“I’ll be stuck in Boston for a while. Gipson’s called for a desk audit of our PharmaStat trials—all of them. And whatever else it takes to calm our jittery stockholders. Who knows how long that list will be? But the first thing on my list is to find a place to live. It would be nice if I could find something that didn’t require a lease. Maybe if I—”
“Excuse me?” Channing climbed directly on top of Lark and pinned her shoulders to the bed. “Are you saying you don’t currently have a flat?”
“I’ve been living at Ma’s for the last two years so I could help take care of her. It was just two months ago that she died.” She made a feeble effort to squirm free before going limp in surrender. “When I found out I was coming here, I put all my stuff in storage. Chloe said I could stay with her and Bobby till I find something.”
“It goes without saying, obviously—you should stay at my place when you get back. It’s the top floor of a three-family house in Somerville, assuming that’s convenient to your work.”
“Are you kidding? Gipson’s headquarters is near Malden Center. That’s only two stops away.”
“On the Orange Line. It’s brilliant.” Except Lark didn’t seem to think so. “There’s that little sneer of yours, the one you always try to pretend I don’t see. Is there something about staying at my flat that concerns you?”
Lark shook her head, though a mild grimace confirmed she was holding something back. “No…it just seems kind of fast.”
“You mean as opposed to spending every single night together since our first? Stocking the fridge for breakfast, sharing a box of tampons?”
“I know it sounds stupid.”
“Stew-pid.”
“Stew-pid. But it reminds me of my first year in medical school when I met Bess. We hadn’t been dating that long, and our schedules were insane. One of the reasons we moved in together was so we’d have more time to—”
She put a finger over Lark’s lips. “Do you regret that your relationship with Bess has ended?”
“No, of course not.”
“All of our choices lead to eventual outcomes. Something to keep in mind as you chronicle whether anything you did was a mistake or not. Carry on.”
“A fair point.” Lark snatched her finger and held it. “But it was a problem at the time that we had no way to slow things down. Once you move in with somebody, the only way out is to break up.”
“Or have your mother get sick, but that’s kind of extreme.”
“Heh…and you only get to use it once.”
“The truth always comes out, Dr. Latimer.” In the few times Lark had talked about Bess, she’d always seemed glad to have that relationship behind her. “Can I ask…if it became a problem that you lived together, why didn’t you break it off? Please tell me you aren’t one of those who suffers in silence at home but tells all your mates.”
“We did break up, two or three times. But then we’d drift back together because we didn’t know any better. If you’ve never had a good relationship, all you have to compare it to is what you grew up with. My ma was dysfunctional as hell and Bess’s father was a womanizer. We felt comfortable with each other, but that’s not the same as being happy.”
Channing was impressed by Lark’s evolved understanding of herself, having cycled through mummy issues of her own. Freudian implications aside, it was little wonder she’d been drawn to Payton’s wisdom and maturity.
“Bess is happy now. Really happy. She met somebody last summer…they’re actually getting married in August. My invitation must have gotten lost in the mail.” Her caustic regard of Bess always stopped short of cruelty and actual harm, and Channing suspected the feeling was mutual. Lark’s deep chuckle suggested there was a lot more to the story.
“I hope to hear all about Bess someday. There was talk you’ve recently met a woman as well. Any truth to rumors you’re in love?”
“Was that in one of the gossip rags?” Lark asked, bringing Channing’s face down for a kiss. “I wonder if they took pictures through the window. She’s the sexiest, sweetest woman ever, and she has a gorgeous, strawberry-shaped birthmark right about”—her hands groped beneath the sheets—“here.”
Channing offered no resistance as Lark urged her onto her back and attached her lips to a nipple. “Don’t think I’ve forgotten what we were talking about, Lark. When I get to Boston, this is what I want waiting in my bed. My lease is up at the end of November. If there’s a problem in our relationship, it will bloody sort itself by then.”
