someone to talk to; Gabriel had phoned several times, but
she simply didn’t feel ready for the emotional pressure of
seeing him. She had begun to recognise slowly, and with a
sense of dreadful irony, the true implications and complexity
of the loss of Louise from her life, Louise who had
always listened, always understood: who had counselled,
sympathised, teased, been on her side. Who would, who
could replace her? It was not just a betrayal, she could see
that now; it was a death in her life, and one she would
never recover from.
‘I just wondered,’ said Gabriel now, still talking to
Melanie, ‘I just wondered if you had any idea if she was
avoiding me. I rang her three times over the weekend and
she just said she wanted to be alone.’
‘Look,’ said Octavia, forcing a smile, trying to sound
bright and in charge of things, ‘I am here, you know. I can
talk. You could try asking me yourself.’
‘I did,’ said Gabriel, ‘all weekend.’
‘He did,’ said Melanie.
Octavia burst into tears.
Later, when Melanie had gone — ‘You can have ten
minutes, Gabriel, then I’ll be in with a large bowl of cold
water to throw over you both, we really do have work to
do,’ — and she was sipping some strong coffee, she said, ‘I’m
sorry. I just felt so wretched all weekend. I feel as if I’ve had
- no, I’ve still got - some terrible illness. There’s a lot I
haven’t told you. It’s so — oh, I don’t know. I’m sorry. But
it is lovely to see you.’
‘Well, it’s not bad seeing you,’ he said, ‘and it’s all right, I
understand. I think. But when can I see you? Or are you
still not ready?’
‘I would like it,’ she said quickly. ‘I really would. It’s
difficult though, and the children are very upset, specially Poppy.’
‘Of course they are. But they could surely spare you for
an hour or two? This evening maybe.’
‘That would be lovely,’ said Octavia. ‘Yes, we could
have an early supper. But I mustn’t be long.’
She and Tom had agreed to meet that evening at home,
to talk, to try and decide what to do with their lives. Or
what was left of them.
‘You’re on. How about high tea? Very appropriate. I’ll
pick you up here — when?’
‘Six?’
‘Fine.’
She reached up to kiss him; the door opened.
‘I said ten minutes,’ said Melanie. ‘Sarah Jane, bucket of
cold water please.’
‘I’m going,’ said Gabriel. ‘Right now.’
He disappeared, his shambling body in its unpressed
trousers and checked country shirt incongruous in the chic
office. Octavia looked after him smiling. He was so …
‘Nice,’ said Melanie, looking after him. ‘Really nice.
Very sexy. As sexy as his voice. Just what you need,
Fleming. Now come on, we have work to do, remember?’
Nico Cadogan had been heard to describe himself a
mischief connoisseur. ‘I would never make the stuff myself,
but I do know a good sample when I see it. Like wine. I
can smell it.’
He did of course make it himself from time to time; but
he found the true pleasure in adding to a brew, stirring in
whatever ingredients came to hand. And just at the
moment, he found himself confronted by an excellent
sample. The fun to be extracted by helping, just slightly
unorthodoxly, a man whom he not only liked and admired,
both personally and professionally, but who was also loathed
and under attack by the rival for his lady love’s hand. ‘This,
Cadogan,’ he said, smiling into the mirror that Monday
morning, ‘is truly vintage stuff.
It had been true, what he had told Marianne on Saturday;
he was in love with her. She seemed to him what he had
been seeking for many years: beautiful, intelligent, charming
and — most surprising of all perhaps — nice. Extremely
nice. Her struggles over her disloyalty to Felix — however
justified — had been tiresome but at the same time infinitely
touching and rather pleasing. There was, in spite of her
sense of humour, and sense of fun, an underlying seriousness
to her. She thought carefully about everything, both
large and small; none of her judgments was reckless or even
haphazard, whether they concerned a choice of pudding, of
politics — or something much more personal. He loved her
too for her intense concern for her children. Nico had no
children, no experience of true parental love, having been
raised in nanny-run nurseries and dispatched to school at
eight, but he could sense nevertheless that the way
Marianne directed her family was the right one.
And then she was easy to please: in a sophisticated
woman it was a rare quality. She enjoyed things: food,
wine, clothes, conversation, her wretched golf, and, it
seemed, sex. He was quite shaken by how wonderfully sexy
she was. He had expected responsiveness, a capacity for
pleasure, a desire to please; he had not expected quite the
level of energy, the exuberance and - as she slowly grew
more familiar to him — the creativity.
‘Intelligent, that’s what it is, that body of yours,’ he had
said, stroking it, smiling at her, as they drank buck’s fizz in
bed, and she had said intelligent maybe, but it had seen
thirty-nine summers and it wasn’t quite what it had been.
‘Nonsense. So you were married at—’ and she had said
eighteen, she was a child bride, and that her parents had
been very worried about it. ‘Quite right, too,’ he had said,
so they should have been. What kind of man would have
taken advantage of someone so young, so inexperienced,
and landed her with a child just a year later?
‘Ten months later, actually,’ she had said, ‘and I wanted
it, I wanted that desperately. And I was right, you see. Here
I am with three nearly grownup friends.’ Adding more soberly that she felt she was hardly grown up herself.
‘I find you quite grown up enough,’ he had said, and
removing her champagne glass, had set about proving it.
That was the occasion he had discovered the inventiveness.
He
was thinking about it now, when the phone rang: it
was Felix.
Nico Cadogan was not a natural villain. He felt a stab of
guilt. ‘Good morning, Felix.’
‘Look, just a quick call. I want you to do me a favour.’
‘Yes?’
‘Reconsider resigning your account from Fleming Cotterill.’
The guilt eased. ‘I’m sorry, Felix. I have no intention of
doing that.’
