Learning curves (19 page)

Two hours later, she was nearly done. She’d downloaded spreadsheets and reports and editorials on the bookselling industry from the
FT
and the
Wall Street Journal,
and had even found some commentary on Wyman’s itself, including some very complimentary articles about Daniel when he got the job. Now all she had to do was transfer them all onto a CD and she’d be ready to go.

And she hadn’t even looked at any of her father’s files.

It wasn’t like she hadn’t been tempted, either. She’d wanted so much to have a quick search under “Axiom” to see what she could find. But she hadn’t had so much as a peek—her days of spying on her father were well and truly over. If she’d learned one thing recently it was that trust was paramount.

Maybe Paul Song was working for her father as a feng shui consultant, she thought severely. He could have had a disaster with some crystals or something—that would explain the desperation in his voice.

Jen frowned. As much as she tried, she just couldn’t picture her father going in for feng shui, or crystals for that matter. Okay, so maybe her mother had asked him to call, to find out how her ex-husband was. Maybe Paul had dialed a wrong number. Maybe . . . Jen shrugged. Maybe she was just going to have to live with the fact that she didn’t know and might not ever find out.

She picked up a disk and slotted it into the laptop to transfer the Web files she’d been browsing. The drive opened up in a window and she moved her files across. Then she frowned—there was an Excel spreadsheet with “2004–05 accounts” and she couldn’t remember whether it was hers or not. She double-clicked on it, expecting to see the filed accounts of one of Wyman’s competitors or a boring accounts spreadsheet from Bell.

But instead, the spreadsheet contained something very different, and when the file sprung up on the screen, she gasped.

22

“You!” George said again, his eyebrows raised. “Well, I really am honored!”

Harriet watched as he turned to put his pillow behind his head, wiping his eye surreptitiously as he did so. She smirked slightly.

“You know, it doesn’t really suit you, looking helpless like this. I bet you’re not enjoying it in the slightest, are you?”

George looked at her defiantly. “I won’t be here for much longer,” he said quickly. “So, what can I do for you? Need some money to bail out that firm of yours? I hear you’re running out of funds, but then again that’s hardly surprising, bearing in mind that you seem to have something against accepting clients who can actually afford to pay you.”

Harriet smiled sweetly, trying not to let her agitation show.
He always said that,
she told herself quickly. There was no need to rise to it just because this time he’d hit a nerve.

“Unlike Bell Consulting, who will take on anyone with money, no matter how they got hold of it,” she said, moving over to the window to look out. “You don’t have much of a view here, do you, George. I’d have thought you’d have demanded the best view in the hospital, a man with your . . . authority.”

She looked at the various tubes sticking out of George as she spoke and he narrowed his eyes.

“I don’t want a view, I want to get the hell out. Now, are you just here to gloat or does your visit have a purpose? I suppose you must be needing company now that your daughter has seen through you.”

Harriet glowered at him. “Oh, George Bell, you think you’re so clever, don’t you? But I’m on to you. Jen’s so desperate for a father to love her that she’s blinded by your protestations of innocence, but they don’t wash with me.”

“Is that all?”

Harriet sat down on the chair next to his bed. “Lost any clients over this yet?” she asked silkily.

George frowned. “Over what?”

Harriet smiled. “Oh, toughing it out, are you? I’m referring to the article in the
Times.
The . . . how shall I put this . . . truth about you and your grubby dealings with Axiom. I imagine your lawyers will be expecting a rather busy few months ahead, don’t you?”

George stared at Harriet. Was this the article Malcolm was referring to? Why the bloody hell hadn’t he seen it? “No one believes those bloody rags anymore,” he said defiantly. “Journalists just make things up to fill space.”

“Making up letters from Malcolm Bray to George Bell thanking him for his help?”

George flinched slightly. “What letter? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Harriet raised her eyebrows. “I’m sure you do, if you think about it. The letter that was quoted in the article? If you don’t remember it, this might jog your memory.”

She took a newspaper out of her bag and passed it to George, who skimmed the story quickly.

“What the . . . How dare they!” he roared. “I’ll have their guts for garters. I’ll . . .”

Harriet frowned, then smiled, then laughed. “Oh dear me,” she said, delighted. “Oh my word. You hadn’t seen it, had you? Oh, how funny.”

