City of Friends

by Joanna Trollope

  Taylor went pink. She made a clumsy gesture which could have been a distant attempted embrace, and could equally have meant nothing much. ‘I follow Flossie on Facebook,’ she said. ‘I know what she’s doing.’

  Gaby looked at her. ‘Of course you do.’

  ‘If you were on Facebook with Stacey and Melissa and Beth, you’d know more—’

  From Gaby’s bedroom across the landing, the landline began to ring. Gaby held Heffalump out to Taylor. ‘Take him for me. That’ll be Steve.’

  ——

  When Gaby had accepted her present position, she had made it plain she wasn’t going to spend her working life going round the world. Work colleagues had told her that the travel involved in investment banking was, they said with grave excitement, brutal, and Gaby had resolved, there and then, to do it differently. It was lucky that her determination had been appreciated by an enlightened Swedish chief executive, the son of a working mother, husband to a working wife, and father to three ambitious daughters. He had accepted, without demur, that Gaby would only travel when it was vital she attend a meeting in person. Otherwise, she made a point of proclaiming, one of her team would deputize for her. They were younger, mostly childless, and relished the chance. It was never a problem for Gaby to find someone eager to go to Shanghai or Singapore or São Paulo, nor for them to be equally eager to return with the results that Gaby would have achieved herself.

  ‘I am,’ she had no hesitation in saying, ‘a good delegator. After all, I handpicked my team so everything they do is a reflection on me. So they’d better be good. And they know it.’

  So when Sarah Parker came into Gaby’s office – a surprisingly modest corner room, crowded with furniture that had accompanied Gaby all her working life – and said that she would prefer someone else to go to France that week to discuss funding for sourcing enriched fuel for research reactors at a nuclear power institute in Grenoble, Gaby was astonished.

  ‘But it’s your project! You’ve done so much work on it.’

  ‘I know,’ Sarah said. Her voice, after all these years in England, was still distinctly American. ‘And I’d like to go. A lot. I really would. But I just don’t want to travel these particular weeks. I just – don’t. So I can try and change the meetings to next month, or Martin can go now.’

  ‘Martin?’

  ‘He’s worked alongside me. He knows it all. His French isn’t wonderful, but it’ll be better if he has to use it.’

  Gaby looked past Sarah through the internal glass wall of her office to where her assistant Morag usually sat. Morag would, in the normal course of things, have alerted Gaby about Sarah’s request, so that Gaby could prepare a response. But there was no sign of Morag.

  ‘I bypassed her,’ Sarah said. ‘She’s sorting something out with Ellie and HR. So I just kinda thought I’d surprise you.’

  ‘You have.’

  ‘I won’t make a habit of it,’ Sarah said. ‘It’s just – there’s a new dynamic in the family and I feel that has to take priority.’

  Gaby looked at her. She was holding a file of papers across her chest with one arm, and smiling at Gaby over the top of it. Her dark hair fell in smooth obedient curtains around her jawline, and the hand holding the file had well-kept natural nails and was very wholesome-looking, Gaby thought, very tidy and together. And pretty. Pretty was as much the word for Sarah as it wasn’t for Melissa. When you thought of Melissa, the word that came to mind was glamorous. Melissa was groomed and studied, even if apparently carelessly. When they were students together, some of the boys had behaved as if Melissa had cast a spell on them, just by being in the same room. No wonder Will Gibbs, newly divorced sixteen years ago, had been entranced to find Melissa part of the same holiday house party. And no wonder, perhaps, when it came to choosing someone to live with and mastermind family life, he hadn’t gone for a Melissa, but for a pretty, capable, responsible, unthreatening Sarah Parker.

  Gaby said, ‘Would you like to elaborate on this new dynamic?’

  There was a tiny pause, and then Sarah said, pleasantly, ‘But I think you know about it, don’t you?’

  Gaby leaned against her desk. ‘Try me.’

  ‘Tom Hathaway’s name isn’t unknown to you.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Nor is his mother’s. Melissa Hathaway.’

  ‘Sarah . . .’

