3. THREE
This was all Adjoa’s fault.
Poppy stood near the end of the bar, by a potted plant, not far from the door to the toilets. Prime real estate for awkward people who knew they didn’t belong. She was gripping a gin and tonic, the glass cold and wet in her hot hand, and her other arm was tucked across her ribs, hand clamped under her elbow. It wasn’t that she was shy—she could be fairly bolshy on her home turf—but she felt so obviously uninvited and out of place that she was pierced with self-consciousness, rigid with it.
It felt presumptuous just being here. Yes, it was technically a company party and open to everyone, but people knew there was an unwritten pecking order to these things. Staff parties in the company lounge, catered and paid for by the company, were the preserve of the higher-ups: senior managers and above. There wasn’t anyone here who wasn’t on at least six-figures. Many were on seven. The board was here, the stakeholders were here. There were even a few clients—those high net worth individuals who couldn’t resist a free bar and finger food.
And even worse, this entire party was being thrown for no less an august personage than Roscoe Blackton himself. This was very much a party for the inner-circle. And Poppy Fields was very much outside of it.
He was busy in the crowd. And she was only aware of exactly where he was so she could scrupulously avoid looking. But after a week of successfully avoiding him, she was beginning to relax. Their very different roles never brought them into contact.
Adjoa was across the room, standing near a plush purple sofa and some tall ferns, the glass wall reflecting the room’s golden lights behind her. It was night outside, but beyond the glass were strings of lights in the roof garden and the lights of all London far below and beyond. Adjoa was chatting to Monica Bokahnson, the CFO—an indomitable woman in her fifties who had the healthily ageing air of an ex-tennis pro. If she knew how to smile, she would have looked right at home presenting the BBC’s Wimbledon coverage.
Adjoa was toying with the idea of switching to accountancy—researching courses and career entry points in much the same way Poppy was. So talking to BG’s Chief Financial Officer made perfect sense. It was why Adjoa was here—it was how she had persuaded Poppy to come with her. Social networking. Making contacts. Getting your name and face out there. And Poppy should have been doing exactly the same thing. Look: there was John Fisher, head of Research. But what if Poppy went up to him and they got talking and he frowned at hearing her accent—even though she did her best to mask it at work—and asked where she went to school, where she went to university, what her parents did?
She could lie, of course. Oh, yah, I grew up in a little cottage just outside Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire. Nothing fancy, you know. Grade II listed, terrible nuisance when we needed to get the swimming pool extended…
Poppy snorted. Then she started with shock, spilling some of her drink, because a tall, immaculately suited man said in a deep, dark voice, “Don’t suppose you’d mind sharing the joke? This party could do with some laughter.”
Aubrey Ford.
She knew him—or knew of him. Of course she did. He was friends with Roscoe Blackton. Famous by association. Also, they’d once shared five minutes of exquisitely awkward conversation in a lift. She wasn’t entirely sure why he wanted to subject himself to more.
“Oh. No. No joke.” She changed her glass to her other hand, attempting to surreptitiously wipe the spilled drink from her hand onto her skirt.
“Let me guess,” Aubrey said with a nod across the room to where Roscoe was holding court, laughing and chatting with a group of people. Three of them were clients. Total net worth in the billions. Now he was talking to an actual duke. And Poppy was wearing a skirt from a charity shop and a supermarket multipack blouse. “You’re deciding what theme tune plays in his mind when he walks into a room. My money’s on Shaft. Possibly Walking on Sunshine.”
Poppy’s shocked laugh made the drink catch in her throat. She coughed, looked at Aubrey wide-eyed.
“Come on.” Aubrey leant in, faux-earnest. “You have to laugh at the man to keep him humble. Consider it a type of public service.”
“I think you can get away with it. I might get in trouble.”
“Not with me.”
She didn’t quite trust his slow smile. Or rather, she trusted she knew exactly what it meant. Because one of Aubrey Ford’s other claims to fame was cutting a swathe through the female half of BG as broad as Roscoe’s.
“You supervised Roscoe’s internship, didn’t you?” she asked.
Aubrey straightened and sipped his drink, perhaps disappointed by the conversational swerve but politely going with it. “Technically, yes, but rather in the same manner a tail wags the dog. Looking for salacious details?”
“No, I’m just…” What was she doing? Diverting Aubrey from getting his flirt on? Attempting some ham-fisted social networking? Grasping at straws? “I…erm… I have a friend. Who’s interested in working here. Probably in research, to start with. A junior analyst. But they might want to work their way up into Portfolio Management. I don’t suppose you’d have any advice? For someone like that?”
He gave her a slow look. “Right. Well… A relevant degree, of course. And a lot of our juniors come to us with MAs, or some work experience, too. Interning is a good start.”
“But do you think… Would…like…maybe a demonstration portfolio of some kind, sample analyses and things… If they could put together something like that for their application… Demonstrate their skill somehow without qualifications… Would that ever be enough?”
