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She had arrived out of the blue at Debra’s front door just over an hour earlier. Debra had been outside in her small back garden, watering the plants in her pots, and wondering if the current spell of good weather really merited the purchase of that wooden seat she had been coveting at the garden centre.
‘Won’t she mind, so early on a Sunday?’ Debra protested, but Leigh shook her head, giving her a naughty smile as she told her,
‘I’ve already warned her to expect us.’
Leigh had always been able to coax her into doing what she wanted, Debra admitted as she got into Leigh’s car and secured the seatbelt.
Elsie Johnson’s house was the next but last in a row of substantial Victorian houses in the suburbs of the city.
Leigh parked outside it with a flourish of gear-changing and sharp braking that made Debra wince a little.
All the houses in the row had short front gardens enclosed by a low communal wall, and from what Debra could see all of them were well maintained. It was the sort of quiet, respectable middle-class area that one would not normally have associated with the kind of situation Leigh had described to her, but if the man was as coldblooded in his deliberate seductions as Leigh had implied then he probably found the area’s respectability an asset.
‘He won’t be in now,’ Leigh told Debra as she saw her glancing at the end house. ‘He’s taking Ginny out for the day. Her parents are afraid to refuse to let her see him in case she leaves home before they can help her to see just what kind of man he is.
‘At seventeen, she’s still barely more than a child still... at least, she is compared with him, a man in his mid-thirties. I hate that kind of man.’
‘Yes,’ Debra agreed vehemently. ‘So do I.’
She followed Leigh up to the front door.
Elsie Johnson had obviously seen them arrive because she opened the door before they could knock.
Half an hour later, as they drove away, Elsie having assured herself that it would be safe to leave her home in Debra’s care, Leigh turned to Debra and thanked her.
‘I suspect she thinks you’re much more trustworthy than me. You always did have the gift of inspiring confidence in people.’
‘Probably because they realise that, unlike you, I’m not going to do anything rash or reckless,’ Debra told her with a smile.
Leigh laughed.
‘I’ve got the tape and everything else you’ll need in the boot. I’ll give them to you when I drop you off. It will only be for a couple of days. I’ll be back from London on Wednesday. I really am grateful to you, Debs. If we can get this contract to vet job applicants for Driberg’s it will make all the difference to us.’
Debra pulled a face.
‘I’m not sure if I approve of large companies using private agencies to vet potential employees.’
‘I understand how you feel,’ Leigh agreed. ‘But it’s a fact of commercial life these days, and if we don’t get the commission then someone else will, and I have two growing daughters to support. Don’t tell me that none of your clients has ever hinted that you might help them find a loophole in the tax laws,’ Leigh added.
‘We aren’t that kind of firm,’ Debra told her firmly. ‘The advice we give our clients is always strictly within the terms of the law.’
Or at least it had been, Debra reflected later on when she was on her own and thinking over her conversation with her stepsister.
Would that continue to be the case now that the small old-fashioned firm she had worked for for the last three years had been amalgamated with a much more modern, thrusting Chester offshoot of a large multinational firm of accountants?
The multinational was putting in a new partner. None of them had met him yet, although they had all heard the rumours and whispers about how dynamic he was; about how determined he was to ensure that the new amalgamated firm would run efficiently and profitably. There had been no suggestion that jobs would go, but still there was an air of tension and uncertainty in the office, and Debra had been rather looking forward to her short break, especially since over the past few months she herself had been particularly busy, having had to take on the workload of a colleague who had left unexpectedly and not been replaced, in addition to working for her own clients.
She had planned to spend her time doing nothing more mentally demanding than working in her garden and redecorating her spare bedroom, but wryly she admitted that she could not really have refused to help Leigh out. Despite their differences, the two women were good friends, and Debra knew that in the same circumstances Leigh would have been the first to offer to help her.
The arrangement was that she would drive over to Elsie Johnson’s in the morning just before Elsie was due to leave for her sister’s, and that she would stay at the house until Leigh returned from London to relieve her on Wednesday.
If her stepsister’s business continued to expand they would need to think of taking on extra staff, Debra mused as she packed. Both Leigh and her partner were adamant about preferring to take 'on only other women. They were not a tough, macho agency, Leigh had pointed out when Debra had gently reminded her that in doing so they could be accused of discrimination. The reason they were getting so many small commissions from other women was perhaps because it was a female-based agency and because, as women, they understood all too well how other members of their sex felt about male betrayal.
‘Jeff helped out and he’s a man,’ Debra had pointed out.
‘That was different,’ Leigh had overruled her, adding that Jeff on
ly helped them out as a favour. He didn’t work for them.