* * *
Upon boarding at Heathrow, Mike Dobbins had coaxed another passenger—a younger man whose jeans and scruffy face reminded Lark of Oliver—into switching seats so he could sit beside her on the way back to Boston. Now instead of catching up on the sleep she’d missed as she and Channing said their early morning goodbyes in bed, she was stuck going over Gipson’s legal and business strategies for handling the PharmaStat debacle.
A predictable wave of yearning struck her when the flight attendant delivered a pot of tea accompanied by a pair of shortbread cookies. Biscuits, Channing would have said. “How lovely. Thank you so much.”
Mike snapped his fingers and ordered coffee, black with two sugars. The savage. “What pisses me off is that we wasted so much time and money on doing an onsite review when we could have just asked the lab. Always look to the science first.”
It was too bad she wasn’t sitting next to Kirsten, whose status as a senior officer of the corporation afforded her first-class flights. She was up there at the front of the plane with a couple of her PharmaStat counterparts, higher-ups who had the authority to satisfy Gipson’s demands. Unlike Mike, Kirsten had too much class to trash-talk somebody’s job while they were sitting right beside her.
If anything, Lark’s review had favorably documented PharmaStat’s professionalism and compliance with protocols. Going forward, their enhanced security procedures would provide insurance against bad actors like Niya.
“For what it’s worth, Mike, the review wasn’t wasted. We’d have done it anyway, even if we’d gotten the lab results first. At least now Dr. Cooke has all the information she needs to get this matter resolved.”
“I guess you’re right. The weakest link in drug trials has always been people with no sense of ethics. I’m talking about doctors who fabricate data, recruiters who fudge the criteria. Remember that guy in Buenos Aires who ‘lost’ the results on all the subjects who suffered serious side effects?”
“Congratulations, by the way. Looks like Flexxene will go to Phase III early next year as planned. You should be proud of that.”
“Thanks, I am. With luck we’ll have this in front of the FDA by December.”
Their odds of getting the drug to market went up markedly once it cleared Phase II.
Starting immediately, Lark would conduct a detailed review of every Gipson trial currently underway at the Cambridge facility. Future trials were off the table until PharmaStat put a new management team in place.
There was also the public relations issue. Gipson’s VP of marketing had hired a crisis management firm weeks ago when the frightening news reports first appeared. They’d have to navigate this crisis too, and design a communications campaign to restore Gipson’s reputation.
Lark was thrilled by Kirsten and Mike’s decision to offer the affected participants a guaranteed slot in the Phase III trial, since one of those participants was Maisie Browning. Phase III involved thousands of arthritis patients worldwide, all of whom would be monitored for several years while using the Flexxene patch. Plus they’d all get the actual drug, since there was no placebo group in Phase III.
“You and Batra were friends, right? Did you ever have a clue she was up to something like this?”
Yes, Mike. I knew she was plotting this scheme to bring down Gipson but I kept quiet about it because she was my friend.
That’s how she’d have responded to Channing, who would have laughed at her dry humor and poker-faced delivery. Doubting Mike’s
ability to recognize her facetiousness, she dutifully replied, “No one was as shocked as I was. I probably wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen the video for myself. Oh, here comes your coffee. I bet if you apologize for snapping your fingers, she’ll bring you some cookies too.”
He peered over at her cookies and pouted that there weren’t any on his tray. “Excuse me, miss. I’m sorry for snapping my fingers at you earlier. Thank you for not breaking them off.”
The flight attendant gave him a playful sneer before winking at Lark and walking away.
“Every time I think I’m ready to graduate from sensitivity training, I step in it again and get sent back for another round. Of course you didn’t know what Dr. Batra was up to. She had everyone fooled, including her husband apparently.”
“It floored me when they said she might have been having an affair with that guy from Haas-Seidel, Mike. She’s always talked about Dev like he was the sweetest man on earth, like they were going to retire in Portugal. I’m not totally convinced this was an affair.”
“It has to be something. There’s no evidence that money ever changed hands.”
When the clock on her phone marked four and a half minutes, she poured the tea into the cup over the milk. “Not yet, at least. But Niya lived four years in Geneva while she was working for WHO. I wouldn’t be surprised if she still has a Swiss bank account.”
