Alternative outcome

by Peter Rowlands

  Chapter 40

  Ten days had passed since my trip to Bristol, and I hadn’t been in touch with Ashley since then. Joanna’s warning was ringing in my ears; I didn’t want to hassle Ashley, and contacting her again too soon might seem like exactly that. But I didn’t want her to think I’d lost interest either. How much time for reflection was enough time?

  I reached for my phone, flicking mentally through possible reasons to ring her. I couldn’t think of any that sounded plausible. What would I be suggesting if I did? I couldn’t think of an answer to that either.

  I scrolled indecisively through my contact list, hovering over Latimer Logistics. And then I pressed the call button anyway.

  She was there, and I was quickly put through to her.

  “Mike. Good to hear from you.”

  Her tone was cool – not unfriendly, certainly not over-enthusiastic. Immediately I regretted making the call. This must be too soon.

  I said, “How are you?”

  “I’m good. You?”

  “OK.”

  A pause this early in the conversation was bad news. Hesitantly I said, “I wondered if Patrick had come up with any more photographs of the Fairmile Hotel – photos taken when we were all there. Sorry to ring you out of the blue about this.”

  “Oh. Right. No, I don’t think so. We haven’t talked about it lately. D’you want me to ask him again?”

  That was a good question. I’d managed to forget his protective attitude to Ashley. He might not want to give me any more help. I said, “Do you think he’ll look?”

  “He will if I ask him.”

  There was another pause, then she said, “What made you bring it up again now?”

  “Well, believe it or not, I’ve had an email from Trina. Or at least, someone who says she’s Trina. So I’m floundering around, wondering what to say in my reply.”

  “That’s amazing!” For the first time in the conversation she sounded almost animated. “Where is she? What’s she been doing all these years?”

  “Well that’s the thing. She hasn’t really said. In fact she makes it sound as if she doesn’t want to be in touch with me at all. So I’m trying to approach it delicately.”

  “Right, well let me talk to Patrick tonight.”

  A much longer pause, then I said, “I couldn’t decide whether to ring you.”

  “It’s fine.” She didn’t say whether she meant the time-lag was fine or this phone call was fine. “Look, I’m in the middle of something here …”

  “It’s OK, we can pick this up another time.”

  And that was that.

  * * *

  That afternoon Sandy rang me. “Mike, how are you doing?”

  “More to the point, how are you? Did you manage to clear up OK after your break-in?”

  “Yes, we’re back to normal now, pretty much. Alan was great.”

  “Did they take much?”

  “Well, that’s partly why I’m ringing. You remember when you came round wanting your photos back? I just wondered what you actually took. Was it loads of CDs?”

  “No, no, not at all. Just two. I didn’t want to deprive you of the pictures you took yourself, I just wanted some of mine that got muddled up with them.”

  “That’s what I thought. Well that’s really strange.”

  “What is?”

  “The people who broke in took loads of CDs from that cupboard. About twenty, I should think. All the pictures we took when we were together, and some other stuff as well. Data CDs – notes about my work, that kind of thing. I didn’t notice at first because it was all such a mess.”

  “Weird. And what a pain for you.” But I was thinking this fitted in rather too well with my break-ins. There was a similar pattern of someone looking for something.

  I made some appropriately sympathetic comments, and we chatted more generally for a while. She said, “We really must fix to get together some time. I meant it when I said I’d like to do that.”

  “Let’s consider it a plan.”

  Chapter 41

  A call came at me from left field the following day, and for a moment I didn’t know how to respond. A vaguely familiar voice announced, “Bob Latimer here, from Latimer Logistics. How are you doing, Mike?”

  We’d never spoken on the phone before. He wasn’t on my list of likely suspects to ring for industry comment, though I felt we’d got on well when I interviewed him for the article earlier in the year.

  “Mike, we really liked the article you wrote about us in the spring. You understood exactly what we’re about at Latimer Logistics, and you picked up a lot of detail in the course of a fairly short conversation. It did us a lot of good.”

  Cautiously I said, “I’m glad to hear it.”

  “The thing is, I wondered if you would be available to write some more material about us – articles, press releases, brochure copy, that kind of thing. We could really do with someone who knows the industry as well as you, and also knows the press. Is that something you could do?”

  Many of my fellow-freelances did exactly this – wrote editorial and press releases for organisations in the industry. It was comparatively easy work, and paid much more than press articles did. I’d always meant to try jumping on that bandwagon myself, but somehow hadn’t made the leap so far.

  Playing for time, I asked, “Don’t you have a public relations firm doing this kind of thing?”

  “In the past, yes, but we never seem to get decent value for money. We dumped our last people a year ago, and since then Sally Meadows has been doing her best for us. But she doesn’t really have the time.”

  Sally, his personal assistant, periodically sent me bland press releases about long-service awards and the company’s charitable donations. They weren’t exactly front page material.

  What was concerning me was that if I took up this proposal I would be bound to encounter Ashley. She was the company’s assistant head of marketing, which surely wasn’t a million miles from press relations. What was her opinion of this proposal? Had she been involved in it in some way? From her distant response when I’d phoned her yesterday it seemed unlikely, so would she welcome it if it was suddenly landed on her?

