The French Girl(3)
“Jump!” someone called below, barely audible above the music. “I’ll catch you.”
I looked across at the stranger on the wall with me. He nodded, gesturing to the black-tie-clad individual below. As the lights flashed obligingly I looked down into a pair of spectacular blue eyes: Seb. Of course it was Seb.
I jumped. He caught me.
* * *
—
Halfway through the meeting with Mr. Gordon Farrow, senior partner at Haft & Weil, when he rearranges his papers for the umpteenth time and continues to gaze a little to the right of me, I realize I’m losing this piece of business. Shortly after that, whilst trying to explain the relative merits of choosing my firm over more established competitors, I realize I never had a chance in the first place. I’m the stalking horse: a competitor brought in to make sure the firm they really want puts in an honest and fair quote. I wind down mid-sentence and snag an oatmeal cookie instead. It takes Mr. Gordon Farrow a moment or two to notice. For the first time, he looks at me properly.
“Is there something wrong?” he asks.
I hold up a finger as I finish chewing my bite of cookie. He waits patiently, his eyebrows raised inquiringly. “Not really,” I say when I’ve swallowed. “Only I just realized I’m wasting your time and mine, since you’ve already made up your mind. I appreciate you need a stalking horse, but if that’s the case I’d sooner eat your cookies and drink tea than knock myself out trying to pitch for unavailable business.”
A gleam of appreciation shows in his eyes. He’s nondescript in every respect: mid-height, mid-gray in his hair, neither fat nor thin, not obviously fit but not particularly out of shape for a man in his mid-fifties. He wears well-tailored suits, but nothing flashy or unusual. I’ve heard the only exceptional thing about him is his intellect, though he’s yet to show me much of that. “Do you always speak your mind?” he asks after a moment or two. It doesn’t escape me that he hasn’t refuted my stalking horse claim.
“Less and less as I grow older,” I say, smiling a little. “It’s a high-risk strategy. Many of the best things that have happened to me came about because of it, but . . .” I grimace. “Many of the worst things also . . .”
He actually smiles at this. “What would you consider one of the best things to happen to you?”
I answer without hesitation. “Getting into Oxford.”
He cocks his head, his eyes gleaming again. “How so?”
“I don’t have the typical Oxbridge background. Getting into Oxford really opened up my horizons. I don’t mean just in terms of job prospects—it showed me paths and possibilities I could never have believed achievable if I followed a different route.”
“My daughter was at Oxford,” he says. “I wonder if she would say the same.”
“I suppose that might depend on her background. And her personality.”
He shrugs with a wry smile. “Caro falls into the category of typical Oxbridge candidate.”
I blink. “Not Caro Horridge?” But of course not Caro Horridge; his surname is Farrow—
“Yes,” he says, surprised. “You know her?”
“We were at Oxford at the same time.”
Suddenly I have the full force of his attention; it’s a little unnerving. “And do you think Caro would say getting into Oxford was one of the best things to happen to her?”
Caro would never consider the question; Caro would view entry into Oxford as right and proper, exactly what she was due. “Well,” I hedge, “we weren’t particularly close.”
His lips quirk. “No longer pursuing the high-risk strategy?”
I laugh. “Like I said, less and less as I get older.”
The corners of his mouth tug upward, then he glances at his watch. “Well, Miss Channing, I know someone as direct as you will forgive me for cutting to the chase. You are the stalking horse. I like your business, I like the pitch book you sent through and your fees are ballpark, but you’d be a hard prospect to sell to committee, as you don’t have a proven track record yet. I’m not sure it’s worth my while to have that fight.”
“What would make it worthwhile? A reduction in fees?”
He purses his lips. “It would help, but even that might not be enough. You just—”
“Don’t have the track record,” I finish for him.
He nods ruefully. “But I can honestly say it’s been a real pleasure.” His eyes are smiling; it takes ten years off him. I can’t see the slightest resemblance to Caro.
In the cab on the way home I record my post-meeting notes on my pocket Dictaphone for Julie to type up later and then I call Lara and rant for five minutes about how I was an idiot to give up my lucrative job to start my own firm, how aforementioned firm will be bankrupt in six months at this rate, how no one will ever hire me again after such an appalling error of judgment, and so on and so forth . . . Lara has heard it all before. She doesn’t even bother arguing back.
“Finished now?” she asks when I finally run out of steam.
“For now. Come round tonight—I’ll probably bore you with more of the same, but I promise to at least treat you to a curry and some nice wine first.” A giggle with the ever-sunny Lara is exactly what I need.