Threatened with arrest for causing bodily harm to the three subjects whose treatments were switched, Niya had confessed to her part in the scheme. She’d named Torsten Shulte, a product manager at Haas-Seidel with whom she admitted having a “close, personal relationship,” as her co-conspirator. Haas-Seidel was developing a transdermal patch called Ostefaan, similar to Flexxene in its molecular composition and delivery, but with a nominal corticosteroid Gipson scientists insisted was merely window dressing to subvert their patent. Ostefaan was at least eighteen months behind Flexxene in trials and bogged down in legal challenges. Getting Flexxene suspended from trials not only would have allowed Haas-Seidel time to catch up in development, it also threatened Gipson’s legal standing as patent holder. Collateral damage to Gipson’s reputation was icing on the cake.
While Shulte’s motive was clear, Niya’s was less so. Lark couldn’t imagine that Niya had done it for the money. More likely, she’d simply burned out after years of so much responsibility. It would explain why she’d been so eager to offer herself as the sacrificial lamb even before the investigation revealed tampering. What if Dev had pushed her past her breaking point, insisting they both work another ten years before retiring? Perhaps it really was her exit strategy.
“I’ve been thinking about this Shulte guy,” Mike said. “He’s a product manager just like I am. He’s got a handful of drugs that he’s responsible for, but ninety-five percent of them don’t even make it to Phase II. Ostefaan has a chance, right? I bet he thinks about it all the time. Like me with Flexxene. I can’t go to the hardware store without thinking about Flexxene. I can’t watch my kid’s soccer game, can’t make love to my wife without—”
“Yeah, let’s not go there.”
“Sorry…like I said, back to sensitivity school. Anyway, Shulte wakes up one morning and realizes he’s basically hosed. Not only is Flexxene going to get there first, he’s got all these lawyers up his ass about the patent case. He’s thinking his bosses could pull the plug any day. Meanwhile his next pipeline drug is at least three or four years away. Career-wise, he’s going nowhere.”
The flight attendant walked by and wordlessly placed a plate of cookies on Mike’s tray before continuing on to the first-class cabin. He beamed with delight.
“So you think he might have done this to save Ostefaan’s chances?”
“Yeah, I do. Come on, which is easier to believe? That one guy sells out his principles or the whole company does?”
“Uh…Volkswagen?” It took all of her self-control not to swipe at his chin, where two days’ worth of beard held a mass of cookie crumbs. “I don’t have to tell you the numbers on Flexxene, Mike. It’s worth billions. Niya Batra’s not going to give up her whole career so her boyfriend can maybe get a drug to market in five or six years. Either she’s getting serious money from Haas-Seidel, or it had nothing to do with money.”
They could speculate endlessly. In the end, only Niya knew why she’d thrown away such an accomplished career and pristine reputation.
Mike however was suddenly sold on the Volkswagen comparison. He rambled that Haas-Seidel was trying to knock the US out of the British market. If Brexit resulted in European companies getting a competitive advantage, he said, they’d go after Johnson & Johnson next, then Pfizer. All the more reason Gipson needed to push back.
Lark found it all too depressing. It sickened her that, not even a month ago, she’d sat in the Crown and Punchbowl gushing over pictures of Niya with her granddaughter, aching at how her friend was being forced to bear the brunt of criticism. She’d praised Niya’s brave actions and begged her to fight the scurrilous charges that had her considering retirement. Niya Batra—her hero, her role model—wasn’t merely corrupt. She was reprehensible.
Chapter Twenty-One
Channing found it amusing that, among the handful of her acquaintances who’d met Lark, it was her straight, married driver Ruth who admitted finding her sexy. “I’m into blokes but she’s dishy. Such a cute figure…and those gorgeous eyes.”
A chime announced a text message. If it was from Lark, it meant her flight was delayed.
