Having It All (57 page)

She had only one chance left of persuading them to change their minds. And it was time she took it.

‘When I was in Leeds I saw David.’

‘And?’ Ginny had already heard about the divorce celebrations.

‘And he told me a story about Ross Slater. How he bought a company from an old man who’d spent his life building it up. At first the old man didn’t want to sell, but Slater
persuaded him. As we know, he’s very persuasive. And do you know how he finally clinched the deal?’

Liz could see that the others were all watching her, almost afraid of what she might say that might still kill the golden goose.

‘He offered the old man a seat on the Board. Told him it was crazy to buy a company without keeping on the creative force behind it, just like he told us. And then, when the old boy
opposed him, he found himself elbowed out.’ She paused for a moment and knew from the silence that she had finally made them think. ‘In a year he was dead. With a million in the bank he
never lived to enjoy.’

Ginny looked mutinous. She had most at stake. ‘Maybe the old boy wasn’t up to it.’

‘David said he was as lucid as a fifty-year-old.’

‘I didn’t know David was such an expert in psychology.’

Liz ignored her. ‘I don’t believe he was incapable at all. I think Ross Slater wanted him out. If we sell Slater WomanPower he’ll destroy it and if we try to stop him
he’ll get rid of us.’

‘I take it you’re against selling?’ Britt asked quietly.

Suddenly a phrase of David’s leapt into her mind. Ross Slater could sell snow to the Eskimos. He had started life as a salesman and that’s what he still was today. Only this time he
was selling them their own death and they were curling up in the palm of his hand waiting to be crushed!

‘I’m against selling all right.’

Britt turned to the others. ‘You two have the rest of the shares. What do you think we should do? Accept Slater’s offer or tell him to take a running jump?’

‘I can’t understand why we’re even discussing it. Of course we should accept. It’s the perfect solution!’

Ginny looked round at her three friends in amazement. To her it
was
simple. They needed someone to run WomanPower and Ross Slater wanted to do it and he’d make them rich at the
same time.

‘If we’re worried that we won’t get a say, why don’t we just ask for a guarantee in the contract?’

‘Of course we can
ask
for a guarantee, but he’ll never agree to put it in the contract. He’ll tell us to trust him.’

‘And why shouldn’t we?’

‘Because he’s like a dirty old man with a bag of sweets. If he wasn’t contemplating something disgusting he wouldn’t be offering them to us!’

Britt turned to Mel, who for once was keeping quiet and listening. ‘What do you think, Mel. You own ten per cent. Should we sell?’

‘Oh, God, I don’t know! In some ways it seems perfect like Ginny says. But there’s something about Ross Slater . . . I can’t quite think what it is . . . I
know!’

They all looked at her waiting to hear the argument that would clinch the deal. ‘He wears suede shoes and my father said never trust a man who wears suede shoes!’

‘For God’s sake, Mel,’ snapped Ginny, ‘any moment you’ll say his eyes are too close together!’

‘Now that you mention it, they are a bit. And do you remember his handshake? I expected Arnold Schwarzenegger and got Woody Allen!’

‘Thank you, Dr Freud!’ Ginny could barely contain her irritation. ‘Has anyone got anything sensible to say? Britt, what about you?’

Britt straightened her papers, acutely aware of the effect her words would have. All around her abysses yawned into which friendship and loyalty could tumble at any moment, scarring once again
her relationship with the three women around her. Especially Liz.

Finally she looked up.

‘I don’t think it’s right for me to say. I’ll advise on the terms of the deal with pleasure. But I’m not a shareholder. You three own the company, not me. So
I’ll pass.’

She attempted a small neutral smile, but Liz caught it before it unfolded and twisted it painfully. ‘Oh come on, Britt. That’s bullshit after all we’ve been through. I want the
truth.’ She held Britt’s gaze mercilessly, not allowing her to look away. ‘I
deserve
the truth. And you of all people owe it to me.’

Britt looked down at her hands. They were surprisingly stubby for such a slender person, and she noticed a tiny fleck of nail varnish on one nail. What the hell was she going to say? The one
person the truth would hurt most was Liz. And Liz was the one person she didn’t want to hurt.

‘Come on, Britt. I can take it. I’m a big girl now.’

Britt looked up, ignoring the other two and looking Liz directly in the eyes.

