Chapter 10
10
O h, but she was good! So good that as she leaned back and opened the calendar app on her phone Caro allowed herself an imaginary pat on the back and a small smug thought: how was Matt ever going to manage without her?
Because anyone else on the team would have flunked this pitch.
Because if she was good, Emir was equally as good.
She should have known. The persona he wore, easy as a hat, was exactly the kind of exquisite display of ethics and personality, income and political affinity that could only be achieved by minute attention to detail. Everything about him – the sneakers, the iPhone case, the pause before he spoke – was calculated to the nth degree. He had about as much spontaneity as her Facebook feed. Twice, her pitch had wobbled dangerously, under the pressure of that microscopic attention to detail and had, in fact taken three times longer than she’d been expecting. Nervously she glanced at her phone. Danny was nearing the end of his second beer and Helen was due any minute.
‘A week next Tuesday?’ Emir said, glancing up from his open calendar app.
‘Sounds good,’ Caro answered. He was definitely one of the most astute investors she’d ever had to persuade, crossing every t and dotting every i of his Due Diligence. And if she hadn’t been equally as assiduous with her own preparation, they would not now be discussing an initial position of two hundred thousand. (A little more than she had been aiming for, twice as much as Matt had guessed.) She looked across at him. He reminded her of herself – this young man, groomed to within an inch of his life, meticulously prepared. So much so that watching him on his phone, Caro experienced a moment of clarity. What could she tell him? What advice would she give him, for those moments in life that cannot be prepped in advance?
Suddenly, he lifted his face and smiled at her and in a moment of light, she saw just how young he was. Her shock shocked her. The office was full of a younger generation for heaven’s sake. And even though neither Mel her secretary, nor Matt, had any living memory of Live Aid, even though for them 9/11 wasn’t much more than a big news day, somehow the link had still been tangible . But this smiling boy-man? Emir? In that moment, it felt to Caro as if he’d fallen to earth from a whole other place, shiny and perfect and young enough to be alien. Thrown, she dipped her head to type in the appointment and to conceal an odd surge of feeling. How long could she continue doing this job? How long did she want to continue doing it? How on earth was she going to connect with a baby, who would be a generation even younger?
‘Tuesday, Caro!’ Danny turned, palm raised ready to high-five.
Caro braced herself, felt the sting of Danny’s hand and looked up just in time to see Helen, appearing at the far end of the terrace.
‘You’ll never guess what that bastard’s gone and done now!’ Face flushed, hair flying, Helen was already halfway across the terrace, passing a waiter, who looked up from the glasses he was polishing in mild astonishment.
Danny turned, ‘This sounds like her!’ He threw his head back and laughed.
Caro stood.
‘No, don’t get up!’ Helen said and lunged forward, wrapping her arms tight around Caro’s neck. ‘You are not going to believe this!’ She tugged her top back down over the slab of still tanned midriff that was on show. ‘I’m not even sure I believe it myself! I was—' Suddenly she stopped talking and looked at Caro's stomach. 'How are you?' And without waiting for an answer flung her handbag behind her. It landed on Danny’s lap. ‘Everything alright? I thought you were in a meeting.’
’I am,’ Caro said pointedly. She indicated the settee behind where Helen stood. ‘ This is Danny and Emir.’
'Oh!’ Buttons of pink appeared on Helen's cheeks. ‘I didn’t see you.’
‘Camouflaged,’ Danny winked and stretched his hand up to the tall upright terrace of vine which backed the sofa. ‘Want your handbag back?’ Smiling, he handed the bag to Helen, whose buttons of embarrassment had bloomed to dinner plates.
‘We were just finishing,’ Caro said, sitting down. And she squeezed her eyebrows together and shook her head in a tiny no one knows – don’t mention it kind of way.
Helen fell into the seat next to Danny. ‘Thanks,’ she said, retrieving her handbag. Then glancing at Caro made a don't worry, understood face back.
In response, Caro pressed her lips together. Helen was flushed and breathless and at least, she suspected, one alcoholic drink down.
‘Danny Abbott,’ Danny offered.
‘Emir,’ Emir said.
‘Helen Winters,’ Helen answered. She raised a conciliatory hand to Emir. ‘Sorry if I'm interrupting.’
‘Helen!’ Danny laughed as he turned his palms to the sky. ‘You’re hurting my feelings here. Don’t you remember me? You’re the reason I just splashed out fifty thousand on a yacht. Mind…’ He pointed a finger at her. ‘I don’t want you capsizing this one any time soon.’
Helen frowned.
‘You spoke to Danny in Cyprus,’ Caro said tightly.
