‘A man of taste after all,’ Henry approved as their new secretary put them on her desk under the abstract.
‘I’m surprised he’s got any money left, the way he throws it away at roulette.’ Cathy was aware that she sounded unnecessarily priggish.
‘He doesn’t bet more than he can afford, you know that.’
‘Hmn.’
‘And what does “hmn” mean? I know what-I think it means – it means you think Heinz is a little bit sweet on you and that’s why he’s given you the business, and that makes you feel all prickly and insulted because he ought to be dealing only from the purest commercial motives.’
‘Rubbish.’ Cathy folded her arms defensively and glared at Henry.
‘Or it could mean that you’re just a little bit sweet on Heinz …’
‘Absolute rubbish. He’s a brat – immature, spoiled, too much money, too little sense. Yes, I think he’s cute, of course I do. He’s very amusing sometimes in a puppy-dog kind of way …’
‘He’s good-looking, too.’
‘Yes, he is. So what?’
‘Good family. Wall-to-wall Almanach de Gotha on both sides.’
‘Oh really, I didn’t know. Are you sure you’re not sweet on him yourself, Henry? You seem to have taken a lot of interest …’ At this point her business partner took a swipe at her with a rollèd-up copy of the Financial Times. She dodged him and knocked the flower vase off the reception desk, and the issue of Heinz Feuer was dropped while CBC’s two senior directors discovered that their impeccably equipped office did not yet possess any cleaning cloths or a dustpan and brush.
In the next six months they discovered some more serious deficiencies. They were busy, and they should have been extremely successful. They did such an unexpectedly large volume of business that their computer system, which the salesman had assured them was more than adequate for their needs, could not cope with it. Three of their secretaries resigned in one week because they could not stand the pressure. Even their telephone installation proved inadequate. Soon the inevitable happened and one of their most important commercial clients, a small pension fund, regretfully announced that they planned to take their business elsewhere.
‘We’ve got to get the office re-equipped,’ Henry said with desperation as they sat alone together in the office on a stormy Friday evening. ‘The fact is we underestimated our success, and if we can’t gear up almost immediately we’re going to lose a lot of business – and the best clients, too, they’ll be the first to go.’
‘The computer salesman came today. We can instal a new system over a weekend, but it won’t be cheap.’
‘Better figure out how much we need.’ Henry began scrawling figures on a pad, drumming his plump fingers nervously on his black ash table. Cathy produced her calculator, tapped in the figures and showed him the total. He whistled. ‘That much?’
‘I think we should reckon on having to spend more than that – our start-up budget was well padded, but obviously not well enough.’
‘This is far more than our contingency fund, Cathy. I’m fully extended – so are you. We both raised every penny we could to get this company off the ground. Where are we going to find the money?’
‘We’ve got to find it, Henry. For heaven’s sake, how can we call ourselves financial consultants if we can’t get our own act together?’ For an instant Cathy bitterly regretted the fact that she had lent Monty almost all her own savings for her lawsuit against Rick, but she at once realized that such a small sum would have been of no use in their present situation.
‘It won’t be difficult to get a loan, Cathy, you know that. Even though there’s a credit squeeze right now there’d be plenty of people queuing up to back us. But they’d want a piece of the action – we’d lose our independence.’
Cathy shook her head. ‘We’d be swallowed up in a year. I’ve thought it through already. My first reaction was to approach Migatto, because Lord Shrewton would swing a deal like this for me, I’m sure of it. But we’d become just another Migatto subsidiary: in two years both you and I would be eased out of our own company – pfft! We’d be right back where we started.’
‘Yeah, that’s how I read it, too.’ Henry tipped back his black leather chair, put his hands behind his head and stared at the ceiling. He had lost weight in the hectic early days of the company, and was wearing loud, yellow brocade braces to hold up the trousers of his navy-blue suit.
‘We could try another way.’ Cathy pushed back her hair, which was overdue for a cut – she had had no time for hairdressers lately. ‘Look for private finance.’
‘Mmn – that’s the way my mind was working, too.’
‘We’d have to be pretty stealthy about it. If word got out, our clients would start leaving in droves.’
‘Any ideas?’
‘D’you know a guy called Samir, Jason Samir?’
‘You’re not serious, Cathy? Samir Holdings? It’s a house of cards, the whole group’s based on overvalued property. Not exactly the model of a modern venture capitalist, is he? Now Slater Walker’s crashed he’ll be the next, if you ask me.’ Henry looked at Cathy’s face and realized that she had already put her idea into practice. ‘Did he approach you?’
‘Yes. Don’t worry, I didn’t tell him anything. I didn’t tell him he was wasting his time, either. I was just neutral. I know you’re right, Henry, but he’s the best hope we’ve got. Let’s think about it over the weekend – we’ll have to make a move on Monday, one way or the other.’
She drove furiously across London to her apartment through lashing gusts of wind and rain, angry with herself for risking her success by making the classic mistake of undercapitalization. It’s pride, she admitted to herself bitterly, I just wanted to do everything all by myself, do it my way, without any help – if I’d been smart enough to ask for help in the beginning I wouldn’t be in this mess.
