The Better Woman (24 page)

The trading floor had a distinct pecking order. At the very bottom were the assistants, like Sarah. Next came the dealers, young men who earned quarterly bonuses that were enough to retire on. Those who didn't retire young, or burn out, became associate directors. A few years later, if they
still
hadn't retired or had a nervous breakdown, they became fully fledged directors.

Eric MacDonald, the chief dealer, presided over the directors, associate directors, dealers and assistants. Eric was a burly man with gold-framed spectacles that seemed far too delicate for his big face. He had a glass-walled office on the mezzanine level where he could keep an eagle eye on the happenings of the entire floor. He was not one to hide away in his office, though. Three to four times a day he would walk the floor, looking over shoulders and proffering advice. He regularly mixed up names, getting them wrong every other time.

‘There's no future in long-term bonds at the moment, Tony.'

‘It's Robert.'

Eric would roll his eyes and continue on without apology. ‘Go short for today,' he'd say, tersely.

Being one of only a handful of females had its benefits. Eric knew Sarah's name right from the start.

‘Here on your own, Sarah?'

‘The guys are out to lunch with Bank of Ireland,' she told him. ‘They're hoping to borrow two million – we've a lot of bonds maturing this week.'

Seemingly satisfied with her response, Eric continued on with his rounds, his hands clasped behind his back, his tiny glasses perched on his oversized nose.

One Friday afternoon, when there wasn't a lot happening, he was more chatty than usual.

‘Do you like working here, Sarah?'

‘Yes.'

‘What do you like the best?'

‘Balancing the portfolio.'

He nodded as if he approved of her answer.

‘What job do you want to do after this?'

Sarah saw his question as one of the most important opportunities of her career and was appropriately careful in her response. ‘I sometimes used to help out by confirming the FX deals in New York. I found it really interesting and –'

Before she could finish, Eric was distracted by a commotion over at the corporate bond desk. He hurried away to deal with whatever crisis was unfolding. Sarah sighed at the untimely interruption, and returned to the task at hand.

A few months later, Eric called Sarah into his office and informed her that she was being transferred from the fixed interest desk.

‘You're going to Foreign Exchange – just as you asked.'

She broke into a delighted smile. ‘Thank you, Eric. I really appreciate this opportunity you're giving me . . .'

‘Just watch and learn,' he replied gruffly. ‘Make sure you ask questions if you don't understand something.'

She tried to take his advice but, with multiple currencies on the move, the FX desk was a frantic place. Nick and Peter, the dealers, had little time or patience for questions. After getting her head bitten off more than once, Sarah learned to ask only what was essential.

‘They tell me you're getting on well,' Eric commented one day. ‘That you're very fast with numbers.'

She smiled. ‘I was practically still in the pram when my grandmother had me working in her shop. We didn't have a cash register in those days – I did a lot of addition in my head.'

‘Does your grandmother still have the shop?'

Sarah felt a familiar pang of loss as she replied, ‘No, she died three years ago.'

‘How about your parents?'

She shook her head. ‘They passed away when I was a small child.'

Eric began to take Sarah under his wing. If things were quiet, he'd sit on her desk, one leg hanging, and coach her on how to watch the markets.

‘You have to be able to do the maths – split-second calculations are often all that stands between a gain or a loss.'

Over time, Eric revealed more about his personal life. He had been married to Patsy for twenty-eight years; their daughter, Laura, was engaged to Mark. Eric adored his strong-minded wife and daughter and was also rather fond of Mark.

‘That young man is far too submissive for his own good,' he sighed one morning.

Sarah smiled. ‘Ah, so Laura wears the pants.'

‘Just like her mother,' Eric grinned. ‘Speaking of Patsy, she wants to know if you'd like to join us for Christmas dinner.'

Sarah was caught off guard. She had no set plans for Christmas. Nuala had extended an invitation, as had Emma. But Nuala came with Colin, and Emma with her valium-popping mother. Neither prospect appealed. But was having dinner with virtual strangers any better?

