City of Friends

by Joanna Trollope

  ‘Yes, I know,’ she said, following Melissa’s gaze. ‘Liam gave them to me last Christmas. They may do nothing for my image but they are divinely comfortable and just what my feet feel like after a day in heels. You, of course, look amazing. And immaculate. It isn’t surprising if Tom reacts against immaculate a bit.’

  Melissa said, gesturing, ‘Oh, Tom . . .’ and then she said, ‘It was perfect timing, when you rang. I was suddenly feeling like the very definition of spare.’

  Gaby indicated the open sitting-room door. ‘Let’s go in there. The kitchen is a nightmare of kids squabbling over the sashimi as they say I never order enough of that and always too much rice. I could kill Quin for being out.’

  The sitting room, huge and high with modern sofas and an enormous abstract painting hanging above the carefully restored fireplace, had the same air as the hall of having been thundered through by a mob in flight. There were garments scattered here and there, a discarded violin in an armchair, drifts of newsprint and magazines across the floor and coffee table, and every cushion looked as if it had not so much been leaned against as jumped on. Gaby waved towards the armchair.

  ‘Just shift the violin. Claudia never plays it; more’s the pity as she’s quite gifted. I keep meaning to sell it but the list of things I mean to do would stretch from here to Oxford. I brought some wine up. Such a relief, when it’s Friday and I can allow myself a drink.’

  Melissa lifted the violin respectfully and carried it across to a side table which was empty except for a chessboard with all the pieces lying tumbled across it as if they had been blown over.

  ‘I think it’s just this kind of casualness and busyness of living that Tom wishes he had,’ she said, laying the violin down gently beside it.

  ‘He won’t wish it for long.’

  Melissa turned. Gaby was pouring rosé into a mismatched pair of glasses. ‘Gaby, he might. He might just fall in love with the whole set-up.’

  Gaby straightened up, and held the taller wine glass out to Melissa. ‘What’s Will Gibbs like these days?’

  Melissa came forward and took the glass. ‘I have no idea. Probably much the same as he was fifteen years ago.’

  ‘Fatter, greyer . . .’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘And more children?’

  ‘I think,’ Melissa said, ‘that that’s the lure. Two little boys.’

  ‘Ah.’

  Gaby looked as if she was considering something. Then she said, raising her glass,

  ‘Happy days.’

  ‘Yes,’ Melissa said, ‘just this one happy-day glass for me. I’m driving.’

  ‘All the more for me, then.’ Gaby hesitated a moment and then she said, ‘I expect you think I’m an absolute cow about Stacey.’

  Melissa looked at her. ‘No, I don’t.’

  ‘Well, thank you, but I bet you do. The thing is, Lissa, I simply haven’t room. My team is complete. In fact there’s a guy on it I’ll be letting go because there’s a girl I need to persuade to stay who’s much better than him, and he’s really surplus to requirements as it is. So, the bottom line is, I haven’t got room for Stacey.’

  Melissa said slowly, ‘I probably should have asked you first.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘You mean yes. You mean I should have asked you before I started getting Stacey’s hopes up.’ She paused. Then she said, ‘Did she sound as if they were got up?’

  ‘Well,’ Gaby said, swallowing wine, ‘Stacey and I had the kind of conversation that my old boss would have called sticky. So whatever she was hoping for, I made plain that I wasn’t in a position to give it to her.’

  ‘I should never have emailed.’

  ‘As a professional woman, no, you shouldn’t. As a friend, of course you should. Have you spoken to her recently?’

  ‘No. No, I haven’t,’ said Melissa, sitting down in the chair where the violin had been. ‘To be honest, Gaby, I couldn’t think how to tell her that I was reviewing the board of Steve’s company, that I recommended that he be put on it. I expect he’s told Stacey, because they have that kind of marriage, but I wouldn’t blame her for wondering, right now, whose side I’m on. So, no, I haven’t rung her. The only person I rang was Beth. I spoke to Beth.’

  ‘I’ve had a frantic week,’ Gaby said. ‘I haven’t spoken to anyone. My mother sends me postcards with Remember Me? printed on them.’

  ‘And Beth said she had been round to Stacey’s.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘It was awful. Awful. Stacey’s mother is like another person, a stranger, and Stacey was in an old shirt of Steve’s with dirty hair and on the verge of tears all the time.’

