by Rosie Thomas
Harriet glanced around the circle of faces. The gathering was an amplification of the pricing meeting, and of all the other meetings that had taken place over the six months of preparation: she saw the members of the Allardyce team and the McGovern Cowper people; there were the bank’s lawyers and representatives from their accountants; there were public relations executives acting on Peacocks’ behalf; Jeremy Crichton and two of his assistants; Piers Mayhew and Graham Chandler; and directly opposite her, Robin and Martin Landwith. Martin nodded a suave good morning, Harriet thought she saw Robin give the shadow of a wink.
This was the ceremony of the meeting brought to its apotheosis, as a celebration of itself, over a formal British breakfast.
The room was oak-panelled as if in a country house; the walls were hung with English landscapes, less impressive than Martin Landwith’s but lending the right atmosphere of stateliness. The carpet was very thick and new, with the bank’s logo discreetly woven into the wide border. It provided a tell-tale link between all this baronial splendour and the humming technology beyond the double doors.
Harriet smiled and unfolded her huge starched napkin.
‘How do you feel this morning?’ James Hamilton enquired.
‘Nervous. Regal,’ Harriet said.
‘It’s a big day,’ he murmured. ‘Now, what about some breakfast?’
On the sideboard running the length of one panelled wall there were a dozen big, silver-domed chafing dishes presided over by the bank’s butlers. Under the silver lids lay Finnan haddock and Caister kippers, kidneys and kedgeree and eggs, bacon and grilled tomatoes and mushrooms.
Harriet discovered that she was hungry.
She ate eggs and bacon and drank excellent hot coffee. She listened to the city conversations and reflected that these people were here because of her, because of what she had achieved. She felt a moment of pure self-centred triumph.
There was champagne in silver ice-buckets, but Harriet had refused it when it was offered. She drank a silent toast in coffee, instead, to Meizu and Simon Archer. Then she looked up and saw that Robin was watching her. Their eyes met, then Harriet looked away, inclining her head to listen to something James Hamilton was saying.
At exactly eight forty-five a McGovern Cowper man slipped in through the double doors. The twenty heads around the table all turned to him. He had come to report on the state of the financial markets overnight. Harriet heard him announce that it had been a quiet night with no major moves. Tokyo had closed a few points up on the preceding day.
The brokers nodded calmly. Harriet understood that there had been no shock to the market that would affect Peacocks’ issue. Her company would go to the market as planned. She spread thick orange marmalade on her toast and went on eating. The food seemed to calm her last-minute nerves.
At nine-fifteen a telephone rang. James Hamilton stood up, excusing himself to her, slid his chair into place and went to take the call.
He returned a moment later. He bowed to her, a little, formal bow and then he announced, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, we have impact.’
Harriet hadn’t expected what happened next.
There was a burst of spontaneous applause. More chairs were pushed back and the men in their dark suits crowded round to shake her hand and kiss her cheek. Piers and Jeremy hugged her, and Martin Landwith’s kiss came closer to her mouth. Now, laughing and with her face flushed with excitement, Harriet felt more film star than monarch.
Robin wrapped his arms around her. ‘That’s my girl,’ he whispered.
My girl? Harriet thought giddily.
When the hubbub of congratulations had died down a little, the lawyers and accountants gathered in a separate group and then slipped out of the room together. They were on their way to the less glamorous but more vital sealing and exchanging of completion documents. Harriet knew that once that business was done, a copy of her prospectus would be dispatched by motorcycle messenger to Companies House.
She looked at her watch. It was nine-forty. From ten o’clock onwards the McGovern Cowper equity brokers would be placing her shares with their institutional clients.
In a moment of panic she thought, what if they’re all wrong? What if no one buys? It made no difference to know that the issue was underwritten. Peacocks felt more like her baby than it had done since the very early days, when she huddled over Simon’s broken packing case in the Belsize Park flat.
The minutes ticked by. Most of the breakfasters were slipping away to their day’s work, but a handful remained gathered at the end of the table with Harriet. Martin Landwith was deep in conversation with one of the brokers. Robin sat calmly beside Harriet, sipping champagne.
