LITMIR.BIZ

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and her two cousins had left boarding-school, while the other two had gone into higher business training, Ralph Proctor had almost begged Yancie to stay home and take over the running of his over-large house—her mother had sanctioned it, because it was what she termed ‘not a proper job’. ‘With that daughter of his picking fault all the time, you know as well as I that he couldn’t keep a housekeeper for five minutes. And Estelle won’t want to take over—the only comfort that jealous madam’s interested in, is her own.’

      ‘What shall I do?’

      ‘What do you want to do?’

      Yancie thought about it. She loved her stepfather dearly, but… ‘I don’t want to go back,’ she realised. ‘Estelle has never been the easiest person to live with; after that…’

      ‘You don’t have to go back,’ Delia Alford assured her firmly, going on, everything cut and dried to her way of thinking, ‘You’re more than welcome to live here with me, you know that. Though Astra will want you to move in with her. She has more than enough room at her flat, and you know Fennia would be delighted for you to move in with them too.’

      The flat her two cousins lived in belonged to Astra’s father in actual fact, but he preferred to live in Barbados rather than the elegant apartment which was in a smart part of London. Astra had welcomed Fennia living with her, since Christmas—only a few weeks ago—when Fennia’s mother had caught the older woman’s latest boyfriend with his arms around Fennia and had chosen to see it as her daughter leading him on. She had, not too politely, thrown Fennia out.

      Yancie was in the middle of saying that she’d give Astra a ring, and also that since she just couldn’t possibly touch another penny of her stepfather’s money she would get a job, when her cousin Greville arrived on one of his unscheduled visits to see his mother.

      ‘Little Yancie Dawkins!’ he smiled, having greeted his mother, opening his arms wide for Yancie the way he had since the days when she was a toddler.

      Yancie went over to her half-cousin, who was nearing forty and a most reliable figure in her somewhat trauma-ridden life. Greville gave her a hug and a kiss, and then asked what was this diabolical talk he’d overheard about her getting a job.

      Over a cup of coffee Yancie and his mother filled him in on the happenings of that morning. ‘I should have done something about a job before this,’ Yancie realised.

      ‘You know your mother’s not going to like it, don’t you?’ Greville commented. ‘She’ll give both you and Ralph hell!’

      ‘Oh, heck, I never thought about my mother,’ Yancie answered, feeling suddenly wretched. It was significant, she supposed, that Aunt Delia had not suggested she might make her home with her mother. The novelty of having a little girl, a white-haired child, had soon worn off. Yancie and her two cousins, who had been similar hindrances to the respective mothers, were, at the age of seven, sent off to boarding-school.

      Yancie drove automatically as she recalled how her father had died in a skiing accident and how, although he had left her mother well provided for, it hadn’t taken her mother long to run through his fortune. To find herself a job had simply never entered Ursula Dawkins’ head. She had instead, after having affairs with several possibles, elected to marry money in the person of Ralph Proctor.

      Yancie, on her holiday visits home, had learned to greatly care for Ralph Proctor, and he in turn had grown very fond of her. Too fond, anyhow, to consider allowing Yancie to live anywhere but in his home after the inevitable happened and his marriage broke down. Which was quite all right by Ursula Proctor, who walked off with a very handsome divorce settlement without the encumbrance of a too beautiful ash-blonde daughter to cramp her style.

      That wouldn’t stop her mother, Yancie fretted, from attempting to make her life, and Ralph’s life, a misery should she learn that not only was her daughter no longer under Ralph Proctor’s roof, but was actually working.

      Although on that fateful day she had left her stepfather’s home, Yancie had had no idea what work she could do. ‘The thing is, I’m not properly trained for anything in particular,’ she explained to her aunt and half-cousin. ‘I can housekeep, I suppose, but…’

      ‘You can’t do that!’ Delia Alford stated categorically.

      ‘It’s all I know,’ Yancie confessed.

      ‘Nonsense!’ her aunt declared stoutly. ‘You can drive, and you can…’

      ‘There’s a driving job vacant at Addison Kirk,’ Greville chipped in, and halted when both his mother and cousin looked at him. ‘But you wouldn’t want to do that…’

      ‘Oh, yes, I would!’ Yancie jumped at the chance.

      ‘Hey! I wasn’t serious!’ Greville protested.

      ‘I am,’ Yancie answered.

      ‘I’m not sure they want a woman driver…’ he began to prevaricate. Though when his two female relatives looked at him askance he had the grace to grin as he conceded, ‘But, perhaps, in these times of equal opportunities, it’s time they had one.’

      Greville then went on to outline how one of the senior drivers had retired at the end of December and how his replacement hadn’t stayed in the job longer than a week, and Aunt Delia beamed. She was very proud of her son; he, as his father had been before him, was on the board of Addison Kirk.

      ‘That’s settled, then,’ she stated, and, smiling at her son, she added, ‘What’s the point of you being on the board if you can’t give your little cousin a helping hand?’

      His ‘little cousin’ was five feet eight, but as she looked uncertainly at him so he too smiled. ‘Indeed,’ he agreed, ‘what point?’

      And so, after the formality of an interview—the outcome of which she knew in advance—Yancie had got the job. As to the politics of the matter, Greville had instructed the head of personnel to make no written mention of his interest, and Greville—while certain his cousin would fare well with her fellow workers—had suggested to her that it might be an idea not to mention that she had obtained the job through him.

      ‘In fact,’ he’d smiled, ‘it might be an idea if you didn’t mention the family connection at all.’

      So she hadn’t, and inside a few weeks she had gone from not having a car to drive to having a Mercedes, a Jaguar and any number of other cars in which to visit her friends.

      As far as Yancie’s mother was concerned, having learned that Sukey Lloyd had written off Yancie’s car, to Yancie’s astonishment, had naturally assumed that the Jaguar Yancie had driven the day she’d called was a replacement.

      Yancie’s immediate superior had given her a very intensive driving test before stating that her driving was up to his high standard. She had then been measured for a hurriedly tailored uniform—two jackets, two skirts in brown and several shirts in beige, bearing the brown embroidered Addison Kirk logo of a bridge spanning the world. Yancie supposed the logo to be something to do with the manufacture of industrial material which the company seemed mainly concerned with. But so long as she could hide the logo underneath a brooch of some sort when she was visiting friends she didn’t much mind what the firm did. She didn’t want to risk anyone she knew bumping into her mother and giving a hint that her daughter was now earning a wage.

      Yancie executed a neat piece of lane-swapping and went back to reflecting how, as her aunt had said, her cousins had wanted her to move in with them.

      ‘Don’t you dare think of living anywhere but with us,’ red-haired Astra had declared warmly.

      ‘I second the motion,’ grinned black-haired Fennia—and it was just like being at boarding-school again, only better. The three cousins had been born within a month of each other and were as close as sisters. Closer, in fact, than were the three sisters who had borne them.

      But, love her mother, her aunt Portia and her aunt Imogen though she did, Yancie didn’t want to think of them in any depth. Between

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