by Fanny Blake
‘Bea, hi.’ Adam gestured that they should both take chairs at the round table. She sat down, unnerved by the way they were both watching her. Adam took some papers from a file with a fluorescent label marked ‘AWAY DAY’ and thumbed through it till he found the one he wanted and put it on top. ‘I want to talk about you and Amanda presenting the highlights of the spring list to the rest of the company.’
‘And Stuart?’ Immediately she was on the defensive.
‘I think it should just be the two most senior members of the editorial team.’
‘But Stuart’s responsible for some of the best books and feels passionately about them. It’s only fair that he presents them.’ Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Amanda directing a pearly smile at Adam as if she was complicit in his suggestion.
‘He can brief you both thoroughly. That should be enough.’ Amanda nodded in support of this strategy.
But Bea was not going to let go of something she believed to be a matter of principle. ‘That’s not the point. If you want this to be a morale-boosting away-day for the troops then you need to let him take a role. Otherwise there’ll be resentment, not to say a whiff of rebellion, in the ranks.’
He thought for a moment, steepling his hands in front of him and tapping his fingertips together. Then he stopped. ‘She’s right, Amanda. I do want everyone onside.’
So it had been her idea, as Bea had suspected. Of course, without Stuart’s books, Amanda had nothing to present except the few Stephen had commissioned before he left. But how would Amanda be the star of the show with only a couple of worthy history books that would sell barely a copy and a self-help guide to positive thinking? Her opportunism reminded Bea of Tom Carter’s. Anyone was expendable if they were in the way of what she wanted and, right now, Bea and Stuart stood shoulder to shoulder in the path to Amanda’s goal. Bea watched her force a smile over her scowl as she obliged Adam with a gritted ‘Of course.’
Fifteen love.
The rest of their discussion focused on the shape the day would take. Apart from the presentation of the new books, which was intended to excite the staff about the company’s coming year, there were going to be talks by the different directors to show how they intended to revitalise their departments, and finally there would be a series of brainstorming sessions to give everyone a chance to contribute their ideas towards improving the status quo. As far as Bea was concerned, the last were probably going to be the most valuable and interesting parts of the day. The most enjoyable, however, would be dinner, along with the time at which she could tear herself away and go to bed. As she was contemplating that marvellous moment, she heard Adam say, ‘Lastly, I think you can chair the editorial brainstorm together, pooling your different experiences.’
Before Bea had time to react, Amanda jumped in: ‘I don’t think that will work, do you? Each session needs one person to drive it or you run the risk of losing its focus. I think I should take the lead simply because I’m not associated with the old regime and can encourage more new thinking. No offence to you, Bea.’ The slight smirk indicated there was plenty. ‘But people might feel less able to be open with you because they know you too well and associate you with the past.’
Ace. Fifteen all.
‘That’s a very good point,’ agreed Adam. ‘Are you OK with that, Bea?’
She was aware that she’d used up all her ammunition too early in the discussion. After being so adamant over the presentations, she would appear uncooperative if she didn’t agree to this. And she had to be careful not to be too aggressive or she would alienate Adam, which was not part of her game-plan. ‘I don’t honestly think that would happen, Amanda. After all, I’ve worked for a long time with most of the people who’ll be there. So, on the contrary, I think they trust me and because of that would feel quite able to speak their minds.’
Adam pursed his lips. ‘But Amanda needs to be given a role that shows where she stands in the company.’
Amanda nodded.
‘I see that. But are you sure this is the best way?’
‘It’s that or being given more titles to present. I’m anxious the staff recognise that she’s been given a position where she can breathe new life into the place. Because it’s such early days for her in the company, I’m asking you to compromise.’
Bea turned over all the reasons why she shouldn’t, unable to find one that she could voice without appearing petty and vindictive. Deciding the best course of action this time was to be conciliatory, she rolled over. ‘Of course. But I’ll be there to help if you need me.’
