up at him. He seemed kind. He was handsome too, for an old bloke. Like a tall Inspector Morse. Except that Inspector Morse would never have told anybody that drink wasn’t the answer. He would also never have come to a party full of posers at the Beverly Hills hotel. What am I talking about? I must be drunker than I thought.
The man followed her gaze to where Theo was dancing. ‘He’ll grow out of it. Believe me. Hollywood, fame, all this, it’s dazzling at first. He just needs to realize what a great thing he’s got going at home. You’re gorgeous.’
It was such a kind thing to say, Theresa felt her eyes well up with tears.
‘Oh, God, sorry. I don’t know why I’m snivelling. I think I’m a little drunk. Then again, I think you must be too. Either that or blind. I’m the fattest woman here by a million miles.’
The man looked at Theresa’s glorious figure poured into her slinky silver dress and laughed. ‘Nonsense. You’ve lost your confidence, that’s all. Trust me, most men aren’t attracted to anorexic airheads with two bags of silicone glued to their ribcage. Not for more than a few seconds anyway. Harry Meister.’
‘Theresa Dexter.’ Theresa shook his hand. Harry was a TV presenter, also at NBC. It turned out he knew Theo slightly through mutual colleagues.
‘So what is the answer, Mr Meister?’ Theresa asked him. ‘If it’s not to be found at the bottom of a bottle of Famous Grouse?’
‘My advice? Get pregnant. I’ve seen hundreds of guys like your husband, new in town and all starry-eyed. Give them a family and they soon settle down.’
He couldn’t have known it was exactly the wrong thing to say. Theresa barely managed to mumble a ‘nice to meet you’ before she ran outside into the parking lot. Slumped against the service doors to the kitchens, she broke down in tears.
He’s right! The one thing that could save my marriage is the one thing Theo knows I’ll probably never be able to give him.
Alone beneath the stars, Theresa wondered how much longer she would be able to hold her marriage together. Years? Months? Weeks? She tried to think back to where it had all begun to go wrong. Immediately one, single, unforgettable image loomed in her mind.
It was Sasha Miller’s face.
Sitting in the front row at McCollum Hall, Harvard Business School’s newly renovated auditorium, Sasha Miller waited excitedly for her name to be read out. As the top graduate in her section, she would have a long wait. Her name, as was the tradition, would be called last, and would undoubtedly prompt a standing ovation from her classmates and professors. But that wasn’t why Sasha was excited.
She was excited because now, at last, she could take the first step towards fulfilling her destiny. The destiny that had brought her to Harvard in the first place. The destiny that had made her quit physics and take an MBA. The destiny that had brought her to America.
Now I can start to destroy Theo Dexter.
After the university ruled against her, things unravelled quickly for Sasha at Cambridge. She didn’t stick around to be formally sent down. She’d suffered enough humiliation for one lifetime. Instead she quietly dropped out, intending to write to the physics faculties at the five other universities who’d accepted her, and finish her degree in peace.
It wasn’t to be. It took six months of pleading letters, phone calls and personal references from every teacher she’d ever met to convince any university to admit her. In the end, University College London took pity on Sasha, mainly because the Head of Admissions, James Trethwick, used to go out with St Agnes’s Deputy Headmistress, Diana Drew, and still held a torch for her.
‘I don’t know what happened with this Dexter fellow, but Sasha’s never done anything remotely like this before,’ Diana told James over dinner. ‘And the girl truly is the most gifted physicist I’ve ever taught.’
That much was true. But James Trethwick still came to regret his decision to admit her. With Theo Dexter’s star inexorably rising, media interest in Sasha refused to die. ‘She’s like Monica Lewinsky to Dexter’s Clinton,’ James complained. ‘Dexter gets interviewed on Parkinson and suddenly there are a hundred photographers loitering outside our labs, trying to get a shot of the Miller girl looking sad or defiant or whatever story they’re peddling this week. It’s distracting.’
Luckily, Sasha’s fellow UCL students weren’t distracted for long. She graduated with a top first not much more than a year after enrolling. Her parents took her out for a celebratory meal in Tunbridge Wells.
‘What now, love?’ Sue Miller asked. ‘You’ll be looking for a research fellowship, I suppose?’
‘With your degree scores you can go wherever you like,’ her dad said proudly. ‘You’ll be beating off offers with a stick.’
‘Actually,’ Sasha took a big slug of red wine to steady her nerves, ‘I’ve decided to go to business school.’
‘Business school?’ Don Miller couldn’t have looked more horrified if she’d said she was enrolling in pole dancing academy or jetting off to a jihadist camp in Afghanistan. ‘That’s ridiculous. You’re a scientist, Sasha. You have been since you were knee high.’
Sasha shrugged. ‘Maybe I grew up.’
‘No.’ Don stood up. He was shaking. ‘I can’t let you do this. You’ll regret it for the rest of your life, Sasha. You can’t just give up on physics.’
Sasha looked at her father sadly. He’d never got to live out his own dream of becoming an astronomer. Instead, he’d lived through her. All her life, she’d been a channel for his hopes. Now she was about to dash them. But she knew she had no choice.
‘I didn’t give up on physics, Dad. It gave up on me. It doesn’t matter how brilliant I am, how hard I work, how many times I prove myself. I’ll always be the girl who tried to steal her professor’s theory. I need to start again.’
Don opened his mouth to speak, but Sue interrupted him. Unlike Don, she had never been obsessed with their daughter’s academic career. All Sue Miller wanted was for Sasha to be happy. If that meant a change of direction, then so be it.
‘Where were you thinking of going? For your MBA? Have you applied anywhere yet?’
Sasha took another slug of wine. This was going to be the hardest part of all.
‘Actually, I’ve been accepted. At Harvard.’
‘America?’ This time her parents’ horror was mutual. ‘You’re going to America?’
I am. Theo Dexter’s in America. I’m going to move there and work my arse off and make a success of my life. I’m going to become rich and powerful. Then I’m going to figure out a way to ruin that bastard’s life, the way he ruined mine.
* * *
Sasha’s only concern about going to Harvard was that it might remind her too painfully of St Michael’s. She needn’t have worried. Cambridge’s charm lay in its slightly dilapidated old-worldliness. Everything was falling down, crumbling and overgrown, from the lecture halls to the underpaid professors’ rickety bicycles. Harvard, especially the business school, was like a well-oiled corporation. Everything was new and perfect and gleaming. At St Michael’s, the libraries smelled of dust, ancient stone and woodworm. At HBS, they smelled of money.
No one, Sasha learned, studied business out of passion. It wasn’t like physics or history or literature. People came to business school for one reason and one reason only: because they wanted to be rich. Unlike in England, where the naked pursuit of wealth was considered vulgar and unseemly, here it was openly celebrated. Of course, there were a few deluded souls who liked to pretend to themselves and others that business really mattered. The ‘I want to make