Daniel and Daughter
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Lucy Gordon
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HarlequinChapter 1
‘OH, HANG this rain!’ Lee Meredith muttered. ‘What possessed me to drive in the pitch-dark in the middle of a downpour?’
But she knew she’d had no choice. It had seemed a good idea when the fashion editor of Modern Lady had said she wanted the autumn clothes photographed by a waterfall. But the waterfall had been a hundred miles away, and as Lee had clicked the shutter for the last time the heavens had opened. Despite the treacherous conditions she had to get home tonight. She was due at her studio the next morning.
The rhythmic dunk-dunk of the windscreen wipers was hypnotic, and she had to fight to stay alert as she stared into the darkness. At last she stopped at a transport café and had a cup of coffee to keep herself awake. To complete the job she went into the rest room and splashed cold water onto her face. Then she freshened her make-up and drew a comb through her blonde shoulder-length hair, with such vigour that the curls danced. It might seem illogical, since there was no one to see her, but it was a matter of pride.
Lee had found that the company of models could become intimidating, so now she used the tricks she’d learned from the glamorous young women to transform her attractive face into beauty. She was five feet two, built on dainty lines, and presented an appearance of feminine fragility that came from another age. The inner reality was a shrewd woman who’d learned survival in a hard school.
The cast of her face was naturally youthful, which had once annoyed her. It had been maddening to be taken for fourteen when she’d been a wife of seventeen and the mother of a year-old child. But now, at twenty-nine, there was a certain satisfaction in knowing she looked several years younger. Her petite figure and mass of honey-blonde hair completed the effect. It would be a clever man who could guess Lee Meredith’s true age, and he would have to get close enough to look into her dark blue eyes and see the pain and disillusion that she concealed behind laughter.
When she was back on the road she drove slowly and carefully. The conditions were dangerous, and she was too tired to react fast. If only those windscreen wipers weren’t so soporific. If only...
She saw a car come out of a side road and swing round to face her. For what seemed like an age she stared at it in bewilderment, trying to work out why something seemed strange. Only after several seconds did her weary brain register the fact that the car was driving straight towards her on the same side of the road.
She slammed on her brakes and slowed, but she knew she couldn’t stop in time. The other car continued, straight in her path. At the very last second the two vehicles swerved in the same direction, their front wheels connected and they came to a forcible halt.
Lee let out her breath slowly, discovering that she was unhurt. Luckily there was no other traffic on the road. Her temper rising fast, she flung open her door to plunge out into the downpour.
From the other vehicle came a howl of unutterable despair. It might have been an animal keening over its slaughtered young, or it might have been a man bewailing the fate of his brand-new car. The two sounds were indistinguishable.
Through the rain and darkness Lee could just discern that the car was the latest model of an extremely expensive make. It was a beautiful vehicle barring the ugly dent in the front, which exactly mirrored the one in her own.
A man appeared. He was tall and lean, but with his hair plastered to his skull it was hard for her to see more. ‘I don’t know what country you come from,’ she snapped, ‘but this happens to be England and we drive on the left.’
‘I’m aware of that,’ he snapped back. ‘I’m English too, and I’m perfectly familiar with the rules of the road.’ His voice had a vigour that didn’t suggest age.
‘No one would guess it who saw you drive,’ she said with heavy irony. ‘I take it you’re not going to deny being entirely responsible for this accident.’
‘I most certainly am.’
‘What?’ Lee shouted above the noise of the rain. ‘You were driving on the wrong side of the road.’
‘I don’t deny that,’ he shouted back. ‘I merely deny being entirely responsible. You had a long stretch of clear road to see me, yet you did nothing until the last minute.’
The sheer effrontery of this took Lee’s breath away. While she was struggling for an answer a tall woman in a headscarf emerged from the other car. She ran over to the two combatants and held a large umbrella over them in protective fashion. ‘That’s better,’ she said. ‘Now you can fight in comfort.’
They both glared at her. Even in the heat of the moment Lee’s professional eye noted that this was one of the most beautiful young women she’d ever seen. But she gave her only a cursory glance before returning to the fray.
‘Am I to blame because you don’t know your left from your right?’ she demanded.
‘No, madam, but you are to blame if you weren’t paying attention to the road. You could have taken avoiding action before you did—’
‘If you’d been driving properly there’d have been nothing to avoid.’
