Almost a Crime (15 page)

in the Bryant family from Mrs B, a minute-by-minute

history of the early days of Bryant and Co from Mr B …’

‘Well, you were magnificent. And next time I go to

New York to see them, you can come. Promise.’

‘Wow! What a lucky little woman I am. No thanks.’

‘All right,’ he grinned at her. ‘Don’t say I don’t try. By

the way, I’ve asked this new prospect of mine, Nico

Cadogan, the one your father put my way, to come to Ascot with us next week. Now that you will enjoy. He’s a nice chap, very good looking, oozes charm.’

‘I can hardly wait.’

‘And darling, that reminds me, what news of Michael

Carlton, and the sponsorship deal?’

‘Ah, yes. That one. Meeting pencilled in for Friday. And

before you ask me, I still haven’t spoken to the Foothold

people. But I will. All right? Now, Tom, if you really

wanted to show your gratitude for the weekend, you’d take

the twins to Holland Park for me. Or at least come with us.’

‘Darling, I can’t. I have a speech to write for a dinner on

Tuesday. I swear next weekend I’ll take them out all day on

Sunday. How’s that? Incidentally, I was hoping to get back

on Tuesday night, after the dinner, but I really don’t think I

can, I’ll have to dash back at dawn. I must spend a couple of

hours at my desk before we go to Ascot, so I’ll meet you

there. Up in the box. Is that okay?’

‘It’s fine. Where’s the dinner?’

‘Bath. It’s—’

The phone rang: it was her father.

‘Octavia, hallo. Just rang to see if you were all right.’

‘I’m fine, Daddy. How would you like to come with

your grandchildren and me to the adventure playground in

Holland Park?’

‘Can’t Tom go with you?’

‘No, he’s — working,’ she said, gritting her teeth, looking

at Tom who had now closed his eyes, put the Sunday Times over his face.

‘I see. It seems a pity he doesn’t have more time for his

family. I think, yes, that sounds rather nice. Nice to have

you to myself for a bit.’

‘You’ll have to share me with the twins.’

‘Well, that will be a pleasure.’

‘We’ll meet you there in an hour.’

She put the phone down, sighed. Now why had she

done that? It would actually have been easier if she’d taken

the twins on their own. They got very frustrated with their

grandfather, who would talk to them for a very few minutes

and then switch his attention straight back to her. She knew why of course; it had been to annoy Tom, to get back at him.

Felix drove across London, contemplating happily the prospect of having Octavia to himself for a couple of hours.; It was a rare treat these days. That had been the greatest

shock of her falling in love: of finding her no longer

automatically available to him. Until she met Tom, he had

come first; if he wanted to see her, if he was feeling unwell

or even lonely, needed her to hostess an evening for him as

she grew older and socially competent, he had only to ask

her. She would give up anything, more or less, for him.

She had once when she was only about ten, forgone a

very special treat for him, a birthday outing with friends to

the ballet at Covent Garden. Fonteyn and Nureyev were

dancing Giselle and she had talked of nothing else for weeks,

had planned what to wear, the present had been bought and

wrapped up days before the event. She didn’t get asked to

very many parties, was not popular at school — too clever

and altogether too grown up for the other children, he felt,

not interested in the sort of nonsense they liked, those

dreadful Barbie dolls and pop singers.

He had become faintly irritated by the ballet outing as it

drew nearer; he liked to provide her with the really big

treats of her life himself. And this was something very

special for her. The night before, when they had supper,

she had eaten very little; he had asked her if she felt all right.

‘Absolutely all right,’ she had said seriously, ‘just terribly,

terribly excited about tomorrow. The best day of my life,

it’s going to be.’

He hadn’t said anything, simply smiled and patted her

hand, but jealousy quite literally twisted his guts.

Next morning he had woken with a bad throat. By

lunchtime he realised he felt really unwell, had a headache,

a foreboding that this might be going to be a really nasty flu.