At ten thirty-five the head of the McGovern team came in. He stood at Harriet’s shoulder and said, ‘We have a full subscription.’
The issue had been taken up. Harriet’s face split into a wide smile. ‘Well done,’ she said. ‘Well done, all of you.’
The broker made a small gesture. ‘We could have subscribed it six or seven times over,’ he told her.
That, Harriet thought, was her proudest, dizziest moment. It was a day of moments, but six or seven times over was the one she remembered best.
Harriet’s next engagement of the day was a lunch for a group of prominent journalists. She found herself in the strange position of making a speech extolling Peacocks’ past and future performance to, among others, Charlie Thimbell. Harriet remembered the Cretan beach; Charlie’s face was impassive as he took brisk shorthand notes.
‘Give me a nice write-up, Charlie,’ she demanded as the lunch party broke up.
‘I don’t know,’ he grinned at her. ‘I have to maintain professional detachment.’
Harriet went back to the Peacocks’ office to give some more interviews. Some were serious, others were the ‘Meizu Girl Makes Good’ variety. She submitted herself to them cheerfully. Her secretary came in and out with sheaves of congratulatory messages, and enough flowers were delivered to turn the reception area into a scented hothouse.
Harriet was too busy to take calls, but she did speak to Kath.
‘Thank you for your faith in me, Mum. Do you know what your holding in Peacocks is worth right now?’
‘Yes, love. Harriet, are you doing the right thing?’
‘Going public?’
‘I meant more, sacrificing all your young life to it. Harriet, are you there?’
Harriet sighed. Kath’s anxiety seemed to have become permanent. ‘It’s not a sacrifice. Today’s the most exciting day of my working life. Won’t you let me enjoy it, and take pleasure in it with me?’
Quickly, guiltily, Kath answered, ‘Of course I will. I’m your mother, Harriet. I only want you to be happy.’
‘I am happy.’
Sara came in with more flowers. Harriet read the card, and saw that they were from Mr Jepson and everyone at Midland Plastics.
At six o’clock Harriet gave her own party for Peacocks’ staff. They crowded into her office and toasted each other and the company’s success with more champagne. Harriet began to feel that she was floating on a tide of it. She scrambled up on to a low table to make her speech of thanks. She told them that Peacocks would not have come this far nor would it go any further without their help, and she reminded them of the long hours they had all put in and the value of the team effort. Harriet was being quite sincere, but even as she talked she was thinking that Peacocks was still her baby. She looked at the faces turned up to hers, Karen and Sara and Fiona, Graham and Jeremy and the others. She felt buoyed up by their liking and loyalty, but her pride and her possessiveness for Peacocks were undiluted.
Later, when the party was ending, Graham Chandler edged her into a quiet corner.
‘I wondered’, he said with his usual diffidence, ‘whether you’d let me take you out to dinner tonight? When you’ve done everything you need to do here, of course.’
‘I’m really sorry, Graham. I’m meeting Robin. In fact,’ she looked at her watch, ‘he should be
here now. Can we do it some other time?’
‘Of course we can.’ His face had turned slightly red.
Robin came a few moments later, and the Peacocks people dispersed. He drove Harriet to the restaurant where they had had their first dinner together, and at the end of the meal he produced a small package in Aspreys’ wrapping.
‘This is to celebrate a successful flotation, and a successful professional partnership. It is also to celebrate the fact that I love you.’
Harriet opened the little velvet box. Inside was a pair of diamond earrings, cold fiery teardrops that exactly matched her Christmas necklace.
She lifted her eyes to Robin’s face. ‘They’re beautiful. They’re extravagantly beautiful.’ Robin reached across the table and removed her Butler & Wilson clips. Then he fixed the diamond drops in place.
‘Like you,’ he told her.
Harriet knew that she wasn’t beautiful, but for this evening she was willing to believe that she might be.
It was midnight when Robin’s latest Porsche drew up outside Harriet’s house. She looked at her watch and laughed softly. ‘Will it all disappear when the clocks strike twelve?’
