FOR THE LOVE OF MONEY

a collection of short stories
by
Brian Doswell

“Such is the motivation to succeed,
When one is
Spurred on by greed”

(anon 2009)

TO HAVE IT ALL OR NOT

Chrissie took a last look in the hall mirror before quietly closing the front door on the sleeping household behind her. She walked down the five chalk-white steps to the pathway and to the drive where her dark blue BMW 535 sat waiting to take her into the City and her air-conditioned office. The big engine purred into life and the red glowing numbers on the dashboard told her that it was still only 6.30. Chrissie allowed herself a moment to enjoy the comfort of the black leather seats before sliding the gear lever into drive and easing the highly polished machine forward and out onto the tree-lined avenue. Black heels sat in the passenger foot well; she would change into them when she arrived in her reserved parking space in the underground car park.
There was not much traffic at this hour but Chrissie knew that that would change when she hit the motorway. She hooked her Bluetooth into her ear as a matter of habit although she knew that the next forty minutes would probably pass in silence. Chrissie wore her dark blonde hair loose at shoulder length which hid the plastic earpiece but she knew, as did everyone else, that walking around the office apparently talking to yourself, was a mark of being an exec, and she liked everyone to know that she was an exec.
At 7.10 she rolled down the slipway onto the M4 and headed east into the rising sun. Now the lottery began. If she was lucky, she would get past Heathrow and into London before the real rush started. If not, then she had another forty minutes before she could thumb the button on her personal remote to open the electronic doors to the firm’s private car park. Within minutes she was sandwiched between a pale green Jaguar and a silver Mercedes. All high achievers on the road at this hour, the denizens would follow on in an hour or so. She would just have to settle for cruising along with the hordes of commuters who collectively made up the City of London. Of course it would be nice to have the road to oneself, but then the City would not be the City without the excitement generated by the people who worked there.
Chrissie liked to recall her first visit to the City as a fifth-former on a school trip. She and her team had won the Hampshire, inter-school, investment competition. Each team had been allocated a notional £10,000 to invest and the winners were the ones who showed the best profit after a full year of trading. Their prize was awarded on a special edition of the BBC Money Programme where Chrissie met Professor Adrian Schmitt a visiting lecturer at Christ’s College Cambridge. Chrissie fell in love with Professor Schmitt and the following year won a scholarship to Christ’s College. Sadly for her Professor Schmitt had moved on but she did meet and eventually marry James. He had a good degree in computing sciences but the job opportunities had not materialised so, by joint agreement, he worked from home on the internet while she went from strength to strength in EC2. The arrangement suited them both and when the children came along James had proved to be an excellent house father. They both knew that James would never get the chance to make a top salary in such a crowded field and Chrissie’s annual bonus schemes were just unbeatable. The house in the New Forest would never have been possible without Chrissie’s salary. Last year, the annual bonus had paid for a paddock and a pony for Naomi. This year, her promotion to exec status, albeit still a junior exec, had ramped the home budget up to the ‘au pair’ level.
The au pair, what a god send, especially now that James junior was almost three years old. Stephanie had answered their advert in ‘The Lady’. They interviewed seven girls but Stephanie had stood out well above the rest. Typically French, gamin, urchin haircut and legs. James had particularly liked the legs and Chrissie had decided that she would have to learn to trust James, legs or not. Six months on, her decision had not been found wanting. Stephanie’s English had improved enormously and the house ran like clockwork, exactly as Chrissie liked it.
‘Turn right into Old Street’, the metallic voice of the sat-nav system on the dashboard brought Chrissie back to the land of the living. Time for her morning game; if she was parked before 8 o’clock she rewarded herself with a mocha latté from Starbucks, if it was after eight, then it would be an espresso from the machine in the corridor outside her office.
Today it was Starbucks - by seconds.
Gary joined the queue behind her and their day began in the coffee shop. She had joined Wilkinson’s at almost the same time as Gary and they were both good friends and fierce competitors. As a senior analyst, Chrissie, with her team, was responsible for formulating the firm’s policy on pharmaceutical stocks, while Gary and his team covered petrochemical industries. There was a fair degree of overlap between the two teams and titbits of information were jealously guarded, although neither was secretive enough to prejudice a board report.
Today was the day for the release of the major pan-European pharmaceutical trading figures. Normally these figures were leaked all over the place by the internal corporate analysts. Chrissie had been on the phone to her contacts in Geneva for hours every day this week trying to piece together the story so that she could anticipate the release and brief her team accordingly. The little bio-tech companies had been their normally cooperative selves but the big boys had been unusually quiet. There was nothing to hang a hat on anywhere in the market. Gary’s team would be going through the same process next month when the petrochemical figures came out, but even though it was early yet, he was also getting a cold shoulder.
They walked across the road to the office building together, both carrying the distinctive Styrofoam cups in one hand and a super slim-line laptop case with the Wilkinson’s crest embossed in the leather, in the other. The lack of information coming into both teams had been a hot topic for several days and occupied their conversation now. The cool marble floored reception hall boasted large, over stuffed leather sofas and they opted to spend a few more precious moments to share ideas and speculation as to why the trail was so unusually cold. There had been no unusual reports or regulatory bulletins so there had to be something in the air. Something big enough to put a lid on all the major companies. At times like this, all thoughts of competition were put to one side and every tiny scrap of information was trawled over and over again in an attempt to find the pearl and extract it from its oyster. Someone must know something, but no one was telling.
The execs’ meeting at 8.30 was similarly grim. George Padworth sat in the big chair at the end of the rosewood table, as he did every morning, except when he was away tending the vines on his estate in the Loire valley. Chrissie and Gary sat much further down the pecking order, but at least they were at the table and not outside in the main hall.
George opened with a list of companies due to report during the day and asked for a brief on each from the respective team leaders. When it came to Chrissie, she had nothing new to say. The room was quiet. Everyone felt a smidgen of sympathy because they had all been there. Gary especially, could see it coming to him when it was his turn in the next few days.
BASF were due to report first at 12.00 CET, which was 11 o’clock in London. The trading desks were open and waiting to get in on the action but what was the call from the top? Some traders liked to fly on their own but that was not George’s way. George liked to control a tight ship and, to date, his way had made Wilkinson’s a very successful firm and their staff very rich. Chrissie had less than two hours to come up with something useful.
8.35 and the meeting was over. There was no point in lingering when there was nothing to say. Chrissie perched on her deputy team leader’s desk in the open plan area of the fifth floor office and her team gathered round.
‘Any new ideas? . . . OK, one more time round the contact list and report back to me directly, by 10.00 latest.’ was all she had to say.
The last of the mocha latté sat on her desk as cold as the trail of information. Chrissie stared at her terminal paging up and down her contact-dialler looking for anything that she might have missed. Chrissie was not the sort of person to get cross but she was close to tearing her hair out with frustration, this did not happen to her. She was a top analyst with a finger in every pie, there had to be a plum somewhere, probably staring her in the face.
Nine o’clock came and went. It was unheard of that there should be nothing on the wires this close to release time. There was always a spare copy of the figures left in the photo copying room and always an unusually highly paid cleaner who would rescue it ahead of disclosure time. Where was he or she hiding, and why?
Chrissie flicked open her mail box merely to change the screen in front of her. There were no new messages, but she knew that anyway. Idly she paged down the 87 messages received yesterday, none were even remotely helpful. They were almost all from her contacts who were having the same trouble; nothing to report. Her right index finger bashed repeatedly on the down arrow until she reached the bottom of the list and then did the same on the up arrow just for the hell of it. Somewhere in mid-list she paused on an email from James that she had not bothered to open. He probably just wanted to let her know that James junior had done something mind numbingly boring, for the very first time. This time she opened it.
The message was short and sweet. ‘try this web site. J.’
Chrissie lined up the curser on the URL and double clicked.
Seconds later an image of a pirate flag appeared looking for all the world like a clip from ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’.
‘I do not have time for this’, echoed in Chrissie’s head, but she rolled the curser over the waving flag and clicked on the ever pointing hand when it appeared. The image changed to a puff of smoke and when the smoke cleared, the screen filled with what appeared to be the cover page of a financial report. The BASF financial report.
It took a few seconds more to realise that the curser had changed to Captain Hook’s hook and that the hook would turn the pages, achingly, one page at a time.
Chrissie hit screen print, but the function did not work. She would have to read this one page at a time and make notes by hand. She turned the pages as quickly as the hook would let her, until she found the first financial summary. The market was expecting a strong set of numbers. Everyone in the chemical industries was due to benefit to some degree from the surge in global oil prices. The wire services were reporting $67 per barrel but Gary had told her in Starbucks that overnight prices in the Far East had hit $75 before falling back in the early hours.
Chrissie paged down the numbers, looking for the bottom line.
This was undoubtedly the information that she had been chasing but where did this site get it from. Could she trust the Pirate?
She hit her home number hoping to ask James, but when she eventually got through, Stephanie answered. James was out in the park with James junior.
Chrissie wished that she had bothered to open James’ email when it arrived. She could have asked him about it last night, but it was too late now. She went back to the figures. They certainly looked genuine. Some of the numbers were common knowledge, rolling on from quarterly reports, exactly as expected. She turned another page and another. The hook was beginning to get on her nerves, it was so slow.
At last she found the table that she needed. Somewhere in here would be the net profit figures with all the caveats and hedges listed. The market was expecting a high number but the market was a fickle thing. If the number was below expectation, the market would be disappointed. If the number was too high, the market would be suspicious and offload shares in case there was a skeleton in the cupboard. Whoever got in first would clean up in arbitrage.
Finally, there it was. If she believed this pirate flag web site, the bottom line was a huge number, well above all the analysts’ expectations. Chrissie drew breath in over clenched teeth making a prolonged hissing noise. It was her way of expressing amazement, something that she had done at school and ever since.
She desperately wanted to share this with her team who would start to assess the figures and attempt to out-guess the imminent market reaction. Instead she called Gary.
Gary leaned over her shoulder while she dragged the hook around the pirate web site. There were no obvious clues but the report looked genuine. The screen image was not a normal document but a photograph of an original paper copy. It seemed as though someone had photographed each page of the report with something simple like a mobile phone and then tied all the separate images together with hyperlinks. The hook was probably just a way to activate the hyperlinks.
They both searched each page desperate for some clue that would lend credibility to the information. Right or wrong, this was dynamite. If Chrissie went ahead on the assumptions in this paper she was either in line for a partnership or the grand order of the boot. There was no middle ground. There was no time for indecision.
Suddenly Gary turned back to a previous page. The light falling on the page was slightly different from the others and it was just possible to determine a BASF watermark behind the typed text. It was almost nothing but it was just better than nothing, enough to sway the pair that this was the genuine article.
Chrissie called in her team and gave them the numbers.
‘Don’t ask, just get on with it.’
While they worked on the details Chrissie called George and passed on the news. The numbers were so far beyond all expectations; George would need to be in on this one himself.
The meeting convened in Chrissie’s office, George in Chrissie’s chair and she leaning over his shoulder. The size of the numbers could be why the wraps had been so tightly drawn over this report. If this were true then the market would be a real mess this afternoon.
The clock hit and passed ten.
Bit by bit, the assessment reports landed on Chrissie’s desk and she fed them to George.
In thirty minutes the report would be on all the screens in London and everywhere else in the world. There were pros and cons to the internet.
‘Feint heart never won fair lady.’ George whispered quietly into Chrissie’s ear. She thought it an odd thing to say, so out of context with such a high profile decision in hand.
‘You’ve been right so far Chrissie, I’m going to go with this. Get me Mack at the dealer desk.’
By noon London time it was clear that Wilkinson’s had somehow scooped the pool again. Buy and sell orders had flashed across a hundred Wilkinson’s screens just ahead of the mob, and the net gain on the afternoon, still to be confirmed by the back office, looked like exceeding £28,000,000.
The screens on the fifth floor were all on the same display. No red boxes only green. Green glorious green and all down to Chrissie.
Five o’clock came and went, closely followed by the whole team with George at the head. Balls Brothers may have sawdust on the floor but their Champagne is the best, and it flowed. Oh! how it flowed.
It was just a touch before 7.30 when Chrissie fired up the BMW and headed for Hampshire. She probably should not have been driving after the champagne but there was very little traffic on the road at this hour. ‘Strange’ she thought, the roads were empty this morning too, I must have missed it all.
The M4 was empty. Heathrow came and went as the air-conditioned cabin of the BMW virtually found its own way home.
A few minutes before nine, Chrissie turned into her neatly manicured drive. There were no lights on in the house and James’ old 4x4 was not in its usual place. Chrissie opened the door and made her way to the kitchen, no sign of Naomi or James junior. No sign of gamine, leggy Stephanie. Her friends had joked about her leaving James alone in the house with an attractive young French au pair all day. She had always laughed it off, but now, their flippant comments hit a panic button in her mind. “Where could they all be?”
She checked the nursery - nothing.
Not a sound in the dark empty house.
Chrissie returned to the lounge and, for the first time, noticed an envelope propped against the clock on the mantle piece. Her heart sank as she opened the envelope and pulled out the note. Tears welled in her eyes as she read the hastily written words.

‘Shame you could not make it home in time for Naomi’s birthday party. We have all gone to the pictures. Love you, James’

AN EXTRA BEDROOM

Crisp morning sunlight, filtering through the shop window, fell on Jean Ellis’s desk in a chequerboard pattern mirroring the arrangement of display sheets hung from almost invisible wires. She loved the magical way these flimsy sheets were all it took to draw people into her agency.
‘Acherson & Co’
The name over the door was not Jean’s. The name belonged to Bill Acherson. At least technically it used to belong to Bill until he died, quite suddenly, after a nasty bout of flu, just after Christmas.
Acherson & Co, Estate Agents of Station Road, Harrow, had been a fixture in Station Road for close to thirty years and Jean had worked there most of that time. Bill had literally lived above the shop which was the front ground floor of a house that he owned outright. Most people thought Bill was gay, he was certainly single but in truth, and Jean knew the truth, there had been no one in his life since his mother died in 1983. Bill liked his own company, his mother’s armchair and Coronation Street. Beyond that, Bill had lived and died selling houses. He had a knack for knowing what people liked and matching people to properties. He always knew when the seller would be prepared to drop the price or when the buyer could squeeze a few more pounds on the mortgage. More importantly Bill knew every conveyance solicitor and mortgage broker in Harrow and its surrounding towns. Bill’s reputation rested on his ability to arrange a sale and completion in less time than anyone else in Harrow. To him it was a puzzle that needed solving, a chess game that he could win if he got all the pieces exactly where he wanted them. Over the years, Bill had accumulated a list of special clients, people who came back time after time as their families grew. Bill was always the one to find that extra bedroom at a price they could afford.
Jean joined the agency after leaving school in that same year and she sometimes thought that, over the years, Bill had come to see her as a bit like his dearly departed mother. Bill had no other relatives that Jean knew of and so it was no real surprise that he chose to leave the house and the business to her.
At forty-five, Jean was still single, ‘A spinster of the parish’, her mother called her, but she didn’t mind. Jean had never enjoyed school. In more enlightened times she would have been classified as a slow learner but back in those days, she was just slow. Jean often thought about the tall, plain looking, gangly and drastically under confident girl that had walked out of the school gates for the last time in July 1983. She had failed everything except art and had nothing to offer a prospective employer, nor any idea of what she might do for a living. She remembered walking home clutching a bag of part-full exercise books, liberally punctuated with red correcting ink, the sum total of her fifteen years of education. On impulse, she stopped at the waste basket in Station Road and tore each book apart page by page before dumping it into the bin. The only thought in her mind was to rid herself of all her past school things and start again, somewhere.
Bill had watched her from his chair at the same desk Jean now called her own. On impulse, he opened the shop door and called her over.
Bill needed a clerk, Jean needed a job, and they took an instant liking to each other. The rest, as they say, is history.
No one was more surprised than Jean’s parents when she arrived home that day. “She left home in the morning, a school-girl and came home a proper estate agent.” Her mother told the neighbours and anyone else who stopped long enough to listen, over and over until there was no one left to tell.
At first, Jean found the work challenging and had it not been for Bill’s enthusiasm and her mother’s incessant mantra, she might have walked away from Acherson & Co a dozen times. However, that all changed the day she sold her first house.
Bill was out doing an evaluation on a house in Borrowdale Avenue and Jean was alone in the shop. A young couple paused in front of the shop window and Jean watched them as they picked their way through the selection of property leaflets displayed there. They appeared to be choosing between two small houses, both in the maze of side streets off the Uxbridge Road. They burst through the shop door engrossed in loud, animated conversation that Jean found intimidating. There being no one else in the place, they pulled the customer’s chairs from Bill’s desk and plonked themselves in front of hers.
“We’d like to know more about these two places.” The woman bubbled as she spoke. “We’re getting married in November and the bank has just agreed a mortgage limit for us to get our first house.”
Jane smiled back at the woman who was now clutching her fiancé’s arm with the grip of a Black Widow spider.
“I’ll get the details.” She said, getting up from her desk and pulling out the filing cabinet drawer, where only minutes before, she had placed a new stack of photocopies. She used the few seconds to take in a deep breath and think, what would Bill do next?
Jane placed the two leaflets side by side on her desk. “I think this is the nicer one. It’s a bit more money but it has actually got a garden you can sit in. This one has a very nice yard, but it’s not the same, is it?”
The bubbly woman pulled the leaflets towards her on the desk and began to study the details. Her fiancé looked at Jane with a weak smile that she would come to recognise over the years. This was going to be the woman’s decision, he would go along with whatever she chose as long as he could walk to the nearest pub and crawl back afterwards. Jane sometimes wondered if he was the reason she had never found a man to marry.
The woman was still engrossed in the fine print when Bill arrived at the door. He saw the clients and the hint of panic in Jane’s eyes. He signalled to her to carry on while he sat behind his own desk and watched.
Jane relaxed the tiniest bit and then in her best posh voice, “Would you like my colleague to take you to see both properties, they’re not far away and he can explain about them on the way?”
Bill laughed at the unexpected boldness of his protégé and rose from his chair. “My car’s outside. It’ll be my pleasure.”
The memory of that morning seemed a very long time ago. The couple had bought the more expensive house with the garden and Bill had made a point of including a commission on the sale in Jane’s wage packet as soon as the sale was completed. In many ways, that morning proved to be the start of their enduring but platonic, office partnership. Bill had guessed correctly that while Jane might not be suited to book learning, she was quite able to follow his example. He liked the idea of someone who would take their time in the day rather than some sharp little junior who would interrupt his lifestyle. Jane would suit him fine.
“The first quarter of the year is always a bit slow.” Bill would often say that, while Jane made tea for them when they had not seen a single customer for a week or more. She often re¬membered those words when things were quiet, as they had been for a week or so. The fact that she had inherited the house and office from Bill and had sold her own ‘two-up-two-down’ within weeks meant that she had no money worries. There were no overhead costs for Acherson & Co, unlike those glass and chrome palaces in the shopping mall. She had learned enough about the business over the years to know that she could retire in a year or two if she wanted, not bad for a kid who only passed art. It was time to put the kettle on.
From the back of the office, Jean heard the shop-door open and she turned back towards her desk, tea-cup in hand.
“Good Morning, I’m Lia Patel. I am a Financial Advisor with Andersons, the bank in the High Street. I wonder if you have some time to talk about Andersons mortgage plans.” She handed over a card bearing the Anderson logo and her name, PATEL Lia.
“Yes I know”, she said. “It’s the back-to-front name, isn’t it? Everyone has the same reaction, but it’s the Bank’s rules. Please call me Lia.”
Jane placed her cup on a tea-stained beer mat that she kept to remind her of Bill. “Always willing to listen,” she smiled, “would you like some tea while you sell me your latest products?”
Lia Patel smiled back and accepted her offer.
An hour passed in minutes as Jane sat back and enjoyed the company. Lia was the first person she had spoken to in days.
“So, by way of a recap,” Lia continued, “Andersons are prepared to lend up to six times the salary of the purchaser, or the combined salaries of a couple, up to 125% of the purchase price. How does that sound to you?”
Jane had listened closely. “Look around you Miss Patel - this is Station Road, not Pall Mall. The people who come in here can barely afford a mortgage of twice their salaries. With a mortgage the size that you are suggesting, they’re bound to default on you, and sooner rather than later.”
“I’m glad you see that, and normally you would be right, however, at Andersons, we are able to take a long view of the steady growth in the property market. If a client falls on hard times we can always recover the value of the outstanding loan from the improved value of the property.”
The principle was sound enough. By chance she had recently sold again that very first house with the garden. She recalled that it had sold in 1983 for £23,000 and this year for £185,000. Lia’s logic seemed all right from the bank’s point of view but she wondered how that couple would have ever found the cash to meet the repayments today.
“OK, I understand all of that but why are you telling me this now. The first quarter of the year is always a bit slow; I’ve got no one on the books right now to send round to Andersons and, anyway, I’m not sure that the buyers would thank me when the repayments start.”
“Andersons would thank you.”
“I’m not sure I understand.”
“Andersons would be pleased to sign an agency agreement with Acherson & Co appointing you personally as an authorising agent, for which a suitable commission would be due.”
“What on earth does that mean?”
“Quite simply, if you get a purchaser who needs a mortgage, you get them to complete the mortgage application form, here in your office, and we, that is Andersons, authorise you to authorise the loan, on the spot - within our agreed pre-set limits. Then when the sale is completed and the purchaser is signed up to our loan, we pay you a commission; say 1.5% of the loan amount.”
Jane did really not need to think again, but years of working with Bill taught her not to rush at decisions and she did not do so now.
Lia misread her silence and chipped in, “Of course, we could go to 2% on loans over £300,000.”
Once again Jane heard Bill’s voice of caution in her mind. “It sounds OK to me. Leave the papers with me and I’ll think about it over the next few days. Can I come back to you on Monday?”
Lia slid the sales pitch back into her briefcase, confident that her morning had not been wasted. On Monday she would have another fish on her line, another little fish creating debtor assets for head office to parcel up to sell to the market. It was like shooting fish in a barrel. Lia liked fish in barrels.
Jane, on the other hand, was not so sure.
As the door closed behind her, Jane sat staring at the figures Lia had left on her notepad. The logic was so simple. Pretty much every prospective buyer that walked through her door had their eyes on something grander than the houses they could genuinely afford. It was natural after all. With the backing from Andersons Bank, she could offer her clients a way to buy that more expensive property, arrange the mortgage and bank a tidy commission for herself without leaving her office chair.
By comparison with her fellow school friends, Jean was already a wealthy lady. Most of her school year were married with kids, grandkids some of them, plus extended credit-card accounts, while she owned a modestly successful business and had money in the bank. She had never been obsessed with money and Bill had taught her well, she had learned to be satisfied with her lot rather than be over-ambitious, striving for an impossible dream. Somewhere deep inside she knew she should not change that now. But then, maybe . . . . . Jane leafed through the diary on her desk and phoned a number.
“Hello, this is Jane from Acherson & Co, Estate Agents. Are you still looking for a four-bedroom property in Harrow? . . . . . . Good, I think I might be able to help you.”
§§§§§
Three months later, Jane received a letter from Andersons Bank enclosing a statement of commission due on their self-authorising mortgage agreement.
‘SAMA Account No. 87943242576. Amount credited £32,045.’
Almost without leaving her chair, with just a few simple phone calls, she had sold seven houses during the month following Lia’s visit and twenty more since then. She looked again at the bank statement, she could expect a similar letter next month and again the month after assuming her pipe-line sales completed according to plan. Moreover, the name on the bank’s letter was Jane Ellis, not Acherson & Co. In less than six months there would be over £100,000 in her personal account plus Acherson & Co. would still receive the standard agency fees on each sale.
In Jane’s mind this was all due to Bill and his philosophy in life, “If you do your best for your clients, they will come back, over and over again.”
This was exactly what she was doing, ‘the best for her clients’ - wasn’t she?

