Chapter Six
I didn’t stay long at Resilience Needs, despite the almonds and the glass of delicious purple goo Carl served me.
It felt too much like setting up camp with the enemy.
Instead, I took the meeting with the consultant, speaking much more softly than usual, then skedaddled back down the concrete staircase into the ice-grey light of the Non-Snow Day.
As I’d taken the call, sitting at the tiny desk in the adjustable chair, I’d glimpsed Olly, far below, hailing an electric taxi and jumping in, a bright, tweedy scarf doubled around his neck, off to his meeting.
I never took taxis – it felt decadent. It was engrained into me: public transport or walk. Just like the idea of a garden in London – the garden Olly had referenced a puppy racing around in – felt as remote to me as the idea of gold-leafing my living room.
That voice, those suits, that sense of controlled self-containment.
Either Olly came from money, or the not-so-equal pay gap was rearing its head and he was on a lot more than me.
He was playing nice now, but I’d lay money on the idea that a man like that would want his way, and it was surely only a matter of time before he started speaking over me in meetings.
I was sensitive to the idea; I’d spent my life battling to be heard in high-level meetings and was practised at fighting my corner, but I felt disappointment at the idea of going head-to-head with Olly.
He stayed at the back of my mind all afternoon as I answered emails.
Popped back to the surface as I rattled home on the tube that evening.
It was highly likely he was married, right?
A garden was such a sweet, domestic thing to have, and he had that married air about him.
He didn’t wear a ring, but not everyone did.
Happy, coupled up, moneybags Olly.
I emerged from the tube into the winter darkness, checking my bank account on my phone in a sudden flutter of anxiety.
I try not to think about money so much, I really do, but I’ve been the Responsible Adult in our family for more than a decade.
Mum and Dad were chilled out, we-could-die-at-any-moment-so-let’s-enjoy-life types who spent every penny they made and never really considered knotty, boring things like pensions and savings.
Mum was our north star. After she died, Dad’s happiness dissolved, and after limping on for a few years he sold the family home because he couldn’t bear to live there anymore.
He bought a nice retirement apartment that also has a not-so-nice service charge, which he had completely failed to take into account.
After he’d spent the remainder of the house money, he soon learnt that his basic pension doesn’t cover it – but my salary does.
My brother, Alex, has a severe form of autism and other health complications which means living independently and working is out of the question.
He’s in an assisted living facility that he loves, paid for by a mixture of benefits and council funding, but I took on the bulk of the welfare admin and (how do I put this politely) the fighting I had to do to get him into The Cedars.
I also pay for extra stuff, which he needs for his health and his happiness.
The saving grace is that Alex and Dad live near each other, so I can visit both of them together.
It’s not the life any of us envisaged. Dad is a good man, but his favourite state is denial.
So apart from the occasional autonomous decision (like the, ahem, retirement flat) he relies on me.
I go into battle for all of us, and I guess, if we’re looking at silver linings, it meant I developed my hard facade early in my twenties.
I toughened up fast, and it’s hard to reverse that kind of thing or take it off for special occasions.
I’d be lying if I said it hadn’t affected my dating history; when people are ticking boxes on the kind of thing they want in a partner, they tend to leave out ‘icy facade, often sarcastic and defensive’ in favour of something sweeter and softer.
I keep most people at a distance. It’s easier that way.
My last boyfriend – who really seemed to enjoy my sarcasm, when we first met – ended up checking the electoral register to find my address because we spent all our time at his place.
I came home one day to find him standing outside my block, a look of complete disgust on his face.
That was a classic evening. So relaxing.
Pushing aside memories of my ex – and of my afternoon at Resilience Needs – I unlocked the door of my building and was assailed by the smell of mince and potatoes.
The ground floor occupant seemed to specialise in school-dinner-type creations.
Wrinkling my nose, I collected a chunk of official-looking letters, possibly related to Alex’s care, and clomped up the stairs.
If you looked at me from the outside, you would wonder why, on such a very good salary, I still live in a grubby, tiny studio flat in in the rough part of Oval.
