Summer With My Sister Read online

  For my sisters, Ellie Brothwell and Fiona Mongredien, with lots of love.

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Epilogue

  Prologue

  As soon as she heard her parents driving away, she picked up the phone and called him. Her heart was racing. ‘They’ve gone,’ she said. ‘Fancy coming over?’

  ‘Too right,’ he said, and a whoosh of heat went through her like a lit match in petrol. ‘I’m on my way.’

  She replaced the receiver, feeling heady and restless, pacing around the living room while she waited for him to arrive. Hurry up, hurry up, hurry up. She was going to lose her nerve if he didn’t get there soon.

  Two minutes later he was knocking on the door, the front wheel of his bike still spinning in the drive where he’d dumped it. She caught her own reflection in the hall mirror as she went to let him in, and her eyes were bright, her cheeks pink. This was it.

  They snogged deliciously in the doorway for several passionate minutes in full view of the neighbours. It felt thrilling and dangerous. Anything might happen. Mrs Lindley’s curtains twitched in disapproval across the road, but Polly couldn’t have cared less. Flicking the Vs at the nosey old bat in a glorious fit of defiance, she went right on kissing him, tingles of desire shooting around her body.

  They’d never had sex in her parents’ house before. Tonight was the night.

  ‘Hello, gorgeous,’ he said as they broke apart. His voice was husky, his pupils flooded with lust.

  ‘Hi,’ she said breathlessly. ‘Come in.’

  She took him by the hand and led him through to the living room, her heart bouncing, her skin prickling. She was seventeen years old, and what was about to happen that night would change everything.

  Chapter One

  Twenty years later

  It was seven o’clock one April morning and the sun was edging above the City of London. The sky was streaked all the shades between shocking pink and palest apricot as the early Tube trains rumbled below the streets, a booming percussion twenty metres underground. Up in the gleaming office buildings, lights flickered on at the windows as if a vast machine was coming to life, and cleaners pushed whirring Henry Hoovers along soulless beige corridors. Elsewhere in the flats and houses sprawling out from the city’s pulsing radius, millions of people rolled over in warm beds, dreamed, snored, spooned against their partners, pressed the Snooze on the alarm clock, or tended to early-rising children through squinty, barely seeing eyes.

  Polly Johnson was a step ahead, already fully prepared for battle. Her skin had been scrubbed in a steaming power shower and was now hidden beneath a severely cut charcoal-grey trouser suit and crisp white blouse. Her shoulder-length caramel-coloured hair was scraped back in a business-like bun. Her face was a mask of foundation and concealer – damn those dark circles below her eyes, they were becoming harder and harder to disguise – with a slash of red lipstick added like war paint. Laptop, killer heels, glossy handbag: tick, tick, tick.

  She strode into the glass atrium that was the reception area of the Waterman Financial Corporation, raised a hand in curt greeting to the receptionists, slapped her pass key on the turnstile and pushed through its clicking metal barrier, the only arms that ever held her these days. Then she headed for the lift. Going up.

  Polly Johnson had risen to the top of her game in a smoothly orchestrated crescendo over the years. No, that sounded as if it had all been laid on for her. It hadn’t. She’d had to fight and hustle every single step of the way there, elbowing past all the other high-achievers, treading on the heads of those weaker and slower in her scramble for glory. She’d stacked up the hours, slogging away doggedly without holidays, weekends and parties; without a social life full stop, let’s face it. Barely pausing for breath, she’d forced herself one notch higher on the career scale, and then another notch, and another. Female colleagues had peeled away meanwhile, veering down the motherhood path, only to find their career options collapsing at the doors of the maternity unit. Not Polly. Work took precedence over family and friends and lovers. You wouldn’t catch Polly stepping off the gravy train for anything.