‘Thank you,’ purred Amanda. ‘I won’t let you down, Adam. And, of course, this time next year, things will be very different.’
Thirty fifteen.
You bet your life it will, thought Bea, as she excused herself. If I have anything to do with it. The game’s not over yet.
Chapter 19
Even from the outside, Ellen’s house had undergone a transformation. Instead of sitting empty, the flower boxes on the ground and basement window ledges overflowed with deep red miniature cyclamen and trailing silvery green stars of ivy. The door-knocker and letter-box had been recently polished, the cream still smeared into the crevices of the deep blue beading. On the doorstep stood a single bay tree in a carved stone pot chained fast to the railings.
As Kate raised her hand to press the bell, the door swung inwards and Emma rushed past her, almost knocking her back down the steps into Paul. Ellen was hot on her heels.
‘Em. Come back!’ she yelled. ‘You nearly sent Kate and Paul flying and Bea will be here soon. It’s almost lunch time.’
Emma slammed the gate so hard that the railings shook. As she turned round to her mother, her small face was streaked with mascara, surrounded by a halo of messy reddish curls. ‘I don’t care. I hate you,’ she spat. ‘He’s not my father and he can’t talk to me like that. It’s not his house.’ She gripped the top of the gate.
‘Em, he was only asking you to tidy up. I’d have done the same.’
‘No, you wouldn’t. Not like that.’ Having exited without her shoes, she was uncertain where to run next.
‘Em. We can’t talk about this in the street so why don’t you come back and at least have some lunch?’
‘Do come back,’ urged Kate. ‘Paul and I haven’t seen you for ages. I want to hear about Cornwall and I’ve brought you a belated birthday present.’ Emma hesitated, clearly having second thoughts about running away. Not that Kate was entirely sure that the coral necklace she had wrapped up in her bag was going to be enough of an incentive to persuade her to stay for long.
Needing her shoes if she was to get much further, Emma unlatched the gate and slouched back up the steps, giving Kate a rather ungracious kiss on her way past. ‘I’m glad you’re here. Perhaps you can talk some sense into Mum.’
‘Em!’ Ellen’s voice trembled with hurt.
‘Well, it’s true. This is our house as much as yours so I do have a say in what goes on here.’ Emma stormed into the living room where a calm-looking Oliver and Matt were engrossed in a game of Risk. As she kicked on her shoes, Oliver looked up from her to Kate who was right behind her, and shrugged slightly, as if looking for support.
‘Hey, Em. I’m sorry if it came out the wrong way. I was only asking you to help your mother.’ He pursed his lips in apology.
‘Yeah. Whatever.’ She left the room and they heard her stamping upstairs. Oliver stood up and offered Kate his hand, welcoming her with a wide smile that he extended to Paul. ‘I’m Oliver. I’m sorry about this. I seem to have blotted my copybook already.’ Apparently realising that his little-boy-lost expression cut no ice, he offered them a drink, then disappeared downstairs to get a bottle of cava from the fridge.
Ellen collapsed into the comfortable red sofa and sat forward, elbows on her knees, hands over her face. Paul took one of the other chairs, looking mildly embarrassed at being part of someone else’s domestic drama.
‘I’m so sorry, Paul,’ said Elle
n. ‘It’s been a trying week but I had hoped you wouldn’t have to see just how trying.’
‘Never mind, Mum. I like him even if Em doesn’t.’ Matt stood beside her, twiddling a bit of her hair round his finger before he snuggled under her arm to give her a kiss. Satisfied that he’d done his bit, he extricated himself and went downstairs to help.
‘And I’m sure we will too,’ added Paul, earning Kate’s undying gratitude for being so conciliatory despite his confessed wish to be at home, catching up with some urgent office work. He turned his attention to the three rows of art books in the alcove beside him. ‘You’ve got quite a collection here.’ He took out an old Tate catalogue of a Rothko exhibition. ‘Never quite got him myself.’
