Another Woman (9781468300178)

by Vincenzi, Penny

  ‘Not so little or so temporary,’ said Theo with a sigh. ‘She’s told me on three separate occasions in the last twenty-four hours that she hates me and never wants to see me again.’

  ‘You cannot be surprised, I think. You have done some terrible things to her. Marrying someone else within months of the break-up, the pauvre Sasha –’

  ‘Not so pauvre.’

  ‘Comment?’

  ‘Oh, I’ll tell you another time. Let’s just say the pauvre Sasha can take care of herself.’

  ‘I’m pleased to hear it,’ said Janine. ‘Harriet must be able to do the same, I think. It was not nice or kind to tell your friend not to put his money into her company …’

  ‘Janine, it would not be nice or kind to encourage Harriet into thinking she was a good businesswoman when in the last resort she is not. Or of allowing my friend to waste what was actually a great deal of money –’

  ‘Well, perhaps. But it could have been done with more finesse. You lack tact, my Theo.’

  ‘I’m afraid, Janine, you’re absolutely right.’

  ‘And how do you know that Harriet does not mean it when she says she hates you?’

  ‘I just do,’ said Theo simply. ‘I know it. I feel it and I know it.’

  ‘Then we have to help her to find out for herself. But it will not be easy. You cannot tell Harriet anything. She does not listen.’

  ‘No. Well, she certainly doesn’t listen to me.’ The small phone in his pocket rang shrilly. ‘Excuse me, Janine. Can I take that? It’s probably Mungo.’

  It wasn’t Mungo, it was Mr Hennessy. ‘Mrs Buchan asked me to tell you that she accepts all your terms, Mr Buchan.’

  ‘That’s very good of her,’ said Theo.

  ‘She is particularly happy with your offer of the ring. She says she will send the one she is currently wearing over to my office this afternoon in order that you may get it copied.’

  ‘How helpful of her,’ said Theo. He grinned suddenly into the phone; the irony of having a genuine diamond ring made to match a fake greatly charmed him. He suddenly remembered rather sharply why he had married Sasha in the first place: she was sexy, she was pretty, she was charming, but she was also a lot of fun. For the first time since she had walked out, he felt a pang of loss.

  ‘Indeed. There is an additional matter, Mr Buchan. Mrs Buchan has found a house and is anxious to proceed with the purchase as soon as possible. A cheque from you is therefore required. Perhaps if you could see your way to coming to my office –’

  ‘Mr Hennessy, I’m an extremely busy man. I really can’t drop everything at a moment’s notice to come and sign cheques at your office. Besides, I need to see the details of this house, I need to be sure it’s a good investment and –’

  ‘May I remind you, Mr Buchan, the house will be for Mrs Buchan, not yourself. She did ask me to remind you again that she thought the story about the CalVin deal would be very interesting –’

  ‘I don’t give a shit about the CalVin deal,’ said Theo, and then after a moment’s thought realized he did. ‘All right, Mr Hennessy, but I’m not prepared to come to your office. You can come to mine. In an hour. You have the address, I imagine. Dover Street. Yes, that’s right. Good afternoon.’

  ‘What was that about?’ asked Janine.

  ‘Oh – Sasha playing games. Clever games, I have to say. Clever girl. And I’m a fool not to have realized it.’ He sighed. ‘I’d better go, Janine. Ring me if you have any good ideas. I’ll be at my office and then –’

  There was a knock at the door; Janine went over and opened it. Merlin stood on the threshold beaming, holding a very large bunch of red roses.

  ‘Merlin!’ said Theo, giving him one of his bear hugs. ‘Let me congratulate you. It’s wonderful news. Couldn’t be more delighted.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Merlin. ‘Pretty delighted myself. Can’t think why I couldn’t have sorted it out before. Love is blind, I suppose. These are for you, my dear. Got them just down the street on my way back from the travel agent. Terrible price, and the chap wasn’t budging, but I thought you deserved them.’

