DIANA HAD BEEN HOPING to get away by 5:00, so
she could be at the farm in time for dinner.
She tried not to show her true feelings when
at 4:37 her deputy, Phil Haskins, presented her with a complex twelve-page
document that required the signature of a director before it could be sent out
to the client. Haskins didn’t hesitate to remind her that they had lost two
similar contracts that week.
It was always the same on a Friday. The
phones would go quiet in the middle of the afternoon and then, just as she
thought she could slip away, an authorization would land on her desk. One
glance at this particular document and Diana knew there would be no chance of
escaping before 6:00.
The demands of being a single parent as well
as a director of a small but thriving City company meant there were few moments
left in any day to relax, so when it came to the one weekend in four that James
and Caroline spent with her ex-husband, Diana would try to leave the office a
little earlier than usual to avoid getting snarled up in the weekend traffic.
She read through the first page slowly and
made a couple of emendations, aware that any mistake made hastily on a Friday
evening could be regretted in the weeks to come. She glanced at the clock on
her desk as she signed the final page of the document. It was just showing
5:51.
