Another Way

by Frankie McGowan

  Instantly she was apologetic. He was, she guessed, in his early thirties. Rimless glasses framed a pleasant face that was clearly sympathetic.

  ‘I think the Prime Minister would be easier,’ he grinned. ‘C’mon, I’ll take you down to his office. He’s expecting you.’

  Ellie deliberately slowed her pace so that the ultra-efficient Roger Nelson would be obliged to appear less so to keep in step. She even stopped to consider a visual display in a glass case of a hotel development Stirling Industries had masterminded in LA and enquired chattily if he worked long hours.

  ‘Not as many as Mr Stirling,’ he answered politely. ‘But then I am based here in the UK. He divides his time between here and New York... ah, here’s Pam Winterman, Mr Stirling’s personal assistant.’

  Ellie, surprised, took in the tall, middle-aged, carefully groomed woman approaching them. Surprised because she had assumed she would be younger, not this mature, elegant figure who was smiling a greeting.

  ‘Pam, this is Miss Carter. Does Theo want us to be present?’

  Shaking hands with Ellie, Pam Winterman shook her head.

  ‘Just briefly. He won’t keep you a moment, Miss Carter, a rather urgent phone call came in.’

  Pam excused herself, needing to attend to some urgent paperwork.

  ‘Why don’t you get Linda to do it?’ Roger asked her. ‘You’ll only just get to the theatre on time as it is.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ smiled Pam. ‘You know how he hates switching over. Besides, I’ll grab a cab and get there before curtain up.’

  ‘Mind if I share the ride? I’m meeting my brother and his wife for dinner in Covent Garden.’

  ‘No problem,’ smiled Pam

  As she spoke the intercom flashed.

  ‘In we go,’ she said, rising and leading the way.

  Ellie took a deep breath and let it out again. If she had expected Theo to come forward to meet her, she was disappointed. In fact she might as well have been invisible for the first few minutes.

  He was leaning lazily against the edge of a dark oak semicircular desk that filled one corner of a room; an imposing room, not an office, the quiet elegance of the pale grey sofas flanking an ample coffee table, the petrol blue smooth-as-velvet carpet, preventing such an impression.

  He was flicking through a file. In shirtsleeves, his tie loosened, he straightened up as they came in.

  ‘Roger... good. The meeting with Stockard Billings is to be held for an hour. Tell them I’ll get there as soon as I can, but get it under way for me. Pam? I’d like the figures for the Blenton contract tonight and when the confirmation comes over from the States, check the figures and then bring them to me at the restaurant and tell them I’m going to be later than planned.’

  Pam Winterman’s and Roger Nelson’s features were inscrutable. Pam scribbled instructions, Roger glanced briefly through a file Theo handed to him.

  ‘Would you like me to let Miss Carlysle know of the delay?’ asked Pam.

  ‘Let Max Culver know. My apologies, I’ll see them both at the restaurant. I won’t make the concert. Roger, take Linda and David with you, in case you need back-up.’

  His eyes slid past Roger to where Ellie was standing.

  She looked steadily back at him.

  ‘Hi,’ he said carefully.

  Pull yourself together, Carter, she inwardly lectured herself. There was a silence, brief but significant enough for Roger Nelson to clear his throat and Pam Winterman to shuffle, quite unnecessarily, some papers into order.

  Theo glanced at them. ‘I thought we might get those instructions carried out tonight,’ he said curtly. ‘Not tomorrow. Drink, Eleanor?’

  ‘What? Oh, no... I mean yes, thank you. Just – um – water, or coke.’

  Roger and Pam had hastily left the room. Neither had protested at the sudden extension to their day, their spoilt plans for the evening. Not by even a flicker had they made it known to Theo that they might like to have been asked.

  Ellie, however, couldn’t resist it.

  ‘Your... secretary had theatre tickets this evening,’ she said to his back as he poured her a glass of wine.

  ‘Really?’ he replied, walking towards her proffering the drink.

  ‘Yes, really,’ said Ellie. ‘Terribly hard to get. Roger was dining with his family. He doesn’t see them often.’

  Theo regarded her with a perplexed look.

