fourteen
After the sessions with Marianne and James, I phoned Christine and told her what James had said about the numbers. She said they were getting on fine and would have something to tell me by the next morning.
There was one other person I wanted to talk to, if I could, before meeting up with Graham again on Wednesday and then preparing for Juliette on Friday.
I might be ‘hopeless’ at strategy, to quote Juliette, but Justin isn’t. He’s an old colleague of mine who had retired three years earlier, although he was only fifty, and then went around the world as a strategy trouble-shooter, helping executives to see why their strategies weren’t working as well as they would like and to rethink their tactics.
I phoned his mobile number and was lucky. He was in Spain, only one hour ahead. He answered after the fourth ring.
“Hello, Ian. I’m in a restaurant in Barcelona, so apologies for the background noise.”
“I’...