As he leafed through the pages, clearly relieved at having something to do, Ellen turned to Kate. ‘I’m afraid it’s turned out just as I predicted in my worst moments. You can see for yourself. Matt’s fine and Em’s a nightmare. Oliver can’t do anything right. She’s being so selfish and unpleasant that I don’t know what to do.’
‘Well, when I’ve got a drink, I’ll go up and see if I can knock a bit of sense into her. Or do you think it would be better to wait for Bea?’
‘Oh, Kate. Would you? She always listens to you.’ Ellen’s gratitude was touching.
‘She does not! Whatever makes you think that? But I’ll have a go.’
Oliver elbowed his way in sideways through the door, holding a wooden tray with five champagne glasses and a green bottle so cold that condensation ran down its side. He put it on the games box that doubled as a coffee-table, nudging the Risk board to one side, despite Matt’s shout of dismay as some of the pieces fell to the floor.
‘Matt! Pick them up, would you?’ He corrected a sharpness in his tone. ‘We can start again later.’ He sat beside Ellen and put his arm round her. As she leaned into him, he pecked her cheek. ‘I don’t think we need wait for Bea, do you?’ With the two women’s agreement, he peeled off the foil, untwisted the wire and slowly loosened the cork, twisting the bottle away from it with his left hand. There was a muffled pop and he poured them each a glass. Kate took hers and raised it. ‘Cheers. I’ll just run upstairs and give Em her birthday present. She’ll be wondering where it is. Back in a minute.’
Going upstairs, she could imagine exactly what Emma must be feeling. With a philandering father and a twice-married mother of her own, Kate’s own family had been a disaster zone when it came to ideal parenting. She didn’t need a counsellor to tell her that was probably one of the reasons she had worked so hard to keep her own marriage together. She still remembered the ghastly occasion when her father had introduced her sister, Beth, and herself to his first girlfriend, who had been noticeably much younger than their mother and the first in a series of increasingly youthful women. Beth and she had been thirteen and eleven when he had taken them out for supper, trying manfully to fill the embarrassed silences with questions about school, their friends, favourite pop groups and what they were doing at the weekend.
Meanwhile the three females had sat uncomfortably, playing with their food. Mandy, the girlfriend, had looked alternately bored and adoring, while Beth and Kate had absorbed her brassy blonde hair, tanned cleavage, her habit of laying her hand with its long ruby nails on their father’s thigh whenever his attention wandered from her, the way her tongue darted from her lipsticked mouth after every forkful, checking for any stray bits of food. The sisters stored away every detail with which to regale their mother later, vowing they would never go out with him again. They hadn’t anticipated their mother’s tears and anger, which had sent them scurrying, alarmed, upstairs. Neither had they anticipated her bringing home her would-be second husband a mere six months later.
Just as she and Beth had been beginning to enjoy the all-female household and benefit from their mother having become such an easy touch when they wanted something, in strode Charles. Loud and brash, he was determined to lick the household into shape, just as he had his army command. Beth and Kate had felt lost, unwanted and no longer part of a family. Not until she was in her twenties, had Kate understood that her mother had fallen in love on the rebound, an error of judgement that she would regret for the rest of her married life, bullied and harried by Charles until his death.
Not that what Ellen had done was comparable, but Kate knew just how devastating it felt when a stranger stole your mother’s attention and love, when permission was given to them to take control of the household. Now she understood that her mother’s love for her and Beth had never faltered but had been temporarily outweighed by her desire to prove to her first husband that she was as attractive to other men as he was to other women; by her need to be loved for herself; and by her longing to share the responsibilities of the household with someone who would and could contribute towards the financial side of things. All of the emotional and practical considerations that Kate had seen operate in so many of her friends and patients had come into play. At the time, none of that had entered her young head. Back then, the world had only spun around her and Beth, and what they wanted for themselves.
The door to Emma’s room was firmly shut. As Kate knocked, she could hear the music being turned down.
‘What?’
