City of Friends

by Joanna Trollope

  Stacey tucked her hair behind her ears and folded her arms. ‘Good.’

  ‘That’s more like it,’ Steve said.

  He unhooked a long striped apron from the back of the door and put it on, crossing the strings at the front and tying them in a competent bow. He picked up the half-empty wine bottle and held it up, enquiringly.

  Stacey shook her head. ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘There’s just one little wrinkle left,’ Steve said. ‘One small detail that we haven’t talked about.’

  Stacey pulled a chair out from the table and sat down. ‘What kind of detail?’

  ‘Work,’ Steve said briefly.

  ‘Work?’

  ‘My work.’

  ‘Goodness,’ Stacey said. ‘Please don’t tell me they want to send you to Singapore.’

  ‘Nothing like that.’

  ‘Phew.’

  Steve crossed the kitchen and opened the cupboard under the hob to extract the skillet.

  ‘It’s about my being made a director. Put on the board.’

  Stacey twisted her wine glass round, watching the reflection from the candle flame move behind the liquid.

  ‘I don’t think I was very gracious about that,’ she said, slowly. ‘I was in too much of a state, that night, to behave properly in any way.’

  Steve put the skillet on the hob. He said, ‘I don’t think either of us get top marks for that evening.’

  ‘I wasn’t very generous, though.’

  Steve turned. ‘What did I say about beating yourself up?’

  ‘Sorry.’

  He came across the kitchen and pulled out the chair next to Stacey’s. He sat in it, upright in his apron, his hands on his thighs. ‘Stace.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I overdid it that night. I wasn’t sensitive enough about what had happened to you and I got – carried away.’

  ‘Well,’ Stacey said. ‘You were allowed to, weren’t you? I mean, you’d been promoted!’

  ‘I was embarrassed as well,’ Steve said.

  ‘Embarrassed?’

  ‘That’s the wrinkle.’ He leaned forward a little, taking his hands off his thighs and clenching his fists lightly. ‘I earned my place on the board . . .’

  ‘I know you did.’

  ‘And it was absolutely a unanimous decision to have me on it . . .’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘But what I didn’t tell you was that the decision to promote me was the result, among many results, of having the board professionally scrutinized and reshuffled, and the professional board consultant specifically advised that I should be among the people who were promoted.’

  ‘Well,’ Stacey said, smiling. ‘That’s all good, isn’t it?’

  ‘Think, Stacey.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Think, Stacey. How many consultants who specialize in board scrutiny do you know?’

  She stared at him. Then she said quietly, ‘Melissa?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Melissa.’

  ‘Melissa advised the firm. She revolutionized the board and it’s had a great effect. She wouldn’t have backed me if she didn’t think I was right, but she did, so she did. I don’t exactly owe my seat on the board to Melissa, but I might not have it, without her.’

  Stacey said slowly, ‘And you didn’t tell me?’

  ‘No. Not until now.’

  ‘And – she hasn’t told me, either.’

  ‘Not face to face.’

  ‘Is there anything else?’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Anything else I don’t know? Any more little deals or secrets or relationships?’

  Steve reached forward to take her hands. He said, firmly, ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Sure? I mean, why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘I couldn’t. Not then. Think back to then.’

  Stacey said, ‘Remember how ultra-keen Melissa was to find me a job?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘All that nonsense with Gaby.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Who knows about this?’

  ‘You and me, Melissa and Gaby.’

  ‘Didn’t you have to declare to the firm that you knew Melissa?’

  ‘She was hired long before I knew. I told the chairman, in private, and I don’t think he batted an eyelid. Nor did Melissa. She said competence was competence and she was far too practised to be affected or compromised. She’s quite different in work mode. Almost scary.’

  Stacey slipped her hands out of Steve’s.

  He said, ‘I am really, really sorry.’

  ‘Were you ever not going to tell me?’

  ‘I don’t know. All I can truthfully say is that I hated you not knowing.’

  ‘Now I do.’

