by Celia Walden
‘Don’t say it would never have happened in our day.’
‘Well, would it?’
Joyce stopped typing long enough to throw her boss a disbelieving look. ‘Pretty sure that’s always happened at office parties the world over.’
‘And it happened at our do?’
‘BWL’s fortieth – least that’s what I heard.’
‘God. I used to be the first to know these things. When did I get so out of the loop?’
The answer hung there, unspoken: when your husband got cancer.
Jill ran a hand through her hair. She’d always felt proud of how few greys she had, even as her sixtieth approached. But over the past few months she’d seen and felt the colour and texture change, and with everything she and Stan were going through, it felt like a spiteful little twist of the knife on the part of Mother Nature.
‘I feel grim,’ Jill murmured, more to herself than Joyce. ‘Need to wipe the hospital off myself. Can you do me a favour and—’
‘Americano and an apricot Danish?’
‘You’re a lifesaver.’ Jill smiled. ‘How am I going to manage without you?’
‘Don’t. All these years I’ve been dreaming of this moment and now the thought of ticking the “retired” box on forms makes me want to cry. Never mind you – what am I going to do all day?’
Jill shook her head. ‘Post pictures of the grandchildren on Facebook—?’
Male voices drowned out the end of her sentence, and as everyone began to file out of the conference room, Jill smoothed down the Jaeger skirt that she’d bought in every colour – something she did once every couple of years with office staples – and strode towards the group of men.
‘Mrs Barnes.’
‘Mr Ho. Good to see you, and so sorry I couldn’t join you. I hope Mr Lawrence here explained that I got held up.’
‘It’s really no problem. We’ve got a whole marketing strategy sorted – isn’t that right? And Mr Lawrence here seems confident that he’ll be able to get us a sale by June.’
‘That’s in three weeks.’
‘He says it’s doable.’ Reaching up, Mr Ho rested a hand lightly on Jamie’s back. ‘And Mrs Barnes, I hope you’ll send your husband my very best. I had no idea he’d been so unwell.’
Jill’s smile froze.
‘My brother went through the same thing.’ He nodded sympathetically. ‘He came through it, but, well … prostate: one of the worst.’
As Mr Ho took her hand in his, Jill felt the rage rise up and block her windpipe. One thing – one thing stoic, undemanding Stan had asked for from the start: ‘You’ll make sure none of the clients ever find out, won’t you, love? I know the partners will have to, and the office top tier – but having anyone else know, all the clients I’ve worked with over the years … well, I don’t think I could stand it.’
‘Thank you,’ she managed.
‘I’m surprised you’re here now,’ Ho went on. ‘I hope you didn’t come in especially, Jill, for me?’
‘Oh I’m still very much—’
‘Because Jamie tells me you’ve been spending as much time as possible at home, which is where you should be. Not here in the office. And I’m being taken care of by this good man here.’ Smiling, he nodded in Jamie’s direction. ‘But do give Mr Barnes all our very best wishes for his recovery.’
With another little bow, her client started in the direction of the lift, flanked by Jamie.
‘Mr Ho …’ A horror of the kind of women who were forced to trot to keep up with men meant that Jill always kept her heel height to two inches or lower, and yet the two men were walking so fast that she was struggling to keep up. ‘Whilst I’m confident Lots Road will appeal to a good many of our buyers, we’ve still got a few hurdles before we can even start showing – the hurdles I pointed out to you earlier in the year. So when we say June …’
‘I know. But Mr Lawrence here says they will be biting …’ Swivelling on the heels of his tiny, shiny brogues, Mr Ho turned to Jamie.
‘Biting your hand off. They will, Mr Ho. They will.’
‘Jamie’s thinking, as you people say, “outside the box”. We like that. I’m told by my friends at the Hong Kong office that he’s a bit of a rising star.’
‘Rising?’ Jamie made a face.
‘Risen!’ Mr Ho laughed. ‘Risen, Mr Lawrence …’
‘Jamie.’
‘Jamie – let’s keep in close touch.’
