‘No,’ said Kirsten, angry suddenly, ‘no, not at all. I’m working in the PR department.’
‘Wow,’ said Toby, and his eyes danced with malice, ‘a proper job. What a clever girl you are.’
‘Oh fuck off,’ said Kirsten.
‘Sorry, darling. But why PR? Why not the legal department at least?’
‘I don’t know, Toby,’ said Kirsten, and her voice was suddenly weary. ‘He said publicity would suit me best, and that I’d learn most about the company there. I just do what I’m told.’
‘Uh-huh. Well, he’s a brilliant man, your dad, from all accounts. You’ll learn a lot wherever you are. Nice boss?’
‘Yes, very nice, actually,’ said Kirsten. ‘I really like her. She’s called Sam. Sam Illingworth. Quite young, pretty. She’s very nice to me, anyway.’
‘How young is young?’
‘Oh – thirty-something. Not really young.’
‘She is for that job. Not like your dad to promote young women, is it? He got his leg over her, do you think?’
‘No I don’t,’ said Kirsten irritably. ‘It’s so gross, that kind of question, Toby. My father may be a monster, but he doesn’t play games in the office. Well, not those kinds of games. And Sam certainly wouldn’t.’
She was surprised at her own indignation; clearly she had absorbed more of the company ethos than she had thought.
‘Quite the little company mouthpiece, aren’t you?’ said Toby amused, cutting into her thoughts. ‘You’ll be giving me a quick rundown on the share price movement next.’
‘Oh Toby, do shut up,’ said Kirsten.
‘No I won’t. You look so sexy when you’re cross. Now let’s get this good work over, and then head for home again. I’m looking forward to my reward already.’
‘I’ll be a bit late tonight, darling,’ said Gray to Briony over breakfast (brioches from Harvey Nichols, orange juice he’d squeezed on the state-of-the-art juicer Briony had given him last Christmas), ‘got a meeting.’
‘Gray, who with? You promised we could see Schindler’s List tonight.’
‘Oh, hell. I’m sorry, darling,’ said Gray, just slightly wary of explaining that the meeting was with an attractive woman, and at the Savoy Hotel. ‘Could we go to the late show instead?’
‘No, I’m sorry,’ said Briony, in the cool, slightly detached tones she’d adopted recently, ‘I really don’t want to be late tonight, Gray. I have a big job on tomorrow. Judy wants to see it, I’ll go with her.’
‘But Bri, I want to see it with you,’ said Gray plaintively, ‘I really really do.’
‘Well, that’s a great shame, Gray,’ said Briony. ‘But you could cancel your meeting. I don’t suppose you’d thought of that …’
‘Can’t we go tomorrow?’
‘No, Gray, I’m going to be late tomorrow. We said tonight. I’ll go with Judy, that’s fine. Really. I’ll see you at home.’
She went out and shut the door just too firmly; Gray sat staring after her, feeling the gnawing mixture of remorse and resentment that had become increasingly familiar to him ever since Briony had first broached the Big B subject (as he referred to it in an effort at lightheartedness).
‘Bloody hormones,’ he said to what was left of the brioches.
Even for someone who made an art form of being unforthcoming when necessary, Sam Illingworth was giving a bravura performance. Bard Channing was simply terribly busy, and he didn’t want to give up any time to something like a profile. ‘And don’t tell me you’d only be an hour, Gray, because you know you wouldn’t. You’ve already told him you want to shadow him for a day or two, interview other key people, he just won’t do it. At the moment.’
Gray sighed, then threw up his hands. ‘OK. I know when I’m beaten. Want to tell me about the northern thing?’
‘Only if you really want to know,’ said Sam, ‘which I suspect you don’t.’
‘Try me,’ said Gray.
He sat and watched her while she went into her carefully smooth PR spiel; about how Bard Channing wanted to expand the northern office, wanted to put up at least two more shopping malls, how he felt they were the only way forward for shopping, including fashion shopping –
‘But you’re really not interested, are you?’ she said with her sudden brilliant smile (she really was very attractive, Gray thought, looking at her, not his type really, too glossy, and she rather wore her competence on the sleeves of her power suits, but still ... ). He wrenched his mind back to what she was saying.
