Page 262 - James Caan - The Real Deal

The Real Deal

there, but, crucially, it was much better for me: if I was still
advising members of staff on this contract or that development I
would never break free or have the mental space to develop
something new.
About three days after the deal was made it hit me – like a
sledgehammer. What the hell had I done? And, more importantly,
what the hell was I going to do now? For eighteen years my days
had been filled by Alexander Mann, and for the past ten of them
I’d had twenty meetings a day and an assistant who made sure I
was always where I needed to be. If I had wanted a restaurant
booked, it had been booked for me; if I had wanted to catch a
flight, it had been arranged on my behalf; if I had wanted to take
a couple of days off it had required coordinating umpteen people’s
diaries. I was free now, but I was also really quite lost. I still
owned the businesses that hadn’t been part of the sale to Advent,
but they didn’t take up more than a day or two a month. How was
I going to fill my days?
I just kept asking myself, What have I done? I was forty-two,
the age when most people earn the biggest pay packets of their
careers and amass the bulk of their wealth, yet I was walking away
from my earning capacity. On the one hand, people thought I was
mad, but on the other they were jealous: I was effectively retiring
twenty years before most people got to think about it.
Obviously, I had discussed it all with Aisha. She had stopped
working at Alexander Mann when Advent had bought their initial
stake in 1999 and for the past three years she had got into a
routine while the girls were at school all day. I think we were both
a little bit worried about how things would work if I was hanging
around the house all day. But, to her credit, Aisha didn’t
constantly suggest ways that would get me back into business and
out of the house. More than anyone, she knew how hard I had
worked and how badly I needed a break. I had worked since I was
sixteen, my life for twenty years had been wrapped up in business

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