As the little troop of men in neat, identikit suits filed into the lift and disappeared from view, Jill headed back across the floor to her office, where Joyce was already waiting with her forgotten post and handbag. But before starting on their decades-old ritual of confirming the day’s schedule, Joyce paused, pressing her lips together.
‘What?’
Joyce blinked: ‘I didn’t know Stan was OK with clients knowing.’
Without taking her eyes off Jamie’s self-congratulatory back, without bothering to mask an emotion that had been muddied until today, when it had become crystal clear to Jill that her partner wasn’t just insensitive but deliberately undermining her, she murmured: ‘He’s not.’
CHAPTER 4
NICOLE
‘The mouldings. I mean look at those mouldings!’
In the pause following a client’s exclamation of awe Nicole had learned to stay silent. Let them revel in the sun tunnels, roof-lights or Juliet balconies. Don’t break the spell with your waffle. Not that Rupert Jones was your typical client. She was willing to bet he knew more about the finer points of neoclassical architecture than she did.
Brutalism was her thing: to Nicole its clean, egalitarian lines weren’t just more in line with her politics but rousing on a deeper level, whereas the Vale Theatre – however awe-inspiring in its faded grandeur – somehow failed to reach her senses. And by the end of the minute she and Rupert had stood staring silently up at the theatre’s ceiling, the swirling trellis of fruit, foliage and flowers had begun to seem faintly ridiculous.
‘Obviously there’s some restoration needed,’ Nicole ventured. ‘But if you picture this as the central atrium and maybe imagine a bar here and another one there …’
The three money men Rupert had brought with him were nodding, but it was the billionaire in jeans and scuffed Converse she cared about.
‘It’s certainly way more workable than I thought it would be,’ said her client eventually. ‘And Jamie tells me that in principle the council doesn’t seem to have an issue with it being turned into a members’ club?’
‘Apparently not. I know he looked into it before we got in touch.’
There was so much more to show and tell Rupert about the property. Nicole was particularly proud of the architectural peculiarity she’d found buried in Historic England’s dense report.
Up on the roof of the Vale theatre, invisible to all but passing birds and planes, was a small octagonal glass dome that had once allowed in additional light before being concealed by a trapdoor in the heavens at a later date. The structure was present in only a handful of historical buildings across the country, and Nicole had found it so fascinating that a week earlier she had braved the Jacob’s ladder leading up above the stage to the heavens. All alone she had marvelled at the view of north-west London – and the rusty hatches that still opened out onto the roof after all these years. Yet something – perhaps as simple as keeping it her secret a little longer – prevented Nicole from telling Rupert about it now.
‘Where is Mr Lawrence, by the way? I thought he was joining us.’
‘He is.’ Nicole checked her phone.
‘Or should we be calling him “Deal Don Lawrence”?’
‘You saw the Property Week piece.’
‘Hard to miss.’ Rupert tipped his head back to take in the proscenium’s full arch. ‘What was it – five, six pages? Not that he didn’t deserve it: eighteen-mill sales don’t happen as often as they used to. BWL must be pretty chuffed with their golden boy.’
‘They are.’ Nicole nodd
ed, feeling as though her smile might crack. ‘Anyway, he should be here any minute. So he can fill you in on exactly what discussions have been had with the council.’ She paused: less was more with Rupert. ‘But you were the first person I thought of when we took on the Vale.’
‘Well, you’ve nailed it in the past. Now are we able to access those boxes?’
Nicole had always enjoyed her dealings with Rupert. She was aware that he had logged her attractiveness, but only in the objective, passing way one does a person’s sex or ethnicity – not with a view to profiting from it, like most men. Softly spoken, punctual and polite, the hotelier also wore his success lightly, which was rare in the brittle, competitive world she inhabited, and something Nicole liked to think she would be able to do when she finally got where she wanted to be.
‘I’m going to need a coffee,’ announced her client once they’d finished the tour. ‘Urgently. How about you call Jamie and get him to meet us at Lytton House in ten?’ One of Rupert’s boutique clubs, she remembered, was just down the road. ‘I’ll get them to sort some refreshments in the upstairs dining room, if you can tell him to meet us up there?’
