by Celia Walden
‘Joyce’s do was a bit … odd.’
‘It was always going to be tough saying goodbye, love. She’s been with us long enough.’
‘It wasn’t just that.’
They were both sitting back in their chairs now, eyes on the canal, and the slow-moving scenery – the gliding boats and squabbling ducks – was going to make this easier.
‘You remember Nicole – our special projects head? You will have met her at the Christmas bash.’
‘The one with the legs?’
‘Pretty sure they all had legs,’ she said with a chuckle. Maybe this was all going to be OK.
‘We got talking. And Christ, Stan: she says Jamie’s been making advances. Not just saying things – appalling things – but, you know, touching her, in the office.’
Jill heard the creak of the sun-lounger’s springs as Stan turned to stare at her, but she couldn’t bring herself to meet his eye until she’d finished.
‘She says he’s been harassing her, and that it’s been going on for months.’
‘Do you believe her?’
‘Well, she’s got a bit of history. She’s married with kids: one or two, I can’t remember. And she’s had a couple of office flings since she’s been with us. One that I know of for sure. Remember that Ian chap?’
‘Yes – it’s coming back to me now.’
‘We all heard whispers about it at the time, didn’t we?’
‘All of which means … ?’
‘Maybe nothing. I’m just telling you what kind of a woman she is.’
‘I’m not sure that does, love. And either way it doesn’t make what Jamie’s been doing all right.’
Stan had always been the bigger feminist of the two. It used to make them laugh, but today his automatic swing to Nicole’s defence touched a nerve.
‘I know that. I’m just filling you in on her … background. I mean we don’t actually know that Jamie’s done a thing.’
‘Oh, I think we do.’
Stan’s disbelieving laugh – a low rumble at the back of his throat – was the last thing Jill expected to hear. Her husband was someone who always saw the best in people. Swinging her legs off the chair, she turned towards him.
‘You think he’s one of these predators they talk about in the papers?’ She swatted a fly off her shin. ‘One of those Me Too men?’
‘I don’t know, but …’
‘What?’
‘Well, I never said anything at the time, but you remember that PA, way back – the young one who was only with us a couple of months, the one he took to that Lisbon conference?’
‘Porto.’
‘Right.’
‘She went back to college.’
‘No she didn’t. She went over to Curtis & Hawk.’ Stan rubbed at the back of his neck. ‘And she told everyone there that Jamie had tried it on – pretty aggressively.’
Jill sat up, pushing her sunglasses up to her forehead.
‘You never said anything.’
‘I didn’t want to worry you. And luckily for us she never made a formal complaint. But I didn’t like the idea of her putting that about. We can’t have people thinking that stuff goes on at BWL.’ A picture of the young girl, of deep-set blue eyes and freckled cheeks, formed in her mind, and it came back to them in unison: ‘Jessica.’
‘It went away, thank goodness, so I never spoke to him about it. But harassment.’ Stan gave a silent whistle. ‘That’s going to be a problem.’
It wasn’t the only problem: there were also Jamie’s indiscretions about Stan’s health. And although Jill couldn’t bear to tell her husband that he was the subject of idle chat – worse still, a sympathy he didn’t want – she had to tell him about Khalvashi.
‘There’s something else: something that could be equally damaging to BWL’s reputation. Alex, Jamie’s former PA, is claiming she was fired for something he did. She’s saying he knew that a due diligence dossier on a Georgian developer I had my doubts about was incomplete, but tried to push the sale through anyway.’
‘What?’
‘Yup.’
Stan frowned. ‘But again, it’s her word against his?’
‘It is. But I tell you, Stan, he’s got … I don’t know, sloppier recently – more entitled, too.’
‘This girl, Alex, has quite a grudge though.’
‘Well, yes: she got fired.’ She hated the parallel lines scoring her husband’s brow. ‘But maybe you’re right. She’s probably just angry and lashing out.’
‘She could be.’
