THE GIRL INSIDE
The Girl Inside
Perceval Books LLC.
Copyright © 2017 S. Culligan.
All rights reserved. This publication may not be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in whole or in part, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior written permission of S. Culligan.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. CFA® and Chartered Financial Analyst® are registered trademarks owned by CFA Institute.
Visit the author’s website at www.sculligan.com
FOR MY PARENTS
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Chapter Thirty-two
Chapter Thirty-three
Chapter Thirty-four
Chapter Thirty-five
Chapter Thirty-six
Chapter Thirty-seven
Chapter Thirty-eight
Chapter Thirty-nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-one
About the Author
CHAPTER ONE
Jo meandered apprehensively toward the edge of the cliff. Her heels, inappropriately high, sent armies of pebbles scurrying down the slope cascading into the water below. With one hand cupped on her brow and the other wedged under the damp waistband of her dark suit, Jo’s eyes crinkled against the late afternoon sun.
She turned to survey the distant image of Cassis, a picture-postcard town with bustling cafes and tourist shops spilling over the cobbled front toward the harbor. Beyond the harbor, the Mediterranean was seemingly calm save for the telltale silhouettes of small pleasure craft bobbing with mirage quality. Glancing down, Jo noticed her stockings were snagged and caked with dust. She hoped that this impromptu excursion marked the end of what had proved to be a grueling interview.
Her temples still ached from being peppered with a barrage of questions on finance, economics, and obscure accounting practices. An eavesdropper could have been led to believe that the intricacies of financial portfolio theory now constituted casual small talk.
“Jump.” Although Jo knew she was not alone, the voice from behind brutally snapped through her train of thought. She gave a tired smile, smoothed back the dark auburn hair from her forehead and turned to make her way back to the car. The path was narrow and she brushed against the Savile Row shirt, inexplicably still crisp and pristine. A forearm blocked her way lightly but purposefully and promptly encircled her torso.
“I said jump.” Jo’s smile gave way to a short laugh that belied a creeping nervousness. She angled toward her companion, taking in the Hermes tie, following the tie upward to the perfect pinched knot, the olive skin and strong jaw. Surely when she reached his chiseled mouth its corners would be straining to hide a smile. She was disappointed; his eyes offered no respite.
“You’re serious.” It was part question, mostly realization. Jo reflected that the day had been characterized by a startling absence of humor.
Josephine edged backwards and then turned to look below. Twenty-five meters, thirty, forty meters? It was difficult to gauge. She struggled to recall the relationship between weight, distance and velocity on impact. Switching from physics to economics at Cambridge was emerging as a poor choice.
She briefly wondered if the coveted position as an analyst at Butterfly Investments warranted this surreal predicament. And then, a myriad of questions, careering through her consciousness violently collided leaving in their wake a stunned silence. Jo found herself ten meters below daylight.
Some external presence had made her jump. With her feet furiously kicking and air streaming from her lungs, Jo shot through the surface of the sea like a bewildered mermaid gulping her first breath of air. In what could barely have been a minute, the darkness seemed to have stolen at least an hour’s advance. Straining against the encroaching shadows, Jo scrutinized the cliff top. The one shadow she hoped to decipher was absent. Eric Manton had left and their parting brought none of the relief Jo had anticipated.
“Can I help you?” The female desk clerk succeeded in enunciating the words in a manner that shut the door on any genuine offer of assistance.
As Jo entered the quietly exquisite Villa Girelli, all conversations were abruptly suspended. In an attempt at poise, Jo smoothed her damp hair, stood erect to attain her full shoeless height and courteously requested her room key through chattering teeth.
The receptionist presented the room key to Jo with as much disdain as the act could encompass. Jo reciprocated with false thanks and, carefully swiveling in the small pool she had accumulated on the marble floor, fixed her attention on the foyer’s exit and gazed resolutely straight ahead as she padded to her hotel room.
Jo’s room welcomed her like a childhood memory; familiar, comforting, but of a different time. Her ad hoc swim had been followed by the ignominy of hitchhiking the fifty or so miles back to the hotel in Aix-en-Provence. Eric had chivalrously taken the rental car with her purse still inside.
Surrounded by the countryside that had lured Cezanne, Aix was the quintessential Provençal town with its shaded boulevards and winding streets. It was also the town in which Jo had spent the last two months studying French at the local university.
When the request to be interviewed for an analyst position had come from Butterfly Investments two weeks earlier, it was not one, in sanity, Jo could have refused. Besides, unlike her more career-minded classmates, Jo had yet to make a decision regarding her future. Working for the highest profile London hedge fund while drawing a proportionally high salary seemed like a reasonable holding option.
