A Passionate Love Affair with a Total Stranger (12 page)

‘She called, yes,' Margot replied. Her face, which was curiously seahorsy, was closed.

‘And? She needs careful managing.'

‘And I dealt with it.' Margot sniffed.

‘OK. Can you email me a written update of how they've all responded so far?' I said. ‘I need to know what's coming my way.'

‘I really don't have time to write update emails, Charley. I'm extremely busy.'

‘With
what
? This is what I need to know, Margot. I haven't come back to drink tea and read
Vogue
.'

Margot rolled her eyes and consulted her watch. ‘Charley, I'm sorry but I just don't have time to walk you through my in-tray right now. I'll try to find some time for you later, OK? Now, please excuse me, I've got a call to make.'

And off she marched.

I felt overwhelmed. Over the three months I'd been away I'd forgotten quite how demanding my job was, and indeed how crazed Margot was about status. In the coming weeks I couldn't afford to put a foot wrong and the weight of this responsibility, combined with Margot's complete refusal to hand my job back, was grim.

I tapped my fingers nervously, thinking about her recent trip to the Salutech HQ in Washington when she'd had the great pleasure of telling them how successfully she'd lobbied MPs in my absence. Even though she was refusing to tell me anything I needed to know about the trip, she'd had no problem telling me how much she'd impressed the board of directors. Apparently Bradley Chambers – vice president of Salutech Global and my most senior boss, generally found groping and leering at me when he was in Europe – had been stunned by her all-round amazingness. ‘He didn't get my name wrong once,' Margot observed casually. Even though Bradley Chambers never missed an opportunity to sit too close to me in meetings, he'd always called me Sharon.

I turned wearily back to my computer screen where my messenger was glowing orange with an IM from John.

It was like the old days – a familiar and slightly inappropriate comment that put us in a flirty little club for two. And yet I felt none of my old pant-wetting enthusiasm.

I snorted, then found myself laughing.

I was confused. This was sublimely weird.
I just wasn't bothered.
What on earth was wrong with me?

You've fallen in some sort of love with William
, came the
reply.
You think about him approximately every thirty seconds and are dying inside at the thought of him meeting Shelley. But meet him she will, for he is not yours, Charlotte Lambert. On Wednesday night she will grope his testicles in a businesslike manner under a table in Polpo and you will lose him for ever. It is this tortuous thought that has reduced your interest in John MacAllister to almost nil. You loser! One fantasy after another! Never a real man! Never a real romance! Loser!

Then I stopped short. Wednesday! I was going to be in London on Wednesday with work! Date day! That meant I could …

I could
what
?

I put my head into my hands and slumped over my desk. Being inside my mind was exhausting and embarrassing. What was wrong with me? Wearily I looked up at the clock to see if the day was nearly over.

It was not. It was eleven fifty-five a.m. and I'd only been there for four hours. But already I was considering abseiling off the fire escape. Trying to breathe deeply, I leaned forward to smell the bunch of flowers Ness had had delivered this morning. ‘Take it easy!' her little recycled-cardboard notelet said. Fat chance of doing anything else, with Margot refusing to give my job back and me immobilized by fear, exhaustion and obsession with some doctor I'd never met.

I took another deep breath and picked up the phone. I'd call Alan Vicary at the
Guardian.
He had always been my first call back in the days when we'd been able to publicize our drugs. A nice, calm man with tufty ears who had once bought me a cigar to cheer me up after I'd been mauled in a press briefing. Our relationship with the press
had had to change a lot over recent years but I still worked with him when I could.

‘Alan Vicary.'

‘Alan! It's Charley Lambert from Salutech. How are you?'

‘Charley! How're all those fractures? Leg full of metal pins? We've all been thinking about you!'

This, of course, was a lie, but it was probably the first question today to which I knew the answer. ‘Metal pins still there but I'm out of plaster and hobbling around,' I said. ‘Could be worse.'

‘Great! So, I hear the HIV miracle you've been working on all these years is about to arrive in the chemists.'

‘Two weeks,' I said. ‘And because of what it is I think we both know there's going to be a storm. So I wanted to let you know you can go back to calling my mobile twenty-four/seven if you need a comment or a scientist interview … Patient group, key opinion leader – anything, anyone, Alan. I'll sort it.'

Alan sounded like he was puffing at a pipe. It wouldn't have surprised me; I'd once taken him for lunch near his office in King's Cross and he'd been wearing carpet slippers.

‘Sure thing, Charley. Although your colleague – what's her name? Melissa? – called this morning to say her phone extension had changed but all press calls were still to come to her.'

There was an uncomfortable pause, which Alan filled with wheezy laughter. ‘I'll take it you weren't expecting that. Oh dear. Well, Charley, you're the boss. I'll be sure to call you if I need anything.'

‘Thanks, Alan,' I said, in as calm a voice as I could
muster. ‘Yes, I'm still the boss. See you end of next week for the press conference.'

Before I stormed over to Margot's desk and swung for her, I called a random selection of other newspapers. All had had the same call from Margot. I dug my fingernails into my palms and boiled with anger. How dare she?

Furious, I pushed my chair back to get up. But without a decent left leg to counter the chair's movement, I shot backwards and found myself crashing onto the floor with a savage exclamation of pain.

‘Shit, Charley!' Cassie, my PA, came running into my office. ‘What happened?'

I was crimson. ‘Oh, it's nothing,' I said, feigning laughter but managing only to make a hollow braying sound. Tears, over which I had absolutely no control, were gathering fast in my eyes. ‘Just tried to get up too quickly! I'm fine!'

‘No, you're not.' Cassie helped me up and popped me expertly back onto the chair, which she steadied with her leg. I felt excruciatingly stupid, embarrassed even to call myself her boss. ‘Charley, please call me if you need help,' she said. ‘You've come back pretty early.'

