– You said, he went on, that my whole life is with Hillary. Well it is.
This really can’t get any worse, she thought. He gave a rueful smile and reached under the table. His fingers brushed her leg.
Bella pulled her chair sharply back.
– Sorry, he said, I was reaching for your hand.
Hand, leg, what’s the difference, Bella thought. You will never touch me again.
– Bella, he said. There is a lot I want to say. But now isn’t the time and place.
Damn right, she thought. She nodded slowly.
– Please say something. This is hard for me too, he said.
At this her eyes filled with tears. He looked at her, and said:
– Bella, you’ll be OK.
How dare you, she thought. How dare you speculate on whether I will be OK.
– Of course I’ll be OK, she said, flatly.
– You’ve got so many friends, and you’ve got your family and Millie.
– Thank you, she said. I know what I’ve got.
– Bella, you aren’t making this easy for me.
– I’d like to go back to the office now, she said.
She looked at her plate and the hardly-touched food. The red cabbage had made a watery pool of slightly purple blood and it had stained the grey flesh of the mackerel.
– Carnage, she said.
– What did you say?
– Nothing.
James asked for the bill.
– Was everything all right? the waiter asked anxiously, looking at Bella’s plate.
She nodded again.
James put his card into the machine that the waiter handed him, efficiently adding a tip – always exactly 10 per cent, which Bella thought mean. Outside he hailed a cab, and held the door open for her to get in.
No way, she thought.
– I’d prefer to walk, she said.
He got into the taxi.
Through the back window she saw his head. He turned and waved at her, half smiling. Bella gave a cough and a wheeze. She wanted to sit down on the pavement and howl. Instead she started to run. He never loved me, she chanted to herself. He doesn’t want me. It is over. It is over. End. End. Two blocks away from the office she stopped. She looked into the window of Robert Dyas. Hand-held vacuums were on special for £8.99. She turned towards the office, but saw Stella coming out towards her. I can’t do this, she thought. I can’t face anyone yet.
She ducked into the shop. A shop assistant eyed her expectantly.
Bella picked up the vacuum and took it to the till. The assistant smiled at her nicely, and said:
– It’s cold out.
The kindness of strangers, she thought.
Back in the office, Bella looked at herself in the lift mirrors. Terrible, she thought. She got to her desk hoping to see a message on the keyboard saying: I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it. She looked at her email knowing that there would be nothing from him. But there it was: a message.
Dear Bella. Sorry if I seemed distant. This is hard for me, and I don’t think I explained myself terribly well. I think I am suffering a little from shock myself. I feel I owe you a more considered message which I will send in due course when I return to normal.
James
She read it and tried to find something in it to hold on to. He was telling her he felt terrible too. And then she read it again. He was telling her that he expected to feel ‘normal’ very soon. She didn’t expect to feel normal ever again.
She sat at the desk and looked at the screen. Please send me a message saying that it has been a huge mistake, she pleaded. You can’t leave me. You said you loved me. You said I made you happy. You said I was bellissima.
And as she chanted this to herself, rocking at her keyboard, another message arrived.
Bella gave a little sob of relief and opened it, registering that the subject line – Briefcase – wasn’t quite right.
She read.
Bella. Sorry about this. But I was a little distracted earlier on, and I fear I may have left my briefcase either in the cab or in the restaurant. Did you see if I had it when we left?
James
Bella read the message and knew that this was the very end.
Stella
Stella went into the ladies’ toilets to put on her Etro dress. It was six months since she had worn it – the last time had been for her parents’ golden wedding, long ago when she was a nice, happy woman leading a busy but straightforward life.
Putting it on now, it hung loose on her, her shoulder blades sticking out at the back, her collarbones at the front. She wrapped a shimmering shawl around herself, then applied three colours of eye make-up in an attempt to create a smoky effect, but put on too much purple and ended up looking as if someone had hit her. The door opened and James’s secretary came in.
– Ooh, she said. You look lovely, going out anywhere special?
– It’s an awards dinner, said Stella.
– Have you won anything?
– Yes, said Stella, I fear I have.
– Congratulations! Very well deserved, I’m sure.
A minibus had been booked to take Stella, Russell, Rhys, Beate and five assorted AE women, whom Russell must have rounded up to create the false impression that AE valued diversity, to the Dorchester. Stephen was arriving separately in his own chauffeur-driven car, and Charles, who had surprised Stella by insisting that he wanted to come – indeed, that he would not miss it for the world – was going to get there under his own steam.
The oil barrel was blinking at them reproachfully as they passed through reception. $42.45, it said.
On the bus Rhys was holding forth, saying that the last time he had gone somewhere in black tie someone had mistaken him for a waiter and asked him for a double gin and tonic. Only Russell was laughing, and his laughter was spasmodic. Rhys didn’t look like a waiter. He looked dashing, she thought. He had put on weight over Christmas, which Stella thought suited him. Some people put on weight when they are unhappy – but was Rhys unhappy, she wondered. In the last couple of days he had stopped talking to her in a guarded, stilted way and had even smiled at her a couple of times.
