Chapter 12
At four thirty on Monday afternoon, Aiden wandered into Tallulah’s office and leaned on the corner of her desk. “Do you want to make a start on those files?”
She looked up. “Now?”
“If you’ve finished the rest of your work.” He still hadn’t cut his hair and pushed it out of his eyes with the back of one hand. It flopped back again.
“Okay.” Tallulah pulled open her desk drawer and lifted out a pile of thick plastic folders. “Here they are. All the ones you asked for.”
Aiden took them from her and began to flick through them. He pulled a face. “I’m not looking forward to this at all. It could take months.”
“I’m only here for a couple more weeks,” she said. “Less than that, actually. We’ll have to work fast.”
“Mmm?” He squinted at a piece of paper as he pulled it loose from a folder. “We only need enough evidence to justify an external audit.”
“Is that what we’re looking for?”
“We’re looking for anything that doesn’t add up. Come on. We’ll work at my desk. We might be able to get through these in a week or so.” He sounded doubtful.
Tallulah followed him through to his office and closed the door behind her. Aiden retreated behind his wide desk, and she pulled the chair in front of it closer. He handed her one of the folders.
Two hours later, he dropped his stack of papers on the desk top with a thud.
“Have you found anything?” Tallulah looked up.
Aiden rose to his feet and stretched his arms above his head with a groan. “No. I’m starving. I can’t concentrate when I’m hungry. Do you want to go and get something to eat?”
“What? And come back afterwards?” Tallulah was on a roll. “Why don’t I ring out for pizza? Then we can just carry on.”
Aiden paced to the window and stretched again. “I need a break. Let’s go out and get that pizza. It’ll still count as overtime for you. You can take a file if it makes you feel better.”
“You’ve the attention span of a goldfish.” Tallulah watched his shoulders roll under his perfectly tailored shirt. “I haven’t been out of the building since eight o’clock this morning, and I’m prepared to carry on.”
“Come on and stop arguing.” Aiden ushered her out of his office, locking the door behind him.
Tallulah’s stomach growled. It was eight o’clock, and she’d eaten nothing since twelve. She was a woman who liked regular meals. She silenced the small voice that told her she should just go home. “Where are we going?”
“Did you say you wanted pizza?”
“I wouldn’t turn it down.”
“I remember there was a place down here.” Aiden turned into a small side street, almost a tunnel, with high walls, a mixture of modern and old. Halfway along was a sign for a pizzeria. “Good, it’s still around. I wasn’t sure.” He stood back to let Tallulah go into the restaurant ahead of him. Most of the closely packed tables were occupied.
A waiter rushed forward. “Do you have a reservation?”
When they said no, he glanced over the room before picking two menus out of a holder by the door. “Is this okay?” He pointed at a tiny table for two in the corner of the room.
“It’s fine.” Tallulah looked at Aiden who nodded. The smell reminded her of how hungry she was.
They followed the waiter to the table and ordered two beers while they studied the menu.
“I wouldn’t have taken you for a beer drinker,” Tallulah said, picking up the menu.
“What do you mean?”
“I would have guessed you were more fine wines.”
“That shows what a poor judge of character you are. You shouldn’t make snap judgements.” Aiden lifted his eyes from his menu and gave her a reproving look that transformed into a grin. “I’m adaptable. I think I’ll have the Sicilian.”
“A margarita for me.” Tallulah put the menu down and picked up her drink. It was icy cold, and she relished the cool relief as it went down her throat. She wriggled her stiff shoulders. “You were right. We needed to get out of there. I eat too much pizza though.”
“No such thing as too much pizza, and I’m getting bogged down in numbers,” Aiden said. “I also think it’s a huge disadvantage not being familiar with the company. I have to learn as I go along. I don’t know what the management team think of me. Clueless I should imagine.”
Tallulah shrugged. “I wouldn’t worry about them. They don’t seem to be doing much of a job.”
Aiden raised both eyebrows.
“The first time I temped here, people were hard working. Everyone looked busy. Now everyone seems discontented. No one arrives before nine, and the office is empty by five. Haven’t you felt the change in the company?”