§§§§§

Two years, four months and three weeks later, Jane sifted the monthly letter from the mail. The bright golden yellow Andersons Bank logo had a familiar glow as she slit the envelope to extract her monthly statement. She smiled at the total printed in bold type at the foot of the column. Lia had persuaded her to place these commission payments into an Andersons, off-shore account, in the Channel Islands. The total sum deposited, plus the compound interest showed, in bold, £1,001,758.
Jane spread the letter out on her desk and moved her desk lamp a fraction so as to shine the light on the letter. She lifted her hand to her face and kissed the tip of her index finger to transfer her kiss to the magic number.
The next letter in the pile bore the familiar forest-green logo of the ‘Three Trees’ Estate Agents, Head Office, Queen’s Gate, Slough. Jane had seen their sales boards many times but, as far as she could recall, neither she nor Bill had ever dealt with them.

Dear Miss Ellis,
Three Trees Estate Agents are planning to expand the range of home purchase services offered at each of our branches and also to extend our coverage of the Slough & Maidenhead area, to include Harrow.
We would be pleased to discuss with you our acquisition of Acherson & Co. as part of this expansion plan.
As a guide for your information, we estimate the value of Acherson & Co in the current market, to be in the order of £1,500,000, to include all sales in progress at the date of acquisition.
If this proposal is of interest to you please contact Mr. Roy Jones at our Slough office, see details below, to arrange a suitably convenient time for him to visit your office to explain our future strategy.
Yours sincerely,

Arthur Evans
MD Three Trees plc.

Jane placed the two letters side by side under the light of her desk lamp. Her mind whirled at the thought; if she chose, she could be worth comfortably in excess of £2.5 million, enough to buy a place in the sun and never work again.
She reached for the phone and began to key the number printed in green at the foot of the page, and then stopped. This was something new, and Bill always said to sleep on anything new. There was no need to rush; the letter was not going to blow away. She sat back in her chair with the phone still in her hand, staring out of the office window. To the left of the window-framed picture, the council waste bin still sat where it had when she had torn those exercise books to shreds. The bin provoked a fond memory of that day, and of Bill, and of her life to date. One day, a few years ago, she realised that she subconsciously rubbed her fingers on the side of the bin every-time she passed it. She had laughed at herself and promised to stop doing it, but the following day, she did it again.
Jane replaced the phone in its rest and returned to the remainder of the post although her thoughts stayed with the amazing number, £2.5 million, £2.5 million, £2.5 million, £2.5 million, it just would not go away.
That evening Jane collected her usual Thursday take away meal, prawn korma and rice, from the local Indian restaurant that was on her way round to her mother’s house in Gilbert Road. Over supper, served on their knees in front of the television, Jane broached the subject.
“Mum, do you remember the holiday we had in France, the year after Dad died?”
“How do they get these colours in the rice, dear?”
“Do you remember that pretty little cottage in the Loire Valley?”
“Yes of course, I couldn’t sleep a wink for the cockerel in the farmyard next door.”
“I think I might give up the business and buy something like that and move there for good. Would you like to come with me?”
“Do they have the tele there?”
“I think so.”
“Will I have my own room?”
“I don’t see why not, Mum.”
“To tell you the truth, I was wondering about suggesting we might save a bit on my pension by sharing the electric bill.”
Jane bit her lip, £2.5 million would probably cover the electric bill for a while but she wasn’t sure how or even if, to tell her mother.
The following morning she deliberately waited until after eleven, then rang the number in forest green at the bottom of the letter.

§§§§§

The French notaire handed her the keys after a gruelling hour, signing page after page of ‘Acte de Vente’. The cottage was hers at last. To be fair it was a bit more than a cottage but Jane was not the type to take these things too seriously. Three reception rooms, farmhouse kitchen, five bedrooms and four bathrooms, all sympathetically restored, would do nicely. Outside there was a swimming pool in a hectare of garden, albeit, more than half of the garden was a bit on the wild side. Jane preferred to call it woodlands. Best of all was the independent annex, barely two steps from the kitchen door. The annex had at some time been a stable but Mum loved it anyway. Jane wondered if it got cold in the winter. Perhaps Mum would be happier in the main house. She could always let the annex for a bit of extra company.
The place sat on a hill side facing south and overlooking the valley where lush green grape vines marched like soldiers in straight lines as far as the eye could see. The notaire had told her that the vines closest to her cottage were owned by an Englishman called Padworth who worked for a bank in London. He, the notaire, would arrange for her to meet Monsieur Padworth next time he was over from England.
Jane smiled politely and decided that, on balance, she had had enough of banks for a while. She was going to paint the scenery; after all she did have a GCE in Art.


IT’S ALL TO EMMA’S CREDIT

Clink. The sound of a teaspoon hitting the kitchen floor tiles startled Emma. She looked down at the spoon and wondered how it came to be there at her feet. As she bent to retrieve the errant spoon she realised that she must have put it into her dressing gown pocket. She knew that the pocket had a hole in and she did intend to mend it – today - probably.
Through the kitchen window she watched Susie’s ‘Dora Explorer’ back-pack as it disappeared through the garden gate. Susie, eight years old, had just left for school, slamming the back door in disgust on her way out. Today, Susie’s particular hell was being the only girl in her class who did not have a mobile phone, with her own personalised ring tone.
Emma tore off a sheet of kitchen roll, blew her nose and threw the soggy scrunched-up paper into the bin before turning to the pile of manila envelopes on the kitchen table. Five years ago she would have left these envelopes on the hall table for Steve to deal with. Five years ago her credit cards actually had credit available and were paid off each month. Now she had exhausted all the credit lines open to her and had less than fifty pounds in her purse.
She had been twenty-five with a shape that she had worked hard at regaining after having Susie. Maternity leave had become daily visits to the gym and the flatness of her stomach had overtaken pretty much everything else in her lifestyle priority list. Going back to work had somehow become bottom of that list. Steve became very boring about her going back to work. On the other hand, Geoff had been completely different. Geoff was the resident fitness instructor at the gym. He had spent endless time playing with Susie in the crèche and, after a while, he had spent just as much time playing with Emma.
Emma often cursed her own stupidity. The affair, the row with Steve, it had all been ridiculous. She knew it was all her fault but . . . She thought of how he had slammed the door when he left and how the sound of a slamming door had not changed in five years. Steve paid the mortgage but nothing else, although he did pay for Susie’s phone. It had been a birthday present. Emma had tried to claim some maintenance from him but she had very little sympathy from any of the agencies and Steve was adamant about her working harder on getting a fair price for her services. She knew what he meant and hated herself for knowing.
This morning she was expecting a visit from a debt counsellor from the local branch of her bank. She winced in anticipation of the forthcoming session. She imagined this boring bank employee producing a magic wand and turning all the red figures into black. She waved her own imaginary wand in time with the thought and knocked the cold coffee into her lap. OK, so it was going to be another one of those days. She should at least get dressed before the appointed hour.
In the shower, she allowed the soapsuds to flow over her body. Was all that time in the gym worth it? Where did that super flat stomach go to, and when? Jeans and a tee shirt would be good enough for the bank, or perhaps not? Too casual - not serious enough? Emma rifled through the rack and selected a blouse and skirt from her old office collection. She was still brushing her hair when the door bell rang. She turned on the dressing table stool and thrust her feet into her shoes, rising and dashing to the top of the stairs in one super-fluid movement. She took a moment for one deep breath and opened the door.
He introduced himself as David Morris and presented his card on which was written MORRIS David.
‘Yes I know’, he said. ‘Everyone has the same reaction, but it’s the Bank’s rules. Please call me David.’
Emma led him into the lounge and gestured towards an armchair.
‘I’d prefer a table, if you have one.’ He held up his briefcase as if to excuse the inevitable paper work that was about to follow.
Emma ushered him towards the dining room table where she pulled out a chair for him. Only then did she notice that she was wearing odd shoes.
The morning was spent alternating between answering questions about her lifestyle and gathering the evidence in the form of outstanding bills, invoices and statements. A business-like silence hung over the pair as David’s fingers worked on his calculator. Emma dared not look at the growing pile of notes.
At length, David drew a dramatic underline on his notepad and leaned back in his chair.
‘I think that will do for now.’ He said, gathering his papers together and folding them neatly into his briefcase. ‘I need to take this lot back to the office and work on a recovery plan for you. Try not to worry too much, I see a lot of cases much worse than yours.’
Emma felt a sudden sense of confusion. She had expected to be beaten and berated.
Instead, he smiled again in a way that warmed her down to her toes. She led him back to the door and, as he stepped over the threshold, he turned towards her.
‘You know,’ he said, pointing downwards, ‘I think we might even be able to afford a matching pair of shoes.’
She looked down in embarrassment and when she looked up, he had gone.
A week passed and the debate about the absolute necessity of a personalised ring tone gathered momentum. Emma knew exactly what Susie meant about being the only one in the class with a simple telephone ring tone when it was perfectly possible to download the latest Sugababes release. She just did not know how to explain the impossibility of paying for it.
Emma was in the shower when the phone rang and she debated whether to answer it or not. If it rang long enough the automatic answer-phone service would cut in. She decided to let it ring. The ordinary ring tone stopped. She finished her shower and was dripping her way across the bathroom floor when the phone rang again. This time she felt obliged to answer the call and dripped her way into the bedroom where she picked up an extension phone.
‘Hello this is David, David Morris.’
‘Hello.’ Emma found herself holding an arm across her breasts as if to hide her nudity from him.
I’ve got a financial plan of sorts for you. Can I come round this morning to discuss it with you? Say 10.30?’
‘OK’
‘Good, see you at 10.30. Bye.’
At 10.30 she was waiting by the door wondering why she felt like a teenager on her first date. When she opened the door his frame filled the space and she felt her knees weaken.
‘May I come in?’
‘Nice shoes.’ He said, as he spread out a small rain forest of paper on the dining room table.
Emma let it go.
‘I’m sorry that this has taken so long.’ He shuffled his papers not yet looking up at her. ‘I discovered that there is an account with the bank that is still in joint names with your ex-husband, so I was obliged to contact him and let him know of our discussion.’
Emma suddenly felt knocked back; did Steve still have a hold over her? She wanted to interrupt but David held up his hand to stop the reaction that he saw coming.
‘It’s not at all bad. Your ex-husband says that it was never his intention for you to be in debt and has agreed to my proposal. If you would just let me outline the plan for you. You might be pleasantly surprised.’
Emma fought back her anger and relaxed in her chair.
David began again. ‘This is really a very simple plan. You and your husband bought this house in joint names nine years ago for £82,000 and it is now worth close to £250,000. Your husband has continued to pay the mortgage on the property and is entitled to a share of the property value. However, if you wish to re-mortgage your half of the property, the bank would be pleased to advance you an amount equal to the amount re-mortgaged.’
Emma shook her head. ‘I’m not sure that I fully understand that. Would you say it again slowly please.’
‘OK. Let’s suppose that your half of the house is worth £125,000, and your half of the purchase price was £41,000, then the bank will accept a re-mortgage up to the value of, say £80,000. However, I have calculated that your debts amount to just under £43,000 and I strongly suggest that we do not get carried away and that we stick to that amount. My plan is that we advance that amount against your interest in this house and clear all your outstanding debts. That way you get a clean start. It’s up to you how you manage your finances after that. This is a one-time plan. Next time, if there is a next time, the additional value will be gone.’
Emma shook her head again. ‘Can it be that simple?’
‘Well, there is a small penalty. Your ex-husband agrees the plan but refuses to increase his share of the mortgage payments. You will have to make the additional payments; over 25 years that would be in the order of £300 per month. How does that sound?’
‘Great.’
‘I will go ahead and arrange the paper work then.’
Emma held the door open and, as he left, he turned towards her with that smile across his face.
‘Please believe, I don’t normally do this but - might you be free for dinner on Friday evening?’


WALL STREET NOT MAIN STREET

Andrew Fitzgerald McAllister left his Docklands office early on Thursday 11 September 2008. Friday would be his thirty-eighth birthday and he was planning to take Lucy to the coast in the shiny new Porsche that he had ordered as a birthday present to himself, and he planned to collect first thing on Friday morning.
Late summer sun glinted on the Thames as he elected to walk to the West India Quay station on the Docklands Light Railway. One of Andrew’s private, childish indulgences was to sit in the front seat of the driverless train as it rattled its automated way from stop to stop, while he pretended to be the driver. At Tower Hill he flipped a mental coin to decide if he took a taxi or the Circle Line to Marylebone and his train home to Gerrards Cross. The mental coin landed tails up, but he ignored it and took a taxi across town anyway. Andrew was in an ebullient mood, given the state of the market, his week had been better than he might reasonably have expected.
On the previous Monday he had been browsing a link to some secondary European stocks and noticed a small German company that was trying to raise some investment capital, not much, a few million euros. The curious thing was that the company happened to have a familiar name. Edelman, or something similar, was the name that his great-grand-parents had used in pre-war Germany. Andrew had a fuzzy history of his mother’s ancestors leaving Germany between the wars and living in America for several years before coming back to Scotland in the 50’s, where she met and married Ewan McAllister.
Edelman’s was a specialist engineering works based 10 kilometres south of Stuttgart, the home of Mercedes who was also the principal customer for Edelman’s precision engine components. The on-line prospectus said all the usual marketing stuff but offered very little detail beyond the brochure level.
On impulse, Andrew rang his mother to ask about the possibility of a family link. Mary McAllister confirmed her parents family name but she was not able to help any further. Andrew made excuses about pressure of work to avoid getting into conversation with his mother and returned to the screen on his desk. The sub-text to the Edelman rights issue included a few paragraphs about expansion plans and retooling for an up-coming round of Mercedes contracts. Nothing unusual in the text, but there was the merest hint of these new contracts being speculative. If the contracts failed to materialise, the new stock would be worth less than the proverbial paper it was written on. Andrew considered two options: fund the issue and hold for the stock to improve when the contracts were announced, or fund the issue and sell the stock on quickly while the market was enjoying the honeymoon period of the new issue. Should he go for a long term possible profit or a short term, guaranteed small profit? The question hung in his mind. The amounts involved were borderline for his desk. Normally he would be looking for investment opportunities in a range ten times this amount.
Andrew leaned back in his chair and gazed out of the windows overlooking the Docklands panorama, surveying his empire. He loved the crisp, newly-built skyline littered with satellite dishes enabling him to reach all four corners of the world without leaving his desk. The high white towers seemed to him to be a fitting complement for the high flying investment banking business that he so much enjoyed. However, on this occasion, instinct told him Edelman’s would be too much trouble for too little gain, he should dump it and find something else; he needed a hot coffee and a cool change of line.
At the multi-choice coffee dispenser, the mobile phone in his pocket started to vibrate. He answered the call.
“Andrew, it’s your mother.”
“Hello Mother, didn’t we just speak?”
“Edelman, I remembered, I have a second cousin called Franz Edelman in Germany somewhere. Does that help you dear?”
“That’s great mum, thanks a lot. I must go. I’ll call you at the weekend.”
Andrew sensed that she had more to say but conversations with his mother always seemed to drift aimlessly around and he didn’t feel up to the task of following her.
Back at his desk the coincidence intrigued him. The principal contact name on the prospectus had been Herr Doctor Franz Edelman. He tossed the empty paper coffee cup into the bin and dialled the number in Stuttgart.
“This is Andrew McAllister from Coulter Brothers in London, may we speak in English?”
“Certainly Mr. McAllister, how can we help you?”
“Can I speak personally to Herr Doctor Franz Edelman?”
“Can I tell him what this is about?”
“Will you tell him that I am the son of Mary McAllister, her parents were Eric and Julia Edelman and I think we might be related?”
Wallpaper music told him that he had been put on hold.
“Good morning, this is Franz Edelman . . . .”
Andrew explained the sequence of events that had led up to this call and then let Franz Edelman launch into a lengthy sales pitch, extolling the virtues of his family engineering plant and personally guaranteeing the inevitable success of the future contracts with Mercedes.
Their conversation concluded with Franz offering to research his side of the family history and fly to London on Wednesday morning, to meet with Andrew and discuss the required finance for his business.
Andrew stayed at his desk over lunchtime weighing up the pros and cons of doing business within the family. In many ways he was already regretting having opened the door to this possibility. He preferred the anonymity of being the party on the other side of the back-office team. He rarely met any of the people whose money lined the coffers of Coulter Brothers and A.F. McAllister in turn.
On the other hand, this was a special case, his mother was bound to ask about it sooner or later and he would need a story to tell. He could also smell a deal.
On Wednesday morning Andrew met Franz in the arrivals lounge at Heathrow. He would have preferred City Airport but there was no direct flight from Stuttgart so he settled for a late start to the day and a comparatively short drive in his air-conditioned S-type Jaguar, from Gerrards Cross to Heathrow. Andrew loved his Jaguar but he was looking forward to collecting the Porsche on Friday. He had always wanted to say, “My second car is a Porsche.” On Friday morning, his dream would come true.
Doctor Franz Edelman was tall and stick-thin with a mass of pure white hair brushed back in waves that settled around the collar of his jacket like an ermine ruff. His pale blue eyes scanned the line of taxi drivers, holding cards with passenger’s names, until he found the card with his name.
“Good morning Andrew. I’m so glad to be in England again it’s been several years. Too long. Far too long.”
Andrew folded the name card that he had been holding into four and slid it into his pocket before extending a welcoming hand to grasp that offered by Franz.
Andrew’s plan was for them to drive to the Runnymede Hotel where they could talk over lunch and be close enough to get back to Heathrow for the late afternoon flight to Stuttgart. He took the Stanwell Moor Road out of the airport complex to avoid the motorway traffic and they were soon in the still, leafy-green countryside that borders the Thames, the same river but a whole world away from the concrete, commercial environment of Docklands. Andrew pondered over the number of significant deals that had been done between cautious, prospective partners in Runnymede since King John had put his seal on the Magna Carta. This was never going to be in that league but the thought amused him, he would have enjoyed being King John.
Andrew’s forte at meetings like this was to listen. He deliberately provoked Franz with loaded questions from time to time but mostly he listened.
Franz had two stories to tell, the first was of his family history and the second was how his grandfather had built the factory to supply engine parts for use in German army tanks during the First World War. Inevitably the two stories overlapped in many places. It appeared that Mary McAllister’s grandfather was one of seven brothers. He had disagreed with the others over the political stance in Germany between the wars and had left for America, fully intending to represent the family engineering works wherever possible. Once the Second World War started, that scheme was lost in the turmoil of the times, as indeed, all contact was lost between the branches of the family until the mid-fifties when admitting to being German became a little less difficult. Since the war, a total of over sixty years, Edelman’s had been a supplier of high quality engineering parts to Mercedes.
Franz Edelman shrugged off Andrew’s question with an expression of supreme confidence. “How could they possibly lose such a prestigious contract after such a long and fruitful partnership?”
Andrew declined to respond. Instead he ordered coffee to be served on the terrace and they moved out from the elegant dining room to enjoy the warmth of the afternoon and the mellow sound of the river as it wound its way through the nearby meadows. It occurred to him that at no time had Franz mentioned any hint of competition for these critical contracts. In Andrew’s book, if a client failed to mention something, it was usually because there was some sticky little detail that they preferred to remain unsaid. He wondered if there was an Eastern European bidder on the scene. He would do an internet search when he got back to his desk.
Their conversation lapsed into talk of family connections, past and present, as they whiled away the last hour before Andrew drove back to Heathrow and, only after they had said their good byes, did he remember that he had intended to pass on his mother’s contact details, neatly written out and contained in an envelope in his pocket.
This morning he had put the deal together.
Coulter Brothers would fund the rights issue plus an additional sum which would be used to underwrite the modern-isation of the Edelman factory in Stuttgart. Franz’s modernisation plan involved the purchase of a large tract of land beside the existing factory and the new build of fifty thousand square metres of clean-air space designed to accommodate the new machines. Land development prices in the south of Stuttgart were currently strong and, if the Mercedes contracts were a bit slow in coming, the initial equity would be covered by the appreciation in the land values.
Andrew had explained the Edelman family connection to Coulter’s Risk Management Board as a precaution should there be any suggestion of insider knowledge and they had agreed that this was a special case. Moreover, as Coulter’s would end up with a valuable asset, namely a majority holding in the German company, all would be well. Once the acceptance documentation had arrived from Uncle Franz, they would sell the asset on the open market as if it were a done deal. On the back of the envelope, Edelman’s would get what they wanted, at a price, and Coulter’s would clear several million Euros without ever actually spending a cent of their own.
Andrew commented to Ed Williams, his close friend and department head, that this was - “Investment banking at its finest.”

