“We parted, of course, but we both knew that there was a link between us that nothing could ever break, even though we never met again. It was too utterly perfect and complete as it was.”
There was a silence, and then someone said, suitably: “Wonderful Pamela!”
She smiled vaguely, shook her head, and then tragically clasped both hands to her breast. “Please, a cocktail. I’m so tired. Oh, and what’s the time? I’m dining with a man at eight, and he’s thrown over a most important engagement to take me, and he’d be quite capable of getting angry if I failed him. Sweet, no! Not a quarter past nine! Oh, please, someone, a car, and take me to the little tiny, tiny French restaurant in Wardour Street.”
Lady Pamela waved away the cocktail, spilling it, prayed for another one and drank it, and then wafted away on the wings of little distressed exclamations and futile, effective gestures of farewell.
That was two nights ago.
This morning I was in Bond Street, and I saw Pamela March in her father’s car, held up by a block in the traffic.
On the other side of the narrow street another car with a solitary woman in it passed slowly. I recognised the woman instantly from Pamela’s description, for she had bright red hair, was quite distinguished-looking, and altogether rather lovely in a pallid, blanc-de-Ninon way, and radiated a marked degree of physical charm.
The eyes of the two women who had been as disembodied spirits communing together met in a long look.
And the expression in each pair of eyes was momentarily identical, and it was with the same effect of immutable determination that each simultaneously administered and received the cut direct.
They knew....