What Women Want

‘Bea. What’s going on?’ Stuart shut the door behind him and, without waiting to be asked, cleared the unsteady pile of manuscripts off the extra chair and sat down. The rich slightly acrid scent of his sweat reached her at the same time as she noticed the damp stains in the armpits of his shirt, which was grubby at the cuff and neck. He was a good-looking guy of about thirty-five, one of the most astute and commercially minded editors she’d come across, but his personal hygiene left something to be desired. His rather brutal haircut and the razor-thin white scar that ran from his right ear to the side of his nose suggested an aggressive streak that she had never, in the three years they’d worked together, come across. If anyone asked him how he’d got the scar, he just smiled and said it was ‘one of those things’. As a result he retained a slightly mysterious aura that clearly made him extremely attractive to some, judging from the comments that Bea had overheard in the Ladies.

‘Not a clue. Why would I know anyway?’ Bea’s attention was suddenly caught by an email from Let’s Have Lunch and another from Mark that had just pinged their way into her mailbox. Damn. She’d have to open them later.

‘Come on. You’re always the first to know everything. Stephen’s always in and out of here.’ Stuart’s anxiety to find out whatever was going on was bordering on desperate. He pulled his fingers one after another so they cracked.

‘Do you mind not doing that? I honestly don’t know what you’re talking about. What’s happened?’ She hated the way everyone assumed that her long-standing friendship with the managing director meant she knew everything there was to know. Though she hated it even more when she didn’t.

‘Piers arrived just after you left, looking like thunder. He came straight up to Stephen’s office and they’ve been in there ever since. They pulled the blinds so they couldn’t be seen.’ Stuart’s voice rose with excitement as he described the unexpected arrival of the chief executive of Rockfast. ‘Then all the directors were called in, one after the other, and Jan’s been looking for you. They all came out looking absolutely stony and won’t talk to anyone.’ He leaned forward as if expecting Bea to share whatever secret there was.

‘I’ve no idea what’s happening.’ Bea hated confessing her ignorance. ‘Nobody’s said anything to me.’ Only because she’d been a bit late getting back from lunch, dammit.

‘But Stephen tells you everything,’ Stuart sounded outraged that Bea hadn’t got the answer.

‘Not this time.’ But why not? Bea asked herself. She knew that Stephen was talking to the management about retiring early some time next year because he’d decided he wanted to concentrate on his silversmithing. He’d always kept the one thing he was passionate about in second place to his career while his kids were growing up but now they were in their twenties, as he’d told Bea, ‘I’m desperate to give it a proper go before it’s too late.’ Bea had wanted to protest, but she could see he had a point. She had only to glance in the mirror to be reminded that she had her own ticket on time’s winged chariot. So that was next year. If there was something to do with the business, she was sure she’d have got wind of it somehow – smoke signals always drifted off the fire in the end.

‘Here’s Jan now.’ Stuart’s excitement was almost infectious as Stephen’s PA put her head round the door.

‘Bea. There you are. Where have you been? Stephen and Piers wanted to see you urgently.’ Jan’s face was almost hidden by a sheet of blonde hair that she swept back with a perfectly manicured hand to reveal a perfectly beautiful face, and a smile that revealed a set of perfectly even white teeth.

‘At lunch, of course,’ Bea was immediately on the defensive. ‘What was it about anyway?’

‘Can’t say.’ The smile became more like a knowing smirk. ‘Anyway, it’s too late now. I’ve been asked to get everyone into the boardroom in ten minutes.’

‘What? It’s Friday afternoon.’ A meeting on Friday afternoon was unheard of. ‘I’ll go and see them now.’ Underneath the desk, Bea’s feet felt about for her shoes. The pain in her blistered toe as she stood up was excruciating but her desire to find out what was going on overrode it.

‘I think it’s too late, Bea.’ Another of those slight self-satisfied smiles accompanied Jan’s withdrawal.

Irritated both by Jan’s cool assumption of control and superior knowledge, and by Stuart’s evident disappointment in her ignorance of what was going on, Bea picked up the phone and called Stephen. Engaged. Outside her office, the rest of the staff were moving towards the board-room in the corner at the far end of the floor. Annoyed that her Let’s Have Lunch date had been today of all days – and how pointless it had been – she followed the last of her colleagues into the room.

