The Silent Tide by Rachel Hore Page A

and I do like it.’
    ‘You have worked well,’ he said, ‘and sales have been decent this month. We’ll try you a few weeks longer. See how it goes. Keep on the right side of Audrey, though.’
    ‘Oh, I will. Thank you,’ she said, jumping up. ‘Thank you so much.’
    ‘Good morning.’ They both turned to see Audrey framed in the doorway, taking off her coat. She looked from one to the other and Isabel felt uncomfortable at the inscrutable expression in her eyes.
     
    Berec arrived in the office late morning with a box of biscuits tied up in ribbon, but Trudy was still away sick and the phones were ringing off the hook so no one had time to talk to him. ‘Go away, Berec, we’re busy,’ Audrey said.
    When Isabel stepped out at lunchtime, intending to visit the library, there he was waving at her from the café across the road. She hurried across to join him, and over a plate of scrambled egg on toast she delivered her news.
    ‘What did I tell you?’ Berec pronounced, delighted. ‘Stephen is a good man.’
    ‘It’s so kind of him. He had been insistent he couldn’t pay me.’
    ‘He likes you,’ Berec said, looking extremely self-satisfied. ‘I knew he would, though Stephen’s not a man who shows his heart easily. He had a bad time of it in the war, they say.’
    ‘Oh, the war,’ Isabel sighed, thinking of her father. ‘Will it never go away?’
    ‘No – at least, not in our lifetimes,’ Berec said quietly and this time he did not smile.
    ‘I don’t know much about Stephen,’ she admitted. ‘I’ve spoken to his wife on the telephone, but she never comes to the office.’
    ‘She wouldn’t. She’s not interested in his work. I met her once at a dinner, it must be two years ago. Her name is Grace. She’s pretty in your pale, English kind of way, but quiet, worryingly quiet. They placed me next to her, perhaps because I talk, but I could hardly get her to say a word to me.’
    ‘How rude of her,’ Isabel said, wide-eyed at this peek into her boss’s private life.
    ‘I think she did not mean to be,’ Berec said. ‘Perhaps she did not feel at her ease. The occasion was the publication of a collection of James Milward’s poetry. Now there is a rude man. So arrogant, so selfish.’ He laid down his knife and fork. ‘Now, if you’ve finished your meal . . . some more of this excellent tea, perhaps? No? So what are you doing at Christmas, my dear Isabel?’
     
    Isabel was dreading Christmas. Her mother had written asking her to come home and she wanted to, badly, but it worried her, too. How would her brothers act towards her and, so much worse, her father? Her mother had intimated the Saturday she’d visited that her father was angry and didn’t want to see her, yet here was this invitation so it seemed that he’d softened. Still she longed to see them. And after all, the alternative, playing gooseberry at luncheon in Claridge’s where Aunt Penelope’s boyfriend Reginald seemed to live, wasn’t to be endured.
    Once she’d written back to say she would go, she felt calmer. On the Monday before Christmas she helped Audrey rig up a small tree and string paper lanterns across the office with all the excitement she’d felt as a child. The days leading up to Christmas were fun, with authors and sales representatives dropping into the office for drinks and a proper party on the Thursday, the night before Christmas Eve. Trudy, still pale under her makeup after her illness, outraged the dignified Philip by catching him under a piece of mistletoe, an act so out of character for both parties that Isabel was rather shocked.
    She was even more shocked when Stephen hooked his arm round her on his way out and did the same thing, murmuring, ‘A Merry Christmas,’ to her. And he was gone.
     
    Late on Friday she joined the great shoal of humanity pouring out of the Underground onto the freezing concourse of Charing Cross station, a suitcase in one hand and a bag of presents in the other. She