§§§§§

On Friday morning Lucy brought breakfast to their bedroom. She also brought the pile of envelopes containing the birthday cards that she had been collecting from the morning post during the week. They showered together, a treat normally reserved for Sunday mornings, and prepared for the short drive to the Porsche garage in Maidenhead. The phone rang while they were still dripping on the bedroom carpet and Andrew took the call. Coulter Brothers Frankfurt Office had started due diligence on the Edelman deal and all was in hand.
An hour and a half later, Andrew was signing the last sheet of several that would make him the owner of the silver 4.8 litre V8 Panamera S, presently sitting on the forecourt of the showroom, being fondly polished by the floor salesman who would probably take his wife out to dinner on the strength of his commission. The mobile vibrated in Andrew’s pocket and he took the second call of the day from Ed Williams.
Frankfurt had OK’ed the deal with the regulators at the DAX and his bonus, the usual percentage, would be paid into his account at the end of the quarter. Andrew looked again at the date on the papers on the desk in front of him. How could he forget his birthday, Friday the twelfth of September? The bonus cash would be in the bank by the end of the month. He began to wish that he had ordered the Panamera Turbo instead.
The garage had filled the tank on the Panamera and promised to deliver his Jag back to his home address where they would park it in the drive and put his keys through his letter box. He trusted them implicitly; after all, this was a lot of money to spend on a car.
The growl of the V8 Porsche engine was calculated to turn heads, and did so, as they drove through Maidenhead towards the motorway junction. Behind the tinted glass windows, Andrew and Lucy giggled like children with a new toy as they set off for a late lunch in Brighton.
Andrew used the cruise control to sit at seventy miles per hour on the M23, allowing lesser mortals to speed past him, pausing to covet the Porsche as they went. Andrew quite liked being coveted. A police car cruised up behind them, waited and then slowly overtook with both the driver and his partner looking over the shiny new bodywork.
“You don’t get me today.” Andrew grinned at Lucy as the police car went on its way.
Lucy had booked a table at ‘The Gables’, a small, family-owned restaurant in a side road near the beach, between Brighton and Hove. They found The Gables many years ago, before they were married, and it was a particular treat for them to eat there whenever they could. It was the only place they knew where they could have the dining room to themselves between the conventional lunch and dinner times. Jenny Black, the owner and head chef, was happy to take their money at any time of day. They always ordered the best and tipped well.
A birthday bottle of Krug was waiting, on ice, when they arrived.
A thin pink line of sun-setting haze rested on the distant horizon when they emerged from The Gables. It signalled the last of the daylight as Andrew fired up the Porsche, searching the unfamiliar dashboard for the lighting controls. He wished they had not drunk so much wine but it was too late now. He would be ultra careful on the way home. The risk of being caught amused him even though he reckoned that he was unlikely to get stopped at this early hour unless he gave the police good reason to do so.
Lucy explored the integrated Sat-Nav system and then the radio, hitting the channel change button in a random fashion to see where it stopped. Jazz FM was their favourite channel and it took some time to find it in the dim light of the cockpit. For a moment she paused on a local news channel just long enough to catch the news reader mention Wall Street. Andrew’s ears caught the mention but Lucy had moved on and couldn’t find the channel again. A Benny Goodman track blasted out from the array of speakers built into the close confines of the cab and they both hummed along with the music for the next twenty miles.
It was late, almost eleven thirty, when they finally turned into their drive in Gerrards Cross. Andrew blipped the remote to open the garage doors and drove the Panamera into the space that he had cleaned out especially for it. The garage door closed silently behind them and they entered the house via the kitchen door.
Anticipating their return, Lucy had left two champagne glasses on the kitchen table with a note announcing, ‘Krug is in the fridge. See you upstairs birthday boy.’
It was well after ten on Saturday morning when Andrew came downstairs and noticed the light blinking on the answer machine in the hall. It was another half hour before he bothered to hit the button to replay the messages.
“Happy Birthday Andrew. Andrew this is your mother, if you’re there pick up the phone.”
“Andy, Happy Birthday you old bugger. Don’t forget to call your loving brother over the weekend.”
“Mr. McAllister, our agent is in your area this week . . .”
“Andrew, this is Ed, give me a call if you can. . . . . . If not . . . . I’ll call you again. Don’t be late on Monday.”
Andrew switched off the machine, collected the newspapers off the door mat and staggered back upstairs.
On Saturday evening he booked a table at the Waterside Inn at Bray, it was the only place he could think of where he could park the Porsche without it being too obvious. Dinner was as dinner always is at The Waterside Inn, expensive but impeccable and worth every penny. Lucy particularly liked the guinea foul in plum sauce and, as Andrew particularly like Lucy, it was a done deal. Andrew liked done deals.
When they arrived back in Gerrards Cross the answer phone was blinking again.
“Andrew this is Ed. Call me.”
Andrew called Ed on Sunday morning after breakfast.
“Good morning Boss, what’s the problem?”
“There’s all sorts of crap happening in the Wall Street office.”
“Like what?”
“Like don’t you ever listen to the news?”
“Sure, you mean the bail-out business. Is the White House still blowing hot and cold on the Fed?”
“Exactly but the blowing is getting distinctly cold. It seems that Hank Poulson is refusing to bail us out. We’re dead in the water. “
“Say that bit again.”
“The word is that the Wall Street office will file for bankruptcy under Chapter 11, first thing tomorrow morning. That’s all I know at the moment. For goodness sake don’t be late in on Monday morning.”
The phone went dead.
Lucy caught the tone in Andrew’s voice and she hurried down stairs to find him sitting on the bottom step with the phone still in his hand.
He recounted the gist of the call from Ed and followed up with, “I can’t believe it. All the other firms have had shed loads of government money. Why not us? Why not Coulters?”
Lucy put her arm around Andrew’s shoulder and kissed him on the cheek. “It has to be a mistake. Wall Street will sort it out, won’t they?”
Breakfast was taken in silence; Andrew knew that Coulters was overextended, way over the average. He also knew that their vulnerability was no secret, in truth Coulter Brothers had been on the market for six months with the best offer to date being from some obscure bank in Korea. He began to formulate his plan for Monday morning. Step one would be to contact all of his best clients and pour some soothing oil on their troubled waters. Step two would be to look after A. F. McAllister.
Andrew turned on the television and switched to the news channels. Anxious men in suits took turns in denying any wrong doing and claiming to know nothing about anything. Frantic reporters repeated their nothing words and handed the subject back to the anchor in the studio. Frantic interviewers struggled to get anyone to comment on anything. Andrew recognised some of the interviewees, others he had heard of, none of them were going to influence the headline news. The main players were notably absent from the screens.
Only one line stuck in his mind, “Main Street not Wall Street”, a quote attributed to Hank Poulson by a windblown blonde girl reporter for Fox News from her position somewhere on Pennsylvania Avenue. The White House was looking to make an example of someone and Coulter’s was first in line.
The phone rang, it was his brother Peter.
“Happy birthday bro. Does this Wall Street stuff affect you?
“Thanks Pete. I’ve no idea. Ed called, all will be revealed on Monday morning.”
They chatted and Andrew waxed lyrical about the new Porsche before hanging up to take another call.
“Andrew, have you heard about the American office?”
Only Alec Evans ever called the American parent company, the American office. Everyone else just called it Wall Street. Everyone who worked there believed that Coulter brothers and Wall Street were synonymous. Without Coulter Brothers there would be no Wall Street.
“Good morning Alec, what do you know that the rest of us don’t?”
Alec Evans was a lead analyst in Andrew’s team and Andrew was not going to admit to being in the dark about the breaking news.
“Come on Alec, its still early Sunday morning in the States, no one will be up until noon. Tell me what you know and we can catch up in the morning. Don’t be late in; it could be an interesting morning.”
Alec repeated the general news reports but had nothing new to add. He promised to meet Andrew at Starbucks before eight o’clock and hung up.
The time had raced by, it was nearly one. Lucy brought Andrew a bacon sandwich and tapped him firmly on his shoulder, “Call your mother.” It was not meant as a suggestion.
Andrew pressed the speed dial and waited for the call to ring out.
“Thank you mum.”
“Yes, we will come over next weekend.”
“Yes, I’ve spoken to Uncle Franz.”
“Yes, we miss you too.”
Andrew wiped the juices from his bacon sandwich from his chin with his fingers and listened with one ear while his mother explained, yet again, how much she enjoyed Peter’s children and how she looked forward to Lucy producing grandchildren. He let her ramble on while he followed the newscast, his eyes locked onto the strap line as it wheeled its relentless way across the bottom of the television screen. He waited for something new to appear. Nothing did.
On Monday morning, the usual line of familiar faces formed along the platform, all waiting to catch the 6:35. On any other day, the carriage would have been silent as its passengers grabbed a last snooze before being disgorged onto the platform at Marylebone. On this day there was a hum of conversation none of which added to the sum total of what was happening in New York.
The underground ride across town to Docklands was the usual crush of anonymous body odours and sullen tempers before emerging into the daylight. Andrew counted off the stations; Limehouse, Westferry, and West India Quay, all familiar territory.
Andrew headed for Starbucks but was distracted by the crowd of people gathered on the stylish marble-paved walkway with its embedded Coulter Brother’s logo proudly displayed outside the main doors. The doors were locked. No one in and no one out. The babble of conversation grew louder as more Coulter Brothers employees continued to arrive. Andrew hung back from the mass, looking for Ed or Alec, he could see neither. He knew their route from the station and he decided to walk towards the corner of the building intending to intercept them before they got enmeshed in the crowd.
Alec arrived on the dot of eight and headed for Coulter’s door. He had not seen Andrew and Andrew was content to let him go by. He would talk to Alec later, when he had more to tell. This was clearly time for step two of his plan, ‘Look out for number one’.
Ed Williams arrived at ten past the hour, looking grey and tired. Andrew spotted him and got to him quickly.
“Ed, what’s going on? We seem to be locked out.”
“Wall Street filed for Chapter 11 as of midnight New York time. The whole firm, world wide, is in the hands of the administrators. That’s all I know. Honest.”
“So, what does that mean?” It was a rhetorical question. Andrew had a pretty good idea what that meant. His high risk investment programmes had sent enough small businesses to the wall over the years. His mind flitted back to the Edelman deal. In a rare moment of familial concern, he hoped Uncle Franz had not signed up for the new factory space because he knew now that Edelman’s was never going to see any of the promised funds. On the other hand, Uncle Franz was still out there, there was still a deal to be had.
A car pulled into the reserved parking bay in front of the building and the driver passed a bundle of leaflets to the nearest person before speeding away again. The leaflets were passed from hand to hand.
‘From twelve o’clock onwards, groups of twenty people at a time will be allowed into the building, under escort, to retrieve personal belongings. Otherwise, the building will remain closed until further notice.’
Andrew grasped Ed’s elbow and steered him firmly towards Starbucks. Oddly, given the hour, the place was empty and all four uniformed girls at the bar turned in unison to serve them. Andrew ordered long lattés and they took the nearest table.
“There’s nothing we can do here, the brass are not going to come near the place until the dust settles, you can be sure of that.” Andrew nudged Ed expecting a response but none came.
“I reckon that we should get away from here, go home before we get pilloried in their place. I’ve got no crumbs to offer. What say you?”
Ed still did not reply and Andrew watched the last of the colour drain from the man’s face.
“Here drink some coffee.” He pushed the white china mug with its distinctive green logo towards Ed, who ignored it.
Through Starbucks windows, Andrew could see a television news van pulling into the space beside the angry crowd of Coulter Brothers employees.
“Ed. We’re going home. I don’t want to get involved with the media. This is not a good place for us at the moment, we’ll be better off somewhere that we can be on the end of a phone and I don’t think this is going to be a mobile phone conversation that I want to have in the street.”
Ed nodded and sipped his latté. Andrew looked closely into the ashen face of his department head. He had known Ed for years, they had worked together on so many deals and he had never suspected Ed to be anything other than solid granite from top to toe. His old friend appeared to be crumbling away before his eyes.
The throng around the locked doors of the Coulter building seethed like a swarm of angry bees, too engrossed in their own business to notice two senior staffers slide away towards the DLR station.
A driverless train slowed to a stop at the West India Dock platform and a West Indian conductress turned her key to open the doors with their customary hiss. Ed wandered onto the train, still looking dazed. Andrew was about to follow when the vibrating started in his pocket, he took the call.
“Hi Lucy.”
“Andrew, the bank just called, apparently the cheque for the car has crossed with the mortgage payment and there are not enough funds available. They want to know your instructions. Shall I tell them your quarterly bonus will be in at the end of the month, or do you want to call them yourself?”
“No, don’t bother; they will have seen the news. Lucy, the firm has gone bust. We’re all locked out. I don’t know for sure but I think I’m out of a job. There will be no quarterly bonus or monthly salary come to that.”
There was a loud silence on the end of the phone.
“Lucy, I didn’t want to tell you over the phone but there’s no point in hiding it. It’s all over the papers. I’ll be home soon. I’ll call you. Don’t worry, we’ll sort something out.”
He slid the phone closed and started to put it back into his pocket as the train moved away from the platform. He watched Ed’s slumped figure through dusty windows as the carriages rolled by. He had intended to catch the train but on reflection, Ed was no use to him now.
“Farewell old friend.”
He was about to wave but he remembered the phone still in his hand. He slid down the face and speed dialled the number of an old drinking pal.
“George? This is Andrew McAllister.”
“Andrew, -how you?”
“Fine thanks. I suppose you’ve seen the press this morning.”
“Looks grim, will you be OK?”
“George, do you want to make a safe five million euros before the weekend?”
“Do bears piss in the woods?”
“OK, see you for lunch at Carluccio’s, my treat. Twelve thirty OK with you?”
It was close to seven in the evening when the car rolled up the drive in Gerrards Cross. Lucy was waiting by the door. It was not in her nature to panic but today was not a natural day. She rushed out to meet Andrew before he had finished parking the car.
Lucy threw her arms around Andrew’s neck and he lifted her feet off the ground as he swung her round in their embrace.
He had already given her the details over the phone so there was little else to tell. Lunch with George Padworth had been well worthwhile. Tonight they would celebrate his appointment as Head of European Investment at Wilkinson International with an opening salary payment to be deposited immediately, followed by an estimated bonus payment at the end of the quarter, coincidentally also the end of the month. Wilkinson’s European portfolio was worth close to five billion euros so his quarterly cut would be close to a million. Four million per year would suit him nicely especially as it was to be calculated as a percentage of managed funds, regardless of the state of the market, and not geared to earnings. Wilkinson’s were keen to recruit good staff, especially as they had just received a substantial, multi-billion pound bailout from the Her Majesty’s Treasury and did not need to report back on the use of those funds until the fiscal year end in April of next year. Andrew felt quietly satisfied with his day.
European deal number one would be the purchase, break-up and disposal of a small engineering works south of Stuttgart. It would mean the end of Edelman’s after a century of specialist engineering work, tough on poor old Uncle Franz.
Andrew swung his suit jacket over his shoulder; an envelope fell from his pocket and fluttered down onto his neatly combed gravel drive.
“Good job I forgot to pass mother’s address on to Uncle Franz,” Andrew thought, “she would never understand the com-plexity of investment banking.”




Monday morning found Harry Joyce looking blankly at the screen on his desk. He had spent the weekend, well most of Sunday, playing golf at Northwood with his usual gang of four. They always played nine holes before lunch, then a full round in the afternoon, to walk off the lunch time beer. Over a forgotten number of years, the four friends had walked and talked their way through every subject you might care to mention. This weekend had been business finances. Harry’s removals business had literally grown from a hand cart shifting stuff for his dad, while he was still at school, to five vans on the road every day of the week, with a minimum of two movers on each van, three on bigger jobs.
The home base was on the edge of Ruislip, an old farmyard off North Breakspear Road, with a big old cracked concrete yard surrounded on three sides by barns that Harry had refurbished as storage units. The site had belonged to Harry’s dad, now long departed. Harry had funded each of the improvements from the cash in hand so he had never needed to talk to the bank. Coming up to forty years since Joyce & Son Removals started in business and never so much as an overdraft. A tree-lined lane screened the yard from the road and with nothing but open fields behind him, Harry had asked the council for permission to extend the site by erecting four more storage units. The Council had agreed in principle but needed full architect’s plans before anything could be considered formally.
Harry looked up from the screen, tugging at this chin with one hand and scratching his leg with the other. The wall in front of him was effectively one long notice-board covered in marker pen and post-it notes. To a stranger this wall was a mystery, to Harry it was everything he needed to know about the location of every van and every job for the next ten weeks.
Harry’s secretary Sandra, had two main jobs, keep Harry’s tea mug full from nine to five, and keep everyone else off the wall. The computer had been her idea. It certainly produced a very nice quotation letter and according to Sandra it kept the accounts and made wages easy. Meanwhile, Harry had barely mastered solitaire.
He returned to the screen. It had all seemed so easy until he began to ask the questions. All he wanted was four more sheds. The council wanted plans. The architect wanted a budget. The bank wanted a business plan. All Harry wanted was sheds.
A foreign sounding girl at Andersons Bank had told him to download their business plan template and fill in the details on-line. They might as well have told him to deliver a load of furniture to the moon.
Sandra brought in a fresh brew and pretended to shuffle the pile of paper that served as Harry’s in-tray. “Why not get that girl from the bank and the architect together and see if they can explain what you need to do.”
Harry grunted by way of reply.
“I’ll arrange it if you like. “
“I suppose I can’t sit here all day looking at this bloody thing. See if you can get them here on Wednesday.”
Wednesday, late afternoon, Sandra cleared enough space in Harry’s office to call it a meeting room. She also brought in a set of clean mugs from her own kitchen having despaired of removing the tea stains from the resident set. A packet of hobnobs and a bowl of sugar lumps formed a centrepiece on Harry’s desk.
The architect, Julian Allyson, had been recommended by one of Harry’s golf partners. His office was in Slough and he had a reputation for industrial unit designs, or so it was said. Harry thought that Julian was a soft name and the bloke could do with a haircut.
Lia Patel from Andersons Bank seemed to Harry to be barely old enough to have left school. He had guessed from her name, when he spoke to her on the phone, that she would be Asian but he had no idea that she would be such a stunningly beautiful girl. She was taller than he had envisaged and the crisp cream linen business suit that she wore simply served to draw attention to her face, with pale creamy skin and jet black eyes that matched a halo of jet black hair.
Sandra ushered the visitors to the chairs around Harry’s desk. Perhaps the sight of Harry’s day-long tea-mug was the reason that both Julian and Lia declined her offer of tea.
Julian produced a folder of drawings from his briefcase. He seemed to know exactly what Harry wanted with regard to the size and shape of the exterior, but his idea of interior fittings soon left Harry wondering how much this would all cost. Every other sentence seemed to be about Health and Safety or Environmental regulations.
Lia opened her laptop and then passed her business card to the other two. PATEL Lia - Business Advisor. “Yes I know,” she said as if by apology, “the Bank insists on putting the names backwards. It’s an old school thing.”
Harry accepted the card, acutely aware that her fingers touched his as he did so. He had stopped listening to Julian and so he missed the ball-park estimate of £650,000 per storage unit.
“Times four, equals around £2.6 million,” Lia’s voice, broke his reverie, “I need to check with head office but I think we would look favourably on that sort of figure.”
“How much?” Harry woke up at last. “I want sheds not bloody palaces. Oops, sorry love, I didn’t mean to swear. How about we start again? Julian, do I really need all these extra bits and pieces? I need extra storage capacity as soon as I can get it. There’s business falling off a log out there and I’m having to pass up on it, for lack of floor space. I have these containers, see. I fill ‘em up with client’s furniture and stuff and then pile the containers in the shed until they want it delivered. I just need somewhere to lock them up in the dry. “
Julian sighed; he could see his industrial unit design talents being cast aside in favour of four tin sheds and a padlock. He tried again.
“I get the picture Harry, but the council will never approve planning for the size that you want without you going along with some of their rules. You are asking for something nearer to an aircraft hanger than a garden shed. Give me a few days to see what their minimum spec is and I’ll give you a new plan.”
Harry winced, for some reason it had never occurred to him that four sheds would cost anything like this price. He had a good sum in the bank and he knew that his land would be worth quite a bit if he ever got planning permission to build on it. He had just never put numbers on it all.
Julian packed away his design portfolio leaving an elaborately printed booklet of his past masterpieces, most of which looked like elegantly landscaped gardens with glass and chrome buildings nestling between the trees.
“Very nice”, thought Harry, “but not exactly sheds.”
As the door closed behind Julian, Lia inched her chair closer to the front of Harry’s desk. She leaned forward as if she was about to whisper some special secret. Harry leaned forward, catching the merest hint of her perfume.
“I have an idea,” she said, “Why don’t I get my colleague from Three Trees Estate Agents to come and do a valuation on your property here. My guess is that the current value will be more than enough to act as surety for a standard business loan from Andersons. All I need from you is a business plan detailing how you intend to spend the money and how you intend to repay it. It’s all in the software template.” She waved a nonchalant hand at the screen on the desk.
“Ah, now that’s where I do need a bit of help.” Harry found his voice at last. “You see, this computer thing is not exactly my forte.”
Lia laughed and the sound of her laugh went straight to Harry’s heart.
“Let me show you.” she said, rising from her chair and moving round to Harry’s side of the desk.
The hint of perfume got stronger as she leaned over Harry’s chair and reached for the mouse, her long creamy fingers tipped with maroon nail varnish resting gently on top of his rough masculine hand. Harry desperately tried to focus on the screen as Lia clicked on various buttons accompanied by a running commentary which Harry heard but completely failed to under-stand.
“There you are. Couldn’t be simpler, could it?”
Harry had no idea.
“I’ve an idea,” he interjected, “Why don’t you explain this to Sandra and we’ll have a go at a plan thing over the next couple of days.”
Lia stood back from Harry’s shoulder and looked down on his thinning grey hair. “Poor old sod,” she thought, “still I’ve got my quarterly target to meet and this could be worth a couple of million on my list.” Lia allowed her fingers to brush Harry’s shoulder as she returned to the front of the desk. She was already planning a separate meeting with Julian Allyson and Harold Evans from the council planning department. With a bit of luck, she could put it all together and all poor old Harry would need to do would be to sign on the line.
Thursday and Friday passed without a call from either architect or banker.
The first nine holes on Sunday morning were close to Harry’s worst ever score. Worse still, the beer tasted stale and there was no steak and kidney pie in the restaurant.