‘Of course I am.’
‘Gray! Let me buy you another drink. And we can discuss the weather or something. I really am sorry about this, I feel a bit of an idiot myself – ’
She’s as baffled as I am, thought Gray; I wonder what this is really all about. He sat looking at Sam, not saying anything and becoming slowly aware of a sensation that he knew very well. It was absolutely unique, that sensation, a stirring somewhere deep within him, unfailingly exciting, and totally reliable, part physical, part emotional. ‘It’s like – ’ he had said to Briony once, trying to explain it, ‘it’s actually rather like sex.’ He didn’t experience it very often, but when he did, he knew to trust it implicitly: it had never failed him. It told him he was onto a story.
‘Well, let’s see what happens,’ he said. ‘Now tell me, how is the real business doing? Is he still hanging onto the Docklands scheme? That really is a slow turnaround. The place is still a desert. I went down the other week, to have lunch with a chum at the Telegraph. It’s all this bloody government’s fault, not getting on with that railway, that’s the key.’
‘Yes, I know it’s very slow. And that the recovery still exists largely in the minds of politicians, as we all know. The thing about Channings is, of course, it’s such a broad base it can carry a loss for a long time. And Bard has a strong predilection for bucking trends.’
‘Yeah, it’s one of the things I wanted to talk to him about,’ said Gray, and sighed. ‘Well, keep in touch. Let me know if there are any new developments, won’t you? I must go. Got a piece to rework.’
‘OK, fine,’ said Sam.
She signed the check; they walked together to the foyer.
‘Thanks again,’ said Gray. ‘Great martinis. I don’t usually like them, but – ’ He stopped. Coming in through the doors was one of the most beautiful girls he had ever seen. She was extremely tall, with a mane of red-gold hair, and extraordinarily brilliant blue-green eyes, the colour of the sea. She was wearing a leather jacket, and something which required more than a little imagination to translate it into a skirt. She looked harassed; paused, caught sight of Sam and smiled a brief, careful smile.
‘Hi,’ she said, and rushed on.
‘Hallo,’ said Sam.
‘Who on earth was that?’ said Gray. He felt rather odd, disorientated; as if he had suddenly found himself in a country where everyone spoke a different language.
‘My new assistant,’ said Sam.
‘Interesting,’ said Gray. He couldn’t think of anything more intelligent to say.
‘Indeed,’ said Sam, and Gray could see by the amusement in her eyes that his reaction to the girl was extremely obvious, ‘and moreover she’s Bard Channing’s daughter. The eldest,’ she added, ‘and the tallest,’ and smiled again.
‘Good God,’ said Gray.
He looked after the eldest Miss Channing, but she had disappeared down the long corridor that led to the River Room. He contemplated making some excuse to follow her, then looked at Sam Illingworth’s face and smiled, slightly embarrassed. ‘Maybe I could profile her. Channing and Daughter, it would make a very good peg.’
‘Indeed it would,’ said Sam. ‘Well, just let me know.’
Gray went home to a solitary supper which he ate in front of his word processor. He didn’t make a lot of progress on his piece; most of his brain seemed to be inextricably engaged elsewhere. He went to bed early, and woke to find Briony climbing rather carefully in beside him. He turned over and pulled her agains
t him, suddenly wanting her rather badly; to his surprise she started kissing him, feeling for him, winding her long legs round him.
‘It’s all right,’ she said, and he could hear the smile in her voice, ‘I’ve taken my pill.’
Gray was torn between relief and a feeling of guilt that the reassurance was necessary; in the morning, he felt strangely remorseful and especially tender towards Briony. It was only when he was parking his motorbike – his beloved Harley Davidson, referred to by Tricia as ‘the wife’ – in his space beneath the News offices, that he realised why. He had fallen asleep (after some extremely good sex) and then dreamed, not of Briony at all, but of a girl half a foot taller than she, with a great mass of golden hair and eyes the colour of the sea.
‘So Francesca, you’ll be in charge of the raffle, will you, and the tombola?’
