly, and the lift moved down again to the ground floor. The two men politely stood back to let Laird walk out first, but he shook his head.

'I'm going back up.'

Anna started to walk forward; he grabbed the belt of her jeans and held on to it, his hand hidden behind her back.

'We're both going back up,' he told the men, who were looking at her uncertainly. They left the lift and Laird leaned forward to press a button; the doors closed and the lift set off again.

Anna could feel Laird's cool fingers in the small of her back, their tips brushing her naked spine. 'Will you let go of me?' she asked icily, pulling. He let go of her belt.

'Anna, I had the purest motives,' he said quietly, and she laughed incredulously.

'What? You don't really expect me to believe that—after your other attempts to buy me?'

'That was before I knew you,' he said as the lift stopped again and the doors opened. She knew they were on the penthouse floor before she saw the familiar corridor.

'If we're going to talk, we'll talk in your office,' she said, moving towards the panel to take them down there, but Laird was too quick for her. He rushed her, as if this was a rugby scrum, took hold of her waist and lifted her out bodily, kicking uselessly, but with such force that Laird lost his footing and they both sprawled on the corridor carpet. He fell on top of her, his weight pinning her there, breathless and infuriated.