Never Mind The Botox: Rachel Read online

  ‘It doesn’t sound like anything much to me,’ said Carl when she’d finished. ‘I’ve known Tom for many years and he runs a pretty tight ship. The new computer systems probably didn’t help; there are always a few teething problems.’

  ‘I just thought that maybe I should look into it a bit further? Widen the sample out a bit maybe and see how common a problem it is?’

  ‘I don’t think there’s any need,’ said Carl. ‘Just add a section to the report with recommendations for improvement and note it there. That way we’ve made it clear that it needs sorting, but I’d definitely categorise it as minor. No need to raise it at the meeting on Monday.’

  ‘Well, if you’re sure,’ said Rachel, rather hesitant to just dismiss it.

  ‘I am,’ said Carl. ‘Right, anything else? Are we done?’

  ‘Yes, I guess we are.’

  ‘Great, thanks. Let’s have another catch up next week. Sounds like this is going to be a good project for you, Rachel. I know the client is pleased so far.’

  How did he know? He must have been speaking to Tom Duffy.

  Rachel felt a bit deflated as she went back to her desk. Carl seemed to think she was making a bit of a fuss about nothing. Maybe he was right. She should write it up as a minor recommendation in the report and then forget about it.

  She rang Rowan on his mobile. ‘Hi, how are you? Fancy lunch sometime this week? I could do with a break from the office,’ she said.

  Rowan was a property consultant based to the west of London but he often came into the city visiting clients.

  ‘I can do tomorrow, if that’s any good for you,’ said Rowan. ‘My afternoon meetings don’t start until three, so we wouldn’t need to rush.’

  ‘Perfect, where?’

  ‘I have a meeting at The Brook Hotel in the morning. That’s quite near you and they have a good restaurant; why don’t we meet there?’

  ‘Sounds ideal. Meet you there at twelve thirty.’ The next day Rachel jumped out of a taxi outside The Brook Hotel at just before twelve fifteen, as the traffic had been quieter than she’d expected. The doorman, dressed in a red and grey uniform, opened the door for her, and as she entered the hotel the cool hush was a welcome change from the hot and noisy road outside. Rachel decided to wait for Rowan on one of the rather inviting looking sofas in reception, instead of sitting on her own in the restaurant. She sat down in the corner on a deeply upholstered tan sofa and ignored all the broadsheet newspapers on the glass coffee table, opting instead to read the fashion pages of a tabloid.

  As she sat there a woman walking across reception caught her eye. She seemed familiar. Rachel looked up. It was Audrey Fox, Lloyd Cassidy’s assistant nurse at Beau Street. Rachel didn’t exactly feel like being sociable, so she hid behind her newspaper, leaving just enough space to watch Audrey sashay into the hotel bar. She was wearing leather trousers and another pair of impractically high sandals. Rachel had to admit she did look pretty good for her age and wondered how much she’d been availing herself of her boss’s talents.

  Rachel had just resettled herself when, to her horror, she saw Carl Stephens walk into the hotel. What a nightmare! She was meant to be getting away from work and this was turning out to be a roll call for the cast of her current project. Rachel hid again behind her newspaper and peered round the side, only to see Carl Stephens heading into the bar where Audrey Fox was sitting. As she watched in disbelief, she saw Carl walk over to Audrey. They embraced in too friendly a manner for Rachel’s liking and then sat down.

  Rachel’s mind was racing. Surely Carl couldn’t be having an affair with her, could he? As far as Rachel knew, he was happily married. Maybe he’d met her through Tom Duffy. The only thing she knew for certain was that neither of them would want to see her. She’d better move into the restaurant.

  She got up and started to walk towards the restaurant, trying to look more closely at the couple out of the corner of her eye as she went but without turning her head in case they noticed her. As a result, she wasn’t really looking where she was going and walked straight into a large stone pillar. Her forehead hit the pillar with a thump and she fell over backwards onto the floor.

  A passing waiter tried to grab her as she fell, dropping his drinks tray with a loud crash as he did so. ‘Gosh, are you alright, madam?’ asked the waiter as more people rushed over to help and deal with the mess on the floor.