He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and rubbed his head until he was no more than dampish, enabling Lee to see that he was younger than she’d thought. He could have been in his late thirties, with a lean, strong-featured face that would have been handsome if it hadn’t been rigid with outrage.
‘May I remind you,’ he said, breathing hard, ‘that the first rule of the road is to act as if all the other drivers are fools?’
‘Well, you said it—’
‘And to be ready at all times to take evasive action.’
‘You were driving on the wrong side of the road!’ she yelled.
‘I know that. The point is that I didn’t know it at the time. I thought I was on the right side of the road. You, however, knew I was on the wrong side, and should have reacted earlier.’
‘You mean I should have done your thinking for you? Why can’t you do your own? Didn’t you get beyond the third form, or something?’
The young woman gave a suppressed choke and was silenced by an infuriated glare from the man.
‘Why didn’t you take avoiding action earlier?’ Lee demanded.
‘Because,’ said the man, speaking with difficulty, ‘I thought you would. I thought you were on the wrong side of the road—’
‘Well, I wasn’t,’ she said, wondering if she was in a madhouse. ‘I was on the right side, and you’re damned lucky it was me and not a ten-ton truck.’
The beautiful young woman poked the man’s arm. ‘She’s right, you know,’ she hissed.
‘What?’ The man stared as if unable to believe he’d heard properly.
‘She’s right. You were driving on the wrong side of the road.’ She turned to Lee. ‘I’m sorry. You see, we’ve just come back from France, where they drive on the other side. We came off the ferry tonight and—’
‘Phoebe,’ the man growled, ‘if you can’t be more helpful than that, just get back in the car.’
‘Oh, no, please let me stay,’ said Phoebe quickly.
‘Then keep quiet and behave yourself.’
Lee gaped at this exchange. ‘I didn’t think men like you existed any more,’ she managed to get out at last. ‘Why do you let him talk to you like that?’ she demanded of Phoebe.
‘I can’t stop him,’ said the young woman sadly.
‘Phoebe!’
Phoebe glanced at the man’s face and hastily fell silent.
Lee felt she might explode.
He took a deep breath. When he spoke again, he sounded as if he was controlling himself with a mighty effort. ‘For your information, madam, this girl—’
‘Girl?’ Lee interrupted him scathingly. ‘You’re that kind of man, are you?’
‘What kind of man?’
‘The kind who calls a woman a girl because it’s an easy way of putting her down. It’s a pity you didn’t let this woman drive. We wouldn’t be in this mess.’
His eyes glinted. ‘Do you really want me to enlarge on the subject of women drivers?’
‘No, thank you. You’re probably as biased against us on that subject as you are about everything else.’
She had the satisfaction of seeing him bereft of speech. ‘Me?’ he managed to say at last. ‘Me—biased against women?’
‘Yes, you. Just because you’re in the wrong, your reaction is to turn and bully a woman.’
Phoebe’s reaction to this was disconcerting. She laughed until Lee thought she would never stop. Her companion appeared to be choking on his own emotions.
‘Look,’ he managed at last, ‘this young lady—will you please hush?’ This was directed at Phoebe, whose mirth was reducing her to a state of collapse.
‘Ignore him,’ Lee told Phoebe. ‘I’m glad you can find it funny. If I were you I’d run for my life. Someone who looks like you doesn’t have to put up with a man whose ideas come out of the ark.’ She turned her attention back to her foe. ‘This is the twentieth century, in case you hadn’t heard.’
‘Twentieth century be blowed!’ the man exploded. ‘Some things never change, and one of them is the way women drive. You were daydreaming back there, that’s why you didn’t see me earlier. If there’s one kind of driver I dread more than any other it’s some fluffy-headed little thing who—’
‘Fluffy-headed little—?’
‘Madam, it isn’t me that belongs to an outdated species, but you—the little woman with nothing better to occupy her mind than her clothes and her hair-do. The one thing you’ve never thought of is what goes on under the bonnet of a car.’
‘I think we have said all we have to say,’ growled Lee through gritted teeth.
‘Certainly. Here’s my card, with the name of my insurance firm on the back. Please ask your husband to get in touch with me. Now, perhaps you’ll be good enough to supply me with your own details so that we can get back into our respective damaged vehicles and try to give each other a wide berth.’