  The upside, of course, was that it would presumably give me a ready-made excuse to see her, perhaps on a regular basis. Yesterday I’d been racking my brains about how to engineer something like this; now, as if by magic, it was being offered to me on a plate. If I’d sat down to invent this scenario I couldn’t have come up with a neater idea. But would she buy into it? It was a big assumption.

  I said, “In principle the answer is yes, it’s a great idea and I’d love to get involved. But do you mind if I ask whether you’ve run it past Ashley Renwick?”

  “Ashley? No, I only thought of it a minute ago, and I thought I’d sound you out straight way.”

  “I understand.” I was floundering. I didn’t want to head him off; I had a sense that this was a once-only offer. But I couldn’t accept it without her knowledge.

  I said, “I get the sense that Ashley is really on the ball with this kind of thing. It would be great to know she’s on board with it.”

  I could almost feel him reviewing the various aspects of this. Happily the pieces seemed to fall in the right places, and he said brightly, “Tell you what, I’ll talk to her now, and maybe you could have a think about what you would charge us?”

  * * *

  I quickly rang a colleague who did similar work to mine. I asked what he charged for this kind of public relations writing, and he willingly gave me a run-down of his usual rates. I was amazed how high they were. Then I rang Bob Latimer back.

  “Ashley says she’s fine with this,” he told me. I could almost hear her speaking that precise phrase, and I wondered briefly what it meant. It was hardly effusive, but what did I expect? She couldn’t dismiss a perfectly reasonable idea proposed by her boss, so she was hardly going to overrule it. All I could do was wonder what she actually thought.

  Well, too bad.
This was another of those opportunities that had to be grasped while it was there. I quoted Bob some sample fees for various kinds of work, and he made a note of them without apparently paying much attention.

  “So when can you come and see us? Could you make it later this week?”

  * * *

  So on the Friday morning of that week I found myself on the train to St Austell. It would have been convenient to have had my car with me at the other end, but I didn’t fancy that long drive again, and in truth I had doubts that the car presented me in a very good light. I double-locked my front and back doors before I left, and made sure I had all my computer hardware with me.

  I was picked up at St Austell by the company’s driver, and quickly found myself in the board room with Bob Latimer, along with his sales director and his head of operations. Bob picked up a phone on a side table. “Ashley, would you like to join us for a minute?” Ashley would, and a minute later she walked hesitantly into the room.

  Absurdly, I felt I must be blushing at the sight of her. Our eyes briefly met, and I saw not hostility in them, just a kind of uncertainty. Bob waved her over to a chair on the other side of the table, and she sat down. She was wearing an aquamarine top with matching beads, and had a slide in her hair in a slightly darker blue. The effect was striking, yet at the same time on her it seemed understated.

  Bob introduced me to everyone and outlined his ideas about getting me involved with press promotion and publicity. Ashley asked how their press releases would be circulated, and I suggested I might be able to help with that, hoping it was true.

  In due course it was time for an extended tour of the premises. Ashley prepared to return to her office and Bob went off to find some high-visibility jackets for the rest of us. At the boardroom door I said to her quietly, “You do realise all this wasn’t my idea?”

  Her eyes widened. “What do you mean by that?”

  Quickly I said, “I mean, it’s an amazing idea, but it wasn’t just some plot of mine to ingratiate myself.”

  Bob returned at that point with an armful of orange tunics. She edged away, commenting with a smile, “That’s what you say, Mr Stanhope.”

  * * *

  I was shown round the same warehouse I’d seen last time, then another warehouse, then yet another, then the operations room, then the IT department, and finally the open-plan sales and marketing office. Ashley had a cubicle at one end, and gave me a little wave as I stood chatting with Bob and his colleagues near the door.

  Then we returned to the board room and started to assemble a programme of press releases that would extend over the next few months. Some of it involved me speaking to, or even visiting, some of Latimer’s customers. It would be quite a lot of work.

  I asked about working on brochures. “We’ll need to bring Ashley’s team in on that. Let’s talk about it next time you’re here.”

  That was fine with me.

  It was only when the meeting ended that it dawned on me I’d made no arrangement to see her at the end of the proceedings, and wasn’t sure how to make it happen. I was debating texting her to see if she had any thoughts when I realised Bob was speaking to me.

  “Do you have any plans for this evening, Mike?”

  I didn’t. I’d booked myself into the same hotel in Truro as last time, and had been hoping that somehow Ashley and I would get together between now and the end of the evening.

  “Perhaps you’d like to join Brian and me over dinner?”

  It was an offer I couldn’t decline, and half an hour later we arrived at a roadside restaurant a few miles outside St Austell.

  While we were there I found a moment to text Ashley: “Been hijacked by the brass and forced to eat fillet steak at gunpoint. Staying over like last time.”

  When we parted company at the end of the evening, Brian drove me to Truro, where he lived. From Ashley I’d heard nothing. Mindful that she might be with Jack, I resisted the temptation to phone or text her again. I checked into the hotel and fell into an uneasy sleep.

