Chapter 13

Back to London ... and Debbie. But a straight narrative for a change...

It was strange to get on the train back to London and an office that I'd last seen what felt like months ago. Well, it was a lifetime ago, in many ways, given that I'd subsequently lost and buried my long term partner, discovered rather a lot about my sexuality – and my capacity for forming friendships all of my own – plus, of course, gone some considerable way to relocating my life and my work to virtually the middle of nowhere. It had all been a bit of a whirl, I thought, relaxing into the journey with a glass of wine and contemplating the e-mails and texts that I'd accumulated while I'd been effectively incommunicado.

Most of which – and the brief conversation I'd had with Seffi while I was waiting for the train – suggested that the turmoil was anything but over. Only this time we should get some sort of final resolution – PCW had made their move a little sooner than we'd expected, but the actual substance was hardly surprising: They'd got cold feet, the corporates who'd never quite accepted the idea of working with people like us had allowed that anxiety to override the potential pecuniary gains and ... all it had taken was that concern to transmit itself to a potential client, giving said client concerns of their own and a feedback loop had been established which ... well, which led to them trying to pull the plug. Whether they could pull the plug entirely was currently a moot point, given the legal advice that we were getting, but it was clear that things were coming to a head.

Which, I felt, was probably a good thing, but also something that could wait. For the moment, I took a sip of the wine, sat back and watched the scenery passing by ... thinking of everything that had gone on while I'd been up North...

I dropped into the hospital to see Dave as soon as I got into London – it was pretty much over the road from Euston, after all – but he was completely out of it, having been doped up prior to the operation they'd scheduled for later in the afternoon. So I patted his hand for a while, as you do, then I took myself off to the office to go and rally the troops. Well, OK, to catch up with the news, or chat with people I thought of as friends ... or something. Maybe I was just being responsible, I thought, taking myself up the stairs into the office.

Which was pretty much as it always had been ... laid back, perhaps, or relaxed ... or maybe just a chaotic mess. Still, it was gratifying to see the crew hard at work, accept the warmth of their welcome, see what they'd achieved while I'd been away – Naz had pretty much completed the CastList rewrite, and had, of course, come up with his apparently revolutionary turbine blade design, Seff had built a pretty comprehensive database of potential clients – interestingly focusing on technology firms rather than the financial sector we'd previously concentrated on – and was busily working through them to identify appropriate contacts within the various organisations. Even the new woman – Niusha, who I'd never met – seemed to have contributed a new approach to using the consulting model more for community activism than actual profit generation but, hey, I thought, that was OK ... realising as I did so just how far I'd come since my own days on PCW's corporate treadmill.

Actually, to be honest, Niusha was a bit of a fly in the ointment. I mean, I was an adult, so, no, of course I didn't get upset about the fact that her stuff was all over my desk, that she greeted me, offered me a coffee, like I was some sort of guest, that she acted generally in a way that suggested that this was somehow her domain. I wasn't even all that miffed to see that she was both highly capable and also classically beautiful in a very Arabian way, found myself wondering just what had gone on between her and Dave, what its longer term significance might be to both of them, wondered whether I should have been a bit more open with Dave about my hopes for a future with him – not just in the work sense – but ... Well, I hadn't known the idiot would manage to get himself confined to hospital just as I got back to London, had my reasons for not wanting to talk about stuff like that one th phone, even more when Phil had still been alive. Even so, this was a woman I could feel myself getting anxious about, even as I knew that was really unfair to her, probably really unfair to Dave ... maybe pretty unfair to me. And also really unhelpful, given that we had a business to run.

So I hauled Seffi away from her investigations and got her to go over everything that had happened since I'd been away, all the e-mails, all the phone calls, all the speculations and gossip that she'd managed to dig up. Seff, of course, kept really detailed notes of everything so it took time, but it was all there. By the end of the working day, I was pretty sure I had a plan, and one with a half way reasonable chance of success, at least by my own estimation, so I packed everyone off home ... and made a few more calls of my own.

Next morning I was in early – I'd phoned the hospital and Dave was OK but 'not receiving visitors' before about noon – and made everyone a coffee, put some random music on – more bloody Grateful Dead, I realised – and settled down to work. I needed to talk to Gareth about the legal situation, I knew, and had stuff for the team to do for the day. For me, I was going to go fishing – I was, after all, the person hereabouts with the most direct experience of PCW and I thought my relationships with some of them were good enough, still, that it might be possible to come up with some useful information. Preferably, information that they didn't realise was useful...

So when the three of them staggered in, I set Naz to reviewing the FreiBank data – Dave had explained the problem but he hadn't actually written it up – and told him to get the process of patenting or registering his blade design as soon as possible. Partly this was because I knew it would make him happy, but mainly because I knew it would really piss off that bastard Karol, my would be rapist. Seff, I asked to dig up everything and anything she could about Carla's operation in the States, not least who would be likely to attend the next weeks meeting on their behalf. Carla herself was apparently no longer at death's door but we'd not heard anything directly from her so I felt it was wise to take precautions. Then, as an afterthought, asked her to see if she could come up with some estimates for the likely market for wind turbines across the EU in the foreseeable future – I felt sure that some consultancy somewhere must have published some sort of report on the issue and being able to point to additional income streams might be useful – and even to work with Niusha on whether her socially useful concept might actually be used to generate an income.

And so the morning passed.

I nipped out to see Dave over lunchtime, surprised to find him sitting up in bed but looking really pissed off, just having been told that he'd be in said bed for a few days at least. Actually, I think we'd both presumed that they'd do some sort of keyhole surgery, get him in and out before he managed to catch anything in the hospital but, no, it was a big scar that he showed me – or at least a big dressing – and he'd have to stay. I kept the conversation light, as far as I could, given that I could see he was still pretty zonked on the pain killers that were dripping into his arm and, anyway, there's not a lot of privacy on a ward. So we didn't go into anything personal – I think his reaction when he saw me coming into the room was reassurance enough about the way he thought about me ... and my reaction to seeing him at least alive ... and the sight of his muscled torso and a wisp of pubic hair as he displayed the damage ... similarly so about my deeper feelings for him. Although we couldn't really pursue that to its logical extent, I thought, at least until the stitches came out. So we just chatted for a while, me carefully avoiding anything much to do with work, and might have carried on like that for the afternoon. Except that my mobile rang and I found myself back in work mode, kissing him goodbye and heading out the building ... en route to an assignation with a former colleague who, I hoped, had a tale to tell.