“It’s rubbish,” George said flatly. “Anyway, no one saw that letter. No one knew about it.”

“One person evidently did. I just can’t believe she didn’t tell me about it. But then again, she always did have a mind of her own.”

Harriet narrowed her eyes as she watched for George’s reaction. She had no idea whether Jen had found the letter and leaked it to the press or not—in fact, she suspected that she probably hadn’t. But she rather hoped that George might think she had. It didn’t do to have your daughter and ex-husband too close.

George looked at his ex-wife incredulously, realizing that she was talking about Jen. “She wouldn’t,” he said firmly. “We talked about it, and we agreed it wouldn’t go any further.”

Harriet’s eyes widened. “So it
was
her,” she said with a smile. “I suspected as much. Oh, George, you are dreadfully naïve, you know. You really think that your daughter loves you and is on your side?”

She shook her head. “George, she hasn’t seen you in years. She hates Bell Consulting as much as I do. But I’m sure you’re right. No, after all that dedicated parenting you put in over the years, I’m sure she wouldn’t dream of shopping you to the newspapers.”

George stared at her. “She’s seen through you, you know,” he said carefully. “I wouldn’t play the moral upper-hand card on this one.”

Harriet’s eyes narrowed. “Look, George,” she said eventually, deciding to extend her bluffing. “You’re fighting a losing battle here. Just accept it—you lost your daughter a long time ago, you lost me even longer ago, and now you’re going to lose your firm, your reputation, and all your money. And the best bit is you deserve everything that’s coming to you!”

“Keep out of this, Harriet, I’m warning you,” George growled.

“Oh, but it’s so much fun, George,” Harriet said with a little smile. “If you’d only listened to me all those years ago, none of this would have happened. But you didn’t, and . . . well, here we are.” She looked at her nails, pushing back a stray cuticle.

George looked at her incredulously. “You’re still banging on about Axiom, aren’t you? You can never just let anything go.”

Harriet stood up. “Why should I, George? I told you to ditch Axiom the first time they breached regulations. They were my client and I said I wanted to terminate the contract, but oh no, not Malcolm Bray, not your old school pal Malcolm. The school pal who’s been jealous of you since you were in short trousers and you never even realized? Well, you didn’t listen to me then, and you’re evidently not going to listen to me now, so I think I’ll be off.”

“You wanted me to get rid of Malcolm because you’d been sleeping with him and he finished with you,” George said softly. “You talk so much about ethics, but I don’t think that getting rid of a client because they’ve moved on to another woman is truly ethical, do you?”

Harriet faltered slightly. She hadn’t expected this. “You knew?” she asked, her voice nearly a whisper.

She watched as George looked at her oddly as if concentrating hard on something, then turned as if rummaging behind his pillow for something, wiping his face and cheeks as he did so.

“I blamed myself in a way,” he said in a strangled-sounding voice. “I was never there. Malcolm saw his opportunity.”

“And you’re still friends? After all that, you’re still friends?” Her voice was wobbly now. She couldn’t decide what upset her the most—the thought that George had known all along or the knowledge that it obviously mattered so little to him that he was still friends with that bastard. Malcolm had convinced her that he was in love with her. Had made her believe him. And had then walked away without a second glance. How could George remain friends with a man who had betrayed both of them like that?

“We all have our own way of dealing with things, Harriet.”

Harriet paused for a moment, then smiled tightly. “Yes, George, I suppose we do.” And with that, she left the room, shutting the door behind her. As she walked down the corridor she thought she could hear the sound of a man sobbing, and it reminded her just how much she hated hospitals.

Jen went white as she scrolled through the document. Payment after payment from Bell Consulting to a numbered Indonesian account. No details, no explanations. Why would a spreadsheet like this exist? And what was it doing on her father’s computer? She wracked her brains, trying to ignore the little voice inside her head that kept saying “Bribes. It’s bribe money,” but it kept getting louder. Had her mother been right all along? Had she fallen hook, line, and sinker for her father’s lies?

She didn’t want to believe it. She was desperately trying to think of any justifiable reason for the money transfers. Trying to think of something her father might have said that could explain it. But she drew a blank. He had an Indonesian office, but these weren’t business transfers—there was no “in” and “out”; just “out.” These were payments for services rendered. Payments to make things happen. They had to be bribes.