Why I always order house white, never a more expensive bottle.
I guess many people might chalk it up to a gambling or shopping addiction, or plain stinginess.
I never disabused my last boyfriend of whatever notion he had formed; never told him what, financially, Dad and Alex need.
I also didn’t tell him my most expensive clothes are gleaned from daily monitoring of second-hand clothes apps, or that sometimes I’ve struggled to pay vet bills for Pebble, the world’s most un-insurable cat, on the basis of her many pre-existing health conditions.
Talking of which, said cat was sitting on the doormat when I shouldered the front door open.
She looked mightily peeved. This is not unusual.
Despite being half ragdoll, supposedly making her affectionate and biddable, Pebble’s default setting is annoyed.
She used to belong to my neighbour Marge, but Marge went into a home and the next thing you know I had a harassed looking council official banging on my door asking whether I wanted ‘it’.
I had looked at Pebble, she had looked at me, and seemingly against my own free will I had opened my arms and taken receipt of her.
Pebble usually waits by the front door (from 7pm sharp, according to my internal security camera, a cheapo one I bought so I could keep an eye on her) and there she was, dodging my attempts to stroke her and mewing for her dinner.
Which I gave her, before I busied myself making a cup of tea and checking my email while crossing my fingers to see whether Esme and Ajax had gone full circle and broken up.
One could only hope. Instead, there was a flurry of messages from people asking if I minded if they applied to work on Chroma, and an annoyed email from Jacob, our Head of Finance, saying in tightly controlled prose whether I knew what was going on about the budget for this whole new project.
The joys of being on the leadership team for the business side of EKArts: Esme, me and Jacob, steering the ship. Esme full of inspiration, me and Jacob steadfastly practical. It had been a good balance until this week.
I started work on revising Esme’s content plan for the next few months: the work I’d actually intended to do until my Monday was ruined.
Unusually, I couldn’t focus, and as the evening ticked on, I started investigating Ajax via the wonders of the internet, hoping that a bit of nuance might make me dislike him less.
Like Esme, Ajax had come to the UK as a baby – his family hailed from Jamaica, while Esme’s was Polish.
Like her, he had fought his way up using his intelligence, force of will and charisma.
For a moment, I glimpsed a seam of gold through the grey clouds: maybe this situation was workable.
Then I stumbled across an announcement for Ajax’s recent publishing deal.
Six figures, for two books entitled respectively Hacking Your Body: The Perfection Plan and A Millionaire in Moments.
‘And it’s a no,’ I said, out loud. Maybe Esme and Ajax had an emotional connection, yes, but they were so different on every other level.
‘Why did she pick him?’ I asked Pebble, eating my last mouthful of toast. Of course, in some ways the attraction was obvious: Ajax was ripped – having gazed at Olly’s forearms for ten seconds too long, I could see the appeal of that – fitness focused, all regimented routine and tightly controlled, structured days.
A touch of research showed me he hired from places like the Army and Oxbridge or Ivy League colleges, first-class graduates all the way.
Staff with gym memberships, lots of goals and ‘measurables’.
He explored optimisation in his podcast, had a well-established lifestyle app and a coaching business which individuals could buy into.
I watched a clip of him getting animated about marginal gains and turned it off.
Esme, meanwhile, was a YouTube and TikTok queen who filmed herself creating art and her vibe was the polar opposite.
Her collaborations across the arts – including designing jewellery and homewares – focused on emotion and artistic merit.
She was about luxury, rest and intuition: yoga and meditation, no gym visits; her skin was soft and perfumed, her hair left unbrushed, and she didn’t care if you were late or early.
She hired wild cards: Cambridge dropouts, artistic types, people like me (I’d studied for my degree at night while working my way up in the Comms industry).
Even her employee benefits were different: we got five duvet days a year and free takeaway on our birthdays.
Both of them were famous for dating famous people. Models, musicians, actors.
They had one other thing in common: their charisma.
And now, Chroma. I opened a fresh message from Jacob.