How Not to Shop (47 page)

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? Straight 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.'

'Er . . . I'm sorry. Do you want me to do it again?' he asked.

'No, I've already sorted it. Will you just try and concentrate hard on the next thing you get from me?'

'Yeah, sorry.'

When Bella was on her own in her office again, she laughed at herself. 'Potential is all very well if you're 10' – she suspected she'd read that on a billboard somewhere.

She lit up another cigarette, took a deep drag and massaged her temples. This was turning into one hell of a day.

There was another knock and Kitty came in with an enormous bouquet of flowers.

'You thought we'd all forgotten, didn't you?'

'Forgotten what?' Bella asked.

'Your birthday, you idiot.'

'Oh God . . . thanks.' She went over to take the flowers, reading the note signed by all four of them.

'Thanks,' she said again, looking round her room and wondering where to put them.

'There's a vase at reception, shall I keep them out there till the end of play?' Kitty asked.

'Yeah, you're a star, Kitty. I bet everyone else would have forgotten.'

Nine hours later, after hundreds of calls, calculations and a gruelling meeting with Chris and Susan, Bella was finally tapping in her last memo and tidying her desk for the day. It was 7.15 p.m. when Chris appeared at the door to ask if she was coming for a drink over the road.

She declined because, at last, it was time to get home to Don. The traffic was infuriatingly slow all the way back across town, so she redid her make-up, sprayed on perfume and flipped through her CDs before giving up in disgust and enduring the radio. She couldn't wait to see Don again. Three whole weeks: it was the longest they'd ever been apart.

When she finally made it back to the block she swung open the front door, ran to the lift and impatiently jabbed on the button over and over again until the doors pinged open.

In the flat everything was still and for a heart-crushing moment she thought Don hadn't been able to make it back. Then she saw his bag and his battered oilskin coat in the hall. Quietly she walked through to the bedroom. The curtains were closed and Don was lying in bed fast asleep.

She was so happy to see him she felt her stomach flip. She moved closer to take a long look at him. His face was brown against the white pillow, but tired and drawn. His thick steely-grey hair was rumpled and still wet from the shower he must have taken. His glasses were on the bedside table and he looked deliriously clean and freshly shaven.