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  Once over the initial shock and panic when she arrived in London, she felt stronger and better. Her only regret was that she didn’t know if Tony was dead or alive and that she couldn’t see Sammy. She found a bedsit and a job as a waitress, and every night when she slept she had nightmares of Tony coming to get her.

  At first she called Sammy every week just to tell him she was all right, but the phone calls became too painful, especially as there was no news of Tony. After a while she told Sammy she would stop phoning him and she would write to let him know she was all right. He agreed reluctantly, but argued that he should be able to contact her. Ella couldn’t bring herself to give him her address or phone number. She failed to explain it to him, but to herself it was a punishment. By messing up her life as she had, and she still blamed herself, she now had to pay. And paying meant that she had to cut herself off from the person she loved most in the world: Sammy. Eloise Butcher had a family; Ella Franke had no one.

  One day she picked up the London paper and saw an article about how too few black people worked in the City. Ella did not know what they meant by ‘The City’ but she read on and was hooked. The description of trading appealed to her; she fell in love. Although it was a crazy idea, she discussed it with her friend and boss, Jackie. Jackie saw this as an opportunity for Ella to put her past behind her and look to the future, so they began to plan. Jackie found someone who could get her a fake university degree certificate and then they set about reinventing her CV. She substituted PR for bar work, and management consultancy for waitressing. References were obtained, and as she hadn’t given phone numbers, whoever she applied to had no way of checking other than by writing. Setting up the deception had been easy but costly. It had taken all the money Ella had. Ella sent this embellished CV to Serena Dalton at SFH, the woman who had commented in the article. She was sure that it had all been a load of bull, and in a matter of days Serena had invited her to interview.

  When Serena saw that Ella was not only black but also a black female, she had almost had an orgasm. The Equal Opportunities Board would love her. Serena had been given a hard time over the article in the paper, which had practically accused SFH of racism. Although the press office had sent out statements denying this and reiterating SFH’s equal-opportunities policy, they had told Serena to go and get some ethnic minorities. Well, now she had Ella, and maybe Ella could save her life. Ella’s interview was short and not terribly difficult; within two weeks she had met a number of managing directors, all of whom wanted to prove the press wrong, and was offered a position as junior trader.

  Ella had prepared for her interviews with meticulous research, and knew a great deal about the field; any questions she was asked she answered confidently. Everyone was impressed. At the time of the interviews, Ella believed she was all the things she had said she was, educated, bright and ambitious. She wasn’t Eloise the punchbag; she was Ella the girl with potential.

  Human Resources was keen for Ella to start, especially as she had been so well liked; they skimmed over the usual checks that they did on all their employees. Luckily for Ella, they had collected the references, but they neglected to check with the university; they decided that the degree certificate was enough.

  Although she knew that what she had done was wrong, Ella couldn’t help but think she should be forgiven for it. Tony had abused her for years. She had had to leave her family and friends because of him. He was a woman-beater, the worst type of coward. The cowardly man who can only hit those too vulnerable to hit back. Ella knew that Sam had been right to teach him a lesson. He had deserved it; he deserved worse. However, the implications still scared her: the implication that she or Sam might get into trouble. She rationalised her deceit in getting her job by telling herself that she deserved a good life. She also knew that while getting the job had been easy, keeping it would not be. When she walked through the doors of SFH, she knew one thing: if she was no good, she would be fired within minutes.

  Ella was ever conscious of her rocky foundation. And the fear of Tony that had once dominated her had now been replaced by a fear of her losing her wonderful new life.

  ***

  Virginia was hung over. For the first time that she could remember, she felt like throwing her alarm clock across the room when it went off. She crawled out of bed, her head pounding. Instead of putting the kettle on, she pulled a bottle of water out of the fridge and, another first for her, drank straight from it. She then hauled herself into the shower.

