Until now, she hadn't even registered in her own mind that she'd been unfaithful to her husband but lying to him wasn't difficult. And, truth be told, she wasn't much bothered whether or not he found out that she'd slept with her boss. She was sure he would be far from distraught if she told him the truth there and then.
"Yep, we leave New York Wednesday afternoon, so early hours Thursday your time."
"OK, you too," she said, pressing the 'end call' button.
"My mum's sill got Cheng and she'll take him to school and pick him up for the rest of the week," she told Nick. "He – Cheng – is well and says he is 'counting numbers' till I get back. Jonathan calling me at two in the morning his time is a bit perplexing, though," she added.
"Maybe he just couldn't sleep. Or he can't count numbers," Nick suggested.
She smiled at him.
Alex had decided to miss the cinema the night before after Kerry had called to say she couldn't make it. Instead she'd cleaned both herself and the flat and she felt a whole lot better for it.
In the early hours she finally gave into temptation and turned on her main phone and looked at her missed calls, of which two were from Tavis who she was supposed to be meeting the next day. He'd left no voice mail. She'd call him in the morning.
Then, among the texts received since she switched herself off from most of the outside world, there was one from Nick which was now a couple of days old.
"Won't even be eleven," she thought, and typed out her reply: "Enjoyed lunch too. Hope cheesecake queue is abating." Kiss or not? she thought and added the 'x' before pressing the 'send' button.
Once it had gone she scrolled through the other messages and was relieved to see none from the cryptic texter who was warning her off Nick Hensen.
"Nick, what was it about Alex's photo that sort of enticed you so much? She is very pretty no doubt but in your line of work it's not as if you haven't seen similar lookers before, Olivia included. Agreed, she might be a bit, err, volatile.."
"Liv definitely is volatile," he said as the long-awaited text reply from Alex finally arrived. He knew it was her by the unique tone he had allocated to her calls and messages but out of politeness to Katherine he resisted the urge to look at it.
"It wasn't just the photo but the whole file. She was, still is, a mystery, but I'm enticed by that. From the moment I read what our people were saying about her, that she wasn't who she said she is and that they couldn't trace her and that they were worried about her, I just became a bit spellbound.
"And when I met her, first time at the lift, well..."
"You were hooked?"
"I guess so," he replied.
"But not so hooked that you didn't sleep with me a week later?"
It was a good question and one which he had difficulty answering.
"Katherine, I never thought of you as a lover, I don't know why, but I just saw you as my very efficient assistant...well, you are more than an assistant, my deputy. Maybe you are just too good at your job...”
"Which is why we should let things settle, so I'm going to the Library to see if their notable book collection includes one on backgammon theory, and I will see you in the morning. Office at ten."
She kissed him on the cheek, grabbed some orange juice from the fridge – "I'm stealing this" and left him with the advice to swot up on the Jack Wyatt account.
Instead, after she'd left, he checked Alex's text message.
Chapter eleven: Online porn and cheesecake
Alex apologised to Tavis for missing his calls over the weekend and also that she had to cancel their Soho trip because, she lied, they had the chance of a new contract and that the client was asking for more details.
She felt better doing so by voice than text and, although she wanted to, she didn't even ask after Nick, so to ensure that Tavis was getting due attention. "We'll definitely do it soon," she promised.
Tavis said it was no problem and that he was still going to laze around for the day anyway. "Give me a call if you get half an hour," he said.
For Nick, the rest of the trip couldn't end quickly enough. By Tuesday, he was working out the number of hours to the return flight and he could have been in any office in the world as he talked figures with the likes of Jack Wyatt and the gold investor whose name he had difficulty remembering.
"We're at a pivotal point for gold, I'm sure," Nick told him. "If we go higher here, then I think we could be in another sustained bull run. But any weakness and it could signal a major change and the run that we've seen - since 2006 - could be at an end. So I think we are just going to have to wait for the time being and see which way the big boys start betting."
What he was really telling the client, he knew, was that if the price went up it might continue going up and if went down it might continue going down. But the client seemed happy with the forecast, shook his hand and said how pleased he was with his investment in the fund.
"And remind me, your own business, is what?" he asked.
"Online porn."
For fuck's sake, Nick thought as he left.
"Katherine, please come in here," he shouted after Michael Harris had left not only his office but the building. "Who's next?" he asked.
"Tyler Morris, half an hour."
"Please can we go to see a show or something afterwards."
"Can't, I'm meeting a girlfriend for dinner, sorry," she said flatly.
"You are my assistant and I thought the job description included organising my working life and also post-work entertainment," he teased her.
"You haven't been entertained?" she asked, lowering her voice, "A blow job, some good straight sex, a trip to Coney Island and an educational class in the world's highest quality art. No pleasing some people."
She was joking with him, surely, but he couldn't be sure as her ebullience of the last couple of days had gone. He looked at her but she wasn't smiling.
He was nonplussed.
"I've had a great time Kath, would you do me a favour and get the number for Kants, Kansies or Kats or whatever it is called." She left and came back a couple of minutes later. "Katz's," she said handing him a piece of scrap paper with the number scribbled down.
