A Reluctant Cinderella

by Alison Bond

  She folded the notes into a tight square and stuffed them into her pocket. Her fingers were on the door handle, but something made her turn back. The scent of opportunity. ‘Give me a job,’ she said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Why not? I’m a quick learner, I can type, fetch coffee, anything. Please? You said yourself I’m no fool. It’s your fault if I get fired.’

  ‘And how do you work that out?’

  ‘You were supposed to be keeping them out of trouble, right?’ she said. ‘Well, I’m trouble.’

  She didn’t feel embarrassed around him. He exuded confidence and security and this made her brave. He was the kind of man she wanted to marry one day.

  ‘I’m serious,’ she said.

  ‘You have absolutely no experience.’

  ‘Please. Be a hero. Won’t you give a girl a chance?’

  Goddamn her. Did she have any idea how sexy she was? No wonder his boys had been dumb enough to get her drunk. She was trouble all right, a walking talking sexual-harassment suit waiting to happen.

  He should push another fifty on her to stop her running to the newspapers and get the hell out of there as fast as he could.

  ‘The pay would be shit and the hours would be dreadful,’ he said. ‘I doubt you’d last a month.’

  She took that as a yes.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘Thank you so much. You won’t regret it.’ She held out her hand for him to shake.

  Bemused, Jackson shook it.

  And Samantha was on her way.

  16

  Fired.

  Without her career who was she?

  She was a sister. Not a very good one. Once a week on Thursday mornings she was a sister. The rest of the time she denied his very existence.

  She wasn’t a mother or a daughter or a wife.

  The closest thing she had to a friend was Leanne, a girl who wasn’t even her assistant any more.

  She didn’t have any hobbies. So she couldn’t call herself a painter or a writer or a musician. She wasn’t a film fan and she hadn’t read a book for years.

  She was a career girl without a career, a working woman without a job to do. Washed up at the age of thirty-four. Over.

  The thought of getting a life was crippling.

  She had never belonged, not really. She was reminded every single day. She saw the shock on people’s faces when they discovered she was a woman, heard surprise in their voices on the telephone. That’s why she liked to do so much by email. Sam Sharp – androgynous enough to garner the respect that came automatically to others. There were twenty Richards at Legends and she had caught each and every one of them looking at her on occasion with contempt, lust or a condescending smile. But never respect. Never fear.

  She had been waiting for this for years, to get kicked out of the boys’ club all the way back to the girl she had never truly buried, just hidden for a while and not too well. Not well enough.

  What were you thinking?

  She was a joke that went too far. A lie she was stupid to believe.

  The one colleague who valued her contribution was Jackson and just look at how much good that had done in the end. She used to think that he was on her side. Now she realized she had been naive. If it came down to it the only side he would ever really be on was his own. Jackson was a fighter just like her. Like she used to be.

  Who was she now?

  He came to see her at home the night he fired her. He was holding a bottle of whisky. ‘Not for you,’ he said. ‘For me.’

  ‘You don’t normally drink when we’re together, Jackson.’

  ‘This isn’t a normal day.’

  ‘And as of six hours ago we’re not together,’ she said.

  He wanted to explain. Not apologize, explain. When he was done she suspected she was supposed to throw open her arms or her legs and tell him everything was going to be okay.

  She settled for throwing him out of her house instead.

  ‘Sam, please try to be mature about this. You were the one who never stopped going on about how we had to keep business and pleasure separate. What happened today was business. Given that advice, in those circumstances, you would have done exactly the same.’

  ‘Did you honestly expect things between us to remain as they were?’

  ‘Great,’ he said. ‘Now they can change. If I’m not your boss then you’re free to be with me, really be with me. We’re fucking amazing together – can’t you let yourself imagine where we could go from here?’

  ‘Get out of my house.’

  He raked his fingers through his thick brown hair in exasperation. She saw the deep furrows in his forehead and the circles beneath his eyes, the signs of his stress, and thought – good.

  ‘I can’t lose you,’ he said.