Diana Martin-Wright flashed Francesca the smile that Bard Channing had once described as a guillotine with lips; the committee of the Grasshopper Ball (in aid of research into allergy-based diseases) were meeting at her house in Campden Hill Square.
‘And the tombola? Diana, that’s a bit tough,’ said Francesca.
‘Not really, darling. I did them both last time, it’s actually much more efficient, the thing is while you’re asking people for big things, it’s easy to ask them for little ones too. I mean sweet Jane Packer, for instance, she donated two wonderful dried-flower arrangements for my raffle and then popped in a two-hour lesson at her school into the tombola. Honestly, it’s easy. Just use your contacts. You of all people should know about that, Francesca.’
‘What on earth do you mean, Diana?’
‘Well, your commercial background of course. You’re a professional woman, or were. The rest of us are just poor struggling amateurs. Which reminds me, do you think Nicky would give a free hairdo? For the raffle? You go there, don’t you? Or don’t you any more?’
‘Well, thanks for the compliment,’ said Francesca, laughing. ‘I’m obviously looking very scruffy.’
‘Oh, of course I didn’t mean that. Just that I hadn’t seen you in there lately.’
Diana was famous for her lack of tact; she probably had meant it.
‘No, well, I must have missed you. If you’re there so much, Diana, why don’t you ask him?’
‘Oh, I don’t think wires should cross like that. The right hand simply has to know what the left is doing.’
‘Oh I see,’ said Francesca.
‘Good, that’s all marvellous. Honestly, when people know it’s charity they’ll do anything, anything at all.’
Which was a lie, Francesca thought; these days people would do very little for charity. It had been so easy, a few years ago, in the dear old lush, flash ’eighties when there had been wall-to-wall money everywhere, when giving it away was not only a nice tasteful way of showing what a lot you’d got, but tax-efficient as well. Now people not only had a lot less, but they wanted to hang on to what they had. And if you were running a business on a sliver-thin margin, when the slightest thing could upset the balance of the books, the thought of giving away a two- or three-hundred-pound jacket or a flight to Paris, or even two hours of a hair stylist’s time, made people nervous. It wasn’t actually going to tip them over into insolvency, but they just weren’t prepared to take any chances.
‘Oh and also, Francesca, I do need help with selling space in the programme,’ said Diana, reaching for her glass of mineral water. ‘Now that would be right up your street, wouldn’t it, easy for you I should think, could you let me have a hit list within the week? How many pages do you think you could personally sell, ten, fifteen – ’
‘I really don’t know,’ said Francesca. ‘Times are hard, Diana, and there are so many calls for this sort of thing – ’
‘Oh I get so tired of being told times are hard,’ said Diana. ‘It is absolutely no excuse at all, just a ridiculous cop-out. We all have to make sacrifices these days, I certainly do, it’s just a question of adjustment. Now if you – ’
Francesca looked at her, sitting in her first-floor drawing room (newly styled by Jane Churchill) in one of the most expensive pieces of real estate in London, dressed by Jasper Conran, thought of her new BMW parked outside the door, her three children parked in one of England’s major public schools, and wondered precisely what sacrifices she considered she had made. These women never failed to fascinate her.
Diana dispatched her committee with the regretful explanation that she had to go and see her dressmaker; Francesca walked down the hill towards her car, drawing up a mental hit list of the people she could sell pages in the ball’s programme to, at £2,000 a time. It was rather short: nothing like the fifteen Diana had clearly indicated, and as she negotiated the heavy traffic in between Notting Hill Gate and St John’s Wood, and she tried to lengthen it, the name Teresa Booth came into her head. She had her own company, the timeshare operation, which she never stopped talking about; she might like to advertise. And she could possibly sell her a couple of tickets to the ball as well. It was worth a try; she could only say no.
She phoned Teresa in her office, and was told she was at home: obviously not quite the tycoon she led them all to believe. Her housekeeper answered the phone, said she would go and ask if Mrs Booth was available; a long pause then followed, before Teresa’s husky voice came down the line.
‘Francesca dear! To what do I owe this honour?’
‘Hallo Teresa,’ said Francesca, ignoring this, ‘how are you?’