‘Anyway, I don’t want you to think about all that. You’ve got enough on your plate. Nicole doesn’t want to report Jamie’s behaviour, so that’s something. And maybe everything just descended into a bit of a bitchathon last night. Maybe all they –’ she didn’t say ‘we’ ‘– needed was to air their grievances. But if you think he may actually have form with the ladies … ? Poor Maya.’
Both fell silent, and Jill was grateful for the distraction of another passing cruise boat. Staring back into a row of Japanese faces – impassive behind sunglasses – she saw their privileged existence through other people’s eyes. ‘Imagine having that life,’ they’d be thinking. And for all those years they would have been right.
CHAPTER 9
NICOLE
‘As a gateway site, gentlemen, of over three acres, I can honestly say I’ve never seen anything quite like it in Central London.’
‘I’d have to query whether Gunnersbury really qualifies as “Central London”, Jamie,’ pointed out Patrick O’Ceallaigh good naturedly.
His brother laughed. ‘I’m with you there.’
‘John.’ Swivelling forty-five degrees, Jamie smiled down at the broader-faced of the twins at the head of the conference table, and Nicole marvelled – as she did every time she encountered the power property duo – that these two could ever have shared the same womb. ‘Back me up here. If Shepherd’s Bush is Central London, Gunnersbury can’t be far off. Hell, Richmond will be Central London by this time next year. Am I right?’
‘You are. And it’s true that we’re looking at a very low pass rate, easy access to the M4. Obviously until we see the total site plan it’s hard to picture how much work Minerva would need, but I’m sure Pat will agree that we’re keen enough to ask you not to show this to anyone else for the time being.’
‘That I would,’ nodded his brother, looking down at the map of every sizeable mall within a ten-mile radius they’d painstakingly put together. ‘It’s exactly the kind of size we’ve been looking for. And certainly with the nearest multiplex over three miles away in Shepherd’s Bush, we’d have, what, the whole of Chiswick, South Acton and Kew sewn up?’
‘All of which are filled with the kind of prime high-end shopaholics who are currently schlepping down to Westfield to flex their husband’s Amexes,’ Jamie went on. ‘God knows the wife spends enough time and money there.’
Nicole was glad her hollow laugh was drowned out by the male guffaws. She could fake laugh with the best of them – hell, she might have made that joke herself had she been doing the pitch. ‘You know what we’re like: give us a shoe shop and our husband’s Amex and we’re happy.’ Never mind that right now it was Nicole’s Barclaycard in her old man’s wallet, and that she’d later be able to track his week’s movements online – movements that were always disappointingly predictable. Little Monkeys, the Corner House Play Room, Waitrose and that awful little pottery café full of screaming children he’d once dragged her to: those were the main staples, with the odd couple of hundred quid spent every other month at The Kit Room. More filming equipment for jobs Ben would never get, to be stashed away in the spare room when they became too uncomfortable a reminder of his professional failures. Still, it was easier to stick with the accepted narrative that women were all dependent on men, wasn’t it?
‘What I’d add, Jamie, if I may –’ Nicole didn’t wait for her boss’s nod ‘– is that Minerva Industrial Estate could also conceivably be broken up into
two separate entities: say, the mall and cinema complex you were after, and a separate state-of-the-art gym. And, as Jamie has pointed out, your lack of immediate competition within the surrounding area is really quite unique.’
‘Right,’ Jamie agreed. ‘Thanks, Nic – and actually I was going to show you how two adjacent developments might work on the site plan. Now if I can just pull it up for you …’
Jamie tapped away at his tablet until the first page of Minerva’s property plan appeared on the display screen.
‘Right – so this one here gives you a good idea of the building’s specifications. It’s category … two? Nic?’
She knew the answer, having read through the prospectus just that morning, but it was impossible to sit there opposite Jamie without feeling his every question was a taunt – the upturned corners of his mouth forcing her into a kind of complicity she wanted no part of.
‘You needed that, didn’t you?’
