business made a reasonable profit, and as a leading litigation barrister, a Q.C., Marcus earned good fees, but living in London was expensive. Her ex-husband had remarried almost immediately after their divorce and had a second young family, and was simply not in a position to continue to contribute to Gavin and Tom’s education—at eleven and thirteen respectively both of them still had several years of education ahead of them, especially if, as she hoped, they both went on to university.
Her tension eased as the traffic suddenly started to move.
It was just the miserable weather that was making her feel so on edge, she reassured herself. At this time of the year, everyone had had enough of cold and damp and was looking forward to some sun.
She and Marcus had hoped to spend a week with friends in Italy in May, but one of Marcus’s court cases had been brought forward and now it looked as though their week in Tuscany would have to be cancelled.
As she turned into the underground car park beneath the block that housed her office, the sleet started.
It was just gone half-past nine, she noted as she locked the car and headed quickly for the lift.
The office block was a modern one, centrally situated in the heart of the city and a good catchment area for their business. Eleanor and Louise had agonised for weeks on whether or not to take the lease. It had been expensive even then, and in those days neither of them had been sure of what volume of work they could expect.
That they had met at all had been pure chance. They had literally bumped into each other when Eleanor had been delivering some translations she had just completed for a large firm of importers.
Louise had been there on a similar errand and, once they had discovered that their language skills complemented rather than competed with one another, it hadn’t taken long for them to decide to pool those skills and set up business as a formal partnership.
It had been a decision which had paid off well; their reputation had spread by word of mouth and within four years of becoming partners they were successful and well known enough to feature in a rash of magazine and newspaper articles about the emergence of the successful businesswoman of the Eighties.
In those days both of them had been single, Eleanor with a bad marriage and an even worse divorce behind her and only too thankful to fling herself head-first into the demands of establishing a new career, not just because she needed the money, but because it also offered her a much needed solace for her wounded pride and battered self-esteem; and Louise, eight years her junior, just emerging from the trauma of ending an intense and destructive relationship with a married man.
Physically so very opposite—she tall and fair, quiet and restrained in both her thoughts and her actions, Louise small, brunette and impulsively vivacious—they had shared a common need to heal the wounds life had inflicted on them, which had bonded them together in their determination to make their partnership work.
And it had worked… Had worked? Eleanor frowned as the lift reached her floor, and then shrugged as the doors opened. Had worked and was still working, she assured herself firmly.
The office block had originally appealed to both of them because of the brightness of its new design. Built around an atrium, it had a spacious, open feel to it which was emphasised by the atrium itself.
Today, though, the marble and chrome seemed to give off a chilly air that made Eleanor shiver slightly.
They had probably turned down the heating again, she reflected as she headed for her office. All the tenants had been complaining about the rapid escalation not just in their rent but in their overheads as well. As she glanced down into the atrium itself she noticed that some of the plants looked over-green and slightly shiny, more as though they were artificial than real, she reflected with distaste, her attention caught by the sterile perfection of a white lily.
Such plants did not belong under London’s sleet-laden grey skies, or imprisoned here, forced into life beneath their covering of glass and heat.
Claire, their receptionist, looked up with a relieved smile as Eleanor walked into the foyer.
She and Louise had chosen the décor for their offices with great care, calling on an interior designer friend of Eleanor’s for confirmation of their choice, but what had seemed energetic and appropriate in the Eighties now looked brash and slightly harsh, as inappropriate for the grey skies of recession as the plants in the atrium were for the grey skies of London perhaps.
‘Monsieur Colbert has arrived,’ Claire told her. ‘I offered him coffee but he refused.’
Thanking her, Eleanor went through into her own office, removing her coat and checking her appearance quickly before hurrying through into the room she and Louise used for negotiating with clients.
Pierre Colbert was French, with business connections which brought him regularly to London and which took him just as regularly to all the other major European cities. He acted as an agent for several large clothing designers and wholesalers, the type who were two steps down from the ‘named’ designers and two up from the general run of high street suppliers.
His business, if they could secure it, would prove an extremely valuable addition to their portfolio. Eleanor had heard via another client that he was unhappy with his existing translators, and she had made a tentative approach to him suggesting that it might be worthwhile their getting together.
She had been warned that as well as liking to get his pound of flesh he was also rather difficult to deal with, and, as she walked into the office and saw the impatience with which he was regarding her, her heart sank a little.
She didn’t show her feelings, though, giving him a calm smile and extending her hand.
‘I’m sorry I’m late,’ she apologised. ‘The traffic…’
‘The English do not know how to drive,’ he interrupted her brusquely. ‘In Paris we have traffic; here in London you have chaos…’
‘Perhaps you would like a cup of coffee,’ Eleanor offered, side-stepping his aggression.
‘Coffee?’ He smiled sourly. ‘I think not.’
Was he deliberately trying to goad her into a response, Eleanor wondered, or did he simply not realise how rude he was being? She had met other men like him, men who were plainly uncomfortable with and antagonistic towards women in business, and she had developed her own method of dealing with them.
Once, in the aftermath of a long, lazy afternoon of lovemaking, Marcus had told her with sleepy pleasure as he ran his hand lingeringly over her warm, relaxed flesh, pausing to cup her breast and slowly caress the still erect peak of her nipple, ‘I love this peace you always carry with you, Nell. It’s such a pleasure to be with a woman who is so calm and secure. It makes it so easy to love you.’
It had been shortly after that that he had proposed to her.
‘No, we don’t seem to have developed the skill of making really good coffee, do we?’ she agreed with a smile. Another woman might have balked at using such placatory tactics, Eleanor admitted, but for her they were almost a way of life… peace and calm, good relationships, concord and harmony were important to her. Too important?
‘Your coffee, like your bread, is uniquely irreplaceable,’ she added, ‘although I understand that Marks and Spencer are doing their best. Apparently
