The long goodbye

Things are falling apart, say Francis's ex-colleagues. His former boss, Malcolm, working on the what goes around, comes around theory, is convinced that having done the dirty on Francis, mafiosa-style, he's next in line for the axe. He's now refusing to go to meetings, convinced that if they can't catch him, they can't fire him, either, and spends all day playing golf.

This means that there's nobody in charge of the sales team, who spend their time buffing up their cvs, going for interviews and arranging supplementary wakes for Francis. In the past ten days, he's been invited to a farewell team Chinese dinner, an au revoir Thai team lunch and a goodbye Pizza. Where next? A cheerio for now tea at the Ritz?

Perhaps all this is making the chairman jealous, because he decides that the little, weakling brands that Francis wanted to buy and restore to profitable good health are in fact the darlings of his later life, who, far from ailing, are piling on the pounds and whose growth means they are much too precious to part with, at least for the money Francis would be able to pay.

I should, I know, be big and grown up about all this, especially as it will make no difference now. But however much I concentrate on higher things, I continue to hope -though only after Francis has got his cheque - that the company will go bust in a spectacularly public fashion, ideally as a result of some amusingly humiliating exposure in a tabloid newspaper. Francis, it goes without saying, is hugely mature about whole thing, and dismisses my talk of evil eyes, wax images with optional pin embellishment and notes in bottom drawers as pointless. "It won't help anyone," he says. But it will, Francis, it will.