Читать книгу Tasmina Perry 3-Book Collection: Daddy’s Girls, Gold Diggers, Original Sin - Tasmina Perry, Tasmina Perry - Страница 25

Cate glanced anxiously around the impressive glass and steel atrium of PCT, London’s biggest firm of accountants, feeling a little sick. Damn Nick Douglas, she muttered, stealing another glance at her watch. He was late again, and on such an important day too. She didn’t need anything else to make her more nervous. Her laptop PowerPoint presentation sat in a slim case beside her, a sheaf of dummy magazines poked out of her Bottega Veneta holdall. She felt shaky enough without him being twenty minutes overdue. As David Goldman had taken great pains to tell her this morning, this was their biggest – and probably only – opportunity to raise the £2 million they needed. After all, the six venture capital firms David had approached had turned him down flat without even asking for a presentation. So David had pulled out all the stops to gather together twelve private investors who might be interested and who had agreed to assemble in the PCT boardroom this afternoon. If Cate and Nick failed to impress them with their presentation today – well, that was going to be it: dream over. David wouldn’t plough any more of his time or money into an idea that was clearly going nowhere fast.

And maybe they were right, Cate grumbled to herself, maybe it was a waste of time. Especially since that phone call yesterday, the call she would have killed for on the day she was fired. Out of the blue, the editor of Harper’s Bazaar in New York had wanted to know if she would be interested in an editor-at-large position on the prestigious glossy. Why didn’t I just say yes? She smiled grimly to herself. The easy option was never her style.

‘Sorry, sorry, sorry,’ said Nick, flying so fast through the glass door that his caramel overcoat flew behind him like a cape. ‘Defective train in God-only-knows-where,’ he spluttered, desperately trying to catch his breath. ‘Brought the whole bloody tube to a standstill. Had to run all the way from Angel.’

Cate didn’t try to disguise her annoyance. ‘Well, maybe you should have left a bit earlier,’ she said drily.

Nick ignored her, instead giving a playful wolf-whistle. ‘Woo-wee! You look great,’ he whistled and, despite herself, Cate smirked back, confident for once in her appearance. She’d spent ages that morning getting ready. Her russet-gold hair was pulled back into an elegant chignon, she’d teamed a black Michael Kors pencil skirt with a mint green cashmere polo neck. Her make-up – glossed lips, bronzed highlighted cheeks – was understated but elegant. She looked professional but not boring, striking but not intimidating.

‘You’ll knock them dead,’ said Nick with a wink, walking up to the marble reception to announce their arrival.

They rode the lift to the boardroom in silence – each not needing to tell the other how vital the afternoon was. Cate and Nick had worked so hard over the last three weeks since their initial meeting with David. The dummy magazine was finished, the business plan was polished. There’d been tough negotiations with printers and reprographic houses to get the best possible deals lined up. A deal to distribute the magazine in all airports, train stations and newsagents had been hammered out. They’d even set up meetings with important advertisers such as Estée Lauder, Chanel, British Airways and Armani to canvass support should they have to move quickly for a summer launch.

The lift door hissed open and David was waiting for them. His grey eyes were serious, his mouth unsmiling: David’s operator mode, thought Nick.

‘Everyone’s here,’ said David in a hushed tone, ushering Cate and Nick down the corridor to the boardroom. ‘Ten men, two women. Watch out for Nigel Hammond who’s sitting at the head of the table,’ he said, lowering his voice even further. ‘Nigel made a billion in spread betting, will be very tough in questioning, but if we can get him, the rest will follow.’ At the heavy oak door, David turned towards them, resting a hand on Cate and Nick’s shoulders. ‘Be confident, answer all the questions as we’ve discussed and leave any of the tricky ones to me. Good luck.’

He squeezed Cate’s shoulder and she felt a warm, fuzzy glow. ‘You’ll be fantastic,’ he whispered as they walked into the room.

