touched that you rushed over to see me but there was no need, dear boy. Take the rest of the day off.’
His father beamed at him as if he was giving Max a great treat.
‘Why don’t you go and visit your mother? Have you heard from her at all?’
‘I can’t take the day off.’ Max refused to be diverted. He held up the piece of paper his PA had pressed into his hand the second he had walked into DL Media’s headquarters. ‘What on earth is this? Why didn’t you consult me?’
His father leaned back and stared at him, his chin propped on his steepled hands. It was a look he had probably seen in a film: the wise patriarch.
‘Max.’ There was steel in his voice. ‘I know your grandfather gave you a lot of leeway, but can I remind you this is my company now?’
Just.
Max held a third outright, his father another third. But, crucially, the final third, the controlling share, was held in trust by his father until he retired. Then it would go to Max. If there was a company left by then. Or if Max didn’t ask the board for a vote of no confidence first...
‘Grandfather did not give me a lot of leeway.’ He could feel the paper crumple, his grip tightening even more as he fought to control his temper. It was so typical of his father to reduce all his years of hard work and training to some sort of glorified work experience. ‘He trusted me and trusted my judgement.’
As he never trusted you... The words were unsaid but hung in the air.
‘Look, Dad, we have a five-year plan.’ A plan his father seemed determine to ignore. ‘A plan that kept us profitable through the financial crisis. We need to focus on the core business strengths, not get distracted by...by...’ Max sought the right diplomatic words. Shiny new toys might be accurate, but they were unlikely to help the situation. ‘By intriguing investments.’
Steven Loveday sighed, the deep breath resonating with regret. ‘The problem with your grandfather was that he had no real vision. Oh, he was a media man through and through, and he knew publishing. But books are dead, Max. It’s time for us to expand, to embrace the digital world.’
Max knew his mouth was hanging open, that he was gaping at his father with an incredulous look on his face, but his poker face was eluding him. His grandfather had had no vision? Was that truly what his father thought?
‘He took DL global,’ he managed after a long pause. ‘Made us a household name.’
A name his father seemed determined to squander. What was it they said? One generation to found, another to expand and the third to squander? It looked as if Steven Loveday was going to prove the old adage right in record time.
Max’s hands curled into fists. Not if I have anything to do with it.
‘Everyone wanted this, Max. Have you seen the concept? It’s brilliant! Bored and want to go out? Just log on and see who’s free—make contact, get a reservation at a mutually convenient restaurant, book your taxi home. And if the evening goes well you can even sort out a hotel room. It’s going to revolutionise online dating.’
Possibly. But what did online dating have to do with publishing?
Max began to walk up and down the thickly carpeted office floor, unable to stay standing meekly in front of his father’s desk like a schoolboy any longer.
‘But we can’t afford it. And, more crucially, it’s not core business, Dad. It doesn’t fit with the plan.’
‘That was your grandfather’s plan, not mine. We have to move with the times, Max.’
Max bit back a sigh. ‘I know. Which is why we were the first to bring eBooks to the mainstream. Our interactive travel guides and language books are market leaders, and thanks to our subscription service our newspapers are actually in profit.’
He shouldn’t need to be explaining this to his father. Max had always known that his father would inherit the controlling share of the company, even though Steven Loveday had only played at working over the last thirty years. He also knew how hard his grandfather had struggled with that decision, how close he had come to bypassing his son altogether for his grandson. But in the end even his hard-nosed grandfather hadn’t been able to bring himself to humiliate his only child with a very public disinheriting.
And now the family business was paying the price.
The increasingly awkward silence was just beginning to stretch to excruciating when a loud and fast hip-hop tune blared out of the phone on his father’s desk. It was the kind of ringtone Max would expect from a streetwise fifteen-year-old, not a fifty-eight-year-old man in a hand-made suit and silk tie, but his father’s eyes lit up as he grabbed the telephone, his body swaying a little to the furious beat.
‘Sweetie?’
Max could just make out a giggle from the caller. Not that he needed to hear the voice to know who it was. The inappropriate ringtone, the soppy expression on his father’s face, the nauseating tone of his voice...
It had been six months. If his father was playing true to form he should be getting bored with his latest crush by now. But then none of this latest infatuation was running true to form. Not bringing it out in the open, not leaving Max’s mother and setting up a love-nest in a Hartford penthouse... No, Steven Loveday’s little affairs of the heart were usually as brief as they were intense, but they were always, always clandestine.
This...? This almost felt...well, serious.
His father looked over at Max. ‘Mandy sends her love.’
Max muttered something inaudible even to himself. What was the etiquette here? Just what did you say to your father’s mistress? Especially a mistress several years younger than yourself—and your own ex-PA. She’d giggled a lot less then.
To occupy himself while his father continued to croon sweet nothings down the phone, he pulled out his own phone and began to scroll through the long list of emails. As usual they were multiplying like the Hydra’s head: ten springing forth for each one he deleted. His father’s name might top the letterhead, but Max’s workload seemed to have tripled in the last year no matter how many sixteen-hour days and seven-day weeks he pulled.
Delete, forward, mark for attention, delete, definitely delete... He paused. Another missive from Ellie Scott. What did Miss Prim and Proper want now?
Max had developed a picture of Ellie Scott over the last two months of mostly one-sided emails. She had to be of a similar age to his recently deceased great-aunt, probably wore tweed and had those horned reading glasses. In tortoiseshell. He bet that she played bridge, golfed in sturdy brogues and breakfasted on kippers and anaemic toast.
Okay, he had based her on all those old classic series featuring British spinsters of a certain age. But the bossy, imperative, clipped tone of her emails made him pretty certain he couldn’t be that far off in his estimate.
And she lived to plague him. Her requests for information, agreement, input and, worst of all, his actual presence had upped from one a week to almost daily. Sure, the money his great-aunt had left to start a literary festival in a tiny village in the middle of nowhere might seem important to Miss Scott, but he had actual real
