Майкл Ридпат - Fatal Error

Ninetyminutes had to succeed for Guy to survive.

Guy was watching me. He knew I knew.

I opened another beer as soon as I got home, and sank into an armchair. It was very hard not to let Guy’s despair rub off on me.

My eyes rested on the telephone. I still had an unpleasant task facing me that evening. It was one of those tasks that doesn’t get any easier the longer you leave it, so I decided to face up to it straight away. I called my parents.

Fortunately, my father answered. He was full of expectation.

‘Did you tell Mum?’ I asked him.

‘Yes, I did,’ he replied. ‘To tell you the truth she was a bit miffed. Can’t think why. Seemed to think I had taken a big risk. She said even if it all came out well in the end it might not have done. Still, we’ll show her, eh?’

‘Perhaps not, Dad.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You must have read about our IPO being delayed.’

‘Yes. But that was just for a few weeks, wasn’t it? The papers say this is just a correction. The market will be roaring ahead again any moment soon.’

‘Well it had better hurry up,’ I said. ‘Because until it does there will be no IPO.’

‘Oh,’ said my father, thinking through the consequences. ‘So where does that leave Ninetyminutes?’

‘Very short of cash,’ I said. ‘I don’t think we’re actually going to go bust, at least not for a few months yet, but it means we don’t have any funds to invest in the business. It will be all we can do to keep it ticking over.’

‘Your mother won’t like this.’

‘No, she won’t. But you’d better tell her, Dad.’

‘Perhaps I’ll wait a couple of weeks. You never know what might turn up.’

‘Tell her, Dad.’

My father sounded deflated. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘And good luck.’

I was working late and Guy was out of the office. I didn’t know whether he was at a meeting or had sneaked home. I was engrossed in a spreadsheet for calculating Amy’s funding requirements for the retailing business over the summer, when I felt as much as saw someone watching me. I looked up. It was Ingrid, sitting in Guy’s chair, fiddling with a strand of her chestnut hair.

‘Am I disturbing you?’ she asked.

‘No.’ I looked at the papers in front of me representing hours of unfinished work, work that couldn’t be done during the hurly-burly of the normal office day. ‘That is, you are, but I’m grateful.’

‘Stressed?’

I smiled. ‘Yeah. I am stressed. And tired. Funny, really, I could handle all the hard work when I thought we were just about to do the IPO, but it’s more difficult when we’re struggling to survive.’

‘What do you think about the IPO?’

‘We’ll get it away in the summer,’ I said. ‘It’s just a question of getting through the next couple of months. Bloomfield Weiss are confident we’ve got a good story, and the site’s going well.’

Ingrid’s pale-blue eyes were watching me steadily. ‘Is that what you really think?’

I sighed. ‘I don’t know what I really think. All that might happen. Or Bloomfield Weiss could be totally wrong and we’ll never do an IPO. We might never get another penny of cash from anywhere. Champion Starsat might come back and buy us tomorrow. The site might crash. On-line retailing sales might go through the roof. People might stop using the Internet. The world might stop turning. Doing this job, I’ve given up trying to forecast even a day ahead. We just have to keep plugging away and hope.’

‘I know what you mean,’ said Ingrid. ‘But Guy seems worried.’

‘He is,’ I said.

‘I think he’s losing his nerve.’

‘Do you?’

‘Don’t you?’ She looked at me pointedly.

‘Yes,’ I admitted.

‘Unless he pulls himself together, everything will fall apart before we get a chance to do the IPO.’

‘Can you talk him out of it?’ I asked.

‘I don’t think so. We don’t have that kind of relationship.’

I couldn’t help myself raising an eyebrow. Ingrid pretended not to notice.

‘What about you?’ I asked her. ‘Are you worried? You always look so cool about everything.’

‘Do I? I don’t always feel cool about everything. Yes, I am worried. Of course, everything has always been so uncertain at Ninetyminutes. And I kind of expected that when I joined. It made a change after working for a large corporation with its plans and budgets. But over the last nine months I’ve really found myself being drawn in. If we’d done the IPO my stake would have been worth three million pounds. That’s serious money. It’s really why I joined Ninetyminutes. It’s so frustrating to have that amount of money so close and then see it whipped away from you. I might never get another chance.’

‘Neither might any of us.’

‘I don’t want to let it go, David. When we’re so close.’ She must have seen the surprise on my face. ‘What is it? You looked shocked.’

‘Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t expect you to be so focused on the cash.’

‘Aren’t you? Isn’t Guy?’

‘Oh, yes,’ I said. ‘But I know about Guy. And about me. I suppose I always assumed that this was just a more exciting job for you. I thought you didn’t have to worry about money.’

‘Oh, because I have wealthy parents, you mean?’

‘I suppose so,’ I said.

‘Rich parents do not solve all your problems. Just ask Guy.’

‘I think I’m beginning to understand that.’

‘This job is fun, I’ll grant you that. And it’s true I’m not going to starve. But my father is never going to give me anything much more than pocket money. Nor should he. I don’t expect it. I’m going to have to make my own way in the world, and I’m cool with that.

‘I’ve done all right so far. I have a good reputation in the business. I could have walked into any of the top magazine publishers in the UK, or anywhere else for that matter. Good salary, good prospects. A woman can do well in magazine publishing. It’s just that a rich woman can do even better.’

‘So what will you do if you do make your three million out of Ninetyminutes? Retire to the South of France?’

‘No way. I’d stick with Ninetyminutes for as long as was necessary. But then I’d probably start my own magazine. Or maybe website. With my own money instead of somebody else’s.’

It made sense, of course. Ingrid had never seemed to me to take life very seriously, but there was no reason why she shouldn’t want to make her millions just as much as Guy and I did. And her reasons were more down to earth than ours. For Ingrid, joining Ninetyminutes had been a rational, if risky, career choice, a route to somewhere she wanted to go. She knew who she was. Both Guy and I were still trying to find out.

‘Let’s hope you get your chance,’ I said. ‘In the meantime, all we can do is keep our cool and pray.’

‘And try to get Guy to do the same thing.’

A week of austerity. Budgets slashed, office heads briefed, Amy placated. I did most of it. Guy’s enthusiasm seemed to have left him completely. His energy reached a new low. He showed up every day, but he was of little use. And this sudden lethargy made a big difference. We had all come to rely on his confidence and encouragement, urging us on to do those seemingly impossible tasks. Without it, the hill seemed higher to climb for all of us.

Frankly, this irritated me. Now wasn’t the time to give up. I wasn’t going to roll over and die, sulking as I did so. I had put a year of my life, fifty thousand pounds and my father’s retirement savings into the venture and I wasn’t about to give up on all that. I tried to replace Guy’s energy with my own. It wasn’t quite the same, but the team appreciated it.