  As she dried herself, she dropped the towels on the floor. She pulled on a pair of grey woollen trousers and a jumper, ignoring the suit and the crisp white blouse that lay waiting for her. She had another drink of water before she left the flat. She wasn’t sure if she should drive – she wasn’t likely to be over the limit, but it was still more of a risk than Virginia liked to take – but she jumped on the scooter and drove to work. The cold air helped to clear her head, but it did nothing to improve her mood.

  She had to wait ages for the lift. She saw Ella, the black trader from her floor, standing next to her, tapping her foot impatiently. Virginia couldn’t help but stare. She knew that Ella was one of the best traders at SFH, and longed to ask her how she did it. Ella sensed that she was being stared at and looked Virginia in the eye. Virginia nodded; Ella tipped her head slightly and looked away. Then the lift came.

  Today, the quiet hum of the screens on the trading floor seemed too loud to Virginia. The flashing lights made her feel as if she was in a cheap disco. She grabbed a cup of water and a cup of coffee, and marched up to her desk. She decided that she might as well do her filing. She finished it just as the office was filling up. The people on her desk said good morning to her, but Virginia just nodded. She had had enough of being nice to these morons who gave her grief. She couldn’t understand how, when all she wanted was peace and quiet, she was busier than ever.

  She felt a chill run down her back and she turned to see Isabelle standing behind her. “Hi,” Isabelle said, as if she couldn’t quite remember who Virginia was. “Have you got a second?” Virginia picked up her notepad and followed Isabelle into her office. “Right, I’ve got a lot on at the moment, and I need you to get these things done quickly. I hope you understand.” Isabelle sounded even more bitchy than usual.

  Virginia guessed it was another of her moods. Isabelle seemed to have bad moods most of the time. The only person she ever took them out on was Virginia. Virginia nodded; speaking would only give Isabelle more ammunition.

  “First, I want a private room in a restaurant for Tuesday the seventeenth at lunchtime. Choose the restaurant, somewhere classy. I mean my version of classy, not yours. I do not want to entertain my clients in Pizza Hut. We are hosting a lunch for thirty people. The names are on this list. I also need the invitations printed and out by the end of this week. I can leave you with that. Standard invites. Put on them ‘sFH Emerging Markets Equities is delighted to invite whoever to lunch,’ you know the sort of thing. Then I am hosting a conference for women in the City – you know, to encourage more women to get ahead. I want all female professional employees invited, so you’ll need to get a list from Personnel. By professional I mean all level four and above, but I’m sure you know that already. Then I need invitations to go out – here, I’ve written a blurb – and people for both events need to RSVP to you. You need to get lists drawn up, and give me final numbers by the end of next week. Oh, the conference will be on the twenty-fourth, and I need the big conference room booked. Right – oh, here are lists of meetings I want you to arrange, including rooms, then ensure my calendar is accurate. Also, I want some brochures on Barbados, only luxury resorts, of course. Here are my dry-cleaning tickets. I’ve paid for it, so I need you to collect it for me today.” Isabelle still didn’t look at her.

  “Right,” Virginia said uncertainly. Although she’d written everything down there was so much to do. Her head pounded even more.

  “Oh, and don’t fuck anything up. If you do I’ll fry your sulky he
ad.” Isabelle looked at her coldly and dismissed her. Not only was the workload unfair, especially the personal chores, but since they had had their ‘chat’, Isabelle had been even nastier to her. Virginia walked back to her desk scowling. She was close to tears.

  Virginia’s place at Canterbury University hadn’t made her parents happy. They would only have been happy with Oxford or Cambridge but Virginia, who was studying economics, had looked forward to going there. She packed her suitcase, bade farewell to her parents and Coventry, and went to Kent.

  Her life as a student was a little subdued. She joined the Economics Society and made friends with people who seemed to share the same interests. They went out together and became a clique. To the trendy people and the sports stars, this little group was known as ‘the spods”, because they put study before sex, museums before beer. They were not proper students.

