Against Her Nature E-Book

Elizabeth Buchan

• Herausgeber: Corvus
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Seitenzahl: 524

Beschreibung

Lose yourself in the captivating novels by bestselling author Elizabeth Buchan, perfect if you love Harriet Evans or Deborah Moggach. Love, money and children... Life is a risk, however much we try to protect ourselves... Unlike the Frants living their quiet ordered lives in the village of Appleford, Tess and Becky are of the generation that believes it can have everything. Highflyers in the high-octane world of London's high-finance, they move through the opportunists, the short-termists, the sharks, the bullies and the very, very rich to face many choices, not least the one presented by biology: children. As the different generations balance the challenges life throws at them, a tender and unexpected love story emerges alongside a journey to maturity in this bold and beautiful novel. 'A modern day Vanity Fair ... brilliantly done' - Mail on Sunday

Leseprobe

Elizabeth Buchan was a fiction editor at Random House before leaving to write full time. Her novels include the prize-winning Consider the Lily, international bestseller Revenge of the Middle-Aged Woman, The New Mrs Clifton, The Museum of Broken Promises and Two Women in Rome. Buchan’s short stories are broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and published in magazines. She has reviewed for the Sunday Times, The Times and the Daily Mail, and has chaired the Betty Trask and Desmond Elliot literary prizes. She was a judge for the Whitbread First Novel Award and for the 2014 Costa Novel Award. She is a patron of the Guildford Book Festival and co-founder of the Clapham Book Festival.

Also by Elizabeth Buchan

Daughters of the Storm

Light of the Moon

Consider the Lily

Against Her Nature

Beatrix Potter: The Story of the Creator of Peter Rabbit

Perfect Love

Secrets of the Heart

Revenge of the Middle-Aged Woman

The Good Wife

That Certain Age

The Second Wife

Separate Beds

Daughters

I Can’t Begin to Tell You

The New Mrs Clifton

The Museum of Broken Promises

Two Women in Rome

First published in hardback in Great Britain in 1997 by Macmillan, an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Ltd.

First published in paperback in Great Britain in 1998 by Macmillan, an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Ltd.

This eBook edition published in 2022 by Corvus, an imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd.

Copyright © Elizabeth Buchan, 1997

The moral right of Elizabeth Buchan to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities, is entirely coincidental.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

eBook ISBN: 978 1 83895 544 1

CorvusAn imprint of Atlantic Books LtdOrmond House26–27 Boswell StreetLondonWC1N 3JZ

www.corvus-books.co.uk

For my mother-in-law, Hope Buchan, with love

Chaos Theory: The branch of mathematics used to deal with chaotic systems, for example, an engineered structure, such as an oil platform which is subjected to irregular, unpredictable stress

From the Hutchinson Encyclopaedia

PROLOGUE

Perhaps it was something to do with their height: tall women are treated differently from their small sisters. Being tall means that you must work hard to blend.

Perhaps it was their differences: one from a gentle, unthreatened upbringing in Hampshire, the other from the tough outreaches of a council flat in Streatham, and they recognized in each other the polarity essential to balance.

Perhaps it was the era, which promised that all things were possible. It was not so surprising that a girl nurtured in the city’s anarchy should be drawn to one to whom it had always been suggested that the world was ordered for her comfort.

Whatever, the two girls met at a reception given by Women in the City (WIC) a new and, of necessity, rather poorly subscribed association. For ten seconds or so, they scrutinized each other. Long seconds. Instantly, and to her immense surprise, a love, both deep and loyal, destined to outlive feelings for lovers, perhaps husbands, trembled on the edges of Becky Vitali’s uninhabited and sceptical heart but drove a spear through Tess Frant’s. And that was that.

‘Let me draw sustenance from life,’ wrote Tess in her childish five-year diary. ‘I must not fail.’

CHAPTER ONE

THE FIRST LETTER ARRIVED ON 25 JUNE 1987, THE DAY OF the Frants’ annual cocktail party. Like most letters, it looked innocuous: in a rectangular white envelope with a typed address.

I am writing to inform you [it said] that the Quattro Marine Syndicate 317/634 will produce a substantial loss in respect of the 1985 Underwriting Account.

You will see from the enclosed letter, which Mr Quattro has sent to his direct Names, that the overall loss is approximately 200 per cent of allocated premium income . . .

A schedule summarizing your underwriting position as of 31 December 1987 is enclosed from which you will note that your cash call will be approximately £6,400 . . .

Colonel Frant read it in the privacy of his study at the High House. Conscious that his heartbeat had raised a little, he frowned, laid the letter to one side and rejoined his family in the kitchen.

Of its contents he said nothing.

*

Summer had applied its colours over the shires and the day was filled with bright hot sun, and with the sound of skylarks swooping over the crops in the fields that lapped the village of Appleford. By six thirty the heat had distilled and rested heavily over the land. Clearly, the sun was going to take its time to set.

As this was England, the topic of the weather was on everyone’s lips.

Mrs Frant moved or, rather, sailed through the drawing room and the coveys of guests. Recognizing a superior might, steam victorious over wind-power, as it were, they gave way and many followed in little dribs into the dry, manicured garden. From time to time, her snorting, slightly anarchic laugh, so at variance with her appearance, could be heard above the murmur of conversation.

‘Margery, my dear,’ she said, halting beside two women on the York stone patio, and kissing the powdered cheek that had been proffered. ‘How lovely.’

‘Lovely,’ echoed Margery Wittingstall, middle-aged, divorced and depressed, but the sentiment did not seem to register with her hostess, who turned to the second woman.

‘And Jilly. How lovely too.’

Jilly Cadogan smiled, safe in the knowledge that she was a beautiful woman who donated energy and attention to the maintenance of that beauty. ‘With time and money, any woman can be good-looking,’ she was heard frequently to say to her friends, and Jilly had plenty of both.

Jilly also proffered a cheek. ‘How good of you to invite us.’

On a hot summer evening, Jilly would have preferred to have been sitting in her own garden, a careful – and fashionable – concoction of scent and colour, but she seldom allowed her preferences to override her social ambitions or duties. In Jilly’s case, these were routed mainly through her husband, Louis, and it was for his sake that she had donned a black linen shift and lipstick, and stood making conversation with the abandoned Margery.

‘That’s just what that guru chappie said. “Think the unthinkable, question the unquestioned, say the unsayable . . .”’