Monty came over as she often did on Friday evenings; she looked strained and depressed, which intensified Cathy’s gloom. She rambled on, talking about her problems with her new band, with her new manager and with Rick, and Cathy realized that her sister was hinting that she needed more money. Brusquely she refused, hating herself for doing it and for taking out her own bad temper on her sister.
‘I’m sorry, Monty,’ she said, ‘it’s a really bad time right now. I’m in a jam myself, and I’ve no one else to blame for it.’
‘Forget it,’ Monty reassured her. ‘I shouldn’t have asked, I didn’t really want to. Don’t worry about me, I’ll handle it somehow.’
To Cathy’s surprise, Lord Shrewton telephoned on Saturday. His normal telephone style was almost monosyllabic but now he made a distinct effort to be chatty. ‘Just thought I’d give you a call to see how things were,’ he said, not able to sound in the least casual.
‘Things are terrific,’ Cathy lied, at once alerted and wondering what lay behind his enquiry.
‘That Samir fella’s been putting it about he’s going to move in and take you over.’ The dry old voice carried a trace of concern despite its owner’s cool emotional temperature.
‘Oh is he?’ Cathy felt angry and disappointed at the same time.
Henry had been right about Samir; it had been a mistake ever to meet him.
‘Heard you’ve parted company with that little pension fund …’
‘They decided they needed a different kind of service. We weren’t really geared for their needs. It was all quite amicable.’
‘Bad news travels fast in the City, Cathy.’ She sensed that he was more than a little offended by her refusal to confide in him. ‘I hope that if you do have a problem of any kind you’ll come to me first. I regard you as family, you know that.’
Even Jamie could not raise a smile from his mother when she took him out from school for the day on Sunday. She slept badly and on Monday she drove to the office early with a leaden heart and looked around the empty, luxurious suite of rooms without any sense of pride of ownership, only a grim appreciation of her
own folly.
The telex was clattering, printing a message in its little room at the end of the corridor, and she went down to read it. To her surprise, she saw it was from Prince Hussain Shahzdeh, urgently requesting a meeting in Paris as soon as possible. The tone of the message was emphatic and her mood lifted at once. With quick, deft fingers she acknowledged the communication, then tore off the printed slip of paper and considered her options. It was still two hours before Henry would be arriving, and if the Prince saw her that morning she could be back in the office in the afternoon.
Obeying a mad impulse to leave her problems behind her for half a day, she scrawled a note to Henry, grabbed her dark-blue wide-shouldered cashmere coat and ran out of the office and down to the street. She reclaimed her car from the startled attendant at the carpark and drove to Heathrow airport. The early morning flights to Paris were always fully booked, she knew, but there were always cancellations and with luck she would be able to walk on to a plane. Luck was with her, and from the departure lounge she rang asking her secretary to telephone the Prince and let him know she was on her way.
‘This is magnificent, I never expected you to get here so quickly.’ The square, dark-suited figure of the Prince burst through the heavy oak doors of his office in a quiet street between the Opéra and the Bourse. He spoke in English and shook her hand in his fleshy, firm grip. A middle-aged, quietly elegant, ash-blonde secretary brought them tea with a suppressed flutter of excitement.
‘What can I do for you?’ Cathy asked, hoping that she still projected the serene confidence which had always been one of her greatest assets. She smoothed the skirt of her navy-blue suit, feeling crumpled after the short flight.
‘This is more a question of what I can do for you.’ His plump face with its thick, black eyebrows bore a pleasant expression but he did not smile. Cathy was startled. This was not what she had been expecting.
‘I’ve been paying close attention to the way you’ve been running my wife’s money and I have to admit I’m most impressed,’ he continued. ‘You’ve had a very successful few months. It strikes me that just at the moment you could expand very fast if you had the necessary capitalization.’
‘There’s no question about that,’ Cathy agreed. They had both seen through each other immediately. This conversation, Cathy understood with mingled relief and suspicion, was a formal minuet staged to save her face. He had heard of her trouble, in the same way that Lord Shrewton had – maybe even from Lord Shrewton himself – and was going to offer her the finance she needed. The only question that remained to be answered was – why?
‘How would you respond if I offered you a loan which would allow you to expand your operation right now?’
‘I would be curious to know why you would do such a thing.’
‘In my wife’s interest – she feels she has an emotional investment in your success.’
Cathy believed him. Apart from knowing the Prince to be a sincere man, she had sensed the peculiar quality of his relationship with the Princess. She fascinated him and seemed to have the ability to dominate him when she needed to, tough and astute as he was. Cathy had also perceived that the Prince had a moral firmness which his wife did not; while she struck Cathy as the kind of woman who would give nothing without expecting a return of some kind, her husband would be unlikely to strike a deal with hidden strings attached to it.
‘I’m flattered that the Princess should feel that way.’
‘We talked about you yesterday, and agreed that I should make an offer to you, since my business has rather more liquidity than hers at the moment.’ As if he had all the time in the world, the Prince continued a leisurely conversation, in which the exact sum of the loan was never discussed – the implication being that no sum would be beyond his means. Cathy accepted an invitation to lunch with him and the Princess in their apartment. She returned to the office to collect the loan documents which had been drawn up in the interim, and the Prince’s car took her to Charles de Gaulle airport.
