Free The Thin Woman by Dorothy Cannell Page B

you cad!” I called after him. “So what else is new?”
    “Anyone home?”
    Jill! She had the most unnerving habit of appearing out of nowhere. I should never have given her my spare key. Even my mirror hadn’t seen me stripped to the buff for years so I wasn’t giving anything human the chance. Grabbing a towel, I went out to the sitting room with the intention of telling her I was about to take a nap. But she foiled me by coming as the bearer of gifts. The casserole she carried might be stewed seaweed, but after Aunt Sybil’s cooking it would taste like ambrosia.
    “You’re an angel”—I smiled—“and a dear friend. Put that down and I’ll get the kettle going.”
    “A new recipe. Tuna and peanut butter fricassee.”
    I should have stayed at Merlin’s Court.
    Work helped. I went in early and stayed late. One of my most demanding clients, Lady Violet Witherspoon, was going through a midlife crisis that found relief in redecorating her cottage on the Norfolk Broads from top to bottom every six months.
    After posting my cheque to E.E. I told myself that I was finished with Mr. Bentley T. Haskell, but the man was unprincipled. He kept popping into my head with much the same impudent abandon with which Jill came tripping into my flat. During the day I was able to keep him at bay, but at night when I closed my eyes there he was, the rogue—turning on the charm. He was crazy about my hair, my eves, my ears. “Such skinny little ears,” he would whisper, his breath warm upon my neck, and I would melt with delight.
    What a blessing, I would say in the cold light of day, that he is such an impossible man or I might have been upset at the prospect of never hearing from him again.
    To prove how indifferent I was, I had the telephone reinstalled. Spending money was one way of keeping busy. On one of my empty Saturdays I went into the West End and bought a royal blue dressing gown and had Uncle Merlin’s initials monogrammed on the pocket. His response was a curt note by Aunt Sybil saying I should have better thingsto do with my money than waste it on fripperies when I was about to be married.
    “Ungrateful old.” Unfortunately I was not done with my relatives. Vanessa rang. She knew I would be ecstatic to learn she had won another fabulous modelling assignment, and why had she not seen an announcement of my marriage in The Times?
    That telephone call clinched my need to escape the pressures of life in the big city. The next morning I invited Lady Witherspoon to the showroom and suggested that her new drawing room might benefit from the Italian influence. Would she like me to make some purchases for the room? In Rome?
    Dabbing her moist eyes with a lace handkerchief, she breathed, “And to think one’s acquaintances are always complaining about slackness among the work force.”
    Professional integrity would not permit me to accept Lady Witherspoon’s offer to defray all expenses, but her cheque—for which I put in many hours casing the fabric houses—did permit me to travel in more style than usual. Once arrived in that city of fabulous antiquity and sunshine, I settled into a small but charming hotel where the view was excellent and every meal a sonnet. With so many double chins bobbing over their fettuccine Alfredo, I began to feel that my proportions were quite reasonable and ordered thirds without a pang. What was even better, Ben slipped back where he belonged, within the pages of paperback romance, chapter—and book—closed. With only the merest tinge of regret—a girl likes to have her memories—I put the book on a high shelf in some inner corner of my mind and let it gather cobwebs. I called the airline and was on my way home.
    London in early April was wet and grisly, the pavements dark and slick. The tall narrow house on Queen Alexandra Place stood hunched and indignant with cold. Grabbing his tip with fingers poking through the holey fingers of his knitted gloves, the taxi driver spun off into