Mrs Frant caught the tail end of a conversation, and a somewhat tired cliché she considered, between a young Turk in the City and the local Tory grandee who resided, with a lot of fake ancestral clutter, in the manor house to the north of Appleford. Both were endeavouring to impress the other.

She beckoned to her son, Jack, who abandoned the group that contained her daughter, Tess, and Tess’s friend Rebecca, or Becky as she preferred to be called.

‘Hand round the drinks, darling,’ she ordered fondly, never ceasing to admire her tall, rangy, unusual son who, during the twenty-five years she had known him, had never given her any worry at all. Until now. ‘Your father’s being a bit slow.’

A toddler in an expensive and useless blue romper-suit, of the type favoured by well-off Parisians, clung to his mother’s leg while a second, older one wove between the legs of the guests unfortunate enough to be in its vicinity. Mrs Frant’s invitation had specifically excluded children, and it was with mild amusement that she saw that the mother, clamped, hobbled and flushed, was paying for her sanction-busting.

Satisfied, Mrs Frant moved on. A big woman, who had once been as slender as a dream, she was given in late middle age to wearing tweed skirts, floral blouses and pale stockings, none of which suited her. Today, however, in honour of her annual showcase party, which was designed to make the point – very subtly, of course – that families like the Frants were the real heart of the village, she was wearing an old-fashioned shirtwaister and flat sandals that revealed unpainted toenails. Yet, in contrast to the gaudy assembly of her guests, well-to-do and smart, there was something magnificent in Mrs Frant’s refusal to submit to the tyranny of appearance: a spirit and independence that, if it had been recognized, might have been admired.

In fact, Mrs Frant was admirable in many ways, not least for her secret life. Like many people who are burdened domestically and tied to one bit of earth, a part of her had cut free, gone undercover, to explore the strange and awful regions of the spirit. Her epic journeys, she called them, secret voyages to match those of the Greek heroes, herself an Odysseus. In reality, Mrs Frant rarely ventured further than the south coast.

‘Becky,’ Tess Frant grabbed her friend, ‘you must meet Louis Cadogan. He’s rich and wicked and he’s lived in Appleford for ages.’ She turned to Louis. ‘And this is Becky, who’s also wicked but poor and wants to make lots of money.’ Unfortunately, this was the sort of comment Tess made when she was nervous and struggling to be interesting and witty. Occasionally, she hit the mark. She finished the introduction in a rush. ‘Becky and I met at a City do last year.’

Height, looks, energy: with his usual quickness, Louis summed up the girls. He judged Becky to be the same age as Tess. Twenty-two? Possibly twenty-three. Of course, he already knew Tess. Tall, fair, slightly plump and dressed to attract attention away from that condition, she combined innate, hopeless romanticism with innocence; Becky, tall, pencil-thin and huge-eyed, hid, he saw with a clarity that startled him, an orphaned spirit under glossy hair and skin (and cheap clothes). Her face was dominated by those doe-like eyes above which were drawn, as if by a thick black pencil, a pair of eyebrows. Once seen, few would forget the curious combination of brow and eye. In that careless arrangement of features was cast her future.

And what would be the changes and transformations, wondered Louis, to dent those tender, unformed spirits and write on the untouched faces?

A significant proportion of the men she encountered were smaller than Becky. Louis Cadogan was not. He was big, but narrow, loose-limbed, well dressed and, she calculated, approximately twenty years older than she was. Instinctively she knew it was the moment to use her smile – a seductive smile that, along with her eyes and eyebrows, was the sole inheritance of any use bequeathed by the parents who had been so careless of her procreation and subsequent nurture.

‘Let me guess,’ said Louis, who even if he was dazzled recognized a wile. He studied the face in front of him. ‘Fund management?’

‘No,’ said Becky. ‘I’ve just started at Landes.’

Louis’s interest quickened. Landes was one of the biggest managing agencies working at Lloyd’s and, as one of Lloyd’s noted underwriters (El Medici, said his friends and enemies), he knew it well. ‘As?’

‘A secretary. But I’m hoping to get a job as a reinsurance claims clerk.’ She shrugged. ‘Apprenticeship. It has to be got through.’

‘And?’

‘Well, I’ll have to see,’ said Becky. ‘I don’t intend to stay there long.’

Louis turned to Tess. ‘How are things with you?’

After university (BA Hons, English and psychology), Tess had taken time off while she considered teaching as a career. After a year of reading through textbooks on semiotics and deconstructionism, and temping – a hideous combination – she had decided to flee the shores of literature. An active pursuit of money had been frowned on by the more intellectual undergraduates, the type with whom Tess had mixed. They had felt that Art and Culture were so much more important. At any rate, this was what they said, although Tess noted that the two who had been the most vociferous (and who had produced the plays with the most nudity and violence) had subsequently got themselves extremely well-paid jobs in advertising and the civil service. Tess was more honest and it was, after all, the eighties when, thank goodness, there was no nonsense about getting on and it was not unfashionable to be interested in making money. The upshot was that Colonel Frant made a telephone call to Louis and the job at Tetrobank had materialized.

Lucky Tess. There was always some contact to fall back on. Some prop to hold her up. At least, that’s what Becky had said once or twice when they’d talked over their past and their future (which did not appear to include marriage or children). It was not a bitter or envious remark, merely one that summed up the situation.

Lucky Tess.

While Tess talked to Louis, Becky was making a covert study of his English features, fashioned into good looks by generations of prudent marriage plus a fortunate deployment of genes. Those looks were lent extra interest by a pair of knowing, clever, slightly weary eyes and a mouth that suggested this was a man capable of feeling.

Then Louis made the mistake of turning his head towards Becky. Mutually startled, she by the honesty of his gaze, which told her that he wanted her, and he by the hunger in hers, they exchanged a look. This time, it was Louis who smiled at Becky.

‘Hallo,’ said Jack. Fed up with doing bottle duty and, wishing to chat up Becky, he pushed his way into the group.

Colonel Frant was dispensing drinks on the shaded part of the patio by the house. To the onlooker, he seemed entirely absorbed in his guests. In reality, he was mulling over his business affairs, to wit his run of profits (that is, until this morning), resulting from being a Name at Lloyd’s.

Features set in a smile poised exactly between bonhomie and slight reserve, for he was a little shy at these affairs, he pressed a glass of iced champagne onto a latecomer who was in fact the chairman of the district council and a golfing companion. The glass was positively snatched from Colonel Frant’s hand and the chairman, having exchanged only the briefest of greetings, hightailed it over to the group under the apple tree, which contained his mistress. Colonel Frant poured out another glass.

