‘Is this about Vanessa? You think I’m trying to force you out?’
‘You want me to go, but it’s not about Vanessa. Look . . . I know you don’t want me to leave while Vallance are wobbling.’
‘Who says Vallance are wobbling?’
‘I’m not stupid, Dennis. I read the signs.’
He picked up his pen. He let his gaze travel round the room as if he were considering something. Finally it settled on me and he gave a grudging nod. ‘Oh, sit down, for God’s sake. You’re making the place look untidy.’
London was not beautiful that autumn: the skies sat low, threatening and sulky, and the rain came down in sheets, creeping up my trousers from the uneven pavements where it collected in puddles. Sometimes the clouds seemed so close to the tops of the buildings that I felt almost claustrophobic. But it might, I thought, looking out of the window, have been almost any season for the amount of time I spent outside. In winter months I occasionally brought an overcoat, and in summer I might wear a lighter shirt, but closeted day after day between double-glazing and air-conditioning, ferried to and from work by tube or taxi, years could pass without my needing to adapt at all.
I sat. Outside, I could hear car horns and some kind of altercation. Normally Dennis loved a good scrap, and would stop whatever he was doing to peer outside. But now he studied his hands. Waiting, thinking.
‘Look, Dennis, I’m sorry about Vanessa,’ I said, at last, into the silence. ‘I never wanted to hurt her.’
His demeanour changed then. His shoulders unbraced themselves, and he leant towards me, his expression briefly softening. ‘She’ll get over it,’ he said. ‘She’ll find someone better. I should be madder at you, given that she’s my daughter, but I’m well aware that Tina’s a minx. Nearly headed down that road a couple of times myself. It’s only because Vanessa’s mother has pretty well all our assets in her name that I haven’t dared.’ He chuckled. ‘Plus she’s told me she’d have my bollocks for paperweights.’
He let out a huge sigh, and chucked his pen across the desk at me. ‘Bloody hell, Mike. How has it come to this?’
I caught it, and placed it back on the desk in front of him. ‘I can’t be part of this development, Dennis. I told you.’
‘For a few effing fish?’
‘It’s not just the whales. It’s everything. We’ll be . . . ruining people’s lives.’
‘It’s never bothered you before.’
‘Perhaps it should have.’
‘You can’t protect people from progress. You know that.’
‘Who says this is progress? Anyway, some people need protection.’
‘It’s a ruddy hotel, Mike, not a nuclear-waste plant.’
‘Might as well be, for the effect it’s going to have.’
I could tell he couldn’t quite believe what he was hearing. He shook his head, dug a few black crosshatches on to his telephone pad. Then he looked at me. ‘Don’t do this, Mike. I admit I’ve kept you out of the loop since you got back, but you’d turned into such a bloody pious git. I can’t trust you if you’re not a hundred per cent with me.’
‘I am with you, Dennis, just not with this development.’
‘You know we’re too far down the road to back up now.’
‘We’re not. We’d earmarked two other sites. Both are viable, you know they are.’
‘They’re more expensive.’
‘Not if we offset the costs of the S94. I’ve been through it.’
‘It’s going ahead, whether you like it or not.’ He was apologetic rather than bullish, and I saw suddenly that this was not about business: it was about Vanessa. He could forgive me, but to undermine his daughter publicly was asking too much. ‘I’m sorry, Mike. But it’s going ahead as planned.’
I shook my head regretfully. ‘Then I have to quit.’ I rose from my chair, and held out my hand. ‘I’m really sorry, Dennis. More sorry than you know.’
When he didn’t shake my hand, I walked towards the door.
His voice, lifted in exasperation, followed me: ‘This is effing ridiculous. You can’t ruin a bloody good career for a few fish. Come on, boyo. We’re mates, aren’t we? We can get past this.’
I hesitated by the door. Oddly, I heard reflected in his voice what I felt – an almost greater regret than I had experienced in splitting with Vanessa. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said.
As I opened it he spoke again: ‘You’re not going to fight me on this, Mike.’ It was a question as much as a statement. ‘You go if you have to, but don’t try to f**k up my deal.’
I’d hoped he wouldn’t ask. ‘I can’t sit by and watch it go ahead,’ I said, swallowing hard.
‘I’ll screw you, if I have to.’ He nodded, to make sure I’d got the message.
‘I know.’
‘I’ll shitbag you all over the City. You’ll never get a job anywhere decent again.’
‘I know.’
‘Don’t expect me to hold back. You know what I can do.’
I nodded. More than most, I knew.
We stared at each other.
‘Oh, bollocks.’ Dennis stepped forward and enveloped me in a bear-hug, until Tina’s voice came over the intercom, announcing that his call from Tokyo had come through.
I met Monica in a bar a short walk from her newspaper’s offices. She had nipped out for a drink, but said she’d be returning to her desk until late that evening, trying to follow up a story. Still mulling over my meeting with Dennis, I had asked her, more out of politeness than genuine interest, what it was about, and she had muttered something vague about farming fraud and EU subsidies, then looked rather cross. ‘I hate stories that involve finance,’ she muttered. ‘You spend weeks trying to understand the figures, and when you run it nobody cares because there’s no human interest in it.’
‘Want me to help?’ I said. ‘I’m not a forensic accountant, but I can find my way across a spreadsheet.’
She seemed a little taken aback. ‘I might.’ Her face lit up with a brief smile. ‘If I get stuck I’ll bring some home, and you can take a look.’
I had to admit that one of the unexpected benefits of my collapsed personal life was that my sister and I had discovered, to our mutual surprise, that we liked each other. I still thought her overly sarcastic, ambitious and chaotic, and that her taste in men was appalling. But now I understood that insecurity lay beneath the sarcasm, and that at least some of her ambition stemmed from having an elder brother who appeared to have scaled the career ladder effortlessly, and parents who, I saw with some shame, had used that success relentlessly and unthinkingly against her. I suspected now that she would have liked a boyfriend more than she was prepared to acknowledge, and that the longer she lived by herself, the less likely she was to leave room for one. If we stayed close, if we were able to leave this particular door open, I would have that conversation with her. One day.