§§§§§

Monday morning found Harry Joyce looking blankly at the screen on his desk - again. Sandra brought in a second mug of tea and was about to explain about the planning software when the phone rang.
“Good morning Mr. Joyce, this is Roy Jones from Three Trees. Would it be convenient to pop over this morning to do the evaluation for Andersons?”
He arrived shortly after eleven.
Harry showed him around the cracked concrete slab and the existing sheds. There was not much to show and they were back at Harry’s desk inside twenty minutes.
Sandra brought tea and Roy opened his briefcase to extract a folded map of the area. “Mr. Joyce, I took the liberty of checking your land registration on the internet and I’ve tried to copy it onto this local area plan.”
Harry looked over the map, recognising the familiar place names like the proverbial back of his hand.
“I’ve marked your land with the red felt tip pen. Of course the felt tip pen covers a lot of yards so this is only a guide.”
Harry nodded. The red line traced along North Breakspear Road and the lane off into Harry’s yard. It also circled the land beyond the yard including the common land through as far as Mad Bess Wood on one side and the Crematorium on the other. Harry looked up at Roy.
“So what’s your point?”
“The point is Mr. Joyce that you own close on twenty-seven acres of land on the edge of Ruislip when the Council are desperate to build houses to meet this new government directive. I reckon that you are sitting on a gold mine.”
“How much of a gold mine?”
“Enough to retire on twice over if you want to.”
Harry had never once thought about retiring, let alone twice. “Do Andersons know about this?”
Roy shook his head. “No chance, plus I needed to see the place before I got back to that Patel girl.”
Harry twitched at the curt way Roy spoke of Lia Patel. Her perfume and the soft casual touch of her fingers still lingered in his memory.
“I get the feeling that there’s something you’re not telling me Mr. Jones.”
Roy held up his hands in surrender style.
“Don’t get me wrong, she’s a cracking good looker but she only thinks about money. The word around town is that she will kiss as many frogs as she has to, to get her quarterly bonus.”
Harry laughed, embarrassed, suddenly wondering if he was being kissed, and then instantly realising that he was that frog.
“So, Mr. Jones, where do I go from here, I wonder.” Harry tugged his jaw with one hand and scratched his leg with the other. “Do me a favour, will you. Keep this to yourself for a few days and check with me before you tell Miss Patel anything more.”
Roy Jones smiled, life was pretty dull in an Estate Agent’s head office and he sensed that this business with Harry might provide a ray of sunshine for a while.
“Just as you say Mr. Joyce. Just as you say.”
It was no secret that Harry had left school somewhat earlier than most of the boys in his year. He was on the school record as a persistent truant, a fact that he never denied, claiming that he learned more about life pushing a hand-cart than pushing a pen. There had been times when he regretted not having a better education but then nothing he might have learned when he was in school would have improved his handicap on the golf course or taught him to work the wretched computer. Harry and his wall of post-it notes might be a shade special but together they managed a very successful business that provided a good living for himself and his team.
“It’s not what you know, it’s who you know. That’s what makes the difference.” Harry’s father had been a fund of useful sayings and through the years he had proved to be right over and over again.
Harry told Sandra he might well be late back, as he left the office headed for the golf club.

§§§§§

Monday mornings at Northwood Golf Club was, by convention rather than by rule, reserved for ladies who often seemed to stay on for lunch afterwards. Harry rarely visited the club on Mondays; ladies days were not his forte. The reason for Harry’s presence was the memory of the bronze coloured Bentley that was always parked in the Captain’s reserved place on Mondays.
Sir William Williams, Chairman of Williams Fine Homes plc, usually called into the club on Mondays to sign off the weekend’s scorecards in his capacity of Club Captain. Most serious golfers would also say that Sir Billy, as he preferred to be called within the confines of the golf club, was also quite fond of paying his respects to the various ladies in the club bar, and what better time to do that than a Monday.
Harry had a handicap of seven which was good enough to keep him on the list for club competitions without being a threat to any of the serious scratch golfers. He had met and shaken hands with Captain, Sir Billy on many occasions but knew very well that he was never likely to get onto the great man’s list of amigos. Today, Harry had a different plan.
Harry installed himself in the club bar, two stools along from the unofficially reserved ‘Captains Stool’. He ordered a large whisky and soda and commandeered a fresh bowl of cachou nuts. Sam, the barman, stopped to chat occasionally between pouring spritzers and fruit juices for the waitress who scuttled between lunch tables piled with lettuce leaves and rye bread crackers. Harry bided his time until Sir Billy appeared from his office and then struck up a conversation with Sam in a voice which he judged loud enough to be heard by anyone passing by.
“ . . . . . . So it seems I’m sitting on twenty-seven acres of prime building land which I didn’t know were there. Well I sort of knew, but I’d totally forgotten about. According to Three Trees, the Council are desperate to go along with this new government directive on affordable housing, so you’d better get used to seeing me in here a bit more often.”
Sam looked at Harry and Harry winked at him in what he hoped was a conspiratorial fashion. Sam continued to polish the glass in his hand with a tea towel emblazoned with the club crest.
Sir Billy ordered a gin and tonic and coughed politely. “I couldn’t help over hearing about your conversation with Three Trees. Arthur Evans is an old friend of mine. If he says the Council are after your land he will be damned right.”
Harry had no idea who Arthur Evans might be, but his ploy had worked well enough. Sir Billy was undoubtedly on the hook.
“Ah, good morning Captain, or is it afternoon already?”
“Afternoon, I say, never drink in the mornings, clouds the mind.”
“Good afternoon it is then.”
Sam served Sir Billy’s drink on a club coaster, taking care to ensure that the club emblem was the right way up. Sir Billy lifted his glass,
“Cheers, first today.”
“And your good health.” Harry lifted his glass in response and waited for the next question that he knew would come sooner or later, especially as Sir Billy stayed at his side rather than drifting off towards the ladies in the restaurant area.
“What do you plan to do with this little treasure of yours?”
“Early days Captain. I need some extra industrial storage units first but my architect seems to think I need gold plated palaces guessing by the price he’s quoting me. The fool thinks they’re worth £2.6 million.” Harry sensed that the bait had been successfully cast on the waters.
“2.6 Million, Eh! Have you spoken to my office, I’m sure they will beat that price, gold plated or not.” Sir Billy produced a business card, “Call that number and I’ll personally see you get all the help you need.”
“You’re very kind; I will most certainly do that very thing.”
“Better yet, why don’t I get my architect to call on you and work something out? Tomorrow morning be OK with you?”
“That would be fine. Make it after ten would you.”
“Certainly Henry.” Sir Billy was never good at names.
“It’s Harry, Captain, Harry Joyce.” Harry deliberately fumbled for the business card that he had slipped into his pocket in anticipation.
“Harry, of course, Harry. Nice to catch up with you.” Sir Billy strode off to find a lady to smile on leaving Harry quietly chuckling into his whisky.

§§§§§

By eleven the following morning, Harry sat back in his chair, clutching his all-day tea mug with both hands like a kiddie’s comfort blanket. On his desk lay a pile of Williams Fine Homes brochures depicting everything from industrial units to five bedroom executive dwellings in ‘neo-everything’ style. On top of the pile was a Williams Fine Homes quotation for four industrial units. The total price to include all planning permission and project management costs, £1,500,000. A second sheet of paper, stapled to the quote, offered a rental agreement for 150,000 cubic yards of secure storage space in Rickmansworth at Williams Fine Homes depot, at a peppercorn rent of £1,000 per annum until the building project was completed.
“Sandra, will you call Andersons and tell that girl I want to see her on Friday, not before. Then fix a lunchtime beer with Roy Jones at Three Trees, soon as he can make it. Oh! And one other thing, call that Julian bloke with the long hair and tell him not to bother.”
Sandra smiled to herself; her sort of Harry was back in the chair. She’d keep the computer to herself in future.


INDIAN SUMMER

Did you know that an Indian Summer is an old American term? George Padworth held court, leaning casually on the balustrade of his terrace overlooking the broad expanse of stripped lawns behind his elaborate 1900’s, Arts and Crafts house in Sunningdale. George enjoyed entertaining and his annual end-of-season garden parties were legendary for his generous hospitality. He continued without pausing, clearly not expecting an answer to his question.
“It comes from the same derivation as Indian Giver. You know the idea, someone who gives you a gift that they take back or use to advantage. So, there you have it; an Indian Giver is a false giver and an Indian Summer is a false summer.”
Those assembled, nodded their heads, accustomed to receiving George’s titbits of information from the seemingly bottomless pit of trivia that he carried round in his head. As Chairman of Wilkinson’s Investment Corporation, George was accustomed to those assembled hanging on his every word.
“Where on earth do you find these things?” Lucy McAllister smiled up at George with a look that could easily, and quite correctly, have been interpreted as pandering to her husband’s new boss. “Why don’t you show me the rest of your garden?”
The little group parted to allow George, with Lucy on his arm, to lead off towards the central stone steps leading from the terrace down onto the lawn.
“Don’t get lost out there.” Andrew McAllister called after his wife, his expression deliberately intended to give her tacit approval to flatter George as much as she wished. Both Andrew and Lucy were well aware that George had rescued them after the collapse of Coulter Brothers. He turned to Sue Padworth,
“I’m sure George will bring her back safely.”
Sue had been married to George for nearly twenty-five years. They had met at university and never parted. Those who knew her well also knew that when she and George joined Wilkinson’s as junior traders, she had been the more successful of the two. However, since having the children, she had given up city life, especially the crack-of-dawn commuting into the city, without regret. George had risen through the firm, high and fast enough to give them a comfortable life style and, in any case, Sue vastly preferred her charity work, pottering in the garden and playing golf.
Sue took a firm hold on Andrew’s arm. “You mustn’t mind George, he’s harmless really.”
“Oh, I guess I’ve known him long enough to trust him, most of the time.” They both laughed in the familiar way that old friends do. Andrew and George had known each other for more than ten years and had met socially on many occasions. The difference now was that this was the first time they had worked for the same firm, George’s firm.
“Andrew,” Sue drew him away from the party, “does Lucy play golf?”
“She used to be quite good but she hasn’t played recently. Why do you ask?”
“I’m playing in a ladies match at Northolt next week. Sunningdale will win of course, but I’d like to take Lucy along. I want to get to know her better now that you are both on board. It would be nice to make up a Wilkinson’s Ladies Team for next season.”
A waitress in crisp white blouse and straight black skirt, offered a tray of bubbling champagne glasses and Andrew swapped both his and Sue’s for full ones.
“I’m sure that Lucy would be up for it if she can find time for the lessons. I’ll ask her to call you about Northolt and perhaps you could talk her into the team idea for next year.”
Sue lifted her face towards Andrew and placed a kiss on his cheek. “Do what you can Andrew, I have a feeling we will be seeing more of each other in the near future.”
Before he could reply, she turned and walked towards the nearest group of guests, bursting in on their conversation with the easy, confident manner of an accomplished hostess.
Andrew lifted a finger to the moist spot his cheek where Sue’s lips had been. It was common enough among his friends for women to kiss each other on the cheek. Normally he would not have given it another thought, except this kiss rested a little too long and pressed a little too hard. He would have thought nothing of an ‘air kiss’ but this was somehow different. His eyes followed the slim curves of Sue’s back as she walked away from him. She could be five or ten years older than him, of course, she would be George’s age, but she was a good looking lady and her kiss had flattered his ego.
He drained his glass and stole a replacement from the waitress before wandering down onto the lawn where a group of familiar faces were attempting to play croquet. Andrew stopped next to a young woman dressed in a flowery print dress with a neckline that plunged much further than it should have.
“You’re Chrissie aren’t you? I’m Andrew McAllister.” He held out his hand to her. “I’ve seen you in the office but we’ve not met.”
“Obviously, but I’ve heard all about you.”
“You’re in Futures aren’t you? George told me that you pulled off a bit of a coup on the oil prices last month. You’re his rising star, you know.”
Chrissie realised that he was not going to go away. “Oh, I thought that was you. Rising star I mean. No one even knew we needed a Head of European Desk until you arrived. However, welcome to Wilkinson’s and a quick tip for you, George does not like shop talk at home.”
“Oops, sorry Chrissie. Is it OK to call you Chrissie? I don’t know any other name.” Andrew chose not to inform Chrissie that he and George went back a few years. He was more interested in how the firm had viewed his sudden appointment.
“Chrissie is fine. That’s my husband James, playing the yellow ball.” Chrissie pointed to a tall suntanned man wielding his mallet like a woodman’s axe.
“So what else should I know about George?” Andrew tried a leading question while trying desperately not to drool into her cleavage.
Chrissie sensed that she might have overstepped the mark as it dawned on her that she was about to dish the dirt on her boss. “I’m sure you’ll find out along the way. And, by the way, how long have you known George?”
“I thought you’d never ask. George and I have been colleagues since 1998 or there about. Shall we talk about something else?”
Chrissie smiled up at Andrew, “Hoist and petard comes to mind.”
Andrew smiled back.

§§§§§

George led Lucy through an archway cut into the high privet hedge that surrounded his tennis court. “I keep this out of sight because I’m such a rotten player.’ George joked, fishing for a complimentary response.
“Oh I’m sure you play very well. Weren’t you and Andrew partners in a doubles match a couple of years ago?”
George grunted, “We went out in the second round. We lost in straight sets to a pair from the Bank of England.” He changed tack, “You know Sue and I have a vineyard in the Loire Valle?” Lucy nodded. “It’s the vendage, grape picking time. How would you and Andrew like to come down for a long weekend and sample some of our previous vintages?”
“That sounds like fun, but can you spare Andrew right now. I know he’s keen to get his feet under the desk at Wilkinson’s.”
“Come now Lucy, where’s the fun in being Chairman if you can’t run things the way you want to? I’m going down next Wednesday. Sue’s got some golf thing on and can’t possibly be spared.”
“I can’t see why not then.” She kissed George on the cheek. “ . . and thank you for throwing Andrew a lifeline, it’s much appreciated.”
Emboldened by her kiss George slid his hand further down Lucy’s back stopping a fraction below her waistline and pulling her gently closer to him.
Lucy resisted the temptation to resist. She knew George of old and had fought off his flirtatious ways on several occasions. Allowing him an extra inch or two of licence on this occasion seemed a small price to pay for Andrew’s new job.
George’s hand slipped a little further and Lucy let it rest on the cheeks of her bottom for a full minute before twisting out of his gasp.
“George, you know I like you a lot but Andrew is my man and you know it.”
“Ah well, one can but ask the question.” George sighed with a droop of his shoulders that Lucy imagined was a much practised gesture.
“We should go back to the party. Your guests will be missing you.” Lucy had intended to say that Sue would be missing him but, on reflection, she realised that Sue probably knew very well where George was all the time. Sue was that sort of woman.

§§§§§

Andrew circulated among the guests with half an eye out for George and Lucy but far from worried about their prolonged absence. He was chatting with some of George’s Sunningdale neighbours when Sue caught his elbow and dragged him away.
“Andrew, come and meet Sir William Williams, he’s just been telling me about a fascinating investment opportunity that has dropped into his lap.”
Andrew followed her across the lawn towards a florid, military looking man wearing a blazer sporting a club badge emblazoned with gold embroidered golf clubs interlaced with the initials ‘NGC’.
“Sir William, this is Andrew McAllister. Andrew is an old friend who has recently joined George in the City.”
“Sir William.” Andrew chose a formal approach extending his hand.
“Please call me Billy, everyone else does.” Sir William shook Andrew’s hand with a firm grip that held on a touch too long, as if seeking some secret response.
“Billy is Captain at Northwood Golf Club in case you hadn’t guessed.” Sue pointed towards the badge on Sir William’s blazer. “So come on Billy, tell Andrew all about your new housing estate.”
The short story, made long by Sir William, centred on twenty-seven acres of prime building land south of Rick¬mansworth which he planned to buy and build on. The new builds, various houses and shops, etc. would be worth close to £100 million in three to four years. Currently he was putting together a consortium to raise £10 million to buy the site from someone who, he was convinced, had seriously undervalued it.
Sue chipped in, “George and I are in, subject to Billy finding the remaining cash. What do you think Andrew?”
“How many shares are you offering?” Andrew directed his question to Sir William.
“I thought five, at £2 million each, but I’d split it if I have to. Not more than ten shares though or there are too many voices at the table.”
Andrew nodded sagely as though he did this sort of thing every day of the week.
“I’ll speak to Lucy, but it sounds like a splendid opportunity.”

§§§§§

The thing about Indian Summers is that the warmth of the day rarely lasts beyond late afternoon. By five o’clock the guests began to offer their thanks for the afternoon and their apologies for needing to leave such a wonderful party. George and Sue stood side by side, staunch pillars of Sunningdale society, shaking hands and thanking their guests for gracing their garden.
When the last one had departed they retired to their lounge and sank into adjacent armchairs.
“Did you get on OK with Lucy?” Sue asked.
George grunted and made no reply.
“I introduced Andrew to Sir William. Do you think he can afford to come in with us?”
“I really don’t know. I’ve promised him a whacking great bonus at the end of the year, but I’ve no idea what he has to hand. No one keeps two million around in cash so he’s bound to need a bit of time to free things up. I could offer him an advance I suppose.”
“Well Sir William needs an answer soon, I gather the vendor is a bit naïve and Sir William wants to get on with it. By the way, did you know that they call him Captain Billy at Northwood? I’m playing there next week; he’s bound to ask me.”

§§§§§

The Porsche Panamera purred as Andrew backed off the throttle on the Bells Hill approach to Stoke Poges. Lucy had been relating her tale of George’s flirtatious fumbling and they were both close to convulsions of laughter. Andrew had expected something of the sort and had every confidence in Lucy’s ability to deal with it. With luck George would not try it again, for a while anyway.
In turn, Andrew explained about the investment opportunity while deliberately failing to mention Sue’s unexpected intimate kiss. Williams Fine Homes were a renowned national building company, if Sir William reckoned it was a good deal, it probably was. They fell to discussing the idea as they drove under the M40 into Gerrards Cross. The thing that worried Andrew was that the investment seemed too small. How come Sir William would need partners to raise ten million? Andrew understood the idea of spreading the risk, but there didn’t seem to be much risk in the deal to spread, especially for a company of the size of Williams Fine Homes. But then, George would not put his own cash into anything too risky, would he? Then again, how many investment opportunities came along to give you a ten fold return inside four years?
Over dinner, Andrew remembered Sue’s invitation to Lucy to join her for the golf match and Lucy remembered George’s invitation to his vineyard in the Loire Valley.

§§§§§

Lucy parked the Jaguar in the NGC car-park and looked around for Sue’s pastille blue BMW Z3, not wanting to venture into the new territory of the Club House without her sponsor. She sank down in her seat keeping an eye on the rear-view mirror for the distinctive coloured sports-car to arrive. The match was scheduled to tee off at ten and a procession of cars began to arrive making her glad that she had parked while there was still plenty of space. A bronze Bentley parked in the space marked ‘Captain’ and she watched the driver fastidiously comb his hair before emerging from the car and striding towards the club house.
When Sue arrived, Lucy walked across the car-park to meet her and was rewarded with a bag of clubs to carry.
“Don’t worry about the bag, I’ve ordered a cart for the round.” Sue led the way into the club house carrying a small holdall with her shoes and gloves to change into before the match. Sir William met them at in the foyer.
“Susan my dear,” He held out both arms for the perfunctory air kiss? “. . . and this is?
“And this is Lucy McAllister, Andrew’s wife and possible investor. She’s my caddy for today.”
Sir William offered his hand with the slightest bow of his head.
“Welcome to Northwood, Lucy. Enjoy the match. I hope to meet you again afterwards.”
Sue was due to tee off in the second foursome and spent the waiting time introducing Lucy to the Sunningdale Ladies who were all charming, well groomed and great golfers. It was not until the last few moments that Sue found time to ask Lucy if George had been his usual jolly self at the weekend.
“He’s OK. I’m used to our macho-men. They all think that they are the masters of the universe but we wives know better when we dole out the aspirins on the morning after.”
“Well then, do you think you could cope with a weekend down at the vineyard? George is driving down tomorrow morning but I thought you and I might go together on Friday.”
The thought of spending a whole weekend with George and Sue had been a difficult discussion in the McAllister house, but in the end, Andrew had twisted her arm and so her answer was, “Why not?”
As they cleared the last hole of the nine-hole match, dragging aching limbs back into the club house, Sue insisted that Lucy took advantage of the changing room facilities before lunch. Lucy happily went along with the idea keen to freshen up after the morning’s exercise and before sitting down with these well-coiffured Sunningdale ladies. What she had not quite expected was the communal shower facility and the close attention that Sue had paid to her younger tighter curves.


A TALE OF A RING TONE

The opening bars of ‘It Ain’t Easy’ by the Sugababes resonated through the miniature speaker of Susie Middleton’s mobile phone.
“Mum, I’ve lost me mobi.”
There had been times when Emma would have cheerfully flushed her daughter’s musical ‘mobi’ down the toilet. The wretched thing never stopped ringing.
“It’s my mobi Suze.” Emma tried for the umpteenth time to correct Susie’s grammar.
“No it’s not, it’s mine and my name is Susie, not Suze. . . . . . Anyway I’ve found it.”
Emma wiped the condensation off her bathroom mirror and went back to applying her mascara. Could it have been six months since David had first walked through her front door? Six months ago the Sugababes ring tone was an expense too far, David had made such a change to her life, and Suze’s. The re-mortgage plan had been a master stroke and, with David’s help, she had stayed on budget from month to month since then. She glanced at her watch, seven o’clock; Steve would be here in a few minutes to collect Suze for the weekend. At seven thirty, David would be here to take her out to dinner, and probably back to his place for the night. She was a bit late, Steve wouldn’t mind, he would pick Suze up and run. They had hardly spoken to each other in a year. It seemed a bit hard on Suze but it was all too late now. She was sure that Steve would spoil his daughter, he always did. Suze had spent the last three days, on her mobi, arranging a sleep-over at Steve’s for Saturday night and Emma hoped that Steve’s new partner would be up to the chaos about to descend on her. The doorbell rang and she pulled her dressing-gown round her to go down stairs, knowing that Suze would get there before her with her Dora Explorer back pack stuffed with things for the weekend.
She heard the front door open and Steve’s voice call out, “It’s me Em.”
“Bye Mum.” Suze’s voice followed Steve’s and then she heard the door close.
Emma sat on the top stair, looking down at the empty hall and the closed door. Part of her wanted to rush after her baby with loving hugs and kisses. Another part lamented the marital split, and yet a third part admired her daughter’s ability to cope with it all. Emma recognised Steve in Suze, more than herself, and wondered if and where she had gone wrong. She pulled the frayed dressing-gown around her knees and hugged them to her as if it were Suze. “See you Sunday, Suze.” She whispered the words to the back of the closed door.
She was about to blow a kiss to her departed daughter when the door bell rang.
Emma scuttled down the remaining stairs and pulled open the door, expecting Suze to be there demanding some forgotten item. Instead it was David.
“Nice dress.” He smiled in the way that still made her knees go weak and kissed her on the cheek. “I’ve brought wine. Shall I pour while you finish getting ready?” It was a rhetorical question.
She rushed back up stairs to finish dressing while David headed for the kitchen. When she came down again, he was sitting on the sofa drinking wine from Suze’s Dora mug.
“I couldn’t think of anything better for an ‘85 Merlot. Yours is in the Kit-Kat coffee mug.”
Emma lifted the bright red mug, “Here’s to a quiet weekend.”
“A quiet weekend, if that’s what you fancy.” David returned the toast with the Dora mug.
Emma perched on the arm of the sofa. “It’s good to have you around,” she stroked her fingers through David’s hair, “I could get very used to you.” She instantly regretted the words, hoping that David had not interpreted them as meaning him to be dull or not exciting enough in some way.
David stretched out his legs and slid down in the sofa. He looked up at Emma, “That’s nice,” he replied, “I could certainly get used to you in that dress.”
Emma stood up and did a twirl, knowing that the dress was a half inch too tight and resolving to lose a few pounds before she wore it again. Her heel caught in the pile of the carpet and she stumbled, grabbing David’s shoulder to steady herself and, amazingly for her, managing not to spill her wine on David’s jacket.
David caught her with his spare hand and guided her onto his lap. “You definitely need someone to look after you. Let me know when you decide to hold auditions.”
Emma kissed him on the forehead and pulled herself free, standing up and smoothing her dress over her stomach. David always seemed so much in control while her world constantly let her down. She fought back a flush of embarrassment.
“So where are we going tonight?”
“I’ve booked Luigi’s. Is that OK? I thought we could leave the car at my place and walk round the corner.”
“And afterwards?
“I’d rather not drive on a Saturday night so, a taxi home suit you?”
“Seems a lot of money to spend on a taxi.”
“Well, I suppose you could stay over, especially as Susie is away for the weekend.”
It was a game that they played. The charade allowed them both to pretend that their relationship was merely a casual thing, totally without commitment on either part, although they both knew that this was changing.
“I’ll put a few things in a bag for the morning - just in case.” Emma ran upstairs and grabbed the bag that she had already packed.

