To Have and to Hold (11 page)

“I don’t think he’ll buy it. Look what happened to Molly and Paolo.”

“But it’s worth a try. All men hate cats, but dogs are different, and what harm can it do to try? One of the girls in the training class has a gorgeous Westie that’s just had puppies, and she’s looking for homes.”

“Oh, cute! I love Westies.”

“Well, the puppies aren’t purebred. Actually the dog was pregnant when she rescued her, so God knows what the puppies will be, but they’re incredibly cute.”

“My luck the puppies will be half Westie, half Rottweiler.”

Emily laughs. “At least it will be a good guard dog. And it would be amazing, you could join the training class. Oh go on, get a dog. Please!”

Alice has brightened up considerably at the prospect. “Well,” she says finally, “you’ve definitely got a point, and it’s definitely worth a try. If my husband ever comes home at a reasonable hour again, I promise to broach the subject.”

         A
week later Snoop came home. Of course Joe protested, but Alice had been practicing her argument, and really he didn’t have a leg to stand on.

Alice was deliriously happy to finally have someone on whom to lavish love and attention, someone who would love her unconditionally, would want to be with her all the time.

She had already started the dog-training class, and, thanks to Harry’s relationship with Emily, was already getting special treatment. If she had any questions or wanted help with anything, Harry had said she could call him any time.

Owning Snoop was opening up a whole new world for Alice. She could turn down invitations with the excuse that she had a new puppy and couldn’t leave him alone, or if restaurants wouldn’t take Snoop she was sorry but she’d have to decline kind invitations to lunch.

She walked Snoop at least five times a day around their neighborhood, suddenly noticing how many other people had dogs, and stopping to talk to all the other dog owners.

The neighborhood consensus on the other half of Snoop was beagle or basset. An odd combination, certainly, but one that might explain the large brown splotches all over what otherwise looked very like a West Highland terrier.

It was a world that Alice discovered she loved, and even though Joe wasn’t around any more than he had been in the past few months, was still distant and detached, Alice found she didn’t care nearly as much. Now she had something other than Joe to think about, and it suited her perfectly.

         E
ven Joe started to think Snoop was rather a good idea. He was turning out to be the perfect excuse for a late-night walk and a late-night phone call to Josie. And, given that Joe had no Joe Junior, the perfect alibi for a weekend rendezvous.

“You have a lie in,” he’d say to Alice, kissing her as he stood at the foot of the bed in jeans and a baseball cap. “I’m just going to take Snoop to Hyde Park for a long walk.” Alice would snuggle back under the duvet with a smile. Who would have thought that Joe would be this smitten with a dog? And if he was this good with Snoop, just imagine what he’d be like with children. Surely they’d be able to start trying for a baby soon.

And Snoop was quite happy. There wasn’t an awful lot for him to do in Josie’s living room, so he’d pee merrily in the corner while he waited for Joe to emerge from behind the closed bedroom door.

“
N
o, Joe, don’t be ridiculous.” Josie shivers as Joe runs an experienced hand up her inner thigh. “Not in the office.”

“And why not?” Joe murmurs. “Eight o’clock on a Friday night, just who exactly do you think is around?”

Josie is silent. He has a point. The trading floor is always deserted by, at the very latest, six on a Friday. She stops to listen, then gets up and looks outside the door. He’s right. It’s deserted.

“Leave the door open,” Joe grins, enjoying the thrill, as he leans back against the conference table in the meeting room at the end of the corridor. “And come here.”

Josie leans against the doorjamb in the doorway. “Don’t tell me what to do.” She raises an eyebrow as she surveys the rise in his trousers. “And if you’re serious, unzip your trousers now.”

Joe unzips them and raises an eyebrow as Josie walks over to him with a smile, bending down to kiss him as she slips a hand through the zip and Joe moans.

11

“
T
his is Steven from Human Resources. We’d like to have a meeting with you. Could you make it up here for six this evening?”

Shit. No. Six this evening Joe is planning on going straight back to Josie’s flat for a couple of hours before the opening of a new restaurant he’ll be going to later that evening with Alice.

“Actually six isn’t a good time, and Steven, can I ask what this is about?”

“We want to discuss some career options with you. How does five sound?”

Joe sighs. Career options. What the hell does that mean? Whatever it’s about it sounds like it’s going to be a long one. Still, he should be out of here by six. That would be fine.

“Okay. Five sounds fine.”

“Great. We’ll see you up here on our floor at five.”

Joe intranets a message over to Josie’s computer, careful not to use any provocative language, to keep things as professional as possible just in case it’s overseen. “Meeting with HR at five. Should be over by next meeting at six. Wait here if it overruns.” He picks up the phone to call Alice, tells her he’ll see her at the restaurant at seven-thirty.

         S
teven Webster is sitting with his back to the window, Jacqueline Astley, the head of European Human Resources, on his left. At the head of the table is Richard Nilsson, global head of Investment Banking, and Joe’s boss.

Joe was prepared for Steven Webster, a man he knows and likes. The man, in fact, who originally recruited him for the job. He’s not prepared for Jacqueline Astley, and nor is he prepared for his boss. This doesn’t look good, and as he sits down he remembers the door clicking quietly shut when he and Josie were fucking on the desk in the conference room late last Friday night.

