Sophie Weston - The Millionaire Affair

‘What’s wrong with your boss?’ she said carefully.

Lisa was savage suddenly. ‘He doesn’t like it that a woman has the best trading results in the room. He couldn’t get out of promoting me, but he compensated by—’ Just the thought of Sam’s lecture made her choke with rage.

Tatiana made a few editorial amendments to her scenario.

‘Did he suggest you say thank you in the traditional way?’

‘What?’ Lisa looked blank for a moment. Then she understood. ‘Oh, no. He wouldn’t dare make a pass at me.’

Looking at her pugnacious chin, Tatiana could believe it.

‘So what did he do, then?’

‘He gave me a lecture on my style. Style! I made half the portfolio’s profits last quarter and he complains about my style!’

Tatiana was disappointed. She liked more passion in her drama. ‘What is wrong with your style?’

Lisa listed the points on her fingers. ‘Wrong address. Wrong clothes. Wrong friends.’

Tatiana began to see that this was a satisfactory drama after all.

‘He thinks you are not good enough for him,’ she deduced. She was indignant.

‘In bucketfuls,’ agreed Lisa. A shadow crossed her face. ‘And he’s not the first,’ she added, almost to herself.

Tatiana didn’t notice. She was thinking. ‘Do you want to rent or buy?’

‘Well, I’m renting at the moment—’

‘Because you could always have the garden flat in my house. As long as you aren’t determined to buy.’

‘—but I don’t want to have to go through—’ Lisa realised what Tatiana had said. ‘What?’

Tatiana repeated it obligingly.

Lisa shook her head, stunned. ‘I didn’t know—I mean I didn’t realise—I wasn’t fishing…’ she said, acutely embarrassed.

Tatiana was amused. ‘I know you weren’t. Why should you? You don’t know where I live, or that I have a flat to let.’

‘No,’ agreed Lisa, still slightly dazed.

‘Well, I have. Just round the corner from here.’ She paused impressively. ‘Stanley Crescent.’

‘Oh,’ said Lisa.

Tatiana waited expectantly. It was clear that something more was required. Lisa had no idea what. She felt helpless.

Seeing her confusion, Tatiana smiled. ‘It’s a very good address.’

‘Is it? I mean—I’m sure it is.’ Lisa was floundering. She said desperately, ‘I just don’t know much about this part of London.’

‘Secret gardens,’ said Tatiana in thrilling tones.

‘Sorry?’

‘When you walk through Notting Hill all you see are these great white terraces on both sides of the street, right?’

‘Right,’ said Lisa, puzzled.

‘Well, what you don’t know is that behind several terraces there are huge communal gardens. Big as a park, some of them. Mature trees, rose gardens, the lot. It’s like having a share of a house in the country.’

She waved her hands expressively. Quite suddenly, Lisa could see green vistas, trees in spring leaf, birds building nests, space. She gave a sigh of unconscious longing.

‘Like gardens, do you?’ said Tatiana, pleased.

‘Never had one. Don’t know,’ said Lisa.

But her dreaming eyes told a different story. Tatiana took a decision.

‘Move in on Monday.’

Lisa did.

It was a blustery day that blew the cherry blossom off the trees in a snowstorm of petals. Fortunately she didn’t have much to move. She installed her boxes in the sitting room of Tatiana’s garden flat, paid the movers and took a cab to work. She was at her desk by eleven.

She was greeted by a teasing cheer.

‘Hey, hey, half a day’s work today?’ said Rob, her second in command.

‘I moved house,’ Lisa answered briefly. She settled behind her desk and tapped in her access code.

Rob’s eyebrows climbed. Lisa had told him, raging, about her lecture from Sam on Friday afternoon.

‘You don’t hang about, do you?’

She was scrolling through the position pages on the screen but she looked up at that. Her wicked grin flashed.

‘No sooner the word than the deed, me.’

‘Sam will be impressed.’

Lisa chuckled naughtily. ‘I know. But I can’t help that.’

‘I bet he checks up,’ Rob mused. ‘Just to make sure you’ve got a proper up-market place this time.’

Her laughter died. ‘He wouldn’t dare.’

‘Want to bet?’

‘If he does,’ said Lisa with grim satisfaction, ‘he’s in for a surprise.’

For Lisa, too, the move turned out to have its surprises. For one thing she had the greatest difficulty in getting Tatiana to name a figure for the rent. Her new landlady had escorted her enthusiastically through the house—stuffed with an eclectic collection of furniture, ferns and objets d’art—the garden—as green and private as Lisa had imagined—and the local shops—everything from a late-night grocer’s to a bookshop which sold nothing except books about food and even smelled like a good kitchen. There was no doubt that Tatiana was delighted to welcome her. But she clearly thought anything to do with money was low and wouldn’t be pinned down on it.

‘Look,’ said Lisa, turning up at Tatiana’s door one evening with a bottle of expensive Rioja, some information from the local estate agent and an expression of determination, ‘this can’t go on. You need a contract and so do I.’

She threw down a printed document onto a walnut sofa table which gleamed softly under an art deco lamp.

‘That’s a standard form. I’ve signed it but run it past your solicitor before you sign.’ Something in Tatiana’s expression gave her pause. ‘You have got a solicitor?’

‘The family has,’ said Tatiana, without enthusiasm.

‘Fine. Call him tomorrow. The one thing that I haven’t put in is the amount of rent. Now, the agent gave me a range for one-bedroomed flats in this area.’ A handful of leaflets joined the contract. ‘Pick one.’

Tatiana wrinkled her nose disdainfully. ‘When I was your age, girls did not admit that they knew money existed. It was men’s business.’

Lisa was not deflected from her purpose, but she grinned.

‘Don’t wriggle. I’m not leaving until I’ve given you a cheque.’

Tatiana picked up one of the estate agent’s pages and looked at it with distaste. ‘That’s far too much. Anyway, that one’s got a separate entrance.’

Lisa had come prepared. ‘All right. There are monthly rentals for nine flats there. I’ve worked out the average.’ She magicked a slip of paper out of her jeans pocket.

Tatiana took it gingerly. Lisa laughed. She had seen her look at a snail on the garden path with much the same shrinking distaste.

‘Talk to your solicitor, or I’m moving out. And that would be a pity. This is a lovely place.’

The May evening was dark. From Tatiana’s first-floor window the shadowed sweep of trees and lawns looked like a magic landscape. Lisa sank into a 1920s chaise longue under the window and sighed with pleasure.

‘Wonderful,’ she said exuberantly. ‘I’ve never known anywhere like it.

Tatiana’s eyes were warm. ‘I’m glad.’ She opened the wine and poured them each a glass. ‘My family bought the house for me years ago. They thought if I could not, after all, make my living dancing, then at least I could rent out rooms.’

Lisa accepted the glass of ruby wine. ‘And did you?’

‘I’ve done both. Dancing is a hard life. Especially when you begin to age. These days I direct, but it was tough in my forties.’ Tatiana frowned. ‘My family still do an annual check-up, though.’

Lisa sipped wine, amused. ‘Who’s brave enough to do that?’

Tatiana sniffed. ‘Well, this year it will probably be my nephew, Nikolai. Couldn’t be more unsuitable. The last time I saw him he was wearing a beard and khaki camouflage gear. Still,’ she added grudgingly, ‘that was on television.’