Aubrey frowned thoughtfully. “No qualifications at all?”
“Beyond the bare minimum.”
“It’s far less common now. But we’ve had people join us at the junior level who have a less…traditional background.”
“Really?”
Aubrey shrugged. “I didn’t complete my degree.”
“You…? Really? And you just applied for a job here?”
“Well. I got lucky. My uncle’s friend was working here at the time. He got me through the door.”
“Oh,” said Poppy, hope plummeting. “Of course.”
“It’s very competitive,” said Aubrey with a hint of apology. “Fiercely competitive, even for people with the right qualifications. Having a personal connection is always going to help you stand out of the crowd.”
“And without that? And with no degree?”
“You might need a miracle.”
Poppy was gone by the time Roscoe managed to escape Andrew. He was relieved to see that Aubrey remained, leaning with one elbow on the bar, surveying the room with his usual inscrutable expression. Roscoe joined him. Ordered a bourbon. Took a sip large enough to make him cough.
Aubrey gave him a once over. “Is this a party or a wake, Goldy?”
“Feels like a wake. The death of the self, maybe.”
“You can’t even summon up a little schadenfreudian glee at being promoted over me?”
“Seems unsporting when it wasn’t a fair fight.” He sipped his drink, the burn doing nothing to ease the bitter frustration in his gut. “Where’s Poppy? Did you frighten her off?”
“Your redhead? She said she had a headache. Can you believe it? No concern for my tender ego at all. She could have invented a sick aunt. A dental emergency. But no. All I merit is a headache.”
Roscoe dredged up a chuckle. Ignored his disproportionate swell of relief. Why did it matter if Aubrey failed? He barely knew the girl. Had no reason—or right—to get to know her better.
He toyed with his glass on the bar’s shiny top, looked up and caught his eye in the mirror behind the neat rows of spirits. Aubrey was right. He hardly looked like a man celebrating his own success. Because he wasn’t. This was all his father’s success, wasn’t it? He turned, looked out at the room, saw his father and Andrew Carter-Hall talking together, Andrew laughing, clapping a hand on his father’s shoulder in his usual effusive way.
Twenty years’ effort and the only thing that really mattered was the name he was born with.
He threw back the rest of his drink, told Aubrey he had a headache, and headed for the exit, leaving his friend shaking his head at the bar.
Maybe it was bad form to leave your own party early. Roscoe couldn’t summon the will to care. He made it down to the building’s foyer and paused as he pushed the glass door open. It was just after nine, dark outside, the street painted in noirish shades of yellow and grey. He wasn’t surprised it was also pouring with rain. It was only fitting.
His place was ten minutes’ walk away, so he didn’t bother calling a car, just turned the collar of his coat up and shoved his hands into his pockets before stepping out from the covered entrance.
Then stopped. Turned. Because there was a woman huddled under the entrance’s shelter, shivering slightly as she eyed the unrelenting rain.
“Hello again,” Roscoe said to Poppy, stepping back under the shelter.
She glanced up at him, expression tight, then nodded past him to the street. “Thought it might stop if I waited.”
“Do you have far to go?”
“Just the tube.”
He turned his head, studied the rain for a moment as though he was a seer able to read tea leaves and not just a man trying to work out what to say next. “Not sure it’s going to stop soon.” He looked back at her. “I could call you a company car?”
She blushed, shaking her head. “No. No, thank you. And…about the other night…”
“Did you get home OK?”
“Yes. Sorry. Not sorry, I mean, about getting home. Sorry about…about the words. And the…everything.”
Roscoe laughed softly. “Don’t worry about it. Most entertaining part of the evening by a long way. Much more entertaining than tonight’s effort, too.” He lifted his eyes to the building above them with a dry nod.
“Your party? You didn’t enjoy it?”
“I’m leaving early so…” He smiled. “No. I didn’t much enjoy it. And you? You also seem to be leaving early.”
She frowned, fidgeted with the strap of her handbag. “I wasn’t meant to be there at all.”
“Why not? Everyone was invited.”
“But was everyone there?” She met his eyes squarely for the first time. Several strands of hair had worked themselves loose from the coil of her French-twist. Tiny curls at the nape of her neck. A longer strand brushing the curve of her jaw.
“I suppose not everyone,” he said. “But they wouldn’t all fit. Are you saying it wasn’t a good turnout?” he teased. “Do you think I should be offended?”
She gave him a studying sort of look, as though suspecting he might be stupider than she thought. So Roscoe put his supposedly large brain to use.
“You mean it was all senior management types.”
“Exactly. The great and the good of BlacktonGold—”
“Great and good might be overly generous…”
“—and me,” she cut in.
“And you,” he echoed while he tried to formulate a proper reply, but he was distracted, attention lost in appreciation of her face, the bright challenge in her eyes. She shifted, seeming suddenly self-conscious as she crossed her arms and nodded towards the pounding rain. “I ought to get going.”