‘I don’t think you understand. The man is not to be
trusted. I wouldn’t let him have a farthing of my own
money. Not now.’
‘But why not? What’s he done?’
‘He has set out to destroy Octavia, destroy their
marriage.’
‘That doesn’t affect his business judgment.’
‘I disagree. He’s a liar, a cheat. Not the sort of person
you’d want to do business with.’
‘Felix, the City is full of liars and cheats. All conducting
their financial affairs with great acumen. Look, if you want
to do down your own son-in-law, for what are clearly
purely personal reasons, you must do so. I’m not interested
in helping you.’
‘But it’s a lot worse than you think. Far worse things
have been going on. He—’
‘Felix, no offence, but I really don’t want grisly
extramarital details just now. Too early, in the day and in
the week and indeed any time. I’m sorry. Good morning to
you.’
Absolutely no guilt left. Felix was a monster. And in
danger of making a total fool of himself. When it came to Octavia, the brilliant mind was dull and blunted. It was almost frightening.
Marianne phoned; briefly, he told her what Felix had
said. ‘Oh God,’ she said, ‘poor Felix. I’ll have to talk to
him. Nico, what have I done?’
‘What any sensible person would have done,’ he said.
‘The man’s mad. Now don’t start feeling guilty. He still has
Octavia.’
He still had Octavia, Felix thought, putting the phone
down with a hand that shook horribly. He felt very dizzy
suddenly; dizzy and faint.
He found it very hard to believe what Marianne had just
said to him, what she had done. That she could not
continue to see him while he was working so savagely
against Tom. And when he had asked her how she knew,
she told him. That Nico Cadogan had told her.
‘And why is he talking to you? Are you seeing him? A lot
of him?’
And she had taken a deep breath and said that yes, she
was seeing him. ‘I do realise you will probably never
forgive me. But I simply cannot continue any longer in our relationship while this — insanity over Octavia continues.’
‘What insanity?’ he had said. ‘I’m only trying to protect
her, help her, get that - that creature out of her life, where
he can’t hurt her any more.’
‘You can’t protect her,’ she had said, her voice very low,
very intense. ‘I’ve been telling you for so long, she’s an
adult, Felix, she’s thirty-six years old, she’s not yours to
protect any more, leave her alone for just once in her life,
let her be. Let her work things out for herself in her own
way.’
‘I am shocked at you,’ he had said simply, ‘shocked and
very hurt. She would be too. As you must know.’
The shock and hurt he felt himself were far greater on
Octavia’s behalf than on his own.
‘I’m going out,’ Tom said to Barbara briefly, ‘be about an
hour. Then Aubrey and I have a lunchtime meeting. I don’t want to be disturbed by anybody.’
‘Tom, Nico Cadogan phoned. Twice. He wants to speak
to you very urgently.’
Tom really couldn’t face telling Cadogan of all people
that Fleming Cotterill was about to go belly up. Not until it
was beyond argument.
‘Tell him I’m out of town,’ he said, ‘tell him I’ll phone
him later this afternoon.’
It would be done by then: the bankruptcy petition would
have been filed. There would be no going back.
Without anything being known quite for sure, the talk had
begun about the Fleming marriage; had anything been
heard about it, people were saying; and then did anyone
think that whatever it was might be true; and then had
anyone heard what had actually happened; fed, perversely,
by the marriage’s apparent earlier perfection, by jealousy, by
resentment, by schadenfreude the rumour grew, until it was
‘of course you knew’, and ‘of course I always said’ and ‘of
course it was inevitable’; and thus in days, hours almost, the
story became fact, discussed and debated in restaurants,
across bars, over lunch, through dinner. The details were
hazy, the possibility of a break-up were vague, nobody
knew quite what had brought it about (although a lot of
people knew people who did), only that something
assuredly must have done. As both the Flemings were
constantly and separately with all manner of people, stories
ran swiftly wild: Tom was having an affair with a researcher,
Octavia with an editor; Tom had been seen with an actress,
Octavia with an entrepreneur. Most people were sorry, a
few were pleased; hardly anyone was indifferent. The
marriage had been too well known, too much of an entity
for that; it was something impossible not to have a view on.
One of the people who had a view — and who was if not
pleased, then certainly not sorry - was Lauren Bartlett. She
had always found Octavia sanctimonious, too good to be
true, undeserving of Tom’s easy, charming devotion. And the marriage had always seemed just a bit too perfect: they just didn’t come like that. Not in real life.
Tom had been certainly looking a bit rough recently, she
reflected. He was obviously under a lot of strain. And he
was actually so loyal to Octavia, supporting her in her
career while his own was so demanding.
Well, it was gloves-offtime. She’d been waiting a while
for the opportunity to get to work on Tom Fleming.
Absolutely one of the most attractive men she knew. It
wasn’t just the looks and the charm, not even the style; it
was that slight touch of awkwardness under the smooth that
was so tantalising. A bit of grit in the mix. Very sexy. A
quick lunch maybe, that would be best, under the guise of a
possible new contract. At least she could find out if there
was someone else. Someone serious, that was. She could use
the device of the friend with the account, the one with the
chemist’s chain. Probably too late, but she could string
things along. And Tom had obviously been desperate for
the business.
Yes, that would be the way to go. She’d ring Tom’s
mobile straight away.
He answered it at once; there was an odd hum in the
background.
‘Tom?’
‘Yes. Who is this?’
‘Tom, it’s Lauren. Lauren Bartlett. Hi. Tom, I just
wondered if—’
‘Lauren, I’m sorry, I’m a bit tied up right now.’
‘Of course. It’s just that I spoke to my friend again, the
one who might have wanted to appoint you, you know?’
‘Oh, yes?’ He didn’t sound very enthusiastic.
‘There still might be a chance. If you’re interested, I can
fix a meeting, I think.’