  Gaby filled her glass again and came to sit on the sofa near Melissa. ‘Jesus.’

  ‘Beth said that she wasn’t in a fit state even to think of an interview.’

  ‘Well, if her mother suddenly—’

  ‘I don’t think it’s so much her mother,’ Melissa said. ‘I mean it is, of course, but it’s almost more losing her job like that. The shock of it, the humiliation.’

  ‘As men who’ve been sacked or made redundant have been telling us for decades,’ said Gaby. ‘How was Beth?’

  ‘Sad.’

  ‘Angry?’

  ‘She didn’t sound angry. She just sounded really, really sad.’

  ‘But,’ Gaby said, ‘she’s quoted everywhere. Professor Mundy’s theory of this, Professor Mundy’s theory of that . . .’

  ‘But she loves Claire. She still loves Claire. You can’t just turn off loving someone.’

  Gaby tucked her legs up under her. ‘Did you love Will Gibbs?’ she said thoughtfully.

  Melissa smiled at her. ‘No. I really liked him and I really fancied him. But I wasn’t in love with him.’

  ‘But Tom . . .’

  ‘I’ve never felt about anyone the way I feel about Tom.’

  ‘He’ll be home tomorrow,’ Gaby said, comfortably.

  ‘Perhaps. But he’ll be different.’

  ‘Will he?’

  ‘Of course he will,’ Melissa said. ‘He’ll have discovered what it’s like to have brothers. He’ll have had family supper, he’ll have slept in a sleeping bag on the floor probably without anyone nagging him to brush his teeth or eat an apple or wear clean socks. He’ll have – secrets. He’ll have seen what it’s like to live in a family.’

  Gaby waved an arm. ‘Like this. Permanent disorder.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Actually,’ Gaby said, ‘not all houses are like this. If Quin gave a flying . . . button about how the children treat the house, it wouldn’t look like this.’

  Melissa looked up at the ceiling. ‘I can’t help wondering . . .’

  ‘What?’

  She looked at Gaby. ‘I can’t help wondering what Will’s house is like.’

  ‘Of course you can’t.’

  ‘And even more,’ Melissa said, ‘I wonder what she’s like. Will’s little boys’ mother. Tom says she’s called Sarah.’

  Gaby took another sip of wine. She said, almost absently, ‘Is she?’

  ‘I don’t even know what she looks like,’ Melissa went on. ‘Partner to Will, mother to these boys, stepmother to Marnie, and now to my Tom.’ She gave a little laugh. ‘It’s mad, really, isn’t it, not to know anything about where Tom is tonight, and be absolutely powerless to do anything about it?’

  ‘You could contact Will.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose so.’

  ‘You get on perfectly well, don’t you?’

  ‘Well, yes,’ Melissa said. ‘As long as he hardly featured in Tom’s life, we did fine. But this is different. This involves Will’s new family, and his house and – and her.’

  There was a sudden eruption of noise from the kitchen, followed by thudding feet, and then Claudia burst into the room with Liam in hot pursuit, brandishing a pair of chopsticks in each hand.

  ‘He’s going for my eyes!’ Claudia shrieked. She dived onto the sofa behind her mother and seized a cushion as a shield. ‘
He is! He is! He means it!’

  Gaby looked across at Melissa and raised her glass. ‘Family life,’ she said. ‘See? Frankly, you can keep it.’

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  GABY

  The girl sitting opposite Gaby looked exhausted. She was immaculately dressed, and her hair was twisted behind her head into a neat knot, but she had dark circles under her eyes and her skin was grey. She wasn’t, Gaby thought, much over thirty. Thirty-three at the outside. Married with two small children and a difficult commute across London. Her husband worked in sports media and, she said, travelled all the time. He was a sports nut, she explained, and had been when they met, so it was no good her saying she didn’t know what she was getting into. This was his dream job. And it was also his choice to live within easy reach of Heathrow.

  ‘We could,’ the girl said, ‘manage on his salary. Just. We talked about it.’

  Gaby continued looking at her, waiting for her to say more. She went on, after a pause, in a rush, ‘I thought I ought to tell you. You always say . . .’