‘I’m sorry Liz, I really am. But you’ll never get an offer like this again. I think you should sell.’

‘What about you, Mel?’ Mel with her glorious irrational prejudices might at least be on her side, allies against the hard-nosed business ethics that were winning the day.

Mel reached out her hand to Liz and took hers. ‘I’m sorry, too, Lizzie, but I agree with Britt.’

Suddenly Liz felt tired, as though she were very old and frail and all her battles had been won or lost a long time ago. Slowly she stood up and bent to pick up her briefcase, the briefcase she
wouldn’t be needing any more.

She had lost David, then Nick and now WomanPower. She had lost in love and in work and now she would lose the friends who had made those other terrible losses bearable. She looked from one face
to the other as though memorizing them before a long journey.

‘Good luck then. I hope you don’t learn too soon that Ross Slater’s a killer. Watch your backs. If you need any advice, ask David. He knows Slater better than I do.’

Liz stood up and started to walk towards the door. She always seemed to be making exits these days. But Mel got to the door first and tried to stop her.

‘Lizzie, don’t go . . .’

Liz shook her head and kept on walking. There was nothing more to be said. She didn’t want to be part of a WomanPower that belonged to Ross Slater. There was only one thing she wanted to
do. To go home. To run up the front path to the cottage and press her cold face against Jamie’s and kiss Daisy’s soft cheeks. They were all she had now. She looked at her watch. She
could be with them in half an hour. She pulled her coat round her and headed out towards the car park knowing that if she didn’t look back she could hold off the tears just that long.

So she didn’t notice that Britt had delved into her briefcase for her Filofax and was leafing through the pages looking for David’s number.

As she turned off the Lewes road towards Seamington and home, the irony of the weather struck her for the first time. It was immaculate. The sun dazzling, the sky so blue and
sharp it hurt to look at it, the leaves red and gold but still on the branches. Every tree looked like the ones Jamie drew at nursery school. Swallows were massing on the telegraph wires like an
audition for Hitchcock, waiting to fly South away from the first frost. Everything was grand and glorious. She’d been so caught up with Nick and with WomanPower that she hadn’t even
noticed nature slipping quietly upstairs and dressing for dinner.

As she pulled up outside Crossways she saw with relief that Ruby’s front door was closed. It had taken her months to learn the village etiquette unchanged for centuries. Leaving your front
door open in fine weather was the norm, except in deepest winter. It was a habit born of living in dark cottages with small windows that needed all the light they could get. But it signalled a
welcome to your neighbours as well, a recognition of being part of a community. It also meant a lack of privacy that would drive any self-contained townie screaming back to anonymity. Usually Liz
loved it, but today she was grateful that Ruby didn’t want to chat.

Inside the cottage everything was silent, but not empty, simply waiting to come back to life when Jamie and Daisy flung open the door and bundled in again. Its cosy friendliness reminded her of
an old granny dozing by the fire, waiting to be woken with a wet kiss on the cheek to offer tea and home-made scones.

Slowly she wandered round the kitchen, letting its cosy silence massage away her stress and hurt, abandoning herself to its timeless peace. By the window, where the sun streamed in, pinstriping
an old armchair, she could smell ripening fruit. Russet apples and hard pears sat in rows on the windowsill and a last wasp buzzed gently, preparing himself for death with the calmness of a Zen
monk.

She began to make a cup of tea. On the pine kitchen table, cooling on a wire rack, was an apple pie stolen from a nursery rhyme. Minty must have made it for tea. It was just the kind of apple
pie she’d seen herself making in her fantasy, light and golden, the edges neatly fluted, a flower made of pastry leaves at its centre. But she’d never made one. Just like the patchwork
she’d cut out and abandoned, and the sampler she’d sewn in tiny cross-stitches till it read HOME, SWEET . . .

Why was it so hard to be the woman she wanted to be? Once women had no choices, now they could be anything they chose to be. Yet somehow choices made it harder to be happy. For no door seemed to
open without another closing. If you chased success you lost out on those small, domestic pleasures which have given women satisfaction for centuries. Creating a home that’s warm and
welcoming, watching your children grow, entertaining friends, having time to chat over the garden gate. Yet if you stayed at home and brought up your babies and baked your pies you were left with
the niggling sense that somehow you were missing out.