‘Anyone who’d ever seen you drive would give you a wide berth,’ she retorted with spirit. ‘That’s probably why you’re such a rotten driver. You’re used to the others scuttling for cover at the sight of you.’
Phoebe made choking sounds, but suppressed them under a baleful glare from her escort.
‘And here,’ said Lee, scribbling on something she’d drawn out of her coat pocket, ‘is my card, with my insurance firm on the back. On the front you’ll find both my home and my business address.’ She had the satisfaction of seeing his eyes widen at this last piece of information. ‘And now I’d be obliged if you’d move your car out of my way, because you are still on the wrong side of the road.’
She turned without waiting for a reply and got into her vehicle. She saw Phoebe take her card from the man and study it, then she gave her attention to starting up. To her relief the engine came to life at once. She let it hum for a few moments, and while she waited she examined the card she’d been given. It read, ‘Daniel Raife’. After the name was a string of impressive-looking letters.
No wonder he got mad when I asked if he hadn’t gotten beyond the third form, mused Lee. The thought cheered her up.
As Daniel Raife’s car passed she had a glimpse of him in profile, his hands clenched on the wheel, his face still furious. Beside him sat Phoebe, who turned her head so that she could watch Lee until the last possible moment. To Lee’s surprise Phoebe’s jaw had dropped and she was staring as if she’d just received the shock of her life.
The next day Lee contacted her insurance firm. Then she sat back and waited for battle. Somewhat to her disappointment she received a speedy reply to say that the firm had already heard from Mr Raife, admitting full liability. By the same post came a letter from his insurance requesting estimates for the cost of repair.
So justice had prevailed when his temper had cooled. Lee put her car in for repair, hired another and tried to feel satisfied. But it was hard when a promising opponent had caved in without a proper fight.
She was also troubled by the feeling that his name was vaguely familiar, but she couldn’t place it and at last she gave up trying. She had a mountain of work to get through and little time to think of anything else. Meredith Studios was a big name in fashion photography but it wasn’t yet at the very top, and nothing less than the very top would do.
It wasn’t only ambition that hounded her, but also the responsibility of being the breadwinner in her family. It had been that way for eight years now, ever since she’d finally accepted that her husband, Jimmy Meredith, was, to put it mildly, unreliable. From the day she’d earned her first fee as a photographer to the day Jimmy had left her she’d supported him. After their divorce he’d married a woman of independent means, with whom he now lived an apparently contented life.
Lee had been temporarily alone as it was the Easter holiday and her daughter, Sonya, was spending the time with Jimmy. Lee’s eighteen-year-old brother, Mark, who’d lived with her since their parents had died two years earlier, was on a hiking holiday. But three days before the start of term they both returned.
Lee and Mark had inherited the same face from their mother, making Mark appear baby-faced and absurdly young. He was a brilliant natural linguist, headed for first-class honours according to his university professors. Lee, who’d left school early, only semi-educated, was full of admiration for her younger brother. But the admiration extended only to his academic talents. Of his common sense—what there was of it—she had the poorest opinion.
Lee and Mark’s mother had made herself Mark’s slave, and it had been a shock for him to find himself living with a sister who had no time to wait on him and a niece, only five years younger than himself, who had no intention of doing so.
He was warm-hearted, emotional, idealistic and often charming. Lee thought that when she’d managed to undo the results of her mother’s over-indulgence he would be delightful. But for the moment he could be exasperating to live with, particularly when he argued with her about money.
Their father had left him a legacy of thirty thousand pounds, which Lee held in trust until he was twenty-one. It was safely invested, and as Mark had grown older she’d begun making him an allowance out of the income, sometimes handing over an extra amount for reasonable expenses. But his idea of ‘reasonable’ was wildly different from hers, and if she’d yielded to him too often he would have had nothing left by now.
‘What’s that monstrosity doing out there?’ he said when greetings had been exchanged and they were gathered in the kitchen.
‘That’s the car I’ve hired while mine’s being repaired, following a collision with a lunatic who was driving on the wrong side of the road. He actually dared to blame me.’
‘How could he, if he was in the wrong?’ demanded Sonya, scandalised.
‘No man ever thinks he’s in the wrong where his car is concerned,’ said Lee. ‘He was a first class MCP. I thought they were extinct, but he was an absolute porker.’
‘How long before you get your own back?’ Mark demanded.