The long modern table had been pushed up against the floor-to-ceiling windows so there would be enough room for everyone. Some perched on its edge, others occupied the chairs that had been randomly spaced around the periphery of the room while everyone else sat on the stained carpet. Bea took a place in the corner by the door, leaning against the wall so she could take the weight off her painful foot. Even turned up full, the air-conditioning couldn’t prevent the room becoming a sauna with that number of people crushed into it. Ties were loosened, jackets were off and pieces of paper flapped as people fanned themselves. Voices rose as speculation mounted. Could Rockfast have sold off the Coldharbour imprint? Surely someone would have heard. Perhaps Rockfast was going under. No, there’d have been word about that too. Perhaps they’d acquired another imprint. Bea stood quietly, as mystified as everyone else, batting away questions as if she knew what was going on but couldn’t possibly say while feeling cross that she was the only director in the room excluded from whatever it was.

Eventually Piers and Stephen came in, followed by the financial, sales, marketing, art and publicity directors, all of them looking particularly serious. Bea caught Stephen’s eye as he mouthed, ‘Sorry.’ At that moment, loud alarm bells began to ring in her head, but she still didn’t know why. How come Bea was the only one to have gone out that lunchtime? Piers stood. He was the only man in the room wearing a suit, rather a natty Armani, Bea noted, but he still maintained his cucumber cool in the heat. His peachy tie was set off by a lightly striped blue shirt while his dark hair was fashionably short, slicked up and back with just the right amount of gel. Quite the image of an executive who had reached the top and was going to stay there, Bea reflected, as Piers directed a taut smile at the assembled team before beginning to speak. He kept it brief, to the point.

‘As you all know, Coldharbour Press has been in trouble for a while. Despite adjustments to the publishing programme, the turnover has fallen again. The board has decided more drastic action is necessary. As a result, I have both good news and bad for you. The good is that Adam Palmer from Pennant Publishing is starting on Monday as the new MD.’ The bombshell dropped. The few who knew of Adam Palmer and his reputation for ruthlessness looked stunned – Bea among them. All heads turned to Stephen, who stood with his eyes fixed firmly on his old brown suede shoes unable to look at his staff. ‘Stephen will be taking early retirement as of August the thirty-first when he has completed the handover to Adam.’ There was a collective gasp. That was less than a month away. Bea couldn’t believe her ears. Stephen had never suggested this might happen. But Piers hadn’t finished.

‘We have also come to an agreement that Louis, your sales director, will be leaving while Sam Spooner will be promoted from his position as sales manager with immediate effect.’

Sam Spooner! He was barely out of nappies. The back-stabbing little toe-rag, thought Bea.

‘Obviously this means that there will be a number of changes to get used to over the coming weeks but I know we can rely on you all to do your best to accommodate them. The Rockfast board is convinced that they will be crucial if we’re to turn the company around to perform in the way it should. All I can add is that, apart from replacing Stephen and Louis, whom I would like to thank for all they’ve done for the company, no other changes are envisaged at this time. Thank you. Have a good weekend.’ He left the room followed by the directors, with Bea on their tail.

Stunned, the staff left the room in silence, a few holding back tears. Only a few of them knew or cared much about Adam Palmer at that moment. What they cared about was that the close team that had worked together over the last few years was changing. If the results hadn’t been everything they might have been, wasn’t that because of market forces, rather than specific individuals who had worked so hard for the company? Change was always unsettling but the more so when it was announced as unexpectedly as this. As the staff filtered back to their desks, they began to talk again, wondering what on earth could have happened to prompt this and why the change had been handled in this way.

Bea went back to her office, fending off questions by inventing an urgent call she had to make. She needed a few moments on her own to think. She shut the door, feeling hurt and confused by the announcement. What did it really mean? What were the implications for her, as one of Stephen’s appointments? She thought she did a good job as publishing director although, if she were honest, perhaps not quite as good a job as she once had. She was uncomfortably aware that recently she hadn’t been responsible for as many sure-fire successes as in earlier days.

