The Phoenix

Her last thought was how ironic it would be if she died on the day she found out that her parents weren’t dead after all. And how dared her grandmother die without explaining any of this to her?

CHAPTER THREE

Gary Larson crossed his fat thighs and leaned back in his chair, a pained expression on his face.

‘I’m sorry, Ella. But I’m going to have to let you go.’

Gary had landed the job of CEO at Biogen Medical Research two years ago by default when his friend Marti Gruber, the original CEO and founder, died in a freak snowboard accident in Tahoe. Everybody had loved Marti, the archetypal go-getting millennial entrepreneur with a passion for risk and pushing boundaries. Nobody loved Gary, his lecherous, talentless best friend and business partner, who had ridden Marti’s coat-tails to success, Ringo-style, ever since High School. But fortune, it seemed, didn’t always favor the bold. Sometimes it favored the fat, entitled and cowardly, leaving the bold to suffocate under six hundred tons of unexpectedly unstable snow.

‘These unexplained absences of yours have become a habit, and one BMR can’t afford,’ Gary told Ella pompously. It was over a week since Mimi’s funeral, but this was the first day Ella had felt well enough to return to work at her boring, number-crunching job in the statistics division.

‘OK,’ she said calmly, standing up to go.

Gary Larson frowned. ‘Wait!’ he called after her. It was infuriating the way that Ella Praeger seemed immune to his authority. Even now, when he was firing her ass, the bitch wouldn’t do him the courtesy of showing any emotion. He’d secretly hoped for tears, perhaps even some pleading. He’d imagined Ella on her knees, her strangely beautiful face turned up to his in desperation. ‘Please, Mr Larson. I need this job. I’ll do anything!’ But instead she was walking away and out of his life with no more concern than someone who’d just been told about a minor change to their bus timetable.

‘Please, take a seat.’ He gestured magnanimously to the chair Ella had just vacated. ‘This isn’t personal, you know. I’ve always liked you.’

‘I know,’ said Ella, still standing.

Gary softened. Perhaps he was being too hasty, letting Ella Praeger go? She was an oddball, certainly, and not popular with her colleagues. But she was a brilliant statistician and a hard worker when she deigned to show up. And then of course there was that body …

‘You wanted to sleep with me from the day I joined.’

‘I beg your pardon?’ Gary flushed.

‘My first day here, you put your hands on my buttocks in the elevator,’ said Ella, mimicking the action with her hands.

‘I have no memory of that!’ Gary spluttered.

‘I do,’ Ella said calmly. ‘Also, when I ate in the canteen you used to sit next to me and touch my legs with yours.’

‘Ella, I assure you …’

‘You also made repeated positive observations about my appearance,’ Ella went on, ‘which is another well-known indicator of sexual attraction.’

The CEO’s face went from pink to red to puce.

‘Now listen, Ella, there’s no need for this to get ugly.’

Ella looked perplexed. Why would it get ugly?

‘You’re throwing around some pretty wild accusations there. I’m sorry if you misinterpreted some of my friendly overtures towards you, as your boss …’

‘No need to apologize,’ said Ella, her tone still maddeningly neutral. ‘I didn’t misinterpret them. I just ignored them because I didn’t find you attractive. Goodbye.’

Gary opened his mouth to say something, then closed it again, like a dying fish on a line. Was she threatening him? Or insulting him? Or was this just Ella Praeger being her usual, baffling, socially awkward self?

She walked out of his office and this time Gary Larson let her go. As soon as she left he loosened his tie, which felt horribly tight all of a sudden, and picked up the phone to HR.

‘Make sure Ella Praeger gets a generous severance package,’ he barked. ‘And when she takes it, have her sign a rider to waive any future claims against the company.’

‘Of course, sir. And when you say “generous” …?’

‘Give her whatever she wants,’ Gary blurted. ‘Just get rid of her.’

Noriko Adachi sipped her iced water as she listened intently to the man sitting across the table from her.

His call last night had been unexpected, but welcome. Professor Adachi still had no idea how this total stranger knew she was in New York, never mind the hotel where she was staying, her room number, and precise details of her itinerary. The seminar on early nineteenth-century feminist literature at NYU was hardly a well-publicized event, especially for those outside the academic world. And yet this polished, erudite American businessman, Mark Redmayne – a billionaire according to Google – seemed to know all there was to know about her.