As her client gave out instructions down the phone, Nicole tapped the ‘shortcuts’ key on hers and watched her thumb hover over ‘Jamie’, hoping against hope that her boss would pitch up before she had to make the call. Why did he even have to be here today? The theatre was Nicole’s project.
‘All good?’ Rupert raised an eyebrow at her and, reluctantly, Nicole pressed the little green phone.
‘Hell-o?’
Hate shot up like a firework inside her.
‘Jamie,’ she kept her voice level. ‘We’re done at the Vale, and Rupert was thinking we could meet at Lytton House to run through the details.’ Nicole threw her client a smile. ‘The man needs caffeine.’
‘Sure. In traffic but should be with you in twenty.’
Jamie made it in less than that, pushing through the double dining room doors with a whole host of explanations nobody could care less about – least of all her client, surely? And yet there they both were, immediately engrossed in their London traffic woes. You’re not stuck in traffic, you are traffic. Nicole dug a nail into her thigh beneath the table, waiting for it.
‘Well you know what they say,’ Jamie concluded with a click of the tongue against the upper palate. ‘“You’re not stuck in traffic, you are traffic.”’
Boom. Predictable as cancer.
‘So the numbers on page five of your prospectus are the ones we’re looking at,’ she murmured, leaving the pair of them to it and leaning in towards the money men. Two of them began flicking through the pages immediately, but the third and most personable had the good grace to smile first. ‘Hope you didn’t spend that sunny Sunday working. Hotter than Barbados, they said on the news.’
The weather had been freakish for mid-May, the blossom on the horse chestnuts lining the park pathways as upright as ice-cream cones against the wide bulk of their new foliage. That Sunday had been the warmest day yet. But Nicole had secretly been pleased to have a reason to leave early. They’d been wandering along the busy banks of the Serpentine when Ben had suggested hiring a pedalo. Chloe had been ecstatic, but Nicole couldn’t face the queues, disclaimers and hiring of lifejackets. Logistics always seemed to leech the joy out of family outings.
‘Mummy’s got to head back and do some work now,’ she’d crouched down to tell her daughter. ‘But why don’t you and Daddy go out on one of the little boats, and we’ll have a nice supper when you get home?’
Released at last and light headed with freedom, Nicole had walked back fast through the park towards the Bayswater Road, weaving in and out of the families splayed across pavements with their prams, scooters and runaway toddlers, and casting furtive glances at the parents who, unperturbed by the pandemonium, didn’t appear to be feigning their enjoyment.
Was she the only one for whom weekend jollity so often felt forced? Did none of those women feel as exhausted at the end of family occasions, both formal and informal, as an actress must after that final curtain call? Then again her mum was always telling Nicole she expected too much. Compromise, she liked to point out, was ‘neither giving in nor giving up: just life’. And maybe she was right. But in a career context compromise had no upside, which was another reason why Nicole found her professional life easier to navigate, and why she sometimes felt more comfortable sitting around a table of businessmen like this one than she did opposite Ben at home. Even when Jamie was one of those men.
Although they’d left a seat at the head of the table for Jamie, her boss had chosen to sit across from her and was leaning back in his chair now, one Tom Ford suede loafer-clad foot perched on the opposite knee, the trouser leg ruckled to expose two inches of pale ankle. Nicole tried to avoid looking at him wherever possible, but the bright Britishness of that ankle was like a flare in the muted maroons of the room, willing Nicole to raise her eyes. When she finally did, Jamie was staring straight back at her.
‘Nicole has explained all the Vale’s Grade II restrictions, I think. Nothing if not thorough, our Nic.’ A small smile – intended to what? Embarrass her? Intimidate her? Either way it wasn’t expecting a response, which was why she came back with a too bright, ‘Thank you Jamie,’ adding, ‘Listed buildings come up so rarely, even for us, and the history of this one is just mind-blowing.’
‘We’ll let Rupert read up on all that in his own time,’ Jamie cut in, grinning ingratiatingly over at their client.