§§§§§

Luigi’s was busy, as always on a Saturday evening. David had booked three days earlier and, being a regular customer, Luigi had given him a corner table, away from the busy restaurant door and out of the passage of the frantic waiters who dashed to and fro with trays of food balanced shoulder high as they squeezed between the tables. David had brought Emma to Luigi’s on that first Friday evening after getting her re-mortgage sorted out. He had split from a long-term, half-hearted, worn-out relationship a month earlier and he was in desperate need of a smiling face across the table. When he picked up Emma’s case file he had every intention of easing her into one of Anderson’s long term loan agreements and moving on. If she had not been wearing odd shoes on that first meeting, she might have slipped by as just another poor manager who the bank could really do without. Afterwards, he tried to recall when he had ever noticed a client’s shoes before. He couldn’t remember a single instance. There had been something in her face, especially her eyes. Her whole expression was tired and ready to give in. If he had told her to jump off a cliff, she might well have done so. He was accustomed to client’s showering him with excuses for their overdrawn accounts, people wanting to blame him or the bank for their lax spending habits. Emma was different. Something told him that she really needed his help, not just with money but with Susie and the house and everything. Something had driven him to break the habit of a lifetime and ask a client out to dinner.
Luigi spotted Emma as she entered the restaurant ahead of David and he came across to welcome her with a traditional kiss on both cheeks. The room was warm and cosy, already a buzz with conversation. The décor of checked table cloths and raffia wrapped Chianti bottles was definitely past its sell by date but the broad smile on Luigi’s face always made her feel at home. She felt like a part of Luigi’s family here and the feeling gave her a confidence that she lacked elsewhere.
“Prosecco and antipasto.” Luigi shouted to a waiter above the noise in the room. The waiter nodded, enroute to the kitchen, without stopping to look back at Luigi.
Luigi pointed to their table and clapped his hand on David’s shoulder with a conspiratorial wink. He had told David several times that he, Luigi De Sotto de San Remo de Liguria, was in love with Emma and if David ever let her go, he would leave Momma De Sotto and run off with her himself.
They had barely settled at the table when the waiter returned with two ice-cold flutes of Prosecco and a plate of Parma ham speckled with green and black olives and flakes of parmesan cheese. They clinked glasses and sipped the wine not needing to find another toast, merely comfortable in each other’s company.
Emma recalled that first Friday evening, her first meal out for years. She had spent all afternoon getting ready and changed her mind ten times about going out at all. Her neighbour, Annie, had offered to look after Susie so she had no real excuse not to go. Her wardrobe did not offer her many choices, the red dress or the green one. The red one showed too much cleavage, the green one was too short. She tossed a coin. At least she had some accessories to go with the green one. She looked over her shoulder at the table they had shared on that first night. The young couple there now seemed to be arguing. Emma thought that she and David had never argued. He always listened to her regardless of what her opinion might be. Steve never did. She remembered their first conversation, at that other table.
“So tell me all about yourself.”
She had not known where to start.
“What did you do at school?”
She told him about being ‘first pick’ for the netball team. Then she told him about being a clerk in the Council Housing Department. Then she told him about her sister Sally who moved to Australia and whom she would like to visit one day. Then she told him about the day her Dad died. Then she realised she had talked for an hour without stopping.
David had wiped bolognaise sauce from his chin with a pristine white napkin and said,
“Then what happened?”
They had both laughed, then and for an hour afterwards. Everything either of them said became instantly funny. They laughed while David paid the bill. They laughed in his car on the way home and they laughed when he said ‘Good night” on her doorstep and left.
It had been the moment she had dreaded, would he want more than her company at dinner? How would she cope if he came on too strong?
In the event, it was a non-event. Annie was waiting indoors with Susie and she had spent another hour telling Annie all about David.
Plates came and went amid their usual easy conversation until the end of the meal when Luigi brought a plate of Gorgonzola cheese to the table. He beckoned a waiter who followed him to the table to take their order for coffee and amaretti biscuits.
Luigi rested his hand gently on Emma’s shoulder, “Emma, you know I love you very much.” He paused for effect and mopped his receding brow theatrically with an overly large red handkerchief, “I have decided to leave Momma De Sotto and I want you to run away with me.”
Emma laughed, “I’m sorry Luigi I’m spoken for.”
“Ah”, sighed Luigi, “But do you really love him?”
“Of course I love him. He’s the only man for me.”
“In that case, David wants me to offer you this.” Luigi produced a small square box from the pocket in his apron.
The hubbub of noise in the full restaurant slowed until it was all but silent. Emma opened the ring box and the solitaire diamond glinted in the light of the candle on their table.
Tears welled up in the corners of her eyes as she looked up into David’s face.
“Of course I will.”
“Prosecco for everyone.” Luigi’s voice rose above the cheers that rolled from table to table as the team of waiters appeared with trays of ready prepared flutes.
At midnight, when the last of the customers had left the restaurant, Luigi came and sat with them bringing yet another bottle of Prosecco with him. “I have a villa in the hills of Liguria, it’s not very big but it is very pretty. I give it to you for your honeymoon.”

§§§§§

Emma slept late and would have slept later if David had not brought toast and coffee to the bedroom. She had drunk far too much at Luigi’s, in fact they had both drunk far too much and her head hurt.
She pulled herself up in the bed tucking the duvet modestly around her body. David passed her a plate of toast and marmalade which she took using both hands to steady the plate. He put her coffee on the bedside table.
“I hope you’re not cross with me for putting you on the spot.” David sat on the side of the bed.
“I’m not sure, you rat. You don’t leave a girl a lot of options.” She reached across to touch him and the plate of toast slid onto the floor.


LIA’S PASSPORT

Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough!
It isn’t fit for humans now,
There isn’t grass to graze a cow.
Swarm over Death.

Like so many of her contemporaries, Lia Patel remembered the opening words from John Betjeman’s poem about her home town.
She remembered an afternoon spent in a class of girls, most of whom were far more interested in live boys than dead poets. The teacher had tried hard to generate a discussion around why Betjeman might have penned those prophetic thoughts in 1937, a full two years before the start of the Second World War, but she had failed at every attempt. It had been the last class on a warm summer’s day with a dozen or more romantic trysts arranged along the main avenue of the marble floored shopping mall in town. The girls needed time to make those subtle, but oh so necessary, adjustments to their school uniform before the appointed hour. A double fold-over on the waistband would turn the regulation pleated grey skirt into something a bit shorter and far more fashionable. School ties could be loosened to let the knot rest between budding breasts, or merely discarded by those with enough shape of their own to not need the added attraction.
Lia would have dearly liked to be among those girls but she knew her father would never approve. She knew he would be waiting at the door knowing exactly how long it should take her to walk from the school to the house and ready to question her in the finest detail if she were more than a few minutes late.
Unlike most of the girls in her class, Lia also remembered the second verse of Betjeman’s poem;

Come, bombs and blow to smithereens
Those air-conditioned, bright canteens,
Tinned fruit, tinned meat, tinned milk, tinned beans,
Tinned minds, tinned breath.

In those distant, teenage school days, it had seemed to Lia that being the daughter of Doctor Arvindra Patel meant that she was doomed to live in a tinned body, subject to the tinned mind of a foreign culture and condemned to breathe the tinned breath of a past, anachronistic generation.
Her mother, a traditionally obedient Indian wife, never questioned her husband’s rules for the household. Lia watched her mother go about the business of the day, washing clothes, cooking food, cleaning the house. She rarely went out except for routine shopping trips, and never learned to drive the family car. Lia tried hard but continually failed to understand why her father had worked so hard to bring his family to this brave new world and yet was so determined to live in the old one, it was a lost argument. It was as though her father was hard –wired to behave in the old ways of a country that she barely knew. He simply could not change and her mother simply would not. Out of sheer frustration, Lia escaped the contradictions of the house by retreating to her bedroom and burying herself in school work.
Lia’s world began to change when she was accepted onto a business studies course at The London School of Economics. The LSE faculty was in central London, a comparatively easy commuting distance from Slough but a tiring and expensive journey when student accommodation was on offer with her bursary at a cost no more than the train fare.
Doctor Arvindra Patel found himself in a quandary. On the one hand, his plans for a carefully arranged marriage for his most special daughter, and on the other, his pride in the notion of a daughter who would, one day, be entitled to call herself Doctor Lia Patel. A fleeting image crossed his mind, the scene was of his own father, seated on a low wooden stool on a dirt floor, endlessly swatting flies and chewing betel nut. The old man’s voice echoed in his head;
“Every father is the platform from which his son strides into the world.”
Arvindra strode from his father’s village and went to the university in Calcutta to study medicine, now it was time for him to let Lia go.

§§§§§

Lia gazed out of her bedroom window at the wall of the adjacent house. She supposed that there had once been a view of sorts but the infill building had replaced any notion of what that might have been. In four years at the LSE, her room had hardly changed. She smiled at the Spice Girls poster on her wall. Why were there no Indian girl singers in the pop charts, only the crazy dancing characters in the incredibly similar Bollywood films? On the dressing table in front of the poster sat the obligatory framed photograph of Lia in cap and gown, clutching her MBA degree certificate. She smiled at the photograph because she knew her father saw the certificate as a token of his pride in her achievement. Lia saw it as a passport out of Slough to a brave new world of her own. The trouble was, she had no real idea what that brave new world was going to be. Her first challenge would be to convince her parents that she should move out of the family home that had sucked her back in when her college days were over.
She did know that if she was ever to escape her old bedroom in Slough, she would need to be independent. She needed money. Step one of her journey was to join the Slough High Street branch of Andersons Bank as an assistant financial advisor, and today would be the first day in her new job.

§§§§§

She also knew that during her years at the LSE, she had become the sort of girl who confused her male colleagues. The first year had been difficult for her in so many ways. She knew from her own mirror that her face and figure were equal to any of those models whose photographs lined the magazine pages. She had inherited her father’s tall lean figure and her mother’s wide dark eyes. Her long straight, jet black hair came from deep in the Indian sub-continent but her light creamy complexion was a mystery. She often supposed there might have been some European blood in the family, somewhere long ago in the past, maybe during the time of the Raj. It amused her to think of her father’s strict family morals being bent, ever so slightly, by an imagined Indian Army Colonel in bright red coat and plumed hat.
That first year out of school uniform and away from the structured regime of the family home had been for Lia, like an amateur gardener planting seeds without knowing what to expect when they grew. Grateful for the generous allowance from her father, Lia had experimented with a variety of fashion and life styles in equal measure. There were boys in her life, several of them, but none that she ever considered as a long term partner. Her allowance was not exorbitant but it placed her in the category of being both good looking and rich enough to buy the drinks in the Uni bar, a lethal combination.
Free from parental view, she drank too much on some occasions and danced till dawn on others, but always in the back of her mind lay the certain knowledge that one day, her father would introduce her to a complete stranger with the dreaded words.
“Lia, come and meet your future husband.”
For most of those first months, Lia existed in a state of confusion. She dearly loved her parents and, in spite of their old fashioned ways, she tried to live her life as she thought they would wish her to. Above all, she was determined to remain a virgin. Her virginity was as important to her as it was to her father although she could never really understand why. She supposed it was an ingrained reaction to the shame that her father would feel if his carefully selected future husband were to complain about damaged goods or demand the return of her dowry.
Over the years it had been Lia’s habit to avoid these thoughts by total immersion in her studies and her second year had been spent in exactly that way. She had earned good grades in each of her prime subjects but her favourite, by far, had been commercial finance. The complexity of the basic mathematics teased her mind and the application of the numbers to investment funding brought some sense at last to the industrial landscape along the M4 corridor that was her home. She began to see the endless rows of square featureless buildings between Slough and Heathrow as money generators. You plant a little venture capital and wait for the seeds to grow. If you get it right, the rewards can be enormous, if you get it wrong you might lose your client’s money but you take your commission and move on. If you work for the bank, managing other people’s money, there’s no way you can lose.
Year three was even better. Lia’s project work included a long work-experience session with the London Stock Exchange. She fell instantly in love with the inside-out Lloyds building in Leadenhall Street. To her, the extravagant service ducts that enmesh the outside of the building represented arteries pumping the life fluids of the City of London around its beating heart. Every day that she spent in the building drew her deeper into an enchanted web where the open plan central floor buzzed from dawn till dusk, alive with small clusters of men and women brokering deals for amounts of money that Lia had only ever dreamed about.
Her third-year assignment meant that she was attached to a small maritime insurance group who oversaw the list of supposedly anonymous Names who shared the income from the premiums and also the charges when insurance claims were paid out. Lia shadowed the work of the team leader, Lawrence Earnshaw, who readily shared with her the rationale behind the group’s business decisions day by day. Lawrence became her mentor and friend while she, in turn, became his conjoined twin. Wherever Lawrence went Lia followed and when he invited her to join the group at a celebratory session in their favourite watering hole in Leadenhall Market, she naturally agreed. They were celebrating the final completion of an insurance contract for a fleet of luxury cruise liners that had taken close to a year to negotiate. Lawrence and his team of four brokers stood to earn significant bonuses once the premium payments started to flow through their team account and although that would not be for another six months, they were in the mood to spend their first payment in advance. Bottles of red wine were delivered to their table in pairs. Lawrence argued that there were six glasses in an average bottle and there were six of them round the table so each bottle represented one glass each, barely one good toast to their success in a bottle. They were in the mood for several toasts.
Leadenhall Market is one of those places, unique to London. During the day, it is principally a covered food market with some of the best meat and fish stalls in the city. In the evening, it becomes the place of choice for the financial sector housed in the streets around the market. From six until eight the bars overflow onto cobbled streets, every table eager to out do the next with stories of their successes of the day. Between seven-thirty and eight o’clock, the assembled throng head for their preferred stations to begin their commute home. The market closes at eight. Sometimes, a particularly successful team are loathe to go home at the witching hour and, for them, there are a variety of less well appointed bars in various adjacent side-streets, only too pleased to continue to serve until dawn.
Lawrence, Lia and the team moved from bar to bar throughout the evening until they arrived at a club, better known for its hostesses than its wine list. Under low romantic lighting, the team danced with scantily clad hostesses and Lia in turn. Lia loved every minute of this voyage into her chosen world, keen to be a team member, to dance until she could dance no more.
In the morning she awoke with a throbbing headache. Lifting even one eyelid at a time seemed an impossible task. There was something pulling in her hair, something hard, with sharp edges. With a superhuman effort she forced open one eye and recognised a Lloyds security pass. Through the fog she untangled her hair from the clip and was about to throw it on the floor when she realised that the photo on the pass was not of her. Real pain tore at her insides as she recognised the picture of Lawrence. At the same time, she became aware of an unfamiliar noise, a man, Lawrence, snoring gently into the pillow beside her. Her body froze but her mind whirled as she struggled to remember the previous evening. Lifting her head, she looked around the unfamiliar room. The black jacket and skirt of her business suit hung on a chair beside the bed, her blouse and underwear lay on the floor. Naked, hung-over and shivering, the first thought to enter Lia’s mind was:
“Lia, come and meet your future husband.”

§§§§§

That had all been four years ago, and two tentative mentions of marriage by her father had passed without the dreaded introduction of a pre-selected suitor. Lia was beginning to think that the good doctor Arvindra had come to terms with the business lifestyle of his only daughter and his aspirations for her future as a tame, subservient Indian wife were beginning to fade into the background. For her part, the passage of time did nothing to ease the problem of explaining to a prospective husband how she came to be damaged goods.
The four years with Andersons had passed without problems. Lia’s natural financial ability and her outgoing personality had helped her to leap over the initial hurdles of being an Asian female in a predominately white male environment. She had quickly been accepted as one of the Andersons team and steadily built an impressive record for placing investment capital with businesses from all round the local towns. She was also eternally grateful that her father had chosen to live in Slough, close enough to the multi-racial community that clings like limpets around Heathrow and the outskirts of the Capital City. If the family had followed the migrant trail to the Asian ghettos of Leicester and the north of England, she might have found much stronger resistance to her personal career among the more traditional Asian culture where her father would have undoubtedly been obliged to arrange her marriage or be seen as a weak and ineffectual man in the eyes of his peers. In a totally selfish way, she was equally glad that she had no brothers who might have felt their honour so besmirched that it would be necessary to kill her for having lost her virginity in such a shameful fashion.
Naturally her personal bank account was with Andersons and there was rarely any reason for her personal financial records to be sent to her home address, so it was no great surprise that her father had no idea of her slowly accumulating bank balance. As she grew in seniority in her department, so her commission payments grew. In a year or two she would apply to move to another branch, probably in America where she would live in one of those memorable buildings that made up the Manhattan skyline and her lost virginity would be of no consequence.
Each morning she would be among the first to arrive in the Andersons open-plan offices on the fourth floor of the Queensmere building. She had a daily routine that rarely varied. Coffee from the machine in the alcove by the lift, check the notice board for social news and then log in to her personal account details before checking her email for messages. The daily total in her account served as a spur for her business of the day. One hundred thousand pounds was her target. One hundred thousand pounds of her own money would give her both courage and security to fly the nest regardless of her father’s wishes.
Lawrence remained the only man to share her bed although she was never short of offers. She considered herself to be an international girl of the world, untrammelled by the cultural or religious ways of any one particular country. And yet, she could never quite overcome the thought that she had, in some way, let her father down. On the several occasions when she had been tempted to share a night of passion with her current escort, these thoughts returned to trouble her and she always went home alone.
Lia’s male and female colleagues at Andersons were generally envious of her success in the office but less enamoured of her social track record. On the surface she was popular but behind her back she was known as the Virgin Ice Queen, the girl who promised more than she delivered. Even with the girls, she would always join in with a hen party but always disappear when the hunky stripping fireman arrived.
Lia became driven by the numbers in her personal account. In her own mind she was already damaged goods, she had no personal problems with using her feminine charms to distract her clients while they signed on the dotted line for loans at terms that they might subsequently regret. Harry Joyce was just such a client. The old man wanted a straightforward business loan to develop his storage units. His secretary had called the branch to enquire about a loan and the call had been passed to Lia. A little research on her part and a call to the architect concerned had confirmed that Harry’s business was sound and the request for a loan could really have been dealt with as an overdraft facility for a year or two.
On the other hand . . . . a little over-exaggeration with regard to the planning requirements and a generous over specification in the build standard and ‘Hey Presto’ the overdraft turns into a substantial business loan with an equally substantial sales commission for Lia.
The meeting had gone well enough. Harry Joyce turned out to be an old duffer who could not even work the computer on his desk. The fool from the architect’s office had been no help but, once he had said his piece and gone, Lia was able to work her routine magic on Harry. Step one, a little flattery. Step two, an accidental touch of hands, preferably fingertips, it always seems more casual, more open to interpretation. Step three, get close enough for the old man to think he might see into her open cleavage. Step four, another less accidental touch of hands, perfumed hand-cream applied in the car before the meeting usually helped. Step five. There was rarely any need for a step five; step five was invariably signing the loan application.
On this occasion step five had not quite worked according to plan. However, Lia had not given up on Harry Joyce. As she drove away from his office she noticed him watching her from his office window with one hand held under his nose, breathing the scent of her hand cream.


