It was a balmy evening. Warm for September. The sky had darkened to a deep purple, but in Karin Cavendish’s back garden it was almost pitch-black. There were a few lights on in the house. Two upstairs, three downstairs. It looked like a face laughing at him.
One of the kitchen windows was slightly open, the blind only half down. From a distance he could only see her torso, a hint of breast hidden behind coffee-coloured silk. He had to get closer so he could see her face and a tumble of hair. She was on the phone. He heard her voice floating on the breeze like the smell of honeysuckle, sweet and heady. He closed his eyes, feeling drunk, taking in every sensation for one final time. He loved her. He wanted to be with her. He knew she could never be his.
63
Erin was going to resign. She had chosen to wear her chicest power-dressing outfit: a black crêpe Donna Karan dress with three-quarter sleeves, and some Gucci heels she had bought herself with her first pay-packet. Looking into the mirror, pulling back her strawberry-blonde locks into a severe ponytail, she wondered if she didn’t look too much as if she was on her way to a funeral, before deciding such a formal, sombre look was probably appropriate. It was the end of something – the end of her new life. In eight months, her life had been transformed from unemployed misery, living in her grandmother’s cottage in Port Merryn and dreaming of one day becoming an author, to a jet-setting PA with a fast car, faster lifestyle and a chic apartment. She was going to miss them all, but the phone call from Ed Davies had changed everything. Eight months ago, she had zero options; now she had too many. Now, she had the power to make positive decisions about her life, but she wasn’t entirely sure if she preferred it to the narrow options of her life in Cornwall.
Erin had spent the entire night tossing and turning, knowing that the decision she was about to make would change her life forever. It was an embarrassment of riches, really. To stay as executive assistant to Adam Gold, sexy billionaire, or finally to have the chance to make her dream come true and become a novelist. This time last year, she knew the decision would have been instantaneous, obvious: write that book, get it published and see it on the shelves. That would have been a lifetime’s ambition fulfilled. But, somewhere along the road her dream, once so clear in her mind, had become murky and opaque. An author’s life was a lonely life and forty thousand pounds wasn’t going to buy the trips on the private jets and the blue Audi parked outside her fantastic flat. Then there was Belvedere Road, which she hardly dared think about. Planning permission still hadn’t come through and, if she didn’t get it developed and let within the next couple of month
s, she was going to have to sell the building: she could only go on haemorrhaging mortgage payments for so long. In so many ways, staying with Adam would be the easy, safe option. But she had to make a decision and the decision she had chosen was the decision she knew her mum, her dad and Jilly would have chosen for her. She would choose her own life. Not somebody else’s. She picked up her clutch bag and made for the door. It was time to stand on her own two feet.
Eight hours later, she still hadn’t told Adam. It had been a busy day; he had been tied up in meetings all morning, there had been an investors lunch, followed by his session down at the Bath & Racquet Club and, before she knew it, 5 p.m. had rushed around. And the truth was, Erin was terrified about resigning. Erin had only ‘left’ one job before, a waitressing job when she’d been a student at Exeter; she’d been so scared of the slimy manager, Keith, she had decided that the simplest solution was to stop going in to work. She’d spent the entire duration of her time left in Exeter avoiding the restaurant, and Keith had left two messages on her answer machine accusing her of stealing her uniform. She had briefly considered using the same tactics at Midas, but had quickly decided that the grown-up thing to do was to resign face to face. The prospect, however, was making her sick.
‘Erin can you just step through one minute, please?’ called Adam from his office. ‘And can you get me a drink?’
Right. This was it. She was determined she was going to do it. It was tempting to wait until the end of the week, of course – surely Friday afternoon with its natural finality was the best time to hand your notice in? – but Ed Davies had called her three times demanding to know what to say to Millennium Publishing. As she was on a month’s notice at Midas, it meant she had to move immediately. She grabbed a cup of black coffee and walked through. The sky outside his office window was a lacklustre gunmetal grey.
‘Sit down, Erin,’ said Adam. ‘Why don’t you get yourself a coffee?’
Erin looked puzzled. It was the first time ever he had asked her to sit and share a drink.
‘I’m fine, thanks. I’ve just had one.’
Adam rested his elbows on the desk. The sleeves of his white shirt were rolled up to show his firm, tanned forearms as he sipped the coffee.
‘So, did you enjoy the party?’
It was the first opportunity they’d had to discuss it all day. Erin couldn’t exactly tell him the truth about Karin and her father and how miserable it had made her, so she chose to be vague. ‘It was a wonderful party,’ she smiled.
‘Well, I think you did a brilliant job helping us to pull it all together like that in such a short space of time.’
‘That’s what I’m here for,’ replied Erin, wondering if maybe she should leave the deed until first thing tomorrow morning.
‘And, actually, that’s what I wanted to talk to you about,’ said Adam. Erin’s attention snapped back to the man sitting in front of her.
‘I stopped off at the Lanesborough to see my mother on the way back from the airport today.’
She quickly averted her eyes away from him. Damn, damn, damn, she thought, suddenly realizing how stupid she had been to divulge her dreams, the details of her novel and, worst of all, how she had an agent to Julia Gold. No matter how kind and supportive Julia had seemed, there was no getting away from the fact that her loyalties were obviously going to be to her son. It was true Erin wanted to leave the Midas Corporation, but the last thing she wanted to do was to get fired.
‘Actually, Adam, there’s been something I wanted to talk to you about as well.’
He held up an imperious finger. ‘Hear me out, Erin. My mother mentioned she’d been speaking to you – she seems quite a fan actually – and she told me you’d begun your writing again. Apparently she’s read your manuscript. Says it’s fantastic.’
‘Adam, don’t take that the wrong way. I haven’t been doing it in work time, but it’s been going well and—’
The finger went up again. ‘You don’t have to make excuses for challenging yourself. How do you think I’ve made so much money? I get bored with one thing and it’s onwards and upwards to the next. You sitting down and writing your novel just makes me remember what I thought when I first met you.’
‘Adam, I—’
‘That you’re made for bigger and brighter things than being my assistant.’
Erin was desperate to make him stop, but by now she was too intrigued by what he had to say.
‘I’ll cut to the chase; there is a fabulous opportunity for you in Moscow. We’re talking a lot more responsibility, I want to capitalize on all this entrepreneurial spirit you have and, obviously, we’re also talking a lot more money, your own flat, choice of car and so on. Alternatively, if you want to stay in London because of your little development in Crystal Palace, I think we can rustle up something for you in marketing. But either way, I think it’s time we stepped up a gear.’ Adam Gold had a way of talking to people as if everything he said made the most perfect sense in the world.
‘But Adam, I came in here to tell you—’
‘Erin,’ he interrupted, ‘I don’t expect you to answer me immediately. I hope you’ve enjoyed being my assistant and, if you’re enjoying it too much and you think I’ve jumped the gun, then just tell me. But at least think about it overnight and tell me tomorrow.’