Free The High Flyer by Susan Howatch Page A

but I knew no man would dream of calling her fat; he would be too busy noting that the surplus flesh was distributed in all the right places. As if to play down the voluptuousness and enhance her respectability, she was wearing a decorous black blouse and black skirt beneath her unbuttoned, drab raincoat.
    Upstairs in my flat she was polite about my kitchen, which I had not bothered to modernise, and her rigorously neutral expression never changed as she inspected the sparse contents of my storecupboard and refrigerator. Taking a notepad and pen from her bag she asked what food I wanted to serve to my guests.
    “That’s for you to decide,” I said cautiously, “but there must be no beef of any kind.”
    “I believe Scottish beef is still safe,” said Ms. Fletcher, “but of course it would be such a bore for you to have to explain that. Is there any guest who’s vegetarian? Or who requires kosher?”
    “Not this time.”
    “All right, but who exactly will be eating this meal? I like to try to anticipate what will appeal to them.”
    I listed the middle-aged American investment banker, his trophy wife of twenty-eight, the elderly English judge and his worthy spouse who was a prison visitor.
    “A bold mix!” said Ms. Fletcher admiringly. “What fun! Anyone else?”
    “Just me and my husband. He’s a lawyer who’s lived all over the world.”
    “Cosmopolitan,” said Ms. Fletcher, classifying him. “He’ll adapt to whatever food is set before him. The Americans will want a salad at some stage, and a lo-cal dessert, the judge will be suspicious of any foreign food except French, and Mrs. Judge will be into Tuscan cuisine while secretly hankering for shepherd’s pie.”
    I laughed. “What about me?”
    “Ah, I suspect you’re not basically a foodie! You’re so beautifully slim.”
    “I might still be obsessed with food. How do you know I’m not bulimic or anorexic?”
    “If you were, you’d be too hung up to suggest the possibility to a stranger—in fact you’d probably be in denial and unable to accept you were slim at all.”
    I was impressed by these deductions, so impressed that I finally dared to believe I was dealing with an intelligent professional. With relief I decided that Ms. Fletcher and I were going to get along.
    We were just moseying around the meat cabinets of the nearby supermarket some time later when I became vaguely aware of a woman watching us from the far end of the aisle. I might not have noticed her if she had been less well-dressed, but in her royal-blue coat and matching dress she stood out among the other shoppers, most of whom would have come from the nearby council estates. Her greying dark hair was expensively styled in swirling curves, and as she impulsively darted towards me I saw she had beautiful skin, lined lightly around the mouth and eyes but still very smooth. Her blue eyes were bright with an emotion which might have been anxiety or fear or anger or a potent combination of all three.
    “You’re Carter, aren’t you,” she said. It was a statement, not a question.
    “That’s me.” I was trying to think who she was, but such a distinguished-looking woman could have been anyone in the City from a top-grade PA to a key player in a multinational, and it was no easy task to locate her name immediately in my memory.
    “I’m sorry,” I said, “but I can’t quite recall—” Then I broke off as the horrific truth suddenly hit me, and at once the woman said: “I’m Sophie Betz.”

THREE
    Life is riddled with secrecy. There are secrets in every area—family, politics, business, medicine and all relationships that are about anything important . . . In intimate relationships it is constantly surprising that the deeper we become involved the
more mysterious the other can become.
    DAVID F. FORD
    The Shape of Living
    I
    I took a step backwards. I opened my mouth but no words came out. Horror, rage, panic and downright incredulity surged through my brain in an