  ‘Sorry, am I missing something here?’

  ‘Not a lot. I simply wondered if it ever occurred to you that they might like to have been asked if they would work overtime?’

  He eyed her narrowly.

  ‘Their personal lives are their own affair, I don’t want to know and if they don’t like it they can leave. They are paid extremely well.’

  Ellie opened her mouth to argue the moral high ground she found herself on every time she was in his presence. It annoyed her, but for some reason she couldn’t stop herself sounding naive. But before she could speak he was pushing ruthlessly on, driving his argument home. ‘Pam has been with this company for nearly twenty years, as my father’s secretary before she became mine. Roger has been here for nearly seven — and that as far as I am concerned is all I need to know about them. Now how can I help you?’

  Her view so summarily dismissed, she took refuge in taking a gulp of the ice-cold water in her glass, gazing as coolly as her fury would allow over the rim of her glass.

  ‘Frankly,’ she said coldly, ‘I’m no longer sure that you can.’ The futility of the situation she was in suddenly hit her. She found his attitude to his staff shocking, but her own position even more so. She had thought he was charming. He wasn’t. It hit her with inescapable common sense that men like Theo Stirling do not run multinational companies on charm or even emotions. Cold, hard shouldered decisions ruled.

  She wasn’t even sure she had understood why women fell for him. This wasn’t the same man who had made coffee in her kitchen, this was a stranger. She was here, she knew, to try and satisfy the whim of a petulant, arrogant young man. She was compromising her family. She was, much more humiliating than the rest, looking every inch the opportunistic journalist Theo believed her to be.

  Suddenly she didn’t care anymore. Life on someone else’s terms was too much. She desperately wanted it to be on her own. He was still staring at her, puzzled, impatient. Slowly she rose to her feet.

  ‘I apologise for wasting your time,’ she said with a slight smile, replacing her barely touched glass on the table. ‘Forgive me. I must go. Enjoy your evening.’

  He was between her and the door, staring intently at her.

  ‘What is this? Eleanor, what did you want to ask me? Tell me. You must have had a reason for coming. What was it, why isn’t it important anymore?’

  ‘It just isn’t,’ she said calmly.

  For just a few seconds they gazed at each other, and then he shrugged, stepped aside and opened the door for her.

  ‘Pam? Miss Carter is leaving, please show her out.’

  Ellie walked past him, to her horror perilously close to tears. Pam Winterman was on her feet, puzzled but unquestioning.

  ‘Of course,’ she said politely, allowing Ellie to walk before her along the carpeted corridor, passing a surprised Roger Nelson on the way. She didn’t look back; she knew Theo had simply returned to his office.

  Returned to a life that she didn’t understand, a man she had quite mistaken.

  *

  It could not be said that Ellie slept well that night. Her judgement, the much prized sense of intuition, had utterly failed her.

  Not just because she had sought out Theo Stirling — that was an issue she would have to come to terms with much more slowly — but because she had allowed herself to drift so far away from her principles that she had allowed Jerome Strachan to manoeuvre her into making such a fool of herself. Turning up in Theo’s office without a reason, hoping one would present itself. Dear God.

  Tossing restlessly, she forced herself to address the
immediate problem ahead of her: her interview with Jerome. Now only — what time was it? four o’clock — now only six hours away. Think woman, think, she ordered herself. Strategy, that’s what Angus said. Have a strategy ready.

  Much as she loathed Brook Wetherby, she loathed even more the fact that Jerome had done something Roland would never have considered doing — would not have needed to do — without telling her first.

  As she drifted in and out of sleep, she knew there was no way Jerome would even meet her half way once he knew she had altered the text back to a more reasonable stance.

  As dawn broke, she fell into an exhausted sleep, waking with a start to see the hands on the clock approaching nine. Groaning, she scrambled out of bed. A shower and some hot coffee brought her disordered mind into more reasonable shape and by the time she arrived at Focus she was ready to fight her quarter with Jerome. She had telephoned Lucy to say she would be there by ten.

  Lucy had sounded quiet, but then it was early and no-one was brimming with enthusiasm at ten past nine in the morning, especially these days.