‘I did?’ A tide of crimson rose up her neck. ‘Oh I did, didn’t I?’
‘Yes, you did!’ Again Danny threw his head back and laughed. ‘And I hadn’t been spoken to like that since… well a long time. Anyway.’ He leaned forward, his eyes dancing. ‘I’m delighted to meet you at last. What’s your tipple?'
Helen’s blush ebbed away. ‘I don’t want to interrupt anything…’
‘You’re not!’ Danny answered. ‘We’re good, aren’t we?’ And he looked first to Emir, who nodded, and then to Caro.
‘Are you sure?’
‘It’s OK. We’re finished,’ Caro said, and her voice was a degree sharper than she had intended.
‘OK.’ Pushing her hair back from her face, Helen shrugged. ‘Well, after the morning I’ve had, I think a large G&T is called for.’
Caro flinched. A large G&T type of lunch wasn’t what today was about. Helen knew that.
‘Caro?’ Danny asked.
Tight lipped, Caro shook her head. ‘I’ll stick with this,’ she said, indicating her lime and soda.
‘Emir?’
Emir too declined.
‘That’s the trouble with the younger generation,’ Danny laughed. ‘They’re far too sensible. I’ll join you, Helen. That’s if we’re not interrupting anything by hanging around a little?’ He looked at Caro.
She shrugged. ‘Not at all.’ Hanging around? Danny Abbot meetings were passing trains. She got to spout as much information as she needed before he steamed on past to another destination. Now he was hanging around? Like a teenager at the chip shop?
Danny leaned forward and with both palms on the glass coffee table he patted out a drumroll. ‘Now,’ he said, grinning. ‘Why don’t you tell us all about what that bastard has gone and done now!’
And wearily Caro leaned back. It had been like this from the very beginning: whenever Helen appeared, Caro became invisible. She felt a little dull inside. As if someone had come along and removed the sunshine from this perfect afternoon that she had been looking forward to for so long.
With the help of a G & T served in a glass large enough to house a small fish, Helen’s encounter at the bank spilled forth. Even as she told it, she didn’t believe it. It sounded so cliché, something that had happened a million times before, to a million other people. But not her. That kind of thing would never happen to her. Still, she slurped on her straw (which was paper and kept sticking to her lipstick) and pressed on, faithfully relaying the ridiculous conversation with the bank clerk almost word for word. ‘Mountains,’ she finished on. ‘That’s his thing.’
Danny’s mouth had dropped open.
Emir, silently handsome as a Greek statue, sipped his expensive water.
And Caro leaned back, her expression inscrutable.
‘So that,’ Helen said as she threw the straw on the table and swallowed the last icy sludge in her goldfish bowl, ‘is that.’ She turned to Caro. ‘I didn’t know what to do with myself. I grabbed a can of one of these from M&S and hopped on the train.’
‘Excellent idea,’ Danny said, ‘in the circumstances.’
‘You think so?’ Helen held up her empty glass and pretended to study it. ‘Whatever happened to highball glasses?’ she said. She felt light. Light as the bubbles in the tonic, and Caro’s face was odd. What must she think of her?
‘Let me get this right.’ Emir clasped his hands together. ‘You didn’t know about this re-mortgage?’
Head shaking, she lowered her glass.
‘Wait a minute.’ Danny waved his hand. ‘Why didn’t you have to sign?’
Helen opened her mouth to answer, but before she could say anything Danny had lowered his chin.
‘ Hel-e-n ,’ he drawled. ‘No, no, no. Don’t tell me your name isn’t on the paperwork?’
She didn’t answer.
‘Don’t tell me this, Helen.’
‘My name isn’t on the paperwork,’ she said finally.
There was a short, odd pause and then Emir said, ‘Did you know that?’ And his eyes were dark pools of astonishment.
Helen looked back at him. He was so handsome, this young man, so together and so cool… ‘Yes,’ she shrugged, every last shred of dignity shredded. ‘I knew that.’
Beside her Caro had lifted her chin and closed her eyes and was now shaking her head in the kind of tiny imperceptible movements not meant to be seen, but which were as visible as clouds to Helen. She looked down at her empty glass.
And all around the table astonishment fizzed like an electric current.