  ‘Yes. There’s nothing else. I haven’t see Melissa since before I was promoted. I haven’t seen anyone – except, as you know, Gaby.’

  Stacey stood up. ‘Right,’ she said.

  He looked up at her. ‘What d’you mean, right? What are you going to do?’

  She looked back down at him. She wasn’t smiling, but she didn’t look unreachable, either.

  ‘I’m going to ring Melissa, of course.’

  ——

  Melissa opened her front door wearing a pale grey tracksuit and spectacles. She gave Stacey an affectionate kiss and gestured at herself. ‘Sunday gear. Running, and no contact lenses.’

  Stacey took off her jacket. She looked towards the stairs. ‘Is Tom here?’

  ‘No, actually. Why do you ask?’

  ‘I thought – maybe you ran together.’

  ‘No,’ Melissa said. ‘I rather wish – but there we are. He stayed over at Will’s last night. One of the little boys’ birthdays or something. I find I don’t ask for the details much, it’s better if I don’t.’

  Stacey stood looking at her. ‘Melissa.’

  Melissa put both hands up to pull her hair more tightly through its ponytail band. ‘I know. It’s – all been such a mess.’

  ‘But it needn’t have been.’

  ‘Stacey, if you’d just talked to us that day, the day you got fired . . .’

  ‘I couldn’t.’

  ‘Well, I understand that, but it meant that by the time we were in touch again, all kinds of things had got themselves into what Gaby calls the Too Difficult file, and we all did things, or didn’t do things, that made all our relationships so much harder. All of them.’

  Stacey sighed. ‘OK then.’

  ‘Coffee?’ Melissa said. ‘Tea? Water?’

  ‘Coffee, please. And water. Could I just ask you one question?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Were you never going to tell me that Steve’s firm were your clients?’

  Melissa began descending the stairs. ‘Want the truth?’ she said over her shoulder.

  ‘Nothing but.’

  ‘I was certainly going to tell you. I was waiting till Steve’s promotion was confirmed, and then I was going to take you out for a glass of champagne and tell you in absolute secrecy that he deserved what had happened in every way because he is one of the best senior people that firm has in its entire workforce. It never crossed my mind that your work request would be taken as a chance to fire you and your world would fall in, as a consequence.’ She paused at the bottom of the stairs and looked up. ‘So you see.’

  ‘Yes,’ Stacey said, following more slowly.

  ‘You don’t sound very convinced. There aren’t any plots, Stacey.’

  ‘Sometimes, though, revelations feel as though there must have been plots somewhere.’

  ‘Not in my case,’ Melissa said firmly. ‘I was hired by the chairman. I told him I knew Steve. He said it was of no importance and he had his eye on Steve anyway. Come on, Stacey! In our world, everyone knows everyone. It’s very rare that I don’t know something about someone in almost every client firm I take on. It’s good news that I could do something useful for Steve, and therefore you. And in the circumstances, it turned out to be very good news indeed.’
>
  Stacey looked at her. ‘Are you expecting me to be grateful?’

  Melissa stopped filling the kettle. ‘Absolutely not. I just don’t want you to be all suspicious and hurt and upset about something that you should only be pleased about.’

  ‘That’s me told, then.’

  Melissa turned from the sink. ‘Stacey. Please.’

  ‘I’m just so – jealous, of you working,’ Stacey said, dropping her gaze. ‘And Gaby. And Beth. Beth’s work diary is full, she said, for eighteen months. Eighteen months! I’d be glad to have a single work commitment in the next eighteen days.’

  Melissa put the kettle down and came across the kitchen to take hold of Stacey’s shoulders. ‘I do get it. I do.’

  ‘I’m like a little kid,’ Stacey said miserably. ‘I want, I want, I don’t know what I want. When I had a drink with Gaby, I was all braced to fall in love with Canary Wharf and everything, and nothing happened. Actually, it was stronger than that because I felt very distinctly that I didn’t want to go back into that world, I didn’t want to be among all those shiny people just desperate to get shinier. But I don’t know what I want to do instead even if I am longing and longing to do something.’ She glanced at Melissa. ‘I didn’t mean to behave like a cow.’