But instead of reassuring her, this was making Stella feel worse, as it suggested that his pain had subsided, allowing him to behave towards her in a normal, friendly fashion.
The ballroom of the hotel was over-lit and over-filled with thirty-eight large round tables, for which each company had paid the organizers a large amount of money. The AE table was towards the front, and Stella slipped away from the others to inspect the seating plan. As she feared, she was sitting with Rhys on one side and Stephen on the other. She could not bear the thought of being in such close proximity to him when they were so estranged, so she swapped his name over with Charles’s. Charles would protect her. But where was he?
When the starters arrived, he had still not appeared, so Russell, who was sitting by Rhys, looked at the empty chair and said:
– Stella, we can’t have you sitting next to Banquo’s ghost.
He got up and took Charles’s place.
Stephen started to tell Stella about his latest trip to the US, from which he had returned the previous morning. He was gleefully spelling out how some of the US oil companies were less well placed to deal with low oil prices than AE, a fact which he seemed to take as a personal endorsement. Stella fixed her eyes on him and tried not to look at Rhys, who was on the other side of the table and was laughing excessively loudly and calling for more wine.
Just as the starter was being cleared away, Charles burst through the double doors and swayed towards their table. Evidently he had been drinking, too. He bent over Stella and gave her a kiss.
– Sorry I’m late, he said. Events –
Russell got up to move, but Charles pushed him back down again.
– I’ll sit over there, he said.
So Stella watched in slow motion as her drunken husband went over to sit next to her drunken ex-lover.
&nbs
p; – Hello again, Stella heard Charles say as he shook Rhys’s hand.
Stella couldn’t hear what they were saying, but Rhys seemed to be telling a joke and Charles was laughing his social laugh. Rhys was not laughing normally either. He was looking dangerous.
There was a banging sound, and the master of ceremonies got to his feet to introduce a female comic from Glasgow who made a succession of bawdy jokes about drunken men in Scotland. Whoever had booked her had not done their homework properly.
Then Dame Marjorie Scardino took the floor and told the audience how very much pleasure it gave her to present the award.
– This year, she said, the entrants were even more dazzling than ever. But the winner is someone who has achieved outstanding success across the broadest field. She has vision. She does things her own way but is true to the company and true to herself.
At this Stella glanced briefly at Rhys. He was staring at his raspberry confit.
– Ladies and gentlemen, the winner of this year’s Veuve Clicquot Businesswoman of the Year award is …
There was a long pause and a roll of drums meant to whip up the anticipation of the audience, though most of them were far too drunk to be paying any attention at all.
– Stella Bradberry.
The lights flashed and Tina Turner’s ‘Simply the Best’ blared out of the public address system.
Stella took the speech from Rhys, then made her way through the tables picked out by a spotlight and climbed the stairs on to the stage.
She looked at the paper she was holding. On the front there was a Post-it note.
I’m sorry, ferret. I adore you. I can’t live without you. You are beautiful tonight. xxx
Stella took this in, and a blush spread across her face. She folded the speech, and came out from behind the podium.
– Thank you, she said. Thank you for those words. And thank you for this award.
Her eyes filled with tears, and her voice broke.
– I can’t give a speech, but what I have to say is really simple. This is one of the happiest days of my life. I did not think this would happen to me today and I will try to deserve it. From the bottom of my heart, thank you for choosing me.
Back at the table Russell was beside himself.
– Fantastic, he said. Fantastic Oscar moment, Stella. You really gave it some emotion – this is going to be really controversial, but it shows that women in business can really be themselves. They can let it all out!
Stella was too happy to contradict him. She despised people who cried at awards, and she hated the idea that people would think her such a pathetic softie. But today they could think what they liked. She had her prize and the prize was Rhys.
She went around the table, kissing Charles, who whispered: What was all that about, Stel?
She kissed Stephen, and even gave Beate a kiss before giving Rhys a kiss which in public was all decorum, but in private came with a delivery of her whole diseased heart.
Bella
For three days she had been putting off making the call.
The woman who took her call at the outplacement agency was nice, though not terribly encouraging. She seemed surprised that Bella wanted to leave a research job at Atlantic Energy, and warned her that in the current climate it would be hard to find a similar posting.
Bella told her that she didn’t mind taking a cut in salary, and she didn’t mind being a PA again, she just wanted to move quickly. The woman said that she would see what she could do.
Bella put the phone down and felt relieved. She didn’t want to stay at AE; she could not bear the daily dose of unhappiness. But neither did she want to leave. It would be too final. And if no job could be found, then she would stay.
But within an hour the phone went again, and the woman said that there was a job as an assistant going at an advertising agency in Soho. It was more junior than the one she now had, and the pay was worse, but there was scope for advancement. They would like to see her that very day.