They had stopped abruptly, fear instantly replacing the passion, but by the time he had pulled his trousers up and run to the door, checking the dealing room outside and the corridor, there was no one there.

“Fuck,” he hissed. “Do you think someone saw us?”

Josie was white. This was the last thing she needed. Shit. Why did she ever take this risk?

“There’s no one there,” Joe said. “Maybe it was the wind.”

“Maybe,” Josie said hopefully. “Or maybe we just imagined it.”

But now, seeing the serious expressions on everyone’s faces, Joe starts to feel rather sick. Maybe they hadn’t imagined it after all.

“Thanks for coming, Joe,” Steven says. “Take a seat. You know everyone here?” Joe nods as Steven gestures to the empty chair and offers him coffee, which Joe declines.

“Do you know why we asked you up here?” Jacqueline leans forward and looks Joe square in the eyes.

He shrugs. “Steven said career options.”

“Joe, this isn’t easy for us,” she says after a pause. “In fact this is probably the hardest part of my job, but it’s come to our attention that you are involved with a work colleague, and I’m afraid you know the rules about that.”

Joe blusters, becomes defensive in humiliation. “Frankly, Jacqueline, I don’t think that’s any of your business.”

“I’m afraid it is our business, Joe,” she says gently. “When you become involved with a work colleague it involves everyone you work with, including the people who may or may not walk in on you in a meeting room.” She looks at him pointedly and Joe looks away. There’s nothing he can say.

“We’ve discussed the various options, and the one thing we all agree on is that you are too valuable to us to let you go. Doubtless you also know, possibly better than most, why we brought Josie Mitchell to the team, and we would also be extremely reluctant to lose her.”

“So where is this going?”

“Do you know Simon Barnes?”

“Vaguely. He’s in the States, isn’t he?”

“Not for much longer. He’s coming back to London to head up the Investor Client Group. I can’t express enough how under normal circumstances this would result in instant dismissal. However, because of the revenue you have brought in and your importance to the firm, we would like to send you out to the States on a three-year contract as his replacement.”

Richard chooses this moment to interject. “Joe, all things considered, I think it’s an extremely generous offer, not to mention an interesting move for you, and one that may in fact work out very well for you. We feel you’ve accomplished great things in Europe, and I, for one, will be sorry to see you leave the team, but we’d like you to change your focus away from banking and toward capital markets. We want you to head up the Americas Issuer Client Group, to look at bringing in some serious new issue and derivatives business in the Americas, including South America.”

“No.” Joe shakes his head. “I’m sorry, but my life is here. I’m extremely unhappy about this, not to mention humiliated at the way you’ve chosen to deal with it. I accept what you say about relationships at work, and I would be more than happy to terminate my friendship with Josie Mitchell, but a move to America is not acceptable to me. I’ve brought in nineteen million dollars already this year, and I’m extremely happy in my position. I feel there’s still far more revenue I can bring in, and I’d like to be given a second chance.”

Joe speaks with a confidence and an assurance he doesn’t feel, but it’s the only way he can mask his deep humiliation and shock. It’s one thing to have an affair, but quite another to be caught.

Of course relocation isn’t a possibility. His home is here, his wife, his life. He has no intention of moving anywhere, and his only regret is that he may have to give up Josie. Either that or be far more careful in the future. It’s his own bloody fault, he berates himself. Josie was right, what was he thinking of, having sex in the office? They were bound to get caught, and he can’t believe, sitting here, that he could ever have found that prospect the slightest bit exciting.

And more to the point, what can he possibly tell Alice?

“
W
e are fully aware of the amount of revenue you’ve brought in,” Richard says firmly. “Which is why we believe you’re the right person to take over from Simon Barnes. We need someone dynamic and motivated to take the team forward.”

“I appreciate what you’re saying, Richard, and I’m flattered that you think that. However, I have to reiterate that I would be extremely unwilling to relocate. Quite apart from anything else, you’re aware that I’m working with two continental drug companies at the moment, and it looks like the combined deals will bring in an additional twenty million.”

“We know, and we’re very pleased with the relationships you’ve built up on the continent, and not to repeat myself that’s exactly why we want to send you to America.”

Jacqueline speaks quietly and authoritatively. “Joe,” she says. “I’m afraid you have no choice.”

“Ah.” Joe leans back in his chair and exhales. Shit. What is he going to say to Alice?

“
A
nd may I ask the time frame of this decision that it appears I have no control over?”

“We’d like you to take the remainder of this week to organize everything. We are aware that you will have things to take care of, but we would like you to start in the Manhattan offices on the ninth of July.”

“But that’s in a week and a half! You have to be joking!” Joe gasps.

“I’m afraid not.”

“How am I supposed to organize everything in less than two weeks?”

