The Marconi business lounge at Bologna Airport was pretty basic as executive lounges went. Beer, soft drinks or coffee and a limited range of prepackaged snacks; it was an insult to the palate after the glorious food and drink Jay had enjoyed on her two-day visit to the city. But she wasn't here to eat or drink. She was stuck here because her flight had a three-hour delay. That was the downside of her insistence on still doing some of the frontline work that was mostly done by stringers and reliable local informants, but it was a small price to pay for keeping in touch with the reality of travel as it was for most people. Well, the reality gilded with little luxuries like executive lounges. Because there was always some work to be getting on with. Jay had never believed in wasting the serendipitous parcels of time that professional travel regularly dropped into her lap.
She'd used the first hour to make notes of the high points of her trip — restaurants, bars, shops, museums, galleries, but also the oddities and unusual possibilities that made 24/7's offering unique. Jay read through her summary and checked against her calendar to make sure she'd missed nothing. Then she took advantage of the business lounge's Wi-Fi to upload her top five prosciutto recommendations to the 24/7 website. Most of the site visitors would never have the chance to taste them, never mind buy them, but now they could sit around dinner tables and hold forth as if they were experts. This was the side of 24/7 that Jay didn't feel proud of. The information and experiences she'd made available had been responsible for a measurable increase in pretentiousness round a certain class of dinner table. She hoped she could get through life without being punished for it. God help her if her just desserts ever came to call.
With work out of the way, she still had the best part of two hours before they would be boarding her flight. She hoped Magda checked the live arrivals website before she left for the airport. She'd told her not to bother coming out to Gatwick to meet her, but Magda had been particularly insistent. It would wear off, Jay knew, but for now this devotion warmed her.
To take her mind off home, she decided to knock out some more of the book. Jasper had called her on Monday to tell her he'd squeezed another twenty grand out of her publisher on condition she could offer an early delivery date. The money was no big deal, but the eagerness it represented was a positive indication of how much they wanted her book. For that vote of confidence, she didn't mind dragging herself back into the past and reshaping it into the sort of narrative that would fly off the supermarket shelves.
She'd have to write about the time she'd spent travelling after she'd sold doitnow.com. Throw in a generous dollop of grief and regret over Kathy, but make it read like forward movement towards the idea that became 24/7. But not tonight. It was too dispiriting to write about travel in an airport. Airports were, in Jay's view, the antithesis of travelling. They were the necessary evil of transit.
The trouble with travel is that, no matter how far you go, you wake up with yourself. The time I spent moving around, getting as far from the beaten track as I could, was the incubation period for my next business, but it was also a futile attempt to escape from the pain of losing Kathy. Only when I realised I was going to have to confront that and then move past it was I able to escape my restlessness and start thinking positively about what I was going to do with the rest of my life.
Everyone dreams of getting rich. Coming from my background, I never thought it would be more than a dream. We all think that if we had enough money, we could give up work and have a wonderful life of swimming pools and beautiful meals washed down with vintage wines on terraces overlooking spectacular views. I can remember once when I was a student thinking that being truly rich meant not having to finish the bottle of wine. Because there would always be more.
Maybe some people manage contentment like that. I'm not sure, though. I've read enough stories about people who have won the lottery and ended up with messed-up, miserable lives to think I'm right when I say we all need purpose in our lives beyond the empty pursuit of pleasure. Some rich people find that purpose in philanthropy — setting up charitable foundations and working with them to make other people's lives better. And that has its place. I've given away enough of my money to know there's genuine fulfilment in that.
But for me, the true fulfilment comes from work. From creating something where nothing existed. From generating jobs, contributing to the economy and helping other people to make their own lives better. I suppose it's not surprising, when you consider my childhood. I saw at first hand and close range the results of fecklessness and idleness. The waste of talent and spirit, when the most stimulating thought is where the next spliff or fix is coming from. I'd nearly been sucked into that world myself. I could have squandered my abilities in the hazy New Age dreaminess I saw all around me.
It's true that I might have reacted against it in my own time and become the diametric opposite. But I was catapulted into that diametric opposite whether I liked it or not. The new set of lessons I learned were duty before pleasure, sacrifice before love, self-righteousness before compassion. All of these drastically different values were thrust upon me.
So I made a double rejection. I went for a pick-and-mix philosophy that let me choose the best elements of both sets of values. Work that created possibilities. Duty that embraced delight. And, at the heart of all I did, love.
I'd never been happier than when we'd been getting doitnow.com off the ground, making a success story out of my crazy late-night idea. The buzz of making the business work, figuring out the finances and talking people into seeing the world my way — all of that had inspired me. Once we were successful, I still took a lot of pleasure from the business. I enjoyed basking in the glory, I won't deny it. But I wasn't sorry when the time came to sell. I was ready for a fresh challenge. I had the bare bones of an idea I thought we could make into something people would like as much as doitnow.com.
Kathy's death changed all that. My idea had been something we were going to do together, the way we had with doitnow.com. Without her, my heart wasn't in it. In all the miles I travelled, among all the people I talked, ate, drank, slept and played with, I didn't meet a single person who inspired me to share my next project. I slowly came to realise that, this time, my challenge was to do it alone.