He leaned across to kiss her. ‘How could it? You’re the fairy godmother, not Cinderella.’
As they reached the steps leading up to the front door Harriet saw a darker shadow moving in the front garden’s shadows. She was fleetingly reminded of her walk the night before that seemed separated from this moment by much more than a day. Then the shadow came forward and grew solid.
It became a small figure in a shapeless checked cotton dress, a V-necked jersey and white socks. Harriet recognised school uniform before she recognised the child herself.
Then she said slowly, wonderingly, ‘Linda? Linda, what are you doing here?’
‘I ran away,’ Linda Jensen answered. ‘I got your letter, and I wanted to see you. I’ve been waiting here for hours and hours.’
‘Oh, God,’ Harriet said. She put her hand out to Robin for support. ‘For God’s sake, Linda.’ She suddenly felt how tired she was. And at the same time she noticed that Linda was shivering. Wearily she added, ‘Come on. We’d better all go inside.’
In the warm light of the kitchen Linda stared coldly at Robin.
‘What’s he doing here?’
‘I invited him,’ Harriet said pointedly. ‘Sit down on that stool, Linda. I’m going to make you some hot chocolate. Don’t say anything, I don’t want to hear anything about this until you’ve drunk it. Then we’ll try to sort it out.’
‘Can I have some toast as well?’ Linda asked. ‘I’m really hungry.’
With food inside her she stopped shivering. But her eyes were over-large in her thin face, and the shoulders in the maroon jersey looked very small. Harriet knew how young she was, however old she might try to act. She could also guess at what Linda had gone through to reach Hampstead at all, and she began to regret the brusque reception she had given her. She pulled another stool close to Linda’s.
‘Now. Do you want to tell me about it?’
Linda gave a small shrug. ‘I already told you. I wanted to see you.’
‘I was coming to take you out to tea.’ Harriet had meant to ring Ronny. Only she hadn’t, yet.
‘In how many weeks? I can’t stand that place. It’s horrible, gross, the things they make you do all the time.’
Over Linda’s head Harriet caught Robin’s eye, and had to suppress a smile. ‘All schools are pretty much the same, you know.’
‘Are they? Well, I’m finished with this one. I’ll tell you what I did. I just climbed out through the hedge and walked down the town to the station. There are day girls, you know, so no one paid any attention to me walking around. This was before tea, when all the lucky ones are going home, to people who care about them.’
Harriet’s eyes met Robin’s again. She put her hand out, to Linda’s maroon shoulder. ‘People care about you, you know. Go on.’
‘I bought a ticket to Paddington and got on the train. Some creepy woman in the carriage asked me what I was doing on my own and I told her I was going to an appointment with my orthodontist in Harley Street and my father’s chauffeur was meeting me off the train.’ Linda smiled at the recollection. ‘That shut her up. At Paddington I made sure she was out of sight and then I got in a taxi and it brought me here. A long way, it took all the rest of my money. As a matter of fact it wasn’t my money. Arabella Makepeace keeps a whole pile of it in her creepy handbag, so I borrowed some, temporarily. Ronny never lets me have enough. Will you pay Arabella back for me?’ Linda’s face looked stiff. ‘I don’t want to owe her anything. I wonder if she’s found out it’s gone?’
‘Linda, what time did you leave the school?’
‘I told you. Before tea.’
‘And it’s half-past twelve at night. Have you thought, at all, about how worried the school must be? And Ronny? I’ll have to ring them now and tell them you’re safe.’
The shrug came again. ‘Ring whoever you like. But I can stay here with you, Harriet, can’t I? Please let me stay?’
Linda’s voice quivered. The chink in the child’s precarious armour touched Harriet. She put her arms around her. ‘Where’s your mother?’
‘At home in LA. I wish I was. Let me stay, Harriet.’
Harriet held her. ‘You can stay tonight, at least,’ she soothed. ‘Robin, do you think you could telephone the school? St Brigid’s, Ascot. They must have half the police in the country out looking by this time.’