  ‘Yes, perfectly fine, thank you,’ said Rachel, getting up and brushing herself down. She then quickly ran round to the other side of the pillar, out of sight of the bar.

  The slightly bemused waiter followed her. ‘You’ve got a bit of a red mark on your forehead, madam. I’ll get some ice to put on it,’ he said.

  ‘No, please don’t worry. I’ll just head into the restaurant. I’m meeting someone for lunch. So sorry about the mess.’

  ‘Rachel, are you okay?’ said a familiar voice.

  It was Rowan.

  ‘What on the earth happened here? I heard the crash as I came in. Typical of my sister to be in the middle of the action,’ he said, laughing.

  ‘Oh nothing, just had a slight accident. Look, shall we sit down?’ said Rachel, hurrying away from the disaster zone.

  They sat down and as soon as the waiter arrived Rachel ordered a glass of wine.

  ‘I see you’re on for a large one, then,’ said Rowan. ‘I haven’t even looked at the food menu yet.’

  ‘I need a drink and quick,’ said Rachel. ‘I’m in shock.’

  ‘Well, you did have a bit of a bump by the looks of your head,’ said Rowan.

  ‘No, it’s not that. You won’t believe what I’ve just seen!’ said Rachel.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’ve just seen one of the partners at work, whose project I’m currently working on and who’s married, meet a woman in the bar. And from the way they greeted each other, it clearly wasn’t a business meeting. What’s worse, I also know the woman. She works at the business I’m currently looking at. What a mess!’ said Rachel.

  ‘Sorry, you lost me. Say that again?’

  ‘I think my boss is having an affair with his client,’ said Rachel pointedly.

  ‘Right, got it. That sounds like great gossip to me,’ said Rowan. ‘Shall I go and have a look for you? See what’s happening? I can pretend to go to the toilets. They won’t know me from Adam.’

  ‘Yes, alright. Maybe they were just waiting for some others to join them,’ said Rachel, not really thinking that was very likely. ‘You can’t miss them − the women is blonde and wearing leather trousers.’

  Rachel watched Rowan head out of the restaurant. In a few minutes he was back.

  ‘Yup, he’s having an affair. They were holding hands and drinking champagne and will be heading upstairs soon, I bet.’

  ‘Oh please don’t.’ Rachel couldn’t bear the thought of it. ‘What a disaster.’

  ‘Why do you care?’ Rowan asked. ‘Surely it’s his problem?’

  ‘Unfortunately he’s made it my problem. We aren’t allowed to have relationships with clients and my current project involves both of them.’

  ‘Do you need to report him or something then?’

  ‘God, I don’t know. Probably. It would be easier if I just forgot I saw them.’

  ‘Can you do that?’

  ‘Maybe. I guess holding hands isn’t absolute proof that they’re an item. They might just be good friends.’

  Rowan looked at her.

  ‘Alright, I know, clutching at straws. Anyway, look, I’m sorry. It’s not your problem. I’ll talk to one of my workmates about it. I haven’t even asked you how you are?’

  ‘All the better for seeing my mad sister,’ said Rowan. He lifted his glass. ‘Let’s drink to more trips to country houses and less work dramas, shall we?’

  ‘Definitely the latter,’ said Rachel. ‘Cheers. How’s Laura?’

  ‘Oh, she’s on quite good form at the moment. We haven’t argued for, ooh, at leas
t a week. That’s not bad by current standards. I’m trying to do all the right things, you know: listening intently to the latest “whose baby can do what” stories, being enthusiastic about looking at schools even though Naomi can hardly hold a spoon yet, let alone a pencil. We even went out for dinner last week, although Laura did ring the babysitter three times in two hours.’

  ‘That doesn’t sound like her,’ said Rachel.

  ‘I know, but it just seems ages since I had a really good night out, you know,’ said Rowan.

  ‘Remember all those great nights we had at home last summer and your birthday last year? She was the life and soul of the party. It’s just a phase. I’m sure it’ll pass as Naomi gets older. You need to adapt too, by the way; make sure you’re pulling your weight.’

  ‘Yes, miss, I’ll do my best,’ said Rowan.