She picked up her phone and dialled Stephen. No reply. Had he left the building on Piers’s coat-tails? That would be so like him. He always kept a strictly professional distance from his colleagues and would never stop and gossip. That was one of the things everyone respected him for. He knew every member of staff by name and would help or advise any of them at any time, but when the clock struck six, he shut the door on his office and went home. His professional and private lives were kept entirely separate. She tried his mobile. No reply.

She saw Stuart coming towards her office and swiftly picked up the phone again. When he popped his head round the door to invite her to come to the pub for a post-mortem, she signalled she was mid-conversation. ‘Hang on a minute,’ she said to the dialling tone. ‘I’ve got quite a lot to do, Stu, so I think I’ll finish up here first. If you’re still there when I leave, I’ll join you then.’

It was true. She had got a lot to do but she knew that there wasn’t a cat’s chance in hell of her doing it now. But she wanted to talk to Stephen if only she could find him. Once she could see the main office was deserted, she went along to his office on the off-chance and knocked quietly on the door.

‘Who is it?’ He sounded exhausted.

‘Stephen, it’s me, Bea.’ She pushed open the door to see him sitting with his head in his hands, alone at the round table where he held meetings.

‘I’m so sorry, Bea.’ He looked up and Bea could see he was as tired as he sounded. She hated to think it, but suddenly he looked old.

‘But what happened?’ She went over to sit with him.

‘I wanted to tell you but Piers acted so fast, there was no time. He and the other Rockfast directors have obviously been planning something like this for ages and then Adam suddenly stepped into the frame. Piers knew I was ready to go, and as for Louis – a casualty of war, I’m afraid.’ He ran his hand through his thinning grey hair. ‘Piers warned me on Monday that they were talking to Adam but I didn’t take him seriously. Then he turned up here today and told me the plan. He’d even spoken to Sam and Louis during the week without mentioning it to me, swearing them to silence. I was just the last nail they needed to hammer in. Big pay-off. I couldn’t say no.’ Bea could see how shocked he was by the way his career had ended so abruptly and, more importantly, out of his control. Deciding to quit when it suited you was one thing. Being sacked according to someone else’s agenda was quite different.

‘What do you think is going to happen? Is it going to be the long night of the P45s?’ Bea moved over to the desk where she knew Stephen kept some whisky for emergencies in one of the drawers. Pulling the top one open, she took out the bottle and poured them both a large one. She sat down again.

‘Well, I’m going to have to play the game and show Adam the ropes but . . . honestly? Adam is bound to have his own ideas about how to run the place. I don’t think the changes will end here.’

A penny half dropped. ‘Me?’ Bea felt a rush of anxiety.

‘Maybe. But don’t spend the weekend worrying. We’ll just have to see what happens next week.’ He downed his whisky in one gulp. ‘Bea, I’m sorry but I’m going to have to get off. I’ve got a lot of things to talk about at home.’

‘Of course. I’ve got to get back too.’ Bea left Stephen as he took his old blue cord jacket from the back of his chair and picked up his battered leather book-bag.

‘Call me if you want to talk about anything over the weekend.’

‘Of course. Thanks.’

Back in her office, she sat thinking. Don’t spend the weekend worrying. How could she not, for God’s sake? On the other hand, nothing she could do would affect what happened next week, so best just to follow Stephen’s example and go home. She didn’t feel like joining the others at the pub although, by the time she got home, Ben would probably be on his way out for the night. That would give her time to think more carefully about her conversation with Stephen. On the verge of shutting down her computer, she registered the flashing icon that alerted her to new emails. Of course. She opened her mailbox. Before she went, there were two she wanted to check. First Let’s Have Lunch. Their communication was brief.

Can you make lunch on Tuesday? If yes, Tony Castle will be expecting to meet you at 1 p.m. at Belushi’s in Jordan Street, WC2.

Sod it. Why not? Life couldn’t be much worse. Fine. I’ll be there, she typed.

She opened the one from Mark.

Enjoyed meeting you very much. I thought we might have a drink at the Grape Pip, off Regent Street. Friday week any good? All best, Mark

What harm could one more meeting do? She’d go for a drink with him and see what happened. Besides, she told herself again, she must try not to judge too quickly. Give the guy a chance. She might at least try to get her full £125 worth.

Great she typed. I enjoyed lunch too. (A small white lie in the interest of good relations.) Let me know what time’s best for you.