THE GRAPE VINE

'There’s a woman sitting among the vines, painting.’ Sue threw the statement at George over breakfast of coffee and croissants served beside their swimming pool. It was early October, too late in the year to swim but the poolside setting under the clear blue skies of the Loire Valley made it her favourite spot, especially when she had guests in the villa.
“Yes, I know, she’s been there every day this week. Apparently she’s English, from somewhere round our neck of the woods.” George replied. “I haven’t met her yet. I suppose I should go down there and say Hello, or Bonjour or something. Trouble is, I come here to get away from England and I don’t expect to find it all around me when I get here.”
“Oh come on George, you know it’s not like that at all. Anyway this place is far enough from civilisation to hide for as long as you like. Leave it to me. I’ll go and find her after breakfast. When are you going back by the way?”
“Probably Monday morning, after I’ve seen Arnaud. He says they’ve picked everything worth having and it’s all safely in the winery. Apparently it’s been a good year so we can expect something over seven thousand bottles of Chenin Blanc to our credit. I’ll ask Arnaud to arrange a swap among our neighbours so we can stock up on some reds, Saumur and Chinon if he can fix it. He also said that as we’re over seven thousand bottles we can have our own label. How do you fancy designing something while you’re here?”
George returned to his laptop. It might well be Saturday morning in Luynes but George checked his email everyday of the week regardless of where he was at the time. Silence fell over the pair, broken only by the occasional clink of coffee cups.
George had chosen the villa on the hillside to the north of Luynes for two reasons. Firstly, it offered all the things that he and Sue had wanted, especially the view down to the river which was spectacular. The second reason was that the place was not far from Le Mans and George fancied himself as a potential driver in the classic Le Mans race. In truth he knew that driving was a pipe dream, but he often toyed with the notion of Wilkinson’s sponsoring a car and himself striding down the pit lane as a privileged member of the inner circle.
The opportunity to buy into the vineyard that nestled in the centre of that view down to the river was an unexpected bonus. In his usual style, George had thrown a party shortly after accepting the keys to the villa and invited René Grossjean, the local notaire, as one of the few French locals that he knew. In conversation together, George had explained that he was an investment banker and the notaire insisted that he meet Arnaud Sande, a local vigneron, who happened to be trying to raise enough cash to renovate his winery. A few days later, over a glass or two of Arnaud’s wine, the three had arranged for George to buy three hectares of vines which would continue to be managed by Arnaud and bottled under the Domaine de Sande label. This would be the tenth year of their collaboration. Arnaud had installed new stainless steel vats in the winery and George had watched the land value increase year by year. Both were happy men and, by dint of a combination of George’s totally hands-off involvement in the workings of the domaine and his bottomless hospitality, the two had become great friends.
Sue had resisted the temptation to furnish the villa as a replica of the Sunningdale house. Instead she had enlisted the help of Elise Sande to scour the local antique markets and recreate what both women agreed was a modernised version of the original Loire demi-chateau style. In the ten years of their joint furnishing programme, their original intentions had changed several times, including virtually starting from scratch when Sue decided to change the complete upstairs to provide en suite bathrooms to all seven bedrooms.
Elise had told Sue of an antique market in Saumur on Sunday morning and she had persuaded Lucy to go with them on a shopping trip.
Lucy readily agreed, not wishing to be left alone with George and still not quite sure why Andrew had failed to arrive on Friday evening as planned. She had read the text message twice, ‘Sorry can’t make it tonight – will call you XXX-A’. The message told her nothing and he hadn’t called. Their plan was for her to fly down with Sue and he would drive down in the Porsche when the markets closed. He would also get Marjorie, George’s PA, to package up any important mail and bring it down with him for George. Lucy could not know that Andrew had spent the evening in Balls Brothers drinking champagne and drooling into Chrissie’s ample cleavage which is why he was late arriving at the tunnel and had chosen to spend the night in Ashford instead of arriving in France at midnight. Lucy had tried to call his mobile several times hoping to have something to tell Sue at breakfast time, but his phone seemed to be off.
When Lucy finally made it to the breakfast table, Sue had finished her croissant and left, intending to walk down the hill and introduce herself to the English woman painter. George looked up from the keyboard and pointed to the coffee pot.
“Good morning lovely lady, help yourself to coffee. Any word from Andrew yet?”
Lucy poured strong black coffee into a fresh cup. “Not a peep. I can’t understand it George, he usually phones to let me know where he wants me to think he is.”
George laughed at her comment. “He’s a big boy Lucy, I’m sure he will be OK, wherever he is. Please feel free to use the pool. Skinny dipping is mandatory of course.”
“I don’t think I’ll bother this morning. I’d hate to be dripping all over your table when my husband gets here.” Lucy always expected a base level of comment from George and was rarely disappointed.
“Has your better half deserted you this morning?”
George closed his laptop. “She’s gone to find our new neighbour, an English lady, a painter of sorts who has recently bought an old cottage on the other side of the village. The woman has been setting up her easel in our vines for the last week or so according to Arnaud. Can’t do any harm I suppose.”
Lucy tore the end off a croissant, folded it into her mouth and brushed an errant pastry flake from her chin.
“George,” Lucy’s voice told him there was a question coming. “What happened to Coulter Brothers, could that happen to anyone else?”
“Wilkinson’s is in good shape, if that’s what you mean. Most of our business is off-shore; we don’t need to be bailed out. Fortunately for me, Andrew happened to come to me at a time when I had decided to mop up a lot of loose ends in the Euro zone. He will sort it out for me. I have every confidence in him.”
“Thank you George, you’re a sweetie.” Lucy leaned across the table and planted a big wet kiss on George’s forehead. “I think I’ll go and find Sue.”
George returned to his laptop and clicked into the internet.
Lucy caught up with Sue in the lane that bordered the vines. She was chatting to a lady who was sitting at an artist’s easel on which rested a fair attempt to catch the dusty shades of green peppered with early autumn browns and yellows that spread across the fields in front of her.
Sue introduced Jane Ellis and recounted the story of her recent arrival from Harrow.
“Virtually on our doorstep.” said Sue, “life is full of co-incidences.”
Lucy was about to make a suitable reply when her mobile phone interrupted. “I must take this, it’s bound to be Andrew.”
“Andrew, where are you?” Lucy listened to the phone for several moments. “OK, be careful. Don’t let that car get the better of you.”
With a sigh of relief, she explained that Andrew had stayed in Ashford, caught the morning train through the tunnel and was already south of Orléans. The integral phone system in the new car was not set to roam and so he was not able to call her until he stopped for petrol and used a call booth. With luck he would be with them before lunch.
Sue took up the conversation and explained the whole thing over again to Jane, who really could not have cared less. Porsches, integral phones and vineyards were still part of another world for her and her mother who were settling in very well and not missing Station Road Harrow one jot.
Andrew did indeed arrive shortly after one, complete with abject apologies and a large envelope full of post for George.
Sue arranged for lunch to be served in the dining room with the four of them sitting round the end of a table that would easily seat twelve. Lunch was a bowl of pumpkin and chestnut soup accompanied by crisp French bread still warm from the baker’s oven. George’s side of the table was littered with sheets of paper from the post bag that Marjorie had sent on.
“Can’t that wait George?” Sue knew it was a silly question. Once George had started on something, he rarely let go until it was done.
George did not answer.
The conversation dipped, save for occasional comments about the soup or the merits of French bread, served straight from the baker’s oven.
Lucy, who happened to be seated nearest to George, could not help noticing the occasional paragraph among the discarded papers. The distinctive logo of the Financial Services Authority topped several of the sheets.
Andrew elected for a siesta after lunch, partly to sleep off the previous evening in Balls Brothers bar and partly to avoid Lucy’s questions about his reason for being there at all. However, as so often happens, an afternoon sleep gets disturbed by the business of the house. In this case, it was disturbed by a phone ringing in the adjacent room, George’s room. He could only hear occasional words and only George’s side of the conversation. The call was clearly about business and Andrew wondered who might be making such a call, on a Saturday, and to France.
The four assembled at seven in the evening and rode together into Luynes for dinner in the Mercedes ML350 that George kept at the villa. He insisted that having a French car with left hand drive and French registration would help to make him anonymous among the locals. On the other hand, there were few in the small community of Luynes who would fail to recognise the silver Mercedes and its English drivers.
Dinner was a quiet affair with hardly any conversation beyond the verbal dissection around the menu and the associated wine list. George appeared too deep into his own thoughts to contribute at all, except for muttering about ludicrous extravagance, when it came to paying the bill. The drive back up the hill was equally silent, followed by an early night.
As she pulled the duvet over her shoulder, Lucy asked, “Andrew, why is there so much stuff from the FSA in George’s post. Everything’s OK isn’t it?”
Andrew muttered reassuring noises but went to sleep pondering on the same question and wondering who had been the urgent caller that afternoon.
On Sunday morning, Sue and Lucy left early to pick up Elise Sande and head for the antiques market in Saumur. Andrew decided to take the Porsche for a spin and left shortly after the girls, heading nowhere in particular and in no particular hurry to get there.
George sat alone in the first-floor room that served as his study and flipped open his laptop. Of thirteen emails on his new list, five were from Sir William. Four of those were follow-ups to the main message,
‘I’m sorry to press but I need a decision from you about the housing project. I have other investors waiting to take your place. I will hold my offer to you and McAllister for as long as I can.’
George sat back in his armchair to ponder the email. Several things busied his mind. He was only recently acquainted with Sir William and to be honest he really didn’t like the man. His mind associated Billy with Silly and he had no time for silliness in business. Why was Sir William in such a rush for such a comparatively small amount of money? Surely £10 million was peanuts to the chairman of such a large building firm? George had an abiding feeling that there was something vaguely wrong about this deal. Sir William had mentioned that the land was extremely undervalued. Why was that? How could he check up on it without knowing exactly where it was and who owned it?
Secondly, he did not have two million sitting in the bank to write a cheque against. Who did? He would have to move things around. The stock market was in a mess with share prices plummeting. He had only recently moved a large slice of his holdings into gold and now was not the best time to dip into that bucket again. He also regretted promising Andrew a two million advance on his bonus, especially as one of the letters in front of him was a circular from the FSA, outlining their proposed changes to the regulations regarding executive bonus payments. The easy answer seemed to be to act in his capacity as Chairman of Wilkinson’s and authorise a director’s Loan for the four million. He could arrange for it to be drawn on the Euro fund management account. Technically that could be construed as misappropriation of client funds but, as it was effectively outside the immediate sight of the FSA, it would be less obvious. However, he could hardly do that without involving Andrew as head of the Euro desk, in which case he would have to explain to Andrew why the Sterling accounts were as tight as they were, and he was not ready to do that yet. He had requested a high-level funding review with Andersons Bank but that was a full week ago and answer was there none. He returned to Sir William’s email.
‘Sorry again George, but I need to get our offer on the table early this coming week. Let me know if you’re in or out.’
George was many things but not a ditherer. He was in and replied to Sir Williams email to that effect. Now all he had to do was find four million, in cash, within the week. He logged onto the LSE exchange rates, 90 pence to the Euro seemed a good working figure. Using his private access code, he transferred five million Euros from Wilkinson’s Euro Fund 27, into his personal account allowing for the possibility of income tax to be paid on the basic sum. The E27 fund stood at well over five hundred million Euros, so five more or less would not show up for a while. When Andrew got back form his jaunt in the countryside, he would transfer two million to Andrew’s personal account and then, in his own time, request the deposit details from Sir William.
George walked down stairs feeling relaxed in so far as the deed was done, and excited in that he knew he was stretching every rule in the book - stretching but not breaking, at least not by much. It was just over five months to the year end. It wouldn’t be the first time he had stepped over the line; he mimed the stepping action for his own amusement as he entered the lounge. So long as no one noticed, all could be put right at the end of the quarter. A bottle of Domaine de Sande was in order, George reached for a corkscrew.

§§§§§

Sunday evening at Villa Padworth was a lively affair compared with the previous evening. Sue and Lucy had both found their respective ‘must buy’ items on the antiques market. Sue had picked a pewter coffee pot on a stand with an integral oil burner designed to keep the pot warm. The stall owner had claimed that it was a hundred and fifty years old, to which Sue nodded but seriously doubted. She also doubted it would get used for coffee but it made an ideal ornament for her ‘cuisine fermière’. Lucy bought several pieces of lace including a very flimsy nightgown which she promised Andrew she would wear later that evening. George had demanded a cat-walk show but Sue had snarled at him and he quickly changed his mind. Lucy had laughed along with the others, knowing full well that George was a pussycat really. She was becoming more concerned about Sue who had insisted that Lucy try the thing on when they returned and had spent overlong tinkering with the laces and smoothing down the fine linen over Lucy’s body.
Andrew had found a long straight road to try out the Porsche and with non-existent French Sunday afternoon traffic around he had enjoyed putting his foot to the floor. He had stopped for a coffee in a village called Ambillou, less interested in the coffee than sitting outside the café bar and admiring the sleek lines of the car. His table conversation which centred on his enthusiasm for the finesse of his drive fell on deaf ears, but he failed to notice.
George saved his news for the cheese course.
Dinner was a simple dish of beef stew with potatoes and beans, served in deep bowls and accompanied by more crisp French bread. Andrew had expected something more elaborate in such a grand setting but was more than content with the rich flavours of the beef sauce into which Sue had put a mixture of black olives and anchovies.
The maid cleared the plates and brought a cheese board to the table. Sue sliced a sliver of a local blue and a triangle of goat’s cheese before passing the board to Lucy.
George left the table to open a second bottle of red and when he came back, he rested his elbow on the back of his chair, bottle in one hand and corkscrew in the other.
“I apologise for being a bit on the dull side last night.” He held up a hand to refute anticipated cries of “No George”, unfortunately no one argued with him. He continued, “I’ve been tossing over this thing with Sir William’s Fine Homes, etc. He seems to know what he’s up to so I’ve decided to go along with him. I’ve also taken the liberty of counting you in Andrew, so after dinner we can go up to my study and I’ll wire an advance bonus of two million into your account. We meet with him on Wednesday morning to sign up for the shares. There will be five shareholders, you, me and Sir William, plus two others whose names he wants to keep quiet until we hand over our cheques. Now then, is that worth a bottle of champers or shall I stick to the home brew?”
Lucy grabbed Andrew arm in excitement. “Champers for me please, George.” She felt Andrew stiffen or did she imagine it.
Sue jumped up from the table to hug George. “Well done you old sod. I knew you would find a way to sort it out. Looks as though it’s time for some more shopping Lucy. Where shall we go? How about Paris, we could get the TGV and be there well before lunch.”
Sue agreed, but harboured a twitch about spending time in communal changing rooms with Sue.

§§§§§

Later, in bed together, Lucy asked Andrew about the investment deal. “Two million is an awful lot of money. Are you sure that it’s OK? George seems to have railroaded it a bit.”
Andrew pulled Lucy towards him, “I trust George, I have to. I know he can be a bit of a risk taker but he didn’t get where he is today etc. etc. And, he’s never let me down.”
“Does that mean he’s clever or just lucky?”
“Good question. Now how does this lace thing come undone?”


FUTURES

Garry Whitaker waited in Starbucks until eight and then walked across to the office carrying a Styrofoam cup in one hand and his distinctive Wilkinson’s laptop in the other. It was a full week since Chrissie had met him in the coffee shop and he missed their morning banter. As usual, he had listened to the news during his commute on the train from Denham, another oil tanker had been hijacked somewhere around the Horn of Africa. This was the third one to be taken by pirates in the last ten days. Shipping insurance was bound to be affected again and the price of oil would almost certainly be fragile during the morning while the market decided what to make of it. He planned to contact a friend at Lloyds Shipping Register later in the morning to see what the inner circle had to say about the effect these pirates were having on premiums. Chrissie normally had a good handle on these things but it seemed as though she had been hijacked herself into the new Futures team under the equally new Andrew McAllister.
Most of the Wilkinson’s people understood that Andrew McAllister and George Padworth had known each other for some years but the sudden and unannounced appointment of a ‘European Desk’ had surprised them all. Chrissie had been head of Pan-European Pharmaceuticals as he had been head of Pan-European Petrochemicals. It appeared as if Andrew McAllister was now somewhere between him and George in the Wilkinson’s hierarchy. Gary had briefly considered asking HR if they were going to put out a circular announcing the new appointment, but then he decided that if that was what George wanted, well so be it. Thus far, nothing had changed in his team.
The thing that worried Gary most was the change that he was beginning to detect in Chrissie. He and Chrissie had been close in a working sense and he had a huge regard for her knowledge of the pharmaceutical market. She had pulled off some master strokes especially the deal with the pirate web site and the BASF report, but now it seemed that her mind was elsewhere, almost as though McAllister had bewitched her. It was obvious that McAllister had his eyes locked into Chrissie’s ample cleavage from morning till night. Who bewitched whom, he wondered? Chrissie had only been an Exec since the beginning of the year and she was still a bit in awe of the high-powered circle she now mixed with. Gary could easily see how McAllister’s attention could be misread.
Gary had been at the last Christmas party in Balls Brothers wine bar, when George had promoted Chrissie to the Exec level. The place had been in uproar for the rest of the evening with champagne for everyone, all on George’s tab. Everyone liked Chrissie, although to be fair, she had worried some when she first joined. The problem was that she was just too good looking; tall, light brown, almost blonde hair, eyes so deep you could swim in them and a figure to die for. The girls were all jealous of her and the boys all voted her the girl they would most like to spend a week with on a desert island. But, that all seemed a long time ago. Chrissie had worked hard and hammered on the proverbial glass ceiling until the whole thing shattered around her. She deserved to be head of Pan-European Pharmaceuticals, her team adored her and she was obviously George’s current protégé, or had been until McAllister showed up.
Gary’s secondary worry stemmed from the rumours wafting upwards from his team, who shared the open plan office on the fourth floor with Chrissie’s team. The word was that she had missed two team meetings in a row; that she was rarely in her office during working hours and after working hours she was always to be found in Balls Brothers with McAllister.
Chrissie, on the other hand, was flying.
She and James had driven home to the New Forest after George’s annual end-of-season garden party. In the car together they had laughed about Andrew McAllister’s attention to her bust line. It happened all the time. She was proud of her figure and James had become accustomed to the way other men ogled his wife’s figure, especially at parties when the booze was flowing. They had been married for ten years and, with the children, James Junior and Naomi, they were a pretty solid family. James worked from home as a design consultant and Stephanie, their au pair, looked after the children which allowed Chrissie to leave home at the crack of dawn and get back, eventually. In many ways, the very nature of her job depended on the social interaction between business colleagues. Fortunately the City, in its own way, closed the doors on most of the after-hours socialising at eight o’clock sharp and Chrissie was usually home around nine.
It seemed that the thing everyone agreed on was that McAllister’s forte was listening. McAllister listened to Chrissie. Chrissie was exceedingly flattered by it and was pleased to explain it in detail to her long suffering husband James. James was beginning to wonder if Chrissie had any other topic of conversation. ‘I was talking to Andrew about this and I was talking to Andrew about that.’ What happened to the rest of the world?

§§§§§

It was shortly after Andrew McAllister returned from George’s place in the Loire Valley that he called Chrissie into his office.
“Hi Chrissie, pull up a chair. I’ve just had a call from an old pal in Rome. He’s a media hound, works for Italian television on their news desk. He told me that Medicato’s research centre in Milan are about to release some new trials data on anti-retro-viral HIV stuff. He reckons it will be red hot and Medicato’s shares will sky-rocket. Now, it’s common news that Medicato are under the cosh, subject to a hostile bid from Roche. If this info is true, there’s a deal in there somewhere. How would you like a trip to Rome to have dinner with my old television buddy Arturo? See what you can find out.”

