Two Women
Brian Freemantle
We will use the full weight of the law to expose and root out corruption… When abuses like this begin to surface in the corporate world, it is time to reaffirm the basic values that make capitalism work. There can be no capitalism without conscience, no wealth without character.
One
A lice said: ‘It’s all right.’
‘It’s not. I love you.’
‘We don’t have to make love every time to prove we’re in love. That just makes it screwing. Ugly.’
John Carver turned away, his back to her.
She said: ‘It’s not just this, is it?’
‘This didn’t help.’
‘Do you want to talk about it?’
‘It’s business. Boring.’
‘Business’s never boring.’ Alice Belling had graduated from Harvard Business School with a letter of introduction to a Boston stockbroking firm and the overly confident and quirky idea of turning her degree thesis on corporate avarice eroding American entrepreneurialism into an Op-Ed commentary for the Wall Street Journal. Unable to decide which to try first she wrote off to both at the same time. The Op-Ed piece, which prompted two more articles and two days of top-of-the-page correspondence, was published three days before Alice got an invitation to join the stockbrokers. Her choice was a freelance media career, specializing in analyses and commentary on global finance and corporate stock market movements and trends. In the past year she’d exposed insider dealing and profit inflation in two multinationals just prior to new bond issues.
‘Business and family,’ further qualified Carver.