"Oh, and if it's cheesecake you are ordering, you will need to eat it before you go."
"Come back Kath!" he said when he had taken in what she had said and she was almost out of the door.
"What do you mean?"
"The UK only allows the importation of dairy products from other European Union nations. Last time I looked the US wasn't in the EU," she smiled sarcastically.
"You are fucking joking?"
She didn't answer, just looked at him.
"But we've got private flights," he said.
"We still go through customs, as you know." she answered.
He called Katz's and asked for them to have ready six full-sized blueberry cheesecakes very fresh for Wednesday lunchtime. He'd decided on strength in numbers. Even if customs found one they might not find them all.
He couldn't help but press the intercom button for Katherine. He really needed to know whether the teasing and jesting they had clearly enjoyed over the weekend was, for some reason, now no longer part of their relationship, apparently killed in an instant by Katherine for reasons he didn't know.
"Hi Nick," she said.
In normal circumstances it would be hard not to laugh, but this time he was worried that for some reason she wouldn't see the funny side, so he was easily able to restrain himself. "Hi Katherine, before I forget. I've ordered six blueberry cheesecakes from Katz's." He waited for some reaction – but there was none - and went for broke, "Would you call them and arrange payment."
"Are you serious?" she asked flatly.
"Why not?" he said.
What had happened to her. Why hadn't she told him just to "fuck off", with a laugh on her face as she would have done the day before?
At the meeting with Tyler Morris the investor inquired about the possibility of increasing his
stake in Hensen Fund Management, and Nick promised he'd look into it and maybe he should come to London in a couple of weeks when "the bean counters have got some numbers together.”
Tyler was one of Nick's more likeable business associates. He had just turned 50 and to his credit was still with his childhood sweetheart who was pregnant with twins when he married her in impoverished circumstances 30 years earlier.
Nick asked him about his kids, "How many have you got now?" he asked.
"Seven up, now, man," he laughed. "Aged five to thirty."
"The youngest is only five? Jesus, Tyler you ever going to stop?"
"Have to now my friend, unless with someone other than Jackie who, err, you know, is now going through what they call 'women problems'."
"Well, I think seven is a great score and and if they have anything like the same you'll have a few grand kids to look forward to as well."
"Six already," Tyler laughed. "And what about you?"
"Oh, you know – well, actually, you don't, since you have been with the same good wife for so long – but there are a lot of what would you call them, 'players' out there who would happily settle for a rich banker if they couldn't at first snare a rich footballer."
"Does it matter?" Tyler asked. "A good-looking girl, probably a lot younger than you, who would go shopping a lot, look after your house and kids, and provide good sex regularly. What's not to like?"
Nick thought that maybe Tyler was talking sense. "A bit 'do as I say and not do as I do', though..." he suggested. "You marry your first love when you didn't have a pot to piss in and you have been happily married ever since. Jackie didn't marry you for your lifestyle, unless her dream was to live in a run-down trailer park in Connecticut."
Tyler laughed. "I got lucky, he said."
"Have you ever been unfaithful to her?" Nick asked.
"Never."
He wondered what it was like just to sleep with only one person ever, as he suspected was the case with Tyler and Jackie.
Then, in a lighter mood, they reminisced about the two days Tyler had taken Nick on a fishing trip to Lake Ontario, during which the city boy from London had tried his best not to catch anything for the fear of having to kill it.
When a rainbow trout did bite, Tyler had to take over to reel it in and whack it on the head. Nick remembered Tyler had promised him that fishing was relaxing. He found it anything but, having to kill things.
"The fish and meat you buy in the supermarket are already dead," Tyler said. "You are happy to eat meat and fish but you want others to do the dirty work."
"Yes, I know, I am a hypocrite, Tyler. But in England we've given up our guns and are not nearly as rugged and formidable a we used to be. But that doesn't mean you can't buy me a burger and a beer before you go and ride the rapids and shoot some deer."
"Damn Limeys," he remarked.
After Tyler had left, several more beers later than they had planned, Nick sent a text to Katherine. "Are you OK?" It was not late enough for her to be asleep and he expected a reply within a couple of minutes. None came.
The next morning he called her. "Hi you OK?”
“Sure,” she replied.
“I sent you a text last night but you didn't get back to me and I was a bit worried that you had some sort of problem... "
"No, nothing, I'm fine," she said. The tone of her voice would, after audio analysis, have shown as a flat-line on a graph, He'd seen the same on financial charts when - however temporarily - the buyers and sellers had given up caring.
"I'll see you in the office in an hour. There's nothing big today. And then we can get to the airport."
What the fuck had happened to her? Nick thought after hanging up. After the morning business had finished, he didn't even bother to tell her that he was going to pick up the cheesecake.
He said goodbye to the staff and asked Elroy to pick up all his luggage from the apartment and anything Katherine had left. Wait for me there.
"Where are you going, boss?"
"East Houston Street."
"I'll take you in the car, man."
"No, Elroy, I'm going on the train, buddy. See you at the apartment."