From that angle – and still pinned to the wall by his weight – Nicole caught the metallic gleam of a filling in the recesses of his jaw.
‘I could feel it. I always know what you need, don’t I?’
Peeling the damp flesh of his thighs from hers, Jamie pulled away, and for a moment Nicole feared that released, finally, from the pressure of him, she might slide to the ground. Closing her eyes she listened to the process of him putting himself back together – the zipping and buttoning and buckling – surprised by the banality of those noises.
‘You planning on staying like that?’
Looking down she saw that her skirt was still bunched up around her waist, her knickers looped around one foot. Beneath her open shirt her bra had been pushed up and wedged above one breast. She must have looked comical, grotesque. But she didn’t care.
‘No.’
‘Good. We’ve got a meeting at four.’
And as he’d let himself out of the conference room into the darkened office, Jamie had started whistling.
From somewhere up above her the hum of the air conditioner seemed to grow oppressively loud, all those men’s eyes prurient, the smiles conspiratorial – as though they all knew, as though they were laughing at her. If she opened her mouth to speak, would any words come out? Nicole pictured herself standing up and walking out of the room. She could explain later: tell them she felt sick.
‘Category two.’ Her voice was low and filled with shame, just as it had been with her husband when she got home after that first time, betraying nothing. ‘That’s right, Jamie.’
‘Thought so.’ He nodded, eyes lingering on her warily.
‘And if we call up our plan of the east wing, Jamie …’
‘What the … what the hell’s this?’
Pat’s voice, the Irish brogue no longer affable but stung, made her look up from her files. That wasn’t the east wing up on the screen: that was … shit. That was Jamie’s D-List.
‘“Inadequate foundations”,’ Patrick read out. ‘“Unreinforced masonry.” Jamie, is this some kind of a joke?’
‘Wait.’ Jamie’s face was white, his middle finger stabbing at the tablet in a desperate attempt to get this aberration off the screen.
‘It’s not … it’s not supposed to be …’
‘Part of the sell? Yeah, we got that much, mate.’
Every set of eyes in that room was on that screen, unable to tear themselves away from Minerva’s horrifying hidden list of inadequacies, bolded and blocked in red, just to make things worse.
‘Pat, are you seeing this?’ said gentle John, not so gentle now. ‘“Unbraced cripple walls”? Did you really think we weren’t going to find all this shit out?’
‘Patrick, John … of course I was going to bring all these points to your attention.’
But the twins weren’t listening, transfixed by a new image filling the screen. Because however bad what they’d just seen was, this was far, far worse.
The email exchange was short, to the point – and blown up to a grotesquely large font.
Subject: Minerva – A Heads-Up
From: [email protected] to [email protected]
Just to confirm that Westfield have pushed the button on our Kew site over the bridge, mate. Sale won’t be signed off/made public till early July but in the interest of transparency you’ll want to alert the buyers you mentioned that any plans for a multiplex are therefore problematic.
From: [email protected] to [email protected]
Appreciate that. Will keep them in the loop.
The email was dated just over a month ago: two weeks before Jamie had pitched Minerva to the O’Ceallaigh brothers.
‘Pat, John. I can honestly tell …’
‘I don’t think you can honestly tell us a bloody thing, mate. And listen – we’ve been in this game a long time. We’re not so naïve as to think you guys are going to put the subsidence right there on the prospectus. But this? You knew what we wanted to do with the site, you knew about Kew, and still you came to us? You let us think …’
‘No, no, John.’ Jamie put his hands together in what looked pathetically like an imploration or a prayer. ‘I’ve always been straight with you. And listen – when has a bit of competition ever been a bad thing, right? This could even be good for the both of you. This could bring …’
At that moment the screen finally decided to do as it was told, flipping back to the white on graphite grey BWL logo. But somehow this only made things worse, like pretending you’d never said words patently overheard.
