"Stop right there." He pressed, palms down, on the circular table and looked at her grimly. "Now you listen to me, because I'll only say this once. If you don't want to do this, then that's all well and fine, but don't think that you can hide behind a lot of hogwash about not being gritty enough and not being prepared for this kind of thing because you're a vicar's daughter and not being the right sort of person. Just come right out with the truth, which is that this particular assignment doesn't appeal to you Perhaps you don't like the thought of working nights. Perhaps you just find the girls we'll be interviewing distasteful. Is that it? Have I put my finger on the button? Do you fancy that you're better than they ate?"
Ruth's face had turned as white as a sheet, and when she picked up her glass of wine her hand was trembling.
How could he say those things? He had got it all wrong! She had spent hours thinking about what she was going to say, working out her explanations in her head, and when it had come to the crunch her own tongue-tied, gauche, immature stupidity had let her down again! Had left him with all the wrong impressions.
"No!" she protested defensively. "I have no objection to working nights at all...I don't have any family commitments...and I don't... How can you say that I find those girls...distasteful?" Her voice was shocked and mortified at the assumption, and she watched his expression change from brutal, punishing grimness to something gentler.
"Then what is it?" he asked quietly.
"I...I feel inadequate for the job," she said finally, which hadn't been part of the rehearsed speech at all.
"I was appalled by those stories last night. Girls who leave home for no better reasons than lack of space and arguments with step-parents-leave home and at the age of seventeen drop the lid on their futures for ever. I wanted to take them home with me and, I don't know...save them, I suppose. Instead I had to jot down every word they said, ask questions and then say goodbye, because tonight we'll move on to a couple of different faces, with different stories and different little tragedies."
"But you can't make everything better, and hiding away from certain unpleasant realities doesn't mean that they no longer exist. It just means that you remove yourself from the inconvenience of having to confront them."
Ruth hadn't tied her hair back Nor had she tied it back the night before. It fell like silk to her shoulders.
With her hair loose and wearing a skirt that was a little shorter than normal and a blouse that was a little less buttoned up than customary, she felt strangely vulnerable.
She felt like a woman instead of a girl.
Particularly here, now, sitting opposite someone so potently masculine and in a situation where the dress code of formality was not in existence.
The night before she had maintained a healthy distance, physically, from him. She had taken up her position on the chair furthest from his, allowing the two young girls to sit between them, facing one another, but even so, her eyes had slipped towards him with unerring regularity. It was almost as though she had needed to feed off him, feast her eyes on his image, allow his overpowering masculinity to seep into her like a liquid.
She suspected that all this was a little bit puerile, a little bit unhealthy.
Her reaction to him frightened and confused her, and, because she had no slide rule against which to measure it, she ingenuously justified it as perfectly natural, absolutely normal to be fascinated by a member of the species who was so utterly different from any of his kind she had ever met before. She equated it with a lack of logic that she tailed to recognize, with the same sort of fascination that might grip her were she to find herself in the company of a two-headed monster.
"I don't have a problem confronting reality," she said awkwardly.
"Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that you've led a very sheltered life, very protected, very cocooned.
You worked hard at school, did ballet, maybe a bit of horse riding, had every angle of your life mapped out..."
"There's nothing wrong with that!" Ruth burst out vehemently. "I'm glad I had a sheltered life! I would hate to have been like those girls!"
"Is that why you find it so hard to be in their company? Because you can't identify with them? Because they seem like aliens to you when in fact they're just less fortunate?"
"No," Ruth said wearily. "I told you, I just feel too much compassion... I also feel around a hundred next to them, when in fact I'm only a few years older. I feel like their mums and I respond as thought I were..."
"You feel older because of the way you project yourself."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean..." Here he drew in a long breath and looked at her steadily. Look, at the way you dress."
Ruth automatically glanced over herself and blushed.
"You spent the whole of last night huddled in your denim jacket as though you were terrified you might catch something if you took it off."
"I felt cold."
"The place was packed with people and it was boiling hot."
"I...I..." She searched around for a logical reason for her sartorial reticence of the night before and found none.
The truth of the matter was she hadn't dared expose the tiny skin-fitting top she had daringly slung on before she'd left the house. It clung lovingly, to every inch of her body. It was the sort of top which was comfortable enough for her to wear at home, when there was no one around, but was absolutely the last thing she would be seen wearing in pubic. She had no idea why she had worn it. Perhaps she had been imbued with a feeling of recklessness, but, in all events, she had lacked the courage to remove the jacket, even though she had felt stiflingly warm in the cafe. She was amazed that he had noticed.
"You have the face of a girl, an angelic child, and you dress like someone's matronly aunt, as though you're ashamed of the way you look." His eyes skirted over her blouse and she nervously responded by fiddling with the top button.
"I'm not a child," was all she could find to say, hurt by the description.
"You don't have to become these girls' social worker. You simply have to understand what makes them tick...the emotion will transfer itself into what we write; and what we write might change the lives of some of them. There are very good places of sanctuary where they can seek refuge, just until they get their heads together and their lives a bit more sorted out, but, like everything else, these places need government backing. The printed word can work wonders sometimes."
He could see the awkward embarrassment gradually ebbing away and her eyes lighting up with interest.
"Woman she might well be, but she responded with the transparently telling emotions of a girl. He could sit and watch the changing expressions on her face for ever. It was as fascinating as watching the rise and fall of the sea on a moonlit night. Her grey eyes reflected the smallest shifts in her moods, from blue-grey, when she felt serene and dreamy, to a stormy dark grey when she was defensive and bristling. Observing all these minute alterations was more fun than reading a good book.
He was also feeling wonderfully fired up. He had watched her covertly the night before, had seen the way her eyes had rested on him before hurriedly flitting away, as though she'd been terrified of being caught out doing something unmentionable. It had been a most amazing turn-on.
She had sat there, her legs discreetly but somehow sinfully clad in what had looked like the thickest possible black tights, her jacket kept severely buttoned so that his mind had been obliged to wander and speculate on what lay beneath it. And when she'd taken notes, which she'd done with remarkable efficiency he really must see about getting her status at the office changed...her hair had brushed against her cheeks and her fringe, which was short and straight, had become permanently tousled from the way she'd expelled her breath upwards whenever she felt hot or bothered or both.