'Oh, I'm sorry.' Yancie was instantly apologetic.

'I'd have preferred your congratulations!' her mother retorted acidly.

'Well, of course, I'm pleased for you. I…'

'Good, you can come and meet Henry tomorrow,' her mother snorted pithily-and hung up. And Yancie felt as if she'd just been pulled through the wringer.

Absently she handed the phone back to Thomson, and only realised that she had forgotten that he was breathing down her neck for all of two seconds when, mildly for him, he enquired, `Family problems?'

In an instant Yancie was back to realising she was in a car parked on a grass verge, not chauffeuring the man she was hoping to impress with her efficiency. `I'm sorry,' she apologised. `My mother's-er-um just got engaged.' Yancie started to feel hot all over. 'She-um-wanted me to be the first to know,' she explained, and set the car in motion, hoping with all she had that her employer would think the news qualified as sufficiently urgent for her mother to have contacted her through the garage, via Kevin Veasey, who had passed on the car's phone number to her.

Not another word was said, and by the time she had driven onto the forecourt of the hotel Yancie was giving serious thought to telling her mother when next she saw her-tomorrow or die, by the sound of it-that she was not only no longer living at Ralph's home, but that she had found herself a job. Well, to be more exact, Greville had found her a job.

Yancie took a swift glance at Thomson Wakefield as they got out of the car. If she still had a job, that was. His glance at her was brief, then he was striding towards the hotel entrance. She went hurrying with him and started to feel annoyed. She half expected when they reached the door of the hotel and he opened it that he would go through and leave it to swing back in her face. But no, he did have some manners, it seemed, in that he held it open for her to go through first.