With Harry Beck's genius London Underground map and the naming and colouring of the lines, a kid could easily find his way round the network at home. But it seemed to him that in New York, like Paris, they liked to test the mind, preferring to designate their subway lines by numbers and letters.
To make things even more difficult, as he understood it looking at the map, they didn't use the directions of the compass but a system where you first had to find the end station of the line in the direction you wished to travel. So he took some time to figure out that he needed 23rd Street F-M and to travel in the direction that he had travelled with Katherine at the weekend, towards Coney Island.
He didn't realise how famous Katz's was. US and foreign presidents had eaten there, film stars, music stars, sports stars. They had signed pictures on the walls. And there was even a sign to show where they filmed the Harry Met Sally "I'll have what she's having" orgasm scene.
"Your cheesecake, Mr Hensen, made just one hour ago," said the man delivering boxes that looked more likely to contain small televisions or laptops than cheesecakes. "Everything is in cool boxes with ice packs in the separate compartments and this box contains further ice packs to replenish used ones during travel. It will be at its very best for the next twelve hours but will still be very good for up to three days.”
Nick was gobsmacked. "Has everything been paid for?" he asked.
"Yes, sir, everything has been paid for and Miss Price sent us a full specification of what was required. We have a car ready to deliver them all to the airport as Miss Price doubted you'd be able to manage them on the subway.”
"Yes, I think Miss Price was right," he said, handing him a tip. "Thank you very much."
Once outside he hailed a cab to take him back to his apartment and then called Katherine.
"Nice job with the cheesecake," he said.
"No worries, it was clear you were going to struggle, and I promise whoever it's for that I won't reveal I had any hand in its delivery to England. That's if it gets through customs of course."
Her voice was still flat.
"Can we talk on the plane, please Katherine. Let's get everything sorted between us before we land tomorrow?"
"Everything is sorted."
"No, it's not," he replied.
They boarded the Challenger 601 at Teterboro, New Jersey, just after 5 pm. There were four Hensen people, Nick, Katherine, and a couple of guys from their New York Office who had meetings in London on Friday. Nick shook their hands and invited them to pop in to the office if they got the chance.
The other four passengers Nick didn't know but it was not unusual to see strangers on the jets, helping to cover his company's $60,000 one-way trip and also promoting the company's green credentials to those who wanted bankers hung, drawn and quartered.
Nick and Katherine sat opposite each other with a table in between them. He looked at her but didn't say anything until the engine sound drowned out the possibility of him being overheard by the other passengers. "Can't do anything, if you don't tell me, Katherine."
She reached inside her bag without saying anything and pulled out her phone, She pressed some buttons and slid it across the table. When he picked it up he read the text message: "Fucking Nick in New York? Not very wise."
"What the hell is this and who's it from?"
"Who knows, it was sent by someone using an internet messaging service," she replied.
"No one knows we slept together apart from you and me - so you told someone."
"I didn't tell a fucking soul." she retorted with some anger in her voice.
"You must have done because I haven't.
"And even if I did – which I didn't – what's the point of the message? It's absurd."
Chapter twelve: A long way home
He looked out of the window. Land was behind
them and he thought the Atlantic was going to seem twice as big as usual sat opposite his hateful-looking PA for seven hours.
"If you didn't tell anyone, and I didn't - and we were the only two there - then what is the explanation?" he asked her rhetorically. "The only reason anyone would bug the apartment would be in the hope of finding out what the company was doing in in the markets. Spying on us to find out the boss was in bed with his PA makes no sense."
Katherine looked up at him, "blackmail?"
"Blackmail for what? I'm not married or even in a serious relationship. I had sex with my assistant who I have always liked as a person, even if I didn't see her... in an intimate way before," he said, lowering his voice.
"It's not, as far as I know, a criminal offence to go to bed with your PA. Mind you when the UK or European fucking Union won't even let you bring a cheesecake in from the States then maybe it is, and no one had told me."
He left his seat abruptly, annoyed with Katherine for the way she had changed so suddenly. One day lovable, laughing and full of fun and now a sulky employee who seemed to suspect he was responsible for the text message sent to her phone.
"Very large scotch please, one lump of ice, and a cigarette if you have one."
At the bar, the flight attendant, Robert Johnson according to the name tag pinned to his shirt, made the drink and then offered him a selection of cigarettes and cigars, while informing him in the politest terms that the charter company would impose an extra charge for having to purify the air after landing.
"Expensive business, smoking these days," said Nick.
He sat at the back of the plane, as far away from the others as possible, hoping they wouldn't notice the smoke, nor his perplexed expression as he tried to work out what was going on.
He lit his first cigarette since the Manarola party and felt quite light-headed after a few puffs. He had first smoked as a a teenager but had quit for years until he had to face a government inquiry into the part that hedge funds might have played in the financial crisis and the near collapse of the western economy.
The plane had a communications system that gave him a mobile phone signal stronger than in many American or European cities. But who to call? It was like a card game in which he not only had little idea about his own hand nor his opponent's, but he didn't even know the identity of his opponent.
Special Relationship Page 11
