needs to stay in London. We need time together. We need to have a chance to mesh, to bond, to hang out, to let ourselves turn into a proper couple. But he won’t stay unless I get him this job. Everything depends on that one factor—everything.
And as I lie there, listening to Ryan operate our dodgy shower, I start to feel serious qualms. I can’t believe my entire future happiness rests on a scribbled promise on a coffee-cup sleeve.
What if it doesn’t work? What if the job’s been filled already?
Or what if Sebastian says the coffee sleeve was just a joke and he didn’t really mean it?
He repeated his offer earlier tonight, I remind myself. And he didn’t look as though he was joking. But what if he was? What if he has a very dry sense of humor?
Or what if he says the coffee sleeve wasn’t just a joke and he did really mean it and they are still hiring … but even so, the answer’s no?
Well. Then I’ll have to persuade him. That’s all.
Nine
My legs don’t often shake. Like, actually physically tremble. But as I turn into Clerkenwell Road, I feel as though they might suddenly give way and leave me sitting in the gutter.
I’m wearing clothes that seemed suitable for a meeting with an investment manager: a fitted skirt and shirt plus a trench coat borrowed from Nicole, from her brief stint as a City PA. It’s too hot in this August weather, but it feels right. A pair of high-heeled shoes are pinching my toes. And as I tap along, I feel a bit surreal. Am I really doing this? Am I going to claim a job, worth tens of thousands of pounds, based on a scribble on a coffee-cup sleeve?
ESIM have been based in this street for two years. Before that, they were round the corner. And before that they were in Sebastian Marlowe’s flat in Islington, and he used to make the team pasta every Friday night. I read that in an article in Money Week.
I’ve read quite a lot about the company, in fact. I’ve found out exactly what ESIM does (invests in companies and funds for institutions and individuals). I know what their aim is (to help clients build portfolios with a commitment to high ethical, social, and environmental standards). I’ve looked up what Sebastian Marlowe does (runs it, basically).
After I’d learned all that, I had this random impulse and looked up Sebastian Marlowe on YouTube. And what I found wasn’t what I expected. At least, I don’t know what I expected. But it wasn’t a video clip of him standing up at some big shareholders’ meeting, berating the board on executive pay.
The title was “Sebastian Marlowe takes Roffey Read board to task.” He stood there, holding a microphone, his frondy hair waving around as he spoke in a measured way about how unfair it was that Sir Keith Barrowdine was due to receive a pay package of £8.9 million when his lowest-paid workers scraped by on the minimum wage. Then he started on about how this once-noble company used to house its workers in cottages and feel responsibility for their quality of life, and how many people on the board today had the slightest idea of where their lowest-paid workers were housed? (He got applause for that bit.) Then he asked, was it a coincidence that so many of the lowest-paid workers were women? Then he said he represented a large number of investors who all felt the same way and the board was clinging on to old, toxic habits and it should watch out.
I mean, it was quite stirring stuff.
I looked through YouTube, and there were a couple more videos, with him saying similar things at different meetings. And then I found an interview with him in the Financial Times, all about how he started his company.
It said he’d lost all his family at an early age. His dad died when he was ten, then his mum when he was eighteen, and then his older brother, James, got knocked off his bike two years ago. But rather than these personal tragedies crushing him, it said, they had taught him a love of life and a passion for justice. It said his colleagues described him as cheerful, well adjusted, and compassionate, and there was even a photo of him, captioned The Clerkenwell Crusader.
Which should all make me feel better, because he’s clearly a good person. But actually it makes me feel