  Chapter 42

  There was no text message from Ashley when I woke next morning, nor any voicemail. I was unsure what to do. It was a Saturday, but I had no sense of whether this made a meeting with Ashley more or less likely than if it had been a weekday. I’d only booked myself into the hotel for one night, so my options appeared to be sightseeing in Truro or an early train ride back to London.

  Then as I walked back from breakfast through the hotel foyer a figure entered from the street: Ashley, in jeans and a blue T-shirt. “Mr Stanhope! Surprise surprise.”

  I felt myself beaming foolishly at her. “Hello.”

  “I wondered if I could buy you a coffee.”

  “Don’t mind if you do.”

  I went upstairs to grab my belongings, then hurried back down and checked out of the hotel. In the street, Ashley nodded to the right.

  “This way.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “Follow me and you’ll see.”

  We set off at a brisk pace through pretty pedestrianised shopping streets with abundant hanging baskets brimming with pastel-coloured flowers. The cathedral loomed across a small square and she gestured towards it without slowing down. “Did anybody tell you that’s a modern fake? Gothic revival. It’s only just over a hundred years old.”

  It looked five times that age to me, but I nodded. “Are you planning to set up in business as a tour guide?”

  We gradually moved out of the shopping area and into narrow streets of period terraced houses, and finally she stopped by a small blue Subaru car. “My flat is along there and round the corner, but I’m not taking you to it.”

  “Whatever you say.”

  She paused as she opened the driver’s door, and suddenly gave me a brilliant smile. “I can’t believe you’re here, getting into my car!”

  “You’d better believe it.”

  We made our way on to a main road out of the town, but before long we turned into a rambling suburb and drew up in front of a smart house of indeterminate age. It was finished in local stone, and the browns and greys did their best to convey a solid, dependable feel.

  “The family home,” she said as we approached the front door.

  “Very nice.”

  “We had a much bigger place when we lived down in Falmouth.”

  She unlocked the door. “Don’t get too excited, I’m not taking you to meet the folks.”

  “I’ve already met them.”

  “And once is enough, believe me.”

  She beckoned me through to a lounge at the back of the house. “Patrick told me he left the photos somewhere here.” She cast around. “Aha!” She picked up an envelope from the sideboard. It had “Ashley” written on it and underlined.

  We moved out into a sun porch and sat at a heavy teak table, looking through the pictures. There were about ten in total, and several of them had clearly been taken on the same day as the one Ashley had emailed to me. Some shots featured the diminutive version of Ashley on her own; in others she was with a young version of Patrick, standing a head taller than her. There was one other picture that included both Trina and me, but it looked like an earlier attempt at the one she’d already sent me.

  Finally there was a shot from a different photo session. Trina was in it, wearing the same white top and blue shorts, but it was a posed shot featuring several adults. I said, “That’s your father, isn’t it?”

  She looked closely. “Yes, and those are probably Trina’s parents.”

  “How about this couple?”

  She shrugged. “Other guests?”

  I asked her if I could keep the pictures. She said, “I’ll scan them and email them to you.”

  I looked up and glanced around the house. “Where are your folks?”

  “Shopping. I checked. It usually takes them hours.”

  I hesitated. “And Jack …?”

  “Playing football in Plymouth. But look, we don’t live in each other’s pockets.”

&nbs
p; We glanced awkwardly at each other, and at that moment a man and a woman loomed at the glass side door and the woman thrust a key into the lock.

  Ashley gave me a wide-eyed look. “Aarrgh! They’ve come back early.”

  * * *

  Her mother came in first, carrying two shopping bags. “Ashley! I didn’t know we were expecting you today.” She bustled off to the kitchen. Her father followed, carrying two more bags. He nodded to the two of us as he headed after her.

  Presently her mother reappeared. She gave me a sideways glance and raised her eyebrows fractionally.

  “This is Mike,” Ashley said. “You met him at Dad’s birthday party.”

  She reached out to give me a perfunctory handshake. Ashley offered nothing to explain my presence.

  I studied Mary Renwick. She was well built but not conspicuously overweight, with an older and slightly looser version of Ashley’s neat features, and dark hair streaked with grey. She stood erect and confident.

  “Where’s Jack?” she asked Ashley.

  “Plymouth.”

  “Ah, of course.” She turned to me again, but addressing Ashley said, “Are you staying for lunch?”

  “No, I promised Mike some sightseeing around Cornwall.”

  “Coffee then.” It was a statement, not a question.

  She went off to make it and her husband wandered through. He seemed relatively indifferent to my presence, but leaned over our bundle of photographs for a moment.

  “Where on earth did you dig these up?”

  “Patrick found them when he was over on Tuesday.

  He picked up the one featuring Desmond Markham and turned to me. “He’s the chap you were asking about, isn’t he?”

  Surprised that he even remembered me, let alone our conversation, I nodded.

  He said, “I’d forgotten all about this picture.” He studied it for a moment, then looked up at me. “Have you had any luck tracking down these people?”