Page 127 of Wife After Wife

Harry had a sense of time going in circles, replaying itself, over and over.

“I’d love a son,” he said, “but let’s just see what happens.”

How many times had he said those words?

He tossed and turned for a while, his mind racing. Finally he fell asleep, and straight into a nightmare. He was on the pitch of a huge, empty football stadium. There was an unbearable loneliness and a sense of something terrible about to happen. Then out of the tunnel came Ana, dressed in a long white robe with a hood, and she was pointing at him. Blood poured from the finger she held out, and her eyes were dark sockets.

He woke with a terrified cry, feeling the cold sweat drenching his body.

“What is it, Harry?” murmured Janette.

“Nothing. Bad dream.”

Janette was right. He needed to do something about the pills.

CHAPTER 40

Harry

October 2006

Harry was having difficulty concentrating on the concepts in front of him, for a new Rose Corp. HQ. But his distraction was for all the right reasons. He had a son. A bloody son! Little Eddie Rose, who’d entered the world with an apologetic whimper following his poor mother’s forty-eight-hour labor.

Janette had wanted a home birth, but as the labor dragged on and she became increasingly exhausted, Harry had pleaded with her to transfer to the hospital. She’d asked for more time—another of her “dreams” had been to give birth in a big bed at home. But there were complications, and by the time an ambulance was called, Janette had been past caring where she was.

Finally, to everyone’s relief, Eddie had arrived. But the placenta hadn’t, and Janette was whipped off to theater to have it removed.

Harry had been left in the delivery room holding the baby, and as he met Eddie’s solemn gaze, he felt it again, the sense of having met this little old soul before. “Hello there, old friend,” he said.

Harry gave up trying to understand the complicated architectural drawings and sat back in his chair. It was eleven days since Eddie’s arrival, and he was running on empty. He’d forgotten what it was like,being a new-parent zombie. He was getting on a bit for all this. Now that he had his longed-for son, he rather hoped this would be it, family-wise.

He yawned and stretched. He should probably take some time off, but these were busy times at Rose. The airline was going from strength to strength, and they’d added new routes to the States in the past year.

To help fund the expansion, Rose Corp. had bought up a number of failing companies, closing them down, laying off the staff, and selling their assets for a tidy profit. It was such easy money it had turned into something of a rampage, especially through the industrial north. Charles had jokingly called it the “dissolution of the factories.”

The asset stripping had made Janette uncomfortable—all those jobs lost. She rarely expressed her views on his business, but on this she’d begged him to stop, after aPanoramadocumentary on the effects of a factory closure on a northern town had left her in tears.

Terri, too, had loathed this new direction, and had sneaked a feature into theRackon the union boss who’d organized a well-attended protest march. With the accompanying black-and-white photos of derelict factories and boarded-up local businesses, the piece had made for grim reading, and the media quickly picked up on the fact that plucky, principled Terri Robbins-More had taken a stand against her own boss, the powerful Harry Rose, who was suddenly losing the goodwill of the British public.

Harry had been apoplectic, his bellowed fury reaching every corner of the top floor. Secretaries and receptionists had cowered, but Terri stood her ground. “Someone’s got to prod your fucking conscience, Harry,” she’d said. “Just read it.”

While he didn’t give a damn what a few bolshie rabble-rousers thought of him, he cared very much about his public image. And he knew that if he fired Terri, she’d be out there as a loose anti-Harry cannon. He read the article and was moved. He’d wound down the asset stripping and let Terri off with a stern warning.

Meanwhile, TV was doing well, and Rose’s sortie into the provisionof broadband, now that the market had opened up to competition, was promising. Later this week he’d be meeting with Charles and Andre to discuss streaming football live via the internet. Half of UK homes now had broadband, but the days when most would have the technology to watch live-stream football were still some way off. Years, probably. Harry intended to help make it happen.

Charles still handled many of Andre’s millions, but Harry hadn’t seen a lot of the Russian lately. Andre had fulfilled his dream of buying a football team. They weren’t in the Premier League yet, but at the rate he was buying up the world’s elite footballers, it probably wouldn’t be long. Mercifully, Andre’s obsession was keeping him busy, and Harry saw him only when they were invited to the same functions.

With all this expansion, Harry was overseeing the design of new premises to be built in Southwark. It was early days but, inspired by the Gherkin, he was talking towers with London’s most innovative property developers and architects. One had even suggested something in the shape of a rose. Harry liked this idea but was also in favor of being the driving force behind London’s tallest tower. It was going to be a tough choice.

His phone rang, and he looked at his watch: five fifteen. Perhaps he’d call it a day. He didn’t pick up.

It rang again, and he looked through the open doorway to see Tina, his secretary, pointing at her receiver. “You need to take this, Harry,” she called.

There was something in her voice.

He picked up the phone. “Harry Rose.”

The woman introduced herself as “Henrietta, the mum of one of Eliza’s friends.” She explained, her voice shaky, that she’d brought Eliza home after a playdate, and had worried when no one answered the door and they heard the baby crying.