  ‘You didn’t lose me, Jackson. You threw me away.’

  ‘Legends is a clean company, Samantha, spotless. I started with nothing and I have spent my entire life building an honest brand, and yes sometimes that means letting people go when they have question marks over their reputation.’

  She gasped with indignation and started to speak. ‘I don’t –’

  ‘No, Sam,’ he said, cutting her off, ‘the press, the bad press; shit sticks and that’s just the way it goes. I read it in the paper so it must be true.’

  ‘That’s not honesty,’ she said. ‘That’s just bullshit.’

  His steel eyes blazed with sudden anger. ‘You of all people should understand. What would you have had me do? Huh?’

  ‘Stood up for me. Issued a press release giving me your full support. Refused to accept the premise of the accusations. Told Carl there was no way I would take a bribe, that I don’t have it in me to be dishonest.’ Her skin prickled with anger.

  ‘But you do,’ he said. ‘You lie every day, about you and me.’

  ‘I don’t want to deal with their snide remarks,’ she snapped.

  ‘I wasn’t talking about them,’ he said. He moved closer to her and stroked his fingertips round her tense shoulders and down her back. Then she could feel his massive hand on the small of her back and some of her fury dissolved. ‘You lie to yourself,’ he said. ‘We both know damn well you’re in love with me.’

  She calmed herself a little and considered what he was saying. ‘Maybe I was,’ she admitted. ‘And that’s why it hurts so much.’ Their lips were so close she could feel his warm breath tickling her mouth. She closed her eyes and surrendered to the inevitable. Then opened them again when she felt him sigh and pull away.

  ‘Grow up, will you?’ he said. ‘Either you love me or you don’t. It’s not a there-one-minute-gone-the-next thing.’

  She bristled with humiliation. ‘Then I never could have loved you,’ she said, closing the door on that chapter of her life.

  So she lost him, or they lost each other. He was mad if he thought she could feel anything for him now but the raw wound of his treachery. He was insane. She could forgive many things. She was an open-minded woman. But not this. Not her career. That grip on the ladder where she had clung and climbed so determinedly. He knew. More than anyone else, he knew. Because he had been there for every struggle. And now, even though he was not the architect of her disgrace, she held him responsible, because he didn’t trust her enough to save her. He didn’t love her enough to be true.

  Leanne turned up the following day at half-past one just like she had every day for the last few weeks.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ said Samantha. Irritation simmered, scarcely off the boil. She just wanted to be left alone to grieve for everything she had lost.

  ‘You look like crap,’ said Leanne.

  She hadn’t slept all night, hadn’t eaten a thing and her face bore the remnants of long ago make-up. Losing the only worthwhile thing in your life takes its toll on your appearance. She pulled the towelling bathrobe she’d been wearing all morning tight around her body, defending herself from the world.

  Leanne sailed past Samantha and into the house, plonking a shea
f of paperwork on the kitchen counter. ‘I wrote letters on your behalf to the clients,’ she said. ‘Here’s a pen, sign them.’ She flicked on the coffee machine with practised ease.

  Samantha picked up the letter. For a few seconds it might as well have been written in Japanese (and her Japanese was rusty) for all the sense it made. It stated that she had parted company with Legends without going into detail, maintained a warm and respectful tone and wished the client every success in the future. She turned it over in her hand, confused. ‘Why?’ she said. ‘What’s the point?’

  ‘You were going to leave without saying goodbye?’

  ‘Leanne, all the clients will have been picked up by someone else at Legends. If you don’t think Richard and all of them were on the phone within an hour of my leaving the building then you must be unbelievably naive.’

  ‘Which I’m not,’ said Leanne, twisting the steam valve with asbestos hands so that it hissed and then roared. ‘Don’t kid yourself; Richard would have been on the phone before you were even out of the lift.’

  ‘So why bother?’

  ‘You’re not dead, Sam. You haven’t even lost your FIFA licence. Isn’t it possible that you might want a career in, gee, I don’t know, sports management? Here, drink.’