A man who, after leaving the Army at the age of forty-five, had reinvented himself as a businessman and latterly as the chairman of a small fruit-importing company, he was both shrewd and cautious. But the eye contains a blind spot and it was possible that Colonel Frant did not see the whole picture with respect to his connection with Lloyd’s.

Yet 1983 had seen profits of around six thousand, 1984 had jumped a little to over seven and, gloriously, in 1985 to more than nine. Nothing excessive but very nice, all the same. Colonel Frant’s linen jacket was new, his shirt hailed from Jermyn Street and a gleaming set of golf clubs reposed in the hall of the High House.

‘Over twenty-five thousand Names,’ Nigel had said as he wooed. ‘Capital base? No problem. Means requirement? Say two hundred and fifty thousand. The risk-reward ratio? Best ever. A hundred thousand underwrites three hundred and fifty and we’ll split it up among some darling little syndicates.

‘Covering yourself? Take out stop-loss. You know about that sort of thing. Must do.

‘Good or what?’

‘Tell me,’ said Nigel Pavorde, members’ agent, materializing at the side of Colonel Frant, ‘who’s the chap who’s just moved into Threfall Grange?’

‘Farleigh,’ replied Colonel Frant. ‘Made a killing with an estate agent chain in the West. His wife, though, has made him move back here.’

Nigel looked as though he had been fed a bone. ‘Good or what, John? Introduce me.’

But Colonel Frant had caught his wife’s gaze and picked up a champagne bottle. In its blanket of ice, the glass had sprung a delicate bloom and he wrapped it carefully in a napkin. ‘Duty,’ he said. ‘Talk to you later.’

Nigel had a taste for outrageous waistcoats and possessed a great many. Some, the unkind, suggested that it was the only way he would ever appear interesting. Certainly, those who on first meeting him had been agreeably taken by his expansive figure and gestures found they were less so on the second encounter. Tonight, despite the heat, he was wearing a waistcoat striped in gold under a beige linen jacket, from the pocket of which he pulled a notebook.

‘8 p.m. discomfort in lower stomach, 4 glasses champagne,’ he wrote, on a page filled with similar notations.

He looked up to find Becky watching him. ‘I like to keep a record,’ he explained.

‘Quite,’ said Becky. ‘So useful.’

‘I’m Nigel Pavorde.’

Becky introduced herself, and set about finding out exactly what Nigel Pavorde did for a living.

They walked down the garden towards Eeyore’s Paddock, where Tess had once kept a pony, beyond which was a meadow that Colonel Frant had bought years ago from a farmer who went bankrupt.

Becky had no interest in gardens but she could, and did, appreciate the sight of the meadow dotted with poppies and cornflowers, a lush, old-fashioned sight. Colonel and Mrs Frant were great conservationists and last year had been delighted to find that the tiny harvest mouse could be tempted to nest in a strategically placed tennis ball. To the south lay a flattish plain and the market town of Granton. To the west was the cricket pitch: a tended strip of emerald that managed to be both plutocratic and democratic at the same time. Jimmy Plover was hard at work mowing and the sound of his machine reverberated, vague and soothing, through bursts of the guests’ conversation.

Appleford was a village in imminent danger of growing out of itself. Its centre was composed of old brick and timbered houses and of gardens awash with peonies, roses, sweet peas and verbascum. Two plaques for best-tended village were screwed into the wall above the local shop, which had recently metamorphosed into a mini-supermarket, and profits of the eighties bonanza were discernible to interested passers-by in the flashes of blue swimming pools and glimpses of conservatories to be had on the way to buy bread and milk.

At the north-east end of the village, and situated in a dip, which those who lived there swore was damp and those who did not swore was the opposite, was a housing estate, built in harsh, unforgiving red brick. Fortunately, for the aesthetically conscious, the estate did not intrude on Appleford’s charm – although, now and then, some of its boys made it their business to smash windows and tear up fences fronting the listed houses.

‘It’s pretty here,’ said Becky, who had no intention of moving into a period dwelling or of remaining in a council flat. Her full red skirt twined around her long legs and acted as a beacon to quite a few of the men present.

‘Hallo again,’ said Louis, bearing a bottle. ‘Would either you or Nigel like a refill?’

‘No, thank you,’ said Becky, who was generally indifferent to food and drink.

With his free hand, Louis prised away her glass. ‘You know, life is too precarious to pass up opportunities and you don’t seem to me to be a natural puritan. You should never say no to champagne and you should drink the best, which this is. I advised John on the choice.’

A newcomer to the village, a widow anxious to be merry and to gain a niche, and who had made the mistake of moving away from the scene of her previous life, was circulating with a plate of rye-bread circles. ‘Hallo,’ she said to Louis and Nigel. ‘This is my way of introducing myself.’ The plate, held out to them with an obvious effort, shook slightly for Jennifer Gauntlet tended to tremble at the slightest hint of nerves.

Louis took a slippery circle and placed it in his mouth. ‘How kind,’ he said. ‘Thank you. Now, do let me take the plate from you.’

‘No, thank you.’ She had gained control of the plate by holding it with both hands. ‘It’s my little duty to the kind hostess.’

‘Louis,’ said Jilly, gliding towards them, ‘I think it’s time we left.’ She ignored both the plate held out to her and Jennifer. ‘Hallo, Nigel.’

‘Meet Tess’s friend, Becky.’

The two women assessed each other, neither drawing flattering conclusions. And, yet, they had several aspects in common.

‘How very nice,’ said Jilly, and turned to her husband. ‘Louis, really, we should . . .’

‘If,’ said Louis, ‘you would like to change your job, get Tess to give you my phone number.’

The Cadogans moved off, leaving Becky with Nigel, who shot his cuffs and said, ‘Time for the old dins, I think.’

Tess slipped her hand into the crook of Becky’s elbow and murmured, ‘Thank God they’re going.’ But Becky’s attention was fixed elsewhere.

Accompanied by a setting sun, the Frants’ guests said their goodbyes and made their way home through Appleford’s quiet, pretty streets, luxuriantly fringed with willow and beech, which had once witnessed Bad King John’s hunting party and a progress of Good Queen Bess.

Suddenly, shockingly, the peace was shredded by three ambulances racing up the ridge, sirens blaring, towards the motorway.

Later that night, Tess lay awake in her bedroom. She thought – for she was rather interested in space and all that – of the world whirling on through the darkness and, in their eyries, of the men and women patrolling the furthest outreaches of the universe with their instruments.

