by Carmen Reid
Back in the bedroom, she pulled open her underwear drawer and rifled through it. Don was coming home! He'd been away so long, he'd find her a turn-on in greying pants and a jogging bra, but hell he deserved a treat. She took out her newest pink and black underwired lace bra and matching G-string, then opened the wardrobe. She slipped into a crisp shirt and hold-up stockings then buttoned on a black suit with tightly fitted jacket and a narrow skirt which fell to the knee.
She checked herself over in the long bedroom mirror and approved. Of course, since New York, nothing about Bella's workwear was left to chance. She'd taken the hair and make-up lessons, been colour-consulted and image madeover. Her perfectly appropriate outfit, about to be perfectly accessorized, was supposed to scream 'woman headed for the top'.
She fished about in her jewellery drawer for small chic earrings and the tiny platinum pendant Don had given her, fiddled to put them on then grabbed high-heeled leather pumps from the shoe rack and hurried into the kitchen.
Two oranges were blitzed in the small electric squeezer. She put the glass of juice and a pot of yoghurt onto the tiny marble-topped table in the kitchen, then went to the front door of the flat to bring in the newspapers. She sat down and studied the Financial Times carefully as she had breakfast, then flicked through Don's tabloid until she found his latest report, and read every word.
At 7.45 it was time to go, so she collected raincoat, briefcase, laptop and keys and headed out to work. As her left hand pushed shut the heavy wooden and glass front door of the mansion block, her eyes fell on the thin platinum band, sparkling with tiny diamonds on her fourth finger, and she couldn't help smiling. God! Marriage was still such a novelty.
Just one birthday ago, she'd woken up in yet another unfamiliar 'loft-style' bedroom, with makeup caked deep into her pores and the roots of a truly monumental hangover taking hold in her skull. Her nostrils had burned suspiciously and she'd been repulsed to see a fleshy, snoring equities trader, whose name she couldn't recall, fast asleep beside her.
She had retrieved her underwear, pulled on a dress stiff with sweat from the night before, picked up her bag and shoes and crept out of the flat. Three heart-attack-inducing espressos later in an Italian café on the corner, she'd come to the realization that it was time to put as much effort into her personal life as she'd put into her career. And about a month after that, all psyched up to stay away from men and sex and one-night stands until she'd got her head together, she'd bumped smack bang straight into The One. After a thirteen-week romance, the longest she'd had for years, they got hitched. Fear of commitment, ha!
She had crossed that line, made the jump, taken the plunge. Well, actually, Don had seen straight through the tough City-girl-shagger defence to the person underneath, the one who hadn't dared to fall in love since Big Romance Number One had gone all horribly wrong. Don had taken her hand and convinced her this was the real thing. He'd urged her to make the leap with him and when he'd slid the slim ring onto her finger, she'd felt a surprising solemnity. She'd felt terrified of it too. But there was so much love just radiating out of him, she had committed, signed on the line, sealed the deal.
She turned away from the front door into the lukewarm May sunshine. In the distance she could hear the gentle roar of traffic: another day in the capital was already under way. She unlocked the door of her low, cream-coloured classic Mercedes 280/SL soft-top, threw her coat and bags onto the passenger seat and climbed in, smudging her right calf with oil on the door frame.
'Damn,' she said out loud, then leaned over to the tiny glove compartment and popped the button, causing half a dozen packets of black hold-ups to slide out onto the floor. She held her leg out of the car door, whipped off the smudged stocking, rolled on a new one then, tossing the spoiled one into the back, she fired up the engine and set off for the office.
At 8.25 a.m., juggling coat, briefcase and laptop with the packet of twenty Marlboro Lights and large bottle of Evian from the shop round the corner, Bella arrived at Prentice and Partners, one of the City's smallest, but sharpest, firms of management consultants.
'Morning, Kitty,' she said as she walked in.
'Hi, Bella.' Kitty looked up from her desk in the large reception area.
'Is Susan in?'
'Of course,'
'Girls first. Are the boys in to play today?'
'Yup, Hector's due in any time and – ' Kitty checked her screen – 'Chris will be in for the afternoon meeting but he might be earlier.'
'OK. I'll just go through my diary and put the coffee on then I'll be ready for you,' Bella said with a smile.
She went into her little office and settled in, hanging up her coat and filling the coffee machine before she took out her laptop, checked through her e-mails and clicked open her schedule.
MAY 8
Tuesday
* Happy Birthday – just in case you've forgotten. Old Bag.