  Now she was up there with the big guns, senior product consultant for Asset Liability Management and Funds Transfer Pricing in the Risk Management department. Admittedly, it was a lot to fit on a single business card. When she’d last seen her family, back at Christmas, their eyes had collectively glazed over as she’d told them her new job title, as if she was speaking a foreign language. They didn’t look so confused when she told them how much she’d be earning, though.

  ‘How much?’ her dad had yelped, almost falling head-first into the sherry trifle.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ her mum had said faintly. ‘Well done, love. That’s amazing.’

  It felt like redemption, that moment, as if all the things that had gone wrong in the past had been absolved. Gold star in the good books for Polly!

  Clare, of course, had had to spoil things by making a barbed remark about bankers’ bonuses being obscene, but Polly had blithely ignored her. I win, you lose, she’d gloated privately, staring her down. Jealousy was so unattractive. ‘More champagne?’ she’d asked everyone sweetly, flourishing the fat green bottle. There was only ever one answer to that, of course.

  It had mattered more than she’d expected, the approval of her parents. It was only when she’d seen their awestruck faces that she realized how much she’d been trying to prove to everyone, them most of all. The money was great, sure, but it was success that she ultimately craved: glory, achievement, a power-packed CV. It was being able to show everyone she could do it, that she wasn’t a waste of space. Since Michael had died … Well, she wanted to be doubly successful, put it like that.

  And, thought Polly now as she strode into her office and saw the sky turning pinky-blue over the domed roof of St Paul’s and the early-morning sunlight glinting off the windows and rooftops of the city before her, she’d made her point. She’d hit every target with precision accuracy, she’d bloody well earned the accolades, pay rises and promotions, not to mention the luxury South Bank apartment overlooking the Thames, membership of the most exclusive clubs in London, a silver sporty Merc that boy-racers eyed with jealousy, and a vast wardrobe stuffed full of designer clothes to die for. Oh, and one humdinger of a bonus heading her way very soon too. Which was just as well, really, because she’d overstretched herself financially with some hefty stock-market investments recently. You had to be in it to win it, though, right?

  Polly’s assistant Jake arrived at eight o’clock that morning with her usual espresso. He was tall, posh and nice to look at, and knew better than to be late when it came to something as essential as coffee. She’d sacked people for less.

  He set the cup carefully in front of her and she grunted, not taking her eyes away from the monitor. ‘Um … Polly, there are a few things I need to check with you,’ he said, clipboard and pen at the ready. ‘You’ve been
asked to speak at the Risk Management Solutions conference next month—’

  ‘Tell them I’m busy,’ she cut in, swearing under her breath as she made yet another correction onscreen. She was checking the research done by Marcus Handbury, a junior consultant, for an important meeting next week. One page in, and she’d already had to rewrite several lines and highlight three instances of poor grammar. Slack, slack, slack. Marcus was one of those pretty-boy public-school types who’d always had everything handed to him on a plate. Just because he had connections with all the right people, it didn’t give him the right to be sloppy with his work.

  ‘Secondly, Henry Curtis has been in touch again, wanting to meet …’

  Polly’s ears pricked up. ‘Lunch or evening?’ Henry Curtis was a big cheese in a hedge-fund organization and had been making noises lately that he wanted to poach her. He’d made a beeline for her at a recent conference in New York, and had lavished her with attention. Flatteringly, he knew all about the coup she’d pulled off beating Carlson International to a major global account, and had gone on to butter her up like the proverbial parsnip. Mind you, the dirty gleam in his bloodshot, appreciative eyes as they roamed her suited flanks made Polly wonder if he was after more than just her business experience. Hmmm. Despite ticking several of Polly’s perfect-partner boxes – rich, successful, attractive – he was officially too old for any romantic liaisons, being forty-six. (Forty-four was her upper age limit. Anything older, and men developed a whiff of approaching-fifty midlife crisis, which put them out of the running. In men, as in life, only perfection would do. Not that she had any time for relationships, of course.)

  ‘Evening,’ Jake replied, his pen hovering above his page. ‘Should I book something?’

