Audacity: Chapter 24

This model of fucking at work isn’t just time-efficient for Gabe—yes, he has me calling him Gabe now. It’s working very well for me, too. I get an excellent orgasm or two during office hours, and it means I can spend my evenings getting to grips with my new EA role instead of swiping right or hitting up bars so I can get laid.

God knows, I need all the time I can get to do a deep dive on this foundation thing. I’ve spent the past few days pulling together a detailed briefing pack for Gabe ahead of his meeting with Eleanor and Torty. The proposed agenda is to take the first steps towards implementing a formal foundation structure under the umbrella of Rath Mor, but I’m damned if I won’t provide Gabe with as much detail, as much analysis, as humanly possible. His parents and brother and sister will be in attendance too, giving him four more reasons to bring his A game.

If I’m right, the Old Guard won’t fail to underwhelm with their proposal, which makes me intent on arming my boss with as compelling a counter argument as possible. My instincts tell me that Gabe’s background of community stewardship and pastoral care will give him a very different vision of his future foundation from the one Eleanor and her cronies present.

And guess what? I’ll bend over backwards to make his vision a reality, even if I suspect I’ll have to intervene on occasion to ensure he doesn’t give every last penny away. There’s a way to do this that’s hard-headed and practical while being innovative and sustainable, and I already feel excited about the idea of being in a position to affect change for good. I’ll throw every single thing I learnt during my time as a management consultant at this, that’s for sure.

In the days before the meeting, I run myself ragged, hunting down the owners of every last piece of information I need and seemingly interacting with most of the estate management team in the process.

The brief Gabe has given me is limited to compiling current state analysis—that is, a picture of where things stand right now—but I’ll be damned if I don’t go back to him with all the extra material he didn’t know he wanted or needed. And that’s precisely because the current state analysis makes for bleak reading.

I’ve mapped—with difficulty—the places to which the Sullivan family donations are currently going, and the picture is piecemeal as fuck. I’ve compiled an audit of all their current charitable initiatives as well as historical giving platforms under Gabe’s father. I’ve got to grips with the current decision-making process where charitable donations are concerned (in a nutshell: random) and I’ve proposed a list of inefficiencies that I see with the process.

To be honest, the only real area that isn’t inefficient is taxation. Rath Mor’s charitable endeavours seem to be an exercise in optics, and offsetting tax, and little else. It’s not that the family doesn’t give away a lot of money. They really do. It’s simply that their giving appears spontaneous and reactive and the very opposite of strategic.

By virtue of the insane value of the land this family owns, it’s one of the biggest landowners in the UK. It has an incredible opportunity not just to part with money but to transform entire communities and create an innovative blueprint for responsible land ownership around the world.

If I’m being completely honest with myself, the fact that they’re even contemplating doing this in-house is insane. With the amount of money in play, they should absolutely be farming this out to Bain or McKinsey or another bulge-bracket management consultancy firm. Any of these guys would lose their shit over this opportunity. I should make this clear to Gabe, and I will. Just not yet.

I want a chance to sink my teeth into this first.

If my first impressions are correct, the bar for making an impact on this front is very fucking low.

In the end, my brief to Gabe extends far beyond its initial remit. I complete my current state analysis (dismal) and then some. A benchmarking exercise against other UK family foundations proves equally depressing, so I perform a deep dive into the state of the London Docklands, where the bulk of the Sullivan family’s wealth is tied up.

This land in South East London is incredibly valuable but, as George pointed out, far less developed than the likes of Kensington and Chelsea, the preferred base of the aristocracy for centuries. By contrast, the Docklands are home to some of the most diverse and deprived boroughs in the entire UK.

I pull a tonne of demographic data on the Docklands, and it makes for tough reading. One of its more infamous boroughs, Tower Hamlets, has one of Britain’s highest incarceration rates and highest proportion of social housing. Its green spaces are woefully inadequate. This is a dream of a regeneration project across all fronts.

It’s not all bad news. The grassroots efforts in some of these communities are truly inspiring. There’s hunger and activism and a real, screaming need for change. And while I’m sure there’s no one in this firm more conscious than Gabe of the struggles the poorest people face, I also suspect his experience has left him ill-equipped to affect change at any scale greater than the parish level.

