Mistakes We Make (32 page)

‘How do you know him?’

‘He’s my new friend Evan’s second cousin once removed, or something. Evan says he’s a techie geeky entrepreneur type. He’s a bit of a legend in his family.’

‘A techie geeky entrepreneur type? What the hell’s that mean?’

‘I have no idea. I’m a mere banker. Come and meet him anyway. Evan says he’s looking for lurve.’

‘He’s not gay?’

Julian looked affronted. ‘Darling. Would I suggest it if he were?’

‘And what makes you think I’m looking for lurve, as you put it?’

‘Aren’t you?’

‘Not really, but I’ll come. A night out might do me good.’

‘Terrific. Can you make Vinopolis by half seven?’

‘I should think so.’

‘Great. He’ll be wearing a red carnation.’

‘Won’t you be there?’

Julian smiled. ‘Just teasing, darling. Evan and I will be there. To start with, at any rate.’

It was one of those evenings when nothing went badly wrong, but nothing worked out the way it might have done either. Molly warmed to Evan instantly, even though he couldn’t have been more different from Julian. He was a chef, and although he could hardly be described as fat, his face had a pleasing softness. She found him approachable and refreshingly open, and she could see at once that they were falling for each other.

David Swift was another matter entirely. He wasn’t at all like the ‘techie geeky’ types she knew from work. They tended to be skinny and intense with an impenetrable vocabulary. Not that they weren’t nice guys. Some of them were even quite fanciable. If David was geeky, he hid it well. He was tall, obviously very fit, with a quick smile and smart clothes, and the kind of charm, she suspected, that would have women scurrying in his direction from all corners. She also – though she could not define why – suspected the charm might be all on the surface. She was prepared to be proved wrong.

‘I hear Fletcher Keir Mason is doing extraordinarily well,’ he said as they shook hands.

‘Thank you.’ She tried not to look startled. It was the kind of comment she might expect at a business meeting, not on a night out.

‘You’ve only been in business for a few months, isn’t that right? Yet already, my little moles tell me, you’re shaking up the world of marketing.’

Instantly, she was thrown on the defensive. ‘Well, we try to be innovative, but our main priority is always to provide the best possible service for our clients.’

‘Sure, sure.’ He leaned towards her and lowered his voice. ‘And if you can add a premium for that kind of service and get away with it, why not? Good business, I’d say.’

Molly blinked and looked away. She was rapidly forming an aversion to David Swift.

‘Ah, thank you,’ a waiter had arrived with a bottle of champagne on ice, ‘good stuff.’

The champagne was Julian’s treat, but David took charge of it.

‘Did Julian tell you I have my own business?’

‘He said you were an entrepreneur. What do you do?’

Molly regretted the question almost immediately, because he launched into a complicated explanation about the advanced digital technologies he was exploiting and selling on ‘to companies just like yours, actually’.

Oh God. First impressions were playing out exactly as expected. It was going to be a long evening. She glanced at Julian, hoping against hope that he would see her discomfort and come up with a rescue plan, but he was deep in conversation with Evan. Did men handle these things better? she wondered. Would Julian, in her situation, be more straightforward, stand up, say, ‘This is not going to work. Goodbye.’

She cursed the courtesy that Billy had bred in her. She would be polite. She tried to make allowances. He must be nervous. When he relaxed, he would offer a softer self for her attention.

But the evening did not improve. Julian and Evan excused themselves and slipped away in the throng before Molly had the wit to make her own excuses. David said, ‘There’s a small restaurant close by, on the up. Impossible to get a table, you know, but—’ He tapped the side of his nose.

She accompanied him with reluctance.

It wasn’t all bad. He had moments of promise – when talking of his sister, for example, who had Down’s syndrome.

‘She’s a star. We’re all so proud of her. She smiles at everything.’ His own smile at this point was the first genuine one she had glimpsed and it gave her hope – but it vanished abruptly, as though he regretted allowing her to glimpse something of what made him human.

Was she becoming like this? Obsessed with her work, her small talk stilted, her friendships pitifully limited? She picked over her
raviolo
 – single, swimming in a sea of pea green
velouté
, and quite perfect. The restaurant was a place for easy companionship. Around her, couples leaned towards each other in familiar intimacy, friends shared jokes over a fine claret or an
île flottant
and a glass of umber Sauternes. It could have been a place for lurve.

