She pushed open the door to see him sitting with his head in his hands, alone at the round table where he held meetings.
‘I’m so sorry, Bea.’ He looked up and Bea could see he was as tired as he sounded. She hated to think it, but suddenly he looked old.
‘But what happened?’ She went over to sit with him.
‘I wanted to tell you but Piers acted so fast, there was no time. He and the other Rockfast directors have obviously been planning something like this for ages and then Adam suddenly stepped into the frame. Piers knew I was ready to go, and as for Louis – a casualty of war, I’m afraid.’ He ran his hand through his thinning grey hair. ‘Piers warned me on Monday that they were talking to Adam but I didn’t take him seriously. Then he turned up here today and told me the plan. He’d even spoken to Sam and Louis during the week without mentioning it to me, swearing them to silence. I was just the last nail they needed to hammer in. Big pay-off. I couldn’t say no.’ Bea could see how shocked he was by the way his career had ended so abruptly and, more importantly, out of his control. Deciding to quit when it suited you was one thing. Being sacked according to someone else’s agenda was quite different.
‘What do you think is going to happen? Is it going to be the long night of the P45s?’ Bea moved over to the desk where she knew Stephen kept some whisky for emergencies in one of the drawers. Pulling the top one open, she took out the bottle and poured them both a large one. She sat down again.
‘Well, I’m going to have to play the game and show Adam the ropes but . . . honestly? Adam is bound to have his own ideas about how to run the place. I don’t think the changes will end here.’
A penny half dropped. ‘Me?’ Bea felt a rush of anxiety.
‘Maybe. But don’t spend the weekend worrying. We’ll just have to see what happens next week.’ He downed his whisky in one gulp. ‘Bea, I’m sorry but I’m going to have to get off. I’ve got a lot of things to talk about at home.’
‘Of course. I’ve got to get back too.’ Bea left Stephen as he took his old blue cord jacket from the back of his chair and picked up his battered leather book-bag.
‘Call me if you want to talk about anything over the weekend.’
‘Of course. Thanks.’
Back in her office, she sat thinking. Don’t spend the weekend worrying. How could she not, for God’s sake? On the other hand, nothing she could do would affect what happened next week, so best just to follow Stephen’s example and go home. She didn’t feel like joining the others at the pub although, by the time she got home, Ben would probably be on his way out for the night. That would give her time to think more carefully about her conversation with Stephen. On the verge of shutting down her computer, she registered the flashing icon that alerted her to new emails. Of course. She opened her mailbox. Before she went, there were two she wanted to check. First Let’s Have Lunch. Their communication was brief.
Can you make lunch on Tuesday? If yes, Tony Castle will be expecting to meet you at 1 p.m. at Belushi’s in Jordan Street, WC2.
Sod it. Why not? Life couldn’t be much worse. Fine. I’ll be there, she typed.
She opened the one from Mark.
Enjoyed meeting you very much. I thought we might have a drink at the Grape Pip, off Regent Street. Friday week any good? All best, Mark
What harm could one more meeting do? She’d go for a drink with him and see what happened. Besides, she told herself again, she must try not to judge too quickly. Give the guy a chance. She might at least try to get her full £125 worth.
Great she typed. I enjoyed lunch too. (A small white lie in the interest of good relations.) Let me know what time’s best for you.
With that, she shut the screen down, grabbed the manuscript of the novel that she had to finish editing before meeting the author the following week, and walked out.
Chapter 3
‘Come and sit down, Paul. Please.’
Kate lay back on the leg of the white L-shaped sofa, patting the seat beside her. In front of her, Sky News was playing on the wall-mounted TV but with the volume turned right down. Exhaustion gave way to relaxation as her body zinged with the relief of at last being almost horizontal after a hard day’s work. She watched her husband busy preparing their supper in the state-of-the-art kitchen area at the centre of their open-plan basement.
Although he was going grey at last, Paul still had the look of the handsome man she had met thirty years ago: tall, athletic and perennially tanned; his strong jaw sagging a bit; deep laugh lines bracketing his wide mouth; wiry eyebrows now out of control; the round wire-framed spectacles that he had always favoured. He had remained slim despite his well-known love of food and drink, so he still looked good in his clothes. This evening he was casual in cream chinos and a loose white linen shirt. When he walked into a room, heads still turned, though perhaps not for quite as long as they once did, and people still flocked to him, wanting to be in his shadow. But, out of everyone, he had chosen Kate. With her petite, dark, retiring appearance and in the definitive way she approached the world, she was almost his polar opposite. It still surprised her that they had ended up together.
‘I’ll be there in a minute.’ He looked up from what he was doing, giving her the oddly attractive asymmetric grin that had never failed to captivate her. ‘I’ve just to get the timing right with this cheese soufflé or I’ll ruin the thing.’
‘I thought we were having omelettes.’ Kate tried to hide her disappointment. All she wanted was something plain and simple, something that didn’t demand such attention. She wished she had insisted on her original plan of dragging him out to their local Italian after work. If they were there, at a table for two, they’d be forced to talk to one another over the trademark gluey pasta, to communicate about something other than Paul’s culinary efforts. Not that she should complain. The fact that he was a keen cook meant that she rarely had to lift a finger in the kitchen except for the odd bit of dutiful washing-up. Her friends always commented on how lucky she was to have him. Even when he’d had a long day in the City, and often with more work in his briefcase for later, he could still muster the energy to knock up a decent meal. However, his culinary enthusiasm (was there such a thing as culinary obsessive compulsive disorder? she wondered) was something she didn’t share. Falling through the door, exhausted after an evening session at the surgery, she was incapable of doing any more than flinging a ready-cooked meal from the freezer into the oven.
She picked up the latest BMJ from the top of the small pile of medical journals that served as a constant reminder of how much and how often she should attempt to catch up with the ever-advancing world of medicine. She put it down again. ‘You wouldn’t believe how late I ran today. I could have spent all morning with the first three patients alone.’ A GP who prided herself on her ability and commitment, she was often frustrated by the necessary time restrictions put on her work. ‘I kicked off with a guy who claimed he’d collected enough anti-depressants to kill himself, so that was a suicide risk assessment. Then, as he was leaving, he happened to mention that he had a jock itch so I had to look at that, which took ages.’
Paul’s full attention was on the window of the oven as he watched and waited for his soufflé to rise, so Kate just carried on, assuming he was listening. ‘After him, I had a dear eighty-three-year-old who had nothing wrong with her but who wanted to tell me about everything that was going on in her life. And then I had to refer a woman for a termination, which took ages because she couldn’t decide which hospital she wanted me to refer her to. How was