  ‘Yes?’ Gaby said.

  ‘That we shouldn’t hide the fact that we can’t cope any more. And I can’t.’

  ‘Ellie,’ Gaby said, putting her glasses on. ‘Can you tell me what you can’t cope with, exactly?’

  ‘All of it,’ Ellie said quickly.

  ‘Like?’

  Ellie made a despairing gesture. ‘I set the alarm for five thirty a.m. Five o’clock sometimes, because there’s always more laundry and getting breakfast and preparing a special packed lunch for Joey because he’s coeliac so he can’t eat at nursery school, and showering and dressing and getting the children up and dressed and giving them breakfast and collecting Joey’s stuff for nursery school and Bindy’s for the childminder and out the door latest by seven twenty because I can drop Bindy off at half past, and then Joey with my friend Sam till his nursery time.’

  ‘Where is Scott in all this?’

  ‘He’s great,’ Ellie said. ‘When he’s home. But he’s away so much.’

  Gaby leaned forward. ‘Do you think it will really be better, if you stop work?’

  Ellie said sadly, ‘It’s more that I can’t go on like I’m going on.’

  ‘Of course you can’t.’

  ‘So I thought if I stopped work for a bit . . .’

  ‘You know,’ Gaby said, ‘so many girls say that to me. Because the social pressure is still on girls to shoulder the family and domestic burden, it’s the girls who drop out of working, and then it’s the girls who find it so hard to get back in. I don’t want you, Ellie, to be one of those girls.’

  ‘But I can’t—’

  ‘I know you can’t. Of course you can’t go on as you are. You’ll go mad. You’ll fall to pieces. Does Scott earn more than you?’

  Ellie looked faintly startled. ‘No, but—’

  ‘But what?’

  ‘He gets a lot on expenses. So it kind of looks like he earns more.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘I’m not blaming Scott,’ Ellie said with sudden energy.

  ‘Nor am I.’

  ‘Aren’t you?’

  ‘I might be blaming the system,’ Gaby said. ‘The system that produces traditionally entitled men like Scott, but I’m not blaming him personally. He’s not the problem. You are the problem. What you want and what you feel you ought to want. Do you like working? Do you like this job?’

  Ellie nodded.

  ‘How much?’ Gaby said. ‘A lot?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Would you miss it?’

  Ellie’s eyes filled with sudden tears. She nodded again, vehemently. Gaby took off her glasses. She said, ‘Shall I tell you something?’

  Ellie waited.

  ‘You’re good,’ Gaby said. ‘In fact, you are very good. Of all the people I’ve taken on in the past five years, you are among the top three. I don’t want you to go. You are a team player and you are a real contributor.’

  Ellie fished a tissue out of her dress sleeve and blew her nose. She said, indistinctly,

  ‘Wow.’

  ‘So,’ Gaby said, ‘I can quite see that your present situation is intolerable. I understand your sense of obligation to family life and your respect for Scott’s desire for self-fulfilment. But if I can help it, you are not about to sacrifice yourself either to your children or your husband. Those days of wifely obligation to all the other people in her family are over, Ellie. You have all the validity as a working professional that Scott does, even if your appreciation of that is buried under your need and wish to be a good wife and mother. So, the bottom line is – I do not accept your resignation.’

  ‘But I can’t—’

  Gaby put her glasses back on. ‘Wait. Wait just a second. Honestly, Ellie, you’re as bad as my children. I haven’t finished.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘For the next few months, while we see if this works, you are going to work from home. You are going to get up at a civilized hour, take the children to wherever they need to go, come home and clock in, online. A few times a week, or a month, there may be something you need to come in for, a meeting or an event, and I will expect you to be a part of all the video conference calls you are usually part of, so I don’t want you in your pyjamas. And I’ll expect you to work until it’s time to get Joey from nursery school. We’ll give it till Christmas, and then we’ll see. OK? How does that sound?’ She looked across at Ellie and picked up the box of tissues on her desk, holding them out. ‘Ellie. Blow your nose.’ She shook the tissue box. ‘And if you dare to try and say thank you, I will probably change my mind.’

