Page 7 of Minha Dona

Helena’s week started the way every week started: too early, too much coffee, and a meeting at eight thirty that could, and definitely should, have been an email.

The São Paulo office of her consulting firm occupied four floors of a glass tower in Faria Lima, the financial district that had been the beating heart of Brazilian business for as long as Helena could remember. Her father had worked two blocks from here for thirty-five years before retiring, as had his father before him, and there was something grounding about walking these streets in the morning, weaving through the suited crowds, knowing that her family’s fingerprints were all over this part of the city.

She’d been back from Houston for nine months and in that time her career had quietly accelerated. The secondment had done precisely what secondments are advertised as doing… broadened her experience, put her name in front of senior people in other offices, given her a line on her CV that said she could operate internationally. Her manager, Rafael, had made it clear that she was on what the firm called the ‘leadership trajectory’, which as far as Helena could tell meant more responsibility and significantly more meetings, with the carrot of more pay at some vague point in the future. Some managers she’d have struggled to trust with that, but Rafael was a partner himself and heading for great things, so he was more reliable than most.

This particular Monday morning meeting was Rafael running through the quarter’s pipeline: potential new clients, active engagements, staffing allocations. Helena contributed where she needed to and let her mind wander where she didn’t. The São Paulo office was smaller than Houston, unsurprisingly given that Houston was the firm’s global HQ, with a character that reflected the Brazilian approach to business… relationships first, everything else second. She liked that about it. You knew everyone, for better or worse.

“Helena, the Pactuali engagement.” Rafael looked at her over his glasses. “Where are we?”

She straightened in her chair. “Scoping phase is done. We’ve built the financial model and stress-tested it against three scenarios. We’re presenting to their board next Thursday.” She paused. “I’d recommend we lead with the conservative scenario. Their CFO is reputed to be risk-averse, and we’ll lose her if we come in too aggressive. We can pivot to something more aggressive once she’s bought in if need be.”

Rafael nodded. “Good. Lead on the presentation. Take Mateus for support but it’s your show.”

“Understood.”

It was her show. More and more things were her show lately. She’d led two client engagements since Houston, both successfully, and she was getting a reputation in the office as someone who could manage difficult stakeholders with a combination of analytical rigour and the interpersonal warmth that Brazilian business culture demanded. She was good at reading people, she always had been, and in a consulting context that translated into knowing when to push a client and when to pull back, when to present the hard truth and when to let them arrive at it themselves.

Reading people. She was good at that in every context, not just professional ones. She’d read Caitlin within hours of really talking to her, had seen the hidden submissive beneath the dominant surface, had understood instinctively what Caitlin needed before Caitlin herself had known.

Don’t. Not at work. Not now.

She forced her attention back to the meeting, which had moved on to a discussion about a potential engagement in Argentina that nobody seemed particularly enthusiastic about volunteering for.

After the meeting Helena spent the morning at her desk, deep in the financial model for Pactuali. It was absorbing work, the sort of work where she could enter a flow state and left no room for stray thoughts, which was precisely why she liked it. Numbers didn’t ambush you with memories. Spreadsheets didn’t make you wonder what might have been.

Her phone buzzed just before midday. Isabella.

Lunch? I’m nearby. That place you like with the salad bowls.

Helena smiled. Isabella worked in marketing for a luxury fashion brand, which seemed to mean that some weeks she was absolutely, hectically busy, others she barely seemed to work at all and would suddenly pop up suggesting lunch out of nowhere. They’d been friends since school and had the sort of relationship where months of absence changed nothing… you picked up exactly where you left off. In practice, though, they saw each other in the evenings at least weekly, often more, it was just the daytimes that tended to be somewhat random.

Perfect. 12:30?

The reply was instant.

See you there x

***

The restaurant was a five-minute walk from the office, a light, airy room that catered to the more health conscious of the working crowd. Helena arrived first and secured a table by the window, the midday sun shaded by the awning outside.

Isabella arrived as her usual bundle of energy, oversized sunglasses pushed up into her dark hair, a shopping bag from somewhere expensive dangling from one wrist. She kissed Helena on both cheeks and collapsed into the chair opposite.

“I have been on my feet since seven.” She shook her head in disbelief. “It’s criminal. A photoshoot in Pinheiros that needed different shoes or else the model wouldn’t pose.” She flagged down a waiter. “I need carbs.” She grinned. “And gossip. In that order.”

They ordered and fell into their usual rhythm. They had, after all, been having lunch together for near on fifteen years. Isabella talked about the photoshoot, then about a guy she was seeing that night who’d managed to get her number out of her at the bar on Friday, then about her mother’s increasingly unsubtle campaign to get her to settle down.

“That article about egg freezing,” Isabella said. “She just sent it. No message. Just the link. What do you reckon: passive-aggressive or just aggressive?”

Helena laughed. “Luckily my parents have already concentrated all their grandchild hopes on my sisters.” Helena had come out to her parents in her teens and while there’d been a brief flicker of hope for her mother when she dated a man a couple of years back, that had soon dissipated when they’d understood that everyone before and after was female.

“Lucky you. Maybe that’s what I need to do… stage a fake coming out.”

“Your mother wouldn’t cope…”

“No, you’re right, she’d drop dead on the spot. Don’t give me ideas…” Isabella smiled, then focused in on Helena. “Speaking of families, I saw you leave with Juliana again.”

“So what if I did? And as you well know she’s not family.”