  ‘They’re beautiful,’ said Theo. ‘Perhaps I’d better get some for Sasha. Might sweeten her up a bit. Off to meet her –’ His phone rang again. ‘Sorry, Merlin. Hallo? Yes, Myra, I’m on my way. Yes, yes, of course, immediately. Merlin, I’d like to buy you both dinner, maybe tomorrow? But I have to rush now. I’ll call you. I wouldn’t mind coming on your honeymoon with you either. Don’t look so alarmed, Merlin, I didn’t mean it …’

  Chapter 38

  Harriet 4pm

  ‘You all right, miss?’

  Harriet looked up from where she was sitting, hunched up in the doorway of what had been her studio until three o’clock that afternoon, and found herself staring into the eyes of a policeman. Or was it a small boy dressed in policeman’s uniform? No, it was a real one. God, it was true, the joke about policemen getting younger; first the one who had stopped her and Theo on the bridge, now this one. She must be getting old. She certainly felt it now. She smiled at him slightly uncertainly, struggled to her feet.

  ‘Yes. Yes, I’m fine. Thank you.’

  ‘Can I call you a taxi or something?’

  ‘No, thank you. I’ll be fine. Really.’ Well at least the £550 she’d spent on her Nicole Fahri suit hadn’t been wasted, if even a policeman could tell she wasn’t actually a vagrant, could afford a taxi. Only she couldn’t of course; she couldn’t afford anything. She was bankrupt, she would shortly be homeless, and she was all alone in the world. She might as well settle back into her doorway and make that her home. It might be quite clever actually; it would cause the receiver a bit of trouble when he came back again to try to sell her offices. Then a cleaning lorry rumbled past, spraying a mixture of rain and dust across the pavement, and she thought perhaps there might be a better option. She realized suddenly she was very thirsty; she walked slowly down to the Strand and into McDonald’s and ordered an orange juice and thence headed for Charing Cross station and the uncertain haven of the underground and finally her flat. Her car was parked outside it, returned by Mungo, with a note and a red rose tucked under the windscreen wiper. He was getting as dangerous as his father, she thought, smiling at the gesture as she read the note: ‘Keys in the letterbox. Thank you for lending it. I’d love to see you soon.’

  It was a very nice flat, but it was blank, anonymous, in a small purpose-built block near Kensington High Street. She had furnished it at high speed from John Lewis and Habitat; it was rather dully tasteful in all shades of beige, its only really interesting feature a dark blue gas-powered Aga which Theo had had installed for her in the kitchen at considerable cost, replacing the immensely more practical Neff wall cooker that had come with the flat. She had gone to be with him for a few days on the island near Mustique, and when she had come back it had been there, waiting for her, the ravages of installing it immaculately put to rights, with a card standing on the top that said, ‘I could get jealous of this. Theo.’

  She had once told him that what she most associated with love and comfort was her mother’s Aga, standing in the kitchen at the Court House and never going out, summer or winter. She had grown up by that Aga, she said, warming her hands over it when she got in from school, leaning against its comfort when she had a tummyache, drying her wet clothes on its rail, opening the oven to see what was in it for dinner, watching happily as Christmas puddings bubbled on its hob, Christmas and birthday cakes went in and out of it, had sat in Purdey’s basket for long hours beside it, reading (and before that, for a brief, joyous time, had cradled the tiny Biggles in her lap by it, actually slept there with him on his first night, after creeping down in the stillness of the sleeping house, hearing him, frightened, bewildered, whimpering for his mother); had brought half-dead animals to lie in soft boxes by its warmth, birds, two of the farm cat’s abandoned kittens, and once even a small fox cub she had found lying by its dead mother near the bridge. She made her first disastrous forays into c
ooking in it (but they’d been more successful than any of her other efforts since in more sophisticated stoves). She and Cressida had always hung their stockings on it, rather than the conventional fireplaces in the house (ignoring the fact that Santa would have had more than a little trouble negotiating its chimney), and whenever there was a family conference (sadly an increasingly rare event) it was in the kitchen, near the Aga, that it took place.