  It occurred to Ellie as she walked swiftly to her office that everyone seemed to be subdued. Her cheerful greetings had been returned in a half-hearted way. Too wrapped up with her own problems, she let it slide over her and addressed herself to the meeting ahead with Jerome. She planned to be reasonable, to point out quietly the problems attached to such a sudden switch in style.

  Mentally rehearsed how she would dismantle his arguments while at the same time letting him see how she was prepared to listen to his point of view.

  The phone squawked on her desk. It was Dixie.

  ‘Ellie? Jerome will see you now.’

  Chapter Eleven

  Ellie gazed out unseeingly at the profusion of flowers punctuating the ordered existence of Green Park, oblivious to the whispering rustle of the trees swaying in a mild summer breeze. In the distance she could hear the drone of the traffic skirting Piccadilly, an unrelenting passage of purposeful noises of destinations to reach, journeys to complete.

  At mid-morning, the park was only just beginning to fill up with tourists, seeking momentary relief from the hot, crowded pavements, nannies pushing their charges in buggies, a handful of students strolling lazily back to their studies. A couple of joggers, sweat bands covering their ears, panted leisurely past. An elderly woman shuffled to a halt in front of her, eyeing Ellie with open interest.

  Tattered plastic carrier bags enveloped her. Her feet were shovelled into zipless battered ankle boots, her body encased in layers of torn, filthy coats, a split plastic raincoat ineffectually wrapped around her ageing body and tied with a length of rope.

  Finally, having carefully deposited her luggage around her feet, she spoke.

  ‘The Kaiser’s got my string,’ she announced accusingly.

  Ellie dragged her eyes away from the middle distance and looked uncomprehendingly at the dishevelled woman.

  ‘I’m sorry?’ she said in a blank voice.

  ‘It was mine.’ Finding an audience, the raddled features of the old woman took on a hopeful look. A mind long since separated from the mainstream of life needed no encouragement to pour its many grievances into Ellie’s ears. ‘It was always mine. Put it away, I did. Nothing to worry about, I said. Nothing. I’ve got the string to keep it all together. ‘Ave you got any string?’

  She was coming nearer, hauling her cherished bags with her. Her ambition was quite clearly a closer acquaintance with this white-faced young woman, sitting huddled in the corner of the seat, hands thrust into her pockets, shivering on a day when temperatures were soaring, who thus far had done nothing to discourage her advances.

  ‘That’s right,’ the woman cackled, as Ellie involuntarily shrank further into the corner. ‘Room for all.’

  Torn between fear and compassion and jolted abruptly back to reality, Ellie gently eased herself from the seat.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she repeated, taking a slow step back from the bench. ‘I have to go.’

  The bag lady seemed unmoved. ‘Somewhere nice? I used to have nice places to go to. But they weren’t really. This is nice. Very nice indeed. Yes.’

  She nodded her head vigorously, brooking no argument. Ellie hadn’t planned on disagreeing.

  Retreating cautiously to the path, Ellie watched as the woman fussily arranged her belongings around her, moving the bags into meaningless piles, rearranging them with a concentration that drove from her mind any further need of Ellie.

  Ellie had the oddest sensation that she had seen that same pointless activity somewhere else recently. But where?

  She turned and slowly began to retrace her steps. An hour sitting alone and still on a park bench had left her feeling stiff and sore. I ought to run, she told herself as she walked unhurriedly towards the entrance that would bring her back on to Piccadilly. But her legs like her brain felt dead, incapable of responding to anything but a desire to reach home and not have to think ever again.

  Somewhere nice? If only. But where was she to go? If only she could think straight.

  It was two hours now since Jerome Strachan, not able to meet her eye, had told her that Focus was letting her go.

  Ellie had felt as though a gun had gone off behind her head. The room was no longer steady. Her mind had gone blank. Letting her go? Go? But where? Jesus. He means... he can’t. Christ, he does.

  Her voice was a croak.

  ‘Why? Because I won’t deliver Theo Stirling on a plate just like that or because I object to having my copy tampered with? I’ve already got Kathryn Renshaw claiming libel and I haven’t even libelled her. What you wrote really was libellous. What was I supposed to do?’