Kate heard the misery in Emma’s voice and longed to help. Perhaps she could use her own experience to help her see things differently. She would share with her what she had shared with very few in the hope that it might make her come round. ‘It’s me, Kate. Can I come in?’ She pushed open the door.
*
Twenty minutes later they came downstairs together, Emma wearing the coral necklace. She immediately went over to Ellen and apologised, while Kate sat on the arm of Paul’s chair, resting a hand on his shoulder. He looked up at her, questioning, but now was not the time to explain how, after exclaiming in delight over her present, Emma had been a captive audience for Kate’s own story, briefly told. Emma was not a stupid child and when Kate tried to help her to see things from her mother’s point of view, rather than her own, she had the grace to look shame-faced. Her agreement to join them for lunch was easily won. She didn’t want to fall out with her mother or upset her, but was struggling to find a right way to communicate with her. The relief and pleasure on Ellen’s face when her daughter hugged her was more than worth the effort. Kate prayed the truce would last into the afternoon.
Oliver refilled Kate’s glass just as the doorbell rang. ‘Matt, could you, please?’ he asked.
Bea swept in wearing one of her more flamboyant outfits: narrow dark green trousers under a tunic that was a riot of multi-coloured swirls and curves, a necklace with gold beads almost the size of golf balls and matching gold pumps. The room stared in wonder.
‘Don’t say you don’t like it.’ Bea grimaced. ‘I needed a shot of retail therapy and the girl in the shop convinced me to buy it. Of course it cost the earth. I wasn’t so sure by the time I got it home. Too much, do you think?’
‘It’s extremely flattering,’ came a voice. ‘I’m Oliver, by the way.’
‘Of course you are.’ She shook his hand. ‘How rude of me. Hi, Paul. Em, good to see you. How was Cornwall?’
‘Wicked. I learned to surf.’
‘So did I,’ chimed in Matt, anxious not to be outdone. ‘Standing too.’
‘That’s brilliant. Did you find the perfect wave?’ Without waiting for him to reply, she gave Emma a small box wrapped in silver paper tied with shiny red ribbons. ‘I’ve brought you something for your birthday. It’s only little.’
All eyes were on Emma as she tore open the package and gave a small gasp of delight when she saw the collection of different lip-glosses and nail varnishes. All eyes except Kate’s – she had turned at the sound of what she saw was Oliver clicking the nails of his middle finger and thumb. Aware of her attention, he stopped and smiled. ‘I should go downstairs and get lunch on the table.’ While the rest of them were encouraging Emma to try out the glosses, he slipped out of the room almost unnoticed.
Wit
h all the fickleness of youth, Emma’s mood had done a complete about-turn and, with it, so had Ellen’s. ‘I love that plummy one. Can I try it?’
‘Mu-um! You’re worse than having a sister! But OK, here you are.’ She took out a couple and passed Ellen the deeper-coloured one. ‘Anybody else?’
‘Well, if you’re offering . . .’ said Paul.
‘For you? No way. Bea? Kate?’
‘No, no.’ Kate was laughing. ‘They’re for you. Come on, let’s see.’
‘You’re not going to make me feel guilty!’ Ellen crossed to the fireplace and, using the mirror above it, painted her lips a rich, glossy purple.
‘That’s so cool. Let me.’ Emma followed suit with a subtle baby pink that was much admired.
‘Lunch is ready!’ Oliver shouted up the stairs. As if in response, Ellen swiftly wiped her lips with a forefinger and thumb, smearing off the gloss. Only Kate noticed, but said nothing.
Downstairs, an individual pear and Roquefort salad was laid at each place. Oliver was standing beside the table, the smell of roast lamb drifting from the other end of the room. ‘Now, where would you all like to sit?’
‘Well, I want to sit beside you,’ Bea said immediately. ‘Kate, why don’t you sit on his other side?’
Taken aback at the speed with which his role as host had been taken over, Oliver pushed his hair out of his eyes, adjusted the oven gloves draped over his shoulder, smiled and pulled out their chairs. ‘My pleasure.’