Wonder Women

by Fiore, Rosie

  The Abbey, Harrow, Oxford … Richard’s CV read like that of someone who had been born into a lifetime of privilege, like so many of his co-workers. But he knew that everything he had was as a result of his parents’ ambitions, a lucky talent and some very hard work. If things had gone a little differently for both his father and him, he might well have been Ricardo Antonioni, head waiter at his grandparents’ restaurant in Bethnal Green. He was extremely careful about the way he spoke and the way he dressed. He wanted to fit in apparently effortlessly, but that took a lot of money and thought. His friend William, whose father seemed to own most of Berkshire, wore scruffy corduroy trousers and drove a twenty-year-old Range Rover that smelled of dogs, but Richard knew he couldn’t get away with that. Not when the ancestral home was a three-bedroomed 1930s house just off the A315.

  But one day, everything changed. He hadn’t had cause to go into the PR department of the bank for some time, but he had been sent a press release to approve which concerned a deal he’d just done, and it was full of errors. Not small ones either: the name of the key client was misspelled, and the total value of the deal had an extra two zeroes, which took it from a big deal to the GDP of a small country. He scribbled all over the printout in angry red ink and went storming off to PR to find the R. Holmes who had made such a pig’s ear of a simple job. When he found him – or more likely her – some ditzy poppet on work experience no doubt – he was going to tear a strip off them.

  Except when he walked into the department, he was stopped short by quite the most beautiful girl he had ever seen. She was standing in the middle of the room with her back to him, and when he entered, she turned to look at him. She looked a little like Alice in Wonderland grown up, with a smooth sheet of fine blonde hair and a slender figure, and the finest creamy skin Richard had ever seen. As he walked towards her, he found himself staring at her mouth. Her upper lip was beautifully, classically shaped, but her lower lip was somehow a little too full. There was something so soft and inviting about it. He wanted to touch it with his finger and see if it was as soft as it looked, and then he wanted to kiss her and never stop.

  He managed to pull himself together before he ended his career with a charge of sexual harassment in the workplace, and said brusquely, ‘I’m looking for R. Holmes. The R. Holmes who wrote this.’ He waved the offending piece of paper.

  ‘That’s me,’ said the angel. ‘Rachel. What can I do for you?’

  There were so many answers to that question. Richard took a deep breath and went for, ‘There are a few mistakes in it. Could we go through it?’

  She beckoned him over to her desk and they sat down. He felt awful for all the angry red marks on the page, but he managed to put his criticisms to her gently and politely. She was mortified to have got so much wrong. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she kept saying. ‘So, so sorry. This was my first go at a press release by myself. I should have been more careful. I’m so sorry.’

  She promised to get a revised version to him by the end of the day. He couldn’t think of a reason to stay in her office, and in fact there were any number of pressing matters awaiting his attention, so he reluctantly left and went back to his desk. She made him feel shy and gawky, but immensely protective at the same time. She was so lovely, but, he felt certain, completely out of his league. And even if that wasn’t the case, how was he to make a move to get to know her better without looking like a sleazy perv? In the macho, male-dominated atmosphere of the bank, he was sure she spent a lot of her time fighting off advances from predatory traders. If he went and begged to take her out, spouting assurances about how he ‘wasn’t like those other guys’, wouldn’t that make him exactly like those other guys? And if, by some slim chance, she said yes, he’d have to put up with all sorts of teasing and ribald comments from his colleagues. Maybe it was best just to do nothing at all.

  He’d talked himself into this position so firmly that when Rachel emailed him the revised press release, he responded with a curt ‘That’s fine, thank you for your prompt turnaround’ and left it at that. However, he didn’t forget her. Whenever he walked through the building and passed the PR office, he would glance in and look for her. When he went to the kitchen to make coffee, he would hope against hope that she would take a break at the same time. And in the mornings and evenings, he would pray silently that she would get into the same lift as him. It happened rather seldom: obviously they were on different timetables. After a few weeks, he thought of her a little less. He was caught up in a fiendishly complex deal, and it absorbed all his time and attention.