“Wait. I’ll get an umbrella.”
He ducked back into the building and asked the late-night receptionist, who handed him one of the large golfing-sized ones they kept in stock behind the desk for visitors. He opened it up when he got back outside. It was black, the BG logo in gold around the rim.
He held the umbrella out, making room for Poppy to join him under it as he tilted his head to the street. “I’ll walk you to the tube stop.”
“No, that’s—”
“It’s fine. It’s on the way to my place anyway.” Which was only the tiniest of lies. It was on the way. Just not by any direct route.
She joined him under the umbrella with a muttered thank you, ill at ease, hands in her pockets. They walked in silence, crossing the street, shoulders bumping as they stepped down from the kerb. Her head reached just past his shoulder, the top of it about level with his chin. He watched the rain splatter on the leather of his shoes, the scuffed black toe of hers. The passing traffic was louder on the wet road, the tyres a sticking Velcro sound, and the rain on the umbrella a drumming roar. But the silence still pressed heavily.
“Aubrey said you had a headache?” he ventured, for something to say. Perhaps it was ungallant to ask. But she did look pale, her face strained. Maybe it hadn’t been a lie.
“Oh. A little, yes. Actually… I…I had some bad news.”
“I’m sorry.” He glanced at her as they walked, but her eyes were on the rain-streaked pavement.
“Just a…erm…friend. About their job.”
The East End accent he’d heard in the bar last week was far less pronounced tonight, would have been almost undetectable if he hadn’t been listening out for it.
“They’ve been feeling a bit sort of stuck in their career and they’d hoped to move to something else that pays more, has more prospects. Not that they hate what they do exactly. There’s nothing wrong with it. It’s just not…them, you know?”
Roscoe nodded. “Yes.”
“But it turns out this new career probably isn’t going to be possible at all. Not without going back to school. Studying for years. And they can’t afford to do that. So… Like I said. They’re feeling stuck. A bit…hopeless, really.”
“I’m sorry. That’s tough. What is it that they want to do?”
“Oh. Erm. Erm… It’s law. A lawyer.”
They crossed another street. Poppy side-stepped to avoid a deep puddle at the roadside and Roscoe put out his hand instinctively to take her arm, guide her onto the pavement, back under the umbrella. He had the urge to not let go, to leave his fingers wrapped around her slim forearm, slide them down her wrist… He shoved his hand in his pocket.
“You should have spoken to Aubrey about it. His whole family are lawyers. They might know someone who can help get your friend through the door.”
She gave a short laugh, as though he’d said something funny, then hid it with a cough. “Yes. Maybe. I think I’m starting to see that life is all about who you know, isn’t it?”
“It seems that way sometimes. Unfortunately.”
She paused, thinking, then said, “Do you think it’s possible to get anywhere in life just by working really, really hard?”
It was his turn to laugh. Dark and bitter. “Honestly? No.”
She glanced at him in surprise.
“I think that’s a myth,” he continued before he could stop himself. “Something they tell people so they have a reason to get out of bed every day. But the truth is, all anyone ever cares about is who you know. Not what you know. Sorry. That’s not what you want to hear. What your friend wants to hear. Don’t listen to me.”
“No,” she said in quiet agreement. “I think you’re right. I think I knew it already. It’s hardly ever about merit, is it? Even if you’re desperate to prove yourself, it’s so hard to get anyone to stop and see that.”
He gave her a long look, their steps slowing as they reached the tube station. “No,” he agreed. “Merit hardly ever gets rewarded.”
They paused at the entrance to the station, Roscoe still holding the umbrella over their heads. “Do you have far to go, once you get off the tube? Take the umbrella. I don’t think the rain is going to stop.”
“What about you?”
“I’m just round the corner.” Or his other flat was. He had two nearby. The closest was just an investment property, not his true home, but he used it occasionally.
“Short commute.” She smiled. “Handy.”
“How about you?”
She wrinkled her nose. “Basildon.”
“But that’s…”
“Basically Essex. Yeah, I know.”
She gave a little shrug, already starting to turn away from him. Her coat didn’t look at all warm and her shoes were wet through despite the umbrella. How long would it take to get to Basildon on public transport from here? Probably well over an hour, perhaps two.
“Seriously. I’ll call you a car.”
“I do this every day. It’s my normal commute.”
“Yes… But… It’s raining.”
“It often does.”
But…Roscoe’s mind protested again. But…
“Let me help you,” he said in a rush, unable to stand the thought of her shivering and wet, a forlorn figure on a darkened train. “It’s all about who you know, right? And now you know me—the guy with priority car service and a warm flat around the corner where you can wait for it to arrive. Take advantage, Poppy,” he said with a smile. “The game of life is rigged, but you might as well play it when you can.”