‘Thanks,' I whispered, still scarlet. I looked at Margot who was on the phone, leaning back in her chair and watching the whole humiliating scene with pleasure written on her face.

When she came off the phone, I buzzed her. ‘Could you come through, please?'

A few minutes later she wandered in with a cup of tea. Only one, of course.

‘Margot, the medical press inform me that you have
contacted them in the last twenty-four hours to tell them that you are the first port of call for questions.'

‘Correct.'

‘The problem is, you're not. I am.'

‘Since when did press calls go straight through to the director of comms?' she asked. ‘There're ten people in this office who take calls before you do. You only get them if they're serious. That's your system, Charley.' She took a sip from her mug and stared at me, unsmiling.

Technically, she was right. But we both knew exactly what she was doing. The slippery little seahorse.

‘Well,' I said, as calmly as I could, ‘the usual rules do not apply at the moment. We're launching a huge product. Anything regarding Simitol comes to me first.'

Margot shrugged. ‘Fine, however you want it.' She strolled out, completely unbothered, and I found myself, once again, on the brink of tears. I wanted to be in bed. My suit was chafing at the waist where I'd put on weight eating Sam's dinners and doing no exercise all these weeks, and my skin felt as if someone had held a blowtorch to it after just a few hours under the sterile breeze of the air-conditioning system.

‘Good day?' Graham from Security had offered to drive me home. I rested my head against the window of his car, barely able to sit up straight.

‘No,' I replied. ‘Dreadful.'

Graham made a tutting noise. ‘Margot's kept things well, though, aye? Worked hard, that one!'

I stared vacantly at the crowds crossing Leith Walk in
front of us. ‘Yeah. Everything seems to be in good shape. I think she's done a great job. Great.'

‘She's quite a little piece,' Graham said slyly.

I looked sideways at him. ‘Piece?'

He grinned. ‘Aye, piece. I find her rather attractive.'

I paused before I put the key into my front-door lock, unsure as to how to deal with the volatile wreck that Sam had become since splitting up with Yvonne. During the five days since his surprise announcement, he'd been drinking too much and now he was florid and unhealthy; his nightly meals had stopped and the Nutella and cheap bread were back. I'd grown to rather enjoy our chats over his grey macaroni cheese, his cabbage and Edam salads, and his wonderful attempts at home baking. But now the vibe in the flat was mostly silence or bad music.

Sam, in short, was absolutely devastated. All he'd told me was that Yvonne had caught him cheating. When, how or with whom I had yet to fathom but I'd been shocked, not just that he had cheated on her but that he had managed to do so without my noticing. How had he got away with it?
Easily
, I'd realized.
He's a pro!

It felt impossibly sad that bubbly, silly, tiny Yvonne, with her excitable squeaks, was probably now reduced to a grieving heap on the floor. The poor girl. Had her tough little mum not threatened to ‘beat tha livin' fuck' out of Sam if he came anywhere near her, I'd probably have tried to call her.

I put the key into the lock.
Please, God
, I prayed,
can Sam not be sitting around in a cloud of doom and stale fart. Please, God.

I walked in. And for the first time that day my prayers
were answered. Sam was not sitting in a cloud of doom and stale fart. Rather than his bread and Nutella on the coffee-table, I saw, with pleasure, his complete works of Shakespeare. And from the direction of the bathroom I heard his voice, far deeper than usual, shouting something about lily-livered boys.

I broke into a grin. I knew that voice! It was his Actor Voice! Hailey and I had dubbed it the Bowes Actor Voice (BAV) after watching him playing Oedipus in a university production. We'd spent the night bent double with mirth at his boomy, two-octaves-deeper-and-ten-times-posher-than-normal delivery. I hobbled over to the microwave with my meal-for-two, giggling. I hadn't heard the BAV in a very, very long time.

‘CHAS,' Sam boomed, emerging dramatically from the bathroom.

‘Hello, Samuel the actor, hello, the BAV. What happened to Bowes the sulker?'

Sam hopped into the armchair, looking pleased but self-conscious. ‘Samuel Bowes is putting himself back into circulation,' he said, a little less boomily.

I put our dinner in the microwave. I didn't approve of microwave meals, of course, but, given that Sam had abandoned his mad cookery sessions and I couldn't stand up for long, they were serving us rather well. ‘So you're going to try to get some work?' I asked him tentatively. It was a minefield, Sam's acting career. He hated being probed about it, but if you didn't ask he complained that no one took him seriously as an actor.

‘I'm going to try.' I looked over at him and, as I'd expected, his face had gone a little red. Sam found it very
hard to talk about acting: it seemed to bring up all sorts of wild emotions that both of us were happy to avoid. ‘If you can go back to work with a crazy half-healed leg I can get my arse off the sofa and try to get some auditions. Remember that showreel I made in 2010? I sent it to some agents a couple of weeks ago and one of them called this morning, saying he wanted to see me! It's bloody PFD, Charley. They're massive!'

I grinned and clapped. It was a huge relief to see Sam like this. ‘Brilliant work, Bowes! When are you going down?'

‘Tomorrow,' he said. ‘I'll stay there till the weekend and see if I can hand-deliver the DVD to any casting directors. Maybe hook up with any friends who are acting. Just, you know, get the word out there.'

‘The word that the Bowes is in town,' I said distractedly. This meant Sam would also be in London during William and Shelley's date on Wednesday. My mind began to race with absurd possibilities. Clearly I had to stay well away from it, but perhaps he could help. Perhaps I could ask him to … to intervene. Try to seduce Shelley and maybe hand William a picture of me by way of consolation?
Yes, great
, I thought angrily.
Perhaps you could hire a brass band and throw an erotic dancer into the mix.