  Until Justin Thackeray. Thackeray, a trader at Richard’s level, was a burly, rugby-playing toff whose neck was wider than his head and whose ego was fatter than both. He was loud, brash and pushy. He believed that he who shouts the loudest does the best. He bulldozed over people in meetings and liked to yell at underlings. He treated everyone around him as inferiors: his fellow traders, who in his opinion, all knew nothing; anyone more junior in the company; all women, all foreigners, all politicians and anyone outside the world of finance – they were all scum to him and were spoken to accordingly. Richard had seldom disliked anyone as much as he disliked Justin Thackeray.

  Late one Friday afternoon, after the UK markets had closed, the office was quietening down, and people on the trading floor were beginning to relax a little and chat to one another. Justin was still barking at full volume into his phone. Rachel walked into the room – she was obviously passing through on her way to somewhere – and Justin slammed down his phone and yelled, ‘Oi! Blondie!’ at the top of his voice. Rachel turned at the sound. Justin beckoned her over and she approached his desk hesitantly. Justin tipped his chair back. He kept beckoning until Rachel was standing in front of his desk like a schoolgirl called in to see the headmaster. Several people at the surrounding desks, including Richard, had stopped what they were doing to watch. Justin glanced around, enjoying the fact that he had an audience. ‘Are you the brainless bint who wrote this?’ he said, lazily waving a piece of paper under Rachel’s nose.

  ‘Er … yes,’ she whispered.

  ‘Listen, poppet, you might have a pert pair of tits and a cute behind, but you can’t write for shit. I wouldn’t wipe my arse with this.’

  The room was silent. Rachel took a long shaky breath. Richard could see she was about to cry. ‘What … exactly is wrong with it?’ she whispered.

  ‘You tell me, sweetheart, you tell me. You’re the fucking English graduate. You tell me what’s wrong with it. Go on.’ Justin held the piece of paper out towards her and Rachel reached out a trembling hand to take it, but he snatched the page away, crumpled it up and threw it at her. It hit her in the chest. There was a gasp from one or two people in the room, and a couple of Justin’s toadying friends laughed.

  Richard didn’t know how it happened. He had no memory of getting up from his desk or walking over, but the next thing he knew, he was leaning over Justin’s desk, inches from his sneering face. ‘Listen, you nasty little bastard, if the only way you can show you’re a man is by bullying young women in public …’

  Justin stood up. Richard straightened up too and they faced off across the desk. Justin had two inches and probably three stone on him, but Richard had right on his side and adrenalin flooding his every cell. Justin wasn’t stupid. His beady little eyes left Richard’s face and darted around the room. He could sense that the mood in the room had turned. He laughed harshly. ‘Whatever, Dicky-boy.’ He tossed his head at Rachel, sneering, ‘I’ll get someone else to write this. Someone with a fucking clue,’ and he sauntered out of the room.

  When Richard looked at Rachel, she was looking at him, her blue eyes round and wide. ‘Thank you,’ she said.

  ‘Don’t mention it. He’s a prick who needed to be put in his place.’

  ‘Could I …?’ Rachel hesitated. ‘Could I buy you a drink to say thank you?’

  And Richard, still full of bravado and confidence, said, ‘Only if I can buy you dinner afterwards.’

 
; He took her to a little Italian restaurant that he knew nearby. He had enough family heritage to know that the food was excellent, and the little alcoves were private and candlelit. Within just a few hours, he had learned a lot about her and she about him. Normally on a first date, he would have given the briefest outline of his growing up, leaning heavily on the Harrow and Oxford parts, and omitting the Italian peasant grandparents and the scholarships that had got him his education. But he was honest with Rachel. He wanted her to know him, really know him, as he was, from the very beginning. Her own background was equally commonplace She told him she had grown up in Manchester, and for the first time he noticed a breath of the North in the way she spoke. She had come to London to do a degree in English, and then a diploma in public relations. They had all had work placements in their final year, and as it happened, Rachel’s had been at the bank. ‘They offered me a full-time job straight away,’ she said. ‘I’m not sure why. I’m not very clever, or business-minded. I was surprised, really.’

