Faith - Lesley Pearse [117]
But that wasn’t enough for her.
A week after Laura’s holiday in Fife, Robbie Fielding made one of his surprise visits to the casino. He was a director of the company which owned the Maybury and, by repute, a hard man who would sack anyone he didn’t think pulled their weight. Laura had met him several times before, but as he’d never taken her to task about anything, she didn’t quake in her shoes when she saw him walk in, as most of the staff did.
‘You’re looking sensational tonight, Laura,’ he said as he came up to the bar. ‘Where’d you get the tan?’
‘Only in Fife,’ she replied, flattered that he’d remembered her name. ‘Can I get you a drink?’
He was about forty, five feet ten, well built with slicked-back black hair and piercing dark eyes. Not handsome exactly, but arresting – he reminded her of a well-built ‘Fonz’ from Happy Days. Someone said he came from Newcastle, and he did have a faint Geordie accent. It was said he dyed his hair black, that he wore a corset to keep his belly in, and that he was a gangster.
Laura thought all this very unlikely. The very nature of the gambling world meant most men at the top of it would be a little bent, but that didn’t make them gangsters. She thought his hair colour was natural, for close up she could see the odd strand of grey, and she certainly didn’t believe the story about the corset. He had the swaggering walk of a man who had worked out in a gym for his entire life.
‘I’ll have a single malt,’ he said and looked appraisingly at her. ‘You dress very well. Do you buy your clothes in London?’
Laura looked down at herself in some surprise. She was wearing a very simple white sleeveless long dress that she’d found at a jumble sale and altered by taking it in to fit tightly and opening up the side seam to make a slit right up to her thigh.
She smiled at his compliment. ‘Sometimes,’ she said. That was true in as much as most of her clothes dated back to her days in London, and others were cast-offs from Jackie. ‘But I got this dress here in Edinburgh.’
‘It’s very nice,’ he said. ‘But then you’ve got the legs for it.’
They chatted while he had his drink. He asked her where she’d been in Fife and she told him about her friend buying the cottage in Cellardyke. ‘It was lovely for a holiday with my little boy,’ she added. ‘But if I didn’t have Barney, and I lived in Kensington like she does, I’d want to go somewhere hot and sophisticated for my holidays.’
Their conversation ended there as the waitress came over with an order of drinks. By the time Laura had finished, Robbie Fielding had gone.
It turned out to be a very busy night as a large group of men up in Edinburgh on business came in and were drinking and gambling heavily. Laura was just taking the till drawer out to take it to the office for the money to be checked, when Robbie reappeared.
‘I’d like to talk to you. Let me take that,’ he said, taking the drawer from her hands. ‘You get us both a drink and bring them to the office.’
Laura knew he wouldn’t suggest a drink if he was about to sack her, but she was worried about how late it was. If Stuart woke and found she wasn’t in bed beside him he’d give her the third degree in the morning. Yet she could hardly tell a director that she hadn’t got time to have a drink with him.
Within only a few minutes of being in the office with Robbie, Laura thought he was sounding her out for another position in the company. He complimented her on her reliability, saying he’d noted she hadn’t called in sick once since starting there, and asked her what line of work she had been in back in London. But then he began asking more personal questions: how old her son was, and whether her husband minded taking care of him while she worked.
She didn’t really know why she told him Stuart wasn’t her husband, or that he didn’t really like her working at the casino, but once she’d revealed that much she found herself unable to stop. Before she knew it she’d more or less told him that she was feeling very dissatisfied with her life just