Free Fugitive Wife by Sara Craven

thought I wouldn’t approve of. But in your case, it’s not my approval that matters, it’s your father’s. I appeal to you, Briony, be careful.’

    Aunt Hes’s warning was stil ringing in Briony’s ears forty-eight hours later, as she became U.P.G.‘s latest recruit for the cutting library. She had no ilusions about the job. She was a dogsbody, pure and simple, signing files ful of cuttings on every subject under the sun in and out of a large book kept for the purpose, supplying background information on any subject required to the various editorial departments, and tracking files that had gone missing. The head of the department was a Miss johnson, an elderly Gorgon, round, whom even editors trod warily, and juniors as a rule did not stay more than a few weeks, Briony was rather wearily informed by her immediate superior jenny Braithwaite.

    ‘La johnson chews them up and spits them out.’ she explained, during Briony’s first coffee break in the canteen.

    ‘Although perhaps she’l make an exception in your case.’

    ‘I don’t think so.’ Briony had already encountered the formidable Miss johnson and suffered a tongue-lashing from her over a file that had not been returned to its correct place on the bulging shelves of the library. The person who had returned the file had hardly had time to leave the room before the tirade began, and Briony suspected that Miss Johnson had orders from above to lean on her.

    She had telephoned her father the previous night and told him she had persuaded Personnel to give her a chance, and to her surprise he had accepted her news almost genialy, at the same time letting her see that he didn’t believe she would be able to hold the job down.

    After a couple of hours with Miss Johnson, she knew exactly what he was getting at, but her determination hardened. She would not be driven out no matter how unfair the treatment might be. She would not return home with her tail between her legs, confessing her fault, and asking to be taken back into the fold like a black sheep. She had as much right to carve out a life for herself as anyone else.

    She had naturaly expected she would see Logan again quite soon and nerved herself inwardly for the inevitable confrontation, but it was not to take place, she discovered with a strange chagrin, at least not at once.

    Logan was abroad again, and no one was altogether sure when he would be back, or what he was actualy doing, although he was said to
    be in the Far East. Though she scanned the Courier every day, Briony saw no stories filed under his byline.

    In the meantime she began to settle to the routine of her work better than she could ever have expected.

    Miss Johnson, she realised, would never change, but she liked Jenny and got on wel with her, and guessed that they might have become friends, perhaps even flatmates, if Briony had not been Sir Charles Trevor’s daughter. As it was, no matter how many breaks and lunches she and Jenny might share there was always an invisible barrier there, which Briony regretted.

    She had been working at U.P.G. for three weeks when her father telephoned her at the flat to say that he was going to the States for a few weeks on business.

    ‘I hope by the time I return you wil have got this nonsense out of your head once and for al, Briony,’ he said coldly, before he rang off.

    Nonsense! Briony thought with an inward sigh, as she laid her own receiver back on the rest. That was what her father thought of her bid for independence, of her attempt to earn her own living. She supposed it had its amusing side, but she was damned if she could see what it was at that particular moment. .

    She had to start making other plans for herself anyway.

    Aunt Hes would be returning soon from Kirkby Scar. Her aunt had been a widow for a number of years and had become a successful
    writer of children’s books, but she made no bones about needing solitude for her work, either in London or Yorkshire, and