  Richard knew the lecherous head of human resources, and he had no doubt that Rachel’s slender ankles, blonde hair and innocent demeanour had had something to do with her being hired.

  ‘So if you’re not business-minded,’ Richard said, ‘is this not what you want to do with your life? What’s the dream? Is it the arts? Writing? Acting? Music?’

  ‘Oh no,’ Rachel said, looking surprised. ‘All I’ve ever wanted is to be a wife and mother.’

  Richard nearly fell off his chair. He usually went out with polished, sophisticated women who also worked in the City. They would never dream of admitting that they wanted commitment, let alone marriage, and no one ever mentioned children. Many of them were probably waging long-term, carefully planned campaigns to land themselves a rich husband, but you would never know it from speaking to them. But Rachel had just laid her cards on the table. She didn’t know how to play the game at all. She knew what she wanted, and she saw no reason not to tell him. Richard knew he should be terrified. But he wasn’t. He was enchanted.

  There was something so fundamentally delicate and vulnerable about her, something in her that made him yearn to protect her. The first date became a second, then a weekly event, then twice a week, then every night. After three months, Richard knew he loved her. After six, he knew he wanted to marry her. He bought a ring, a simple but large solitaire-cut diamond on a platinum band, and put it in his bedside drawer. Not only did he love her, he knew she loved him. He knew she looked to him for care and protection. Yes, it was an old-fashioned relationship, almost Victorian, he liked to think, but it suited them both. Seeing himself through Rachel’s eyes, Richard could glimpse a man he could be proud of, a man with class, power and brains. The man he had been pretending to be for years was real in her eyes, and it made him feel ten feet tall.

  He knew that a proposal to Rachel had to be perfect. Not only because he knew he wanted to spend his life with her, but because Rachel so loved weddings and everything around them that she had been keeping scrapbooks of dresses, rings, and flowers since she was about ten years old. Her expectations would be very high. In the end, he went for the restaurant where they had had their first date. She noticed when they arrived that the room was very quiet (deserted in fact, since he had booked the whole place for the evening), but he told her it was just because they were early. There was a single white rose at her place setting, and champagne in an ice bucket. She smiled and lifted the rose to smell it. ‘You spoil me,’ she said. Richard raised a hand to summon the waiter, who came over and expertly uncorked the bottle. ‘Ah, Giuseppe, we need glasses,’ Richard said. This was the prearranged signal. Giuseppe nodded and retired, then returned with two glasses. As he put Rachel’s glass in front of her and began to fill it, music began to fill the room, a plaintive tune on a single violin. Giuseppe filled Richard’s glass, smiled and melted away, just as the violinist emerged from the kitchen.

  ‘Rachel,’ began Richard, and when he looked at her lovely face in the candlelight, his eyes filled with tears, ‘will you do me the honour …?’ He was choking up. ‘Will you do me the honour …?’ He took a ragged breath. ‘Rachel, you’re the light of my life …’ and at that moment, the candlelight caught the enormous diamond at the bottom of Rachel’s glass. She gasped and lifted the glass so she could see the ring.

  The wedding, a year later, was perfect in every detail. Rachel gave up her job six months after they got engaged and spent all her time planning the big day. Once they were married, she moved into Richard’s riverside apartment and redecorated it magnificently. Richard couldn’t believe how she transformed his life. His clothes were impeccable, their home was beautiful, every meal was a delight and she kept their family finances in perfect order. While she had had no appetite for the business world, she was born to be a homemaker. They began to entertain, and he discovered that for all her ditzy manner in the workplace, she was a wonderful hostess. She was an accomplished cook and an even better baker. She created beautiful tables, brilliant guest lists and made the whole thing seem effortless. He lost his last vestiges of awkwardness and inferiority. With Rachel as his wife, he felt like a king.

