Angel Touch Read Free Page B

won’t know what they’re missing. Then, of course, you spring it on Frank one evening when the mood is right.’
    â€˜Don’t be silly, it wouldn’t fit him.’ She slumped onto the sofa.
    â€˜Well, if you wanted a trial run, I’m usually free on Wednesdays.’
    That day was Wednesday. I’m nothing if not subtle.
    â€˜Oh shit, it’s Wednesday,’ she said, throwing back her head and almost all her wonderfully-shiny hair.
    â€˜I can see you’re totally underwhelmed by my offer,’ I said, pouting.
    â€˜It’s not you, Angel darling.’ She put out a hand and patted my knee. It trembled. ‘It’s just that I don’t want to go to work today.’
    â€˜Well, of course not. It’s your birthday. In America, everybody has the day off. Some American friends of mine have over two hundred birthdays a year.’
    I knew that would cheer her up, and like most women she showed her amusement by bursting into tears.
    I said lots of ‘There, theres,’ and sat down next to her, putting an arm around her and cocking an ear just in case Frank returned earlier than usual.
    â€˜C’mon, honey, tell Uncle Roy all about it,’ I said, much against my better judgement. (Rule of Life No 52: when women decide to tell you what’s troubling them, if it’s really important they start with ‘It’s nothing …’)
    â€˜It’s nothing, really, I suppose,’ she said.
    Oh shit.
    â€˜It’s just … I’ve got bad vibes at work.’ She took a deep breath and shuddered. ‘I’m being blamed for information leaking out from the firm, and the big chiefs are getting paranoid.’
    I felt my eyebrows rise. Salome was part of a team of stockbroking analysts, the background boys and girls who keep industrialists well wined and dined whilst sticking to the Perrier themselves. Any titbit of information they pick up at a lunch table is recycled that afternoon in the form of a sector note telling punters what shares to buy, what to hold, what to flush down the pan. Salome’s particular sector was the leisure business, holiday firms, travel agents and so on, but there are as many sectors as there are businesses with share listings: breweries and distilleries, cars, oil, banking, you name it.
    If Salome was linked with information leaks, then it was serious. Just at the moment, insider trading carried a stigma in the City only marginally less repugnant than having your car clamped.
    â€˜Is it happening?’ I asked carefully.
    â€˜Oh yes.’ She sniffed loudly and stood up, looking for a box of tissues.
    â€˜Why does anyone suspect you?’ My eyes followed her legs across the room.
    â€˜Somebody somewhere has acted on my last two circulars before they even got to our paying customers. Yesterday was the worst. I did a profits forecast on an airline and the shares were being bought within an hour of it leaving my typewriter. I’d had a tip I’m sure nobody else had got wind of. It helps being a woman in the City sometimes.’
    â€˜Now, that’s a sexist remark, Salome, my dear.’
    â€˜No, it isn’t,’ she smiled.
    â€˜It would have been if I’d said it.’
    â€˜You could make a note to the milkman sexist.’ Now there was female logic for you. ‘I’d better get ready, I suppose. Got to face them.’
    I stood up and put my arms round her from behind, keeping an eye on the door in the reflection from the screen of her TV.
    â€˜Come on, my dear, slip into your pinstripes and have at them with your umbrella. They’ve got to be nice to you on your birthday.’
    â€˜Yeah, well, I don’t intend to do any work today, so they can’t blame me if anything else goes wrong.’
    â€˜I’ve been saying that for years, but they still do. You’ve nothing really to worry about, have you?’
    She half turned to me.
    â€˜Yes, I have to