“I don’t know.” Aiden rested his elbows on the table. “I haven’t spent much time here. I worked on the construction sites in my university holidays, but that was nearly fifteen years ago, and it was very different from head office.”
“Construction sites?” Tallulah couldn’t imagine it. She narrowed her eyes and tried to picture Aiden stripped to the waist, hauling bricks up scaffolding or whatever it was they did. She hurriedly moved her mind back to the present and Aiden in his slightly crumpled linen suit. She fixed her eyes on his hands.
“Yes. My father had both of us working for the company in the holidays.”
“Your sister worked on the sites as well?” She’d caught glimpses of Francesca around the building, and she looked even less like a casual worker than Aiden.
“Not in the same role.” Aiden grinned and pushed his hair back from his face. “My father wanted us both to go into the family business.”
Not many people would describe a money-spinning multi-national as ‘the family business.’ “So why didn’t you?”
“Construction never really interested me,” Aiden said. “I studied molecular biology at university. I didn’t know what I wanted to do when I finished, so I did a PhD. It made my father furious. He called it a waste of time.”
“Then what did you do?” Tallulah was fascinated.
“I got a job doing analysis for a venture capital company in the US. They funded new advances in gene therapy. I loved it. It was such a buzz to turn ideas into successful businesses.”
“What did your family think of that?” Tallulah asked.
“My father wasn’t pleased. He didn’t speak to me for three months after I moved to the US. He wouldn’t answer my phone calls or anything.”
“What about your mother?”
“She talked to me, but every time she called, she asked me to do as my father wanted. Francesca couldn’t understand why I didn’t want to go into the company, but at least she thought it should be up to me.”
“You’re on good terms now?”
Aiden let out a bark of laughter. “I think my father sees this as the thin edge of the wedge. I suspect he thinks I’ll go from acting CEO to permanent CEO, with him pulling the strings.”
“And will you?”
Aiden gave her an incredulous look. “Not in a thousand lifetimes. I like what I do.”
The pizzas arrived. Neither of them said anything for the next few minutes.
“How old were you when your mother died?” Aiden asked, looking up briefly from his pizza.
“Fourteen.” She wasn’t sure she wanted to talk about it. It was a subject she mostly avoided, even with her siblings.
“What happened then?”
“We went into care,” she said. “I was fostered.”
Aiden pulled a face. “Was it bad?”
“Not really.” She pushed at her pizza with the tip of her fork. “I was lucky, but I missed my brother and sisters.”
“How many do you have?”
“Two sisters and a brother. They’re all younger than me.” She didn’t mention the twins. They were completely lost until they reached eighteen at least, but she hoped that then they would try to find out about their birth family. She’d like to see how they’d grown up. Her mother’s last lover had probably been their father. He’d been barely out of his teens, but already a petty criminal, with a streak of violence running through his character. At least he’d left the children alone. Until they annoyed him, and then if they moved fast enough, he’d let them get away. He’d beaten her mother though.
“You weren’t fostered together?”
“No. Not many people can take on four children. Especially ones that might be trouble.”
“Were you trouble?”
“Not me.” Tallulah had always been serious and determined to work towards a goal. She’d had her first-ever opportunity to think about her own future once she was in foster care, and she knew she didn’t want to follow in her mother’s footsteps. Ellie Becks had taken a wrong turning early in her life. She had given birth to Tallulah at the age of sixteen, and as long as Tallulah could remember, her mother had struggled with various addictions. She’d always hoped a man could save her, but most of the men she brought home needed saving themselves.
“What happened to the others?” Aiden asked. “Do you still see them at all?”
“Of course I do.” Tallulah had raised her siblings. “Family’s important.” From her fifth birthday, she had realised her mother wasn’t to be relied on. She’d looked after herself, and then Zoe, Mia, and Kyle, made sure there was food for them, even if she’d had to steal it. She made sure they were at school every day and that they were clean and dressed. She knew what might happen if social services suspected the family wasn’t coping. She sighed heavily. It had happened anyway.