‘We don't bite,' said Eric with a smirk.

Sarah laughed. ‘Okay, I'll come then.'

The MacDonald residence was in Blackrock. Set well back from the road, its imposing two storeys were coated with dark green ivy, and it looked like a fitting abode for EquiBank's chief dealer.

I'm going to be a fish out of water here
, thought Sarah as she drove up the sweeping driveway.

‘Ah, you must be Sarah.' The woman who opened the door had a loud voice, a big bosom and a friendly smile. ‘I'm Patsy – Eric's better half.'

She ushered Sarah inside, took her coat and handed her a glass of mulled wine.

‘Laura, is everything ready on the table?'

‘Mark, get some music on.'

‘Eric, check on the turkey, would you?'

Once her instructions were dispatched, she emitted a raucous laugh.

‘Eric might be the boss at work,' she told Sarah, ‘but he's got no clout in this house –
I
call the shots around here.'

After Christmas Sarah was often invited over to the MacDonald household and eventually she came to know them so well that she would call unannounced. She felt at home there. It was as if there had always been an empty seat around their family table with her name on it.

‘Why do you hang out with them so much?' asked Emma, perplexed by the unlikely friendship. ‘They're nearly three times your age.'

‘Patsy's like a mother – she fusses over what I eat, what I wear, my health – and Eric's like a dad . . .'

Emma smiled wryly. ‘Maybe I'll leave Mum to her valium and ask the MacDonalds to take me in as well.'

Sarah did nothing to hide the friendship at work, and it was a rude awakening when she overheard a conversation that was going on inside the smoking room.

‘Every time I turn around he's there with her, showing her this, showing her that.'

‘That's not all he shows her, I bet.'

Sarah recognised the sniggers: Nick and Peter. Deeply upset, she returned to her workstation.

Eric came around later that day and sat on her desk while he talked about the dip in the US dollar. Sarah tried to talk to him as normal. She felt as sorry for him as she did for herself that people would misinterpret their friendship.

The following year Sarah got promoted and became a foreign exchange dealer. She had finessed her natural instinct for the market and the promotion was one hundred per cent merited.

Nick and Peter were put out that she was now on the same level as them.

‘Anybody can get ahead if they're sleeping with the boss,' she heard Nick mutter under his breath.

‘What did you say?'

He was too cowardly to repeat it out loud. ‘Nothing.'

‘I've worked damned hard for this promotion,' Sarah informed him in a stony voice. ‘If I ever hear you insinuate again that Eric is more than my friend, I'll tell him – and I think you're smart enough to know what that will mean for your future here.'

With a grunt, Nick swung around in his seat and went back to work. Seething, Sarah continued to stare daggers at his back. It had been Denise, in New York, who had first set the standard. Then Eric. Sarah was very grateful to them both for helping her establish the direction she wanted her career to take. She was aiming for the very top. Nobody, least of all Nick, was going to stop her.

She'd never felt more confident, more sure of herself and her place in the world. She still had dark moods, like everybody else, but they usually passed. If they lingered, she had coping
strategies: running, keeping her thoughts positive, focusing on her achievements at work. She was often amazed by how effective her strategies were, by the way she could change her thought patterns and lift her moods. An ocean of tears could have been saved if she'd known all this at the time of the abortion and her grandmother's death.

1990

Jodi finished her degree with second-class honours. It wasn't what she'd initially aimed for, but it wasn't a bad result considering.

‘When's your graduation ceremony?' asked Shirley.

‘I'm not going, Mum.'

‘Oh, darling, why not?'

‘Because the sooner everyone forgets my face and name, the better for my career.'

After the trial, Jodi had been the subject of much curiosity at the university. She had tried to ignore the stares and nudges and whispers, and now that her degree was finished she had no desire to extend her notoriety to the graduation ceremony.

Shirley didn't argue and Jodi returned the paperwork to the university, electing not to attend the ceremony.

The dean phoned the house the next day, sounding very displeased.