  After three years together, Virginia’s friends all took their first-class degrees to postgraduate courses around the country, even around the world. Virginia had decided to take her third-class degree in economics to the City. When she failed to secure a job she felt too embarrassed to keep in contact with her successful friends. While they took off to their new lives, Virginia returned to Coventry and her parents. Desolate, she found her parents devoid of sympathy. Instead they told her how disappointed they were, and Virginia began her phase of loneliness.

  She had forgotten how bad living with her parents could be, so she told them she needed to live in London to find a job, took her savings and went. Every recruitment consultancy told her the same thing: the only way to get into the City was as a graduate trainee, or as an assistant/secretary. When Virginia was offered a job as secretary to Isabelle at SFH she took it, knowing that it was only temporary, that it wouldn’t be for ever, that it wouldn’t be for long. Now, she had stopped telling herself that.

  As she worked like a horse for Isabelle, she prayed that soon she would find something, anything that would make her happy.

  ***

  Clara’s mouth felt dry and she couldn’t feel her teeth. The second thing she noticed was how much her head hurt. She felt shit. She tried to turn over slowly, without moving her head too much, and when she did, the third thing she noticed was Toby. She closed her eyes and opened them again to make sure.

  Forgetting her thumping head, she sat upright. It was 6 a.m. Slowly she got out of bed and walked to the kitchen. She tried to ignore the fact that she was naked and the reason why she was naked. Gulping down a glass of water, she scrabbled in a drawer for some headache pills. Praying to the god of paracetamol, she heaved a sigh of relief when she found them. Swallowing four, she gulped down another glass of water and crawled back to bed.

  As she walked back in Toby was awake and watched her. No matter how much she needed to crawl back under her duvet, she was unable to do so, just in case he got ideas. Of course, he had ideas: after all, she had screwed him. She grabbed a towel that lay on her bedroom floor and wrapped it around her. This was turning out to be a bad day already. Headache or not, Clara decided to sort things out. “Good morning, Toby.”

  “Hey.” Toby had that lovesick look in his eyes that Clara had seen a million times before.

  “Toby, I want to thank you. Last night was wonderful.” She paused as she tried to remember if it had been wonderful, and found she could remember little of it. “But, well, you know it can’t happen again.”

  It was exactly what Toby had been expecting, but he still felt crushed.

  “It’s not that I don’t like you – God, I think you’re great and sexy and fun – but we work together and I wouldn’t be able to handle it, you know.” Clara felt nauseous; the conversation wasn’t helping.

  Toby looked crestfallen. “I understand. But I really enjoyed last night.”

  Clara smiled. Thank God, he wasn’t going to argue. She kissed his cheek. “Toby, you’re the best.” And with that, she ran into the shower. When she returned, Toby asked if he could have a shower and he asked if she would mind them going to work together. The only thing Clara minded was that she was early and she couldn’t crawl back into bed for another hour. She ordered a cab, got dressed and tried to remember another time when she had gone to work so early.

  She hoped that no one would notice that Toby was wearing exactly the same clothes as yesterday.

  The day was harder than most. She refused to pick up the phone, refused to speak to anyone and when any of the senior guys asked her to do anything, she told him or her to “piss off,” “get screwed,” and “stick it up your arse.” The people on the desk knew to expect such outbursts from Clara. They were used to her mood swings. Even when Tim came to sit on the desk for a few hours, as he did most days, she scowled. At lunchtime, Clara announced that she felt ill and unless anyone wanted her to be sick all over the desk she had better go home. They all stared at her, amazed that someone so junior could behave like that and get away with it as she stalked out of the office.

  Hailing a cab, Clara thought about getting home. She was feeling dreadful – tired, sick, and her head was exploding. As soon as she got home, she took a line of coke then went back to bed. As she fell into a weird, dream-filled sleep, she thought about nothing but the white powder flowing contentedly to her brain.