She’d thought she was so close this time to getting it right. A life in balance. Suddenly her mind filled with that picture, corrosive and staining like battery acid on a new car’s
paintwork, of Nick lying on the sofa. And for the first time since she’d opened that door she allowed herself to put her head on her arms and weep into the warm beeswax of the kitchen
table.

Behind her she heard a crunch on the gravel and Jamie bounded in, his trousers split at the knee where he’d grazed it, pursued by Daisy in a bright pink parka, with mittens that hung down
from the sleeves and had dangled in the mud all the way from nursery school. Minty put her head round the door and, seeing Liz’s tears, quietly withdrew to hang up the coats in the porch.

‘Mummy, Mummy, why are you crying?’ demanded Jamie and her heart turned over at the love in his voice.

She turned round and held him. ‘Because I was missing you so much!’

He patted her kindly. ‘Well I’m here now, so you can stop!’

‘Yes.’ She smiled at him through her tears. ‘Yes I can. Can’t I?’

‘Silly old Mum,’ tutted Jamie.

‘Me too! Cuddle! Me
too
!’ demanded Daisy, furious to be missing out on any kisses.

Liz looked down at her and saw David’s face, determined and wilful, smiling up at her in miniature as Daisy fought for a place on her knee.

When she’d been pregnant she’d expected her babies to pop out exactly the same, like Smarties. Instead, right from the moment he’d slipped into the world, Jamie had been like
her and Daisy the spitting image of David, body and soul.

As she picked Daisy up and placed her squarely on her spare knee she caught herself wondering what it would have been like if things had worked out differently between them.

Banishing the thought, she reached for the perfect apple pie and cut each of them a slice that was fractionally too big and they all sat at the round pine table eating it in their fingers. And,
as Jamie recounted in great detail what he’d done at school this morning, she began to feel that maybe today had been less of a catastrophe than it had seemed.

Liz was picking chrysanthemums when the phone went. She’d always thought they were vulgar when she was growing up, associating them with gaudy corporation flowerbeds, but
now she loved their brash and boastful colours and that special crisp and tangy perfume that spelled autumn as clearly as the arrival in the shops of Cox’s Orange Pippins or shiny new
season’s Brussels sprouts.

For a moment she considered ignoring it. There was no one she wanted to speak to and it meant she’d have to take off her gardening gloves and her wellingtons and then the arctic socks she
had on underneath. When they’d first been recommended to her by a huntin’ ’n’ shootin’ friend she’d been deeply sceptical of the thin mesh stockings and wanted
to hang on to her familiar woolly socks that looked as though they’d been knitted for the trenches. But arctic socks were a revelation – and warm feet, she’d found, transformed
your attitude to country life.

Whoever it was on the phone, they were very persistent and on the tenth ring she gave in, and threw down the secateurs, convinced they’d ring off by the time she’d pulled her boots
off.

She wondered if it might even be Mel or Ginny. But it had been ten days since she’d walked out of WomanPower and none of them had been in touch since. So why should they call now?

She was still pulling the second boot off when she finally got to the phone, and, already off balance, very nearly fell over when she heard the voice on the other end.

‘Hello, Liz. This is Mark Rowley. I’ve taken over as Special Adviser to the Chairman of Metro Television. There’s been a bit of a crisis here. I don’t know whether
you’ve heard but Conrad Marks has been fired. It’ll be all over the trades next week so I’m not giving anything confidential away.’

‘Why?’ Liz sat down heavily on the chair in the hall. ‘What’s Conrad been up to?’

For a moment she visualized him caught in the act with Claudia on the boardroom table. Only you didn’t get fired for that kind of thing in television.

‘He moved substantial funds from the Panther Sponsorship deal into his own private companies. About half a million in fact.’

‘My God! How have Panther taken it?’

‘So far they’ve been quite reasonable. Except that they want it back. And they want to see Metro run by someone with integrity they feel they can trust or they’ll withdraw the
rest.’ He paused. ‘Liz, Sir Derek was wondering if you could possibly come up to London in the next couple of days and have a chat?’ Liz held her breath. She might have been
living in the sticks for nearly a year but she still knew ‘Can you come up and have a chat’ was television for ‘We’re thinking of offering you your old job back, with brass
knobs on.’