She was glad that her father joined them before she could be drawn into the small flood of exchanges passing between the other three as Ralph introduced his wife to Ben, and Helen explained her relationship to Susan.
Miranda excused herself on the pretext of wanting to go to the Ladies, gritting her teeth in rage and revulsion as Ralph leered at her and told her fulsomely, ‘Going to check up on the old makeup, are we, then, Miranda? Shouldn’t worry too much, if I were you. A good-looking woman like you doesn’t need any warpaint, although I must admit there’s something about a woman’s mouth when it’s painted with lipstick that makes a man wonder what it would be like to kiss it off.’
As she turned her back on him, red flags of rage flying in her cheeks, Miranda heard Susan saying uncomfortably, ‘Ralph! Really.’
Horrible, revolting man, Miranda seethed as she walked quickly towards the corridor and the Ladies. The language he used was almost as offensive and demeaning to her sex as the intent behind it.
As she stared at her flushed face in the mirror, she was half tempted to wipe off the discreet touch of lipstick she was wearing, but then she decided that to do so was to give in to his bullying, demeaning tactics and would allow him to see how much his words had affected her, and to a man like Ralph Charlesworth the fact that he had affected her, even if it was with revulsion, would be something he would consider to be a triumph.
No, she wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of seeing how much he had disgusted and offended her.
She stayed in the Ladies for as long as she could, praying that when she rejoined the others he and his wife would have left them.
When she eventually walked back into the bar, she was relieved to see that her father was in discussion with the president of the club and his wife; and that there was no sign of Ralph and Susan.
As Miranda rejoined them, Helen murmured sadly to her, ‘Poor Susan; I don’t know how on earth she puts up with that lout Ralph. I’m sorry if he embarrassed you, Miranda.’
‘It wasn’t your fault,’ Miranda told her, adding, ‘I can’t understand why Susan stays with him either, but, then, I suppose with three children…’
‘Well, yes, although she claims that she does love him.’ She gave a faint sigh. ‘Poor girl; I have a horrid feeling that sooner or later he’s going to leave her, and that it will probably be sooner.’
* * *
THROUGHOUT THE meal Ben Frobisher conversed mainly with her father. He had made several attempts to draw Miranda into their conversation, but she had resolutely refused to respond with anything more than cool politeness. The man had charm, she had to give him that, she admitted reluctantly to herself, but she wasn’t going to be swayed by it.
Even so, she discovered that she was listening rather more intently than she would have wished when Helen questioned about his background and family.
She was surprised to discover that he was one of four children—somehow she had imagined him being an only one—and that the other three were all married with young families, something which made him the butt of a great deal of family teasing.
‘You don’t approve of marriage, then?’ Helen hazarded, smiling at him.
He laughed. He had a nice laugh, Miranda acknowledged; it was both warm and spontaneous, crinkling his eyes at the corners and doing the most peculiar things to her insides.
‘Quite the contrary,’ he assured Helen, obviously not minding her questions.
‘But I do believe that it’s a lifetime’s commitment and that as such it’s something one needs to be very sure about. A marriage that is going to endure can’t be based on mere sexual attraction, no matter how strong that attraction initially appears,’ he said bluntly. ‘That’s not to say that it isn’t an important part of any marriage, but it can never be the total sum of an enduring relationship. I suppose the truth is that as yet I still haven’t met the woman I know I won’t be able to live without.’
Helen laughed and teased him, ‘I do believe you’re a romantic!’
‘Aren’t most of us at heart?’
A computer expert who claimed to be romantic. Wasn’t that a complete contradiction?
‘Are you a romantic, Miranda?’
She stared at him, and felt her skin starting to flush. His question had caught her off guard. She had been listening to the conversation and yet had considered herself safely outside it. Now she wondered if he hadn’t thrown the question at her because he wanted to embarrass her, rather than through any desire to know what motivated her.
‘Miranda, romantic?’ her father snorted, answering the question for her. ‘Miranda is one of your modern breed of women who scorns such old-fashioned notions. She prides herself on being independent and self-sufficient.’
Miranda knew that her father was really only teasing her, but for some reason his words hurt her, drawing a picture of her which her emotions instantly rejected as she viewed the cold, emotionless creature his words had created. She wasn’t really like that, was she?
It was true that she was independent, but that was because… because… because what? Because she had wanted to give her father his freedom… his right to have a life of his own, the kind of life he might not have felt free to have with an adult daughter still living under his roof.
Well, maybe her motivation hadn’t been quite so altruistic, and certainly she enjoyed her work, but, if she was truly the woman her father seemed to think, wouldn’t she have long ago left this small market town behind her and headed out into a much wider and harsher world?
‘Jeffrey, honestly, that’s not true,’ Helen intervened. ‘Don’t listen to him, Ben,’ she exhorted. ‘Miranda might try to hide it, but in reality she’s one of the most tender-hearted people you could ever wish to meet, although I know she hates admitting it. I suspect she’s rather afraid of letting people see how tender-hearted she actually is in case it makes her too vulnerable.’
Miranda was horrified. Much as she had disliked her father’s jocular misrepresentation of her as a hard-headed determined woman with no room in her life for time-wasting emotions, it had been preferable to H
elen’s far too accurate portrait of her.
She knew that Ben Frobisher was looking at her, but she could not bring herself to return his look with anything like the composure that doing so required.
‘No one likes to appear too vulnerable,’ she could hear him saying, but, although the words were addressed to Helen, she could sense that he was still watching her.
Her appetite had deserted her completely. She pushed the food around on her plate, longing for the evening to be over. She had been right; the only thing she had not guessed was the true intensity of the evening’s awfulness.
She was glad when her father started to ask Ben about his plans for relocating his business to the town, and was both surprised and rather chagrined to learn that, while he would be bringing some key people down with him from London, he was hoping to recruit the majority of his employees locally.
‘It’s the kind of business that requires young sharp minds,’ he told them all. ‘At a recent convention, the majority of those attending were under thirty, and a good percentage were under twenty. At the moment we hold a good place in the market because we’ve been able to specialise in a profitable area, but we can only hold on to that advantage if we remain in the forefront of new advances, and in order to do that we need keen, innovative minds.’
‘What will happen to your existing employees?’ Miranda asked him.
‘Most of them have already found new jobs. There’s no shortage of demand for trained people in and around London, and, of course, they’re all getting redundancy payments. In fact, none of them actually wanted to relocate with us. They’re all under thirty, with established lifestyles in London, most of them are unmarried, and the thought of moving out to a quiet market town didn’t have much appeal for them.’
‘But it did for you?’
Miranda had no idea why she was questioning him… talking to him. If she had any sense she would simply sit here in silence, having as little to do with him as possible.