Chapter 13
13
A month later
‘And the share price barely moved!’
‘Because the news got buried! The market was down three hundred points that week but Andy released the report anyway. He was told not to, but Caro wasn’t here and…’ Matt turned, his broad forehead furrowed in irritation. ‘Do you need to take that?’ he said, then, ‘ Caro? ’
Caro stared at him. Like a child blindfolded and spun around, she wasn’t sure where she was. She blinked as the room settled back into focus. A long polished oval table, three windows, outside of which she could see the unmistakable shape of the Gherkin and beyond it the rounded benign dome of St Paul’s. She was at work, in the boardroom.
‘Do you need to take the call?’ Matt repeated.
Everyone at the table was looking at her, but she couldn’t for the life of her remember who they were. One, two, three… Her heart picked up and she felt a tingling at her fingertips. The beginning of an overwhelming panic, something she’d never suffered from, but that had in the last week or so found a space to settle inside her and was only growing more confident with each foray. Steeling herself, she pressed her nails into her palm, and the sharp pinch of skin was an anchor tethering her in place. ‘No,’ she said and pushed her buzzing phone away.
‘Right.’ Matt turned back to the faces at the table. ‘It got buried, Danny. That’s all.’
Danny. Of course. Caro looked down. She felt squeezed in by the coldness of her panic. How could she not have recognised Danny? Or Emir, sitting next to him? When she glanced back up again, she saw that they were both watching her.
‘You OK?’ Danny mouthed.
‘Fine,’ Caro mouthed back and dug her nails in harder. Less than two hours ago she’d answered her phone to a delivery company trying to deliver a cot that was no longer needed. The last nail in the coffin of a dream that was dead as a dodo. Apart from that, yes, she was fine.
‘The last FPO sold out in three hours. Minimum you’re looking at, minimum, is a four hundred per cent return. That’s more than feasible in my opinion.’ He turned to Caro.
Who nodded.
Matt frowned gently at her.
‘Yes, more than,’ she offered.
‘Jeez, Caro.’ Matt shook his head and turned back to the table.
And Caro looked down at the empty sheet of paper in front of her and drew a tiny circle in the margin. A four hundred per cent return was feasible because it existed in a way that another pregnancy, for her, would never exist. Was in fact impossible.
Kay had explained. Poor Kay, left to deliver the news. After losing the baby – foetus, as everyone had referred to it – she’d undergone a scan, which had revealed uterine tissue growth in the intestines. It wasn’t worth the risk. Not at her age, the doctors had explained. It would only grow back and then there was the possibility of acute obstruction, of further serious complications. No, not worth the risk. But Caro had been numbed by shock and painkillers, she wasn’t sure what they were talking about, she wasn’t sure what she’d said. Either way, twenty-four hours later she’d woken up, having undergone a full hysterectomy, her uterus removed, the problem solved.
Gone. All gone. And poor Kay, red eyed and white faced and stumbling out the news that Helen couldn’t come because Libby had had her baby on the same day that… Thinking this, Caro’s head dropped as it always did when the truth hit her. Libby, who had spent most of her pregnancy trying to wish it away, and she who had counted and treasured every last minute of it.
Unconsciously her hands settled on her stomach, a habit she had so easily acquired and now couldn’t break, as if her body remembered, which of course it did. Every fibre of her being remembered.
‘So,’ Matt was saying. ‘The order sheet doesn’t lie, Danny.’
Emir shrugged. ‘I didn’t realise Caro wasn’t in when the report was released. That explains it.’
‘Timing was shit.’ Matt held his hands up. ‘No argument there.’
‘But she’s back now,’ Danny grinned.
Caro smiled, and although the men continued talking, she didn’t hear a word that was said. She was back. She’d been back for three weeks now. And on that first day, it had been like stepping onto a lifeboat. No one had known. She’d been able to slip back into her role seamlessly, passing off her hospital stay as women’s problems, two words, about as popular a subject matter in the office as tax and audit. But with every passing day, the men and women with whom she spent the best part of her week had seemed increasingly alien to Caro. And the value of what they valued increasingly worthless. Overseeing investments worth millions of pounds, she’d felt numb, as if she was a child in a sandpit, mindlessly moving spadefuls of sand from A to B. So that now the lifeboat she’d jumped onto gladly felt more like the Starship Enterprise , with everyone around her hellbent on going somewhere and going somewhere boldly, and Caro wholly unable to name any destination that she might even want to journey to.
‘Caro!’ Matt threw himself back in his chair, arms wide in a gesture of impatience. ‘If it’s not important, do you mind?’
And again, she felt herself snapped back into the room.
‘Your phone,’ Danny said gently.
She looked at her phone. It was buzzing away on the table in front of her.
‘Just answer it,’ Matt said, his voice heavy with irritation.
‘OK.’ Caro pushed her chair back and picked up her phone. But the name that flashed up sent a powerful wash of cold through her legs, and it was with visibly shaking hands that she swiped to answer, moving away to the window as she did so.