It Had to Be You Read Free Page A

That’s his wife, Josie. James, it gives me great pleasure that you, my old friend, my trusted manager of the London office, think that Josie and Howard make a lovely couple. Thank you.’
    James looked desperately for sarcasm and found none. But ‘old friend’, ‘trusted manager’. Maybe things weren’t so bad after all.
    The waiter scurried across with their water, and asked if they were ready to order.
    ‘Absolutely,’ said Dwight Schenkman the third without consulting James. ‘James?’
    ‘I’ll have the capricciosa, please.’
    ‘Great choice, James. I’ll have the Veneziana. I like to feel I’m giving 25p to Venice. It’s a great little town. And those dough balls sound nice to start. You going for the dough balls, James?’
    ‘No, thank you.’ How thankful he was that he hadn’t made any comment about them.
    ‘We’ve had some great lunches, haven’t we? Le Gavroche. Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons with Claire and the lovely Deborah.’
    Claire! Must remember that. Claire. An éclair with the e on the end instead of the beginning. Easy-peasy.
    ‘And now the Pizza Express.’
    ‘Hard times?’
    ‘Got it in one. What’s your view of the state of the packaging industry, James?’
    ‘Difficult, Dwight. We pack what people buy. We can’t pack more or less than that. We’re a kind of barometer of the economy.’
    ‘I like that.’ The BWC rolled the phrase round his mouth as if it was a glass of premier cru Chateau Margaux. God, James could do with a glass of wine. Any wine. ‘A barometer of the economy. I’ll remember that.’
    Of course you will. You remember everything, you bastard.
    Dwight Schenkman the Third leant so far forward that James could smell his toothpaste and his aftershave.
    ‘To business,’ he said.
    James’s heart began to pump very fast. Thank goodness he’d remembered to take all his pills.
    ‘There are two elements to this, James. A global element and a UK element.’
    The pumping of James’s heart began to slow just a little. It didn’t sound like the sack.
    ‘In the short term, James, I am requiring every element of our global operation to make a fifteen per cent cut across the board. Across the board, James, from personnel to toilet paper via water coolers and stationery. I need your specific proposal as to how this target may be met in Bridgend and Kilmarnock, and I need it within six months.’
    James knew how difficult this would be, but all he could feel was relief, immense, shattering relief. He had been given a job to do. He had not been sacked.
    Dwight’s dough balls arrived. Since he was far too well bred to talk with his mouth full, and since he was an exhaustive chewer, his outlining of James’s greatest challenge came with long interruptions.
    ‘There is a real possibility, James, that we might have to consider transferring some, if not most, of our total British production capacity to …’
    James tried not to watch the curiously sterile rhythmic movement of Dwight’s jaw as he chewed.
    ‘… Taiwan. Well, there are other possibilities, but Taiwan is favourite as of this moment in time.’
    As opposed to this moment in space, thought James irreverently.
    ‘In six months I will have received estimates of the saving that we can achieve by moving production to Taiwan. I want you to set up a committee to give me another report producing equal …’
    James took a sip of his water and tried to pretend it was gin.
    ‘… savings in the UK. Otherwise, Taiwan it is. In which case we could …’
    He chewed on his next morsel of dough ball as if he couldn’t bear the pleasure to end.
    ‘… close the London office and you could all join us here in Birming-ham.’
    Dwight Schenkman pronounced England’s second city as if it was a type of meat.
    James’s heart sank. Even the arrival of his pizza capricciosa couldn’t lift it.
     
     
    She was more than three-quarters of an hour late now. He was in turmoil. He stared wildly at the door, willing her to