  Nothing, she’d told Theo on the phone that night, half laughing, half crying, could have made her realize how much he loved her, nothing could have made her love him more. ‘Next time you’re here, I shall cook you a meal on it,’ she said, and ‘Good God, I hope not,’ he said in alarm (having sampled her cooking once or twice). ‘It’s just to remind you of me. We could have some sex with it,’ he’d added more cheerfully, ‘I’d much rather that,’ and sure enough, they had. She’d dragged the mattress from her bed and laid it in front of the cooker, heaped with cushions and pillows, had greeted him at the door wearing nothing but a striped cook’s apron, had led him to it and then removed the apron and lain down, watching him undress, hurling his clothes onto the floor, feeling her body warming, softening, opening to him before he even touched her, seeing the pleasure ahead, his mouth on hers, his hands everywhere on her, unfolding joy, the sweet heavy settlement of him within her, the clenching, the gathering round him, the pushing, the pulling of desire, the leaping and falling of delight, and then the last slow, sure climb into orgasm, hearing the great roar of her own voice as she reached, accomplished, conquered, and then the oddly quieter cry in his own. And then much much later, as she lay beside him, her body throbbing into quietness, she looked at him and smiled and he smiled back and said, ‘That’s quite a cooker you have there, Miss Forrest.’ And she thought, reaching out and touching the warm sides of the Aga, that she had never been so happy.

  She’d intended to have it ripped out when the affair was over, as a final, painful gesture, but it proved so complicated and so expensive that she’d abandoned the attempt. It seemed to her absolutely symptomatic of Theo that he had managed to bestow upon her something that she couldn’t get rid of without enormous difficulty and expense; other girls wrapped up their engagement rings, their necklaces, their bracelets and sent them back, and she had to sit, day after day, staring at a love token that weighed half a ton.

  Well, it would go now, she thought, along with the flat, and it might even be a selling point, would actually have a cash value. What should have been a cheering prospect made her sit down and burst into tears. She cried for a long time; racking sobs, cathartic, almost pleasurable, and so loud they almost drowned the ring of her phone. ‘Shit,’ she said and decided to leave it, to let the answering machine take it; but her rush of tears once halted refused to start again and she grabbed a tea towel to wipe her eyes on and ran into the tiny bedroom she had converted into a study. A female American voice was telling her to ring Mr Hayden Cotton most urgently, and issuing an endless list of numbers which Harriet wrote down in the wrong order twice so that she made two extremely expensive calls first to a truck company in Ohio and then a health club in Miami before finally reaching the haven of Mr Cotton’s office just off Delancey Street, Manhattan. Hayden Cotton insisted on remaining in Delancey Street, where he had launched his empire in a small sweatshop and where it now occupied an entire block.

  ‘Why quadruple overheads?’ he would growl whenever (as they frequently did) one of his executives suggested moving up-town, or even further down towards the Seaport area. ‘Or are you offering to take a salary cut?’

  They never were, and so he never moved, and never would, it was famously said, until he had to leave feet first; and it was true, he saved hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, and since all his employees, even the most humble stitcher, operated under a profit-sharing scheme, they did not argue too much about it.

  Harriet, who had visited the Cotton Fields offices, would not always have agreed with him, would have protested that a good address, a glamorous image, were essential. Having been forced to see that a good address and a glamorous image had done her very little good at all, possibly very much the reverse, she would now have consented to run her company from Cardboard City had she been given the opportunity. Waiting now to be put through to Hayden Cotton, she wondered if she was to be given the opportunity, and if maybe it wasn’t too late: Theo had said companies could be bought back from receivership. Perhaps …

  ‘Harriet Forrest?’

  ‘Yes, speaking.’

  ‘Hayden Cotton. You get a backer yet?’

  ‘No, Mr Cotton, I haven’t, I’m afraid. And my company’s gone into receivership today.’

  ‘Uh-huh. That’s a shame. And I’m sorry we didn’t get a chance to do business together.’

  ‘So am I, Mr Cotton.’

  ‘However, I have another proposition for you.’

  ‘Yes?’ Could the sound of a heart thudding be heard down the phone? Did a voice strangled with excitement, with emotion, give you away?

  ‘How would you like to come and work for me?’

  ‘For you? In what way?’