Octavia had sat at lunch, chattering excitedly about the

ballet, saying she couldn’t believe she was really, really going; it had begun to irritate Felix. He excused himself from the table, went to lie down on his bed. His headache was definitely worse.

After a while, he had heard the door open softly.

‘Daddy?’ Are you all right? Why are the curtains pulled?’

‘Well, my head aches. But not too badly.’

‘Poor Daddy. Can I get you an aspirin?’

‘Oh, darling, I’ve already taken something much stronger

than an aspirin. This is a real headache, I’m afraid.’

‘Not a migraine?’

He got them sometimes: when he was upset. She

Worried about them, hated the whole process, the pain he

was so clearly in, the vomiting. She knew he got them

when he was overworking or upset about something, took

a pride in trying to ward them off, making him leave his

desk on Saturdays or Sundays to go for a walk: ‘Come on,

time to get some fresh air,’ she would say, holding out her

hand as if she was the parent, he the child.

He had smiled at her, at her worried little face, had said

no, no, not a migraine. ‘More like flu, I think. Got a bit of a

temperature. Don’t you worry about me, poppet. Look,

hadn’t you better be getting ready to go?’

‘I don’t want to leave you,’ she had said, with enormous

reluctance. ‘Not if you’re ill.’

‘My darling,’ he had said, struggling to sit up, ‘my darling

sweetheart, you’re not missing that ballet for me. For your

old daddy.’

‘I’d miss anything for you,’ she had said, ‘if you wanted

me to.’

By a quarter to six, when she had put her head round the

door again, all dressed up by then in a dark plaid taffeta

frock, and a ribbon in her hair, tied by Mrs Harrington, the

housekeeper, he had realised he was feeling much worse.

‘Oh, Daddy …’ She had come over to the bed, put a

small hand on his forehead. ‘Daddy, you’re hot!’

‘A bit. Yes.’ Of course it had been silly, under the

circumstances, to shut the window, turn up the central

heating; but when he’d gone up to the room, he’d felt

rather cold. ‘But no one ever died of a temperature. Or flu.

Did they?’

‘I don’t know. I suppose Mrs Harrington will be here, to

look after you.’

‘Well, not, actually. It’s her evening off, remember? She’s

taking it instead of tomorrow. But she’ll leave me

something. Not that I feel like eating.’

‘So you’ll be on your own.’

‘Yes. Poor old me.’ Then he had smiled at her again.

‘But for heaven’s sake, Octavia, I am a grownup. Going on

forty. I’ll be all right for a few hours.’

‘I think I should stay with you,’ she had said in a small

voice. ‘Daddy, I can’t leave you alone. Not with a

temperature and maybe a migraine.’

‘Darling, I’ll be fine—’ an imperceptible pause, he heard

it himself— ‘of course I will.’

‘No,’ she said slowly, pulling the ribbon out of her dark

curls, ‘no, you won’t. I wouldn’t enjoy it, worrying about

you. I really wouldn’t.’

‘Oh, darling, you’re so sweet. So good to your old dad. I

feel so mean—’

‘Daddy! Stop it. I’ll just go and phone Flora’s mummy

quickly, and then I’ll come and sit with you. Make you a

milky cure.’

‘That would be wonderful.’ He heard her voice indistinctly

on the phone in his study next door, then her

footsteps running downstairs. She came back after ten

minutes, with a drink on a tray, and a book.

‘I’m going to read to you,’ she said. ‘Robinson Crusoe,

your favourite.’

Her voice sounded slightly funny: he looked at her. She

had been crying.

‘My darling,’ he said, ‘I can never thank you enough for

this. I feel so bad. I tell you what, as soon as I’m better, I’ll

take you to that ballet. We’ll go together. How about that?’

‘It’s all sold out,’ she said brightly. ‘Never mind. Next

time perhaps. Now be quiet, and rest your poor voice. I’ll

read to you.’

She did, and he fell asleep, watching her, listening to her,

thinking how beautiful she was, and how sweet, how much

he loved her, how much she must love him.

In the morning he felt extraordinarily better. Just a

twenty-four-hour bug obviously.