  After a year or so in the riverside place, Richard suggested that as they were planning to start a family, they might want somewhere a little bigger. Rachel had already researched schools and they settled on an area of Surrey that met her high standards. Richard left her to do the legwork, and she shortlisted three houses for them to see together. They viewed them all in a day, and chose the one she had already set her heart on. And so, on their second wedding anniversary, they took possession of a beautiful six-bedroomed sprawling house in Surrey with a big garden and a wonderful airy playroom.

  Richard couldn’t believe his luck. He had found his soulmate, she loved him too, they had plenty of money, a beautiful home and a perfect marriage … except. Except. They had stopped using contraception as soon as they had got married. ‘I’m ready whenever,’ Rachel had said. ‘It’ll happen when it happens.’

  But it didn’t happen. After a year or so, Rachel went for some blood tests and an ultrasound and was told that everything seemed fine. After another year, she went for more comprehensive tests, and she begged until Richard went and had his sperm checked. The problem was definitely with Rachel. She had fertility treatment, which did nothing except make her feel extremely ill. Then they went through two rounds of IVF, both of which failed. By the end of the second round, the strain was beginning to tell. Rachel was terribly thin, and she looked permanently drawn. Then, to make matters worse, her sister, Louise, fell pregnant from an ill-judged one-night stand with a married colleague. When Rachel found out, she was devastated, and it nearly destroyed the relationship between the sisters.

  Just before her thirty-fifth birthday, Rachel went to see her gynaecologist. He told her that she had gone into early menopause and that any future attempts at IVF would have to be with someone else’s eggs.

  Rachel, ever groomed, ever organised, always on the go, went to bed for a week. Richard gently suggested the possibility of adoption, but she wouldn’t hear of it. She lay in their big bed, her hair dirty and lank on the pillow, with tears leaking non-stop into the white linen. Richard’s heart ached for her. He couldn’t give her a baby, the one thing she wanted, the only thing that would make her feel complete. After years of feeling like her knight in shining armour, he felt like a foolish failure.

  But help came from a most unlikely source – Rachel’s sister Louise. She worked very hard to win Rachel’s trust again, and involved her in caring for her little boy, Peter. When Peter was a year old, Louise volunteered to be Rachel’s egg donor. Rachel wrestled with the idea. The baby wouldn’t be hers by blood, but it would be of the same bloodline. Eventually, they decided to give it a try. The gamble paid off not once, but twice: Rachel fell pregnant with twins, a boy and a girl. Richard had feared it might be odd, but it wasn’t. Even before the twins were born, he had all but forgotten that they weren’t Rachel’s children by blood, and
so had she. Other than Louise, her husband, Adam, and Louise and Rachel’s brother, Simon, no one else knew.

  Overnight, Rachel had the family she had always dreamed of. She was exquisitely happy pregnant, and when Jago and Xanthe arrived, she lavished them with all the love in the world. The light didn’t just come back on, it glowed from her like a lighthouse, and she was the happiest woman in Surrey.

  At first, Richard was happy simply because she was happy, but as the twins grew, they stopped just being blobs who ate and slept. They became feisty, fascinating little individuals, and he fell in love for the second time in his life. Jago was boisterous, funny and cheeky, and Xanthe was quieter, but extremely determined … a miniature Rachel. He didn’t know it was possible to love someone so small so much. Loving them made him reassess everything. He started thinking about the state of the planet, so he got rid of his enormous Porsche four-by-four and bought matching hybrid cars for himself and Rachel. He worked to build closer relationships with both his family and Rachel’s. But most of all, he started to reconsider his work life. He didn’t want to keep working thirteen-hour days, getting home when the twins were already asleep, and he didn’t want to work in banking at a time when people saw it as the root of the financial crisis. He wanted Jago and Xanthe to be proud of their dad. He wanted to do something they would think was cool, and that they could relate to.