  ‘You didn’t.’

  Stacey gave a little yelp of disbelieving laughter. ‘That coffee?’ she said, in a steadier voice.

  Melissa released her hands. ‘Of course. Stace . . .’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I mind for you. I really do.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘It’ll happen, I just know it will—’

  ‘Melissa,’ Stacey said, cutting in. ‘What were you going to do today? Without Tom? And if I hadn’t come?’

  Melissa made a face. ‘You’ll laugh.’

  ‘Try me.’

  ‘It’s so anal.’

  ‘Lissa!’

  Melissa leaned against the counter by the kettle. She said, ‘Well, what I was going to do was sort through my whole wardrobe, my work wardrobe, clothes, shoes, bags, everything, and throw out all the stuff I couldn’t bear to see any more, let alone put on.’

  Stacey smiled at her. ‘Can I help you?’

  ‘What? You don’t want to go through my work clothes as a way to spend a Sunday.’

  ‘I might,’ Stacey said. ‘I might really like spending time with you doing something like that.’

  Melissa looked straight at her. Then she picked up the kettle again.

  ‘OK then,’ she said. ‘You’re on.’

  ——

  Steve looked at all the carrier bags in the hall. There were five of them, all full – five glossy, upmarket carrier bags.

  ‘What’s all this?’ he said, suspiciously.

  Stacey was on the floor, allowing Bruno to have the full welcoming ritual at his own level. She didn’t glance up. ‘Oh, just chuck-outs of Melissa’s.’

  ‘All of them?’

  ‘Yes. There was a lot to chuck. She buys quality for sure but quality in quantity. I got the impression that she was feeling a bit new-broom-ish. Wanting to clear out before starting off again.’

  Steve picked a black velvet scarf out of a bag, looked at it, and dropped it back in again. ‘But why’s it all here? Why did you bring it all back with you?’

  Stacey gave Bruno a final pat and got to her feet. ‘Because our charity shops need good stuff more than hers do, in Kensington. The charity shops near her are more like boutiques than anything. You should see the labels.’

  ‘I don’t know anything about labels.’

  ‘Liar,’ Stacey said affectionately. She paused to kiss him. ‘You affect to be bemused by women’s labels but you know plenty about men’s.’

  He caught her in an embrace before she could move away.

  ‘You seem very cheerful,’ he said, teasingly.

  ‘I had a lovely day.’

  ‘Trying on Melissa’s clothes?’

  ‘No,’ Stacey said, not pulling away from him for the first time in months. ‘No. I didn’t try on anything. Except her shoes. Oh my God, Steve, you should see her shoes! No, we just sat on her bed in a sea of clothes and talked and at lunchtime we had a picnic of smoked salmon and bagels.’

  ‘On her bed?’

  ‘Still on her bed. And then we watched a movie I’m not even going to tell you the title of because I don’t want to give you the ammunition, and then we had tea and shared a chocolate brownie Melissa had bought for Tom, and then he came back and I saw him for ten minutes and then I drove home with the spoils.’

  Steve tightened his arms slightly. ‘What did Tom do when he found you’d eaten his brownie?’

  ‘We didn’t tell him.’

  ‘That,’ Steve said, ‘wasn’t very honourable.’

  ‘He was full of birthday cake anyway.’

  ‘That’s beside the point.’

  Stacey looked down at Bruno. ‘I ought to feed him.’

  ‘I’ve done it.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Lovely.’

  ‘The dishwasher is unloaded, the recycling is out, the dog has been walked as well as fed.’

  ‘Wonderful.’

  ‘That’s what I thought.’

  She looked up at him. ‘What else were you thinking?’

  He bent and kissed her mouth, without hurry.

  ‘Guess,’ he said.

  ——

  Melissa’s clothes, spread round the top floor, in the rooms that were once supposed to be Mum’s, looked impressive. Skirt suits and trouser suits, scarves and coats, shoes and bags, and all, having belonged to Melissa, immaculately kept. There were no missing buttons or descending hems, there was no fraying or scuffing. The shoes and bags had been polished, the coats had been brushed.

