My husband got the promotion because of me.
He stood on marble with a glass in his hand and told two hundred people that I had never understood the life he was building — and the life he was building had been handed to him, eight weeks earlier, because of who he had married and did not know it.
And the ninety seconds after I hung up, which four different people have described to me and which I remember almost none of.
I know I put the phone in my bag. I know the dress was cold against me by then, because champagne goes cold about four minutes after it goes on you and nobody tells you that.
What I do not remember is the chairman crossing the room, which apparently he did, at speed, and which about forty people saw.
He did not reach me. I was already moving.
And the thing I do remember, completely clearly, out of that entire evening, is a woman called Marguerite from the finance team — forty-odd, I had met her twice, she had no idea who I was — who came out of the crowd with a napkin and put it in my hand and said: “He’s a pig. Have you got a car?”
