Marathon or sprint?

I left you with Caroline floating naked in a warm swimming pool under a starlit sky.

Don't thing for one moment it is easy for me to write about this. If you knew C better, you'd understand that she's a good natured person who takes people at face value and tries to see the best in them. In business, she's ruthless and calculating, but for her that's a numbers game. She wants to win and she usually does. With people, I think she's naive, which means she sometimes loses.

I'm sure you've been in a work environment which works fine in the day to day, then the boss or the head of HR has the daft idea that things would be better if everyone knew each other, not just in a work way, but as a human beings. So they bring in a facilitator who takes them through a few bogus questionnaires, assigns them a score, and gets people to admit to their colleagues that they think they might be an extrovert gay, or an extreme introvert who has the urge to be dominated. I wonder how good this is for long term career prospects?

Alistair, head of R&D in Monsaint, chemical engineer by training I think. I met him once. Used to play rugby, now runs marathons. Driven. He had had his personal can of worms opened that afternoon. He had convinced himself that his inner drive was being hampered by his lack of success in satisfying a woman. He could do 26.2 miles in a decent time but couldn't last more than a few seconds in bed. He just found the whole business much too exciting. It troubled him, he couldn't sleep, so he took a walk out of the hotel grounds and into the olive groves behind.

When he returned and saw the vision of Caroline enjoying herself in the pool he didn't turn round and go the long way round through the hotel. He stayed and watched from behind one of the columns that supported the rooms above. In a moment of lucidity that had been lacking for most of the day, Caroline realised the risk she was taking and decided to run back to the the privacy of her room. She walked up the shallow end steps of the pool, emerging like a Botticelli Venus with a shake of her long red hair.

Alistair saw the key card drop out of her rolled-up towel. Like a true gentleman, he scooped up the card and set off up the marble stairs after her, following the wet footprints which led to C's room.