Later, finally bathed and enveloped in an oversized robe, Jo sank into the middle of the bed with its myriad of pillows and duvet encased in crisp linen. She was abruptly roused from her reverie by a loud knock on her door. As she ventured out into the corridor, Jo almost tripped over a package which someone had placed in front of her door. Back inside her suite, she prized off the lid off the nondescript file box. Inside she found her handbag together with a brief note requesting her to sign the enclosed documents and return them to the front desk by midnight. Jo glanced at the bedside clock which registered 11.30 p.m.
The documents consisted of a contract setting out terms of employment for a position as an analyst at Butterfly Investments and a confidentiality agreement. Jo had the sensation of holding her breath for the second time that day as she scanned the paperwork and hurriedly scrawled her signature in all of the marked places. At 11.58 p.m., still in her robe, Jo marched to the front desk to deposit the documents.
On returning to her room, Jo examined t
he box more closely, and found that it contained more than she had originally realized. Hidden under a layer of white tissue, she discovered an airline ticket for a flight from Marseille to London leaving at 8.00 a.m. the following morning, together with directions for reaching the offices of Butterfly Investments. Jo was completely unprepared for her second discovery which was a box containing the most exquisite pair of Louboutin black high heeled shoes. The shoes, with their distinctive red soles, slid on and Jo smiled deliciously as she admired the perfect signing bonus. For now her decisions, like the shoes, all appeared to fit perfectly.
That night Jo slept fitfully, disturbed by sensations of falling without ever landing. The 5.30 a.m. wake up call brought some relief with the new dawn.
CHAPTER TWO
Barely twenty-four hours later Jo was steering a precarious path through the morning rush hour traffic in Moorgate, absorbing grime and fumes as she dodged between the numerous cyclists, mostly couriers, who sped with the precision of torpedoes through the scantest of gaps. She checked her watch and quickened her pace as she merged with the herds of office workers fanning out from Liverpool Street station onto London Wall.
Although it was only a fifteen minute walk from her parents’ apartment at the Barbican Centre to the offices of Butterfly Investments, Jo was already running her habitual ten minutes late. Jo’s father cited this as a manifestation of her archetypal princess persona, alluding to Jo’s expectation that, in most circumstances, the courtiers were willing to wait for her appearance. Jo was certain this was not one of those circumstances.
As Jo stopped to check the map on her phone, her reflection in a shop window caught her attention, as if she had glimpsed a childhood friend out of context. Although the sight of the young business woman was one she was not yet accustomed to, Jo allowed herself a moment of quiet confidence. Her smooth hair was pulled back in a sleek ponytail and the subtle use of make-up added a refinement to her youthful features. Jo’s deceptively conservative grey suit, deftly cut to flatter her slender form, was complemented by the prized heels that accentuated her legs.
“Cheer up love, it may never happen.” It wasn’t the first time that she had been offered such advice. Jo had come to realize that when she was lost in thought, people often assumed that she was sad. She swirled around to locate the voice that sounded so close. A barrage of snickering burst from above, and Jo looked up to see a group of workmen on a scaffolding platform, slurping tea as they surveyed the ant-like figures scurrying below. Wanting to appear neither sad nor snobbish, she attempted a half smile and half wave, but the workers were already otherwise engrossed as they joined in loud appreciation of the more obvious assets of an attractive blond.
Jo missed the inconspicuous alley twice before locating Adden Lane, the cobbled pedestrian street that housed the offices of Butterfly Investments. Their location was proving as secretive as their investment strategy. The entrance to this unimposing building was via carved wooden doors displaying a modest plaque bearing the company’s logo, and manned by a security guard attired in a dark suit and bowler hat, reminiscent of a Cambridge college porter.
“Good morning Miss Lavelle.” The guard tipped his hat with his left hand and opened the entrance door to his right revealing an opulent foyer. As she made her way towards the reception desk, which was some considerable distance from the entrance, Jo observed the ornate antique furniture, the paneled walls, and the original works of art. The only audible sound was the clatter of Jo’s heels on the expansive tiles.
The receptionist seated behind a polished mahogany desk had the appearance of a model from the cover of a high fashion magazine. Her immaculate features softened, however, into a broad welcoming smile as she beckoned Jo to hurry forward.
“Come on, move it along,” she gently chided in a distinctly Cockney accent. “You’re the last one. Here’s your security pass. Ted will show you where to go.” Jo managed a quick thank-you before Ted, a colossus of a security guard, resolutely ushered her down a series of corridors until they arrived at a room marked “Waterloo”. A discrete shove by Ted sent the latecomer half stumbling into a large conference room crammed with a mass of dark-suited individuals, typical of a cross section of the city workers on the pavements outside. Furtively, Jo slipped into a vacant gap along the back wall. Her arrival had not gone unnoticed, however, and she was startled to hear her name.