  ‘You do that,’ said Rachel, laughing. ‘Maybe you should come with me to our work summer party instead of Harry. It should be a great night and at least I can rely on you to behave yourself.’

  ‘Do you want me to?’ Rowan asked. ‘I will if you want.’

  ‘No, that’s okay − just wishful thinking,’ sighed Rachel. ‘I’d better take Harry. He’d only end up sulking if I didn’t, even though he insists he doesn’t want to go.’

  Rachel tried not to think about Carl being in a hotel room somewhere above her head as she and Rowan ate. They finished lunch late and as a result Rachel drifted through the remainder of the afternoon in a rather pleasant haze.

  The following Monday Carl arrived at Beau Street half an hour before the all-party meeting was due to start, by which time Rachel was feeling pretty flustered. It was hardly the time to ask him if he was having an affair with a client. It really worried Rachel that he’d dismissed her concerns that directly involved someone that he was almost certainly sleeping with. She hadn’t mentioned Audrey by name, but she’d referred to Lloyd Cassidy’s assistant nurse. Carl was bound to know that was her and probably therefore assumed she must be telling the truth. He’d also specifically told her not to mention it at the meeting, making it hard for her to raise it again later on.

  ‘Right, all ready?’ Carl asked.

  Rachel tried to keep her voice steady. ‘Yes, my plan is to run them through the information we’ve had so far and explain that our preliminary analysis is that the business is showing steady growth in its core business and strong growth in some of the newer procedure types. Also that we, er, haven’t identified any major issues to date.’

  ‘That sounds about right. Are we going to make the report deadlines as per the timetable?’ Carl asked.

  ‘Yes, just about. It’s tight, though, so we’ll need the rest of the project to go smoothly.’

  ‘All right, good. Can you talk me through how you plan to put our report together? I want to make sure I’m happy with the structure.’

  Rachel spent the next fifteen minutes talking Carl through their report outline and then they both headed up to the boardroom. Tom was already in the room when they arrived and Carl went over and shook his hand. They stood chatting and laughing while Rachel sat down and placed her papers in a neat pile in front of her. Did Tom know about Audrey? she wondered. If he did then it didn’t seem to worry him. After a few moments Carl sat down too and a few people she didn’t recognise started to enter the room.

  Rachel instinctively got up and held out her hand. ‘Hello, Rachel Altman from Payne Stanley corporate finance,’ she said to a tall, dark-haired, rather Amazonian looking woman who seemed to be in charge.

  The woman shook her hand briskly. ‘Good afternoon, Meredith Romaine, Clinton Wahlberg, but I suggest you sit down as we’ll do the introductions when everyone’s here.’

  It was like she was being told to sit down at school.

  ‘Oh, I see, we just…’

  But before she had a chance to finish, Meredith had already turned away as Charles Sutton, the chief executive and founder of Beau Street, had come into the room, shortly followed by Tom Duffy.

  ‘Charles, hello,’ said Meredith. ‘Please do sit here.’ She gestured to the chair in the middle of the long table. ‘And Tom, why don’t you sit next to him.’

  Rachel was beginning to worry that there was some sort of invisible table plan for the meeting and that they were bound to have sat in the wrong place. Carl seemed oblivious to the implicit pecking order being established and was leaning back in his chair with his hands behind his head and his papers spread messily about in front of him. He certainly seems relaxed, thought Rachel.

  Movement at the door caught her attention. She looked round just in time to see an attractive, smartly dressed woman trip into the room and almost squash a timid-looking bloke from the Clinton Wahlberg team who was sitting at the table. The woman caught herself at the last minute, looked momentarily mortified, and then managed to smooth her expression into a polite, professional look. Behind her in the doorway, her colleague – a tall, dark-haired man – looked like he was trying to suppress a smile. Glossing over her dramatic entrance, Tom introduced the woman as Alex Fisher, one of the lawyers acting for Beau Street, and her companion as Dan Furtado, another lawyer. Rachel nodded politely at them.

  Also joining Tom and Charles was a female doctor whom Rachel recognised from the doctors’ profiles they’d been given as Stella Webb. She didn’t seem to know many people in the room either and Rachel wondered what her role in the deal was. It soon became clear: she introduced herself as the doctor who would be in charge of bringing together the medical side of the two businesses should the deal go ahead.