‘Two weeks at least. They’re waiting for a part. And I’m afraid that one’s only insured for my use.’
‘Then don’t you think,’ he said, reverting to a battle that had been running between them for weeks, ‘that it’s time I had my own car?’
‘I do not. You’re on a direct bus route to the college.’
‘Yes, but the car I’ve got my eye on—’
‘I know the one you’ve got your eye on and it’s far too expensive.’
‘It’s my money, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, and I’m going to make sure there’s plenty left when you’re twenty-one.’
Mark groaned, but dropped the subject and went upstairs to unpack. Sonya was making tea. She was a thin, sharp-faced girl of thirteen, with a candid tongue and a disconcerting ability to make her mother laugh. Despite some routine mother-daughter battles they were good friends.
‘The way he goes on about that money,’ she said now, ‘you’d think he was the cheated heir in some Victorian melodrama. Honestly, he’s a pain in the—’
‘Sonya!’
‘I was going to say in the neck,’ Sonya insisted with an air of innocence that didn’t fool her mother. ‘And he is. It was much nicer when he wasn’t here.’
‘Darling, what could I do but take him in? He’s a babe in arms in the common sense department.’
‘Oh, come on. Mum. Mark’s got it sussed. That little-boy-lost stuff is supposed to make us all run around after him.’
Lee chuckled. ‘Well, he failed with you, didn’t he? He’s improved since he’s been living here. One day his wife will thank you.’
‘I wish he’d get married and move out, like he keeps threatening to.’
‘Does he? I hadn’t heard.’
‘He says if he was a married man you’d have to hand over his money.’
‘Oh, I see. Leaving him free to blue the lot on expensive cars.’
‘Why don’t you let him have a car, Mum? Then he might save us all a lot of trouble by eloping, like you did.’
Lee sipped her tea, glad of an excuse not to respond to this.
She’d been fifteen when she’d become madly infatuated with Jimmy Meredith, and just sixteen when she’d run away with him to Gretna Green. Almost at once she’d discovered her tragic mistake. Jimmy was addicted to the drug of excitement. It had been exciting to court the daughter of a prosperous businessman, thwarting his attempts to break the couple up. It had been even more exciting to plan a runaway match, dodge her frantically pursuing parents, and confront them in the smithy at Gretna Green, defying them to do their worst. But when he found himself married with a child on the way, he grew bored.
He’d discovered a new thrill in gambling. Her father had several times had to hand over money to cover Jimmy’s spiralling debts.
The only good thing to have come out of the marriage was Sonya, born while her mother was only sixteen. For her sake Lee had clung to the remnants of her broken-backed marriage, even after Jimmy had moved on to the excitement of other women.
Whatever his faults, he’d been a loving father, and when he’d been fired from his last job he’d spent all his time with his little daughter. Lee had been able to start her own career as a photographer, leaving Sonya with him while she went out to work. She prospered, and by the time her father cut off the money supply, saying, ‘That’s all my dear. The rest is for Mark,’ Lee was able to cope alone.
At last Jimmy had moved out to live a hundred miles away with the woman who became his second wife. Sonya stayed with her mother, but paid her father long visits in the holidays.
Sonya knew nothing of the worst details. She adored Jimmy, so Lee said nothing now, and let her chatter on about eloping as though the subject didn’t give her a pang.
‘Couldn’t we nudge him into eloping?’ Sonya was saying wistfully. ‘Then we’d get rid of him.’
‘Darling, that’s very unkind.’
‘But it’s a fantasy, Mum. It’s all right for fantasies to be unkind because they’re the safety valve for our aggressive instincts. “It’s easier to treat our neighbour with charity in real life when we’ve just given him a satisfying come-uppance in the privacy of our minds.”’
‘Who said that?’ Lee demanded, for Sonya’s theatrical manner made it clear she’d been quoting.
‘Daniel Raife, in his newspaper column.’
‘Who?’ asked Lee sharply.
‘Daniel Raife. Mum, whatever’s the matter?’
‘That was the name of the man I collided with.’
‘It must be a coincidence. It couldn’t be the same man because you said your Daniel Raife had a real down on women and this one’s the opposite. He writes for one of the tabloids and has a page in a woman’s magazine, plus a TV chat show, where he gets people talking about controversial things. And he’s always arguing in favour of a better deal for women.’