The . . . the bastard. Her father was a lying, cheating bastard. The past few weeks had just been a ruse to get her off his case, to stop her finding out the truth. And she’d fallen for it. He was lower than low, and she . . . well, she was even worse for letting him suck her in, letting him flatter her into believing him, into trusting him again.

She was breathing quickly, her heart pounding in her chest. What was she going to do? Who was she going to tell?

She stood up and started pacing around. She should call her mother.

No. No, she needed the truth first. She was going to give her father his bloody laptop. She was going to tell him what she’d found. And she was going to make him tell her, admit the truth. She wanted to see his face, wanted him to see the hurt on hers. Wanted him to know that he would never have a daughter again, ever.

In what felt like slow motion, she sat down and transferred the file across onto her CD. Then she calmly bundled the laptop back into its case, picked up her bag, and left for the hospital, slamming the door behind her so loudly that the neighbors upstairs ran to the window to see who’d left in such a rage.

“I’m sorry, dear, you missed him.”

Jen looked at the nurse blankly. “What do you mean I’ve missed him? He was right here yesterday. He’s staying here—it’s not like he could have just popped out.”

The nurse looked at her strangely and Jen realized that her tone was perhaps a little on the sarcastic side.

“I’m sorry,” she said quickly. “What I meant to say was, do you know where he is?”

The nurse shook her head. “Home, I expect. He checked out about an hour ago.”

“Checked out?” Jen said indignantly. “This is a hospital, not a hotel. How can he just check out?”

The nurse smiled indulgently. “We’re not a prison,” she said. “People can leave if they want to.”

Jen frowned. “But why would he want to leave? Why would he just go, when I was bringing his things round to him? It doesn’t make any sense.”

The nurse shook her head again. “I don’t like to get involved,” she said with a little shrug.

“But I’ve got his computer,” Jen said redundantly. “He asked me to bring his computer.”

“Maybe you could take it to him at home?” the nurse suggested.

Jen frowned and looked around the bare room. Suddenly she noticed something next to the bed. There, on the bedside table, was a newspaper. She walked over and looked more closely at it and discovered that as she’d feared, it was the copy of the
Times
with the story about Malcolm Bray’s letter in it. Her heart sank as she realized that someone had shown it to George, that he probably thought she’d leaked it on purpose.

“But he can’t have gone home,” she insisted. “I need to talk to him.”

The nurse nodded understandingly and Jen wondered how many loopy relatives she had to deal with on a daily basis. She’d probably be in the staff room—or whatever nurses had—that evening telling her colleagues about the crazy daughter who refused to believe her father had gone home. “Sad, it was,” she imagined her saying. “Didn’t look crazy, but just shows, you never can tell . . .”

“I’m sure he’d be happy to see you if you dropped by at home,” the nurse suggested.

Jen felt like stamping her feet and crying out like a toddler. She didn’t
want
to go to his house; she wanted her father in this bed, a captive audience, so that she could shout at him, so that she could give him the speech she’d prepared and memorized on the way here, the speech that would hound him for the rest of his days, make him realize how inadequate he was, how alone he would be in this world. He’d probably have people around him at home. And it was his territory, his power base. It just wouldn’t be the same.

“Actually, I can take that.”

Jen turned, startled, to see a Bell consultant at the door. She recognized him. It was the one called Jack.

“That won’t be necessary,” she said firmly. “My father asked me to bring this to him, and I plan to do so.”

He held out his hand and smiled smoothly. “Actually, Mr. Bell asked if I’d swing by and collect it from you. Save you the bother of having to go to his house. I think you’ve got his phone, too?”

Jen stared at him. This was all the leverage she had, the only thing that she knew her father needed. If she gave them up, he wouldn’t ever have to see her. He’d obviously read the article, obviously deduced that she’d never trusted him in the first place, that she’d run to the newspapers and betrayed him. Well, maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing. Maybe that’s all he deserved.

“If you don’t mind?” Jack said with the hint of a smile but cold, calculating eyes.

“Fine,” Jen said eventually, thrusting both at him. “But you can tell him from me that I hate him. That as far as I’m concerned, he doesn’t have a daughter anymore.”

And half expecting the
Dynasty
theme to start playing, she ran from the room and all the way to the tube station.