‘Have you been married?’ she asked, thinking of Adam.

He looked startled. ‘Haven’t we all?’ He took her hand across the table before she could withdraw it. ‘We all carry baggage, at our age.’

It was an insight, at least. And honest. She prepared to soften.

‘All the more important, don’t you think, to understand what we each want before we embark into our little boat on the storm-tossed waters of life?’

Oh God, such a cliché. Molly swallowed, thinking longingly of Julian’s gentle perception and Evan’s straightforwardness. Where were they now? Enjoying a very unpretentious drink in a fun-filled gay bar somewhere, no doubt. She reclaimed her hand.

‘You’re right, of course. We all have baggage.’

She tried. She sidestepped questions about her work, quizzed him on travel, on hobbies, on sport, on reading (exotic resorts, no time, squash and trade journals), but by the time the waiter arrived bearing the dessert menu, she had had enough.

‘Not for me, thank you. Listen, David, it’s been fun,’ she lied, glancing ostentatiously at her watch, ‘but I have a seriously early start tomorrow. Would you mind very much if we—?’

‘Not at all. I’ll see you home.’

‘If you could just find me a taxi, that would be great.’

He didn’t launch into more clichés. There was no ‘I’ll call you’ or ‘we must do this again soon’. They hadn’t clicked, and at least he had enough perception to know it.

‘Thank you for supper. I hope you find the right sailing companion.’

‘You’re a very delightful lady.’ He lifted her hand to his lips and she squirmed at the gesture, before realising she preferred that gesture of farewell to some of the other possibilities he might have chosen.

‘It was awful,’ she giggled with Julian over a late nightcap at the flat.

‘He seemed perfectly pleasant. Nice looking guy,’ Julian said.

‘Oh yes, at least I had something worth looking at all evening.’

‘So what was wrong with him? He’s mega rich, Evan tells me. The techno geeky whatever it is he does is rolling in huge bucks.’

‘That was part of the problem. He was so focused on making money that everything else was unimportant to him.’

‘Like?’

‘Like being human.’

‘Ouch.’

‘There was one glimpse of genuine feeling, when he talked about his sister, who has Down’s. I actually rather liked him for a few minutes. Then he brought down the curtain and it was all ambition, success and money making.’ She stopped, appalled at a sudden thought. ‘My God, Julian, do you think that was how he saw me?’

‘You’re not like that.’

‘Really not?’ She sighed, missing Lexie and the old times of laughter, and friendship and silly fun. ‘I liked Evan,’ she said, not wanting to think about herself for a moment longer.

‘Isn’t he just perfect?’

‘Yes. For you. Are you a couple yet, do you think? Will I have to move out?’

‘Oh darling, not yet.’ His smile was mischievous. ‘But it’s all very promising—’

They won the health campaign contract. So it was, ironically, the best day in Fletcher Keir Mason’s short history when Molly told Barnaby that she wanted out.

‘It’s so brilliant!’ Ken Mason was jubilant and hugged Molly ferociously.

‘What a team,’ Barnaby said, over and over again. ‘What a team.’

She waited until after the champagne had been popped open and the cupcakes demolished, until the smiles and the chatter had subsided and everyone had returned to their desks to get on with the day’s business, then said quietly, ‘Barnaby? Can I have a word?’

She almost bottled it. He was a good man and a great colleague. She’d thought that this career path was what she’d always wanted. The glittering successes, the challenging but rewarding contracts, the buzz of being at the heart of all these new ideas and testing her skills to their utmost and beyond. In some ways, it still was – but she couldn’t help thinking about David and how his ambition had shaped him into something rather distasteful. Or, at least, into the kind of person she very much did not want to be.

‘Isn’t is wonderful?’ Barnaby said, letting the glass door into his office swing closed.

They were in a bubble of silence. Molly inhaled deeply. This was it.

‘It is wonderful. You’ve achieved miracles, and in a very short time.’

He looked at her, puzzled by her tone. ‘Is something wrong?’

‘I want out, Barnaby.’

‘Sorry?’

‘It’s not for me. I thought it was, but I’ve realised I was wrong.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘I’m resigning from the company.’