“So, perhaps Miss Lavelle can tell us at what level the FTSE opened today.” Jo looked up and instantly recognized the face of Simon Wright, co-founder and CEO of Butterfly Investments. At the age of thirty-seven, with an estimated personal wealth well over £1 billion, he ranked among the top one hundred in the Sunday Times UK Rich List. His picture also regularly graced the pages of eminent society magazines. As Jo’s gaze met that of Wright, all other eyes in the room settled on Jo. Jo wondered why it wasn’t possible to find a cliff to jump off when you really needed one.
The expectant silence was interrupted by the click of a camera shutter. Jo turned and found herself staring directly into a lens just a few feet away. My God, thought Jo with increasing embarrassment, is my mortification being documented for company records? At this point, she became aware of a subtle nudge somewhere in the region of her right thigh, and on looking down, she caught a glimpse of a cell phone screen displaying two lines of text – “FTSE 100. 7,337.”
“Um, seven thousand three hundred and thirty-seven?” Jo managed hopefully.
“Why, yes Josephine,” replied Simon Wright, with a smile not quite quick enough to hide the surprise in his eyes. Being addressed as Josephine inevitably made her feel that she had somehow disappointed. “The FTSE 100, a share index of the one hundred largest companies listed on the London Stock Exchange, and the leading barometer of the UK equity market, did indeed open today at seven thousand three hundred and thirty-seven, up one quarter of a percent from its close yesterday. But that information is already useless. Here at Butterfly Investments, our skill lies in forecasting at what level the FTSE will open tomorrow. Proprietary knowledge, my friends, is power, and power, when astutely used, generates wealth; enormous wealth, which we gladly reap the benefits of.” This last statement lead to hearty applause from the adulatory crowd.
Simon Wright went on to document the firm’s myriad of achievements in the financial world since its inception five years previously, at a time when most city firms were still recovering from the aftermath of the global financial crisis. As a hedge fund, the firm used proprietary models to exploit anomalies in the markets and lock in so-called arbitrage opportunities, or theoretically risk-free profits. This was not a new concept, and although the company’s legal status and private ownership exempted it from full public disclosure of its results, it was widely known that the firm achieved returns on an unprecedented scale, with remarkable consistency. Many prominent investors clamored to have their wealth managed by Butterfly Investments. Few had been afforded the privilege.
While Simon Wright continued to expound on the success of his creation, with a liberal use of superlatives, Jo turned her attention to the members of the audience. The new employees could be easily identified by the rapt expressions on their faces and by the patina of their brand new city suits. Jo reflected on her achievement at becoming a member of such an elite group of about thirty analysts, selected by Butterfly Investments from a rumored applicant pool of twenty thousand. It was difficult to detach her ego from that achievement, especially since she had not solicited the fund’s approach.
Her thoughts now turned to her savior with the cell phone who was standing next to her. She surreptitiously examined his appearance, and was intrigued to discover scuffed, brown Doc Marten shoes, distressed jeans, a crinkled dress shirt, and a tanned face. The tall, athletic frame was topped by a mop of unkempt sand colored hair. Jo promptly registered the battered notebook in which notes were being scribbled by her neighbor, and her curiosity precluded any attempt at subtlety. A sense of familiarity struck her as she stared at him, and she was not
displeased by the notion that they were already acquainted. He failed to register Jo’s interest and was already busy motioning to his companion who was holding the camera. Jo observed that this companion was similarly oblivious to the accepted dress code in the City. Both were scanning the immediate area for an escape route, having been mistakenly corralled with entirely the wrong species.
Relief was on the horizon, however, as Simon Wright concluded his monologue.
“….so you Oxford and Cambridge graduates had better be prepared to lose some of your insufferable complacency. You are almost outnumbered this year by the Ivy League upstarts. We also welcome Serge Clayeux, who is here to demonstrate that elite French university is not an oxymoron.” Applause and laughter followed, but Jo sensed that, under the thin veil of affability, the gauntlet of competition was being laid down.
Jo was carried along by the general wave of conversation and bodies as the meeting dispersed. She managed to catch up with the note-taker and the camera man, however, as they headed for the main exit.
“Excuse me.” She bobbed up and down, trying to keep pace, and projecting her voice upward to catch the attention of the figure with the assured, loping gait. “I just wanted to thank you for saving me back there.” He didn’t slow down or acknowledge her. “You know, FTSE, phone…” He finally paused at the front door, turning around, said phone held up to his ear, and looked down and slightly past Jo. Once again Jo experienced a jolt of recognition as she looked at the unshaven jaw, broad mouth and dark eyes framed by incongruously luxurious lashes.
“Don’t mention it. Just didn’t want to prolong the tedium of staying in that meeting any longer than necessary.” He turned away. “Yes, I’m still here. You’ve managed to book us on the two-thirty from Heathrow to Islamabad? You are a star. I’ll try and swing by the studio before I leave. Later.” He jammed the phone and the notebook into his backpack. “Come on Rich, let’s move it.”
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