Violet: Karen
International wealth preservation sounds much more glamorous than international insurance. Violet has started googling for information, should the possibility of a transfer ever arise. Her first taste of her new job has been a bit disappointing. She’d imagined a succession of high-level business meetings, negotiating with billionaire clients and steely underwriters, involving complex calculations using new software packages she’d learned at uni. Instead, she seemed to spend her first weeks mainly at the photocopier or making very weak organic ashwagandha tea for Gillian Chalmers, the head of the International Insurance Department at GRM, who spent her whole time in meetings, apparently ignoring her new assistant.
So it has fallen to Laura, Marc Bonnier’s assistant, to induct her into the culture of the firm. Laura is a brisk cheerful girl about her age — with a rather fat stomach, which she conceals under loose draped tops, lively eyes and shiny dark hair — who came into the Wealth Preservation Unit three years ago as a graduate trainee. Since international insurance is not her field, she briefs Violet on the office gossip instead: who is going out with whom, who is due for a million-pound bonus, and who is in or out of favour with the CEO.
‘It must be great working for Marc Bonnier,’ Violet ventured one day, ‘he’s so —’ She bit her tongue. To talk of a male colleague as hot was just too girly. ‘So impressive.’
‘You’re lucky to be working for Gillian Chalmers,’ Laura said. ‘She’s the rising star around here, and she’s had to fight hard to get where she is. It’s still a male-dominated environment.’
‘Mmm. I had noticed.’ Though being dominated by Marc Bonnier seemed quite appealing.
‘Don’t be fooled by Gillian’s traditional style. She thinks to get on in a man’s world women have to look professional — you know, suits, heels, all that.’ She glanced at Violet’s short skirt, black tights and cardigan. ‘She can be quite a dragon, but don’t be put off.’
In the kitchen corner off the open-plan office where the juniors work, which still houses an ancient photocopier as well as a fridge, kettle and a selection of personal mugs, to which Violet’s yellow one has now been added, Laura informs her that Gillian Chalmers and Marc Bonnier, the two principals who interviewed her for her job, used to be an item for years, but split up acrimoniously about six months ago, and that Marc is on the prowl for a replacement.
She doesn’t tell Laura that she’d found herself standing next to Marc Bonnier in the lunch queue in the staff restaurant yesterday, and while she was fumbling in her bag he whipped out his swipe card and paid for her lunch. He himself only had a black coffee and a bowl of salad.
‘Tell me about yourself, Violet. I didn’t have a chance to get to know you during the interview.’
He sat down opposite her while she tucked into a prawn curry (prawns are supposed to make you brainy) and told him she was fascinated by international insurance.
He raised one eyebrow and grinned. ‘Really?’
‘Really.’ She laughed. ‘Well, I’m interested in other things too.’
‘Tell me.’
So she talked about backpacking around Brazil, without mentioning Nick, with whom she’d travelled. The way he watched her as she talked made her cheeks flush. It seemed far too informal for a boss‒worker relationship.
Why, she wondered, did Marc Bonnier and Gillian Chalmers split up? Maybe it’s because of Gillian’s dominating personality — but she doesn’t say this to Laura, who seems to rather hero-worship Gillian.
Then this morning, without warning, Gillian summons her to her office.
‘I’m sorry I’ve been a bit busy these past few weeks, Violet. I’ve had a couple of deadlines. I hope you’ve settled in.’ Without waiting for an answer, she hands her a thick black slip case. ‘We want to develop our reputation as a global company. That’s one of the reasons we appointed you, Violet. We were impressed by your language skills. I’d like you to take a look at this proposal, and prepare a risk assessment so that we can match our client to a suitable underwriter.’
Their client, who goes by the initials HN Holdings, is seeking to build a shopping mall in Nairobi’s downtown district. She takes the slip case with a tremor of panic. At her interview she’d managed to sound knowledgeable and confident, but being faced with a real-life situation with millions of dollars at stake is different.
‘Er … which risks …?’
‘That’s up to you to discover. There are known terrorist risks in Nairobi, which you need to quantify and put in perspective, alongside other potential risks in that environment. You know Nairobi, don’t you?’
‘Oh yes, I was born there.’ She doesn’t add that she was eight years old when she left.
‘Excellent. I’m sure you’ll do a good job.’ Gillian smiles briefly and turns her gaze back to her computer monitor, indicating that the meeting is over.
Back at her desk, Violet opens the slip case to pore through the papers and photographs. The figures involved are astronomical, the language is bristling with jargon, yet through all the abstraction a rush of memories flood in on her of Nairobi’s hot bustling streets, seedy shopping parades, and the chaotic building sites where new developments spring up apparently unplanned on any corner or patch of land. And in their wake another cooler memory tiptoes in, of the quiet sunny bungalow in a suburb called Karen where she lived until she was eight. Her mind wanders through the cool rooms out on to the veranda and down to the wide securely fenced garden where hummingbirds glimmer in the flower beds and Mfumu, her dog, lazes in the shade all afternoon, moving around to keep out of the sun. That was a happy time.
She can’t exactly remember when she realised she was different from the ragged children who crowded around the car that picked her up from school each day. Her father was a newly qualified doctor from Edinburgh doing a stint of VSO before settling down to a well-paid consultant’s job in a teaching hospital in England. Her mother was a nurse at the Mbagathi District Hospital on an HIV-prevention team. They met over a suspect blood sample, and soon realised that they shared a love of benga music and mandazi. They married in the Presbyterian Church on Mai Mahiu Road six months later, and in less than a year Violet was born. When her father’s VSO term ended, he took a post at the same hospital.
While her parents were at work, her grandmother Njoki looked after her at her home in Langata. It was a two-storey wooden house that smelled of spice and black soap, with a front-facing veranda that had a view over the garden towards the mountains and a back window looking down towards the river where the Kibera slum festered like an open sore and skinny Maasai cattle grazed on any parched patch of grass.
She smiles as she remembers her grandmother’s flowery pinafores, the scent of coconut oil on her hair, and the way her face wrinkled like an expressive prune when she told her funny stories about the naughty monkeys that lived in the forest; but of her grandfather Josaphat she has no memory at all. He died when she was three. She tries to recall what her grandmother said about his death; the circumstances had been hushed up in a fog of sighs, murmurs and downcast glances.
Once her cousin Lynette, in a rage after losing half her garden in a corrupt land deal, muttered down the phone, ‘Mnyamaa kadumbu.’ Those who keep quiet survive. By the time she started her geography degree at Warwick, it had become a catchphrase in Kenya; troublesome people were getting bumped off regularly. Yes, if she is to assess the hazards of investing in Nairobi, corruption will be high in her league of risks.