§§§§§

The following morning Chrissie parked her BMW at Gatwick before checking onto the Easy Jet flight to Rome. Grey autumnal English skies gradually turned to azure blue as the Boeing 737 flew south over France towards the navigation beacon at Ajaccio on the island of Corsica and then a long slow left turn to line up on runway 07 at Fiumicino airport, on the coast, a few miles north of Ostia and west of Rome. As an Exec, Wilkinson’s would normally have paid for her to fly first class but this was the first available flight of the day and Chrissie was eager to follow McAllister’s lead. Her dark blue cabin bag, bought especially to match her BMW, contained her laptop, toothbrush and a change of clothes which she hoped she would not need as she planned to get the late evening flight from Rome back to London.
Arturo Scarlatti was waiting in the Arrivals Lounge with ‘Wilkinson’s’ written in pencil on a crumpled sheet of paper.
Chrissie had not known quite what to expect but was far from surprised when Arturo, media hound and old pal of Andrew, turned out to be ‘tall dark and handsome’ and drove an old but most desirable Maserati Spyder Cambiocorsa with the top down along the autostrada into Rome as though the hounds of hell were at his heels. On the outskirts of the city, Arturo took a slip road off the autostrada into lush green countryside and then another turn past high iron gates into the grounds of a villa that had once been a grand private home but was now a very expensive restaurant.
Arturo had booked a table on the balcony. He had also ordered a bottle of Orvieto Classico from his uncle’s vineyards in hills above Spoleto. Apart from a stale croissant and a paper cup of instant coffee in the departures lounge at Gatwick, the crisp dry Orvieto was effectively Chrissie’s breakfast and none the less welcome for it.
Arturo went to great lengths to explain in near perfect English, accompanied by extravagant hand gestures, that he had chosen this particular restaurant because the enlightened management were sufficiently discerning to appreciate the delicate flavours of his uncle’s wine. The owners were also cousins of his by marriage to another cousin whom he had not seen for many years but worked for Medicato in Milan.
A waiter emerged from the arched door of the villa with two plates of gnocchi coated in a light cheese sauce.
“A perfect compliment for my uncle’s wine.” Arturo continued to explain the reason for his call to Andrew.
Quite by chance, he had been preparing a documentary piece about HIV and Aids for a television programme when his cousin’s name appeared in the contact list. He had of course rung his cousin at once, hoping to get an inside track on the story. His cousin had explained in turn how the clinical trials results were exceptionally good and the dilemma that Medicato was in with regard to the takeover bid from Roche. Once the news was released, Medicato’s shares would certainly improve, this would affect the bid from Roche who would almost certainly want to reconsider their offer which would undoubtedly have an adverse affect on the value of Roche’s own shares. It was clear to Arturo that there were many ways to take advantage of these beautiful market forces, but he could not do this in Italy because everyone would know that he had used inside information, especially his uncle, not the one who owned the vineyards in Spoleto, but the one who was the deputy chairman of the Borsa Italiana.
The waiter returned to collect their plates and Arturo ordered the veal Milanese without consulting Chrissie. He poured more crisp pale yellow wine into Chrissie’s glass and continued.
“So, I need Andrew to arrange a suitable trade, or maybe two trades. My cousin informs me that the clinical trials will be released in two weeks time. Until then, they are still under lock and key in the depths of Medicato. Even the top directors of Medicato don’t know how good they are, which is just as well or they will be on the phone to Andrew as well. We have two weeks to set up an account and arrange the deal.”
Apart from a few courtesies, Chrissie had hardly spoken a word.
The waiter arrived with the veal and wished them, ‘Buon appetito.’
The breadcrumb coating on the veal melted in Chrissie’s mouth and the bottomless bottle of Orvieto washed it down with exactly the right after taste. Her initial thoughts were that the whole thing with Arturo’s cousin and Medicato was no less a subject for censure under the rules on insider trading in London than it was in Rome. She doubted that George would go for it but she had promised Andrew to find out the facts and what better way to do it than on a sunlit terrace in Rome.
Breakfast at Gatwick was becoming a distant memory as the waiter cleared their plates and then returned with a single large glass bowl of panna cotta, and two spoons. Arturo explained,
“In Rome, lovers always share a dessert of panna cotta. It is a pudding of air and beauty that lifts the spirits before an afternoon of passion.“
Chrissie smiled as kindly as she felt able without encouraging him, “In England pudding and passion are rarely spoken of at lunch time.”
They both laughed, sharing the feeble joke and respecting her hidden meaning.
Chrissie was beginning to wonder why McAllister had sent her to Rome for this information when it could easily have been passed by phone or email. There had to be more to this and Arturo was not telling. He fell to talking about the view, to the west you could almost see the blue Mediterranean, today it was just a soft blue haze. To the east lay the Seven Hills of Rome.
“You must come and see my office, there will be some television going on. It will be fun for you.”
Arturo made an excuse and strolled inside; she assumed he had gone to use the toilet, however, no sooner had he disappeared than the waiter returned with a fancy gift box which contained their bill. He deliberately placed the box in front of Chrissie, bowed a deferential head and turned to fiddle with the place settings at an adjacent table. Clearly she, or rather Wilkinson’s, was expected to pay. Chrissie dug out a pile of Euros that she had bought at Gatwick while waiting for departure and tucked a suitable amount into the gift box. As soon as the waiter had retrieved the box and returned inside the building, Arturo appeared and demanded that she follow him to his car and then to the studios. He made no reference to the bill and she chose to leave the matter where it lay, McAllister would pay.
Arturo drove the Maserati through the suburbs of Rome as though it was the only car on the road. Chrissie felt herself gripping the door handle with pure white knuckles. Her windblown hair had long ceased to be a concern, arriving alive would be good enough.
Eventually Arturo turned into a side street barely wider than the car, mounted the pavement and thrust the car into the darkened entrance of an underground car park, all in one fluid movement, without ever seeming to slow down. The tyres squealed on the painted floor surface as he pulled the car round endless concrete pillars and into a reserved space.
“We are here.” Arturo pushed open his door, climbed out of the car and headed for the elevator leaving Chrissie to follow on.
Chrissie deliberately took her time. Once out of the car, she spent a moment tidying her hair and smoothing down her jacket and skirt, then she eased her trusty laptop out of the front pocket of her cabin case and closed the zipper, spinning the numbers on the barrel lock. She called across the parking space to Arturo,
“Is it OK to leave my case on the seat?” she was concerned that the roof of the Maserati was still open.
“For sure, it is OK. My uncle is the chief of police in this precinct. It is as safe as a road of houses.” Chrissie smiled at his misquote and joined him at the elevator door.
The sign on the wall of the elevator said ‘4 Persons’ but the two of them filled the tiny space and Arturo’s arm wrapped unnecessarily around Chrissie to select the floor button. She did her best to pull back into the corner of the box.
The door opened on the ninth floor and Arturo led her along a passageway lined with photographs of television personalities, none of whom she recognised, to a wide double door over which a red ‘Recording’ light glowed. They waited for the light to go out then he opened the door into a studio where an audience of about a hundred people was watching a glamorous curly-haired blonde in the skimpiest of glittery dresses and heels, host a quiz show. The recording had stopped while a sound engineer made an adjustment to the microphone pinned to one of the contestants and the blonde girl stood at the edge of the set holding a glittering microphone and looking exceedingly bored. Arturo gripped Chrissie’s wrist and dragged her onto the set.
“This is Elaina my cousin.” The blonde girl’s eyes came alive and she kissed him enthusiastically on both cheeks. “. . . and this is Chrissie from London, she is here to see your show.” The blonde girl kissed Chrissie, equally enthusiastically, while a make up girl appeared from nowhere to repair her smudged lipstick.
The studio lights came on again and Arturo pushed Chrissie into a spare seat, indicating for her to keep quiet while the quiz show continued.
An hour later the recording came to an end with the final contestant having won 4,000 Euros and a holiday on a mountain in Treblinka. The whole thing had gone completely over Chrissie’s head as she had understood neither the questions nor the answers. The studio audience filed out and a gang of technicians began to rearrange the set. Elaina crossed the floor towards their seats pulling off her elaborate blond wig to reveal short mousy brown hair tied back under a bandeau. Elaina also kicked off the heels and Chrissie noticed that, close up, those long sexy legs were encased in what could only be called, support hose. Suddenly Chrissie felt a lot less wind swept.
Elaina led them from the studio to her dressing room where she began to remove her stage make-up while Arturo explained that Elaina was the long term partner of Catarina Cantini, who was the PA to the Marketing Director of Roche and who had copies of all the details of the Roche bid for Medicato.
“Now we go together to see Catarina. Bring your lap top Chrissie.”
The Maserati cruised along the duel carriageway of Via Appia Nuova, towards the Coliseum before turning off into a maze of apartment blocks on Via Alba. Elaina’s apartment was on the third floor of a red brick building that probably dated from the mid-eighteen hundreds. High ceilings and ornate plasterwork decorated every room, including the toilet that Chrissie headed for as soon as she decently could. She quickly tidied her hair and make up, deciding that the gurgling plumbing was probably as original as the plasterwork, before meeting Elaina’s partner.
Catarina Cantini might have stepped out of the pages of Vogue, elegantly coiffured in her white linen business suit worn over a black silk shirt-style blouse. Chrissie wondered about her relationship with Elaina as the mouse beneath the glamorous show girl façade and Catarina, well perhaps Catarina would look right as the classic dominant partner. Catarina had not offered kisses to anyone; she merely shook hands in a very no-nonsense fashion.
Chrissie followed Catarina into the room that served as a study where Catarina copied a number of files from her PC onto a memory stick which she then passed to Chrissie, who copied them onto her laptop before slipping the memory stick into her handbag. The text was in Italian but the spreadsheets were clear enough. Catarina checked the files on Chrissie’s laptop, deleting one of them before nodding her head and closing the screen. From the brief glimpse of the spreadsheets Chrissie could tell that the quality of information was good and probably more than enough for Andrew McAllister to buy into positions that would mask his illicit sources of information. She would check the details later; what she really wanted to know was why?
Arturo explained, “The man she works for is uncomfortable with Catarina because she lives with my cousin. He prefers that she lives with me or any other man come to that. But she tells him that she prefers my cousin and they fire her - simple as that.”
“So Catarina leaves with her handbag full of goodies?”
“Exactly so. Except, she will not give these goodies to a man, she spits on men, so I tell Andrew and he says you can deal with her. I say they are all crazy people.”
“So does Catarina require revenge, in cash terms?”
“No, she has a new job at the studios. She will be fine; she just wants her old boss to hurt a little bit. Andrew will know how to hurt him, in the wallet will hurt him best I think.”
At last Chrissie understood why this would not have been possible over the phone.


THE UNRAVELLING

Sir William Williams rested an arm on the back of Sue Padworth’s chair and bent forward to whisper in her ear. A waft of pungent aftershave caught in her throat and she resisted the impulse to gag.
“Have George give me a call will you sweetie.” Sue winced.
Three other Sunningdale ladies carefully looked away in case he should choose them next but they need not have worried, Sir Billy was not on his best form. He had come to the NGC from a meeting with his architects, in anticipation of finding Sue in the restaurant. He needed to speak to George urgently but preferably not in either of their offices. Dark clouds were forming over the District Planning Office in Slough. In brief, or as brief as architects ever were, the billions of pounds pumped into the denizens of Threadneedle Street had forced the government housing plans onto the back burner. Suddenly the need to build fifty thousand new homes had become a forgotten issue, as had the much-touted initiative to restructure the town planning process. Twenty seven acres of newly acquired, prime building land was beginning to look like a nice green park for the kiddies and not much else.
Sir William had diverted his entire legal department onto the task of wriggling out of the contract with Harry Joyce but so far Harry had the upper hand and Sir William had five working days to pay over the balance of eight million or default on the contract. The default clause required him to forfeit the title to the land and pay half the agreed amount by way of compensation.
Williams Fine Homes was indeed a nationwide building company with an elaborate portfolio of designs and new build properties ready to come to market all over the country. Technically, the net worth of WFH plc. amounted to billions but, like every one of its contemporaries, its book assets and the working capital were a different story. Leverage was the buzz word. Leverage sounded much more American, more energetic than gearing. Gearing had pedantry painted all over it. Either way, every asset on the WFH books had been used at least twice over to borrow the working capital to pay the building contractors who actually laid the bricks, and were presently threatening not to. Better yet, the newly installed, twelve million pound computer system gathered up every available bit of cash at five o’clock each evening and deposited it in a hedge fund from where it fully expected to get it back, with interest, in the morning. There being nothing but the best for Sir William, his personal instruction to his accountants had been to use the renowned global fund management services of Coulter Brothers. However, since Coulter Brothers had filed for bankruptcy protection under Chapter 11 in the State of New York, all depositor funds, worldwide, were frozen until further notice. All was safely gathered in and there it stayed.
Sir William needed cash, and quickly.
The housing development had seemed like a life-line. Eight million of other people’s money, paid over in cash, would have stemmed the tide, and indeed had done, for a while. Now the closing date was a mere five days away and no one had managed to unlock a brass farthing from the banks to replace it. Moreover, half of the eight million had already gone out to the contractors for the monthly wages. Sir William had spent enough years close to the ground with bricklayers, who were the salt of the earth, to learn a few choice expressions. He had never needed to air this specialised vocabulary in his own boardroom, until now.
One spark of hope lay on the horizon. Like most of those who had knelt before the Queen, for services rendered to the nation, Sir William had grown accustomed to his title and wanted more. A peerage would suit him nicely. He even had draft headed paper ready in his private study, bearing the heading, ‘Lord Williams of Heathcoat’, Heathcoat being the name of his country house in Wiltshire. He knew that the Sergeant at Arms might not be able to grant him that title but it pleased him to fondle the note paper in anticipation of the day. The spark that had now ignited in his mind offered the possibility of killing two birds with one stone.
It had begun at the last board meeting, with a chance remark by his Director of Building Services. The man was responsible for the construction aspects of WFH, and as such, was the one with the problem of how to pay the bricklayers. A large proportion of WFH bricklayers were Irish and Sir William had deliberately engaged an Irishman to oversee his construction work. The boardroom discussion, essentially between Sir William and his Finance Director, had been about the need to extend their credit when the lilting bass voice of Patrick O’Donnell drowned the pair of them.
“For the Lord’s sake why dosen’t the pair of you get over to Dublin and try the Irish banks, they’re supposed to be giving the stuff away.”
In the week that followed, Sir William, with the aid of his Finance Director and the Deputy Chairman of the Bank of Ireland, who harboured aspirations to become the President of the Republic, had outlined a scheme that might yet save the day. Sir William and WFH would build two schools in the rapidly expanding Dublin suburbs. In essence, WFH would build these schools at cost, using Dublin based labour wherever possible. In return, the Bank would open an extended line of credit to cover Sir William’s immediate needs. In Sir William’s mind, the schools would become fine examples of his noble charity works, worthy indeed of a Baronetcy. He could already feel the ermine on his collar. Unfortunately for Sir William, the whole deal required the approval of the Governors of the bank and the explicit collaboration of the Minister of Finance who was presently in London attending a meeting of European finance ministers and not due back for three days. Meanwhile, the deadline on the contract for twenty seven acres of Harry Joyce’s land grew ever closer.

§§§§§

Over dinner in Sunningdale, George listened to Sue’s lengthy description of her golf match and that odious little man who had had the nerve to lay his hand on her shoulder with such suggestion of intimacy that she was forced to blush.
George could not recall the last time he had seen Sue blush. George had his own problems and was listening with only half an ear.
“So will you phone him and tell him to keep his hands to himself.”
“Phone who?”
“Oh for God’s sake George, don’t you ever bloody well listen?”
George pushed aside his cheese plate, leaving a large piece of his favourite Stilton and the crumbs of a digestive biscuit. “I’m sorry; tell me that last bit again.”
“Sir William wants you to call him. He said it was important. And tell him to keep his hands off my body.”
“I’ll do it now.” George rose from the table and headed for the privacy of his study.
George had no great liking for Sir William. They had first met a year ago, at a Mansion House dinner where Sir William had given a particularly boring after-dinner speech on the potential impact of sub-prime mortgages on the building industry. Wilkinson’s had sponsored a table of ten guests and George had felt obliged to invite Sir William to meet them. The evening had gone well enough but he had come home with the feeling that Sir William had only told half of the story.
“Sir William, you wanted me to call.”
“Hello George, please call me Billy. I need to update you on our little project.”
“Go ahead, I’m listening.” George did not really want to call anyone ‘Billy’.
“We have a few contractual details still to sort out, planning stuff, very boring but necessary. Now then, you know there are two more share holders who wish to remain anonymous, not my idea, you understand. Well they have indicated that they are looking for a quicker exit route for their investment and so there are four shares up for grabs. It’s an opportunity George. Are you interested? I’m sure you want to speak to Sue. Call me back, but make it soon, this is too good to miss.”
George replaced the telephone in its rest having deliberately omitted to mention Sue’s personal message. The offer was tempting but, right now, he had other things on his mind. He had spent the afternoon considering how to deal with the tip that he had received from an old friend at the Financial Services Authority. Questions were being asked about the apparent good fortune that Wilkinson’s had enjoyed from the BASF deal. The pirate web site had worried him at the time but he had chosen to ignore his gut feel. On reflection, nothing would have come of it if they had not been quite so lucky with their scoop of the market. Hindsight is a wonderful thing; with hindsight he should have shared Chrissie’s information with one or two of his close contacts to make it appear less specific to Wilkinson’s. However, it was too late now. Now his problem was to find a suitable answer for the FSA, should they choose to pursue it.
George spun his chair round in circles, a habit that he tried to break. Marjorie, his trusty PA, often said that she knew when he was really worried; he spun his chair round in circles. George stopped spinning but he remained convinced that Sir William was not telling him the whole story.

§§§§§

David Morris had also not had a good day. He enjoyed his position at Andersons, it had been a well deserved promotion and he was determined to do his best for the bank and its clients. However, he had not reckoned that, as a debt counsellor, his life would be full of hardship cases, not all of which would be as easy to sort out as Emma’s had been. Today’s case had been one of many on a growing list in his in-tray. A mature couple, who had been clients of Andersons all their working lives, had planned their retirement around a house move with Andersons as the mortgage lenders. It was a familiar story. They had accepted the Andersons Low Cost mortgage scheme which was not really low cost at all. They had borrowed far more than they could afford on the premise that the first two years were one point below the base rate and the remaining twenty-five years at four points above. The Andersons mortgage advisor, Lia Patel, had assured them that, by buying a house in a better part of town, they would be able to re-mortgage as the value of their house increased. Two years into the scheme, he had lost his job and, at fifty-seven years old, he had little chance of ever getting another. Coincidentally, Andersons had stopped considering re-mortgage applications. There was no way back. David’s only solution was to arrange for Andersons to repossess the house on as gentle terms as he could manage. He had spent the afternoon on the phone to his contact at Three Trees estate agents to find a suitable rental place but the market was very tight. Unless they could find a buyer at a reasonable market price, the bank would be forced to repossess at the auction price and a two bedroom flat in Pinner was likely to become their sole retirement option.
David knew very well that the couple would see Andersons as the villains of the peace and himself as Andersons’ repre-sentative. There was little that he could do about that except do his job, as sensitively as he could. By chance, the couple’s address was quite close to Susie’s school and he knew the area. It was a shame that such a nice place would end up being sold at auction but he really had no better solution to offer. The least he could do was to break the news in person, rather than by phone or letter.
When he arrived on their doorstep, he felt a desperate urge to turn and run away. The feeling did not improve when the door opened to reveal the couple, looking distinctly older and greyer than when he had last seen them.
The couple sat together as he took them, step by step through their options, together with the scant information that he had been able to collect from Three Trees on their behalf. If they chose to put the house on the market they would still be required to find the monthly repayments until it sold and that could take months or even years in the current housing market. David knew they were already overdrawn and had no way of finding the required amount each month. If they allowed the house to be repossessed immediately they would get the balance of the auction price, after the bank had recouped the outstanding loan and their associated fees. If they were very lucky, they might get a few thousand.
“It depends entirely on who is at the auction on the day.” David concluded with nothing better to offer.
The couple sat, silently holding hands, visibly shrinking in their chairs. Tears welled in both sets of eyes as David let himself out of the house, having hated every moment of the meeting.
The temptation to resign his job at Andersons weighed heavily in his mind. He rationalised for his own benefit that no one was at fault, this was merely the product of an unfortunate turn in the market. It had been worse before and it would be worse again. These were the platitudes muttered in Andersons’ corridors of power, but he knew better. Much as he liked the girl, the commission hungry likes of Lia Patel had driven this couple into their current plight. He began to see Lia Patel as a beautiful Siren, sitting on her safe, comfortable rock, luring passing ships to their destruction. The image suited his mind but did nothing to ease his concern. He glanced at his watch as he got into his car, it was nearly four, too late to bother going back to the office. It occurred to him that he was only two streets from Susie’s school; she would be coming out about now. Emma might be at the gate to meet her; he could do with something to cheer him up. Meeting them would do it.
Parking near the school was not an option. The road in front of the school gates was jammed with several cars double parked restricting the flow of traffic to one lane. David drove along the road as slowly as he dared, hoping to find a parking place while keeping an eye open for Emma. He spotted her close to the gate, in conversation with a gaggle of other Mums, but failed to catch her attention so he was forced to drive on until he could park in the next street and run back to the school gate, hoping that she had not already left.
Susie spotted him first. “David, did you buy Mummy that enormous ring?” All eyes turned towards him and a silence descended on the Mums.
“I suppose I did.” David held out a hand to help Susie get her arm through the straps of her Dora Explorer back-pack. “Is that OK with you?”
Susie settled the back-pack and held his hand in hers. “It’s good for me David. I think Daddy’s happy about it too.”
The Mums turned as one towards Emma, demanding to see the ring and wishing her well while David and Susie sat together on the school wall and talked about the stupidity of algebra until the fuss died down.
Emma naively asked David about his day and was rewarded with the sad tale of the unfortunate couple. David didn’t usually talk about his work and she did not usually ask but in this case he needed a shoulder or maybe a whole dustbin to dump his feelings into. He deliberately drove around the block and parked across the road from the couple’s house. He could imagine the auctioneer’s call.
‘Nice four bedroom detached property, recently modernised kitchen. Quiet street, garage plus off-road parking, 100 foot garden, close to schools and amenities. Suit a young couple with kids at school.’
Emma reached across from the adjacent seat and squeezed his hand. “I’d like a place like that. At least they had the pleasure of it for a while. What do you think Suze?” Susie was busy on her phone and did not answer. But David did.
“Do you really like it?”
“I think so. I’d need to see inside.”

§§§§§

It was Saturday morning and Lucy was playing golf again with Sue. Andrew was pleased that she had found a new hobby although she did seem to be away from home a lot these days. Sue had arranged for her to become an associate member of the Sunningdale Ladies Club. He had always thought that the waiting list for Sunningdale was years long, but then, what Sue Padworth wanted, Sue Padworth usually got. According to Lucy, they were playing a match at a club down in Kent and might well stay over-night if the after-match dinner got too boozy. She had taken the Jaguar on the premise that Sue’s BMW was too small for two sets of clubs and their over-night stuff.
Andrew had made a late breakfast and was reading the paper in the kitchen when the phone rang.
“Andrew, I know it’s Saturday morning but do you have a few moments to talk about Rome?”
“Hi Chrissie, sure, go ahead.”
Chrissie explained that she was concerned about insider trading. James had promised her that he had literally stumbled on the BASF pirate web site, but she did not believe him; the chances of it turning up at that hour were too great to be a coincidence. She had no reason to suspect that he was hiding anything but, it was clearly not a public web site and as such it was privileged information. Now she was about to be implicated again with the Medicato dossier.
Andrew put down his paper, “If you’re really worried, and it can’t wait till Monday, why don’t we have lunch and talk it through?”
“I guess that would help. What do you have in mind?”
“Can you get away today?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know the Runnymede Hotel?”
“Yes.”
“One o’clock then.”
“Thanks Andrew.”
He parked the Porsche in the hotel car park and waited in the car for Chrissie’s dark blue BMW to arrive. When it did, he walked over to her car and opened the door for her, bowing formally and offering his arm with his elbow raised in an equally formal manner, “Madam, lunch is ordered.”
Chrissie laughed, took his arm and they entered the hotel reception together.
Lunch was served, eaten and cleared while they talked. Chrissie handed over the memory stick and explained what was on it. Andrew slipped the stick into his pocket as though it were some super secret object although no one around them could have ever known what it was. On the other hand, the restaurant was filling up and he was beginning to be concerned about inadvertent eavesdroppers. On impulse Andrew left the table and crossed the open space to the reception desk where he arranged for their bill to be added to the room that he booked for them to continue their conversation, in private.
A waitress delivered a large pot of coffee and two cups to their room. Chrissie opened the doors onto a Juliet balcony and stood in the open space. It was still early afternoon and the view over the river was backed by the autumn colours of the woods along the towpath. Andrew took the only armchair, leaving Chrissie to sit on the bed. She kicked off her shoes and curled her feet under her as she clutched her coffee cup in both hands.
“Does Lucy know we’re here?”
“No. She’s playing golf with Sue Padworth.”
“Ah, you mean digging sand castles in the bunkers with the dyke.” Chrissie instantly regretted her unguarded response. She looked directly at Andrew’s face which told her that he had no idea.
“Andrew, you didn’t know. I’m so sorry. I mean, everyone knows about Sue.” Chrissie’s voice betrayed a hint of panic, “She is very discrete and I’ve never heard of anything untoward. I’m sure Lucy is not a lesbian. Oh Christ, what have I said?”
Andrew sipped his coffee. “Of course we know; everyone does.” He lied so poorly that he instantly regretted trying. He’d known the Padworths for years and never suspected.
Chrissie flushed with embarrassment at her loose comment, moved round to the end of the bed opposite his chair and rested her hands on his knees. “Andrew, I’m so sorry.” Her head dropped.
Andrew put down his coffee cup and rested his hands on top of hers. “Don’t worry. Every thing will be OK, you’ll see.” He raised her chin with the tip of his index finger and moved forward.
Chrissie let him kiss her.