‘Of course!’ Lee said. ‘I knew I’d heard his name before. I don’t think I’ve seen his show, though.’
‘It’s on during the day, when you’re out.’
‘So Daniel Raife is on our side, huh?’ Lee asked skeptically.
‘Honestly. He writes books with titles like Women Are The Best, and he talks about how brilliant his daughter is, and how he’s looking forward to her being made a judge.’
‘Is she anywhere near being a judge?’
Sonya chuckled. ‘I shouldn’t think so. She’s only fifteen. She goes to my school. She’s mad about clothes. She thinks it’s wonderful that my mother’s a fashion photographer.’
Mark had returned to hear the end of the conversation. ‘She sounds like a real twit,’ he observed.
‘Phoebe isn’t a twit.’
‘What was that name?’ asked Lee quickly.
‘Phoebe,’ said Sonya. ‘She’s his daughter. Why?’
Lee was staring at her. ‘The man I collided with had someone with him called Phoebe. What does she look like?’
‘About five foot nine, very beautiful.’
Mark vanished into the next room and emerged a moment later with a book. He showed Lee the photograph on the back cover. ‘Is that who you saw?’
The picture showed a young man with handsome, regular features and dark eyes. Her professional attention was alerted to the tell-tale signs of touching up that made the face bland and uninteresting. Even so, there was no doubt that this was the man she’d crossed swords with.
‘That’s him,’ she groaned. ‘And let me tell you, he’s a fraud. If you could have heard the way he talked to poor Phoebe—’
‘Most people talk to their kids like that,’ said Sonya wisely. ‘That’s not sexism. That’s parentism.’
‘It still doesn’t justify the remarks he made about women drivers,’ said Lee firmly.
‘But you can’t blame a man for what he says when his car’s been damaged,’ protested Mark. ‘That’s not sexism either. It’s driverism. I don’t suppose you were sweetness and light yourself.’
‘Well, he had no right to call me a fluffy-headed little thing. I certainly wouldn’t have put him down as a man who wanted his daughter to be a judge.’
‘He’s wasting his time. Women are incapable of being impartial,’ Mark declared from the lofty heights of his age. ‘They should be kept ignorant—like Sonya.’
‘Well, it would be better than knowing eight languages and talking drivel in all of them,’ Sonya countered.
He departed without deigning to reply. Sonya murmured wistfully, ‘One of these days I’m really going to enjoy kicking his shins.’
‘Aren’t you supposed to be working that off in your fantasies?’ Lee enquired.
‘Oh, no, Mum. Kicking his shins is for real life. The fantasy is boiling him in oil.’
Later that evening the phone rang. ‘Lee, thank heavens I found you in,’ said a relieved voice on the other end.
‘Hello, Sal. What’s the crisis?’ Sally was an old friend who worked for a public relations firm.
‘Could you possibly do an extra session tomorrow? Please, Lee. It’ll save my life.’
‘It’s a bit difficult,’ Lee said doubtfully. ‘I’m fully booked. I could fit someone in at the end, but they’d have to wait a while. Who is it?’
‘Daniel Raife. It’s for his new book.’
‘Sorry, Sal, you’re wasting your time. I’m Daniel Raife’s most unfavourite person since our cars collided. He’d never let me take his pic.’
‘But he asked for you.’
‘He what?’
‘We handle publicity for his publisher. They always put his picture on the back cover. At the very last minute he’s decided he wants a new photograph, and he said it has to be done by you.’
‘I wish I knew what was going on,’ Lee said, feeling frazzled.
‘Well, if you take his picture you’ll be able to ask him,’ Sally said unanswerably.
‘All right, but warn him he’ll have to hang about. He can try his luck from four o’clock onwards.’
When she’d hung up Lee took out Who’s Who, not really expecting to find a talk show host there. But Daniel Raife wasn’t just a television celebrity and columnist, it appeared, but a professor of philosophy with a staggering number of degrees. At thirty-seven he’d lived a varied life in which—if his entry could be believed—he’d reluctantly exchanged the life of an academic for the bright lights of the studio.
‘Hmm!’ Lee murmured cynically. ‘Fame, fortune and getting your own way all the time, but secretly you yearn for the life of the mind. Well, it may fool your public, but you’re a fraud, my friend.’
She was rather looking forward to tomorrow.
