Free Almost a Crime by Penny Vincenzi Page B

regulation business? Very soon.’
    ‘Yup. Early next week. I’ll have a chat with an old chum
    of mine in Whitehall. Meanwhile, sit tight, don’t do
    anything rash.’
    ‘You sure about that? I did meet someone at a dinner last
    week, someone quite high up in the government, who said
    any time I wanted help, I had only to lift the phone. We
    could shortcut the whole—’
    ‘Bob, please don’t do that. Let me put it more strongly.
    On no account do that. Half the time these guys you meet
    at dinners don’t mean it, or don’t have the clout and then
    you’ve ruffled feathers in Whitehall which in the long run
    are more important. Okay?’
    ‘Yes, okay,’ said Macintosh. But he didn’t sound
    convinced. ‘And you don’t think I should do this ruddy
    photo shoot?’
    ‘No, I don’t. Not if you don’t want to. Unless—’ Tom
    stopped. He felt rather cold suddenly, as he always did
    when he had a brainwave. ‘Unless we did something really
    very clever. Made everybody happy.’
    ‘Does that include me?’
    ‘Oh, it does, Bob. It most certainly does. Pass me the
    water, would you, there’s a good chap. Now listen…’
     
    ‘Fleming!’ Melanie’s head appeared round Octavia’s door.
    ‘Look, if it wouldn’t be too much to ask, could you possibly
    come into my office? We do have a meeting scheduled and
    it’s already ten minutes late.’
    ‘Sorry. I was on a complicated call.’ Octavia was never sure if it was Melanie’s personality, or her own innate sense of hierarchy, bred from her rigid childhood and education,
    that made her so constantly nervous of annoying her.
    ‘That’s okay. Now listen,’ she said, leading Octavia back
    into her own office, pushing a large tortoiseshell comb into
    her wild hair, ‘any progress on Cultivate yet, and a sponsor?
    Margaret Piper’s written me a letter, saying she’s very
    dissatisfied.’
    ‘Evil old bat,’ said Octavia. ‘She’s my client, what’s she
    doing complaining to you? Honestly, she’s getting more of
    my time proportionately than any of my other clients. I
    watched her feeding her chins for over two hours, and she
    didn’t even thank me.’
    ‘I think she sees me as headmistress here,’ said Melanie.
    ‘Now calm down, Octavia, I’m not blaming you, obviously,
    and I know how hard it is to get sponsorship at the
    moment, and specially for a charity like that one. But I
    don’t want to lose her, and if we’re not careful, we will.
    And if, as you say, Lloyds Bank aren’t going to come up
    with the goods, then we do have a problem and maybe I
    should throw some names into the ring.’
    It was pride as much as anything else that made Octavia
    say she had actually, she thought, now got a sponsor for
    Cultivate. Foolish, dangerous pride, as she saw very clearly
    afterwards …
     
    Marianne Muirhead had had a very good day. She had won
    her golf match, on a course she was particularly fond of, the
    Royal Surrey in Richmond. It had been the first course
    ever to be designed for women players, and was extremely
    pretty, studded with trees and ornamental shrubs and set on
    the edge of the Old Deer Park, in that lovely area between
    the Thames and Kew Gardens.
    She had then stopped off to shop in Sloane Street on her
    way home and bought herself an extremely chic black crepe
    trouser suit from Prada, some perilously high-heeled boots
    to wear with it, and an exquisitely beaded evening bag in
    Valentino, and had then reached home to find a spur-of
    the moment dinner invitation with one of her more interesting women friends, a barrister, waiting for her on
    the answering machine. She phoned to accept and to agree
    on a restaurant — Mon Plaisir in Monmouth Street, ‘so
    pretty and the best frites in London’ — and then went down
    to greet Romilly, who was calling her from the hall, flushed
    with excitement at being chosen to play a saxophone solo at
    the concert her school was putting on at the end of term.
    ‘Very well done, darling!