So at lunchtime she had gone to Charlotte Street and been interviewed by a woman in the highest stilettos she had ever seen. Bella had had no time to feel nervous, but neither had she had any time to psych herself into the right mood to be an advertising researcher, even if she knew what that mood was. The interviewer asked her a few questions about herself but then gave up and they had a nice chat about who should have won Britain’s Got Talent. It was not the sort of chat you would ever have with someone you were even slightly interested in hiring.
There was no way that she had got the job.
Stella
The theme of the World Economic Forum in Davos that year was ‘Shaping the Post-Crisis World’. The title seemed particularly apt to Stella. She and Rhys – who at Stella’s insistence was coming too – would be reshaping their own world after the crisis it had survived.
Getting Rhys on to the list of AE people attending the conference had not been easy. As a part of its draconian cost-cutting measures, the finance director had decreed that only six people could go to Davos, compared to thirty the previous year. However, Stella had insisted that she needed support, and as she was so favoured by Stephen, the finance director did not dare query it.
The previous year Stella had flown out with Stephen in the AE private plane, but at the last minute James had intervened to say that the company could not afford any more bad press. Other companies had announced that their CEOs were arriving by commercial flight, and so must Stephen.
Stella sat on the early morning flight to Zurich with Stephen on one side of her and Rhys on the other. As she briefed Stephen on what he was to say at the session he was chairing, Rhys pressed his thigh against hers so that she could feel its warmth spreading through her body.
At Zurich airport they bumped into the senior partner of Allen & Overy and Stephen, much to Stella’s delight, accepted his offer of a lift, leaving her to make the three-hour journey to Davos alone in a taxi with Rhys.
As they drove through the snowy landscape she lay against him, and he told her about his Christmas with his mother, and how every night as he went to lie in his bedroom he had wished she was there. He told her that all his aunts had asked him if he was getting married or if he had met anyone, and he had said no, there was no one.
The anguish that Stella had felt over the last two months had quite gone. The pain of heartache was like the pain of childbirth, she thought. Once it had stopped you couldn’t remember what it felt like.
The taxi dropped them at the Arabella Sheraton, where Stella was booked in. Nathalie had reserved a room for Rhys in a B&B in Klosters, which was a bus ride away, but Stella had assured him that there was no need for him to go there at all. They would simply pay for the room; no one would care if he had slept there or not.
Stella had stayed at the same hotel several times before, and had thought it blandly luxurious and borderline vulgar with its pastel colours and knotted wood furniture. But this year she saw it through Rhys’s eyes, and it seemed to her a haven, their own private home. Rhys gave a delighted whoop when they were left alone by the porter in Stella’s room – and then insisted on them both going back out into the corridor so that he could carry her over the threshold.
– You are mine, he said. Mine for two and a half days.
Stella laughed delightedly and thought how relative time was. If you were used to measuring out your time together in minutes, two and a half days seemed like a lifetime together. They got into bed and he made love to her slowly and gently, and Stella, freed from the thought that time was about to take her back to her real life, abandoned herself to this joyous, other life completely.
And then, afterwards, instead of rushing back to the office, they got dressed together and Stella put on Rhys’s jumper under her coat, feeling as she had done at university when she wore her first proper boyfriend’s rugby shirt to a tutorial. Together they left the hotel and went down the snowy hill to pick up their passes for the conference. On the way they bumped into a distinguished
Indian economist with whom Stella had shared a platform at Davos twelve months earlier.
– It’s been quite a year, he said.
– Yes, she said, and thought: more than you can ever know.
Once they had got their passes Rhys suggested that they go tobogganing. Stella, who was meant to be attending a session on the revival of Keynsianism, gladly agreed.
They went up in the lift and, suspended above the snow in a dangling chair, he kissed her, and she laughed and thought that she could not remember ever being so happy.
As they waited for their toboggans at the top of the hill, Stella noticed a group of respectful Americans surrounding an elderly man who was holding forth on Gaza.
– Who was that? Rhys shouted at Stella as they whizzed down the hill.
– George Soros, she shouted back.
And they both started to laugh again.
That evening Stephen and Stella had both been invited to a cocktail party hosted by the Russian government at the Belvedere.
She put on the dress that she had bought six months earlier at a time when she was trying to make Rhys admire her. Looking at her in it now, he told her that she was beautiful, and when she looked at herself in the mirror she believed him.
Rhys had not been invited to the party, but Stella had told the man on the door that he was her assistant and she needed him to be there. She said it with such authority that he shrugged and let them both through.
Once inside, Stella was absorbed into the crowd. Bill Gates caught her eye, and nodded faintly. Nigel Lawson came over and kissed her on the cheek. Stella basked in the attention of these men, knowing that the only man whose attention she cared about was standing a few yards away. Though where was he, exactly?
She looked about and then caught a glimpse of him by the bar on his own. She made her way across the room towards him.
In Office Hours Page 30