‘Very well, thank you. Very busy, my company is expanding considerably and there is a great deal to do. Of course you ladies of leisure would find that hard to appreciate – ’
‘I have worked, Teresa,’ said Francesca, keeping her voice level with an effort of considerable will, ‘and I can just about remember being under pressure. Anyway, it’s about your company I’m phoning.’
‘Oh yes? Don’t tell me you want a job?’
‘No, I don’t. Well, I would like a job, actually, but the children and Bard keep me pretty busy.’
‘Yes, dear, I’m sure.’
Francesca counted up to five almost audibly, and then said, ‘But I wondered if I could twist your arm, and persuade you, or rather your company, to buy a page in the programme of a ball I’m helping with. In November, it’s the Grasshopper Ball, medical research, terribly good cause and – ’
‘How much?’
‘Two thousand pounds a page,’ said Francesca.
‘Good God. That’s a great deal of money.’
‘Yes I know. But think of the target audience, Teresa. These are people with real money …’
‘Francesca dear, people with real money aren’t very interested in timeshares, are they? Certainly not in places like Marjorca and even Marbella.’
‘Oh I don’t know,’ said Francesca. She realised she was rather enjoying herself; it was like being back at the agency. ‘I don’t think you can assume anything. I know several people who have a timeshare in ski-resorts – ’
‘Bit different, dear, but do go on.’
‘And there are a lot of hangers-on at these things, people anxious to be seen to be doing the right thing – ’
‘So they haven’t all got real money?’
‘It depends what you mean by real,’ said Francesca, carefully patient. ‘If they’ve got enough to buy the tickets, they’ve got enough to buy a timeshare. Or at least consider one. And then it’s a very impressive showcase, Teresa. You’d be alongside the very best. Tiffanys, Aspreys, Gucci, they were all there last time, and Kuoni came in; the sort of class acts that could well enhance your image.’
‘Does that mean you don’t think Home Time is a class act?’
Damn, she’d asked for that one. ‘No, of course not. But a good ambience never did anyone any harm. You might consider a half page.’
‘No, I don’t want to look cheapskate. I’ll take a page.’ The swiftness of this startled Fancesca; she had expected a much longer battle.
‘Oh. Wonderful! Well, that is
just marvellous. Thank you. I’m delighted. You’re very kind. Now I wonder if you’d like to join us, you and Duggie, buy a couple of tickets, you could be on our table naturally – ’
‘No thank you, dear. Not my scene. As I told you. I don’t get along with those kind of people too well. I don’t have much to say to them.’
‘I’m sure you would – ’ Francesca’s voice tailed off slightly.
‘No, Francesca, really. And I might say too much. Anyway, you let me know nearer the time, and I’ll send a cheque. And I’d like to know precisely whose ad I’m alongside.’
‘Oh – well, that could be difficult.’
‘I don’t see why. Sorry, Francesca, that’s a precondition. I don’t want to be slung in alongside Sainsbury’s.’
‘Well, obviously they don’t advertise. But – yes, all right. I’ll confirm that. Thank you. Er – how’s Duggie?’
‘Oh, pretty well. Up in Scotland for a few days. Playing golf. And making money for your husband.’
‘Ah,’ said Francesca. It seemed a strange remark, since anything Duggie made for Bard he also made for himself; they had an equal shareholding. Or so she had always understood.
‘How is your husband?’
‘Oh, he’s fine. Thank you.’ There was a silence, then she said, ‘Well, Teresa, I must – ’
‘Do you see much of young Oliver Clarke?’ said Teresa suddenly.
‘Oliver? Er – no. Why?’
‘He seems a delightful young man. Not at all spoilt. What a difficult life he’s had. They’ve all had.’
‘Yes. Yes indeed. Um – how do you know him?’
‘Oh, I make it my business to know anyone I find interesting. And I find him very interesting.’
‘Really?’ Francesca didn’t know what else to say. What on earth was the woman going on about?
‘But your husband has been very good to them all, hasn’t he? Extraordinarily good, some might say.’
‘Well – he has been good, yes. But Nigel Clarke was his partner. Their partner. And I think he felt responsible when he was killed.’
The Dilemma Page 11