The boardroom was so enormous, Cate felt as if she was looking at it through a fish-eye lens. A large oval walnut table dominated the centre of the room, around which sat a dozen sombre faces, each painted with differing levels of hostility, boredom, impatience or ‘come-on-impress-me’ arrogance. Only Lesley Abbott, an elegant-looking women in her mid-forties who had made a fortune from selling her market research agency, looked faintly welcoming. Cate decided she would be her focus point.

David Goldman stood at one end of the table and cleared his throat. He had the swagger of a car salesman and the confidence of a presidential candidate.

‘We all know why we’re here,’ he began. ‘This is a venture that I think has great potential. It’s well-researched, has a fantastic management team and, as they will explain, they have spotted a real niche in this market.’

Cate felt her stomach lurch and she realized it was her time to talk. Nick flashed her a look that was a mixture of reassurance and anxiety. She stood up and pressed the return key on her white PowerBook. A big image of Sand magazine appeared on the projection screen behind her.

‘Ladies and gentleman, thank you for coming. I would like to take a minute to introduce myself and our travel and style magazine Sand …’

Damn, thought David Goldman watching Cate in full flow. She’s incredible.

What’s your marketing expenditure?

Is it enough?

Who wants to advertise?

Do you think anyone cares that much about travel?

What are the brand extension opportunities?

Questions, questions, questions. Cate and Nick expertly handled each one with passion and authority. They surprised themselves with their ability to address every objection. But it was hard. Cate had fudged a couple of the trickier points and she was sure she’d missed too many of the crucial selling points.

Cate glanced at her watch. Christ, had they only been talking for forty-five minutes? She was physically exhausted, her throat hurt, her mouth was parched and her head was pounding. She needed a large glass of wine and a lie-down.

‘Can I just ask Cate, why do you think your magazine will succeed, when hundreds of magazines supported by greater investment and bigger publishing companies fold every year?’

Nigel Hammond took a sip of his Evian water, placing it quietly in front of him. His tone was mildly sarcastic, his expression sceptical.

Nick opened his mouth to speak but Cate got there first.

‘Mr Hammond,’ she began calmly, ‘you don’t need me to tell you that there are safer, more lucrative investments out there to spend your money on.’

Nick Douglas flashed a look at David Goldman. He had gone the colour of fresh white paint.

‘But this isn’t a vanity publishing project,’ she said, placing her palms on the surface of the table. ‘It’s not a Me-too magazine. This is filling a genuine niche in a lucrative market and we have the talent, the vision and the contacts to exploit it. Yes, to be brutally honest, this is a punt: magazines are very high risk. But for the person who has the balls to invest in it, they will not just be buying a potentially valuable business, but buying into a slice of publishing history. Don’t you wish you could have bought Rolling Stone or Wallpaper magazines when they were started on somebody’s kitchen table?’

She looked at Nigel Hammond who stared back, giving nothing away. ‘Perhaps, yes,’ he replied, ‘but why should I be persuaded that you’re the woman to make that happen, particularly when you were fired, very recently, from your last job?’

Cate swallowed, her hands clammy. She knew she had a very important choice to make. She could be apologetic or she could fight.

‘I was fired in February, that’s true,’ she said evenly. ‘But, Mr Hammond, out of the dozen very successful people sitting in this room today, I would wager that nearly every one of us has been fired at some point. Achievers often are.’

She glanced around the room and noticed Lesley Abbott smile.

Nigel Hammond looked back and scribbled some notes on the book in front of him. Then he closed it with a thud, his face completely impassive.

‘Cate. Cate! Where are you going?’ Cate was fleeing the building as fast as her Manolo Blahniks would carry her and Nick, in his flat black loafers, was struggling to keep up. She stopped and turned to face him with tears in her eyes.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘the thing about me being fired. I’m sorry – I’ve spoilt it for both of us. I’m going to see my father. Maybe he’ll want to invest or perhaps he could call his friend Philip Watchorn who’s very connected and wealthy and …’ The words tumbled out of her mouth until they became tangled up and she just let her arms flop at her sides.

Nick just wanted to reach out and give her a hug: this beautiful, dynamic career woman who at this moment looked like a disappointed child.

