Free My Heart Has Wings by Elizabeth Hoy Page B

asked.
    Jan nodded. “He was very pleased, and said I was to bring Mike home any evening; the sooner the better. But the awkward thing is Mike seems to have forgotten all about it, and I don’t like to remind him just now. He’s frightfully tied up with something rather big.” She broke off abruptly. Not even to Carole could she mention the forthcoming test flights at Merecombe. She shook the salad basket over the sink, with a suddenly goaded air. “The truth is, I suppose, I hate to mention it, in case it sounds as if I’m asking a favour. Why on earth should we badger Mike Carliss ? I can’t imagine him being really interested in us or our problems.”
    Carole gave her a sardonic little glance. “Can’t you?” she asked mockingly.
    Jan coloured. “Really, Carole!” she exploded, “ if you ’ re hinting that Mike Carliss is nursing a secret passion for me you’re crazy! He regards me as little more than a useful adjunct to the office equipment, in fact half the time he hardly sees me even when I’m there right under his nose. You’ve no idea of the rate at which he lives; all those terrific tests, and hush-hush projects, and being S.M.’s white-headed boy—for ever at Sheldrake Manor, as good as engaged to Erica ... ”
    “Okay, okay!” Carole waved a silencing hand. “Sorry I spoke. But I still think Mike likes you quite a lot. And even if he is the air-ace of all time, and Erica Scott-Manly’s boy friend into the bargain, that doesn’t stop him from having odd neighbourly impulse. If he’s willing to help Pa with his play, I think he ought to be encouraged. In fact I don’t see where Pa is going to get all the technical gen without someone like Mike.”
    She was perfectly right, of course. “Well, I’ll do what I can,” Jan promised, inwardly resolving to speak to Mike about the play the very next day.
    But it turned out to be one of those days when everything went wrong in the office. For one thing the sultry weather had intensified and it was almost unbearably hot. The wind-sock hung limp as a rag; not a breath of air stirred across the tawny plains beyond the airfield. Everyone was edgy, the tension in the E.106a team more noticeable than ever, and Daker was in one of his most difficult moods. Helen, who was making heavy weather of the new security filing system, had mislaid a batch of charts he urgently needed. Though she was not due at' the office until after lunch Daker decreed she must be sent for at once to find them.
    Jan phoned her at her home, softening down the peremptory command, though she was still smarting from the way Daker had snubbed her when she had suggested that she herself could probably find the charts and save Helen a journey. “You stick to your work and don’t interfere with hers!” he had snapped. As if he didn’t want her to go near the security files on any pretext, which was ridiculous. She’d always been trusted with them—ever since she joined the firm, Jan thought indignantly. But now they had been turned over to the newcomer Helen, who had no experience in complex filing. It was all most puzzling.
    With a shrug Jan settled down to transcribe a long boring report on axial turbine design. Pale and flurried, Helen arrived presently, having driven post haste from the Thames-side village where she lived with her parents. “I remember having those charts yesterday, but I haven’t the faintest idea under which heading I filed them!” she moaned, rushing off to the strong room to search for them.
    Jan stifled an impulse to go and help her, but Daker’s remark about “interfering” still rankled. She went back to her axial turbines, a difficult bit of transcription, that needed all her concentration, but before she had got very far Erica came in.
    It’s going to be one of those awful mornings, full of interruptions, Jan thought, and looked up to find that Erica was not alone. Casually elegant in an expensively tailored silk summer suit, she breezed into the