Conflict of Interest

Handing her a few minicab cards, he pointed towards a telephone by the sofa, before leaving her to make her call. He went through to the kitchen, filled the kettle and got things ready for coffee.

In the sitting room, Judith soon ordered a cab but, as she called through to Chris, there would be a twenty-minute wait. Getting up from the sofa, she folded her arms in front of her and walked slowly around the room, taking in the pictures, the souvenirs – so many things as deeply familiar as they had been long-forgotten, until this moment. How many hours had she lain cocooned in their duvet in Islington, she wondered, staring up at that Monet print they had bought in Covent Garden? And the calabash from her week’s holiday in Jamaica – there it was, perched in a corner; why in God’s name had he kept all this stuff? She’d cleared out any mementos from that period in her life years ago.

She wanted to reach inside her handbag for a cigarette, but supposed she shouldn’t smoke in here; it wasn’t her house. Instead, she wandered through to the kitchen, where Chris was spooning Nescafé into two mugs. On the wall by the fridge she found a pinboard the two of them had started together in Oxford, still holding so much of the memorabilia: the menu from a Magdalen College dinner; the May Ball invitation – it was where they had first met Bernie; a champagne cork on which she had written ‘Je t’adore’ in red biro on a romantic weekend in Paris.

‘You still have this,’ she nodded, touching the board.

‘Mmm.’ Chris glanced across at her. They had avoided eye contact – direct, lingering inspection – for years. When they had met, by force of circumstance, it had all been momentary encounters and sidelong glances, as though they couldn’t bear to reveal anything of themselves to each other. But now he held her gaze, searching for her intentions – and could find none. Not so much as a flicker of the old emotion. Nothing to suggest they’d ever been more than casual friends. Perhaps he expected too much. He poured hot water into the two mugs and, as they made their way back to the sitting room, he began to realise that inviting her to his home had been a mistake.

‘So …’ he sat opposite her on one of the sofas. How were they going to kill time till the taxi arrived? ‘You’ve got just under twenty minutes to tell me about the past four years of your life.’

She laughed self-consciously as she leaned forward, holding her mug in both hands and blowing on to the surface of the drink. Then she began, telling him about her move to The Herald, and about the titanic ego that was Alex Carter. She mentioned her place in Earl’s Court; her attempts to quit smoking.

‘And how’s Libby?’ Chris asked.

‘Still driving people crazy.’

He laughed. Judith’s mother was a cranky old thing, known in the Cotswold village of Tetbury as ‘a personality’. Having lost her husband in a car accident, she’d suddenly found herself, in her mid-thirties, with a family of three young girls to bring up, single-handedly. She’d taken to trading in antiques, a business in which she’d done very well, but not without ruffling a few of the local feathers.

Judith told Chris the family news, and answered his questions about some of her other friends he’d lost touch with. Of course, there was one question more than any other he wanted her to answer. He wondered if he should hold back, and wait to see if it came up in conversation. But time was short. So, in as neutral a voice as he could manage, he asked her.

‘You seeing anyone at the moment?’

Meeting his eyes, she shook her head. ‘You?’

‘No. Even if I wanted to, I’ve no time. Specially since the new job.’

‘You left MIRA?’

He was surprised she didn’t know. He’d just assumed … ‘I’m now looking after Research and Planning at Lombard.’

Judith was taken aback. Eyes widening and eyebrows raised, she put her coffee mug down on a side table.

‘I know, I know,’ he assumed an air of nonchalance, ‘the devil’s work.’

She sat back in the sofa. ‘I never take calls from Lombard PRs,’ she told him matter-of-factly, ‘so what does a planner do? Sounds as Machiavellian as the rest of the operation.’

Chris pulled a droll smile. ‘Hardly. I basically find out what people think of Lombard clients. I look at all the financials of clients and their competitors, corporate strategy, brand positioning – that kind of thing.’

‘Like analyst reports?’ Judith thought of Merlin.

‘Exactly. But for the benefit of the clients who commission them.’

‘Sounds very analytical.’

He nodded.

‘You enjoy it?’

‘Only been there six weeks, and I’ve been too busy to even think about it. I was getting stale at MIRA. I needed to move on.’

After a pause he added, ‘It’s strange the way things turn out. I never thought in a million years I’d end up working in the City.’

‘Especially not for Lombard.’ She couldn’t help herself; she was more than simply surprised by the revelation. It seemed to Judith that Lombard had half of the national press in their pocket. And even though she’d managed to give the agency the slip, by fixing her meeting with Hunter and Eaglesham, she had never, for a moment, underestimated Lombard’s power.

All of which made her feel very wary of Chris’s new job. She couldn’t help thinking there had to be more than money to lure him into that den of crooks.

Leaning back in the chair, she asked him curiously, ‘So, which clients do you work on?’