When in Rome... by Gemma Townley Page A

known and whether their products are rated. According to Nigel, we need to skew the research to show that no one has heard of them; that way, they’ll have to keep the U.K. brand and operations. If HG products are really well known, they’ll just start replacing Leary products with the HG ones and that’ll be that. I start digging out names of our customers to start calling them, but then Nigel comes over.
    “I think Denise can probably do that,” he says. Oh great, so he’s trying to get rid of me already.
    “I’m perfectly capable of making phone calls, you know,” I say crossly and pick up the phone, just to prove my point.
    “No.” Nigel takes the receiver and puts it down. I look up, shocked. Nigel never does things like that. Are all the men in my life turning into tyrants?
    “I want you to help me do some proper research,” says Nigel quietly.
    “I always do proper research,” I say. “Usually, anyway . . .”
    “Look,” he hisses. “Shut up, will you. I want to find out some more about HG. Find out what this merger is really about. I want you to help me track recent mergers and the fallout.”
    “Fallout?” I think I know what he means, but you can never be sure with Nigel. Once he asked me to do some research on the relevance of ABC to today’s accountant. I rung round a whole load of bemused accountants to find out whether the alphabet was really a useful tool for them in their current roles, only to discover (when the report was complete) that Nigel was actually talking about some business tool called Activity Based Costing. I never dared tell him my mistake, and we continued publishing the ABC CD-ROM because everyone in my research report said it was absolutely essential.
    “I mean, what happens afterward. What happens to the companies.”
    Well, obviously, that’s what I thought he meant.
    Nigel and I sit at his desk going back through the last twenty years of publishing mergers. I had no idea there were so many publishing firms. Nor did I know how many publishers are owned by one company. Like, take theFinancial Times . Did you know that they are owned by Pearson, who used to own London Weekend Television? No? Well, neither did I. We put together a big list, focusing on cross-border mergers, then we highlight all the U.K.-U.S. ones.
    I take my half of our final list back to my desk, and I’m about to do a search on the Internet, when I suddenly notice something. On the screen from my original search on HG, a name on one of the documents rings a bell.
    “Nigel.”
    “What?”
    “Come here.”
    Nigel reluctantly gets up and walks over to my desk. I am looking at a news report on a previous merger—HG and a French book publisher.
    “Isn’t this the same company that was involved in the Brightman-Glover merger?”
    Nigel looks closely at my machine.
    “Scroll down,” he orders.
    We search through old news reports looking for information on all the U.S.-Europe mergers in the past ten years. Sure enough, in nearly all of them the same name keeps appearing: Tryton.
    “Not a company I’ve heard of,” admits Nigel. I haven’t either, but that doesn’t mean much. I mean, I haven’t heard of any of these companies.
    Nigel doesn’t say any more about it, so I assume it isn’t really that interesting after all, and I carry on noting down share prices and collecting information.
    By twelve, I’m starving from all this hard work so I go out to get some lunch. When I come back Nigel’s in exactly the same position, hunched over his computer.
    I guess it’s because he thinks his job is on the line and he’s trying to demonstrate how hard he works and how essential he is. Personally I prefer theque sera sera approach. If I’m going to lose my job, then there isn’t much I can do about it, so I may as well make the most of it while I’m here. I sit down at my desk and take out my new copy ofMarie Claire to flick through while eating a tuna sandwich.
    There’s an article about people who have slept with their