One of the things I had realised during my travels is that most travel guides are 'one size fits all'. Your only real choice is deciding whether you're a Lonely Planet type of person, or a Rough Guide, or a Frommer's. It's a cookie-cutter way of arranging travel, and it's one that's hopelessly out of date now we have the ability to deliver what people need directly to their email in-box. It's also no way to cater to a market where the needs of travellers are so varied. I wanted to create something that helped people make the most of their trips, whether they were experienced, seasoned travellers or newbies making their first tentative forays out into the wider world.Their needs are different, but I thought one company could serve them all.
And so 24/7 was conceived.
Just like babies, businesses take a while from conception to birth. And just like babies, a lot of them miscarry on the way. And some are stillborn.The internet age has opened up amazing new horizons for many people. But it's also given false hope to a lot of people. Ideas are ten a penny. Good ideas are more rare than that. But finding someone who can turn a good idea into a profitable reality is more like a one-in-a-million shot.
I'd done it once, so I was confident I could do it again. I returned to London and settled into the house I'd bought two years before and hardly lived in. I enlisted Vinny Fitzgerald, who had worked on the IT end of doitnow.com alongside Kathy, and Anne Perkins, my devoted former PA, to help me put 24/7 together.
While Vinny began work on constructing the software package that would allow us to tailor the guides as individually as I wanted, I started researching how we would actually assemble the body of knowledge that would make our guides so special and how we would generate subscribers. I soon became aware that I wasn't the only person with a similar idea. When the wo
rd went out that I was looking at travel guides, those people flocked to me because I had a proven track record in online business.
Mostly they came with half-baked, half-formed notions with nothing solid to back them up. It always amazes me that so many people think it's enough just to have an idea, without doing any work to underpin it. I was appalled and astonished at the number of people who turned up with nothing more concrete than a sense of entitlement. Just because they'd had an idea. It's the difference between being a good pub raconteur and a bestselling novelist.That difference is hard work.
Of course, some of the people who beat a path to our door were very far from a waste of time. We ended up buying the work of an Italian entrepreneur who had been working on a similar idea. He had some great marketing ideas, but no software expertise. Without someone like us, he'd never have got his project off the ground and he knew it. He was happy to turn his work into hard cash, and we were happy we'd ended up with something that would save us a lot of time in the long run.
We were also in talks with a Swedish software developer who had been working on a package that would cover similar ground to the software suite Vinny was engineering for us.
Careful now, Jay told herself. Ulf Ingemarsson's death was still an unsolved murder. Caution should be her watchword. Liv Aronsson was a mad bitch who would fall on the slightest ambiguity like a terrier on a rat. She was still hawking her case round lawyers in Stockholm and London, trying to find one who thought there was any point in bringing a case against Jay. She'd failed so far because she always insisted that they pursue a claim against Jay for unlawful killing as well as theft. But one of these days, some slick bastard in a fancy suit might persuade her to solo on the theft accusation. And then it could get messy.
Vinny had warned her that a forensic software architect might be able to isolate elements of code that had come from Ingemarsson's work. Luckily, lawyers didn't have Vinny's insight into the intricacies of programming code. But even so, if Aronsson did manage to demonstrate that some of their code had been written by Ingemarsson, she couldn't prove they'd stolen it. Because of course, they hadn't. They had a paper trail of payments made to various programmers, any one of whom could have introduced that code into the finished program. 24/7 was vulnerable only to the accusation that they'd been conned, the innocent victims of someone else's theft.
And besides, after all the unsuccessful lawsuits over the Harry Potter books and The Da Vinci Code, the public were deeply sceptical about the idea of plagiarism in any field of creative activity. They got excited for about five minutes, then they sat back sipping their Pinot Grigio and talking vaguely about Zeitgeist and ideas floating around in the ether. Still, there was no point in making it easier for Aronsson.
To our horror, he was murdered in a burglary at his holiday villa in Spain before we could reach an agreement on how we could work together. So his work died with him. The tragic waste of another life reawakened the pain I had felt when Kathy died, and for a few weeks I found it hard to concentrate on work. I wanted to run away again, but this time I had responsibilities to other people. So I stayed.
Jay read what she'd written. Nothing there that Aronsson could use, she thought. And a good place to end a chapter. She reckoned she'd given them enough grief and pain on Kathy's account. Nobody could accuse her of being heartless, not on the basis of this. And of course, with the up-to-the-minute ending, where Jay could wax lyrical about her new life and new love with Magda, she'd be demonstrating even more of her warm and emotional side. She'd never really written much about her personal life, nor talked about it in interviews. So this was the best possible climax to a book that was all about overcoming adversity. See, readers? Work hard, do the right thing and you too will end up rich and beloved.
If only it had been that easy.
21
When she got home from work, Magda almost expected there would be no leather wallet sitting on the dining table. That it would all have been a dream, like a bad soap opera. But it was still exactly where she'd left it. She hung up her coat then sat down at the table. Opened the wallet and there were the four bearer bonds. More money than she'd ever dreamed of holding in her hands. It should have been exciting but instead it was puzzling and frightening.
