Summer With My Sister
For my sisters, Ellie Brothwell and Fiona Mongredien, with lots of love
.
Contents
Prologue
As soon as she heard her parents driving away, she picked up the phone and called him. Her heart was racing. ‘They’ve gone,’ she said. ‘Fancy coming over?’
‘Too right,’ he said, and a whoosh of heat went through her like a lit match in petrol. ‘I’m on my way.’
She replaced the receiver, feeling heady and restless, pacing around the living room while she waited for him to arrive.
Hurry up, hurry up, hurry up
. She was going to lose her nerve if he didn’t get there soon.
Two minutes later he was knocking on the door, the front wheel of his bike still spinning in the drive where he’d dumped it. She caught her own reflection in the hall mirror as she went to let him in, and her eyes were bright, her cheeks pink. This was it.
They snogged deliciously in the doorway for several passionate minutes in full view of the neighbours. It felt thrilling and dangerous. Anything might happen. Mrs Lindley’s curtains twitched in disapproval across the road, but Polly couldn’t have cared less. Flicking the Vs at the nosey old bat in a glorious fit of defiance, she went right on kissing him, tingles of desire shooting around her body.
They’d never had sex in her parents’ house before. Tonight was the night.
‘Hello, gorgeous,’ he said as they broke apart. His voice was husky, his pupils flooded with lust.
‘Hi,’ she said breathlessly. ‘Come in.’
She took him by the hand and led him through to the living room, her heart bouncing, her skin prickling. She was seventeen years old, and what was about to happen that night would change everything.
Chapter One
Twenty years later
It was seven o’clock one April morning and the sun was edging above the City of London. The sky was streaked all the shades between shocking pink and palest apricot as the early Tube trains rumbled below the streets, a booming percussion twenty metres underground. Up in the gleaming office buildings, lights flickered on at the windows as if a vast machine was coming to life, and cleaners pushed whirring Henry Hoovers along soulless beige corridors. Elsewhere in the flats and houses sprawling out from the city’s pulsing radius, millions of people rolled over in warm beds, dreamed, snored, spooned against their partners, pressed the Snooze on the alarm clock, or tended to early-rising children through squinty, barely seeing eyes.
Polly Johnson was a step ahead, already fully prepared for battle. Her skin had been scrubbed in a steaming power shower and was now hidden beneath a severely cut charcoal-grey trouser suit and crisp white blouse. Her shoulder-length caramel-coloured hair was scraped back in a business-like bun. Her face was a mask of foundation and concealer – damn those dark circles below her eyes, they were becoming harder and harder to disguise – with a slash of red lipstick added like war paint. Laptop, killer heels, glossy handbag: tick, tick, tick.
She strode into the glass atrium that was the reception area of the Waterman Financial Corporation, raised a hand in curt greeting to the receptionists, slapped her pass key on the turnstile and pushed through its clicking metal barrier, the only arms that ever held her these days. Then she headed for the lift.
Going up
.
Polly Johnson had risen to the top of her game in a smoothly orchestrated crescendo over the years. No, that sounded as if it had all been laid on for her. It hadn’t. She’d had to fight and hustle every single step of the way there, elbowing past all the other high-achievers, treading on the heads of those weaker and slower in her scramble for glory. She’d stacked up the hours, slogging away doggedly without holidays, weekends and parties; without a social life full stop, let’s face it. Barely pausing for breath, she’d forced herself one notch higher on the career scale, and then another notch, and another. Female colleagues had peeled away meanwhile, veering down the motherhood path, only to find their career options collapsing at the doors of the maternity unit. Not Polly. Work took precedence over family and friends and lovers. You wouldn’t catch Polly stepping off the gravy train for anything.
Now she was up there with the big guns, senior product consultant for Asset Liability Management and Funds Transfer Pricing in the Risk Management department. Admittedly, it was a lot to fit on a single business card. When she’d last seen her family, back at Christmas, their eyes had collectively glazed over as she’d told them her new job title, as if she was speaking a foreign language. They didn’t look so confused when she told them how much she’d be earning, though.
‘
How
much?’ her dad had yelped, almost falling head-first into the sherry trifle.