The tall, arched dining-room windows had magnified the mid-afternoon heat, but whereas the other men had taken off their jackets at the start of the meeting, Jamie had kept his on, and speckles of damp now dotted his light blue shirtfront. As he raised a hand to his neck to loosen his collar, Nicole felt her breathing grow shallow, as though the oxygen supply in the room had been reduced.
You like this? You want more?
Same shirt? Same spattering of spots. Only, the spots had been inches away from her face and his hand raised not to his own throat, but hers.
I can feel how much you want it, Nic.
In rams his finger. And it feels like an expletive, the kind that made her hit back with an expletive of her own. Only, when she did, pushing back with all her strength against Jamie’s damp chest, he just flipped her easily around, shoving her nose against the conference room wall – fingers still tight around her neck, wedding ring cold against her clavicle.
‘Nicole?’ A row of male faces were staring over at her, expectant. ‘The garden walls?’
‘The … ?’
‘Do we know whether they can be knocked down – or moved?’
‘Again, I’m afraid we won’t know until the planning authorities get back to us. But we’d certainly hope that might be a possibility.’ Her hands were trembling and her cheeks tight. ‘Anyway –’ she nodded at Rupert ‘– you’ll be the first to know when we get those details.’
Keeping up the chatter for the remainder of the meeting helped Nicole recover a semblance of composure. But as she pointed out facts and figures, never allowing herself to be drowned out by the men or stay silent for too long, she felt Jamie’s eyes linger questioningly on her. He’d read her mind, she felt, and enjoyed her discomfort. Now, he was irked by her recovery.
‘Right.’ Rupert stood and the money men followed. ‘We’ll pick this up next week once we’ve got all the details?’
‘Absolutely.’ Nicole wanted to be the first to reassure him.
As Rupert and his men filed out of the room, Nicole gathered up her papers as quickly as she could. But Jamie, ever the gentleman, had already stationed himself by the door.
‘Am I going to see you at Joyce’s leaving do on Thursday?’ he asked in a low voice, as she approached.
‘I’ll be there.’
The doorway had been narrowed by Jamie, who stood solid, immovable and smiling to one side of it, arm outstretched, and she hesitated.
‘After you.’
Imb
ued in those two words were so many things: power, primarily, and also challenge, along with a basic schoolboy merriment at the discomfort he was causing. And despite every effort at composure, Nicole felt herself hold her breath as she passed, as though she could somehow shrink into invisibility, and ignore Jamie’s thumb – under the pretence of guiding her through – rub lightly, caressingly, up and down her spine.
CHAPTER 5
ALEX
The first glass of rosé had knocked her sideways, and Alex was grateful to have the bar to lean against. From her position in the corner of the pub, she could also keep an eye on the steady flow of BWL arrivals, her pulse quickening and slowing every time the door swung open to reveal someone … who wasn’t Jamie.
‘Stop it.’ Fresh from her cigarette outside, Lydia had reappeared in a breeze of peppermint tobacco.
‘Stop what?’
‘He may not even come.’
There was no doubt in either of their minds that ‘he’ wasn’t Hayden, who was safely at a conference in Oxford.
‘Jamie’ll be here – he loves Joyce.’ It was early but Alex guessed the number of people who had come to see off her colleague was already nearing fifty. ‘Look at all these people: everyone loves Joyce.’
‘OK so he’ll probably come,’ Lydia grudgingly accepted. ‘But the place is rammed. Just stay out of his way.’ Eyeing Alex’s empty glass, she frowned. ‘And careful with that. You know what they say about new mums: it’s like being a booze virgin all over again.’
Alex had no intention of avoiding Jamie. And she sure as hell didn’t feel like being careful. Energised by an anger she hadn’t felt in years, not since that final conversation with her father (‘Your mother and I think it’s best’ – as though asking your sixteen-year-old daughter to move out were regrettable, but nothing personal), she’d had her shoulder-length hair cropped and highlighted that morning, and squeezed herself into her first pair of non-maternity trousers in almost a year.