* Put in follow-up call to Petersham's office to answer/reassure on queries/nerves/cold feet.
* Prepare for meet with Merris.
* BOLLOCK Hector.
* Chris and Susan meet 2 pm – Petersham's and Merris details.
* Get pregnant?
What???! She re-read that last bit. God, why had she put that in there? It was on her mind, but that didn't mean it had to be in her diary. She hit delete. It was off the screen, but not out of her head. She knew she wanted a baby: really, really wanted one. Something that had begun as a vague interest several months ago had now grown into a fully-fledged desire. It was weird.
Why did she want one so much? She'd tried to analyse her reasons endlessly: maybe because her own parents had made such a mess of things and she wanted to do better, maybe because she worried a lot about what the future held for her and Don without kids. He was thirteen years older than her and she couldn't help imagining herself growing ancient, all alone with deranged, incontinent cats for company instead of children and grandchildren.
Bella also worried that it might take a very long time to have a baby. Her own mother had given birth to her at 29, then spent eight years enduring miscarriage after miscarriage before finally giving up hope of a second child. She remembered the little cradle and the boxes of baby clothes, all care fully labelled, in the upstairs loft room and how sometimes as a small girl she would find her mother up there, weeping furiously.
But Bella's biggest problem right now was that when she married Don seven months ago, he didn't want children – said he was too old, too independent, too set in his ways – and she'd agreed 'no kids' with him. But now she knew she hadn't meant it, hadn't really thought it through.
The idea was beginning to form in her mind that if a pregnancy were to happen 'accidentally', Don would of course be shocked, but she was sure he would come round to it. Anyway, her mother's experience had left Bella with the belief that conception was a million miles away from actually having a baby. So, would it be so bad to get pregnant and see what happened?
There was a knock on the door and Bella was interrupted from her thoughts by Kitty.
Bella poured them both coffee and, as usual, teased Kitty about her latest office outfit, in between briefing her for the day.
Kitty, small, spiky red-haired and generously curved, was crammed into silver hipster trousers, a tiny purple T-shirt and a silver padded waistcoat. Platform-soled trainers with flashing lights completed the look.
'When is the mother ship due to land?' Bella asked with raised eyebrows.
Kitty looked at her blankly.
'You do not speak the language of earthlings?' Bella added.
'Shut up, Bella.' A grin split Kitty's face. 'Just because you like looking like an airline hostess, you twentieth-century throwback.' She ignored Bella's exaggerated gasps of horror and added: 'Silver is so now.'
'But are you dressed for success, Kitty? I think not,' Bella answered.
'You are such a corporate clone! Power dressing does not equal power,' Kitty snapped back. 'Where are you headed Bella? Straig
ht for the glass ceiling.'
'Oh God,' Bella groaned. 'It is way too early for a radical feminist rant, please.' She cracked open her pack of cigarettes and lit up, closing her eyes with pleasure for the first drag of the day.
As it headed towards 9 a.m., Bella shooed Kitty out of her office and started on her calls. She was in a gap between two big contracts and restless to drum up new business. After she'd made the first call, the phone on her desk buzzed.
'Hello. Bella Browning,' she answered.
'Bella, it's Kitty, I've got a very angry caller for you. Do you want me to say you're busy?'
'No, they'll just ring back. I might as well face the music. Who is it?'
'Tom Proctor at AMP.'
'OK, give me just thirty secs then put him through.'
She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, willing herself to stay calm as she slowly put her finger over the flashing extension button to connect him.
'Hello Tom, how are you?' she said.
'Don't call me Tom, you bitch,' he shot back at her. 'You know perfectly well how I am. I'm fucking sacked. Sacked after seventeen years of working my arse off for this company only to have you come in here for eight weeks and pull the entire thing apart.'
This was the worst part of her job, the part that racked her with guilt. Tom was 53 with three kids in full-time education and a very expensive lifestyle to maintain. He did not have a great track record and was going to find it hard to get another job as good as the one she'd had him fired from.
'Have you any idea how much damage you've done here?' he raged. 'My colleagues, men with families and young children to look after, are packing their things into bin liners and leaving in tears.'
She swallowed hard, really not wanting to hear this.
'Just who do you think you are?' he screamed down the phone. 'I'll tell you – you're some cocky little graduate with a bollocks business degree whose only idea of cost-efficiency is sacking people and you probably only got your ludicrously overpaid position by sucking every cock in the city.'
Christ, that was way too much.