Miss Hughes, it’s Vanessa Easton. I got your number from our mutual friend, Oliver Bristow. Would love to have chat. Next week perhaps? V
Vanessa Easton. A capital manager, she recalled from the memorial event at the Crown and Punchbowl. And a handsome woman whose husband taught at Cambridge, who said she’d founded her company on economic principles learned from Poppa. Why would she… Perhaps because she was head of a company that might very well have use for someone of Channing’s talents.
It was an intriguing possibility, assuming that’s what this was about. The sort of work Vanessa Easton did was on a smaller scale than Albright, but right up her alley.
“They’re just like the robber at Butch Annie’s.”
“Excuse me, what?”
“Her eyes. They’re like the guy who robbed Butch Annie’s.”
“You mean the burger joint?”
“It was brill, just last year. Some wanker came in and robbed all the customers while they were eating. Made like he had a gun in his pocket and collected all their wallets in a sack. So the police came around and took down his description, right? Everyone remembered his eyes, that they were gold with little brown flecks. It goes out on Twitter and bunches of people start tweeting to the police that their friend Roger has eyes like that. So they go to Roger’s flat and he’s got this pile of cash on his bed and a sack of empty wallets. All because of his beautiful eyes.”
“I’ll be sure to tell Lark that story so she knows not to rob Butch Annie’s.”
She could have rented a car twice over for what she’d paid to have Ruth at her beck and call, but a rental car wouldn’t have come with such vivid narration. All of Ruth’s stories were captivating, even the royal gossip. Surely it was useful to know the line of succession all the way down to the grandson of the queen’s second cousin several times removed.
“Bloody sakes, you actually know these people?” Ruth exclaimed as they started down the long drive that led to Breckham Hall.
“The Earl of Alanford lives here. His son was my best mate at school.”
“My Toyota isn’t posh enough to be in the drive. You want I should go back and wait outside the gate?”
Two luxury vehicles sat gleaming by the garage. Surely Lord Alanford would offer to have one of his drivers deliver her to Penderworth. Or she could ring Cecil to fetch her, since they’d be home from the Burys by now.
“I’ll catch a lift home, Ruth. Thanks for the airport run.”
The door was answere
d by Helena, a longtime employee of the Alanford household who’d served as Kenny’s nanny when he was a toddler. “So nice to see you, Miss Hughes. Lord Alanford is waiting in the courtyard with tea. May I bring you anything else?”
“No, it’s fine. Thank you.” On the drive back from Heathrow, she and Ruth had stopped for a pub lunch in Hatfield.
Though Channing knew her way around Breckham Hall, Helena escorted her to the garden, a practice that always felt more like surveillance than hospitality. She wondered if they followed Oliver as well.
Lord Alanford rose from his shaded chair as she walked across the flagstones. “How wonderful to see you, Channing. Thank you so much for making time to come. I know how busy you must be.”
There was no sign of Lady Alanford, who sometimes stayed at their flat in the city. In fact, Channing recalled Kenny saying they were catching a performance this week in West End.
“I was delighted when you called. It’s been so hectic, I almost forgot I’d promised you a memento from Poppa’s collection of Romantic poetry.” She handed him a book by Keats that included “Ode to a Nightingale,” the poem she’d excerpted at Poppa’s funeral. “It’s not a first edition, nor even in good condition, I’m afraid. It was one from which he read quite often, as you can tell by the worn cover. He’d be so pleased to know it was on your nightstand now.”
He held the book to his chest as his eyes misted. “I couldn’t be more pleased with your choice. I always felt it was the poetry that gave your grandfather his gentle side, which I very much admired. Lord Hughes, as we all knew, was an unflinching champion of the work ethic, but he saw the imbalance in our social system.” Ever the gentleman, he held her chair before seating himself at the one adjacent. “Over the years he came to believe that economists, himself included, should focus their theories more on the common good. I believe it was his love of poetry that brought him to an appreciation of humanity.”
Channing was too polite to call bollocks on his revisionist reflections, recalling all too well Poppa’s full-throated defense of Thatcher long after civilized Englanders came to see her policies as needlessly cruel.
A Proper Cuppa Tea Page 22