Or was that just Helen? She didn’t know. All she knew was that sitting there, on a chic city terrace surrounded by all the financially astute, fiscally responsible people of the world, she had never felt more stupid in her whole life. If the floor had opened up, she would have gladly slithered down into a black hole of mortification. A warmth swelled behind her eyes. This was her fault. That’s what they were all thinking. Caro definitely. And they were right. Her longstanding acquiescence in all things financial had been more complete than she’d ever admitted – to anyone. Lawrence earned it, she spent it, and that had been the roomy and comfortable shape of their finances. She thinks you have it easy, Kay had once told her about Caro. Well, there wasn’t anything easy about what she was feeling right now. Exposed. Humiliated. Ashamed. And what exactly had she done to deserve that? Trust her husband? The buttons of pink rose again in her cheeks, only this time they tingled with defiance, even anger, and from the corner of her eye she saw Danny nod at her glass. She nodded back. Fuck it. From the corner of her other eye, she saw Caro bristle. She ignored it.
Danny turned for a waiter.
‘Can we get a menu as well, Danny?’ Caro called, a right-angled edge to her voice. ‘Let’s eat?’ she added, addressing the question to Helen.
Helen shrugged. ‘I’m not that hungry.’
‘You need to eat.’
‘OK,’ she breathed, and tipped her head back and breathed again. What she needed, what she really needed to do, was open up the steam valve in her chest with another large G&T, not stuff it down with an overpriced posh burger and chips. Especially considering the grave state of her bank balance.
A waiter approached trailing a cloud of pungent aftershave.
Numbly Helen took a menu. She had about as much interest in eating as she did in Lawrence’s heart-rate monitors that always littered the kitchen dresser. Added together, over the years, how much had they cost? ‘I’m really not…’ But she was saved from any further feeble explanation by another waiter arriving with refills for her and Danny, and a bowl of crisps for the table. She slapped the menu closed and picked up her refill.
‘You’re not going to order, Helen?’ Caro asked without looking up from her own menu.
Helen shook her head. Why was it that Caro could always make her feel like a child?
‘Do you think he did it to fund the Everest thing?’ Glass in one hand, Danny had spread his elbows across the back of the sofa. He looked as if he’d settled in for the afternoon, which was exactly what Helen felt like doing, which was a problem given that they were due to meet Kay in the baby department of Selfridges in just over an hour. Baby department! How was she going to get through the afternoon? She nodded at Danny.
‘I know he did,’ she said flatly.
‘How do you know?’ It was Caro. Her first words on the matter.
Helen looked at her. ‘Well, I don’t know a hundred per cent, but where else has it gone?’
‘I thought you said he sold some stock.’
‘That’s what he told me.’
Caro nodded. Her lips were a thin line.
‘That’s about the cost,’ Danny said. ‘I had a mate do it three years ago. Cost him the best part of eighty grand back then.’
‘Exactly.’ Helen eased back herself. She didn’t want to encourage Danny… She shouldn’t encourage him, but with the freshness of the first sips of her new drink she could feel muscles relax that hadn’t relaxed in weeks, and it felt good. All she wanted was to keep that feeling going. Never mind that beside her, in a complete reversal of sensation, she was aware of Caro closing up like a clam. Well, there would be time for all that Caro had to say on the matter after. But right now, right here, the spotlight of Danny’s attention was a warm and comfortable place.
‘Man, that’s impressive though.’ Emir shook his head. ‘Everest.’ He’d stretched his arms forward, nursing the glass in his hands.
Impressive? Helen looked at him. Emir was square jawed, with a rack of visible abdominal muscle under a top that masqueraded as a casual t-shirt, but was really an exquisitely styled, cost-enough-for-a-lifetime item of clothing. His hair had been shaved at the sides in a ruthlessly clean line, and his nails showed perfect cream half-moons. In fact, the level of personal grooming he displayed required the kind of sustained sense of self-absorption Helen knew she hadn’t possessed since she was seventeen. That season of her life when, locked in her bedroom, plucking her eyebrows and shade-testing lip-gloss to the backdrop of Stevie Nicks’ Edge of Seventeen , she could let a whole day slip by. So fast forward a few decades, years in which every hair follicle in her body had been allowed to run wild and nail-files were rusted in place on the edge of the bathtub, and, compared to this magnificent young man, what was she but a middle-aged, fluffy, flabby, flushed mess? On her third G&T, while he calibrated his sips of water to exact hydration requirements. Impressive, he thought. And who was she to disagree with that? She took another slug. Resentment bubbling. A mother, that’s who she was. A mother who had kept the fort safe and the knickers clean while her husband, every inch as disciplined as Emir, had re-mortgaged the house and buggered off to climb a mountain. Which was criminal and selfish and not impressive at all. She reached forward and took the largest crisp in the bowl, stuffing it sideways into her mouth. ‘That,’ she crunched, ‘isn’t really the point, Emir. The point is, what am I going to do now? He’s got his I Climbed the Highest Mountain in the World certificate, but what have I got? How’s he going to buy me out when he’s mortgaged up to his eyeballs? And how am I, on a part-time doctor’s receptionist wage, going to be able to buy my own place?’
