Having It All (43 page)

‘I know, why don’t we have a party? A really gruesome one packed with every Personnel Manager, dead or alive, we can manage to dig up?’ Ginny had just come back, full of energy
and stolen ideas, from a week’s spying at their rival Nine to Five, and clearly felt ready for anything.

Thinking it over for a minute, Liz decided it wasn’t a half bad idea. After all anything,
anything
would be better than being told to get lost by another uppity receptionist. At
least they’d get their picture in the local paper and they could capitalize on it by taking an ad on the same page to outline their services. In its own small way, WomanPower would have
arrived. But to justify all that expense they’d have to be damn sure the paper would run a story.

‘I know.’ Ginny leaped up and started pulling up her suit and showing her legs. ‘Hire a model. Sit her behind a typewriter and get her to flash a bit of leg at the camera. You
know. The boring tired old sexy secretary routine. They’re
bound
to fall for that one.’

‘Ginny’– Liz jumped up and put her arms around her –‘you may not be a feminist but you’re absolutely brilliant!’

But by the time she packed up to go, and they’d worked out how much it was going to cost them, Liz was starting to lose her nerve. What if it didn’t work? They’d have poured
hundreds more pounds down the drain.

On the other hand, they had to do something.

Dejectedly, joining the small queue of commuters making their way out of Lewes at five-thirty, she tried to ban all thoughts of WomanPower from her mind. Thank God tomorrow was one of her days
off and they could go for a walk high up on Firle Beacon, with Daisy dozing in the backpack and Jamie running on ahead looking for a suitable place to do roly-polys on the hard frosty ground. Thank
God for kids! For the immediacy of their demands and their need of you
now
, not in five minutes when you’ve finished the article you’re reading or tidied the kitchen cupboard.
She remembered a quote from Lady Antonia Fraser, who’d managed to produce countless children while also producing countless books. The great thing about being a working mother, she’d
said, is that if the work is going badly at least you’ve got the children.

And tonight Liz knew exactly what she meant.

‘Mum! Mum! Oww! Your cheeks are cold!’

She had only half opened the front door when Jamie catapulted himself past a laughing Minty and into her arms, almost knocking her over in his delight at seeing her.

‘Hello darling, did you have a nice day?’

‘Scrummy! We went to Burger King and Daisy and I had a Whopper and she gave me her pickle ’cause she didn’t like it and I had a Coca Cola and they gave us a free Superman in a
car!’

Wiped out after her thankless day Liz slipped off her coat and hung it on the knob of the banisters, knowing that the pegs were only two feet away, but two feet suddenly seemed like two miles,
and wondered why she had bothered to move her children a hundred miles from London slap bang into the middle of some of the most beautiful countryside in the world when they preferred the inside of
a Burger King.

Scooping up the pile of mail that had arrived after her early start, she thanked Minty and flopped down on to the sofa, pulling Jamie on to one knee and Daisy on to the other.

‘Me open it! Me open it!’ demanded Daisy, grabbing for the pile and Liz handed her a bank statement. She could tear that up with pleasure. It was, as usual, all bills and mail-shots.
Except for one letter, postmarked Selden Bridge.

She gently extricated herself from the sofa, slotted in a Disney video, reminding herself guiltily that the baby books said you must never, never use a video as a babysitter. Then, using the
video as a babysitter, she slipped into the kitchen and sat down at the pine table.

Looking round at her familiar things, her pretty china, her Staffordshire dogs on the mantelpiece over the Aga, the basket of flowers in the middle of the table, she felt stronger. She was happy
here. She wondered then why she felt so reluctant to open his letter. What could David have to say that would hurt her any more than she’d been hurt already?

With a slightly shaking hand she tore the letter open. It was short and to the point. David was thinking of settling in somewhere called Selden Bridge and wondered if, given that neither of them
were likely to be living there, wasn’t it time to put the London house on the market as soon as possible?

She put the letter down carefully. It was a perfectly sensible suggestion and her only surprise was that he hadn’t come up with it sooner. But why the sudden rush? Maybe it was money now
that he’d chucked up his job with Logan, but she couldn’t help feeling there was more to it than that, something he wasn’t telling her.