With that, she shut the screen down, grabbed the manuscript of the novel that she had to finish editing before meeting the author the following week, and walked out.

Chapter 3

‘Come and sit down, Paul. Please.’

Kate lay back on the leg of the white L-shaped sofa, patting the seat beside her. In front of her, Sky News was playing on the wall-mounted TV but with the volume turned right down. Exhaustion gave way to relaxation as her body zinged with the relief of at last being almost horizontal after a hard day’s work. She watched her husband busy preparing their supper in the state-of-the-art kitchen area at the centre of their open-plan basement.

Although he was going grey at last, Paul still had the look of the handsome man she had met thirty years ago: tall, athletic and perennially tanned; his strong jaw sagging a bit; deep laugh lines bracketing his wide mouth; wiry eyebrows now out of control; the round wire-framed spectacles that he had always favoured. He had remained slim despite his well-known love of food and drink, so he still looked good in his clothes. This evening he was casual in cream chinos and a loose white linen shirt. When he walked into a room, heads still turned, though perhaps not for quite as long as they once did, and people still flocked to him, wanting to be in his shadow. But, out of everyone, he had chosen Kate. With her petite, dark, retiring appearance and in the definitive way she approached the world, she was almost his polar opposite. It still surprised her that they had ended up together.

‘I’ll be there in a minute.’ He looked up from what he was doing, giving her the oddly attractive asymmetric grin that had never failed to captivate her. ‘I’ve just to get the timing right with this cheese soufflé or I’ll ruin the thing.’

‘I thought we were having omelettes.’ Kate tried to hide her disappointment. All she wanted was something plain and simple, something that didn’t demand such attention. She wished she had insisted on her original plan of dragging him out to their local Italian after work. If they were there, at a table for two, they’d be forced to talk to one another over the trademark gluey pasta, to communicate about something other than Paul’s culinary efforts. Not that she should complain. The fact that he was a keen cook meant that she rarely had to lift a finger in the kitchen except for the odd bit of dutiful washing-up. Her friends always commented on how lucky she was to have him. Even when he’d had a long day in the City, and often with more work in his briefcase for later, he could still muster the energy to knock up a decent meal. However, his culinary enthusiasm (was there such a thing as culinary obsessive compulsive disorder? she wondered) was something she didn’t share. Falling through the door, exhausted after an evening session at the surgery, she was incapable of doing any more than flinging a ready-cooked meal from the freezer into the oven.

She picked up the latest BMJ from the top of the small pile of medical journals that served as a constant reminder of how much and how often she should attempt to catch up with the ever-advancing world of medicine. She put it down again. ‘You wouldn’t believe how late I ran today. I could have spent all morning with the first three patients alone.’ A GP who prided herself on her ability and commitment, she was often frustrated by the necessary time restrictions put on her work. ‘I kicked off with a guy who claimed he’d collected enough anti-depressants to kill himself, so that was a suicide risk assessment. Then, as he was leaving, he happened to mention that he had a jock itch so I had to look at that, which took ages.’

Paul’s full attention was on the window of the oven as he watched and waited for his soufflé to rise, so Kate just carried on, assuming he was listening. ‘After him, I had a dear eighty-three-year-old who had nothing wrong with her but who wanted to tell me about everything that was going on in her life. And then I had to refer a woman for a termination, which took ages because she couldn’t decide which hospital she wanted me to refer her to. How was I supposed to deal with any of them in ten minutes flat? Paul! Am I boring you?’

He turned in her direction for a second, making a sterling effort to appear interested. ‘No, no, darling. Not at all.’ His attempt to disguise a yawn was futile. ‘Keep going.’

She wasn’t fooled. ‘No, it’s all right. I’ll spare you. Just one of those days. How was yours?’

‘Same old, same old. Aaah.’ Said with the satisfaction of a job successfully executed. ‘I think we’re ready.’

Triumphant, he made his way to the table by the wide glass door to the garden carrying the perfectly risen soufflé, its smell filling the room. ‘Come and sit down.’