  Samantha knocked back the blistering espresso in one gulp and sucked in sharply as her gullet screamed in fiery protest. She slammed the little cup back down. ‘Don’t you get it? People remember a scandal.’ All that hard work, all those hours, the sacrifice and for nothing. ‘There’s no way back for me,’ she said. ‘Not after this.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Leanne, ‘that’s the attitude.’ She sipped her espresso and rolled her eyes. ‘Fine, I’ll forge your signature, okay?’

  ‘I don’t care. Do what you like.’

  ‘And what will you do?’

  ‘I might go away,’ she said impulsively. ‘Maybe I’ll bum around the world for as long as I like. There’s other things I want to do besides work, you know, like learning how to sail or cook – I used to make a really good curry – or, like, seeing the pyramids and the Taj Mahal.’

  ‘Yeah, right,’ said Leanne, ‘but what are you really going to do?’

  ‘Give me those damn letters.’

  ‘Here’s a pen.’

  ‘Whatever, just pass them over. I’ll do them later.’

  Leanne stayed for a little while and then before she left she told Samantha she wouldn’t be coming back. ‘Until you need me. I’ll stay at Legends – they’ve found me a desk with the commercial department. But when you do decide how you’re next going to take on the world and win, will you let me know? I enjoy working for you; I’d like to do it again someday.’

  ‘I didn’t win,’ she said. ‘I was beaten.’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Leanne. ‘But somewhere along the way somebody cheated.’

  ‘I think you’re right. But who?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You don’t think …’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said Samantha. ‘It’s just what you said, a while ago, about who stands to gain from my disgrace. I was wondering how Richard was doing. Has he picked up all the clients?’

  ‘A few,’ said Leanne. ‘The Welsteads, of course. But, to be honest, most of the good ones have gone to Jackson.’

  Both women fell silent. ‘He wouldn’t bring shame on his own company,’ said Samantha eventually. ‘That would make no sense.’

  ‘You’re right,’ said Leanne. ‘Besides, Jackson’s crazy about you. I mean, not like that, not that way, but you know what I mean.’

  Once, a long time ago, she had read that the sign of a great businessman (or woman, presumably) was not making the first million, but losing the first million and then making it again. At the time she remembered thinking – who would be stupid enough to lose a million?

  She had been so sure that she would grasp whatever she managed to make of herself and never let it go. What she hadn’t realized, until now, was that anything can be wrenched from your hands – your money, your career, your reputation. There isn’t a grip in the world tight enough to hold on no matter what.

  So now what?

  Perhaps thirty-four wasn’t too late to start over after all.

  Give it time.

  The injury of Jackson’s betrayal, of her fall, was still raw. It was several days before she saw a way back up.

  Late one night, as she was having a hot bubble bath that was supposed to make her relax but really just made her edgy, the telephone rang. She picked up the cordless phone by the bath automatically.

  ‘Hey, it’s Gabe.’

  He was calling her from a bar she guessed, the buzz of background conversation was discernible even though he was shouting to compensate for it. The pause dragged on. ‘Gabe Muswell,’ he prompted.

  She felt a pang of guilt. Her most recent signing. At least she’d had the chance to make one last dream come true.

  ‘How’s it going?’ she asked politely.

  ‘Great,’ he said. ‘I’m loving Krakow. Bit of a party town. First home match on Sunday. Any chance you might come and watch?’

  ‘Did you get my letter?’ she said.

  ‘Nope.’

  She took a deep breath, inhaling the warm fragrant steam. ‘I’ve resigned,’ she said.

  ‘Come again?’

  ‘We wrote you a letter, special delivery. I’ve resigned from Legends.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘I’m afraid I’m no longer your agent.’

  ‘Was it something I said?’ He laughed. He was definitely in a bar. She could hear the clink of glasses, practically smell the beer on his breath.

  ‘You really didn’t get my letter? Nobody from Legends has called you? Richard Tavistock?’

