Throughout the long years of friendship which followed, neither of them ever referred to the incident again, but its legacy to Sir Vivian was a lasting gratitude to his friend, and a profound distaste for the unnatural tendencies displayed by the captain of the First XI. He had never been able to reconcile himself to the increasing tolerance towards homosexuals, and what he regarded as their ghastly practices.
When Sarah had announced her engagement a few months ago to the son of his oldest friend, Sir Vivian had been not only delighted, but relieved. Dearly as he loved his daughter, theirs had always been a somewhat awkward relationship, particularly after the death of Sarah’s mother. Without his wife to bridge the communication gap, Sir Vivian approached sole parental care of his extremely attractive and sexually precocious daughter with bafflement and anxiety, feeling the best he could do was to give her a generous allowance and hope she’d be bright enough not to make any disastrous mistakes. When Sarah left her boarding school to go to Oxford to study law, he had naturally been pleased, but wasn’t convinced that she had the necessary drive and tenacity to make much of a career of it. In his view, the best any girl could do was to find some decent man with a fair amount of money, and settle down. That Sarah had chosen to do this with the son of his best friend was more than Sir Vivian could have hoped for.
On the eve of his party, fifteen minutes before the guests were due to arrive, Sir Vivian wandered through the reception rooms, surveying the array of glasses and bottles of champagne cooling in their baths of ice. He had toyed with the idea of cancelling the party a few weeks ago, fearing that, with a recession impending, it might look overly extravagant. But he was glad that he hadn’t. Besides, the simplicity of hotpot hinted at austerity. This year’s gathering would be more than a mere social event – it would also be a special celebration of the fact that his only daughter was to marry the son of his oldest friend. Smiling with satisfaction, he went through to the kitchen to see how the caterers were getting along.
While her father was inspecting trays of hotpot, Sarah was still in the office, trying to catch up with the last of her work. She’d already received more than one frosty reproof from her boss, Hugo, about sloppiness and bad timekeeping. Two weeks ago she couldn’t have cared less, confident that as soon as she was married she was going to dump the job. But Toby’s redundancy had changed everything. Until he found something else, they badly needed Sarah’s money. Only an hour ago, Hugo had dropped an urgent new matter on her desk, barking, ‘I need it tied up by the end of the day, so make sure you get it done tonight.’
She was leafing through the file when her mobile buzzed. It was Toby.
‘I’ve just had a shower, and I’ll be leaving the gym in ten minutes. Do you want me to pick you up?’
‘I’m still at the office. Probably going to be here for another half-hour at least. Bloody Hugo dropped something on me at the last minute. One of our major clients wants reinsurance cover for a tanker going to Yemen. You go on without me. I’ll see you there.’
‘OK. Don’t work too hard.’
She clicked the phone off. That was a laugh. At least she had a job. All very well for people with time to spend in the gym. Why wasn’t he out there trying to find something? So far as she could tell, he’d done nothing all week. She turned back to the file. She’d got cover for seventy per cent of the risk, with the last thirty per cent still to get. In theory, she could go straight to her father’s bash from the office, but she really wanted to go home and have a shower and change, and not turn up in her office scruffs. So she needed to wrap this up in the next fifteen minutes, if possible. She pondered for a moment, then picked up the phone, deciding to give Gerald Last at Haddow Syndicate a shot. With any luck she’d catch him before he headed off to the wine bar for his Friday night drinking session. Gerald was a smooth operator, one of the old-school, long-lunching brigade who gave the lie to the notion that the City was no longer a sexist institution. He largely despised City women, but he liked Sarah because she was attractive, had decent legs and nice tits, and was a good sport. As a result he and Sarah had done a fair amount of business over the past year or so. Sarah, with robust cynicism, knew exactly how Gerald’s mind worked and was prepared to flirt and massage his ego to get the job done.
She found Gerald still in his office and, after some preliminary banter, explained what she needed.
‘Who else is on the slip?’ asked Gerald.
Sarah gave him the names of the other underwriters.
‘Fine,’ said Gerald. ‘Don’t see a problem.’