  ‘Tell him lunch will have to do,’ she said crisply. ‘Maybe one day next week? Book a restaurant near here.’ She’d have Curtis make the effort, get him to prove how keen he was, she decided. Not that she was in a hurry to jump ship, but it was pleasing to be asked, wasn’t it?

  Jake ran through a couple of other things, flagging up a liquidity-risk briefing that needed approving, various items on the board-meeting agenda, and a potentially interesting new client who’d approached the firm. ‘Oh, and finally,’ he said, ‘it’s your niece’s birthday on Wednesday. Is there anything in particular you’d like me to send her?’

  Polly waved a hand. ‘Just … something pretty,’ she said carelessly. She wasn’t certain exactly how old Clare’s daughter, Leila, was now (ten, perhaps?), but Jake was good at choosing presents. He’d picked out an amazing couture dress for Clare’s birthday last month, and the most stylish Paul Smith cufflinks for her dad’s retirement gift. He was sure to find something appropriate. He had time to browse around after all, unlike Polly herself.

  ‘That’s everything then, thank you,’ Jake said, bowing his head a little as he left the office.

  ‘Not a problem,’ Polly said automatically. Those three words had become her personal mantra over the years. Nothing was a problem to her – one merely had to apply logic or determination (or hire the right staff with the necessary skills) and anything could be resolved. Jake, for instance, obliterated many of Polly’s problems. He arranged her dry-cleaning, her diary, her bill-paying, he sent flowers and birthday cards to people on her behalf, he booked in her car to be valeted … How did anyone manage without a Jake in their life?

  ‘Cheers!’

  ‘Cheers!’

  Twelve hours later Polly was in the Red House, a private members’ club near Liverpool Street, full of other City types talking shop over cocktails and criminally expensive wines. She was in the fifth-floor bar, as she so often was these evenings, finding it impossible to go straight home after the relentless hustle of a long, hectic day without a drink or three first.

  Clinking champagne glasses that night with Polly were the two Sophies, Richenda, Josh, Matt and Johnny. She wouldn’t go so far as to say that any of them were friends, but they were all useful contacts. Like her, they were regulars in the Red House, high-fliers in the banking world who shuffled billions of pounds around without a second thought. Like her, they’d set their smartphones down on the table in front of them with almost religious solemnity, pouncing whenever emails buzzed through as if the financial industry depended on their cheetah-like reaction times. Polly had worked with the blonde Sophie at HSBC, and knew Richenda from a hot and dreary training week in Singapore that they’d both sweated through early on in their respective careers.

  ‘Down the hatch,’ said Johnny, with a lascivious wink at the brunette Sophie, ‘and up the sn—’

  ‘Oh, Johnny!’ she hooted, elbowing him so hard he almost spilled his drink.

  Ugh. Johnny was a pig. He’d tried it on with Polly once, had lunged at her and stuck his horrible, meaty tongue down her throat after one too many at a drinks party. If his thinning hair and ruddy, salami-like complexion hadn’t already seen him struck off her list, his atrocious manners and that disgusting, thrusting tongue would have made him a goner in a heartbeat. Repulsive as he was though, he was also head of communications for a huge rival corporation, and thus someone she needed to keep onside. She forced a laugh, as did everyone else around the table. Nobody wanted Johnny to think they’d had a sense-of-humour bypass.

  The other Sophie, who had ice-blonde hair, a sour-puss mouth and a caved-in face as if someone had accidentally deflated it, began to talk about the Risk Management Solutions conference and how she’d been asked to give the keynote speech.

  ‘I got a call from them too, about speaking there,’ Polly felt obliged to put in. ‘Turned it down, unfortunately. Too busy.’

  Sophie coolly raised an over-plucked eyebrow. ‘Yes, I heard they were trying to fill a space,’ she said. ‘Julian Leighton was in that slot, had to pull out. So they’ve been in touch with you, have they?’