‘Pat.’ Pushing his chair out from the table and urging his brother with a deft dip of the chin to follow suit, John O’Ceallaigh headed towards the door, with his brother right behind him. Making no attempt to stop them, Jamie watched as they crossed the floor towards the lift. Along with everyone else, he was well aware that this was past saving.
Visibly relieved that they hadn’t been the ones responsible for what would clearly go down as one of the biggest gaffes in BWL’s history, people began drifting back to their desks. But for a good five minutes, Jamie stood outside that room, stooped and still. And as Nicole watched him from her desk, she felt her mouth twitch into a smile so broad she had to turn away, lest someone should see.
The plan they’d drawn up in the pub – the one that had vanished without a trace, with no word from Alex since or even the most cursory acknowledgement from Jill of the conversation having taken place – was being put into action by one of them. It wasn’t Nicole. And it couldn’t be Jill, who had ruled out the use of the D-list that night. Which left only Alex. But Alex was no longer at the company, so how on earth could she have pulled this off?
CHAPTER 10
ALEX
Why did milk boil so much quicker than anything else? How could it, in a matter of seconds, go from trembling and trimmed with lace to bubbling and spitting at her like it was now? Alex watched, mesmerised, as angry white dots hit the back of the oven, disappearing into the grease and food splatter that had built up since Katie was born. She watched as the tidemarks forming along the inside of the pan went from nicotine to sepia, and the liquid reduced itself to coagulated soup. Then she switched off the hob. She didn’t want a hot chocolate anyway. All she wanted was a good night’s sleep – and her job back.
From her play mat Katie gurgled, and Alex turned, guilty at having forgotten her daughter’s existence even for a minute. ‘What if you leave the house and forget the baby?’ she’d asked Joyce when pregnant. ‘It’s not like your keys,’ her colleague had laughingly replied. ‘The baby’s at the front and back of your mind, twenty-four-seven. They’re proper little people, remember, even before they can talk.’
Only, Katie didn’t seem like a little person. Looking up at her mother now, her beautiful blue eyes blank, she seemed more like an alien creature, silently judging her for all her failures.
‘Having fun down there?’
Crouching down beside her and blocking her nose to the all-permeating smell of baby powder, Alex jiggled one of the little monkeys
hanging overhead. She’d picked up the £80 ‘play gym’ for £15 from Fara Kids, a bargain that only made sense days later when she’d discovered that the electronic elephant with light-up ears could only manage one of the ‘20 merry melodies’ advertised on the battered box. Thanks to that malfunction, ‘The Wheels on the Bus’ was liable to start up its sickly melody unasked – once even waking both her and Katie in the early hours – just because it could. Three months on Alex found herself clenching her teeth as the first notes rang out through the flat, and she reached out now to switch it off.
How could something so tiny need so much stuff? She’d got it all as cheaply as she could, from charity shops or eBay, but already the seven grand her mum had lent her was gone, and Alex was all too aware that within months there would be a whole new list of necessities: the Moses basket would have to be swapped for a baby bed with a new mattress, and soon she’d need a high chair and a bath chair, safety rails and booster seats.
She thought about the August deadline her mother had made her swear she’d meet. Alex had to pay back the money she’d borrowed by then – or her father would find out.
‘He mustn’t know,’ her mum had whispered down the phone.
For as long as Alex could remember, her father had always been referred to with that fearful ‘he’. And this one was more fearful than most. ‘I took the money out of the new account we set up, so he won’t notice it’s missing until we have to transfer the deposit.’
‘Deposit?’
‘On the new house.’
Alex didn’t point out that she’d never even seen the old house; that she’d never been invited – and that most people didn’t have to wait for an invitation from their own parents.
Equally fearful of what ‘he’ might say, Alex hadn’t even been able to bring herself to tell her mother she’d lost her job, allowing herself only a moment’s honesty: ‘I need you, Mum. I want you to share these first few months, share Katie with me. I didn’t expect Dad to be on the first plane over …’ But what kind of man doesn’t let his wife meet her only grandchild?