She was right about the tickets, but he managed to pull

some strings and hire a box. They sat in it together, just the

two of them, and he ordered a bottle of champagne and

gave her a small amount, mixed with orange juice, and she

smiled at him as she sipped it, and told him she loved him

and this was much much better than going with lots of girls

from school.

‘Is it really?’ he said. ‘Are you sure? That would surely

have been more fun.’

‘No, this is more fun. Honestly.’

‘I still feel guilty.’

‘You mustn’t.’

So he didn’t.

‘Right, then. I’ve had a look at all the background, the

figures and so on. More coffee?’

Nico Cadogan shook his head. George Egerton had

offered two pounds fifty a share for the Cadogan Group,

and Cadogan had had an emergency meeting with his

bankers. ‘I’m awash with the stuff. What do you think?’

‘Well, this offer’s going to tempt your shareholders, with

the shares at two pounds at the moment. What can you

offer them to stay with you?’

‘Precious little. I thought you were going to find a

political process to stamp on it.’

‘Cadogan, it isn’t as easy as that. We can do quite a bit of

stirring, yes. We can write to the MP in Romford — where

your head office is — stir things up, say Provincial are

ruthless, half the staff are going to be made redundant, we

can table a few questions, try to put down an EDM - an

Early Day Motion. It’s a sort of petition. You find an

interested MP—’

‘How?’

‘This is why you’re hiring us,’ said Tom, grinning at him.

‘Anyway, you write something for him, saying something

like “This house notes with concern the proposed merger,

blah blah blah,” and the person who puts it down goes

round the House, trying to get likeminded people to sign it.

Then it gets printed in the order paper for that day, and hopefully gets signed some more. You can use it for support, it has strong moral authority. Nothing much more

than that, though. And then we can write to Margaret

Beckett, point out that hotel prices will almost certainly go

up. Write to the papers — you’re very good copy — say

you’ve got a family company, have a personal holding of

fifty-one per cent, look after your staff well, all that stuff’

‘Sounds good to me.’

‘Yes, but there’s a catch, isn’t there?’

Cadogan looked at him, sighed. ‘Yeah. I know what

you’re going to say. Our duty to the shareholders.’

‘Precisely. They’re not going to like the idea of losing

out fifty pence a share, simply to keep a few people in their

jobs. I wouldn’t.’

‘So what do we do?’

I like that we, thought Tom; we is good. He felt a surge

of confidence.

‘You have to win the shareholders round. Present your

overhauled company, your aggressive plans for expansion,

your new MD; tell them you’re planning to trim the sails a

bit more, tell them two pounds fifty is not good enough,

that within a year, if they stick with you, the shares will be

worth three fifty. We can still plant the stories about loss of

competition, speculate about rising costs. If it goes to

referral—’

‘What, to the Monopolies people?’

‘Yes. If the Office of Fair Trading don’t clear it, say it

should be referred to the MMC — Monopolies and Mergers

Commission — then we can start beavering away quietly

about jobs being at risk, all that sort of thing. This is a PR

job as much as a political one. It boils down to that: are you

game?’

There was a long silence. Cadogan got up, went over to

the window. Tom studied his back view, the black and

silver hair, the broad shoulders, the perfectly cut suit, the

exceptionally long legs; if you sent to central casting for A

City Executive, they’d come back with someone who

looked exactly like Nico Cadogan. And sounded like him.

‘Okay,’ said Cadogan turning back to him. ‘You’re Now, what sort of fee are we talking here?’

Tom took a deep breath. ‘Twenty grand a month,’ he said.

There was a silence, for at least five seconds. ‘That your standard fee?’

‘Yup. For a case like this.’

‘It’s extortionate.’

‘It’s realistic’

Another silence. Then, ‘Okay, I pride myself on being

realistic. But you’d better deliver.’

Tom experienced the adrenalin rush very physically.

She couldn’t put it off any longer, Octavia thought: she

must phone the chair of the Felthamstone branch of

Foothold, see what reaction, if any, she got to Michael