§§§§§

Harry Joyce also liked to spend Saturday morning reading the papers. It was a quiet hour that had been his since, well since for ever. When the kids were young, Dorothy had always kept them out of his way for that hour. Now, even though the kids had flown the nest and Dorothy had passed on, he found the habit hard to break. Harry liked to read the sports supplement and the local weekly, with the extended small ads section. Harry could read the small ads like another person reads a novel, for him there was a story in every column.
On the kitchen table, beside his empty cornflakes bowl, lay a pile of post, three pieces of which he had set out, side by side. The first was a letter from Andersons, acknowledging the deposit of five million pounds and offering a range of personalised financial services on completion of his contract with Wilson Fine Homes. The second, under their distinctive green logo, was from Roy Jones at Three Trees, suggesting that the proposed sale price to WFH was far too low and he should attempt to renegotiate the contract. The third was from Sir William requesting a meeting to discus a delay to the planned completion date.
From time to time, Harry looked over the top of his newspaper at the three letters. Each time he looked, his face creased into a smile. He had spent several hours during the past week with his solicitors. They had told him of the correspondence with WFH plc and how the original contract had been over generous in terms that were undoubtedly designed to get him on the hook before he had a better offer. The five million, as a non-refundable deposit on signing the initial contract, had in their opinion, been wholly intended to lock him into WFH at a substantially below market price. Now it seemed the boot was on the other foot. Roy Jones had produced a list of WFH building projects that were falling behind schedule due to the shortage of skilled bricklayers and other essential tradesmen. It was a pattern he had seen many times before. His advice to Harry, over a pint in the Dog & Duck, was not to panic.
Harry, with five million in the bank already, was not prone to panicking. When he closed his office door and said goodnight to Sandra on Friday, he had taken a fond look at his wall, covered in post-it notes. Everything was in order for the following two weeks. Providing no one went sick on him, every contract would happen according to plan. What was there to panic about?
His solicitor had also come up with a suggestion that took his fancy. There had been a veritable snow storm of correspondence from WFH requesting a delay to the completion date. The solicitors correctly assumed that the only reason for such a request would be that Sir William was temporarily short of cash. Their suggestion was to hang on to the five million deposit already paid over and offer to extend the completion date month by month with a forfeit of an additional half million pounds per month on the completion price. Given that the property was considerably undervalued, Sir William would probably pay a good bit extra to hang on to it.
At close of play on Friday evening, an email from WFH implied that Sir William was prepared to consider the proposed revised contract terms subject to a limit of six months or three million.
Harry returned to his paper. The Business to Business column included his advertisement for the sale of his removal business. He hadn’t thought about a price for it yet. The five vans should be worth a bit and the storage contracts were an on-going earner. He’d see that Sandra was alright.
On the opposite page was a small ad for a long winter let on an annex to a cottage in the Loire Valley. With something up to thirteen million in the bank it would be a good place to hide while he decided what to do with it all. He read the description again. He liked the idea of two bedrooms; perhaps he’d invite that young girl from the bank to be his personal financial advisor. He was more than willing to be kissed a few more times for money.
‘That sounds like it would suit me. Funny how things have a way of turning out’, he thought.


GEORGE PADWORTH

The letter on his desk was brief, only a few lines.

‘Further to our last letter, dated December 12th, it is our understanding that Wilkinson’s are in breach of the general regulations concerning insider trading. We have considered your explanations regarding the circumstances surrounding the BASF share transfer and the Xavier Hedge Funds. Neither of these explanations appears to be satisfactory.
It has also come to our attention that the unsuccessful merger between Roche and Medicato, generally understood to be the result of the disclosure of confidential information, may be a direct result of trades executed by your firm on 28th and 29th of November.
The Board request that you attend a preliminary hearing to further determine the details of these and other associated transactions.’

George walked out of his office at ten to three, without speaking to a soul. Marjorie looked up from her keyboard in time to see the back of his neatly tailored, Saville Row suit as he strode towards the elaborately panelled mahogany doors that concealed the elevator.
“Mr. Padworth.” Her voice trailed away as she realised that he had no intention of responding. Only twice in seven years as George Padworth’s PA had she known him leave the office without telling her where he was going. She returned to the letter on her screen and then, without really knowing why, she called reception.
“Susie, its Marjorie, George has just gone down in the lift. Let me know if you see him, I need to remind him about his six o’clock meeting.”
A few minutes later the phone on Marjorie’s desk rang. “Marjorie, its Susie, George just went out of the building without stopping. I’m sorry but I missed him. Do you want me to try his mobile?”
“No, that’s fine I’ll get him later.” Marjorie sat back in her chair, puzzled by George’s sudden departure. It was not like him at all. George never left the building without first asking her to call the garage to have his car sent round to the door.
In the street, George walked briskly along the pavement. The air smelt heavily of diesel fumes as a string of taxies, cars and buses rolled by. Anonymous among the crowd, he looked up and down the street as he approached the traffic lights on the corner. A small group of people stood, shoulder to shoulder, waiting to cross when the lights changed. George looked up at the light pole. The green light turned to amber and the traffic slowed to a halt. Eager pedestrians pushed forward in anticipation and, as the green man lit up, they began their surge across the road. George stood back and watched them move like a flock of birds turning over a country garden. Crossing traffic revved impatient accelerators as the opposing light flipped to green. A red, slab-fronted London bus hissed as the driver released the brakes and joined the flow, crossing the junction parallel with the stream of pedestrians. George heard the engine note dip as the automatic gearbox changed up a gear. The bus driver had no chance to stop as George threw himself into its path.

§§§§§

“Marjorie, this is Susie.”
“Yes.”
“Marjorie, there’s a police constable here asking to speak to Mr Padworth’s boss. He won’t say what it’s about; I think you should come down.”


AFTERWARDS

Jane had spent the day in Tours buying brushes, paint and a selection of watercolour tablets in various sizes. She was tired and her feet hurt from walking around the back streets of the city in search of art shops but she felt totally at ease with herself as she flung her shopping onto the passenger seat of her silver Citroen Picasso and slid into the driver’s seat. The engine purred into life and a waft of cool air emerged from the air-conditioning system. Jane sat for moment in the car park enjoying the refreshing breeze on her face before sliding the automatic gear lever into drive and turning out into the afternoon traffic. She awarded herself a merit star for coping with the French style of driving and headed north over the bridge, D37, before turning left onto the D592 towards Luynes. She mused that it must be her years as an estate agent that enabled her to remember road names and numbers; D592 to Luynes and then right onto the D49 to Beauvois. Heading west, she flicked the visor down to mask the sun-light and began to hum to herself as she drove along the empty road. The roads were never empty in England, especially Station Road Harrow.
Barely a year had passed since she signed the Act de Vente and accepted the keys to the cottage. The move had been an adventure but, with hindsight, she knew she had made the right choice. Once the business was sold and the money was in the bank, the thought of staying in Harrow had become progressively difficult. Two and a half million pounds was a lot of money, too much to stay alongside her old neighbours, some of whom fawned on her and others turned away as if the money was in some way tainted. She could have moved to a more expensive neighbourhood but then she would not have known anyone there and mother would not have enjoyed it. The move to the delights of the Loire Valley had been an excellent compromise.
The French language had proved difficult at first but when she realised that she could get by with a credit card, a pin number and the minimum of conversation, she relaxed, and the relaxing seemed to make it all so much easier.
Her mother’s hips were no better but then what else should she expect at her age? Mother had not liked the annex and preferred living in the main building, which Jane did not mind as the place was much larger than her old house in Harrow and she liked the company. They shared the kitchen but both had their own living space to retire to as and when they felt the need. Strangely neither felt the need that often.

§§§§§

Harry Joyce had all but forgotten his enquiry about the cottage in the Loire when an envelope with a French stamp turned up on his door mat.


Dear Mr. Joyce,
Thank you for your enquiry about a long term rental of the annex to my cottage. The property is available at the moment and I suggest that you come to Beauvois for a weekend, as my guest, while you determine if the location is suitable for your requirements.
Yours sincerely,
Jane Ellis

Harry read the letter twice and tugged at his chin. He had spoken with his solicitor about the sale to Sir William and the news was good. Sir William had done a deal of sorts with an Irish bank, for the full sale price and the grand signing was to be on Thursday morning at his solicitor’s office in Slough. In a way he had begun to hope that the completion date would stretch out a few months longer, the extra cash would have been fun to have but, in truth, Harry could not imagine how he would ever spend ten million pounds anyway. In a fit of generosity, Harry had sold the removals and storage business to Sandra for ten pounds. Sandra would know how to run it while none of the drivers or humpers would ever have understood Harry’s wall of post-it notes.
He had sent a message to the Asian girl at the bank, inviting her out for dinner, but she had not replied. “Gone to find another frog,” thought Harry.

§§§§§

The flight into Tours was bumpy and Harry struggled to hang on to his breakfast as the plane lurched left and right at the mercy of the turbulent air. Furthermore, the pilot seemed to have trouble landing at Tours airport and the jolt as the tyres hit the concrete all but finished Harry’s ideas of spending time here at all. Oddly enough Harry had only flown twice before, once to Spain and once to Edinburgh. By comparison Tours airport was more like the golf club and the warm air that wrapped around him as he walked across the tarmac to the arrivals door cleared his mind. Maybe it was the contrast with the sterile air inside the plane but to Harry, France actually smelt good.
Jane Ellis was waiting for him, holding a card with his name on but she need not have bothered, she was the only person waiting by the door where the customs officer idly checked the incoming passports.
The pair shook hands in a very English style and Jane escorted Harry to her car.
“I see you brought golf clubs.” Jane and Harry had exchanged lengthy phone calls about the location of Beauvois in the Loire Valley, the proximity of golf courses and the availability of fishing permits for the river Loire. Jane had enjoyed finding answers for Harry from the shop keepers in the village and from her newly installed internet connection.
“I hope you don’t mind. I thought maybe – if there was a chance. I always play on a Sunday morning at home.”
Jane smiled inwardly. Harry Joyce reminded her of Bill Acherson. It was exactly the sort of thing that Bill would have done, had he played golf. Harry was a similar height and build to Bill although Bill had more hair. She hoped Harry would like the annex; she could do with some company.
They chatted in the car, exploring the coincidences of their recent past good fortune and sharing their concerns about their respective futures. From being ordinary working people, suddenly they had both become wealthy middle-aged retirees. Now, by total chance, they had found each other to share some time together. Silently, they both thought it best to take things a step at a time.
Jane’s mother had a kettle boiling when they arrived at the cottage and Harry produced a packet of Hobnob biscuits from his bag, as a joke based on a comment from one of their earlier phone calls. Harry had asked about things that Jane missed most in France. “Nothing at all”, she had answered, “except Hobnobs.”

§§§§§

Sue Padworth stretched naked on a sun lounger beside the pool, enjoying the warmth of the summer sun on her already golden tanned body. Six months ago, a good lawyer had managed to convince the Coroner that George’s tragic, fatal accident had been the result of him being distracted due to the pressure of work and that the unwarranted hounding by the audit team from the Financial Services Authority had undoubtedly contributed to the balance of his mind being disturbed.
Sue spent a full day in the West End putting together an all black ensemble for the funeral. It amused her to think that the hat, a large brimmed lace trimmed creation in a sort of Audrey Hepburn, My Fair Lady style, would do very well for Ascot next year. She chose a backless halter-neck ‘little-black-dress’ which she wore under a knee length black lace coat, good cocktail party wear, and shoes, who else but Jimmy Choo?
There was a brief ceremony in the Methodist Chapel in Sunningdale followed by a cremation in the Slough Crematorium. Sue was not the least surprised that in the end, George had very few friends. A dead man, no matter who he is or was, can no longer be called upon for favours. George had done his last favour, to Sue.
Reluctantly George’s life assurance company paid out in full, having spitefully deducted fifteen hundred pounds for, so called, administrative expenses. The cheque for seven million pounds arrived by post to the Sunningdale house, among a dozen or so, similarly anonymous buff envelopes. Sue had not rushed to open it, she recognised the company logo on the automatic franking stamp, she knew what it contained.
Sue had avoided the neighbours since the accident; their reaction had been mixed to say the least. Privately, most of them suspected that George’s death had been suicide especially as the rumours about the various insider deals at Wilkinson’s grew daily, filling the gossip columns of the financial papers. The new head of European Investment Funds had take over from George for a short while until it became obvious that he was also implicated in an inquiry by the Italian stock exchange. For the lack of another suitable candidate, the baton passed to Gary Whitaker who had managed to find a compromise with the various regulators offices and presently kept Wilkinson’s afloat, just.
Sue reflected on the wisdom of her decision to stay out of the financial business. She could have earned every bit as much as George had she chosen, but that would have involved her in actually working when George, bless him, provided as much money as she needed.
She watched the sunlight reflect off the rippling surface of the water in the pool. A shadow moved through the water, a familiar shape, swimming breast-stroke along the mosaic floor tiles. The shape changed direction and burst upwards to the surface, emerging dripping from the water and slithering onto the tiled edge-stones in super-fluid movement.
Lucy McAllister wrapped a towel around her equally naked and tanned body.
“What time are we teeing off at Gloriette this afternoon?”

§§§§§

Chrissie and James sat on the swing seat in the garden of their home in the New Forest. James Junior and Naomi played on a trampoline, Naomi doing her best to accommodate the exuberance of her younger brother.
Au pair, Stephanie brought a tray of glasses and jug of lemonade from the kitchen, and Chrissie called the children to stop playing and come and get a drink.
“So, what happens to McAllister now?” James asked, pouring lemonade into a glass and holding it out towards Naomi.
Chrissie took the jug from him and poured a second glass for James Junior.
“I believe he has a job as a consultant for an insurance company. He’s not exactly broke but I doubt he will get another job in the City for a while, if ever.”
“Is Lucy still in France with Sue?”
“How would I know James, am I my boss’s keeper?”
“I did wonder for a while, with all those extra hours in the office - weekends and all.”
Chrissie ignored the comment. She knew that she had come very close to making a complete fool of herself with Andrew McAllister. The trip to Italy had been a huge vote of confidence in her ability to handle a potentially sensitive deal. Her ego had been stroked, flattered and then some. Luckily for her, Gary had taken the time to point out that she was already under the eye of the regulators with regard to the BASF report and the Pirate Website and she had had the sense to hand everything over to Andrew.
True, she had let Andrew make love to her in the hotel at Runnymede but never again after that. It had been so good, so spontaneous, so mind-bendingly intimate. They had spent the whole afternoon in bed together and afterwards, when she had showered, he had refused to let her wear her underwear, scrunching the delicate lace into his jacket pocket and forcing her to leave the hotel and drive home in a sensually vulnerable state.
By pure chance she had switched the car radio on while cruising along the motorway and caught a late-afternoon sports report recounting, at great length, the winners and losers in a contest for an international football trophy. A blinding flash of light in her mind lit up a mental image of her undressed body as a trophy. She envisaged Andrew nailing her best lace underwear to the wall of his study alongside a dozen other similar sets and the image stayed with her until she turned the BMW into her drive. She kicked off her driving shoes and leaned forward to put them in their usual place in the passenger foot-well. Her breasts fell forward beneath her blouse. Suddenly she heard a rapping sound on the car window and looked up to see James Junior with his palms and the tip of his nose pressed to the glass. James Junior pushed out his tongue and licked the glass, obliging Chrissie to return the gesture sticking her tongue out at him. She thanked her lucky stars that it had not been James Senior who had been at the window with an unencumbered view down to her navel.

§§§§§

Sally sat in Harry’s chair patiently transferring information from the pastiche of post-it notes on the wall, into her computer. Harry’ desk shone with the first polish it had seen in close to forty years and she was slowly but surely working her way through the piles of brochures and golf magazines that filled the remaining shelf space, spilling over onto the floor in ten different places. Seven bin liners of waste paper sat in the short passageway outside the office door, for removal if there was ever a van free to go to the tip.
There had been a party when Harry left. All the crew had wished him a fond farewell and no one had even thought to question the fact that Sally had taken over the firm. By and large, they were glad to still have a job. Sally decided not to change the name; ‘Joyce & Son’ was a well established name in the town and why bother changing the existing advertising material or the headed stationery. Harry had left her three months wages in the bank as a float and the deal with Sir William included the relocation of the removal business in the final planning scheme so, while she was sad to see Harry go, she was also alive with excitement being the owner of her very own removal business.
The phone rang and Sally lifted the handset.
“Joyce & Son Removals, how can I help you?”
“Hello, this is David Morris; could you give me an estimate for moving two houses worth of furniture into one, with the possibility of storing the left over stuff for a while, until we sort ourselves out?”

§§§§§

The Dublin flight, carrying Sir William Williams, landed at Heathrow shortly before mid-day. He trailed his cabin bag through the EU Citizen gate, silently cursing the need for such elaborate security systems and the single class seating on the shuttle service in equal measure, especially for someone as important as himself. Forced to wait in line with other equally impatient passengers, Sir William spent another twenty minutes getting to the car park and into the relative seclusion of his much loved Bentley.
He had enjoyed a splendid dinner on the previous evening with an old Masonic friend in Dublin and spent the first hour of the morning finally agreeing a comprehensive package of funding services with the Bank of Ireland; now he was eager to get back to his office but, lunch at the golf club would not go amiss along the way. He had already telephoned to his office and authorised the final payment to that wretched removal man, now he needed to set the wheels in motion to submit the draft planning application for the £100,000,000, 27 acre development that would bear his name. A new community and the Irish schools project, he could feel the sword resting on his shoulder already. Sir William felt he had earned a very large whisky.
Patrick O’Donnell had been summoned to the NGC bar and was duly waiting when Sir William swung the Bentley into the space reserved for the club Captain.
“Full steam ahead Pat.” Sir William steered Patrick immediately into his office frantically waving to the barman to follow and “Bring your order pad, I want to order lunch.”
“I’d rather we did not talk too much about this in the office until we get the local projects back on track.” Sir William leaned forward as if to share a close secret, “Never mind the cost Pat, the Bank of Ireland will be picking up the tab. Just let them see that we are busy people and getting on with their programme.”
Two days later Patrick O’Donnell was on the shuttle to Dublin to begin the recruitment of a local workforce as a visible gesture of the start on the new schools programme.
Coincidentally, as Patrick O’Donnell had left the office on his way to the waiting taxi, he held open the engraved glass door of WFH plc, for a very attractive young Asian girl who strode confidently to the reception desk announcing her appointment to see Sir William.
Lia Patel had made it her business to follow the progress of the deal that had slipped through her fingers and sensed there might be a chance to get back into the action. She had noted the payment to Harry Joyce and realised that it was way under the value of the entire plot. She also knew that Sir William had been desperately chasing funds and while she couldn’t help him with the really big numbers, she was determined to find some crumbs from the great man’s table.
Sir William’s PA held open the panelled mahogany door and Lia walked up to his desk holding out her business card.
“Please call me Lia. It’s the bank that insists on this back to front ‘PATEL Lia’ thing.” She deliberately did not add her usual flippant comment about it being an old school thing, realising that Sir William was exactly that.
Sir William lifted his head from the papers on his desk and gazed into Lia’s jet black eyes. As if on springs, he rose from his chair and leaned forward to accept the card and shake hands, instantly craving the contact with her slim creamy skinned fingers, tipped with perfectly varnished nails. Sir William appreciated attention to detail.
“Sir William”, she began, “I would like to congratulate you on your acquisition of the Joyce estate. Harry Joyce was a client of mine and I know how pleased he is with the efficiency of your office.” She paused, wondering if she was over doing the pitch. “As a Business Advisor for Anderson’s I would like to ask your advice on a new support package that we are considering.”
Sir William was already considering where to reserve a dinner table so that he could offer PATEL Lia any advice she cared to ask for.
Lia began again, “If, for example, a company such as yours were to build a large number of houses, would it be useful for you to have an off-set deal on the finance for end customer mortgages?”
“What exactly did you have in mind?” questioned Sir William.
“I assume that with such a significant project, WFH plc would build an on-site sales office. Well, suppose Andersons were to underwrite a pot of pre-approved mortgages, your agent could sign up buyers on the spot, within certain pre-agreed limits.”
“I’m beginning to like this idea, but I’m not sure how this will improve on my existing partnership with my old friend Arthur Evans at Three Trees. I need a bit more – explanation.”
Sir William’s emphasis on the last sentence told Lia that he was open to a deal. ‘Fish in a barrel’, thought Lia.
“If I could use your terminal, I could show you some speculative graphs.”
“Be my guest.” Sir William waved a hand towards the screen on his desk and rolled his oversized black leather chair backwards, inviting Lia round to his side of the desk.
Lia clicked onto the Anderson’s web site and then navigated down to her carefully prepared presentation.
“Let me show you”, she said, leaning forward and taking Sir William’s hand in hers so that they moved the mouse together.
She knew that her blouse would fall open and that the lace trim of her black silk bra would be on show, contrasting with her flawless ivory flesh tones. She sensed him inhaling the perfume of her hand cream, knowing full well that after she had left the office, he would raise the back of his hand to his nose. ‘Fish in a barrel’, she thought again.

§§§§§

“I would really, really like a tortoise.” said Susie Middleton. “My best friend Jocelyn has got a tortoise and she says you need a big garden for a tortoise. Our new garden is big enough for a tortoise. Can I please have a tortoise? Please?”
David and Emma sat together on the sofa while Susie knelt in true supplicant position on the carpet in front of them, deliberately looking at David with unblinking eyes as wide open as she could manage.
“What do you think David?” Emma swivelled round, laying her head on David’s lap, hooking her legs over the arm of the sofa and looking up into his eyes, mirroring her daughter’s pleading pose.
“Charles Darwin says that tortoises are close cousins of the dinosaurs and every bit as old. Who will look after it? Who knows what dinosaurs eat?” David already knew that he would concede, a tortoise was as good as ordered.
“I’ll feed it”, Susie jumped in, “My best friend Jocelyn must know what dinosaurs eat. I’ll find out from her.”
Emma said nothing, smiling up at David, pleased that Suze and David had become such good friends so quickly.
David continued to tease Susie. “Do you think Jocelyn knows what sort of a house the tortoise will need to sleep in?”
“I suppose.”
“Who will build a house for a tortoise?”
“You will David, won’t you?”
“Only if you help me.”
“I will, I will. Can we go and get one now?”
Emma chipped in, “We could go to the pet shop at the garden centre on Saturday. Meanwhile we have still got a whole load of boxes to unpack. Suze, go to your bedroom and tidy up your books.”
As Susie skipped away to the door, heading for the stairs she called back, over her shoulder.
“David.”
“Yes.”
“Who is Charles Darwin? Does he work at the Bank?”
Emma convulsed into laughter on David’s lap while David pressed his hand over her mouth.
“Not exactly Susie, I’ll explain later.” He need not have bothered; Susie was already in her bedroom stacking books onto a shelf.

Impressum

Tag der Veröffentlichung: 16.03.2010

Alle Rechte vorbehalten