‘Slow down, Cate. Slow down,’ he said softly. ‘I thought you did brilliantly. I’ve been fired too, remember? It just so happens that you’re better known than I am, so people have heard about it.’ He put his hand on her arm but she snatched it away, pulling on her trench coat.

‘I bet no one in that room had been fired,’ she said miserably, fiddling with the belt.

Nick shrugged. ‘You impressed me. I’d have given you the money.’

Cate looked at Nick and she could have sworn his cheeks had gone slightly red. ‘Do you wanna go and get a drink?’

She shook her head slowly. ‘I’m going into Mayfair. I’ll get us the money, Nick. I will,’ she said quietly, determinedly.

He watched her go down the street and gave a slow smile at the brave girl hailing a taxi. It was getting dark and the streetlights were just winking on. In his heart of hearts, Nick didn’t think it had gone very well either. They had answered all the questions with passion and authority, but Cate had been right. It was a punt. If he had a million quid, would he really want to put it into a magazine run by a start-up company that might very well fold within six months? He seriously doubted it.

The Balcon Gallery was tucked away on a tiny side-street off Mount Street, a quiet, rarefied pocket of London, full of society hairdressing salons and upmarket art dealerships. Its proud red-brick frontage had a crisp white canopy, a sombre blue door and a large window full of expensive eighteenth- and nineteenth-century masterpieces. The gallery was a world away from the trendy Brit-Art spaces of London’s East End, where men in mullets painted swastikas in blood to sell to millionaire admen and rock stars. The Balcon Gallery pitched itself at the other end of the art-lovers’ spectrum; quiet, old-school money who preferred more traditional pieces to sit in their old-school Belgravia and Kensington homes. Known as a specialist in nineteenth-century Dutch artists, the gallery had recently begun to move with the times and branched out into late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century French bronzes and, as Cate approached, she could see a dainty Degas ballet dancer in the window.

Cate pushed open the door and a tinkling bell rang over her head. Sitting at a table at the end of the room, Mark Robertson, the gallery’s office manager, was drawing up an invoice for an immaculately groomed middle-aged couple, while Oswald perched on the edge of the desk talking to them.

Oswald looked up and flashed Cate one of his most charming smiles.

‘Ah, here’s my daughter,’ he beamed to the customers. The woman, with her honey-blonde highlighted hair, Hermès ostrich Kelly bag and Ferragamo shoes, recognized Cate from Class magazine and smiled a little more broadly.

‘Do you want to go upstairs to the office, darling? I’ll be up shortly,’ Oswald said cheerily. Cate nodded and walked up the tiny spiral staircase at the end of the room. As she went, she watched her father at work. It was a shame he spent so little time at the gallery, she thought: he was a natural salesman. Even that little jovial father-greets-daughter interchange was perfectly pitched. A showman and a charlatan, she thought grimly.

The building was tall, long and thin, a perfect space for a gallery, although it meant that the office, located in the eaves, was rather cramped. The table in the middle of the room was spilling over with invoices and papers; as she sat at it, she flicked through an auction brochure detailing the sale of some rare Henry Moore sculptures.

Helping herself to a coffee from a pot on the sideboard, she sipped it slowly, her mind a maelstrom of thought. She felt just as nervous now as she had earlier in the day. But it had been a gut-wrenching, heart-pounding adrenalin rush in the PCT boardroom; sitting in the Balcon Gallery offices she felt small, apprehensive and resigned. She really hadn’t wanted to come and see Oswald, but she could still see Nick’s proud but disappointed expression as they had left the investment meeting. She looked at the dummy magazine sitting in her bag, its cover slightly thumbed and torn and she felt a rush of sadness. Why was she getting sentimental about a magazine? she scolded herself. It wasn’t an abandoned puppy, it was a business – and a damn good one, if only someone would give them a helping hand. And, as she thought this, she heard the slow thud of her father coming up the spiral stairs.

He was wearing his London clothes, noted Cate, taking in his fine navy suit with a Dracula red silk lining, no doubt going on to one of his fancy St James’s gentlemen’s clubs afterwards.