More than anything, she wanted to talk to Jay about it. But that prospect was even further away now. Magda planned to drive down to Gatwick to pick Jay up, but before she'd left work, she'd checked the airport website and discovered the Bologna flight had been hit by a three-hour delay. No point in heading straight there, so she'd come home to grab a sandwich and a coffee first. Now at least she could take the bonds with her to Jay's tonight, to prove to her lover she wasn't dreaming.
She went through to the kitchen and started assembling a sandwich with the remains of a roast chicken, some black olives and half a Little Gem lettuce. But her mind wasn't on food. All day, she'd found herself drifting off in the middle of conversations with patients and parents, her mind worrying at the notion of Philip as a crook. It wasn't how she wanted to remember him. Knowing this about him undermined everything she believed about the man she had been happy to marry. She'd thought he had integrity. She'd believed he'd worked to earn what he'd achieved. But she'd been wrong. He was a cheat and a liar. Worse, he was willing to betray his friends to protect himself. If she'd been so wrong about Philip, how could she trust her judgement again? She shivered, the knife sliding off the chicken and catching the side of her finger.
Blood oozed from the fine cut and Magda swore, reaching for the kitchen roll and pressing a sheet tight against the wound. She closed her eyes and leaned back against the table, feeling sick and pathetic. After Saturday, she couldn't even pour her heart out to her mother. It was all too hard and too horrible.
As if on cue, the phone rang. Expecting Jay, Magda jerked into full awareness and grabbed it. 'Hello?' Even to her own ears, her voice sounded desperate.
'Magda? It's Charlie Flint.'
'Charlie?' For a moment, Magda was nonplussed. Then everything fell into place. 'Of course, how lovely to hear from you.'
Charlie chuckled. 'You don't sound like it's lovely. Is this a bad time?'
'No, it is lovely,' she insisted. 'I just cut my finger, right before the phone rang. I was a bit discombobulated. How are you?'
'I'm good. More to the point, how are you? I just wanted to touch base. I know you were apprehensive about telling your dad about you and Jay. I thought I'd give you a ring, check you were OK.'
Magda felt herself choke up at Charlie's consideration. What was that thing they said about the kindness of strangers? Well, Charlie wasn't exactly a stranger, but she wasn't exactly a friend either. She was simply someone who was easy to talk to. 'Thanks,' Magda said. 'It was pretty grisly. Dad and I had a terrible row. He was so hostile, so cold. It ended up with me walking out and Wheelie coming with me.' She forced out a wry laugh. 'It was pretty harsh. A real "never darken these doors" moment. I think his only regret was that it wasn't snowing.'
'I'm sorry it was so shit.'
'It's not like I was expecting anything else.' Magda sniffed. 'He's just an unreconstructed old bigot.' She tucked the phone into her neck and opened the drawer beneath the cutlery, her version of what her mother called 'the all drawer'. She raked through, looking for an Elastoplast while she listened to Charlie.
'Well, you've got it out of the way now. That's one less person you're going to have to come out to. And most people are not like him.'
Magda sighed. 'At least he's honest about his feelings, Charlie. I don't know what's worse — facing that kind of abuse directly, or dealing with the sneaky, behind-your-back stuff that you can't fight because you never see it head on. Just catch it out of the corner of your eye, if you get my drift.'
'I'm not quite sure I do.'
She found the tin with the plasters and yanked the top off. 'We used to have a pretty busy social life, me and Philip.' She sighed again. 'Maybe it was my way of not having to spend too much time alon
e with him. I don't know. Everything is cast in a different light now I've finally got to grips with my sexuality. Anyway, we had lots of friends. Couples mostly, but some singles. And some of the women I thought had become proper friends. We did stuff together — shopping, cinema outings, meals. You know?'
'I know,' Charlie said. 'Nothing special, just the fabric of friendships that develop over the years.'
'Exactly. And they were really kind to me after Philip died. At least one of them spoke to me every day on the phone, they came round with flowers and wine. They were totally there for me. Anyway, once Jay and I became an item, obviously I told them. I didn't want to lie to them. They were my friends. And they were all apparently cool with it. Only one of them said anything remotely negative, and she was just concerned that I'd jumped into something too soon after Philip's death.' Magda stripped the backing paper off the plaster and wrapped it round the cut, which had stopped bleeding. Uncertain how to express the tenuousness of what had happened, she ground to a halt.
But Charlie understood very well. 'And then they drifted away, am I right? They stopped calling or texting or commenting on your status on Facebook.'
'Bang on. And when I left a message, they just never got back to me. At first, I thought they were maybe being tactful. You know? Giving us the chance to spend time together without people butting in every five minutes. Then I realised it was because they didn't know how to connect with me.' She paused again, trying to figure out how to say what she meant. And appreciated the way Charlie didn't feel the need to fill every silence. 'I'm not saying they're homophobic. I don't think they hate people because they're gay. It's more that they think we don't have anything to say to each other any more. Like I suddenly stopped being interested in going to the movies or shopping for a new pair of jeans.' Another sigh. 'And it's been hard, because you can't actually confront a blank. So that's what I mean about it almost being easier to deal with the way Dad was.'
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