Lottie sees me struggling with my mood boards from the window of the office and runs out to help.
“Is this all for Japan?” she says, tilting them this way and that to get a look at them. “Wow, they look amazing.” Her enthusiasm is infectious.
“I changed some things up over the weekend. I just wanted to see how they sat against the walnut floors.” I don’t tell her that I’d done it through the fog of a hangover after drinking myself into a stupor after Nathan had gone to bed on Saturday night. I’m still not feeling quite myself a day later—it seems to take me so much longer to recover than it used to. Though I can’t imagine it helps when I’m mixing gin and wine with antidepressants.
“I think Nathan’s on the phone now,” she says through a wide grin, as I hold the door open for her. “Might it be the decision?”
My stomach does a somersault as I look at my watch. “Oh God, it wasn’t supposed to be happening until 11:30.” I let out an involuntary squeak, though I don’t know whether it’s from nerves or excitement.
I try to gauge Nathan’s expression as I peer through the striped glass panels of his office wall, but although he must see me, he shows no flicker of recognition.
“Do you want a coffee?” asks Lottie.
“Yes please,” I say. “A strong one.”
The atmosphere is charged as Nathan moves, seemingly in slow motion, through the open-plan area and into my office. Six heads turn and watch his back as if it’s going to give them the answer we all so desperately want to hear.
I feel a rush of heat to my ears as he closes the door behind him and stands in front of me. I can see his lips moving but the first few words he utters sound as if he’s talking underwater.
“I’m sorry,” is the first thing I hear clearly.
My head falls into my hands, my elbows firmly on my desk.
“The developers aren’t buying the land after all. They’re not going ahead with the deal.”
It’s in that moment that I realize just how much I’d wanted it. “But why?” I ask, my voice high-pitched and sounding like a spoiled child.
“I don’t know,” says Nathan. “But what we need to take away from this is that if the deal had gone ahead, we would have definitely won the business. They said as much.”
I can’t think straight. I just feel deflated.
“Did they even hint at what’s happened to change their mind?” I say, finding my voice.
Nathan scratches at his head, his bemusement obviously as great as my own.
“I mean, why would they just suddenly pull out at this late stage? AT Designs aside, I thought this was a massive deal for them as well.”
“It is. It was,” he says, rubbing at the five o’clock shadow that peppers his chin. “It just doesn’t make sense. I thought they were a hundred percent committed.”
“All that work,” I say, “a wasted trip to Japan.”
“It’s the nature of the beast,” he says. “I’m so sorry.”
He walks to me and pulls me up out of the chair. “I’m sure we’ll have other opportunities,” he says, hugging me and kissing the top of my head. I’m vaguely aware that the team are eyeing us through the glass—it doesn’t take much to guess which way it’s gone.
“I know,” I say. “I’m just so disappointed. I really thought this was the big one.”
“We’re already doing really well,” he says, holding me away from him, his eyes boring into mine. “This year’s figures are amazing. Don’t beat yourself up about it.”
“It’s not about the money,” I say. “It’s about putting ourselves on the map, building a reputation. This would have done that.”
He looks away for a moment, and I watch as he goes into thinking mode. “Give me a sec,” he says, before turning and going out the door. Lottie’s eyes follow him forlornly as he crosses the space between my office and his. She looks how I feel.
I’m surrounded by wood samples, fabric swatches, and paint colors, all destined for twenty-eight apartments in Tokyo that no longer exist. I want to throw the whole lot out of the window in frustration.
Lottie pokes her head around the door. “You okay?” she asks quietly.
I daren’t look at her, as I’m sure I’ll cry, and thankfully she takes the hint and backs out. For God’s sake, Alice, pull yourself together, I say to myself. It’s not as if somebody’s died.
But they have, and I suddenly picture Tom’s face, his mouth breaking into a wide grin at being told we’d won the contract. I can feel his immense pride as he lifts me up in his arms and twirls me around, before we collapse into a giggling heap, unable to believe what we’d achieved.
This one’s for you, is what I was planning on saying to him. But now I can’t, and I don’t know if I’m more disappointed that I’ve let him down, or overcome with guilt that it’s his face I imagined sharing that moment with and not Nathan’s.
“Can I just run something by you?” says Nathan, coming back in and interrupting my thoughts. He’s almost bobbing from one foot to another, agitated.
“Go on,” I say, sitting back down on my chair.
He comes around to my side of the desk and sits on its leather top beside me.
“What if I told you that the land and the project is still up for sale?” he says, staring straight ahead, out of the window behind me.
“What do you mean?” I turn and look up at him, confused.
“The sellers still want to sell—it’s just the buyers that have pulled out.”