  Sarah held up her free hand. ‘Just one moment—’

  ‘I’m not playing games, Sarah,’ Gaby said. ‘If you want to know if I know that Tom is Will’s son, and that he spent the night with you last week, the answer is yes. I knew the night it happened. Melissa told me.’

  Sarah went on smiling. She said, ‘But what you have never told me is that you know Melissa as well as you do. You never told me, when you hired me, that you and Melissa had been at college together.’

  Gaby folded her arms. ‘I didn’t know until well after you started working here that you were living with Will Gibbs.’

  ‘You knew I had a partner and children.’

  ‘I knew that,’ Gaby said. ‘But I didn’t know who your partner was.’

  Sarah’s gaze didn’t waver. ‘OK then,’ she said. ‘But you’ve never told Melissa, have you? You’ve never told your old friend that her son’s father is living with a senior member of your team. Have you?’

  Gaby unfolded her arms. She reached across her desk for her spectacles, and put them on. Then she said, in as conversational a manner as possible, ‘Are you trying to blackmail me, for some reason?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘Then I don’t understand your air of elaborate intention. What happens between me and my friends is no concern of yours. Your concern is to arrange the funding for Grenoble in the next two weeks.’

  ‘I think,’ Sarah said, ‘that Melissa ought to know. It looks like Tom’ll be at our house every week, right now. He’s wonderful with Jake and Ben, and even Marnie was less bratty with him around. But it doesn’t seem fair if Melissa doesn’t know about me working for you.’

  Gaby took off her glasses. ‘I know.’

  ‘So why—’

  ‘There was just never quite the right time to tell her. That’s all.’

  ‘I really don’t want to go to France.’

  ‘You needn’t. Send Martin in. I’ll tell him it’s his big chance, and I’ll be meaning that.’

  Sarah got up and turned towards the door. She was wearing ballet flats, of the kind Taylor and Claudia wore, except that Sarah’s hadn’t got scuffed toes. She said, her back to Gaby, ‘Who’s going to tell Melissa then? You or me?’

  ——

  Steve Grant had booked a window table in a restaurant on Canada Square that specialized in modern European cuisine – ‘Whatever that is,’ he’d said to Gaby – and told her that he would meet her there.

  She kissed him briefly, sat down, ordered fish to eat and water to drink as if he were hardly part of the encounter at all, and then said, ‘I gather things are bad at home.’

  ‘Terrible. Losing her job was one thing. Her mother’s dementia is quite another. And she only lost the one because of the other.’

  ‘Why don’t you order?’

  ‘Because,’ he said in the level, reasonable tone he found he was using most of the time at home now, ‘I haven’t had a chance.’

  ‘Well . . .’

  Steve held the menu up towards the hovering waiter. ‘Risotto and green salad please. And Diet Coke.’ He glanced at Gaby. ‘Salad for you?’

  She shook her head. ‘I hate salad.’

  ‘I know,’ he said, ‘just testing. My little joke. There aren’t many jokes in my life at the moment.’

  He offered Gaby a basket of Italian breads. She shook her head again. He said, ‘Gaby, I need your help.’

  ‘I thought you were going to demand to know why I didn’t offer Stacey a job.’

  He took a breadstick and snapped it. ‘If you thought that, I’m amazed you agreed to see me.’

  ‘I’m in a new phase,’ Gaby
said. She took a swallow of water. ‘It’s a phase of facing up to everything, telling everyone everything, generally behaving in a way that leaves everyone else to deal with the fallout because I’m not doing any previous editing.’

  ‘Goodness,’ Steve said. ‘What brought this on?’

  ‘Just life. And circumstances. And getting caught out by the consequences of trying to be professional at the same time as trying to be kind. It doesn’t work.’

  ‘So, in that case,’ Steve said, ‘why didn’t you even have a conversation with Stacey about what to do when she lost her job?’

  Gaby put her water glass down. Then she looked directly at Steve. ‘I didn’t want to.’