‘So to what do we owe this pleasure?’ asked Oswald briskly, ‘I assume you want something – something too important to be resolved with a phone call.’

He pulled a pocket watch from inside his jacket, peered at it through his half-moon reading spectacles and put it back with a tut. ‘I have to be at White’s at seven for dinner with Watchorn so you’d better make it snappy. Make me an Earl Grey, would you?’

Cate went over to the sideboard, switched the chrome kettle on and put two spoonfuls of tea into the bottom of Oswald’s teapot. Turning back, she pulled the dummy out of the holdall and put it on the table in front of her father.

‘I wondered if you’d have a look at this, Daddy?’ she said as casually as she could.

Oswald picked it up and quickly thumbed through the pages.

‘I’m aware of this. Your friend David Goldman sent it to a friend of mine.’

Cate should have known. It was typical that her father would know her every move. Whatever she’d done, good or bad, even when she was thousands of miles away, she’d always had the feeling that he was watching her, a disapproving look on his face. ‘However, I believe you’ve been offered a job in New York.’ Oswald pointed over to the kettle which was billowing out huge clouds of steam. Cate jumped up and began to make the tea, beginning to feel genuinely unsettled now.

‘Venetia told me,’ said Oswald, as if reading her thoughts. ‘Frankly I feel it would be the best for everyone. You’ve let yourself and the family down with this sacking. And this way you can be some company for Serena. At least one of you has some sort of career.’

‘Daddy, I don’t want to go to New York,’ she said slowly. ‘I want to do this.’

‘Ah, this.’ He picked up the magazine and started flicking through the pages dismissively. ‘Yes, Nigel Hammond called me to ask what I thought about it.’

Cate’s heart froze. Nigel Hammond? ‘You know Nigel Hammond?’ she said, a tremor in her voice.

‘I have a great many friends, Catherine,’ said Oswald, looking at her over his glasses. ‘I have done something with my life and they respect my opinion.’

‘So what did you say to him?’

Oswald put the magazine down and looked at his daughter, clearly enjoying his moment of power. ‘What could I tell him? Hmm? That you’d just been fired from a very similar business to the one you’re asking him to invest his money in? I simply referred Nigel to William Walton at Alliance. I thought he’d be the person best placed to comment on whether you were a good risk. Nigel is a very cautious investor.’

She span round and glared at him, her eyes blazing at his betrayal. ‘But you knew …’ she hissed, ‘you knew that …’ But she could see it was pointless. The frustration she had felt over the last few weeks gushed to the surface. ‘You don’t want me to succeed,’ she shouted, her voice thick. ‘What’s wrong with me? What’s your problem with me? What’s sodding wrong?’

Oswald smiled over sourly. ‘I didn’t give you a two-hundred-thousand-pound education to talk like that. Now, I think you’d better be running along. I’m going to be late for dinner.’

As she watched Oswald pull away in his Bentley she squeezed her hand into an angry fist. She knew Daddy would be difficult – obstructive even – but couldn’t believe he’d put a mere acquaintance before his daughter. She took deep gulps of London air, vainly trying to stop the fat tears streaming down her cheeks. Scrabbling to pull a tissue out of her bag she noticed the luminous blue light of her mobile ringing. She took a deep breath, wiped her nose and flipped it open.

‘Cate?’ It was Nick.

‘Hi Nick,’ she replied, trying to hide the wobble in her voice with a sniff. ‘I can barely hear you. Where are you?’

‘I’m in the pub getting very, very drunk. Cate, you’ll never believe it! We got the bloody money!’

She stopped, staggered.

‘No way! But how? Nigel Hammond spoke to my dad and the bastard passed him on to William Walton.’

She could hear Nick laughing down the phone.

‘I know! David told me about that. Apparently Hammond thought William Walton was a cocky American jerk. I believe “full of crap” was his phrase. Quite taken with you, though. Thought your presentation was “very spunky”. I think you’ve found a fan. And Cate?’ said Nick, his voice happy and slightly slurred, ‘I think you’re pretty damn great too.’

She wiped her eyes and a small grin started to form on her lips. She was beginning to feel much better.