“O-kay,” I say hesitantly. “How does any of that help us?”
“What if we buy it?” he says, his jawline tensing with every word he utters.
“What?” I almost screech. “Don’t be insane!”
“Listen to me,” he says, looking at me for the first time and taking hold of my hands. “We could do this project ourselves. We could buy the land, build the apartments, design the interiors, and sell them on ourselves.”
“Are you out of your mind?” I ask, laughing.
“We could do this, Al,” he says, his voice getting louder. “Me and you. AT Designs. We could do this whole damn thing ourselves.”
I’m looking at him, shaking my head. “This is far too big for us to take on. We don’t have the experience, we don’t have the money…”
“A million buys it,” he says. “We could get a loan, keep the repayments super-low.”
“Okay, you’re scaring me now,” I say, but the adrenaline is coursing its way around my body. Is this even a remote possibility?
“I’ve just spoken with the vendors,” he says, as if reading my mind. “They’re desperate. They were selling for £1.5 million, but they’ll drop if they can get a buyer now.” He falls to his knees in front of me. “We can do this, Alice. I know we can.”
“We … we can’t, I mean we can’t just…”
“You wanted to hit the big time,” he says earnestly. “Well, now’s your chance.”
“We need to talk about it…”
“We can’t wait around, Al—this offer’s not going to be there for long. They’ll have other developers biting their hand off—it’s right on the 2020 Olympics site. It’s a no-brainer.”
“I need to think,” I say. “I can’t think straight.”
“We can do this,” repeats Nathan excitedly. “It’s all there for the taking.”
“I need some time to get my head around it,” I say. “Give me twenty-four hours to think.”
“This opportunity might not be there in twenty-four hours,” he pleads. “We need to strike while the iron’s hot.”
“I’m not going to make a rash decision now, Nathan.” My voice surprises me—its tone tinged with calmness, belying the chaos that is raging through my head. “AT Designs was set up using Tom’s money. Almost every penny of his inheritance went into founding this company and I’m not about to blow all our hard work away on a whimsical fancy thousands of miles away.”
“When you say, ‘our’ hard work, are you referring to mine and yours? Or yours and Tom’s?” Nathan’s blue eyes are unflinching as he looks at me.
“Both,” I say.
“I’ve given my all to this company,” he says, “and yet ten years after Tom’s death, he still takes top billing.”
“Oh, for God’s sake, you’re being ridiculous,” I snap, closing the door in a futile attempt to stop the whole company listening in on our domestic.
“But I’m right, aren’t I? No matter what I do or how much I achieve, I will never be able to escape Tom’s shadow.”
“You’ve worked here for less than three years,” I say. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”
I see him smart and wish that I could suck the words back in.
“You need to understand how much AT Designs means to me,” I say, careful to keep my voice gentle and my features soft. “We’ve worked so hard to get it where it is—you, me, Tom, all of us.”
“Who are you doing it all for, Alice?” he asks, turning away from me. “Because if it’s Tom, he’s not coming back.”
I swallow hard at his true words. No one is more aware of that than I am. “I’m doing it for us,” I say. “You, me, the girls. It’s what keeps me sane.” I attempt to smile but I know it’s not reaching my eyes.
“Will you at least think about it?” he says. “For us.”
I nod, but I’ve already made my decision. How can I risk the business when I’m not even convinced our marriage is going to survive? Despite his protestations on Saturday night, I’d allowed the poison of paranoia to worm its way through my system as soon as he’d gone to bed. At 11 p.m., I’d believed him and felt nothing but relief. By two o’clock the next morning, I was wallowing in self-pity and overcome with an incandescent fury that I’d allowed him to trick me. If I’d known where his “mistress” lived, I would have gone round there and dragged her out by her hair.
Thankfully, when I woke up yesterday, my emotions were a little calmer despite the banging in my head, and we’d managed to have the kind of Sunday I wouldn’t have thought possible just a few hours before. We smiled at all the right times and asked the girls all the right questions over a roast dinner, but there was still a palpable feeling that something was off. The elephant in the room wasn’t so big that the girls would notice it, but it was there nevertheless. And the shadow of it still remains today, so how can I possibly plow everything I’ve worked for into something I know so little about?
And yes, Nathan’s right; Tom is still at the forefront of my mind all these years later. Whether it be trying to second guess what he’d do when Sophia plays up, to how he’d advise me to handle this very situation. I hear his voice so clearly, see his face so vividly, that it sometimes takes my breath away. He wouldn’t want me to risk throwing everything away. I know he wouldn’t. I just need to convince Nathan that’s what I think and not what I know Tom would have thought.