Danny turned to her. ‘You’re a doctor’s receptionist?’
‘I am,’ she said and took another three crisps.
Caro snapped her menu shut.
‘Oh, it all makes sense now!’ Danny laughed. ‘Remember Caro? How she put me in my place?’
‘I do.’ Caro was on her feet. ‘I’m just going to order some food,’ she said and looked meaningfully at Helen.
‘OK.’ Helen took another crisp and then another. ‘I’ll just snack a bit,’ she said, turning away from Caro. Yes it was Caro’s day, yes, they were here to look at prams and cots and… good grief! Were they really going to do that! The three of them, one hundred and fifty-one years between them, browsing Moses baskets, like dewy-eyed newly-weds!
‘You should eat something, Helen,’ Caro muttered.
‘I’ve lost my appetite,’ she muttered back and sucked at her paper straw.
‘My mum was a doctor’s receptionist,’ Emir smiled. ‘She hated it. Couldn’t wait to quit. She said the patients were too rude.’
Surprised, Helen looked at him. She couldn’t have found a single way to connect this specimen of humanity to her world, and here he was doing it for her. Unpicking the straw from her lips, she said, ‘Well your mum’s right, Emir. They can be rude bastards.’
Danny laughed. ‘Don’t mince your words, Helen.’
‘I don’t mince anything these days, Danny,’ Helen slurped. She looked at Emir. ‘Is that why your mum quit?’
‘No.’ Emir leaned back and crossed one leg over the other so his thighs made a wide denim triangle. He scratched his chin. ‘She stopped because I bought her a flat in Malaga. For fifteen years, she worked two jobs to raise me and my sister. My dad bailed when I was two. Bought a one-way ticket back to Dominica along with all her savings.’ He gave Helen a rueful smile. ‘I get it,’ he said. ‘She trusted him. She didn’t do anything wrong either.’
Salt on her tongue, Helen lowered the crisp she’d been about to eat. She wanted to cry.
Danny tilted his head at Emir and said gently, ‘Self-made millionaire here, Helen. And he’s right. You didn’t do anything wrong.’
Caro came back, slipping into her seat. ‘I’ve ordered,’ she said but no one seemed to hear.
‘Millionaire!’ Helen whispered, caught in a gin-befuddled mix of astonishment and self-pity. ‘What do you do?’
‘I trade. Markets. Short-term stuff mostly.’ Emir smiled.
‘ Financial markets,’ Caro added.
Helen eased back in her seat. Now she really did want to cry. This lovely young man, buying his mum a flat as soon as he could.
‘He can turn a fiver into five hundred in twenty-four hours,’ Danny laughed.
‘No!’ Helen looked around the table. ‘Really?’
‘It can be done,’ Caro said stiffly. ‘Sometimes.’
Helen raised her glass. ‘I think I need your number,’ she said.
‘It takes a lot of skill, Helen,’ Caro said lightly. ‘Emir’s been doing this for a long time.’
And the lightness of Caro’s voice was like a little whip, startling her back to life. Emir couldn’t be more than a day over twenty-five-ish. And he was a millionaire? Buying property for his mother? She’d passed the train journey up engulfed in a maelstrom of emotion. How stupid she’d been! How blind! And until this moment not a single patch of clear or positive thought had emerged, an idea that might carry her forward and out of the storm. She leaned forward and slapped her glass on the table. ‘I have a savings account my grandmother started for me when I was eleven.’
Danny was laughing.
Undeterred, she grabbed her handbag. What did it matter? She had nothing to lose, no dignity left to salvage. ‘Last time I checked there was about three thousand. I have to try and do something. It’s either that, or staying where I am. In the house, I mean, with Lawrence – and with Libby now—’ Abruptly she stopped talking. Pregnancies, she remembered, were not to be discussed here and now. From out of her handbag she pulled a packet of tissues and a foil sleeve of Ibuprofen, the top of an eyeliner pencil and a copy of The Big Issue.
‘Three K will get you started,’ Emir nodded.
Helen leaned back and pulled out the sleeve of a pop-up umbrella.
‘You can lose money, Helen,’ Caro said. ‘Very easily, if you don’t know what you’re doing.’
Defiantly, Helen looked at her. ‘Well, it’s time I learnt, don’t you think?’ And finally she pulled out her phone.
‘I can give you some tips.’ Emir too had his phone out. ‘What’s your number?’
‘Me too,’ Danny held up his phone.
Helen shook her head and smiling, turned to Caro. ‘Can you believe this?’ she said. ‘Me? Interested in investing?’
But the smile Caro managed barely reached her lips.