‘Bloody hell,’ her mum had said faintly. ‘Well done, love. That’s amazing.’
It felt like redemption, that moment, as if all the things that had gone wrong in the past had been absolved. Gold star in the good books for Polly!
Clare, of course, had had to spoil things by making a barbed remark about bankers’ bonuses being obscene, but Polly had blithely ignored her.
I win, you lose
, she’d gloated privately, staring her down. Jealousy was so unattractive. ‘More champagne?’ she’d asked everyone sweetly, flourishing the fat green bottle. There was only ever one answer to
that
, of course.
It had mattered more than she’d expected, the approval of her parents. It was only when she’d seen their awestruck faces that she realized how much she’d been trying to prove to everyone, them most of all. The money was great, sure, but it was success that she ultimately craved: glory, achievement, a power-packed CV. It was being able to show everyone she could do it, that she wasn’t a waste of space. Since Michael had died . . . Well, she wanted to be doubly successful, put it like that.
And, thought Polly now as she strode into her office and saw the sky turning pinky-blue over the domed roof of St Paul’s and the early-morning sunlight glinting off the windows and rooftops of the city before her, she’d made her point. She’d hit every target with precision accuracy, she’d bloody well earned the accolades, pay rises and promotions, not to mention the luxury South Bank apartment overlooking the Thames, membership of the most exclusive clubs in London, a silver sporty Merc that boy-racers eyed with jealousy, and a vast wardrobe stuffed full of designer clothes to die for. Oh, and one humdinger of a bonus heading her way very soon too. Which was just as well, really, because she’d overstretched herself financially with some hefty stock-market investments recently. You had to be in it to win it, though, right?
Polly’s assistant Jake arrived at eight o’clock that morning with her usual espresso. He was tall, posh and nice to look at, and knew better than to be late when it came to something as essential as coffee. She’d sacked people for less.
He set the cup carefully in front of her and she grunted, not taking her eyes away from the monitor. ‘Um . . . Polly, there are a few things I need to check with you,’ he said, clipboard and pen at the ready. ‘You’ve been asked to speak at the Risk Management Solutions conference next month—’
‘Tell them I’m busy,’ she cut in, swearing under her breath as she made yet another correction onscreen. She was checking the research done by Marcus Handbury, a junior consultant, for an important meeting next week. One page in, and she’d already had to rewrite several lines and highlight three instances of poor grammar. Slack, slack, slack. Marcus was one of those pretty-boy public-school types who’d always had everything handed to him on a plate. Just because he had connections with all the right people, it didn’t give him the right to be sloppy with his work.
‘Secondly, Henry Curtis has been in touch again, wanting to meet . . .’
Polly’s ears pricked up. ‘Lunch or evening?’ Henry Curtis was a big cheese in a hedge-fund organization and had been making noises lately that he wanted to poach her. He’d made a beeline for her at a recent conference in New York, and had lavished her with attention. Flatteringly, he knew all about the coup she’d pulled off beating Carlson International to a major global account, and had gone on to butter her up like the proverbial parsnip. Mind you, the dirty gleam in his bloodshot, appreciative eyes as they roamed her suited flanks made Polly wonder if he was after more than just her business experience. Hmmm. Despite ticking several of Polly’s perfect-partner boxes – rich, successful, attractive – he was officially too old for any romantic liaisons, being forty-six. (Forty-four was her upper age limit. Anything older, and men developed a whiff of approaching-fifty midlife crisis, which put them out of the running. In men, as in life, only perfection would do. Not that she had any
time
for relationships, of course.)
‘Evening,’ Jake replied, his pen hovering above his page. ‘Should I book something?’
‘Tell him lunch will have to do,’ she said crisply. ‘Maybe one day next week? Book a restaurant near here.’ She’d have Curtis make the effort, get him to prove how keen he was, she decided. Not that she was in a hurry to jump ship, but it was pleasing to be asked, wasn’t it?
Jake ran through a couple of other things, flagging up a liquidity-risk briefing that needed approving, various items on the board-meeting agenda, and a potentially interesting new client who’d approached the firm. ‘Oh, and finally,’ he said, ‘it’s your niece’s birthday on Wednesday. Is there anything in particular you’d like me to send her?’