‘You can’t.’

‘I can. I am.’

‘Sorry, Molly.’ Barnaby’s puzzlement was changing into anger. ‘It’s a pity that you are feeling that way, and I’ll work with you to turn your feelings around, but you are financially and contractually committed to this company. You can’t simply resign.’

She’d known this side of Barnaby must exist – it’s not possible to build a business with such single-minded determination unless you have a core of steel – but she hadn’t run up against it before. The problem was, she could be determined too, and having made up her mind, she was fixed on her resolution. Barnaby’s opposition only made her more tenacious.

‘Trying to hold me here against my will would be extremely ill advised,’ she said icily. ‘I might adhere to the letter of my contract, but my enthusiasm would be nil. And that would show.’

‘You’re threatening me?’

‘I’m telling you like it is.’

‘You’re a key part of our success, Molly.’

‘I’m flattered you think so. But I’m not irreplaceable.’

‘You are. People like you. You bring in business. You are top rate at what you do.’

‘There’s a dozen more like me out there. Women who have the hunger for success as well as the expertise. If it’s a woman you feel you need.’

‘You can’t leave. What’s brought this on, anyway? We’ve just won our biggest contract, for heaven’s sake. We’re on course for some serious profits. We’re making our mark.’ He grabbed her arm. ‘It’s what you wanted. What we both dreamed of.’

She waited until he released her.

‘I thought I did. I’ve realised I was wrong.’ She changed her tone. ‘I miss my family, Barnaby. My father needs me. My brother’s facing jail. I want to help his kids keep sane. I want to be part of their lives.’

She could see him soften. Family was important to Barnaby.

‘Bloody hell, Molly.’ He sank down onto his chair, a look of devastation on his face.

It almost made her change her mind, before she remembered Lexie and the wedding, and the fact that she was losing the friendships that really mattered to her.

‘I can’t release the money. It’s completely tied up.’

‘You could find someone to buy me out.’

‘That’s not so easy.’

‘It’s a successful business. You said so yourself.’

‘Banks aren’t lending. It would have to be someone who could pay cash. People are up to their necks in vast mortgages – the kind of people I’d be hoping to catch, anyway.’

She stood her ground. ‘I’m going.’

‘I can’t release the money.’

They stared at each other, locked in an impasse.

At last, Barnaby relented. ‘I’ll tell you what. I can see that you need some time to sort yourself out. Why don’t you take a sabbatical? I can’t pay you because it’ll cost us a packet to hire someone in to do your job, but you’ll still get dividends, if there are any. And your name will still be on our letterhead as a director. That’s really important, Molly, you do see that, don’t you? I can’t have a principal walking out at this point, it would send out so many wrong signals.’

Molly wavered. ‘It’s not ideal.’

‘Certainly not from my point of view, but it’s the best I can come up with.’

‘Can I work? I’ll need money.’

‘That’s a problem.’ He drummed his fingers on his desk. ‘Maybe small freelance jobs. Event stuff, like you were doing at that place before you joined us. Not big projects. Nothing high profile.’ He gazed at her searchingly. ‘I’ll need your word on that.’

She nodded. ‘Thank you, Barnaby.’

‘Bugger thanks. I still want you back.’

––––––––

M
olly arrived back in Edinburgh in a car that was stuffed to the roof with bags and boxes and the detritus of everyday life she hadn’t had the heart to junk – the paperweight her mother had given her years ago; an orchid Julian had presented to her when she’d first moved into the flat in Battersea; the heavy brass Buddha that Adam had bought for her on their honeymoon. There was no room in Billy’s house and she had nowhere else to stay. Lexie’s home was out of the question and she had little more than a month’s wages in her bank account.

‘You don’t expect the nestlings back when you get to my age,’ Billy had said good-humouredly. ‘Look at me – quietly hobbling down the final staircase of life, minding my own business, when everything changes.’

‘You don’t get my sympathy, Dad,’ Molly laughed. ‘You know you love having everyone around. Besides, you don’t even have a staircase.’

‘And just what are we meant to do with all this stuff?’

She could see the pleasure under the gruffness, and smiled.

They set to and cleared a corner of the garage. As Billy no longer drove, it was a garage in name only because Adrienne had already colonised the space with most of the contents of her former large house.