Why, she thought, visualizing the winking screens and rows of mathematical calculations, if the watchers in the laboratories and observatories are slipping through time they must be encountering the future as well as the past; the conflict and cruelty to come, as chilling and devastating as that which has been.

As a child, her life had been one of sensation: ice cream dripping stickily down fingers; the whiff of new hay in Eeyore’s Paddock; a scrape of leather against her thighs; stomach-aches like stones; bubbles of excitement held in her body like the first mouthful of Tizer; the strange, heart-stopping moments when she learnt something frightening, embarrassing, ominous, and wished she had not.

Now it was different. Lying there in the High House, Tess felt overwhelmed by the challenge of living, the sheer business of feeling, for her feelings ran deep and were often tempestuous and she despaired of mastering them. Above all, she longed to find God and was failing to do so, sometimes, even, berated Him for not being there. She also told herself it was bad luck to have been born into an age where there was no longer room for a Deity and where any mystery was given a scientific, rational explanation. Either that, or a documentary on television.

Longing for certainty was akin to feeling hunger. You could be plump, as Tess undoubtedly was, and still be a hungry person. As hungry as the thin, restless Becky. Starved. Famished. At least they had that in common. Sharing something with Becky mattered to Tess and it thrilled her to know that the need was returned.

Perhaps, if she relaxed her mind would be free to roam the highways and byways of knowledge and emotion and to make the connections that would fill her with power, energy and love.

CHAPTER TWO

ROUND ABOUT THE CHEESE COURSE, NIGEL HAD BECOME a little drunk which, while not unpleasant, loosened his tongue. ‘Bloody Americans!’ He strove, as always, to impress his peers. ‘I reckon all these court settlements will be disastrous.’

Nigel had been permanently allocated the role of buffoon (the waistcoats and notebook helped). However, it did not necessarily cancel the correctness of his observation. The willingness of American courts to settle in favour of plaintiffs – Shell was currently facing a bill for £200 million to clean up the toxic waters leaching into the water table in the Rocky Mountain Arsenal in Colorado – was affecting the insurance market.

The cheese, Cheddar and Wensleydale, was excellent, and its spicy, tangy taste was commented on knowledgeably and with affection, almost love.

‘Bloody Americans,’ repeated Nigel, to no one in particular, and ate his cheese. ‘I wonder if this was made with pasteurized milk?’

The Bollys had met at Luc’s restaurant in Leadenhall Market. A group of ten colleagues, they had been so dubbed because of their fondness for champagne by Chris Beame, who fancied himself a wit. They met to exchange gossip, because they liked one another and because it was both useful and agreeable to mull over the business. As an informal gathering, it counted two active underwriters, a managing agent, a members’ agent, an investment expert and an accountant among the ten. With his beaked nose and hooded eyes, Matt Barker, an underwriter with a Midas touch and a member of Lloyd’s council, gave it a welcome touch of gravitas, and Louis its glamour. Except that they all enjoyed healthy earnings, nothing of significance united them, neither taste nor lifestyle – apart from Louis’s and Matt’s mutual fondness for roses.

Yet once absorbed into the Lloyd’s sphere something odd tended to take place. Much as patients given new hearts have been found to develop the tastes and craving of the dead donors, so recruits into the world of Lloyd’s could be said to step inside the skins of the seniors.

Insiders, including the active underwriter, have by custom to demonstrate faith in their own judgement by investing their own money in their own syndicates. It was thought to be sufficient, and soothing, demonstration of good faith to the external Names. If the insiders were putting money where their mouths were, then the external Names – those like Colonel Frant, who knew nothing of the market only that they wished to make money for little effort – could rest easy.

Strangely, not one of the ten here at Luc’s, neither the seniors nor the juniors eating their cheese and drinking their claret, had ever been tempted to place their personal business on the syndicates specializing in reinsurance, known as the LMX, which was reputedly flourishing. Or on those known to have long-tail liabilities. (For example, claims were coming in to some syndicates for cases of cancer caused by asbestosis as long ago as twenty years.) Yet a percentage of Colonel Frant’s underwriting liability had been placed in precisely these dubious areas by at least one of the men sitting round the table.

The Far East . . .’ Chris Beame had the sheen of excitement on his face. His syndicate was a relatively modest one, having around five hundred Names and an underwriting capacity of twenty million or so. Unlike some of the stuffier underwriters, he did not care – well, not much – if the Names on his syndicate did not include the royal and the titled. No, Chris argued that the aristocratic pot was empty and that it was better to concentrate on culling a new harvest of politicians, lawyers, accountants, businessmen, sports stars and – even – women. It was, he had been heard to say with only a trace of complacency, a remarkably progressive, democratic set-up.

‘Self-regulation at Lloyd’s,’ Matt Barker had a trick of drawing his listener into a conspiracy, whose secrets promised to be intoxicating, ‘will have to be seen to be better managed.’

Louis nodded and moved his glass around his knives. ‘Tricky.’

Well back in the past, both men had been aware of, indeed had dabbled in, activities that were not criminal – no, nothing like that – but were open to criticism. Activities such as the creation of baby syndicates and, when taxes had been high, a little bond-washing.

Louis’s position, which he shared with Matt, was simple: if the opportunity was there, take it. They knew how to operate the market, and operate it they would. There was, particularly with regard to the younger men, a lot of sabre-rattling and declarations of ‘Let him who dares, dare.’ Louis had reached the age when he simply did it.

As a result, Louis’s personal wealth could now finance rose gardens from Arctic to Antarctic, and Matt, if he wished, could have bought up a couple of factories specializing in the production of his favourite bright-coloured ties.

Neither man was dishonest.

Sometimes Louis asked himself why the business fascinated him so much. Then he would recollect the childhood where each step had been proscribed, each thought tagged with potential damnation, each impulse questioned. A childhood in which the Virgin Mary’s dreaming face and rose-bordered shimmering blue cloak suggested all manner of tenderness, but the cold, hard discipline exacted by her and her Son was anything but. A childhood where a sense of possibility had been whittled to nothing – and from which Louis had escaped.

In part, only in part.

After a satisfactory lunch the Bollys broke up and, in the gents’ afterwards, Nigel examined his reflection in the mirror. Was he imagining things or was a touch of yellow painting his eyeball? He felt for the portion of his torso containing his liver and prodded it. Nothing.

It was tiring being a hypochondriac, tiring and burdensome, and it was an effort to stave off the terrors that threatened each corner he rounded.

