Singing in the Wilderness by Isobel Chace

nice.’
    Gloria turned speculative eyes on to her. ‘Bit of a change for you all the same. You’ll notice the difference when you have to pay for everything yourself. I thought when we first arrived it would be fun having another English girl around, but you believe in keeping yourself to yourself, don’t you ? Shall we see more of you now that you haven’t got Daddy to r un home to every evening ? ’
    ‘Possibly.’
    ‘Well, I wish you would!’ Gloria went on. ‘There’s not much a girl can do on her own here. The Persian girls have their mothers after them if they so much as smile at a man on their way home, and their families have hysterics if they’re half an hour late, or anything like that. I’ve been downright lonely since I’ve been here.’
    ‘Oh, Gloria, I’m sorry. I never thought!’ Stephanie said quickly. ‘You should have said something before. You could at least have come home sometimes with Father and myself.’
    ‘Thanks very much! That wasn’t quite what I hand in mind! Now if your father had been more like Mr. Ruddock I might have considered it! Why do you suppose they chose an American to run things ? I thought this was a strictly English contract! Though he’s dishy enough for me whatever he is! Did you ever see such a huge man, and handsome with it?’
    ‘I suppose he is,’ Stephanie said, as if she had just discovered the fact.
    ‘You don’t mean you haven’t noticed!’ Gloria expostulated. ‘Come to think of it, you might not have done. I suppose living with Daddy rather cramped your style where men are concerned?’
    ‘I’ve never thought about it,’ Stephanie answered truthfully.
    ‘You may not have thought of it before,’ Gloria observed with relish, ‘but working with him every day, you’d better wake up and think about it now! What I’d give to have your opportunities!’
    Stephanie thought rather less highly of her opportunities that afternoon when she unlocked the door of her office and began to take stock of the damage that had been done to her filing system. She cleared a space in the middle of the room and sat on the floor, putting the papers in neat piles all round her. Nothing seemed to be missing, but then nothing was in its right place either. It all seemed to be a completely meaningless bit of vandalism, and she would have dismissed it as such if it hadn’t been for the planning that must have been involved in getting hold of the keys to the files.
    Fatemeh put her head round the door quite early in the afternoon.
    ‘I’ve come to help you myself,’ she announced. ‘There’s been too much talk about this downstairs already and I don’t want to encourage it. What shall I d o first?’
    Stephanie pointed out the various piles that could be safely filed away. ‘I’d rather you left the last two to me,’ she said. ‘I want to make absolutely sure that there’s nothing missing from the confidential files.’
    Fatemeh nodded. She was a pretty girl, intelligent, with a bright perky way of speaking that disguised her essentially placid good nature. It had taken a lot of persuasion for her family to allow her to work for a foreign company and she was always met at the door by one of the maids of the house who, as closely veiled in a chador as her young mistress, escorted her to and from her home daily.
    ‘Do you know why it happened ? ’ the Persian girl asked as she settled to her task. ‘Has it to do with your father?’
    ‘I don’t know,’ Stephanie admitted. ‘If my father had wanted any of these letters, he only had to ask, or he could have got it himself. Why all this ? ’
    Fatemeh smiled across at her. ‘I like your father, which is why I haven’t told anyone else, but he was here yesterday afternoon, I saw him myself.’
    ‘You saw him? But what did he say?’
    Fatemeh shrugged. ‘I said I was sorry he was leaving and he said he was too. Naturally, I didn’t ask him what he was doing in his own daughter’s office.’ The Persian