CHARLOTTE LAMB - Wild Hunger

Keira looked at Sara’s long, beautiful manicured fingernails and laughed. Sara was smart, lively, very shrewd and down-to-earth, when she was with her own sex; but let a man walk into the room and she threw a switch, started fluttering her lashes, using a soft, sweet voice, acting dumb and helpless. And the really maddening thing, thought Keira, was that it always seemed to work; men loved it. Had Gerard Findlay liked it?

Sara added triumphantly, ‘And I was right: he got in here, didn’t he? And without having to break the door down. He is clever…’ She grinned. ‘As well as very sexy.’

Keira wished she could deny it, but much as she might dislike Gerard Findlay she couldn’t ignore his smouldering sexuality. The first time she’d seen him he had made an indelible impact with his black hair and angry grey eyes, that lean and powerful body. He was intensely male, and he made Keira deeply aware of her own sexuality. Everything female in her vibrated in response, as if buried deep inside her was a magnetic needle which quivered and swung towards the north pole of his masculinity.

‘I hate the man,’ she repeated, and Sara gave her a glinting, teasing smile.

‘That’s what you say.’

To her own fury, Keira felt her skin colour, glow hot. At that second the telephone rang. Deeply relieved to be able to change the subject, she said, ‘Could you answer that? Ask whoever it is to leave a name and number and I’ll call them back later.’

‘OK,’ Sara said, then, with a mocking flick of her lashes added, ‘Saved by the bell!’

Keira did not ask her what she meant. Sara was intensely intuitive, unfortunately. She picked up feelings and thoughts Keira did not want her to guess at; it was part of Sara’s strongly developed femininity, which was half instinctive, half learnt at her mother’s knee.

It was the merest accident that Sara came to be in London, let alone working as a model. Her Arab parents had brought her to London when she was four because her father got a job with an Arab bank in Mayfair. When Sara was six, he had died, and her ravishing, still very young mother had stayed on in London because her brother worked in the same bank and was at hand to take care of his sister and her child.

Sara’s mother was young and beautiful; within a year she had married again, a client of the bank with an enormous fortune. Sara had lived in England ever since. At seventeen she had become a model and had been very successful. Her family made sure she never took her clothes off in front of a man, never modelled underclothes or swimwear, but that had not hindered her career. She had begun by working with one of her cousins, a talented young designer who modelled his clothes on her: Arab-inspired caftans and evening dresses, hooded cloaks that swirled around you as you walked, filmy loose white gauze trousers tied at the ankles. His clothes were romantic, visually exciting; he had helped make Sara’s reputation, she had begun to appear on magazine covers and was soon in great demand. When she’d retired from the profession to get married, aged twenty-one, a wail of regrets had gone up from the photographers and designers who liked to have her work for them.

Sara had been blithely indifferent. Oh, she had enjoyed modelling, but now she was eager to be a wife and mother. Sara always threw herself wholeheartedly into whatever she was doing, and loved variety, excitement, novelty—she got bored doing the same thing every day. What she wanted was constant change.

Keira frowned at the ceiling, her face as cold and white as the plasterwork above her. I wish I did, she thought, but change of any kind, in her work, in her private life, made her tense and nervous and there was nothing she could do to stop that kneejerk reaction.

While she was staying at the clinic she had undergone therapy which tried to get at the root of her eating disorder and made her aware that the various problems she had all stemmed from the same source, her childhood and the breakdown of the family which had changed her world forever at exactly the worst age, on the verge of puberty. It was one thing to realise something like that, quite another to be able to deal with it. You could re-train yourself where learned behaviour was concerned, but when you were dealing with the unconscious you could not use reason or persuasion; you were helpless to reach that submerged part of the mind.

She started, hearing Sara’s running feet on the stairs. The other girl came back into the room, flushed and smiling. ‘It was your mother.’

Keira tensed. ‘You didn’t tell her I’d had an attack?’

‘No. Although I know I ought to have—she’ll be furious when she knows I didn’t tell her.’

‘She’ll tell Ivo, and he’ll just use it as a stick to beat her with!’

Sara gave her a curious look. ‘You hate him, don’t you?’

‘He isn’t my man of the year, I’ll admit.’

‘Well, I told your mother you were out and would ring her back when you got in; don’t forget to do that when you feel up to it.’ She looked at her watch. ‘I’ll have to go; we’re having a dinner party tonight. I’ll ring you later to check how you are. If you need me, you know where I am.’

‘Yes,’ Keira said, then added quietly, ‘Thanks, Sara—for coming so quickly and…’ She made a wordless little gesture with her hands and Sara shook her head at her.

‘What are friends for? Be seeing you soon.’

* * *

In the newsroom of the TV company he worked for Gerard was arguing with the news editor, a large, shaggy-haired man with heavy eyebrows and a permanently harassed look.

‘I tell you there’s nothing wrong with me now; I’m as fit as you are.’ He gave the other man a furious look from head to toe, scowling. ‘Fitter, come to that!’

The other man, who was stones overweight, drank like a fish and smoked like a chimney, laughed.

‘Sure, you are, but I’m not a foreign correspondent, I’m a desk jockey, and I don’t need a doctor’s certificate before I come to work. I have to abide by the company doctor’s decision and he says you shouldn’t be sent into a war zone again, or put under any strain, because you’re still suffering from…’ He searched among the piled papers on his desk and pulled out one, pushed his spectacles up on his forehead and peered at the document. ‘Here it is…post-traumatic shock. That’s what you’ve got, Gerry, old son. You’re in post-traumatic shock and the company won’t be responsible for you if you go abroad. They don’t want to have to pay out huge sums of money in compensation if you crack up permanently next time.’

‘Damn fools!’ growled Gerard, but recognised that he had no hope of persuading the company to change their mind. Money was the bottom line with these people.

‘Listen, didn’t you do an art degree? Todd’s on to an interesting art story—it may develop into a full programme for current affairs, or just turn out to be a stock item for one of those nights when there’s no news. He could do with some help; why not work with him for a week and then have another check-up?’

Gerard gave a furious shrug. ‘Oh, very well. Where will I find him?’

‘He’s working out of Annexe Three—you’ll need a pass; security is pretty tight at the moment. Hang on; I’ll ring him and warn him you’re on your way and he’ll alert Security.’

Todd Knight was a short, ginger-haired man in his early thirties; he was the news team’s art and antiques expert but doubled up by reporting on certain crime stories when they touched on his specialist subject.

He welcomed Gerard with open arms. ‘Good to have you aboard, man! I could do with some help with this stuff; I’m absolutely swamped with leads and I can’t follow them all up personally. You’re a godsend.’