Kate dragged herself across the room while Paul examined the interior of the main course as if it was a biological specimen before serving it, then passed her the salad. He was uncharacteristically silent as they ate so she filled the vacuum with more gossip from the surgery while he nodded or shook his head, making the occasional sympathetic sound at the right moments. She could tell by the way his eyes occasionally drifted towards the kitchen that his mind wasn’t entirely on what she was saying but she forgave him. Her professional problems must sometimes seem so petty and tedious to him, but she wanted him to understand her irritation when one of the other partners had to go out for a chunk of the morning leaving her and the on-call doctor to share his patients, as well as her impatience with the practice manager who seemed to be having an awful lot of days sick in the run-up to her daughter’s wedding. Never mind the frustrations of an appointment system that rationed only ten minutes to everyone, when many needed more time – much more time.

*

Her day had begun to go wrong at 8.15 a.m. when she had turned up at the practice and asked Mrs Yilmaz to come inside before the doors officially opened.

The old woman was leaning against the wall, her stick not enough to support her for the wait until the surgery opened, a warm smell of urine and old age drifting off her. A patterned headscarf covered most of her head and face while an old patched coat hid most of what she was wearing, except for the bottom of a long, shapeless dark skirt, thick stockings and sensible black shoes. Her entire body shook with a guttural graveyard cough as she took Kate’s arm, then shuffled beside her to the glass door, coughing again as she waited for her to open it. Kate dug out her keys, aware that she was about to incur the wrath of Sonia, their draconian receptionist, who liked the practice to run the way she thought best. And that meant not having the doctors bringing in the patients to the waiting room, however needy they might be, until the clock struck half past eight on the dot. Not only was Kate about to annoy Sonia but, sensing the pent-up irritation behind her, she’d already alienated most of the remaining queue of patients. Some of them were probably on their way to work, already displeased at being late, while others always felt they had first call on the doctor’s attention. Just another Friday morning.

Having settled Mrs Yilmaz into one of the comfier chairs in the waiting room, she greeted Sonia with the cheeriest ‘Good morning’ she could muster, only to be met with a scowl and a grunt. Their chief receptionist had made herself indispensable to the practice but, all the same, a little compassion wouldn’t go amiss, thought Kate, as she walked down the corridor to her room. She was the first of the partners to be in, as usual. She liked it that way, having a bit of time to make the transfer from her life at home to her role at work, to gather herself for the day ahead. She let herself in. The pale blue of the walls at least had a soothing quality as did the view over the small haphazard garden at the back of the building.

She hung her bag on the back of her chair and sat behind her desk, where her computer was already on and a cup of coffee steaming beside it. Thank God for Evangelina, the junior receptionist, who suffered under Sonia’s large thumb but remembered the little things that made the partners’ lives bearable – a regular supply of hot drinks and occasional biscuits being two of them. Kate flicked to her appointments’ screen, her heart sinking as she registered in whose company she would be spending her morning.

With one or two exceptions, it was a question of the same old patients with the same old insoluble problems: people suffering from all manner of aches and pains that were usually merely symptomatic of their circumstances. Unloved, unhappy, lonely, unemployed: the conditions that bred so many minor complaints. All those patients wanted was a reassuring chat or a token prescription and to be sent away feeling someone was taking notice and cared about them. No one else did. She sighed. At least she had the post-natal clinic to look forward to in the afternoon. That was one of the bright spots in her week, where her examinations gave her the perfect excuse to cuddle and play with one cute, unquestioning, doted-upon baby after another.

She glanced at her watch. She had five minutes. Just enough time to check her emails and not enough to do anything else. Having negotiated the rigmarole that got her through to her NHS inbox, she ran her eye down the entries, hoping to see one from her middle son, Sam, who had recently arrived in Ghana on a school-building project. She was disappointed to find nothing.

Dear Sam, the most adventurous of their children, the one who dared to go higher, further and faster than either of his siblings, up for any kind of physical challenge. Always the dreamiest of the three, he had left school and, to her and Paul’s dismay, chosen not to follow his friends to university. With no idea what he wanted from life, he had travelled alone to New Zealand where he had found a job in the timber industry. Just when she’d thought he had settled, he was off again, this time to work towards preserving the Canadian wilderness. And now he was building a school in Ghana. She knew rationally that each of their children had to leave home and follow their own path in life. But if only his didn’t have to take him quite so far away. They couldn’t even pick up the phone for a chat when they felt like it. She missed him terribly.