Page 8 of Annabel and Her Sisters

Mr Delightful got an even more radiant secretary as I floated in to take longhand, curling up on his sofa as he swept back his blond hair and put the phone down, with an ecstatic smile, to Penny, his mistress.

Part of the reason our relationship worked was that I knew about Penny– I’d bumped into them holding hands in a restaurant– and kept shtum.

I also knew about his cocaine habit and would stand outside his door while he was hoovering up a line and give a sharp knock if someone approached– the doors had little glass windows which made it precarious.

So I did have other skills: discretion, quick instincts and sharp knuckles.

Plus, Mr Delightful– real name Robin Linton-Smith– liked the fact that I was posh, and my dad was a high court judge: he’d have been surprised to learn Dad grew up on a housing estate.

In later life, working for Robin served me well: I could tell which of Polly and Luke’s friends were on coke from their ability to laugh at absolutely nothing, their frequent trips to the loo during supper, and the fact that they never put on weight.

When Thursday came round, I asked Robin if I could have a couple of hours for lunch instead of one.

‘Of course, darling! Who are you meeting?’

I went the colour of the dashing red silk hanky spilling out of his top pocket. ‘Um…’

Robin looked entranced and tapped his nose, thrilled to have a fellow conspirator. ‘Mum’s the word,’ he assured me with a purr. ‘Don’t hurry back, Napolina have cancelled. The pitch is next week, now.’

I left at 12.45, flew downstairs into reception, turned left into Henrietta Street, then down to the Strand before tracking east, feeling a tiny bit guilty.

But surely lunch was fine? It wasn’t even after work drinks.

Certainly not supper. Everyone had lunch with friends, of both sexes.

Except he wasn’t a friend. And I was living with Will.

When I walked into the wine bar, though, I knew I couldn’t care less.

He was even better looking than I remembered but sweetly nervous, pushing back his tawny hair which got in his eyes and quickly getting a bar stool for me, and a drink.

The bar was good. Much better than sitting at a table for two and I wondered if he’d thought it through.

‘We can just have a toasted sandwich or something here– if we sit down we have to wade through a menu. I hope that’s OK?’

‘Perfect.’ He had.

After that it was easy. We talked and talked, first about Giovanni because that was our common ground, and I told him how he and my dad had met at bar school, and then about my friendship with MT, who it turned out he’d met– that made my heart lurch a bit and my brain scurry into overdrive concocting damage limitation.

Apparently she’d done work experience in his chambers.

I told him we’d done a secretarial course together and she was now a trainee solicitor.

‘Good for her. And you?’

‘Oh, I’m still pounding a typewriter. But I love it, it’s such a fun agency.

We have amazing clients– Guinness, the army– and my boss is great and I work with a great friend, Hebe.

I honestly almost look forward to going in and having a laugh.

Last week we were involved in a pitch for Kitekat and they dressed me, Hebe and another secretary in accounts up as kittens to bring the coffee in– everyone roared! ’

David laughed too– this was, after all, the eighties and no one batted an eyelid at three pretty girls dressed in furry mini dresses complete with tails and ears serving refreshments.

In fact, Hebe, Tina and I had been flattered to be chosen and felt sorry for Jenny and Trish in the next bay, who hadn’t.

‘And what next?’

‘Sorry?’

‘I mean, after the secretarial stint?’

I blinked. ‘Oh, well, you know. Use my degree, I suppose,’ I lied. I loved it at BDG.

‘Which is?’

‘English.’

‘Cool.’

‘I suppose. Easy though, really. While you were in the library wading through law tomes, and the biochemists were in the lab every day, I was lying in the sun reading Northanger Abbey .’

‘And writing about it.’

‘Well, that’s not hard.’

He grinned. ‘I’d find it bloody impossible.’

‘Really?’

He looked sheepish. ‘I’m only really good at reading and retaining and repeating. Regurgitating. I’m always in awe of creative brains.’

That was nice, too, but I wasn’t sure I was.

A creative brain. A Greek friend who was a dancer on a cruise ship said I wrote hilarious letters to her, but that was easy.

I went back to the office, thoughtful. Quite tipsy, but thoughtful.

David expected more from me. Not expected, but had assumed.

With an English degree. Suddenly I felt ashamed.

I’d been a secretary– a bad one– for five years.

Will had quite liked the fact he had a much better job than me and had only gone to Oxford Poly.

He was a negotiator at Savills. And my parents were extremely unpushy and had never mentioned it.

The following day I popped down to see Hebe’s boyfriend, Gus, an art director and a friend of mine, on the slightly scary creative floor.

He was laughing uproariously with his copywriter, Tom, but most of the creative department, like Robin, were constantly amused.

I outlined my plan and he looked impressed.

