Chapter 8
Once her girls were in bed, Jo made herself a cup of tea and used her trusty, bashed-at-the-edges laptop to go online.
Yes, yes, yes… obviously she could be chucking some soup together to see her through the busy end of the week ahead, or making small inroads into the laundry landslide, or even unpacking some of the last removals boxes cunningly disguised with a tablecloth in her bedroom.
But she was too tired, she couldn’t face it.
Whereas the lure of just a little preliminary research into Quintet, a teensy scout-about of the top ten hits from a Google search… well, she couldn’t resist that.
She typed in ‘Quintet’, then the manufacturer’s name ‘Wolff-Meyer’ and began her search.
Financial reports, NHS sites, doctor comments all came up, so she began a methodical trawl through everything that sounded interesting, in the hope of finding some clues.
When her home phone on the desk began to ring, she didn’t take her eyes from the screen as she picked up: ‘Jo Randall,’ she said automatically.
‘No, it’s not your news desk, work slave. It’s me.’
‘Hey, you, I was just thinking about you.’ Jo was pleased to hear Bella’s voice on the other end of the line, ‘I’m on the internet…’
‘Aha,’ Bella interrupted. ‘Working or doing Mummy porn?’
‘Mummy porn?’
‘You know, on the Mini Boden website planning fantasy child outfits?’
‘Oh, ha ha,’ Jo replied. ‘No, I’m working. I’m deep in Reuters finance trying to make sense of rows and rows of figures.’
‘Looking into anything interesting?’ Bella asked.
‘Oh, you know me, just the little cottage industry that is global pharmaceuticals.’
‘Hope you’ve got a good lawyer then,’ Bella warned. ‘They are very, very litigious. Who are you investigating?’
‘Wolff-Meyer, the Quintet manufacturers.’
‘Well, well…’
‘Know much about them?’
‘Might do.’
‘Come on then, tell me something interesting,’ Jo wheedled.
‘Would you like to know how much money they made last year on vaccinations alone?’
‘Yes.’
‘A cool ￡900 million.’
Jo whistled.
‘They have big money, big, big money. And they have big investors: banks, the major pensions companies, probably the government too. No one wants these guys to fail.’
‘No one wants any vaccination scare stories to send share prices tumbling then?’
‘No, definitely not.’
‘Not even the government.’
‘Especially not the government.’
‘Oh, good, nothing I like better than a challenge.’ Jo was scribbling notes. ‘Medicine has been great business ever since the days of the witch doctor,’ she added.
‘I suppose so – Jo?’ Bella ventured.
‘Yes?’
‘There’s more marble in their London headquarters than in the Vatican.’
‘And how would you happen to know that, Bella?’
‘Well… there’s something I didn’t tell you the last time we spoke about Quintet.’
‘Yes?’
‘It will probably interest you just a little bit too much to know that I updated all the virus software in their London office four months ago and I now hold a regular maintenance contract with them.’
‘No!’ was Jo’s response, her heart beat revving up as she felt an internal ‘yeeees!’. There had to be some way this amazing stroke of luck could be put to good use.
‘So you’re in cahoots with them. I might have guessed,’ Jo teased.
‘I hardly think a computer contract—’ Bella began.
‘I’m going to have to take you out for a series of stiff cocktails, my friend,’ Jo said. ‘And talk to you about Messrs Wolff and Meyer. See if three margaritas later, you can come up with something interesting for me that you didn’t even know you knew.’
‘I don’t think so, Jo, just put me down as one of the company’s techies. I’m sure there’s not that much I can help you with.’
‘We’ll see. I’m deep in research. I will let you know if there are areas requiring further investigation.’
‘The weather forecast for Sunday is great,’ Bella informed her, ‘which is why I’m phoning. I thought you and the girls – and maybe, you know, your boyfriend…’ big tease at the word, ‘could join us for a barbecue at the allotment?’
‘The allotment,’ Jo snorted, ducking the boyfriend dig. ‘Who even are you?!’
Bella with an allotment. It still made her snigger. Bella had somehow imagined herself spending the weekends digging, weeding, growing lovely organic deli food and picnicking with her boys in the fresh air. Yeah, right, maybe if Bella had had a personality transplant that might have been possible.
Instead, her allotment was riddled with weeds, overgrown lawn and catastrophic under-production of fruit and vegetables.
When the tuts and complaints from her allotment neighbours grew too strong, she’d hired a gardener for a slash and burn repair session.
Bella had high-heeled wellies, a designer trug and cute little gardening implements from the Conran shop, but Jo had absolutely no recollection of ever having seen Bella on her hands and knees attempting one tiny little bit of work in said allotment.