  ‘I’m thinking of launching a new range. Tell you more about it if and when you want to talk. I need a designer for it. A chief designer. I’d like that person to be you.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Harriet, ‘Oh I see. Well, Mr Cotton, I don’t know. I mean I’d love it and I’m terribly flattered to have been asked, but I’ve got used to working for myself, you see, and –’

  ‘I do see and I greatly admire what you’ve done. But I think, with the greatest respect, Miss Forrest, your talents are ninety-nine per cent in the design field. Running a business just distracts you from that.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Harriet. ‘Well, I haven’t done that badly, Mr Cotton. I mean –’

  ‘I think you’ve done extremely well. All you needed was a really good business manager. But even so, designing is what you were made for. And what you should do for me. I could make you a very good offer. Harriet. Very good indeed.’

  ‘Well – I don’t know. It’s not something I – I ever thought of –’ Harriet started again, trying to sound more efficient, less daffy. ‘Where would I work? In London?’

  ‘No. That wouldn’t be any good. You’d have to come over here. I’d want you working closely with me.’

  ‘Oh, I see.’ Her mind was racing, raking over his offer, thinking of all the implications. They were scary, they weren’t what she wanted at all: but then was she really in a position to argue? A new city, a new lifestyle, a new life; it could be exactly, exactly what she needed

  ‘The pay’d be good,’ said Hayden Cotton, ‘I thought quarter of a million for starters.’

  Quarter of a million dollars a year! That was at least, at least £150,000. And the low tax structure in the States, the lower cost of living, would make it worth far, far more than the same sum in England. She’d be – ‘With profit-sharing, of course,’ said Hayden Cotton, cutting into her thoughts. ‘And there’d be a lot of potential built in. Maybe a partnership one day. And narurally a car and an interest-free loan to buy an apartment or whatever. And you’d be able to get home to London often, obviously. Think about it, Harriet. At least come and talk to me.’

  Harriet thought. She thought of the pleasure of designing clothes, her own collection, with none of the attendant headaches of cost, cash flow, financial forecasting, VAT returns; she thought of the heady lifestyle that would surely ensue; she thought of having more money, real money, to spend on herself, not plough endlessly back into the company, of freedom to enjoy herself, of not having to work through weekends and nights, not having to find staff, get rid of staff, find more staff. She thought of living in New York, a city she loved, of jetting backwards and forwards across the Atlantic, and she thought of getting away from England, from the pain of her discovery about her father, the nightmare of Cressida – and from Theo. Theo hated New York, visited it as rarely as he could. The opportunities for bumping into him, for being pursue
d by him, would undoubtedly be fewer. It was very, very attractive. And then she thought of the joy, the pure, unalloyed pleasure of having her own business, of seeing it grow, of doing what she wanted, what she thought best; and yes, she had made mistakes, but she had learnt from them, she wouldn’t make the same ones again, and she would do it again, somehow, she would get hold of some more money. Owning a company was like having a garden, planting things in it, ideas, talent, skills, risk, courage, and seeing them grow in entirely your own way, and however hard, however exhausting, however at times unrewarding, the pleasure was heady, and the rewards, however meagre, were absolutely your own, absolutely personal. Working for Hayden Cotton, as his chief gardener, might be a lot easier, but the end result, however grand and splendid, would still be his.

  ‘I really don’t think I could,’ she said finally. ‘I have to do things my way, Mr Cotton. I’ve made lots of mistakes, and I’m sure I’ll make lots more, but they’ll be different ones. Thank you for asking me, but I have to stick it out here.’

  ‘Oh well,’ he said with a sigh, ‘pity. I thought you just might. Mind you, Theo said you wouldn’t, said you’d never come.’

  ‘Theo! Theo Buchan?’

  ‘That’s the one.’

  ‘You discussed this with Theo?’

  ‘I mentioned it. We talk a lot, you know. We go back a long way, to when I dealt direct and bought textiles from him.’

  ‘Yes I know,’ said Harriet bitterly.

  ‘He thought it was a great idea for you, but he told me I was wasting my time. I guess he knows you better than I thought he did.’

  ‘Oh, he does?’ said Harriet. ‘I think not. You can tell Theo Buchan I –’ She stopped, confused. It was hardly Hayden Cotton’s fault that Theo still saw it as his prerogative to go around trying to run her life for her. It was outrageous, but –

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said carefully. ‘I didn’t mean to sound rude, Mr Cotton. I really didn’t.’