“What happened to your mother?” Aiden asked. His eyes were intent, and she got the idea he really cared about her answer.
“She died of an overdose,” Tallulah said. “That’s what they said. I don’t know what she’d taken. I don’t want to know.”
“That’s why you—”
“It was a long time ago.” She’d had enough of the subject. Thinking about her mother depressed her. Tallulah had never been sure whether she was angry at her mother or just pitied her. It was past, and the cards had been stacked against her mother. All Tallulah could do for her now, was to make her own life count, and to do her best for her siblings. If they’d let her. She put down her fork and picked up a slice of pizza in her fingers. It had cooled enough.
Aiden copied her.
“My youngest brother is working for Marlowe’s,” she said. That was something she didn’t mind talking about.
Aiden looked interested. “What’s he doing?”
“Just a summer job in the mailroom.”
“Does he like it?”
“It’s okay,” she said. “I blackmailed Human Resources into employing him. Said I’d stay and work for you if they gave him a job.”
Aiden frowned. “Why does everyone think I’m difficult? They loved me in the US.”
“Are you sure?” Tallulah smiled to herself.
“Just ask Loretta.”
“Loretta?”
“My admin assistant.” Aiden took a drink. “She’s been with me since we started the company.”
“Mmm.” Tallulah sat back, unable to eat a single morsel more. “And she loves you?”
“Adores me.” He hoped Tallulah never had a chance to talk to Loretta.
“Right.”
“Coffee?” Aiden waved at one of the waiters.
Tallulah glanced at her watch. It was half past nine. She yawned ostentatiously.
“I just live around the corner,” Aiden picked up his cup. “Since this morning. How will you get home?”
“Bus.”
He frowned. “I don’t like that. Why don’t you come back to my place and I’ll call you a taxi?”
Going back to Aiden’s apartment felt like a bad idea. “Will the company pay?”
“Naturally.” He gave her a haughty stare.
“I’ll ask the waiter to call one. That’ll be quicker.”
Aiden shrugged. “I’ll wait with you.”
Tallulah usually travelled everywhere by bus, or on foot. She hated the hot overcrowded tubes, especially in summer. She’d never felt unsafe in London, but if it made him feel happier, he could keep her company.”
The taxi arrived as they were finishing the coffee.
“Can you work late again tomorrow?” He bent down to speak through the open door.
“Yes,” she said. “But not the following day.”
He slammed the door closed and the taxi started to move. She watched through the window as Aiden walked towards the main road.
~ ~ ~
Half past midnight.
Tallulah sat up and rearranged her pillow by punching it hard. It was impossible to sleep. Her mind kept circling back to Aiden, and not in a work-appropriate way. Maybe she shouldn’t spend time with him outside the office. Why had she done it? None of her previous employers had tempted her to as much as a lunchtime drink. An image of him stripped to the waist and flashing his muscles on a construction site looped through her brain.
She gave up trying to blank it in the end and forced her mind to think of ways of stealing money and of ways to go about hiding it. There were several methods to do it through the ordering system. She could think up various strategies for liberating small amounts of cash without even slightly straining her brain. It was a good thing for the world that she had decided a life of crime wasn’t for her.
She twisted onto her back, pushing off the thin sheet. It was so hot, and a beam from the streetlight outside the building leaked round her screen. An insect moved on the rough plaster of the ceiling.
One way of defrauding the company would be to order more equipment and raw materials than could be used, at least on paper, and charging for it, then ordering the correct amount in reality and pocketing the difference. The problem with that was that it would involve more than one person. Another way would be to add a ten percent charge onto everything that went through accounting. That would certainly make a dent in profits and could be done by a smaller group of people. They’d have to be fairly senior. When she thought about it, none of it could have been carried out by junior staff. It was difficult for them to get away with requisitioning an extra biro, and stealing even a box of paperclips would be fraught with risk. It had to be someone senior. Images of grey men in suits flitted through her mind, and she finally drifted off to sleep, counting them like sheep.