  ***

  Tim was facing an onslaught in the office from Sarah Parks, one of his senior salespeople. She had worked at SFH for a long time and with many salespeople. “Tim, Clara’s as good as useless. I mean, she swans in late every day, doesn’t have time to fill her clients in on the markets, even if she could. She gets Toby or Francine to do all her orders for her and she just chats, e-mails and looks decorative.” Sarah couldn’t bear to see Clara in such a good position: she gave working women a bad name.

  Tim was silent. He was in a difficult position. He knew Clara wasn’t the greatest salesperson in the world and he seriously doubted that she knew what an equity was, but she was Clara and he wanted her, and therefore he couldn’t do anything about it. “Sarah, you’re exaggerating. I’ve had loads of compliments about her from her clients. They really like her, and I think you’ll agree that that is the important thing. How many clients do you have who would go elsewhere just because they didn’t like you? It’s not based on anything else.” This was true. Clara’s clients loved her, and Tim knew that they would hate it if she was removed from their accounts.

  “Fine, but she’s not doing what she should be doing. Tim, I mean it, she’s really bad for team morale. If people see her getting away with murder, they’ll expect to do the same.”

  Tim sighed. There was only so much logic he could argue with. “I’ll speak to her.” As Sarah left, Tim knew he had no intention of speaking to Clara. It was important to him that her job was reliant on him. If she had been competent, his power would have been greatly reduced. This way he held all the cards.

  He sat at his desk and remembered when he had first employed Clara. The managing director of the Private Client Division had called him and asked him if he had any secretarial vacancies. It was good timing, because his current secretary was leaving to travel the world. He had just requested that Human Resources find him a new one. When Phillip Reid told him that a client’s sister wanted a job and it would be a great favour to him if Tim would consider her, Tim agreed to an interview.

  James Hart looked after the family business and the family wealth. At thirty-two, he was considered one of the most eligible bachelors in England and he was the heir apparent to his father’s empire, of which he was now mostly in control so that his parents could spend time at their various overseas homes. James was proving a great success. When Clara told her parents of her intention to get a job, they scoffed. Her mother said she should be finding a suitable boyfriend, and her father said that she was a rich party girl, and why did she need a job? “Clara, we didn’t send you to finishing-school so you could come out with ideas about getting a job, we sent you there to learn to cook.”

  Clara didn’t know why she wanted a job
. She knew that she had no qualifications, that she couldn’t cook and that she was bored with her life. She liked the idea of putting on a suit and having somewhere to go during the day other than for lunch. She resented the way that her family treated her like an airhead. She hated her parents for having no expectations of her other than marriage; she hated herself for constantly proving them right. She always behaved like an airhead. She was crying when James found her. James and Clara had always been close, so it was natural for him to step in to protect his little sister. He told her he would use his contacts and help her to get a job in any way he could. Hence the interview with Tim Pemberton at SFH. Clara agreed to let James help her because she felt she had something to prove. She just had no idea how she was going to prove it on her own. Everyone saw Clara as a confident, beautiful bitch. If they had known the amount of times she cried herself to sleep, they would perhaps have thought more kindly of her.

  When Clara walked into his office Tim nearly fell off his chair. She was so lovely, so gorgeous and so sexy. Her blonde hair curled over her face, her big blue eyes were hypnotising, her figure slim but curvaceous. Tim thought that if he were to describe his ideal woman, she would be Clara. She smiled, showing two rows of perfect white teeth; she shook hands, revealing lovely long nails; and she spoke to him in a cut-glass accent. She was heavenly.

  After that the interview was a bit of a blur. Tim couldn’t help staring at her, managing to ask questions somehow but not listening to answers. The minute she left his office, he called Human Resources and instructed them to offer her a job. How she had gone from being his secretary to his mistress was a bit of a blur too. All he knew was that from the moment she had started working for him he hadn’t been able to get her out of his mind. He was aware that her work wasn’t really up to scratch and that she was always late, but he was most aware of how much he wanted her. So much that, for a while, when he slept with anyone, from his wife to his prostitutes, he imagined Clara.