‘Sure. You write some ads, and I’ll draw them up for you, no probs. Good for you, Annie, you’re wasted up there with the suits.’

God. Gus never said anything serious like that. I told Hebe, because I had to, and she agreed. ‘Can’t think why you haven’t done it before.’

‘Well, I suppose when I first came here I thought I might become an account exec eventually, until I realized that was impossible.’ This much was true.

She laughed. ‘God no, you’re far too disorganized!

’ Hebe hadn’t been to university but she was a brilliant secretary.

She then confided she was thinking of moving to the City, to work as a PA for an investment bank or something, where she’d earn more money.

Why had it taken me so long to know myself?

And why had it taken a complete stranger to set me on course?

Three months later I had a portfolio together, with Gus’s help, and was showing it to Mike, the creative director.

He was a friend of Robin’s, but it had taken all my nerve to ask for an appointment.

He flipped through my work. Paused on one particular ad I was pleased with, for Kitekat, as it happened.

Read a thirty-second TV script I’d written for Sainsbury’s.

Then another for Polos. I noticed he smiled at the ending. He looked up, thoughtful.

‘You can write, Annie. And you’ve got imagination. Did Gus work on these with you, or just draw them up?’

I hesitated. Gus was a brilliant artist, but it was well known Tom, his copywriter, mostly came up with the ideas. Mike smiled.

‘You don’t have to answer that. And yes, I will give you a job.

Or at least a trial. As it happens, it’s convenient.

Alan’s copywriter, Bill, is going to Gold Greenlees, left him in the lurch.

’ He leaned forward. ‘But Annie, it’s hard making the break in the same agency.

You’d be better off going elsewhere. You’ll always be regarded as Robin’s secretary, you know that? ’

I did, but I was too thrilled to care. And there turned out to be a reason why Bill had abandoned Alan– he didn’t have a creative brain.

So as a team, and because I was new, we were mostly given below-the-line stuff: brochures, copy for leaflets, no TV.

All things I could do on my own; but I didn’t care, because I could tell David I was a copywriter.

Ah yes, David. Because it won’t have escaped your notice that some time has passed since I mentioned him.

David and I had met again, for a drink after work, in a pub this time in South Ken, which had a sunny garden, and he’d kissed me on the way home.

Quite a lot. But no more. Yet it was enough.

More than enough. I’d gone home and told Will.

Not about the kiss, and not about David, but that it was over.

That living together, which after all had been something of a trial run, wasn’t working.

And that I was truly sorry but my heart wasn’t in it any more.

I think he was more shocked at being dumped than losing me, but it wasn’t very pleasant. He was very upset, too. We both were, and I cleared out of there pretty quickly.

And then it all came out. From my friends. From Hebe, and MT, and Fatima, about how he’d cheated on me. Not just once, but a few times, and they’d known. I was horrified. Upset. Angry. But mostly with them.

‘Why the fuck didn’t you tell me?’ I demanded of MT.

‘Because you were so in love with him,’ she wailed. ‘And I rang Fatima and she said no, all men are like that, it doesn’t mean anything. But honestly, Annie, I was so bloody conflicted. And I never caught him, you know? It was all just stories. Hearsay.’

‘All men in Fatima’s world perhaps– her father for one, we know that– but MT, this is me, twenty-eight and single, not married with two kids when maybe you would keep quiet, splitting up a family and all that.’

‘I know, I know, and when I heard you’d met David’– I’d told her– ‘I prayed so hard, cos Dad says he’s great.’

‘He is great,’ I said curtly, but I was livid. I’d been made such a fool of. I hated Will. Loathed him. Was furious I’d felt sorry for him with his stupid, sad face as I’d cleared out of the flat.

‘But Annie, just because he’s great and Will’s a shit, it doesn’t mean he’s the one, you know? Don’t… you know. Leap. Maybe have some time on your own?’

‘No. He is the one.’

‘You’ve only kissed him once!’ she squealed.

‘It was enough,’ I told her shortly.

It was. David wasn’t just clever and attractive; he had substance, and honour, and kindness, which were qualities I knew I’d missed.

And we didn’t rush into anything. ‘Don’t do anything you might regret,’ MT had warned, and that much I did take on board.

We went out very happily for two more years before we got married in the Temple Church and then had the reception in the Inner Temple when I was thirty and he was thirty-two.

I loved him dearly. Still do. Ten years after his horribly premature death.

But he’d left me with a huge legacy. That of the pen.

But for him, I wouldn’t have got bored with writing brochures, or copy for haemorrhoid creams, and started a novel under the desk.

But for him, Alan and I might not have got the sack when a new creative director took over, and when I was already pregnant with Luke, so who cares.

But for David, I might not have written eighteen books. So no. I have no regrets.