  Jerome looked surly and tight-lipped.

  ‘Don’t be absurd. It has nothing to do with your copy. It’s...’

  Ellie’s eyes were riveted to him. ‘It’s what?’ she demanded. ‘What is it, if it’s not that?’ She knew her voice was unsteady.

  ‘It’s very sad for us,’ he said lamely, fiddling uneasily with his pen, pulling the cap on and off.

  ‘You must have known about this yesterday,’ she said slowly. ‘While I was discussing the column. You let me go ahead and do all of this...’ She indicated the schedule she had prepared with a helpless, bewildered gesture. ‘Why didn’t you just tell me then? So much easier. Why?’

  Jerome, confronted with such a reasonable question, took refuge in anger.

  ‘You’re being foolish. You know how much you mean to us, it’s just another inescapable effect of this damn recession. It’s got nothing to do with you personally, you do know that, don’t you?’

  Ellie struggled to keep her voice under control. Tears weren’t far away. She was horrified at her weakness, but anger sustained her.

  Her voice was icy. Jerome blinked rapidly and began to move files aimlessly around his desk, stacking them in brisk, pointless movements as Ellie spoke.

  ‘I can’t think who else it has to do with, so, no, I don’t know that at all. And no, I don’t understand why you have to do it, but yes, I do know how much I mean to you.’

  For a moment Jerome’s expression brightened, but instantly he regretted it. Ellie’s face was wreathed in contempt.

  ‘Yes, I know exactly how much I mean to you. Nothing at all. Now,’ she began to rise to her feet. ‘If you’ll excuse me, I have to clear my desk. I assume that’s what you want?’

  ‘Of course it’s not what I want. I’ve told you, I have no option. Cuts are needed,’ he said, staring fixedly at the sheet of paper in front of him.

  ‘Well, it’s what I want,’ she said quietly. ‘In fact I’ve never wanted anything so much in my life.’

  She left the room without a backward glance. She heard Dixie calling after her, but she walked on, staring straight ahead. Tears were crowding dangerously close to the surface. If she could just get to her office, grab her jacket, get out of here. She didn’t want to meet anyone. She brushed passed Rosie, ignoring her outstretched hand, and glimpsed Lucy ris
ing from her seat.

  Oh God, they all knew, guessed. Keep going, keep going, she told herself. The door of her office was open, her jacket and bag were within reach, the phone was going. Lucy was beside her, her eyes filled with tears, trying to put her arm around her.

  Ellie swung round and grabbed the distressed girl by the shoulders.

  ‘Stop it, do you hear me?’ she commanded. ‘Stop it. Just cancel my lunch date. I’ll be back. I’ve got something important to do.’

  Lucy gulped and shook her head. ‘Yes, Ellie. What else can I do?’

  With the last remnants of self control perilously close to breaking point, Ellie forced herself to try to sound positive.

  ‘You can stop behaving as though it’s the end of the world.’

  ‘I don’t care,’ Lucy muttered furiously. ‘They’re just sods, the lot of them. Bloody Jerome, he just can’t bear to have anyone around him who knows more than he does. Denton was right. That’s what all this is about.’

  Even through the paralysing grip of shock, Ellie knew that Lucy was right. Jerome found her threatening. He needed women around him — men too — who thought he was God. She put her arm around the distressed Lucy.

  ‘Hey, c’mon, that’s enough,’ she said gently. ‘Have a cup of tea ready for me when I get back, okay?’

  Swiftly she hugged the younger girl and, fearful that she might run into Jed, she took the back stairs, ignoring the lift and left the building by the goods entrance.

  At last she reached the sanctuary of the street. A few more minutes and she was in the haven of the park. Another second and, safe from prying eyes, tears began to course down her cheeks.

  Sinking down on to a deserted bench, she gave full reign to the torrent of emotions that had threatened to overcome her in the middle of the office. Anger and humiliation took it in turns to envelop her. Very little ground was left uncovered, as only those who have lived through the dreadful moments of knowing their carefully constructed life is being slowly torn apart could possibly comprehend.

  Unanswered questions, bitter accusations, suspended belief.