Page 9 of A Midlife Marriage

She could feel the heat in her face.

‘I’m looking forward to hearing this. I’ve heard you’re an impressive woman.’ And finally, Spencer Cooper let her go.

‘Well …’ Caro laughed, her hand at her side now like a fallen puppet.

‘Well,’ he returned and smiled. It was a smile that managed to combine shyness with confidence, a smile worth thousands in dental work, a smile that made her a rabbit in headlights.

She made a half turn to the window, as if she would walk out into thin air, turned back, blushed again and pointing toward a raised platform on the other side of the room said, ‘I’d better make my way over.’

Hands in pockets, Spencer stepped back to let her pass, and as she walked across the room Caro knew she was being watched.

So,she performed. Quite possibly the best performance of her career. Her suit was Max Mara, her belt Hermes, her pumps Manolo Blahnik, her confidence sky-high. Light poured in through the glass walls. Lush foliage created a sense of serenity. ‘Good morning,’ she started. ‘My name is Caro Hardcastle and I’m the investor relations manager at Eco-Innovate.’

All eyes turned to her.

‘We have invited you here today because we see an incredible opportunity in the energy management system market, and we would like to share how Eco-Innovate is poised to capitalise on this.’ She was at the beating heart of an enclave in the sky, an exclusive space for the very rich and the very powerful. Click. With the projector remote in her hand and Matt her CEO, proud as a parent stage right, she powered on. ‘The EMS market is currently valued at forty billion. Conservative growth rates stand around thirteen percent.’

It wasall over in thirty minutes. Months of research, weeks of revising, writing, editing and testing.

‘Thank you for your time.’ And to the sound of polite but enthusiastic applause, Caro unclipped her microphone, handed it to a waiting junior and stepped off the stage: an empress having delivered a victory speech.

‘Superb!’ Matt offered her a glass of Champagne. He tilted his head. ‘Listen to that.’

Indulging him, Caro too tilted her head.

‘Kerching!’ He grinned. ‘I hear the sound of fifty million.’

Fifty million? The goal had been thirty. She turned to look at the crowd behind her. She had done enough equity offerings to be able to gauge the PH level afterwards and this time it was clear. The room buzzed, so much so that there could be no doubt that the atmosphere was energetically acidic, rather than insipidly alkaline. Matt, she was thinking, could be right. Dipping her head she took a sip of champagne, eyes scanning the room. There was much that could still fail. A slick presentation was just a slick presentation and what was really needed to get the high-end guys to open their wallets, was the same as what was needed to get the low-end guys to open their wallets: an old-fashioned charm offensive. ‘Let’s get mingling?’ she said.

It wasn’tuntil ninety minutes later, that she felt the first twinge of fatigue, the slight droop in her otherwise upright back. It was a slackening that she sensed mirrored in the room, with the drift toward the buffet tables, the tonal dip of background chatter. Good, because now she’d paused, she was hungry. Over the course of the morning, she had spoken to every portfolio manager and analyst that needed to be spoken to. She had charmed and impressed, challenged and blindsided with facts and statistics, counterarguments and persuasions. She had doneher homework. But then Caroline Hardcastle of Artillery Terrace had always done her homework.Diligent and conscientious,those were the most consistent comments on every school report. And it wasn’t that the thin-haired, bespectacled child who had shut herself in her room, had understood that one day this was where it would all lead to: a stage in the sky, where she was a queen. It was simply that doing her homework was what her mother had expected of her, and if she did what her mother expected of her, then her mother would love her … would, one day, show her that she loved her. All this passed through her mind in an instant, a snatch of fragmented words and briefly glimpsed scenes that vanished before they were tangible. So much the mind held, an ambush around every corner.

Closing the door on a past that brought no comfort, Caro moved across to the windows, put her hand to her eyes and looked up. The sun was directly above, and she found herself thinking of the smallholding, of Tomasz and what he might be doing. If he had broken for lunch yet, and if so, what he would be eating. Thinking this, she smiled. If she knew him well, and she did, his lunch would be a sandwich piled with slabs of ham and mayonnaise. A server brushed past, catching her elbow, whispering an apology. Waving it aside Caro turned just in time to see a tray piled high with crab legs. As she followed the server across the room, her stomach twisted in hunger.

The spread was phenomenal.Salads of peach and prosciutto, lobster and avocado. Oysters and tuna tartare, caviar, noodle bowls, baby potatoes tossed in rosemary and sea-salt, wild rice, artisan bread. As she looked along the table, she held her plate close to her chest. Even if she and Tomasz worked every day for a year, they could never even come close to achieving this: the kind of bounty cold-hard cash could buy.

‘Now this could be a problem.’

At the sound of the voice, so close behind, Caro felt a twinge of excitement. Spencer Cooper had found her again. ‘Quite,’ she said, as she turned. ‘I don’t know where to start.’

‘That’s not what I meant.’ He smiled.

‘It wasn’t?’

‘I was going to ask you if would like to join me for dinner later?’ He raised his hand to the table. ‘But if you eat too much now …’

‘Oh.’ Heart racing, she too looked at the table.

‘Or…’ He put his hands in his pockets and tipped his head to the side. ‘We could skip dinner, and go straight for cocktails?’

‘I have a train to catch.’ The words came out so fast, so blunt, she might as well have lifted her plate and cracked it over his head and, judging by the way he seemed to recoil, she felt as if she had. ‘Otherwise,’ she blurted, ‘I would have loved too.’

He smiled, slow as a lizard. ‘Another time then? I’m over for a week.’ And opening his jacket he pulled a card from the breast pocket. ‘This is me.’

‘Thank you,’ she said, as she took the card. When what she should have said was,Thank you, but I have a train to catch because I’m going back to my fiancé. Who I’m planning to buy a smallholding with, who I’m marrying in three weeks.Those were the words that should have come out of her mouth to cut it off, stop it before it started, whateveritwas.

9

The man who stood on the other side of the reception desk was young and angry.Having kept his sunglasses on thus far during the conversation, he had now pushed them to the back of his head. In order, Helen supposed as she watched him, to demonstrate just how angry he was. She didn’t care. He wasn’t having a cardiac arrest, he washere to get a certificate for travel insurance signed, for which he would have to wait.

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