  Polly flinched. Sophie was making it sound as if she’d been contacted as a last resort. ‘Well, ages ago,’ she lied. ‘Almost forgotten about it, to be honest. I find it so hard to keep track of all these requests.’

  ‘Oh, I know’ Richenda put in, her dark corkscrew curls bobbing like springs as she nodded. ‘I’ve been besieged since my team won the Financial Bridging Award.’

  ‘Did you win an award?’ Mean Sophie muttered sarcastically under her breath. ‘You should have said.’

  ‘My PA has to run two diaries for me now, it’s crazy,’ Richenda went on, not seeming to hear the jibe. ‘But what can you do?’

  What could you do indeed? Everyone looked sage at the question, although they all knew they wouldn’t have it any other way. The thrill of the chase, the adrenalin rush, the clammy hands and pumping heart when the market was on the rise – it was addictive, and worth any amount of stress.

  A BlackBerry beeped and all eyes returned to the table immediately, everyone on constant high alert for business news from the American offices. Same old, same old, thought Polly with a smile to herself. Just how she liked it.

  Later – two in the morning later – Polly stumbled into her flat, kicking off her shoes and rubbing her aching calves. She really must catch up on her sleep at the weekend, she vowed, feeling battered with exhaustion after another gruelling day. The thing was, with a job like hers, you could never clock off at five and go home. Just as important was being a player, being seen out in such places, pressing the flesh, staying in the loop. And it had been worth going along tonight. Matt had had some interesting news about GlobalGo, the sportswear company that had scaled the heights of success at high speed, only to be freefalling now. He predicted they were going to be wound up any day, which could have repercussions for some of Polly’s clients. ‘Another one bites the dust,’ Johnny had said knowingly. Business was business.

  She fell into her enormous luxury bathroom, which was at least as big as most people’s main bedroom, and snapped on the spotlights. Eww. Not looking pretty, Polly, she thought, catching a glimpse of her reflection in the vast rectangular mirror that hung above the stone basin.
Her skin had somehow taken on a greyish tinge lately. Crow’s feet were appearing beneath her eyes, nestling above the dark rings that never seemed to fade. She tutted, peering closer at the mirror itself. The bloody cleaner had left a smear on the glass again. Shoddy – she’d have to have a word with the agency about that. Polly was convinced the cleaner had been slacking off lately. The bed didn’t seem to have been made quite right, either, the other week, and Polly was sure someone had helped themselves to her Crème de la Mer moisturizer. It wasn’t good enough.

  She slipped on her silk pyjamas, dimmed the lights in her bedroom, and climbed into her enormous bed, with its drifts of feather pillows, the softest Egyptian cotton sheets and the luxuriously thick duvet. She set her alarm, pulled on her lavender eye mask and then let herself sink into the bed’s embrace. She was asleep within seconds.

  Tuesday started just like any other day, with the six o’clock alarm and a drilling hangover. Into the shower, down with some Nurofen and a kick-arse coffee, clothes on, make-up on, then a takeaway breakfast from the deli on the way to the Tube.

  ‘You look tired, love,’ the guy behind the deli counter said sympathetically as he made her espresso. ‘Reckon you could do with a holiday.’

  Polly gave a hollow laugh. Holidays were for wimps. She smiled mirthlessly as she took her breakfast and walked to the Tube station, mentally running through her day ahead. There was a board meeting at eleven, a client meeting at two, cocktails at five for a PR do, and a dinner function with clients at The Ivy. Oh yes, and Hugo Warrington wanted to see her at ten for a chat. No doubt he was going to congratulate her on the Spelman account she’d netted last week. Maybe he would even jack up her bonus on the back of it. Hugo Warrington was the company chairman, the beating heart of WFC. He was fifty years old, enormously rich, and so ruthless you could practically see a dorsal fin through his Savile Row suit jacket. She liked the idea of a cosy chat with him, just the two of them. It was about time he recognized precisely how much clout Polly Johnson had.