  ‘There’s nothing the matter with anything,’ Melissa had said, surveying the heaps before they bagged them up, ‘except that I can’t wait to see the back of them.’

  Stacey was sitting on Melissa’s bed, her lap full of scarves. ‘For any particular reason?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Sure?’

  Melissa picked up a dark brown handbag and looked at it.

  ‘Tom spends a lot of time at Will’s house,’ she said. ‘And Will rings me. He rings me a lot, now. Sometimes every day.’

  ‘What has that got to do with your clothes?’

  Melissa put the bag down. ‘Restlessness,’ she said emphatically. ‘This whole new development unsettles me. I don’t know what to do.’

  ‘Do you know what you want to do?’

  ‘Not even that.’

  ‘Join the club!’ Stacey said. They were laughing, both laughing. And then Melissa started gathering up her discarded possessions, armfuls of them, and Stacey said, in mock outrage, ‘Honestly, Melissa, honestly. All this just so that you can go shopping again!’

  And Melissa had stopped suddenly, her arms laden with clothes, and looked at Stacey without a hint of contrition.

  ‘I know,’ she said, ‘I know. Shopping. The most satisfactory displacement activity in the world.’

  Now here they were, all the things Melissa had worked to pay for, and had now discarded: wool things and silk things, leather and cotton things, sober-coloured, beautifully designed and made things that had once meant something in Melissa’s life and were now spread round Stacey’s top floor in a way that, despite the hangover of happiness from the day before, seemed unquestionably melancholy. It didn’t just seem sad to Stacey, looking at those clothes that had once held the promise of achievement of some kind for Melissa, but also, at another level, plain wrong. It was wrong to think of all the labour and craftsmanship that had gone into Melissa’s cast-off clothes and bags and shoes not continuing the validity and intensity of life with which they had begun. It was just wrong to think that these possessions, which had been undeniably an indication of status to Melissa, should not be given the best opportunity to do as much – or even more – for someone else.

  Stacey picked up the nearest handbag. It was
navy blue, made of slightly grainy leather, with heavy brushed-steel fittings and steel studs on the bottom so that it would sit, sturdily, on the floor, without scratching the leather. Inside, Stacey noticed, there was not only a breath of Melissa’s scent, but pockets and a lining of grey suede. It was a wonderful thing. A carefully, handsomely crafted wonderful thing. You would look at that, sitting beside a woman at a meeting, and think, ‘Nice bag.’

  Nice bag. Stacey had a moment of extreme stillness, quite forgetting to breathe. A memory of the afternoon in St Paul’s Churchyard came clearly back to her at the same moment that an illuminating idea flashed into her mind, unformed but compelling. She heard herself give a little gasp, and then a little cry. Nice bag!

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  MELISSA

  The meeting room was full. The chairman and chief executive of the accountancy firm Melissa was advising had said that the initial invitation to hear her speak had only gone out to the board and senior managers, but the clamour of protest from the rest of the company had been so vociferous that they had moved the venue to the biggest meeting room in the building and this, they said proudly, was the result.

  Melissa knew that they wanted to be congratulated for such a turn-out. They were hugely relieved to find that the doubtful business of applying for Hathway’s help in the first place had proved so well justified and, weirdly, wanted Melissa herself to applaud them for being so bold and so enterprising. In her turn, she would liked to have been applauded herself for agreeing to address this audience in the first place. It wasn’t the kind of thing she did, after all. It was what Gaby did, often: Gaby was perfectly well practised in standing up in front of an audience and lecturing them on what was needed to change in a modern workplace to make it more progressive, more diversified. But Melissa preferred to work in a much less visible way; quiet scene-shifting that could happen without drama or noise was far more to her taste. And she wouldn’t be here now, in this meeting room full of accountants, with a prepared speech about the abiding gap between most company policies on women employees and those women’s experience of everyday working, if it hadn’t been for Will.