A Desirable Residence - By Madeleine Wickham Page 0,6
me your details.’ He gave her another crinkle-eyed conspirator’s smile.
‘But wait!’ cried Liz, her voice sounding shrill to her own ears. ‘I don’t know your name!’ A look of amusement passed afresh over his face.
‘It’s Marcus,’ he said. ‘Marcus Witherstone.’
As Marcus proceeded down the corridor to his own office, he was filled with a glow of benevolence. It was so easy to help people, he reflected; really, very little effort for the reward of such self-satisfaction. Sweet woman; she had been so touchingly grateful. And it had been worth it just to put that dreadful Nigel in his place. Marcus frowned as he pushed open the door to his office. It was his cousin, Miles, who had hired Nigel—poached him from Easton’s, the rival estate agency in Silchester. Said he was a young dynamic talent. Well, perhaps he was. But no amount of talent, in Marcus’s opinion, made up for that horrible nasal voice and smug young face.
Nigel was just another of the topics on which Marcus and Miles disagreed. Only that morning, Marcus had spent a fruitless half-hour trying to persuade Miles that they ought to be branching out into property abroad. Setting up an office on the south coast of France, perhaps. Or Spain.
‘All the big boys are doing it,’ he said, waving a collection of glossy brochures in front of Miles. ‘Look. Villas worth half a million, a million. That’s the kind of business we should be handling.’
‘Marcus,’ said Miles, in the dry, deliberate voice that he’d had since he was a small boy, ‘what do you know about French property?’
‘I know that it’s an area we should definitely be going into,’ said Marcus with determination. ‘I’ll go over there, make some contacts, suss out the market, you know.’
‘I don’t think so,’ said Miles firmly. He spoke in much the same way as he had when, aged seven, Marcus had tried to persuade him to climb out of the window of their grandparents’ house and go to the village pub to buy Coke and crisps for a midnight feast. He hadn’t had any guts then either, Marcus thought crossly. And just because he was three years older, he wielded a tacit authority over Marcus that neither of them could quite abandon. Even though they were supposed to be equal partners.
He stared angrily at Miles, so bloody staid, in his ridiculously old-fashioned three-piece suit, puffing away at his stupid pipe. A pipe, for God’s sake.
‘Miles, you don’t live in the real world,’ he said. ‘Expansion’s what it’s all about. Diversification.’
‘Into areas we know nothing about? And at which we’re bound to fail?’ Miles took his spectacles off and began polishing them on his handkerchief. ‘I think it’s you who doesn’t live in the real world, Marcus.’ He spoke kindly, and Marcus felt a series of angry retorts rising. But he kept his mouth closed. If there was one thing Miles couldn’t tolerate, it was conspicuous family rows at the office. ‘This is the time to be consolidating,’ Miles continued. He replaced his spectacles and smiled at Marcus. ‘If you want to go to France, why don’t you go there on holiday?’
Now Marcus looked aggrievedly at the glossy brochures still sitting on his desk, tantalizing him with photographs of blue skies, swimming pools, bougainvillaea. And his own inspired jottings: Witherstone’s Abroad. Spread your wings with Witherstone’s. Weekending abroad with Witherstone’s. He hadn’t even had a chance to show his slogans to Miles. But perhaps it was just as well. He opened his bottom desk drawer and stowed the brochures inside. Maybe he would bring the subject up again in six months’ time. But now he had to go. He glanced at his watch. Five twenty already, and he had promised to pick up Anthea and the children from outside the library at half-past.
He glanced hurriedly at the fluttering yellow post-it notes decorating his desk. They would just have to wait till tomorrow, he thought, gathering up his briefcase, stuffing a few random papers inside. But as his eye ran automatically over the messages, one suddenly stood out and grabbed his attention. He stared at it silently for a minute, then looked around as though afraid of being observed, and sat casually down on his leather swivel chair, from where he could see it better without actually touching it. It was written in the same innocent, rounded handwriting as all the others, in the turquoise ink that was the trademark of Suzy, his secretary. It sat benignly between a request