Instinctively she got up and leaned for a moment against the Aga, hoping its comforting warmth would banish the sudden chill she felt even though the room was warm. And standing there she had
the oddest sensation that a door was closing and that she was on the wrong side of it.

She was so engrossed in her thoughts that she didn’t hear the gentle, almost hesitant knock at the front door until Jamie launched himself into the room, his face aglow with
excitement.

‘Mum! Mum! There’s a lady at the door with lots of presents and she says they’re for me and Daisy from Dad!’

For a moment Liz wondered if Jamie was talking about Britt, but then she realized Britt was the last person who would turn up bearing gifts from David. Burning with curiosity she followed Jamie
into the sitting room.

Standing by the fire, still loaded with presents, the fur hood of her leather parka framing her lovely ski-tanned face, was one of the most startling-looking girls Liz had ever
seen. Tall and slender as a model, even in her flat running shoes, her short dark hair flecked with snow and her huge brown eyes sparkling from the bitter cold outside, she smiled at Liz and Jamie
with open friendliness.

‘Hello, I’m Suzan. David asked me to drop these in. I hope this isn’t a bad time?’

Jamie ran up and started to take the presents from her, and as she bent down Liz studied her again. As well as her glowing athletic beauty, two things stood out about her. Her youth, which Liz
put at twenty-one or twenty-two, and the tone of her voice when she talked about David. The girl was clearly in love with him.

David signed his name on the three copies of the contract and shook hands with the Managing Director of Star Newspapers and with his lawyer.

Everything had gone amazingly smoothly. Once he’d got the report from the firm of market researchers he’d hired to evaluate the paper’s potential for growth, had toured the
building and met the staff for the second time and pored over the paper’s Profit and Loss Account, it didn’t take him long to make up his mind. And now that it was done he didn’t
know whether he was more excited or shit-scared. He was a newspaper proprietor! It wasn’t exactly Greene Communications, but it was his and it would stand or fall by his talents.

As the fear retreated and the excitement took over he knew he just had to tell someone. Liz. She would understand. She’d spent months building up Metro. And this would be like Metro
without Conrad! Like Greene Communications without Logan sitting on his shoulder and subtly, or sometimes not so subtly, steering it in the direction
he
wanted it to go in.

Smiling to himself he reached for the phone.

‘Liz? Liz, it’s David. Did you get my letter? Look I’ve got some good news and I wanted you to be the first to know.’

Liz sat clutching the phone, her knuckles whiter against the white of the receiver. He didn’t need to tell her. She already knew. He’d fallen in love. That was why he suddenly wanted
to sell the house so fast. She’d known it the moment Suzan walked into the room.

‘Liz, I’ve bought a newspaper! The
Selden Bridge Star.
It’s only small, but it has great potential and I’ll be my own boss! No more Logan breathing down my neck.
Liz? Aren’t you going to say anything?’

Liz sat silently. What about his other piece of news? Was he just going to wait for her to find that out by walking into a restaurant too?

‘And will your new love like it in, where did you say – Selden Bridge?’ She could hear the bitterness in her voice, the sarcastic tones of the joyless carping wife, but she
couldn’t help it. How dare he send his teeny-bopper girlfriend round with presents for the kids. ‘She seemed like a city girl to me. At her age she’ll be pining for
Stringfellows.’

There was a stunned silence from David. What the hell was Liz on about? And then it struck him, suddenly, ludicrously, and he burst out laughing.

‘You mean Suzan? She’s not my new love, for Christ’s sake. She’s just a friend, a reporter on the
News
.’

Liz knew she should keep quiet, but she couldn’t stop herself. She wanted to lash out, to strike home. ‘Has anyone told
her
that? She’s clearly in love with you. A
father complex no doubt. She probably screwed her tutor and her last boss and now it’s your turn.’

Oh, shit. Why had she said that? It was just that Suzan was so young and beautiful, and she’d walked in at the moment when Liz, worried about WomanPower, had felt fat and a failure.

‘Liz, what are you
talking
about?’ She could hear his voice go cold, all the enthusiasm drained out of it, and she wished to God she could take it back. But it was too late.
‘Look, there’s no point discussing this. Suzan is a friend and former colleague, that’s all. Maybe it’s better we don’t talk at all if you feel like this. I’ll
get my lawyer to ring you about the house . . .’