‘What a good party it was.’ The Widow cornered Angela Frant in Appleford’s mini-supermarket. ‘Wasn’t it? It was so nice of you to invite me.’

She looked for further affirmation to Jilly, who was buying Tatler at the counter on her way to her monthly appointment with her astrologer and then on up to London for a little lunch.

Jilly smiled but with not too much warmth, for the Widow had been marked down in her mental social register as a non-runner. She waited while Jennifer coaxed forth the coins in her plastic purse for a tin of soup, a small loaf, a half tin of baked beans, and then paid for her magazine.

She drove to Granton – once a solid market town, specializing in candles and cattle, now a vision of white paint and shop windows selling the World of Interiors magazine, artificial flowers and coloured bathroom fittings – more than ready for an expensive dose of reassurance.

Mercury is making a good aspect to Uranus, Jilly was told. Be prepared for changes. She must also take care not to overstretch herself. Jilly made an immediate resolution to cut down on her charity work.

Money, pronounced the astrologer, who did her homework, is there. Plenty of it. But beware the tricky aspects of Pluto in your House.

On the way home, Mrs Frant asked Jennifer Gauntlet if she would mind signing up to help with the annual fête. ‘Then,’ she added, ‘there are the cricket teas. I think Mrs Thrive would appreciate some help.’ The gist of Mrs Frant’s meaning was that Eleanor Thrive, who could not organize the contents of a lavender bag, was as usual making a hash of her rota. The implication was also that, being alone, Jennifer would have plenty of time to give. But, Jennifer bravely concluded, it was infinitely more comforting and less bitter to be included on a dubious basis than not at all.

Mrs Frant walked slowly back to the High House, so-called because it had been built by a Regency remittance man on the top of the only rise in a flat swathe of rolling Hampshire land. The rise did not immediately strike the onlooker as very high but she liked to think of the house as occupying a rarefied stratum with purer air; it was a home that worked to make her better.

At present, she required the reassurance: Jack, her good and wonderful son, was becoming a source of worry.

If he had given her no trouble during his childhood, Jack had, nevertheless, been difficult to understand. Or, at least, his mother found his motives and ambitions, and the marked puritan streak, mystifying and, lately, a source of pain. Certainly, his progress since leaving Oxford with a degree in Philosophy had not conformed – if taking a series of temporary jobs in reputable charities was not conforming. He had been lined up for a position at a merchant bank, and all would have been well. But he had had other ideas and held out stubbornly to work in Africa for a charity. It was Tess who had gone into the merchant bank.

‘Jack is a missionary manqué,’ Tess informed Becky as they waited at Waterloo for the train down to Appleford, the weekend following the party. ‘He sort of burns with fervour to do good, or at least to flagellate himself.’

‘Why?’

Tess raised her shoulders and stepped back to allow a flock of girls to scuttle down the platform. ‘Some strange tic in his make-up. Maybe we have a saint in our past.’

Becky, who that week had been telephoned twice by Jack, had her own views. He had already declared his love for her (it took him five seconds, he had said) and when she protested that he did not know her, Jack asked why that mattered.

He was waiting for them at the station and drove them back to Appleford. Prowling and preoccupied, Mrs Frant fed them soup and roast chicken and watched her children – a maternal computer recording heartbeats, skin tone, mental fitness. Both the quality and intensity of her gaze, Becky felt, were disconcerting but, then, she possessed no knowledge, no memory of maternal love.

Like his sister, Jack was fair, but unlike her lush, moisturized-by-rain looks, his seemed bleached in anticipation of the sun.

‘Tess was quite right,’ he said, in a clever way, as he bore Becky off for a drink at the Plume of Feathers.

‘About what?’ Becky matched his pace and her red skirt swirled in a way that made Jack feel quite dizzy.

‘You’re a red colour. Vivid and scarlet. Like a poppy.’

Becky was amused. ‘And Tess?’

Jack halted at the entrance to the pub. ‘Let’s sit in the garden. What colour do you think she is?’

‘Powder blue. Soft and full of depth.’ Becky tested a bench with her finger. ‘This one’s damp.’

‘Come here, then.’ As Jack sat down beside her, she felt his energy and fervour trap her in a magnetic field. They talked about his future and Becky’s work and, every so often, Jack turned his gaze on the English countryside around them, bathed in the milky light of a high summer evening.

For Jack, the vista was bred into his blood and bone, as familiar as the skin on his palm, and it barely registered as he contemplated the idea of another landscape: lunar, unyielding, irradiated with intense light. One, moreover, where he would be needed.

‘It’s a wounded world,’ he announced.

Becky stared at him. ‘Really?’ Endeavouring to understand what he meant, she said, ‘The world has always been wounded, as you put it.’

Later Jack got up to fetch a second round and, a little hazy with wine, Becky watched his progress with an uncharacteristic mix of emotions. Desire, a worship of his beauty and strength, a yearning to be part of them.

‘Where do you come from?’ Jack put the refilled glasses on the table, spotted with mould.

‘It’s very peculiar.’ Becky watched his expression. ‘Everyone always wants to know where I’ve come from.’

‘It’s your surname.’

Becky’s eyebrows rose. ‘My father was Italian. Or so I’m told.’

‘Your mother,’ Aunt Jean informed her niece, ‘sinned and she didn’t stand a chance.’

‘Why, Aunt Jean?’

‘Because, because . . .’ Aunt Jean had been washing-up during this conversation and up to her wrists in clumpy suds ‘. . . your silly mother listened to the first man who came along. Or rather, if she had stuck to listening and not laid on her back, it would have been a different story. And then she lumbers me with you.’

Aunt Jean had been lumbered with many things. Her heart complaint. Her religion. Her job cleaning offices in the evening. And, if I’m anything like my mother, Becky concluded, I know she was not taken in. She merely took what she wanted and made a mistake.

That’s all.

‘Your Aunt Jean brought you up, then.’ Jack’s expression was tender as his blue eyes sought and engaged Becky’s huge, deceptively soft ones. His compassion, not yet outweighed by middle-aged sternness or zeal, was a huge, slippery emotion that often gushed out of control. From suffering Africa to the damaged spider in the garden shed, his pity flowed indiscriminately. It flowed now, wrapping Becky in the downiest of coverings.

‘My mother abandoned me when I was a couple of months old,’ said Becky, whose reservoir of pity was, by comparison, limited. Especially, to be fair, in relation to herself . . . ‘Which was hard for my Aunt Jean who did not, does not, like children.’