  ‘You—’

  ‘I didn’t want to for several reasons. One, she might be brilliant at private equity, but it isn’t the same as investment banking. Two, we are the same age, and equally experienced, so I couldn’t expect her to be subordinate to me. It would be awkward for both of us. Three, my team is complete, and I have someone particularly good at exactly the level Stacey might have considered, and that someone happens to be the partner of the father of Melissa Hathaway’s son, which is a fact I didn’t know until after I hired her, and have chosen, for the best reasons, not to reveal since. All in all, the reasons added up to not wanting to talk to Stacey about it.’

  ‘Ah,’ Steve said. ‘All too difficult.’

  ‘Yes. Too difficult. You can sound sarcastic if you want to, but you know about too difficult yourself. You’re living with it.’

  ‘Too right.’

  ‘Steve,’ Gaby said. ‘Before I get really angry and shout at you in a public place, will you please tell me what it is that I might help you with?’

  Steve put the pieces of breadstick down. ‘Stacey,’ he said, in a quite different tone.

  ‘I know. I haven’t been to see her.’

  Steve waved a hand. ‘Not that. She’s made herself pretty unavailable, I know that. But all the energy’s gone out of her, all that wonderful get-up-and-go, all that enthusiasm. She goes out to get food and walk the dog, otherwise she’s just at home with someone who often doesn’t even know who she is. Just at home. I don’t know what she’s doing. I don’t know how she passes the time. It’s as if she got hit on the head, or something. I tell her about my day, and she’s very polite about that, you know how she is, and then we watch the news, or a movie, and then someone from a local care agency comes in to help get her mother to bed and give her sleeping pills, and by then Stacey’s wiped out. Not just tired, flattened. Sandbagged. She sleeps like someone’s knocked her out.’

  ‘Doctor.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘She needs to see a doctor.’

  ‘She won’t,’ Steve said. ‘I’ve tried. I even asked our doctor and she said patient confidentiality meant she couldn’t do anything without Stacey’s consent.’ He picked up the breadstick again and began to break it into equal, small pieces. ‘Gaby, will you see her? Will you come and see her?’

  ‘Couldn’t she come here?’ She gestured around the restaurant. ‘It might remind her of what she’s missing.’

  ‘I don’t think she’ll leave the house. Will you come to the house?’

  There was a fractional hesitation, and then Gaby nodded. ‘Of course.’

  He swallowed. ‘Thank you.’ And then he said, ‘I feel so guilty.’

  ‘For having a job?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And getting a promotion?’

  ‘You can’t imagine,’ he said, ‘what her reaction was, when I told her. It never occurred to me she’d be fired instead of getting what she’d asked for.’

  ‘You knew,’ Gaby said tentatively, ‘that Melissa recommended you.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you told Stacey that?’

  Steve looked miserable. He leaned sideways so that an immense white soup plate containing a tiny amount of risotto could be set down in front of him. ‘No,’ he said simply.

  ‘No?’ Gaby repeated.

  He glanced at her. ‘I couldn’t,’ he said. ‘Not on top of everything else.’

  ‘But Melissa thinks you told her! Melissa thinks yours is the kind of marriage where there aren’t any secrets!’

  Steve looked at his risotto without enthusiasm. ‘Not any more,’ he said.

  ——

  ‘Would a whisky help?’ Quin asked Gaby.

  They were on the kitchen sofa together, in front of the television, which was set into the wall like a picture. A late-night news programme was running, with the sound turned off. It gave Quin a feeling of power, he said, to be able to mute all those glib politicians at the touch of a button.

  Gaby yawned. ‘No thanks. Anyway, it’s only Wednesday.’

  ‘Just thought it might help.’

  She rolled her head against the sofa back to look at him. ‘It helps telling you how utterly fed up I am,’ she said.

  ‘Good.’

  ‘You know how I feel when life and work start leaking into each other. And usually, I’m pretty good at keeping them separate.’

  ‘As one who falls into the lesser, and therefore neglected, half of that equation, I would heartily agree with you.’

  Gaby hit him lightly on his arm. ‘Stop that. You knew what you were getting into.’

  ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘except that one never does know, until one is right in.’

  ‘But you like it.’

  ‘I’ve got used to it.’

  ‘Please, Quin, take me seriously for a minute.’