‘It would be better if you did it,’ Robin muttered. ‘They’ll think I’ve abducted her, or something. Whereas, in fact, nothing could be further from my mind.’ But he went through to the next room, and they heard him obtaining the number and then talking in his calm voice.
‘Linda, where’s your father? Don’t you think we should talk to him about all this?’ Harriet asked.
‘No.’
The child drew a long, ragged, frightening breath. Then, at once, the remnants of her bravado deserted her. Her face contracted like a baby’s and she began to sob.
‘Don’t tell Caspar. I’ll do anything if you don’t tell Caspar. You don’t know what he’s like when he’s angry. You don’t know anything.’ Linda pitched forward and wept in Harriet’s arms.
Harriet stroked her hair. There were small twigs caught in it, left from her long hours, hiding in the garden hedge. Harriet found that she was suddenly near to tears herself.
She could imagine Caspar Jensen’s fury as clearly as she remembered his charm.
‘It’s all right,’ she whispered to Linda. ‘It’s all right. We’ll think of something, between us.’
Thirteen
All the way back to Ascot in Harriet’s car, Linda sat in silence, staring without interest out of the window. Harriet glanced at her from time to time, but said nothing.
When Harriet had telephoned Linda’s headmistress the night before, Mrs Harper’s relief that Linda was safe had swung quite quickly into suppressed anger. Nor could Harriet entirely blame her. She suspected that if she herself was responsible for Linda Jensen she might react in the same way. She listened patiently to what the headmistress had to say.
The police had been called, did Miss Peacock realise? Linda’s nanny had driven straight to the school and was even now trying to contact Mr Jensen, overseas, you understand? Harriet pressed her lips together, knowing that she mustn’t show a flicker of amusement. Linda was watching her closely.
Had Miss Peacock by any chance encouraged Linda to run away?
‘Of course not,’ Harriet protested. ‘But she had told me that she is unhappy at St Brigid’s.’
Linda’s brown eyes fixed on Harriet’s face.
After a pause Mrs Harper said, ‘Yes. It’s not a very easy situation. We’re trying to do all we can to help her, you know.’
Harriet imagined her, a competent and probably kindly woman shaken out of her calm routine, and sympathised with her.
‘I understand that.’
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There had been some more talk. Veronica Page had wanted to drive straight to Hampstead to collect Linda. Harriet had spoken to her, and under Linda’s unblinking stare had suggested that that was unnecessary. She could be regarded as a family friend, Harriet had continued, and so would be glad to look after Linda overnight and drive her back to St Brigid’s the next day. Miss Page could meet them at the school, perhaps. There had been an agreement. Linda had come forward to mumble a few words to Ronny to convince her that she was perfectly safe. Harriet accepted Mrs Harper’s and Miss Page’s thanks and hung up.
As soon as the receiver was replaced Linda had rounded on her.
‘I won’t go. You can’t make me. It all stinks, you don’t know.’
The words had come out in a jumble, fury competing with tears. Linda had swung out a fist, intending to hit Harriet, but Harriet had caught her arm and the tears won out. Linda stood and cried noisily, her narrow shoulders vibrating. Harriet held her and looked over her head to Robin.
Robin was embarrassed, and impatient, and irritated. With the sobbing child between them, Harriet sighed.
‘What are you going to do?’ he asked. He made Linda sound like a business decision, to be dealt with briskly before moving on to the next item on the agenda. Harriet found herself looking at him with an edge of dislike. She put her hand up to touch Linda’s fine straight hair and picked out another tiny twig that had been caught in it. ‘I’m going to put her to bed, and in the morning see if she wants to talk. Then I’ll drive her back to school.’
Linda broke away from her. She hesitated, trying to make up her mind which way to run, and then dashed past Robin in the direction of the door. Robin caught her this time, not very gently, and Linda drew back her foot in the round-toed school shoe and kicked his shin. Robin swore.
‘You can’t run away from here as well, Linda. Where will you stop, if you do?’ Harriet asked.