‘Poor baby . . .’ Jack’s gaze was now firmly anchored on new details: Becky’s skin lustre, the sharp slash of her collar bone and, despite her height, her air of fragility.

A modern woman: clever, sensuous, knowing. Lover, siren . . . achiever?

Jack found himself thinking foolish thoughts . . . that Becky had a flame burning inside her. A bright, leaping flame that would cast warmth over, that would be shared with, the right person.

‘Sentimentality,’ she was saying, ‘is a weakness. I gather my mother is living up north somewhere. That’s all I know.’

Jack took her home the long way, via the footpath that ran trenchant, across a cornfield. At its edge, he stopped abruptly, took her in his arms and kissed her. Unguarded and disarmed by the unfamiliar harmonies of earth and sky, Becky submitted, her busy mind for once still and quiet.

Heat rose from the baked perimeter of the field, the smells of chalky earth and ripening grain, and the chorus from the swifts high up accompanied the desire running through Jack and Becky.

I don’t like her.

In her garden, Mrs Frant was marching her routes, which she did every day. This one took her past the rose bed – too much orange, she decided – and along the herbaceous border. She stopped and bent over.

Where was the cosmos? Ah, there, almost hidden by the selfish, springy growth of a garnet penstemon. The cosmos was special – its deep blackish-purplish colour and chocolate scent promising all manner of revelations – and autumn without the cosmos (she liked the name, too) was not autumn.

Satisfied, Mrs Frant marched on.

Marching the routes stilled and soothed her. It imported structure and rhythm into her day, into her spirit, on which she could rely. And, provided she followed the exact path of the chosen route, things would be well.

‘I don’t like her, John,’ she had told her husband. ‘She means trouble.’

Angela Frant was a traditional matron, much concerned with parish matters, the WI and WRVS, but one with unexpected reserves. While Colonel Frant’s daytime musings might focus on the pound’s climb or fall against the dollar (the $1.55 during the dreadful 1976 providing a benchmark) or, latterly, that letter, Mrs Frant found time to ponder the implications of world famine, France’s political configurations and the Russian nuclear disaster at Chernobyl. The broad sweep was Mrs Frant’s territory, the minutiae her husband’s. It was a standing joke between them that she never read the small print.

Yet when it came to her children, Mrs Frant was as parochial as it was possible to be; living proof that maternal love is an anvil on which the sharpest of swords are forged.

‘Rebecca is not suitable for Jack.’

‘Aren’t you jumping the gun? Jack’s enjoying himself, that’s all. Becky is very taking.’

Mrs Frant had noted the ‘Becky’. She walked on down the garden towards the paddock on her now thickened ankles. Rebecca, she concluded correctly, is on the make. With his job prospects, Jack would make a good catch and, clearly, there was a bit of money in the family. All the things she wants.

When she put this point of view to her husband, he surprised her.

‘Don’t be silly, darling.’ Lately, Colonel Frant had only used ‘darling’ when he was irritated. ‘Girls don’t think like that, these days. Anyway, how do you know what she wants?’

‘I know.’

The image of Becky buried itself in Mrs Frant’s mind, and she carried it carefully and self-consciously, exhuming it from time to time for examination.

In fact, Jack was in a bind for he could think of little other than Becky. Quite apart from his African ambitions warring with the merchant bank, there was the thorny problem of Penelope (an earnest BA Hons in agriculture, and putative co-worker in Ethiopia), who was standing by at her home in Reading, waiting for the telephone call.

Instead of phoning and embarking on the Reading pilgrimage, which he had faithfully promised the faithful Penelope he would do, Jack tracked down Becky at Paradise Flats in Streatham.

Becky had just got back from work. She let him into the ground-floor flat in the block and ushered him into the main room, off which opened two bedrooms and a kitchen. The smell from yesterday’s supper of tinned steak and kidney pie lingered in the air and a pile of clean washing roosted in one corner. In the flat upstairs, someone was trying to flush a lavatory.

Becky apologized for the state of the room. ‘Aunt Jean’s out cleaning and her work with the Holy Spirit during the day generally leaves her too tired to do her own housework. Ergo, God must be a man,’ she explained for Jack’s benefit, adding, ‘the God Squad was over here last night. Tea, ginger biscuits and sing along with the Lord.’

But he was too full of other ideas to sympathize. ‘I’ve been talking to my contact in HAT.’

‘In what?’

‘Help for Africa Today. It’s partly funded by UNESCO, partly by a government aid agency. They need workers for a limited period in Ethiopia and it might be possible to get taken on. It would be perfect.’

A mental picture spread out before Becky. Of negotiating with officials and civil servants under a hot sun. Of walking between children with outstretched hands. Of being congratulated on her skills . . .

‘Good God,’ she said and, for an awful second or two, Jack thought she was laughing at him. ‘What about the magnificent Penelope?’

‘Penny? Well, I’ve confessed to her. She’s . . . um sad, but she’s going out to Africa whatever happens.’

I could, thought Becky, rummaging in the dark areas of her heart, allow Paradise Flats to rule my life. They could be the template for the way I am. For ever. I could allow myself never to move on.

Deep-seated melancholy induced by a deprived background was a state of mind she had often mulled over and rejected. Not for Becky was the depression induced by unsatisfactory vitamin levels, high-rise vertigo or the tyranny of no hope. Nevertheless, she darted a look of dislike at her aunt’s flowered overall hanging behind the door.

‘Poor Penelope,’ she said. ‘I do understand her feelings.’

A large smile spread over Jack’s thin face, and his expression grew tender at this evidence of his loved one’s generosity. ‘I knew you would.’

He yearned so to cherish her, much as he would cherish his starving charges in the camp. Becky stretched out a hand and Jack seized it.

‘I’ve got a job,’ she said. ‘And I don’t want to leave it.’

Jack’s face fell. The script he had written during the long sleepless nights portrayed him as resourceful and irresistible. He studied his shoes. They required polishing and, clearly, so did he. Before he knew what he was doing, he had slid to his knees in front of Becky’s chair and recaptured her hand. The upkeep of the floor had defeated Aunt Jean and an upsurge of dust accompanied the movement. Outside, a summer storm was lashing south London into a frenzy, a thrilling shuddering backdrop that Romantics demanded for the significant encounter. (Think Beethoven. Think Goethe. Think Brontë.)

‘Oh, Becky,’ he murmured, thus exposed and yearning. ‘What have you done to me?’