She answered coolly: 'Mr Proctor, I have a starred first in Economics from the London School of Economics, where I was top of my MA year. I spent four years working for the biggest consultants in the country before I joined Prentice and Partners. And Susan Prentice is a woman, so I certainly didn't need to suck her cock.'
Undeterred, he shouted back: 'We didn't fucking well need you lot of bloodsuckers in here. You've destroyed us. I'm going to make sure you never get another contract in the City again, you smug cunt.'
She couldn't believe she was hearing this. She stood up at her desk and her voice began to rise: 'If you were even half as good at your job as I am at mine, AMP would never have needed to call consultants in. Without my help that firm would have gone to the wall in two years max and everyone would have been laid off without the kind of generous redundancy payout you've received.'
Just for good measure she added: 'How dare you phone up to insult me? You kept telling me one day you'd move to the country and restore antique furniture, so why don't you sod off and do it?'
Damn, she instantly regretted that, but cunt! Cunt? How dare he?
At that moment, she glanced over to the door and saw Chris grinning at her and giving her the thumbs up. That was all she needed, Susan's number two listening in on this. Quickly she added: 'Mr Proctor, I'm very busy, you'll have to excuse me. Thank you for your call.'
She heard an astonished gasp, but put the phone down before he could say anything else.
'Phew, you tell them Bella,' Chris grinned at her. 'Just sod off to the country and restore antique furniture. I must remember that the next time someone calls me a cocksucker.'
'Chris, you heartless shit,' she said, relieved he was treating this lightly. 'I'm really embarrassed you heard that. Are you going to fire me now?' She asked with a little arch of her eyebrows.
'No,' he paused for effect, 'but I may have to get very firm with you, Ms Browning.' Then he added: 'Just try not to make too many enemies for life. Anyway, how was your weekend?'
'Good,' she replied. 'Don wasn't around so I did girlie things, you know, drank ten pints of lager, did three lines of coke, shagged a complete stranger in the toilets.'
He gave her an intrigued look.
'I'm joking, Chris.' Then the penny dropped. 'Oh!! You actually did that. Well you're a lucky boy, but at your age you have to think of your health, you know.'
'I'm only 34!'
'Mmm, but you have the added stress of being a senior partner,' she teased.
'A job you would probably kill me to get. Which is why I never send you out for sandwiches.'
'I'd never go!'
'Bella—' he reached for the door handle. 'It's been a pleasure as always, but we have lots of work to put together before this afternoon's meeting. Merris, Petersham, any queries, I'm next door, watching you through my spyhole.'
'See you later,' she said and he was gone, leaving her with a slightly too flirtatious smile on her face.
There was another knock on the door.
'Come in.' She knew it was Hector. Hector, the fresh out of university new boy who seemed never to tire of telling them about his heroic Highland pedigree. And that was just one of his many annoying qualities.
'You wanted to see me?' He poked a tousled head round the door.
'Yes,' she said.
He came in, looking arrogantly crumpled, as usual. He still bought into that boho tweedy suit, pashmina, I'm not going to conform or try too hard kind of look. He was a very brilliant guy: why else would he be working here? But he really was going to have to get it together.
He sat down on the chair opposite her desk.
'So, what is this piece of crap?' She tossed a thick, spiral-bound report onto the desk.
'Ah, I was wondering if a few inaccuracies might have crept in.'
'A few inaccuracies!!' She picked the report up again. 'Let me just open it at random . . . 32 per cent of £586,000? That is . . .' she barely paused, '£187,520. Yet unbelievably, you've got £28,500 down here. Totally, utterly out of the ball park.'
'Well, I suppose I'm not a mathematical genius like you, Bella,' he had the nerve to reply.
'What does that have to do with it? Why don't you buy yourself a sodding calculator?' she snapped. 'In fact go and buy a proper sodding suit while you're at it. It's about time you sharpened up.'
He looked up at her rather surprised, but she continued: 'You've been here for four months now and you don't seem to have learned anything. This report is about a major company, you were working out their profits, their losses, their expenses. Your mistakes could have cost hundreds of thousands of pounds, could have cost people their jobs. This is not a game, Hector, this is not a theoretical problem you discuss in a tutorial. Christ. It's all very well having potential if you're 10. There comes a time when you have to prove it.'
There was a long pause.
Hector wondered why Bella was holding the report right in front of her face and shaking slightly.
'Are you OK?' he asked.
He was surprised to hear a snort of laughter emerge from behind the pages.
'Oh God,' she put the report down on the table. 'You really deserve a strip torn off you, but I can't do this with a straight face.'