  He turned to look at her, full on. He had pushed his own rimless glasses up on top of his head where his hair, like Taylor’s, stood up in a small, unruly fuzz. ‘I am now very serious.’

  ‘I think I sorted a few things at work today. Martin is thrilled and terrified about going to France alone, which is just as it should be.’

  ‘Good. Poor bugger.’

  ‘Lucky bugger.’

  ‘Being thought lucky when you are terrified is poor.’

  ‘So,’ Gaby said, counting items off on her fingers. ‘Work, once I’ve got those pathetic box-tickers in HR to agree about Ellie working from home, will be OK.’

  ‘Phew.’

  ‘You said you’d be serious.’

  ‘Gaby,’ Quin said. ‘This is quite boring. We’ve been through all this at supper, so the repetition isn’t very fascinating. And when things aren’t fascinating, I have to liven them up a bit. Anyway, I know what all this is leading up to.’

  She rubbed her nose with the back of her hand. ‘Do you?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘You have promised to talk to both Melissa and Stacey, and neither conversation is going to be in the least bit easy, and you basically don’t want to have either. Do you?’

  ‘No.’ Gaby’s voice was small.

  He leaned across the gap between them and kissed her cheek. ‘Usually,’ he said, ‘out of hard-won experience, I’d say at this point, well, don’t. But in this case, in this instance, as it concerns two of your closest friends in the world, you just have to.’

  He got up from the sofa and stood looking down at her. He was smiling.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  BETH

  ‘Should I,’ the girl reporter asked anxiously, ‘call you Professor Mundy or Doctor Mundy?’

  They were in Beth’s crowded business school office, with its medley of tables and chairs, the former like her desk in Wilkes Street, invisible under stacks of books and piles of paper.

  Beth smiled. ‘I’m both.’

  ‘Yes, I know, but—’

  ‘My professorship is the senior appointment.’

  The girl nodded. She was Hong Kong Chinese, a ferociously hard-working MBA student and, in her current capacity, reporting for the graduate students’ online newspaper. It was hard, Beth reflected, to persuade focused girls like her to broaden their interests to embrace anything cultural, let alone anything remotely fun. You might persuade a girl like Linda – a deliberately Wester
nized version of her Chinese name – to go to a gym, or for a run, but the idea of a rock concert, or clubbing, or even the theatre, would be met with utter incomprehension. Linda was here to work, to gain the highest possible scores in her MBA, and to return home to a well-paid job, and the consequent approval of the family. Two years in London, even if it did include all tutoring fees and living expenses, didn’t leave much change out of sixty-five thousand pounds. Young women like Linda were to be regarded with sober respect, Beth told her colleagues frequently.

  ‘They’re here because they want to be here. These are grown-ups.’

  Linda, despite the remarkable agelessness common to her ethnicity, looked both young and strangely unformed. She wore an impeccable grey flannel dress and her improbably glossy hair was tied back with a grey ribbon, but her tiny feet, in their shiny patent pumps, looked like the feet of a little girl. And her hands, moving swiftly over the keys of her laptop, were the hands of a child, small and innocent.

  ‘Just to give you some background . . .’ Beth spoke firmly, to distract herself from wondering about Linda’s private life, ‘I am the oldest woman but one on the teaching staff here and – I say this emphatically – it has been a huge advantage to me, throughout my career, not to come from a fancy family.’

  Linda paused. ‘Fancy?’ she said, with only a quick glance away from her screen.

  ‘Upper class,’ Beth said. ‘Effortless. I think it has been very good for me to have had to strive.’

  ‘Striving is natural in my culture,’ Linda said.

  ‘Particularly for women?’

  Linda’s gaze shifted. She didn’t look up or speak.

  ‘I haven’t taught here for all these years,’ Beth went on, ‘without noticing how many of you young women are intent on staying well below the public and media radar. And how picky you all are about boyfriends. Not just that, either. When I went to a reunion of all the women I’d done my own MBA with, all those years ago, there wasn’t a single one who had managed to succeed in combining a career, motherhood and marriage. Lots of them had two out of the three, and it was invariably marriage that was the casualty. Young ambitious women today – women like you, Linda – have to make very careful marriage choices. Don’t you think?’