  ‘Nah, thankfully. Wasn’t he that arse who left the price tag on his shoes that time? What kind of dickhead spends three hundred quid on a pair of shoes? They weren’t even trainers.’

  She smiled. Her first smile for days it seemed. Poor Gabe. He was the client that nobody wanted. Yet she had a soft spot for him.

  ‘I’m sorry, Gabe.’ She swished the hot bathwater around with her fingertips, creating miniature whirlpools and eddies. ‘The situation was out of my hands.’

  ‘You were fired?’

  She hadn’t gone into details with anyone else. Perhaps the bath was relaxing her after all. ‘Not technically,’ she said, and was surprised to hear her dry little laugh. Progress indeed. A few days ago the thought of being all but technically fired was enough to reduce her to tears.

  ‘So what are you going to do now?’ he said.

  ‘Honestly? I have no idea.’

  ‘Then there’s nothing to stop you coming out here on Sunday. You still like football, right?’

  The truth was she wasn’t sure if she’d ever liked football. She appreciated talent, she worked hard to get very rich in a very rich world, but ultimately it was twenty grown men kicking a ball around a field and she watched games with her head and not her heart. Of course, she had never told anyone this. They would have blamed her ambivalence on her gender. As a woman it was often assumed she ‘didn’t get it’.

  She answered Gabe with a noncommittal ‘hmmm’ but her head was opening up to the possibility.

  Why not take a short trip out to Krakow? She got on well with Gabe and Christine. It would be like a holiday. She could watch a football match; it wouldn’t kill her. And perhaps she could catch up with Aleksandr Lubin again.

  That final thought made her feel hot between her legs.

  And she was single now, wasn’t she? She could never forgive Jackson for what he had done to her.

  Could she really go through with it if she saw Lubin again? He was so young. She was so old. Unconsciously her hand smoothed over her full slippery breast and dipped under the water where she felt her wet skin slide beneath her fingers.

  ‘So you’ll come?’ Gabe said.

  Abruptly she stayed her straying hand. She couldn’
t go running off to Poland just to hook up with the last male to pay her any attention. She wasn’t that needy. And, besides, now that she was no longer Sam Sharp: Superagent, he probably wouldn’t find her attractive in the slightest.

  ‘Maybe,’ she said.

  17

  The moment she saw Josef Wandrowszcki kick a football Samantha was determined to introduce him to the world.

  It was bitterly cold. The air nipped at her gloved fingertips and she applauded every tackle just to keep them warm.

  You could take the girl out of the agency, but you couldn’t take the agent out of the girl. She tried to be cautious, but she couldn’t take her eyes off the skinny kid up front wearing the number-eleven shirt.

  Wow. It was the only word that came to mind. Wow.

  Everybody always thinks they’ve found the new Pelé, or the new Wayne Rooney, the next Gary Lineker, and it rarely proves to be the case. But this kid, he really was that good.

  And the dying embers of ambition in Samantha’s belly bloomed into flame once more, burning bright.

  He was everywhere, swarming across the pitch like he had more energy than all of them, but always where he should be, just behind the forward line ready to pick up every hopeful pass and run at goal with a fearless pace that gave her that hot little feeling in her gut.

  He’s a hero waiting to happen.

  It didn’t matter that she wasn’t with Legends any longer; it didn’t matter that she wasn’t even an agent any more. She had a duty to discover him. She owed that much to football fans everywhere. It wasn’t right that he was stuck out here with nobody to watch him but a small domestic audience. He needed a bigger stage.

  She had never felt this way before – the instant attraction – like a young girl in love, the certainty that he was The One. She didn’t want him, of course not, not in that way; he was a child – it wasn’t like that at all. When she saw Joe she didn’t see a man, or even a boy. She saw a player.

  Who one day would play in front of the entire world.

  Another dash at goal, another lucky save from the overworked goalkeeper.

  The old guy on her right, his voice muffled by collar, coat and scarf, shouted something excitable and thumped her on the shoulder.