Page 25 of Minha Dona

“Do you? Because each time you’ve mentioned anything to do with Miami tonight you’ve brought it round to her in some way or another.”

“She’s an important partner.”

“No doubt, but that’s not the way you’ve mentioned her. I know your excited voice and you’re doing it now.”

“I’m not.”

“You are.”

Helena had laughed and Isabella had laughed too, and then Isabella had said, more gently, “Be yourself. That’s all you ever need to be. If she can’t see what’s in front of her then she doesn’t deserve you.”

It was good advice. Helena repeated it to herself as the plane descended through the white clouds that dotted the blue sky and Miami appeared below, glittering in the morning light.

I’m just here for the professional opportunity.

She shook her head and smiled ruefully to herself. Yeah, right.

***

During her career, Helena had grown used to staying in a wide range of hotels. It was a hazard of the job that one week you could end up in five-star luxury, a month later you’re in a three star that felt close to one.

Unsurprisingly for the partner conference there’d been no expense spared, so much so that Helena wondered if this might spoil business travel for her forever. The attendees, all two hundred of them, were being put up in a sweeping mid-twentieth century behemoth that mixed Art Deco glamour with the sort of luxury that told you the hotel knew its guests could afford not to care about the prices. The lobby itself was vast, marble everywhere, with a glimpse through to a pool that Helena would dearly have loved to try but didn’t dare… it wouldn’t have been a good look for her first introduction to some of her colleagues to be her in a bikini on a sun-lounger, not the professional look she was after.

Helena checked in and was shown to a room on the twelfth floor with a view of the ocean that she’d never have been able to pay for from her own salary, and once she was on her own she sat down on the bed, looking out at the view, trying to forget that at the end of her day stood the drink with Caitlin and whatever that may or may not bring.

***

Helena spent the day in what could best be described as displacement activities with the welcome reception not due to start until five. She found a cafe with a nice terrace for lunch, spent some time on the beach (sufficiently anonymous that she could risk some sunbathing), browsed the shops, and then around three she headed back to her room.

Looking good that evening was not an option, for both professional and personal reasons, but balancing the two was harder… she wanted a hundred and ninety-eight of the other attendees to see her as someone who absolutely fit in and deserved to be there, and precisely one attendee to see her and remember exactly what had made that week in Houston all those months ago so incredible.

She showered, taking her time, letting the hot water ease the tension in her shoulders that she pretended to herself was from the flight. She dried her hair and styled it, wearing it half-up and half-down, the way she wore it when she wanted to impress a client but also had something social on that evening. Her makeup was minimal but carefully chosen, just enough to add a little darkness to her eyes, a little colour to her cheeks, the subtlest brighter shade to her lips.

The dress… well, she’d never dare admit to anyone how long that had taken to choose. Three shopping trips in total, she’d ended up going for a black, sleeveless cocktail dress in keeping with the dress code that hit just above the knee, fitted without being tight, sophisticated without being too much. Simple jewellery to go with it, a necklace and a pair of earrings, heels that were just the comfortable side of killer, aware as she was that she’d be doing a lot of standing and networking in them.

She looked at herself in the bathroom mirror and saw precisely what she wanted to see: a young, successful professional woman in the early stages of her career, invited to one of the most prestigious events in her firm’s calendar. Confident. Composed. Ready and looking precisely like she belonged.

She did not look like a woman who’d been awake for most of the last twenty-four hours thinking about her ex, or whatever Caitlin even was. They’d never defined it, which was part of the problem, and could someone you’d had a one-week relationship with, regardless of how insanely intense it had been, really ever be called an ex?

Caitlin was someone though, that was for sure.

Helena took a deep breath, picked up her room key, and headed for the elevator.

Chapter 10

The welcome reception was held in a ground-floor function room that opened onto the hotel’s pool terrace, the doors flung wide open. It felt like more than two hundred, Helena thought, milling around in clusters, suits for the men, cocktail dresses for the women, name badges and champagne flutes everywhere. She hid a smile at the pretence in the room of intense relaxation when everyone was really networking furiously.

Helena recognised the São Paulo partners who’d come, of course, and a few others from international projects she’d worked on as well as one other non-partner who’d made the cut, a highly competent but, in Helena’s view, highly arrogant consultant from the Singapore office. But most of the room being strangers was not a problem… a life growing up with her father doing what he did meant that she learned to make small talk with some senior people at a young age, and even without that she was good at this, working her way around the social dynamics. Read the room, find the interesting people, make yourself memorable without being overbearing. The skills were interchangeable with the bedroom, she found: both required you to pay attention, to listen, to make the other person feel like they were the only one in the room.

She was mid-conversation with a partner from the London office about cross-border regulatory challenges, genuinely interesting, not just polite, when she saw her.

Across the room. Near the doors to the terrace. A champagne flute in one hand, the other gesturing as she talked to a group of four people who were visibly hanging on her every word.

Caitlin.

Helena felt the world narrow around her.

Nine months.