Before the end of the day she was back in her office, her feet crossed jubilantly on the black marble top of her desk.
‘We’re saved,’ she told Henry, who stood in front of her looking anxious. ‘I found a fairy godmother. Or godfather. Both really. The Shahzdehs offered me a loan – look.’ She passed him the loan agreement and he looked at it for a few seconds but could not concentrate on it.
‘There’s got to be a catch somewhere. There’s nothing in it for them.’
‘They’re charging a fair rate of interest.’
‘You could think of a hundred better uses for the money.’
‘Well, if there’s a catch, Henry, I can’t see it. It’s a perfectly simple deal, it’s watertight, unsinkable and copper-bottomed. Now are you going to stand there like a dying duck in a thunderstorm all evening or are we going round to the Ritz for some champagne?’
They closed the office over a weekend for the new computer to be installed, and hired ten more staff to handle their business. Cathy sighed with relief as the first fortnight passed with only minor problems.
A slight figure marched into her office one blazing July morning as she was preparing to go out for lunch.
‘Jamie! Of course, it’s the school holidays-already. But I thought you were going to Coseley first?’
He was ten now, but in his grey school trousers and dark-green blazer he looked older. Jamie was not tall for his age; he was small and slender compared to his friends, but he had a self-possession which made him seem far more mature than they were.
‘I got to Coseley and there was nobody there except Nanny Barbara,’ he told her. ‘There never is, and I’m tired of wandering around all by myself. I want to come and live with you.’
‘Darling.’ Cathy walked round the black marble desk to sit beside him, using the wheedling tone all mothers adopt towards dangerous pre-teens. ‘You can’t stay with me, there’s nothing for you to do here either. It’ll all be different when you go to Eton.’
‘I don’t want to go to Eton.’ His vibrant blue eyes gazed calmly into hers.
‘We’d better talk about this.’ She reached for the telephone console. ‘Can you call the Dorchester and tell them I’ve been delayed but I’m on my way. And hold all my calls, please. Now Jamie, why don’t you want to go to Eton?’
‘Because I won’t learn anything useful at Eton; you can’t deny that, Mummy, you’ve told me so enough times yourself,’
‘But …’ She was searching her distracted mind for arguments, and not finding any because she knew, he was right, and that this was what she wanted, what she had longed for all these years. There was, in truth, no reason at all why he could not live with her full time now. Starting the business had simply wiped everything else from her mind.
‘I want to come and live with you, Mum, and go to an ordinary school in London, I’ll get my exams, I’m quite clever enough. Then I want to go to Oxford, then a business school in America.’
‘You’ve got it all figured out, haven’t you?’
‘And I want to be like you, not like my father,’ he went on. ‘You’ve really made a mark, Mum. And you’ve done it all the way you wanted.’
Cathy knew he was deliberately hitting the right buttons, and admired that too.
‘Very well, you’ve convinced me. But I won’t have much time for you – you’ll have to take care of yourself.’
‘That’s OK.’
‘You’d better speak to your grandfather,’ she suggested. ‘Just tell him exactly as you’ve told me, and I think he’ll agree.’
She was correct. Lord Shrewton, one of the few men she knew who always put common sense and his duty to his heritage before all other considerations, accepted Jamie’s proposal with restrained but obvious pleasure. Charlie, who had been divorced by Lisa and was now living in Los Angeles with a new American wife, made no objection, and Cathy was at last granted legal custody of her son.
Chapter Twenty-Four
The California sunshine w
as as thick as syrup on the emerald velvet lawn. The driver put Veronique’s Vuitton case and Monty’s Turkish carpet-bag into the boot of his car.
‘We make only one promise to you here at the Centre. What you have to deal with now, Miranda, is living a normal life. We can only guarantee that if you don’t go to your aftercare you will go back to using drugs, or something else which alters your relationship to reality.’ The Director with the curly moustache shook her hand. They climbed into the car and drove away.
Véronique opened her purse and hunted in it. ‘Here’s your ticket.’ She handed the airline folder to Monty. ‘And what was left of your money when we were in Paris. I’ll say goodbye to you at the airport.’
Monty flipped open the air ticket and saw that it was for a one-way flight to London. ‘But you’re sending me home. Why?’
‘Madame Bernard has no further wish to deal with you.’
‘But I owe her for the clothes. All those St Laurent clothes you bought me – what about them?’
‘They are of no consequence. Madame Bernard wishes you to return to your own life now. She has instructed me to tell you never to attempt to contact her again.’
Monty was stunned. The only shadow that had been hanging over her three months at the Centre was the knowledge that she had to deal with her debt to the notorious Paris madame. She dreaded another encounter with the shadowy, ruthless woman who had stripped bare her soul, but she was grateful too and curious about the reasons why Madame Bernard had taken the trouble to be so cruel to her in order to be so kind. Monty knew now that she was the only person who could save her own life, but Madame Bernard had forced her to discover that.
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