City Girl in Training. Liz Fielding

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СКАЧАТЬ let him steal my taxi. His taxi.

      But the tiger in me wanted to write my name and telephone number on a card and murmur ‘call me’ in a sultry voice. Since he must by now believe I was at least one sandwich short of a picnic, it was perhaps fortunate that I didn’t have a card handy and was thus saved the embarrassment of making a total fool of myself.

      Instead, I glanced at my wrist-watch, not because I wanted to know the time—I had no pressing engagement—but to avoid looking into his eyes again.

      ‘We’re nearly there,’ he said. Then, ‘Are you staying long? In London.’

      ‘Six months,’ I said. ‘My parents are travelling…Australia, South Africa, America…and they decided to let the house…’ I was ‘wittering’ again and, remembering his impatience, stopped myself. ‘So here I am.’

      ‘While the cat’s away?’ he suggested, with another of those knowing smiles.

      Clearly he hadn’t had any trouble spotting that I was a mouse. Fortunately, the taxi swept up to the front of a stunningly beautiful riverside apartment building, terraced in sweeping lines and lit up like an ocean liner, and I was saved the necessity of answering him. For a moment I sat open-mouthed at the sight while, apparently impatient to be rid of me, my companion opened the door and stepped out, lifting my case onto the footpath. Then, gentleman that he was, he opened his umbrella and handed it to me as I followed him, before turning to speak to the driver while I dug out my purse and found a five pound note.

      ‘Put that away,’ he said as I offered it.

      ‘No, really, I insist,’ I said. I couldn’t let him pay my fare. He didn’t bother to argue. He just closed the taxi door, picked up my suitcase and headed for the front door, leaving me with a five pound note in one hand and his umbrella in the other. The taxi drove off.

      ‘Hey, wait…’ I wasn’t sure whether I was shouting at the driver, who clearly hadn’t realised he still had a fare, or Mr Tall, Dark and Dangerous himself.

      I’d been warned about the security system on the front door. You had to have a smart card, or ring the bell of the person you were visiting so that they could let you into the building. TDD bypassed the system by catching the door as someone left the building, and was now holding it open. Standing in the entrance. Waiting for me to join him.

      He wasn’t going anywhere, I realised.

      ‘While the cat’s away…’ he’d said.

      And my memory instantly filled in the blank. ‘The mouse will play.’

      And I hadn’t denied it.

      Did he think I couldn’t wait to get started? Expect to be invited in? Offered…and I swallowed hard…coffee? Had my invitation to share the taxi been completely misunderstood?

      I realised just how rash I’d been. Naïve. Worse…just plain stupid.

      I’d allowed this man whom I’d never met before, whose name I didn’t even know, to give the driver the address. I hadn’t heard what he’d said and, too late, it occurred to me that I could be anywhere.

      And who’d miss me?

      I’d actually told him that my parents were on the other side of the world, for heaven’s sake!

      How long would it be before Sophie and Kate Harrington raised the alarm when I didn’t arrive? When I’d spoken to Sophie, she hadn’t been exactly enthusiastic about me moving in. In fact I’d got the distinct impression that she, like me, had had her arm painfully twisted.

      She certainly wouldn’t be dialling the emergency services today. Or tomorrow. Not until Don called, anyway…

      Anticipation of his agonised realisation that I might not even have got on the train, that my disappearance might be entirely his fault for not seeing me off, made me feel momentarily happier.

      The pleasure was short-lived, however, swamped by instant recall of a lifetime of my mother’s awful warnings about the inadvisability of taking lifts from strangers. And with that thought came relief.

      My mother, even from thirty thousand feet, came to my rescue as, pushing the five-pound note into my jacket pocket, I gripped my attack alarm. It was just a small thing on a keyring and I’m ashamed to say that I’d laughed when she’d given it to me, made me promise I’d carry it with me while I was in London. But, as she’d pointed out, I’d need a new keyring so it might as well be this one…

      I sent a belated—and silent—thank-you heaven-ward before forcing my mouth into an approximation of a smile and looking up at the man I’d decided was tall, dark and dangerous. As if that were a good thing.

      ‘You really didn’t have to see me right to the door,’ I said, trying on a laugh for size. It wasn’t convincing.

      ‘I wouldn’t,’ he assured me, ‘if I didn’t live in the apartment next door to you.’

      ‘Next door?’ He lived in the same block? Next door? Relief surged through me and I very nearly laughed.

      ‘Shall we get inside?’ he said coolly. He’d clearly cottoned on to my unease and was offended. ‘If you’ll just close the umbrella—’

      In my hurry to comply, I yanked my hand out of my pocket and the keyring alarm flew out with it.

      I made a wild grab for it and as my fingers closed over it I felt the tiny switch shift. I said one heartfelt word. Fortunately, it was obliterated by a banshee wail that my mother probably heard halfway to Australia.

      Startled by the blast of sound, I let go of the umbrella, which, caught by a gust of wind, bowled away across the entrance and towards the road. TDD—his patience tried beyond endurance—swore briefly and let my suitcase drop as he lunged after it. It was too much for the over-stressed zip and the case burst open in a shower of underwear. Plain, white, comfortable underwear. The kind you’d never admit to wearing. He froze, transfixed by the horror of the moment, and the world seemed to stand still, catch its breath.

      Then reality rushed back in full colour. With surround sound.

      The rain, the piercing, mind-deadening noise of the alarm, the red-hot embarrassment that was right off any scale yet invented.

      I was gripping the keyring in my fist, as if I could somehow contain the noise. There was a trick to switching it off—otherwise any attacker could do it. But I was beyond rational thought.

      TDD’s mouth was moving, but I couldn’t hear what he was saying and finally he grabbed my wrist, prised open my fingers and dropped the wretched thing on the footpath. Then he put his heel on it and ground it flat. It seemed to take for ever before the sound finally died.

      The silence, if anything, was worse.

      ‘Thank you,’ I said when the feeling came back to my ears, but my voice came out as little more than a squeak. A mouse squeak and heaven alone knew that at that moment I wished I were a real mouse—one with a hole to disappear down.

      ‘Wait here,’ he said, and the chill factor in his voice turned the gravel into crushed ice. Well, it wouldn’t take a genius to work out why I was holding an attack alarm. He’d surrendered his taxi to me, refused my share of the СКАЧАТЬ