His lawyer!
They didn’t need lawyers. They were civilized human beings. ‘David I’m sorry. I . . .’

But he’d rung off. She’d been incredibly stupid. He clearly wasn’t in love with Suzan, after all. She could tell from his tone. She’d got it wrong. And now she’d
planted the idea in his brain, and he’d turn it over and over and wonder if she was right. Oh God . . .

Liz sat in the freezing darkness of the hall, and put the phone down, going over the conversation word by word. She could hear again the enthusiasm and excitement in his voice when he’d
talked about buying the paper. And she hadn’t even said anything, hadn’t even congratulated him. She’d just raved on like a jealous wife. And she wasn’t a wife. Not any
more.

She had to apologize, had to at least wish him luck. She reached out for the telephone and stopped, the gesture frustrated.

In her fury and jealousy she hadn’t asked him his number.

Still seething at Liz’s reaction, David walked through the wet, shiny-grey streets of Selden Bridge and marvelled that so many houses could be ranged one on top of the
other up the steep hillside. Double deckers, they called them when they built them at the turn of the century. But to David it looked more like every house had fifty others on top of it, their dark
slate roofs, polished by the rain, making an elaborate criss-cross pattern. It was amazing they didn’t all slide down the hill into one great slaty heap.

Hearing his footsteps echo on the wet streets, he realized he didn’t know a soul here. But it didn’t worry him. He knew he would once he took over the paper. Noticing a brightly lit
pub on the corner of the street he was walking down, he slipped in and ordered a pint of Theakston’s Old Peculiar. It was worth moving to Yorkshire just for the beer! To the left of the bar
there was a pay phone and, on impulse, he rang the
Daily News.
She wouldn’t be there still. It was far too late.

The phone rang six or seven times and just as he was about to put it down someone picked it up.

‘Hello, Newsdesk.’

It was her. She sounded preoccupied, as though she’d been dragged away from a scoop.

‘You’re working late.’

‘David!’ He could hear the sudden pleasure in her voice and it cheered him up. ‘Well, you know how it is, I’m on a story that’s just about to break.’

Yes. Yes he did know. He remembered that excitement very well indeed. And he hoped to feel it again soon. ‘I wanted to thank you and to tell you some good news.’

‘What’s that?’ He could hear her smiling, intrigued.

‘I’ve just bought a newspaper. The
Selden Bridge Star
!’

‘David! That’s incredible!’ He could almost warm his hands by the enthusiasm and excitement in her voice. ‘How amazing! Your very own paper! And are you going to edit it
yourself or tell some other poor sod what to do?’

This was the very question that had been vexing David all day. Suddenly he knew the answer.

‘I’m going to edit it myself. For the moment anyway.’

‘David, that’s great, really wonderful!’ She paused fractionally, then continued, her tone as light as she could make it.

‘I don’t suppose you’ll be needing a Woman’s Editor?’

‘Look! There’s Peter Glenning,’ Ginny hissed in Liz’s ear as they stood in the reception line of WomanPower’s buffet lunch shaking hands with
businessman after businessman. ‘He runs Glenningtree, the biggest employers in the South East. My, we
are
honoured.’

‘He’s probably heard about your prawn balls,’ Liz hissed back.

Ginny giggled. She’d been running round like a mad thing for days borrowing every oven in East Sussex to knock up hundreds of tiny sticks of satay, with spicy sauces of chilli and peanut,
baby quiches, mini pizzas and her celebrated melt-in-the-mouth prawn balls.

They’d been staggered when they sent out 150 invitations, expecting the usual pattern at London PR bashes of only a quarter bothering to reply, half neither replying nor turning up and the
other quarter arriving late and half-cut with someone they’d picked up in a pub.

Instead everyone had accepted and everyone had turned up.

Liz looked around her at the sea of grey suits, broken only by the occasional daring departure of a sports jacket or the light relief of a pair of nylon shirtsleeves. God, they looked dull. Half
of them would be called Brian and would spend their weekends caravanning.

All except one.