  The meeting kicked off with a rather long and tedious discussion about the timetable. Rachel wasn’t paying too close attention until Meredith suddenly put a speakerphone into the middle of the table and announced that the project leader from the Equinox Practise was going to be joining them on the phone. No one had mentioned the other side being at the meeting! She’d be pretty unpopular if she told Equinox that there were no major issues and then came up with a load of problems late in the day. She didn’t have much choice, though, without any evidence that there was actually anything wrong.

  Before she could think about it any more, she heard Meredith mention her name.

  ‘Thank you for that update, Alex,’ she said, nodding at the lawyers. ‘Rachel Altman from Payne Stanley is now going to give us an update from their side.’

  ‘Oh, yes, th-thank you,’ Rachel stammered.

  She looked down at her notes for a few seconds as she gathered her composure. Carl began to look a bit concerned but soon Rachel looked up again and started talking.

  ‘We’ve been on site now for two weeks and the company has been extremely helpful in getting us the information we requested. I’d say our information request is now about ninety per cent complete, with the last few items expected in the next few days. We’re still going through our analysis, but preliminary results show that the business is growing steadily in the core business and there’s strong growth in many of the newer procedures, such as the lunchtime facelift, eyebrow transplants and toe tucks.’

  The assembled mass of serious faces quickly killed her urge to laugh.

  ‘We haven’t identified any material issues to date, but as I said we still have quite a bit of work to do. We expect to be able to report on time, assuming that all goes well from here on.’

  The voice on the end of the phone blasted loudly into the room. ‘Hey, Rachel was it? It’s Ryan Miller here from Equinox. Thanks for that update; that’s exactly what we want to hear. We’re pretty sure that it’s a smart business over there.’

  Rachel winced. He was clearly only wanting to hear good news. Let’s hope that’s what we deliver, she thought.

  Meredith closed the meeting. ‘The Equinox Practise will be over in the UK in three weeks and they’re looking forward to getting final reports from each of you then,’ she said. ‘Please make sure that you let Alfred…’ she gestured at her colleague, ‘… or I know straight away
if you’re having any problems meeting the timetable. Thank you all for your time.’

  Rachel wasn’t sure many people would be calling Meredith and certainly not with bad news: she was far too intimidating. She was pretty sure that it would be Alfred getting those types of calls.

  After the meeting, Carl had a taxi waiting.

  ‘Right, got to go. That all seemed to go pretty well and Tom was on good form. Keep up the good work and let’s speak soon on next steps, okay?’

  ‘Okay,’ said Rachel.

  Once Carl had left, Rachel suddenly felt rather worn out and wasn’t sure she really had the energy to look into Lloyd Cassidy’s records any further. It would be much simpler for the project, and for her promotion prospects as well, if she just ignored what she knew.

  She decided she needed a break and rang Shali.

  ‘Hi, how’s it going?’

  ‘Not bad actually, for once I’m just about on top of things. You?’ Shali asked.

  ‘Oh, you know, not bad − tight deadlines, lots to do, the usual,’ said Rachel.

  ‘Any good celebrity spots yet?’ Shali asked.

  ‘No, none, not even a sniff. Very disappointing. It seems like just the sort of place they’d go to. Anyway, I’ll keep at it.’

  ‘Summer party next week,’ said Shali.

  ‘Don’t remind me. Harry has just about agreed to come, under protest.’

  ‘I don’t have anyone to take yet,’ said Shali.

  ‘I thought you said you were spoilt for choice?’

  ‘Not as spoilt as I thought, it would seem. Ooh, I know, do you think your brother might come? I’m sure he’d enjoy a night out with us and he’d make great arm candy.’

  ‘Shali, my brother is not arm candy!’

  ‘Er, what I meant to say is that he’d be great company,’ said Shali quickly. ‘Anyway, would you ask him? Pretty please.’

  ‘Yes, okay, as it happens he could probably do with a great night out. He’s finding the whole new baby thing quite hard work.’

  ‘Ah bless,’ said Shali. ‘A night out would do him good.’