Chapter One
(Tuesday 19th October 2004)
After indulging in an extravagantly extended gap year, approaching her supposedly "respectable" mid-twenties, Heather Hunter decided to settle in Bingley. Reliable old Dad had his misgivings about the place but she'd felt a buzz in the air, not to mention a sense of Bypass Boom. House prices were rising at crazy rates and builders and estate agents were having a ball. Property-wise, Bingley was without a doubt the ladder to climb on.
It was time to buy anyway. Going home wasn't an option. She'd been as good as out-of-the-nest ever since she went away to school, a decade ago. And personal freedom aside, job hunting had become a major must. There was no chance of finding anything suitable in or around Kettlewell. With its very well-publicized road and rail links, Bingley was a much more promising starting point.
Getting a job wasn't so easy though. Not for her, anyway. She'd had a couple of big hurdles to clear. One: graduates were ten a penny, even those with first-class degrees. And two: most graduates her age had already accumulated valuable job experience. All she'd accumulated was an every-last-inch tan and experiences best kept off CVs.
Apart from Sexy CVs, that was, and those only ever got submitted to Mary Rose.
A month applying for everything nice, bright and shiny produced only frustration. At last admitting she needed help, she registered with three employment agencies and began to fare better . . . well, that is to say ever-so slightly better. Using her specifications, her dedicated advisors came up with a handful of low-ranking, mostly temporary positions. Using their own initiative (wilfully ignoring her very clear-cut instructions!) they flagged up a couple more possibilities, and local possibilities at that.
Ironically, both major employers in Bingley were bank headquarters and both were always recruiting. Known worldwide by their initials, B&B and WYB simply couldn't get enough new blood in the shape of top graduates. All three advisors pushed her towards them despite being aware that, although she liked living there, actually working in the sleepy old market town wasn't what she wanted.
Not to begin with.
No not.
Heather's original plan had been to find something in Leeds and commute. Leeds was the happening place for finance, second only to London. Failing Leeds, she could always commute into Manchester. Failing that, surely something would come up. Surely it would.
Her parents kept saying money wasn't an issue but, the longer the hunt went on, the more and more anxious she became (her, the girl who never worried about anything!). Dad kept producing statements proving their investments were doing well but that hardly helped. He had worked all his life, she hadn't managed to hajime.
Or even get into her gi.
Halfway into the third month, when one of the agencies suggested she tried paternity cover at a small accountancy firm in Batley, she cracked. To heck with it, she concluded. Bingley might not be up there in the financial Super League, but its banks had sound reputations. If nothing else, she could fill in some of the yawning gap that was growing in her post-academic history.
So she'd dumped the idea of living the high life and applied to both of them, giving it everything in her interviews, preparing ahead as thoroughly as her friend Tanya ever prepared for an exam (meaning so very, very thoroughly!). And she'd made all the impressions she wanted to make, duly receiving two decent offers . . . decent for a complete novice armed with a rapidly-aging degree, anyhow.
The offer from Bradford and Bingley was best but she'd dithered. She couldn't quite put her finger on why, but somehow it didn't feel right. In the end she turned them down, accepting instead a position at the smaller, funkier West Yorkshire Bank next door, perhaps swayed by their very much in-your-face, female-friendly marketing campaigns.
Okay, she had reasoned, maybe the money is a little less, but there's a clearer career path and the competition won't be so fierce.
And anyway, it's only a stepping stone. A promotion or two and I'll be off.
To her surprise life at WYB wasn't at all sleepy or provincial. Many of her colleagues lived nearby but lots travelled in from five or ten miles away and quite a few high-fliers reverse-commuted, coming in from big cities or remote rural retreats. And there was a good atmosphere, a real can-do culture . . . together with plenty of cynicism and a handful of no-hopers, of course.
After her first day Heather spent two hours on the phone telling Mum how much she'd enjoyed it. After her second she spent just as long telling Mare the same sort of things. During her Initial Review, on day three, she was told she had settled in well and everyone was pleased with the way she'd acclimatized. From then-on she was hooked and didn't spare Leeds another thought. When it came to her Second Review she must have said "we" and "us" ten times as often as her reviewer.
Not that she was totally besotted. She was still very much the newbie with lots to learn. And, even if she was determined to succeed, she didn't want to alienate her less ambitious colleagues.
Softly, softly, she kept reminding herself. Don't blow it before you catchee monkey.
*****
Today, after a month of real job experience, Heather was due to attend her first meeting with mixed-graders from other WYB departments. It was held in a large, official meeting room and, compared to the usual team huddles and briefs, seemed very formal and imposing. The tradition turned out to be to begin by going round the table. When it came to her she kept it short and sweet.
'Hi, I'm Heather Hunter, formerly from Hunters Farm, Micklethwaite. I was educated at The Manor and I'm a graduate trainee.'
'The Manor?' said a bloke called Chris. 'Do you mean Cottingley Manor, up the road?'
Heather had hoped to sneak under the radar and didn't welcome the question. And she also didn't welcome the ogling she'd been getting from Chris, who was wearing a wedding ring. She didn't do married; life was complicated enough without married.
'No,' she said, feeling her cheeks flush as everyone looked at her, 'just The Manor.'
'It's a private school in Cheshire,' someone put in.
Fifteen pairs of eyes left Heather before her flush became a full blush, fixing instead on the attractive, late-twenty-something who'd been first to introduce herself.
'Very swish,' the woman went on. 'The sort of place you'd like to send your kids, Chris. You'd have to put in some extra hours though. No more sneaking off to the golf course every afternoon.'
Chris said, 'Thank you, Victoria,' as if he was used to being put in his place, and that was that.
Heather didn't have very much to contribute to the rest of the proceedings and passed the time by just watching, listening and (hopefully) learning. That meant she spent a lot of time looking at Victoria, who had plenty to say for herself.
She was more than just attractive too, Heather decided, if not strictly conventional for a senior banker. She had short-ish brown, almost-black hair which was spiky and tastefully streaked, somehow making her punky and professional at the same time; a long oval face with perfect, darkish skin, suggesting a dash of Mediterranean blood in there somewhere; light brown eyes behind enormous and exceedingly snazzy glasses; a very, very generous mouth filled with dazzling white teeth. And, by what could only be alchemy, everything worked so she started off looking good and got better every time you looked again.
I bet she doesn't need to pour beer down a guy's throat, Heather thought, after taking a quick glance at Victoria's left hand.
At one stage Victoria became involved in an exchange with Chris. Although Heather didn't fully grasp the subject she could tell that, despite her earlier put-down, Chris was combining with Victoria to solve a particularly knotty problem. She also supposed that, from everyone else's complete silence, the two of them grasped the subject and knew it inside out.
Trouble was they were at opposite ends of the table; it was like watching a tennis match. After turning this way and that half a dozen times, taking a cue from the people opposite, Heather concentrated on one end of the rally. Naturally, she chose Victoria's end. And equally naturally, she used Victoria's intense concentration on Chris as opportunity to study her in more depth.