Mainly Bella held noisy barbecues there and Jo suspected this was because she didn’t want her immaculate home garden to get too messed up.
Don pottered about the allotment a little, admittedly, with a hoe and a pair of clippers.
But mainly he sat in his deckchair with a bedraggled fisherman’s hat on his head and read the foot-high stack of newspapers at his side.
Occasionally, his sons, Markie and Murdo, poked him so vigorously that he had to get up and join in a game of kickabout, badminton, swing ball, or whatever wild and vigorous activity they were pursuing that day.
‘Allotment 12.30-ish?’ Jo suggested. ‘Me and my daughters only,’ she made it clear. ‘We’ll bring potato salad and pudding as long as you get the posh burgers sorted out.’
‘OK. Deal.’
‘How’s your week going anyway?’ Jo asked.
‘Same old, same old. People I’m working with have turned into total pains in the arse, so I’m stressed and in a bad mood all the time, Don’s going away for a few days on some sort of ideas-creating, brainstorming jolly in Dublin.
More like a brain-damaging session in Dublin.
Even if they come up with any good ideas, they’ll all get too pissed to remember them.
Murdo has started to wet his bed again, which means I’m blaming myself for…
well, everything… You know, life. All lovely. ’
‘Finished ranting now?’
‘Yes, feel much better. You?’
‘I’m fine.’ Jo left it at the short answer.
‘Oh, good. I’ll look forward to hearing all about it on Sunday.’
‘Or maybe speaking about it before then?’
‘Yeah, well… we’ll see.’
Not long after she’d hung up the phone, her mobile bleeped with a text.
Fancy a fck?
it asked. Followed by a smiley face.
Oh please.
Too busy but call me.
Jo typed back. Just seconds later the phone rang and his sexy voice was in her ear.
‘Are you sure?’ he was saying, ‘I’m getting out early tonight, it’s quiet.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Jo told him, ‘I’m still working… Tell me about your day anyway.’
‘Hot and sweaty, but delicious. That’s all you need to know about my day and about me.’
‘Mmmm.’
‘And you?’ he asked.
‘Me? The usual, trying to save the free world from the evil clutches of – insert villain of the week into this space,’ she joked.
‘And why can’t I come round?’
‘I’ve got to do the washing, unpack things… it’s Mel’s birthday tomorrow, I have to wrap her presents and bake a cake…’ She had a feeling she’d let something out of the bag now.
‘Can you wrap a kitten?’ he asked.
‘Please shut up about the kitten. I haven’t got her a kitten. I’m the worst parent in the world.’
‘You are, but not because of the kitten,’ he answered. ‘You’re the worst parent in the world if you don’t let the professional chef you know come over and bake her birthday cake.’
‘Oh.’ Yeah, he was going to be hard to resist now.
‘I’m very good at cakes,’ he wheedled. ‘I’ve probably spent more time baking than you’ve—’
‘Spent shagging?’ she answered for him. ‘Although not counting the past few weeks.’
‘Yes…’ he lingered over the word, managing to load it with meaning.
‘OK, OK,’ her resistance was over. ‘Come and bake the cake. Please.’
‘OK, I will come over for some late-night baking, but I’m not promising anything else…’
‘No?’
‘No… right, you have to go and check your cupboards for the following ingredients—’
Marcus arrived not long after 10.30 and as soon as he was in the house, she was kissing him, licking his soft salty skin and telling him that they should go to bed immediately and never mind the cake.
But he’d come with a rucksack full of the things he needed and he wasn’t going to be distracted.
‘Will you just get off?’ he insisted. ‘Jo, leave me alone!’ He took her hands off his shoulders, then out of his pockets. ‘Baking,’ he reminded her. ‘Focus. Baking is a serious science,’ he added, ‘I hope you’ve got scales that work in your crap kitchen.’
‘Crap kitchen?’ She felt mildly insulted by this, even though the cramped dark-pine, grey-granite arrangement fitted at expense by the previous owner didn’t really appeal to her much either.
He washed his hands at the kitchen sink, while she watched with her arms tight around his waist and her head hooked over his shoulder.
She let him lead her round the room like this as he went into cupboards and the fridge to round up the ingredients he hadn’t brought with him.
‘So, we’re doing sponge,’ he said. ‘Let me see the size of your baking tins.’
‘Why does that sound so rude?’ she said and kissed his neck.
‘Because you’re a filthy old lady.’
‘Am not!’
‘Are so!’
She showed him her tin collection and he almost seemed impressed.
But then cake baking was a favourite rainy Sunday activity she liked to practise with her daughters.
‘But it’s to be a dress, you know, sponge layers stacked up,’ she explained, ‘so Barbie can be plunged in all the way up to her monstrous chest.’