Becky’s eyes were enormous as she ticked off the consequences of being weakened by love. There knelt her would-be lover: a big, golden, nervous example of its power, stripped by it to the bone. She bent over and touched his mouth with a finger, letting it slide, light and uncommitted, around the contours of his mouth, and relishing the slight harshness of his shaved skin.

Somehow, for the moment at any rate, Jack had dodged through the entrenchments dug into her stoutly defended heart. Why Becky Vitali, she thought, dazzled, you’ve been missing out.

She noticed a tiny tremor in his hands and smelt the sharp aphrodisiacal tang of male sweat. ‘What do you want, Jack?’

Afterwards, Jack gathered Becky in his arms. ‘Why don’t we forget all this?’ He meant jobs, family, London. ‘We’ll do worthwhile things, you and I.’

He sounded energized and directed. A tangle of hair and limbs, Becky stared past his shoulder at the ceiling. (NB A web of mould appeared to have taken root at the junction of the two big cracks. Reason? Neighbour’s overflowing bath? Decaying joists? The council had promised a makeover.) She was limp and deliciously drowsy.

‘Why not?’ she murmured.

‘Drive to Africa! Drive there?’ Mrs Frant was horribly aware that she sounded like a parrot. She was wearing rubber gloves and had a duster in one hand.

Jabbing her finger down on a pink oblong, Becky looked up from a map of the Sahara that she and Jack had unrolled over the dining room table at the High House. She had pulled back her hair and was wearing khaki shorts and a T-shirt.

Jack ignored his mother. ‘Which route do you think, Bec?’

‘Tamanrassat would be the main stop. Presumably they’d have supplies out there.’

Mrs Frant sank down on a chair opposite them and listened. Phrases such as ‘dry season’ and ‘wind factor’ were being bandied about. ‘Listen to me,’ she lunged at the table with the duster, ‘this is not on, Jack. You have your job to think about. So do you, Rebecca. They won’t make allowances while you jaunt off to Africa.’ She rubbed savagely at the table top: it could have been Becky’s face that she was endeavouring to obliterate.

Her son looked up, and Mrs Frant’s heart squeezed with fear. ‘Don’t worry, Mum,’ he said. ‘This is the final fling before we settle down. One glorious expedition and then I’ll come home and be as good as gold.’

Mrs Frant’s dusting movement continued. Does she dust in her sleep, wondered Becky.

‘Promise,’ said Jack.

CHAPTER THREE

COLONEL FRANT’S CAREER HAD BEEN DISTINGUISHED by a certain sort of courage, the kind that did not question too much and got on with it. He was not used to asking favours or advice and was surprisingly diffident – at least, with regard to himself. It was with reluctance that he sat down in his study to write a letter to the managing agent.

‘I am sorry to be bothering you on such a subject,’ he wrote, ‘but I wonder if you could clarify my position a little more precisely? Am I likely to incur more cash calls?’

The letter that came back suggested that the Colonel was worrying unnecessarily, and that his exposure was such that any cash calls would, in the event, be paid for by profits in other areas.

Looking back, Louis was aware that his meeting with John Frant in the Bluebell Wood had been of significance. That it was accidental, and incidental, did not alter or diminish its importance.

Both men were walking the dog and, as they approached each other from opposite directions through the greenish light filtered by the trees, the dogs wheeling and circling, they had time to make choices.

‘I wonder, old chap,’ said Colonel Frant, ‘if you would give me some advice? I’m a little concerned about my exposure. Do you think I should resign from Lloyd’s?’

Louis clicked his fingers and Brazen came to heel, bringing with him the odour of hot dog and saliva. The rankness curled under the noses of the men.

‘No. I don’t think so.’ Louis was as aware as any working Name of the dangers of under-capacity. That is, of Names such as Colonel Frant not possessing enough liquid capital to pay for the cash calls in bad years. ‘You should be fine. But if you like I’ll have a word with Nigel, who should look into it for you.’ He spoke with the advantage of possessing knowledge that he did not impart. Colonel Frant listened with the disadvantage of ignorance, which he should have sought to alleviate. Neither questioned further.

They parted. One to walk home, reasonably reassured. The other to pursue his way through the wood, dry and brittle with drought, up onto the ridge where Caesar and his men once camped. From this vantage point Appleford appeared untouched, for the road and housing estate were hidden. Only the grey stone spire of the church and a cluster of houses could be seen, drowsy and complete.

Becky and Tess were comparatively new friends and, as is the case with older friendships, areas had not yet emerged that were unwise to examine. They discussed everything, obsessively and at length. It was extraordinary, Tess exclaimed, how every detail, every nuance that they aired of their feelings drew them closer together, and how well they understood each other.

Becky was less sure of the last point but willing, for the time being at any rate, to go along with it.

‘You really don’t mind about me and Jack?’ she asked Tess, for the fourth time. She seemed uneasy.

It was Friday night and the two girls had been to a French film in Notting Hill Gate and had emerged blinking into the night.

Tess did not stop to reflect. ‘Of course not. I love the idea. Why should I mind?’

The certainty returned to Becky’s expression. ‘As long as you don’t object.’

Her best friend. Her loved brother. Tess admired the neatness and symmetry of the affair and, since it did not occur to her that things did not always happen for the best, she sat firmly on the occasional stab of jealousy. Becky had been hers first and, sometimes, it pained her a little to see Jack claim her.

Funnily enough, for she did not often waste energy on such sensitivities, Becky understood. ‘But I love you too,’ she said, and gave Tess a quick kiss before running to catch her bus home. After a few paces, she turned to look back. ‘Mind you go to that party,’ she called.

Tess had been invited to a party by a colleague and Becky had had to work hard to persuade her to go. Tess had declared that she was too fat and the women would be beautiful. Becky replied that Tess was in danger of living too much inside herself and it was making her lazy.

‘It’s too easy to turn inwards,’ she scolded. ‘And, given half a chance, that’s what you’d do. You’ll end up holding parties in your head and becoming a recluse.’

Tess was so pleased and flattered that Becky had bothered to think about her in such depth and with such a degree of insight that she found herself agreeing to go.

London was swathed in late summer dust, whirling pollens and pollution, and the following evening Tess sneezed several times as she walked down the Chelsea street. So fresh and inviting earlier in the year, gardens were now filled with ochre and yellow, their city soil exhausted by the demands made on it.

The party was being held in a house owned by the portfolio administrator at Tetrobank. By nine o’clock it was in full swing and Tess had been hating it for the last half-hour.