“HR will do everything we can to assist you. We know you’re . . .” Jacqueline tries to suppress her distaste at this situation with a cough “. . . married. The firm will provide roughly two months’ accommodation in a hotel—you already know the Godfrey-approved hotels—and we’ll arrange for someone to help your wife organize everything at this end, including the packing, naturally. We would suggest you arrange for your wife to join you as soon as possible to start looking for a home. Gayle Messler is our preferred relocation agent, and she’s expecting your call. You will naturally get the full expat allowance for three years.” Jacqueline pauses and checks her watch. “I’m afraid I’m expected at another meeting. Steven will be able to answer any questions that you have. Thank you for your time, Joe, and good luck.” She shakes Joe’s hand, while he remains speechless in shock.

Richard stands up as well. “I’ll call you at home later,” he says. “We’ll talk about it then.” And he too disappears out of the door.

J
oe takes the lift back down to his floor, still in shock, but armed with a sheaf of papers Steven has given him. There is his formal job description, details of his new, increased salary, his monthly housing allowance, healthcare insurance, various other minor benefits, and the contact numbers for the relocation agent.

         H
e sees Josie sitting at her desk, and as soon as he sits down a message appears on his screen. “Ready?”

“Something’s come up. Will have to go home. Meet me at the café in five.”

“
I
don’t fucking believe it!” Josie’s in a fury. “What business is it of theirs what we do? How dare they relocate you, and how dare they not involve me in this?”

Joe sighs and puts a hand on her arm to placate her. “Josie, it’s so much better this way. I agree, it stinks, but it’s much better you don’t get involved. I have to go, I don’t have much choice.”

Josie sits and thinks for a while. “You do have a choice, you know. You could always get another job.”

“I know. I’ve thought about that. But I don’t want to have to start proving myself all over again. I’ve established a good reputation here, and my bonus is virtually guaranteed. Even though the last thing I want to do is leave the country, and leave you, I have to.”

Josie doesn’t say anything for a while. She tries to digest what Joe is telling her, tries not to let her true feelings show on her face. She thought she could handle this, thought that Joe would be just an affair that wouldn’t mean anything, but now, sitting in front of him, hearing that he’s leaving, she knows she’s been fooling herself all along.

She had never planned on falling for him. God, she of all people was cynical enough to know what happens when you get involved with married men, but the longer she continues seeing him, the more involved she feels.

The only person who knew, up until—she thinks with horror—last Friday, was Al. And Al had been warning her for months, had told her that not only was it unbelievably dangerous to get involved with a colleague, but this was a colleague who was married.

“This is going to end in tears,” he said repeatedly, when she first entrusted him with the information. “I don’t like the sound of this at all.”

After a few weeks she had stopped mentioning Joe, and Al stopped asking. The friendship they had didn’t really allow for relationships, and certainly not ones of which one of them disapproved.

Plus Josie was becoming aware that she didn’t want this to end. That the more she saw Joe, the more she wanted to see him. That she had started thinking about him when she wasn’t with him, that every time he swung his legs out of bed to go back to his wife she started to feel slightly sick inside.

Most of all, Josie had started to think about Alice. She knew Joe wasn’t happy, and half entertained the fantasy that he would eventually leave Alice, would move into Josie’s apartment, and live happily ever after.

She had started to hate Alice. Alice who seemed so irrelevant in the beginning, who had nothing to do with Josie, with the relationship she had with Joe. And yet over the last few months Alice had grown into this mythical, hateful figure, this Medusa who had cast a spell over Joe, a spell that always brought him running back home.

She was careful never to say anything to Joe, and hated herself for even entertaining the thought that he and Alice might break up, for being that much of a cliché. The more she got to know Joe, the more she could see that the minute she stopped being a challenge, the minute she became the slightest bit needy, or demanding, he would be bored and would move on.

And so, even as she was falling for him, she made herself as unobtainable and interesting as possible. Of course it was hard, particularly when she wanted to see him all the time, and it wasn’t so much that she was physically unobtainable—when Joe wanted to see her she almost always said yes—but that she was emotionally unobtainable, impenetrable. She kept Joe guessing, knowing that was the only way to hold his interest.

         I
t had worked, thus far. And now here he is, sitting opposite her at Ponti’s near Liverpool Street Station, telling her he’s moving to another country and she may never see him again.

Immediately a vision of her life as it was before she met Joe flashes into her mind. The ready-cooked microwaveable meals, the bottles of wine she drank on her own, the mindless television she’d watch in bed before falling asleep knowing that the next day, and the day after, and all the days stretching ahead of that would be exactly the same.

Nothing to look forward to, nothing to dream about, nothing to grow excited about or plan for, only the monotony of work, eating, and sleeping. A monotony broken only by the occasional nights out with Al, which, while pleasant, were hardly anything to look forward to.

Joe has given her something to look forward to. She would never be as dramatic as to say that Joe had given her a reason for living, but he had certainly made her life more interesting, had provided her with hours of colorful fantasy, not to mention hours of colorful reality.

Al would say there would be other Joes, preferably available ones, ones who might actually have long-term prospects, but Josie knows this wasn’t necessarily the case. She knows because it had been eighteen months before Joe, and she knows because there was nobody else in whom she had the slightest interest.

The other thing she knows is that however hard it is to hear that Joe is going away, however much she dreads him leaving, however hard she may have fallen for him, she is not going to let him know.

“So when are you going?” she says finally, a false brightness in her voice.