Money will talk to so many stakeholders here in a way that a Catholic priest could only dream of and pray for. If Gabe is undertaking this project from a place of compassion, of positivity, then I am absolutely going to weaponise his agenda with every gun in my arsenal.

So, once I have a clearer picture of what we’re dealing with, I take the initiative to include an entire section on inspirational precedents. There’s no bloody way I’ll allow the likes of Eleanor and Torty to be the only ones painting a picture for Gabe.

My devious form of visual overriding comprises examples of successful projects across environmental, social impact and community contexts. I would imagine Eleanor is already all over the more glamorous cultural preservation projects.

I reference projects ranging from the High Line and Industry City in New York to Barcelona’s 22@, which is a fantastic example of the kind of regeneration that can be carried out on industrial land. In my view, these are precisely the kind of precedents the Sullivans should be homing in on, rather than what the likes of the Cadogan and Grosvenor Estates are doing in London’s swankiest areas.

Finally, like the good little Bain-trained management consultant I am, I crunch more numbers than these guys could ever want or need at this stage in the creative process. I keep them as high level as possible, but I want everyone at that meeting to understand that philanthropy and smart business don’t have to be mutually exclusive.

I lead with the tax benefits, obviously. But there are plenty of sustainable funding models with which any self-respecting MBA will be familiar, and a lot of the projects I’m proposing we consider would be prime recipients for government grants. I finish up with some high-level risk analysis based on the information I have at this stage.

Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Eleanor.

It’s really fucking good.

‘This is really fucking good,’ Gabe says in amazement. ‘You know it’s about a million times more detailed than I asked for, don’t you?’

We’ve made some cups of tea, locked his office door and curled up on his sofa together. My shoes are off, one stockinged foot folded beneath me and one outstretched. Gabe takes it and lays it in his lap so he can knead it. This is some oddly intimate hinterland between the two parts of my role, but the feeling after a day in heels is utterly glorious.

I resist the urge to moan in pleasure and instead look him dead in the eye. I won’t mince my words. ‘Look. I want you to have all the information when you go into that meeting, and fuck knows, the information isn’t easy to come by in this place.

‘You may think you’re at a disadvantage when it comes to huge-scale business decisions like this, but you have a perspective that no one else in that room has, and that’s one of humanity and compassion. From what I’ve seen, this is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to have serious, massive impact, and I’m damned if I’m not going to arm you up so you can advocate for yourself and for all the people whose lives could change if crusty old farts like Eleanor step aside and admit that noblesse oblige and fucking charity balls aren’t the way to affect change.’

He laughs. ‘Wow. You’re my pet piranha, aren’t you? My secret weapon.’

‘You’d better believe it,’ I retort. ‘Wait until you see my teeth.’

George’s warning about Eleanor flashes into my mind. Don’t let the pearls fool you. She’s got teeth, and she doesn’t like to be challenged.

That makes two of us, buddy.

He laughs, then says, ‘I’ll send this to my family today. They’ll be blown away.’

‘Good. That’s good. Get them on board with your vision before they’ve even walked into the room.’

‘My vision?’ He holds up the pages of what should be a briefing document and instead is a solid pitch, and I have the good grace to laugh.

‘Our vision.’

‘That sounds more accurate. But I reckon Dad’ll love this stuff. He grew up on the Dublin docks. He’ll get it.’

‘And your mother? God that’s good,’ I moan as his thumb circles my instep hard.

He lays the briefing document down and circles my ankle with his other hand. ‘She’ll agree with the core of it, I think. I mean, it would be hard not to. But she loves Eleanor.’

‘How? Why?’

He purses his lips before answering. It’s something he does a lot. He’s never in a hurry, never one to say something without measured consideration.

‘Validation, I suppose. Having people like Eleanor on board credentialises my parents. They may be very wealthy, very successful, but there’s a part of them that still sees themselves as interlopers. You know what London high society is like—it’s a melting pot of old money and new. Eleanor provides that old-money gloss that they feel gives them some respectability.’

‘That’s ridiculous. From the sounds of it, your parents are about a million times more impressive than her.’

‘Maybe so.’ He strokes his fingers along my foot, his grip deliciously firm. ‘But sometimes it seems as though they’re still trying to find a way to belong. Even after all this time.’