‘Hallo,’ said a square-jawed, square-shouldered man, with a lock of dark hair falling over his forehead. ‘I’m George Mason and I’ve been watching you.’ (Watching Tess’s treacherous, glowing skin with its frequent blushes.)

‘Hi.’ Tess hated herself when she said hi. She searched in her handbag for her cigarettes.

‘And this is Iain MacKenzie,’ said George, pointing at the older man who stood beside him. ‘Fellow officer and friend who hauls me out of trouble. Frequently. I give you fair warning that where I go Iain comes too. Providing Flora, the wife – his wife, I mean – lets him.’

‘Will you shut up?’ Iain smiled at Tess. ‘One glass and he reverts.’

‘How do you do?’ said Tess.

Iain took her hand. His was warm and large. ‘It’s nice to meet you but I can see Flora signalling, so . . .’

George watched his friend’s retreating back. ‘Ruled by his wife,’ he said.

A youth lurched past them, pupils boiled-looking and drugged.

‘This is the sort of party,’ Tess said, ‘where if anyone looks deep into your eyes, it’s to see their own reflection.’

George bent over and looked deep into hers. ‘In yours I see a maiden who needs rescuing.’

It is not often in a life that its course is determined within a second, but when it does happen, it is worth recording. Tess always remembered the exact scent of the tobacco plants in the terracotta pot on the patio, the colours of the women’s clothes, the strange, whitish quality of the sky.

‘You look interesting,’ he told her, still looking into . . . What was he looking into? Her soul? ‘I know you’re interesting.’

Cigarette in hand, and bothered by his actorish quality, she looked back at him, her lower lip caught, in her confusion, between her teeth. Her silky, youthful bloom caught George on the raw.

‘George!’ shrieked a voice. ‘Darling, darling! Where’ve you been with not a squeak out of naughty you?’ In a Lycra dress that barely covered her rump, a girl wrapped thin arms around George’s neck and kissed him over and over again.

Women, Tess had once been lectured by a feminist, should make the running. Consider for how long the chains have been round our necks. Break ’em. She considered what the running might be in this sort of situation and concluded, not for the first time, that theory and practice were not related.

George and the girl appeared to be wriggling about satisfactorily and Tess was awed to see that she was not wearing any knickers. Behind the girl’s back, George raised one finger and pointed it at Tess. ‘Wait,’ he mouthed.

Tess slid away from him and the entwined nymph and went to admire the small, smart London garden. On balance, she did not rate being young, a condition that left her frequently depressed and underlined her inexperience and sense of powerlessness.

It was not a fashionable view, but bugger that, she thought.

She lit another cigarette. Nicotine, wonderful nicotine, burnt its way into her system and the smoke hit the back of her throat with its customary thud. Glorious, unselfish cigarettes, little pencils of comfort and courage. Tess smoked hers down to the stub then buried it in the flowerbed.

‘Dinner.’ George Mason had detached himself from Miss Lycra. He did not seem to think that she might say no.

Nor could she.

Over dinner in a restaurant poised equidistant between the very smart and the avoidable, George spoke on the subject in which he appeared to excel: himself. Charming and persuasive, he threw disconcerting flashes of modesty and humour into the sparkle, much as dun-coloured feathers among fancy plumage soothe the eye. Yet Tess was not entirely convinced for she gained the impression that this display was an effort for him, even distasteful. She suspected, too, that he did not like himself very much, just as she did not always like herself either, and her romantic instincts stirred.

‘The Army sent me to university. Edinburgh. I was lucky and got an early captaincy.’

‘How old are you?’

‘Twenty-eight.’

‘And then?’

George’s attitude suggested that what he was going to say did not matter at all. ‘Northern Ireland. I had a good tour and my platoon found a cache of explosives.’ Tess had an impression that she was looking at a file marked ‘Top Secret’. George paused, his unmilitary hair falling across his forehead, and decided to close the file, leaving her tantalized. ‘Success is always useful.’

For the life of her, Tess could think of nothing interesting to say. Her tongue was tied, her waistband was tight and never, ever again would she eat dessert. How else could she ever be naked in front of this man? She dropped her head between her hands and pushed back her heavy fair hair. When her face emerged, the skin was stained a pure rose.

‘I wonder,’ she said at last, ‘how we would be, how we would think, if we did not have the Northern Ireland problem. Like the Empire, it shapes us.’

‘Ah,’ said George, eyes narrowed. ‘The psychology of politics.’

He was teasing her, perhaps even patronizing her. Tess’s flush deepened but she ploughed on. ‘We have a dark edge running along one of our perimeters.’

After an awful moment, when Tess could have died for the banality of her remark, George said, ‘Yes, I suppose you’re right . . .’

On leaving the restaurant, George asked, ‘Where do you live?’

‘In Pimlico. I have a flat there. Or, rather, it’s my father’s and he lets me rent it.’

‘Ah,’ said George. ‘That’s nice.’

‘Hurry up, petal,’ said Freddie Ahern. ‘Bill’s been asking for you.’

Tess opened her drawer – a horrible sight – and stuffed her handbag into it. Then she remembered her pen, opened the drawer again and extracted it with her reading glasses. ‘What does he want?’

‘There’s a dowager, rich, rich, rich, who he wants netting in and thought you should sit in on the meeting. Then he’ll want you to set up the new portfolio.’

‘Right.’ Tess’s hair had worked loose from its velvet scrunchy and she adjusted it before grabbing her things. As she passed him, she tapped Freddie on the head with her pen. ‘Don’t you look so smug, Frederick. Your turn next.’

Considering that he was sitting down, Freddie did a remarkable imitation of a flounce.

When she came back to her desk, feeling quite pleased with her performance, the office was an organized frenzy. The previous day there had been one of the biggest rights issues of the decade and the price had gone through the roof. Today, at 9.01 a.m., something had gone wrong and it was falling.

‘What the devil . . . ?’ Tess’s director, Bill – thirty-fiveish, wearing a blue striped shirt, red braces and a red tie – stared at the screen where the Strip revealed a large wobble. ‘You’d better offload the smaller holdings and top-slice the larger.’

Women, Bill had mentioned to Tess in passing when she had been hired, are not just good on the eye. Had she got it?

Tess had got it.

‘OK. OK . . .’ Kit, the assistant director – thirtyish, wearing a red-striped shirt and blue tie – swivelled round to face Tess. ‘Beam up my holdings,’ he said. ‘Give me the numbers.’