  ——

  Someone had attempted to tidy the hall. One of the ghost chairs was piled with an assortment of the garments that had been scattered across the floor, and Claudia’s violin lay on the console table with a Post-it note stuck to it, reading, ‘Please sell me.’ The writing was not in a hand Gaby recognized. On the floor, at the back of the hall, weighted by a single gumboot, was a piece of paper on which Liam had written, ‘Dad and me have gone to rugby practice. Claudia’s at Sophie’s,’ and had then signed his full name at the bottom, Liam Quintin Henderson, as if he and Gaby had never met.

  Gaby stood at the foot of the stairs and called upwards, ‘Taylor!’

  There was no reply, but there was the sound of music, or of a steady beat at least, slightly muffled by a closed door. Gaby kicked her shoes off under the console table where her zebra slippers waited, slipped her feet into them, hobbled a step, stooped, took one slipper off and extracted a red Lego brick from the toe, put her foot back in and began to climb the stairs. She held the bannister, hauling herself up as if she was very tired or very old, until she came to the wide first-floor landing. All the doors were shut and there was the blue knitted elephant that Liam had loved as a small boy on the rucked-up modern rug in the centre of the floor. Gaby picked it up and looked at it. It was missing one eye and someone had clamped a plastic clothes peg to its tail.

  ‘Taylor!’ Gaby shouted again.

  From behind the furthest door came the thump of music. Taylor shouted something inaudible back. Clutching the elephant, Gaby shuffled down the landing and opened Taylor’s bedroom door.

  ‘Why can’t you use earphones,’ she yelled, ‘like everyone else?’

  There was an abrupt silence. Taylor was lying on her bed. She didn’t move. ‘I didn’t think there was anyone in but me,’ she said. ‘Why’re you holding Heffalump?’

  Gaby looked at the elephant in her hand. ‘I met him on the landing. He was just lying there, poor thing. Why has he got a clothes peg on his tail?’

  Taylor sat up slowly. ‘Ask Liam.’

  ‘They’re at rugby.’

  Taylor yawned. ‘Liam was so excited,’ she said. ‘They’ll have to play with floodlights.’

  Gaby said, ‘Have you had supper?’

  ‘Not hungry.’

  ‘Please don’t tell me you’ve eaten three bags of crisps.’

  Taylor pulled off the band hold
ing back her hair and shook it out. She said, ‘If I had, I wouldn’t tell you.’

  ‘What would you like to tell me?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Taylor said.

  ‘Nothing about your day or what Miss Dixon said about your history project, or what you had for lunch or whether you have made up with Flossie?’

  Taylor sighed. She got up from her bed very slowly. ‘I haven’t,’ she said.

  ‘Have you tried?’

  ‘I don’t want to try. She put a photo of me on Snapchat I’d asked her to delete. It wasn’t a rude one. I just looked really, really rubbish.’

  Gaby propped herself against the door frame. She tucked Heffalump against her, as if he was a small, knitted baby. She said, ‘I’ve had, basically, the same three best friends for over twenty-five years. Do you think Flossie might be a friend like that?’

  ‘No,’ Taylor said.

  ‘Because of who she is?’

  ‘Because,’ Taylor said with emphasis, ‘I don’t want friends.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘It means,’ Gaby said, ‘that you don’t want supper and you don’t want friends and you don’t want to answer civil questions about your school day from your mother, so why is she wasting her time on you?’

  Taylor bent to pick up her headphones off her bed. ‘Steve rang.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Steve. Steve Grant. Stacey’s Steve.’

  Gaby pushed herself upright. ‘When? When did he ring?’

  ‘I dunno,’ Taylor said. ‘Maybe an hour ago. I didn’t look. I left you a note in the kitchen.’

  ‘Taylor,’ Gaby said, ‘what did he want?’

  Taylor shrugged. ‘To talk to you.’

  ‘And what did you say?’

  ‘I said you would be back by seven.’

  ‘I wonder why he didn’t ring my mobile?’

  Despite herself, Taylor looked suddenly more engaged. ‘Maybe he was ringing from his office landline. Maybe he didn’t want the call traced on his mobile.’

  Gaby looked at her daughter. ‘Good thinking. Something about Stacey. Something he didn’t want Stacey to know about.’ She stopped, and then she said, in a different tone, ‘Friendship isn’t easy. Is it?’