‘Your form says that you're not attending the graduation ceremony. May I ask why?'

‘Because all the graduates will be pointing me out to their relatives – that's the girl who stabbed her stepfather.'

‘That's not a worthy reason –'

‘Yes, it is, Professor,' Jodi cut him off. ‘The ceremony will be full of business mums and dads – bankers, accountants, economists, potential employers. I don't want to remind them that Jodi Tyler is on the job market. I don't want to prompt them to warn their recruitment departments about me. “Whatever you do, don't hire that girl, she's dangerous, she could go on a stabbing frenzy in the office some day . . . ”'

‘You're being ridiculous,' he snapped. ‘This graduation ceremony marks a momentous occasion for you and the faculty. It's a testament to how we worked together. It sets an example for every other struggling student.'

‘I'm not interested in setting an example! I just want the best possible start to my career – which is to be as anonymous as possible.'

‘Now you're being selfish . . .'

Jodi flared up.
‘No, I'm not!'

Suddenly he was angry too. ‘For goodness sake, Jodi, grow up.'

‘I
am
grown up – and I don't have to listen to you patronising me.'

She crashed down the phone and fled to her room.

Grandma, who had overheard the yelling, made to go after her but changed her mind.

They'll sort it out themselves
, she thought.

Grandma was wrong: they didn't sort it out, even though Jodi tried to. A few weeks after their argument, she was offered a job
in ComBank. It presented the perfect opportunity to phone the dean's office, to tell him the news, to make amends.

‘The dean is overseas,' said the secretary.

‘When will he be back?'

‘We don't know.' The secretary lowered her voice. ‘You never know how long family problems take to resolve, do you?'

Jodi hung up with an odd mix of emotions: curiosity about the professor's ‘family problems', regret that she had waited so long to phone him and, the most acute of the emotions, loneliness. One way or another, Professor Phelps had been a constant in her life for four years, a formidable ally, helping her through the trial and her degree. She missed him.

Jodi's new job consisted of processing changes of address in the unit trust department. It was soulless work, data entry peppered with a few phone calls.

Think of this as a stepping stone
, she told herself over and over.

The notifications of address change came in the mail and Jodi was one of four administrators who processed the data onto the system. Jodi's colleagues were pleasant in a remote, disinterested kind of way. They talked about weekend plans and the weather. They never asked Jodi anything about her personal life. They were too self-absorbed to follow world or even local news, and didn't have a clue that three years previously their new colleague had been on the front page of every newspaper in the country.

They were just as insular when it came to their work, tapping away on their keyboards and muttering under their breath if there was anything slightly out of the usual with a customer's request.

The supervisor, a hefty woman called Mary, was consulted on every minor deviation from the norm. She would give instructions on how to proceed, a sigh in her voice.

‘Phone the customer.'

‘Enter a file note.'

‘Ask for further evidence.'

Mary gave the same advice over and over but none of the administrators took the initiative to retain it. Jodi saw an opportunity to make her mark. Initially this meant bothering Mary with even more questions. At five o'clock, when the others had scarpered from their desks to make their train or bus home, Jodi would type up her notes. It took three weeks to put the standard operating procedure together, but she felt a great sense of achievement when it was done.

She put the final copy on Mary's desk.

Please, Mary, give me a promotion – before I go insane
.

The next morning, when Jodi was opening the mail, she saw Mary approach. She didn't look particularly happy. She reached Jodi's side and put her hands on her ample hips.

‘Are you trying to put me out of a job?'

Then, to Jodi's relief, her broad face broke into a smile.

After that, Jodi's promotion was swift; in less than a month she was moved to the application processing area which was also under Mary's supervision. In her new role she was responsible for handling applications to join the unit trust fund. This involved setting up new clients in the unit holder registry system and creating a purchase of units. She had to prepare a deposit slip for the cheques that came in with the application forms. Sometimes she liaised with other areas, like the funding department where the price for each unit was set. This was how she met Andrew Ferguson, a fund accountant from the UK.