City of Friends

by Joanna Trollope

  The chief executive of the accountancy firm had been at university with Will. They had shared a flat as students, and another when they were studying for their law and accountancy exams. The chief executive was Marnie’s godfather and the friendship had survived both their divorces as well as the acquisition of new partners. At a rugby game at Twickenham – Harlequins versus London Welsh – Matthew had told Will about his firm’s decision to consult Hathaway and Will had confessed his connection with Melissa. Then, a little later, celebrating a resounding Harlequins victory, Matthew had asked Will if Melissa would ever consider speaking to his firm, as part of their gender diversity programme, and Will, halfway down his third pint, had said that he could but ask.

  So he had asked, over a glass of wine in the bar of a Kensington hotel, and Melissa had initially said no, of course not, that wasn’t her style at all, and then, gradually, the no had segued through maybe to a reluctant yes. And so here she was, simultaneously exasperated with herself and elated, in dramatic new shoes and a severe grey trouser suit, standing in front of a room packed with accountants, women as well as men, with Matthew and his chairman in the front row next to Will. It had not felt dignified, or indeed cool, to ask what Will was doing there, so she hadn’t. She had, in fact, barely acknowledged his presence. Her own audience, she had made plain from the outset, comprised the women in the firm, especially the younger ones.

  Gaby had said, on the telephone, ‘Just be yourself. As few notes as possible, don’t wave your hands about too much and do not touch your hair, ever. Make one major point and two minor ones – it’s all you’ll get across, even to a bright audience. And they’ll all, men as well as women, notice your shoes.’

  Melissa looked out across the room. There was a definite buzz of anticipation; she could feel it herself. She put her notes down on the plexiglas lectern that had been provided, and stepped to stand beside rather than behind it. If this was stage fright, it was definitely exhilarating: exhilarating enough for her to think, at some level, that if they were all going to look at her shoes, then they might as well have a good view.

  ‘Good evening,’ Melissa said. Her voice sounded remarkably like itself. She smiled at them all. ‘And thank you for having me.’

  She folded her hands in front of her and shook – rather than pushed – her hair back. Then she said, ‘I’m going to start with a statement. A statement that I’m in a position to make because I’ve been a mother myself, for fifteen years. It is not children that hold women back in their careers, it is something else. And that something else is that men get far more help. In a recent study of almost 700,000 employees, 38 per cent of the men received five promotions as compared to 29 per cent of the women. And I want to add to that. I want to refer to the results of research recently published in Sociology magazine. In that study, of 4,000 couples in the UK with young children, the risk of those couples divorcing before their children started school was reduced by 80 per cent – 80 – as long as the mother out-earned the father by at least 20 per cent.’

  She paused. Small eruptions of cheering were happening here and there in the room, little whoops of support. And in the front row, his eyes fixed on her face, Will was clapping.

  ——

  In the taxi going home, Melissa felt distinct elation, the kind of sheer, slightly wild excitement that she hadn’t felt in years and then only in situations that hinted at as much danger as they did promise, like deciding to start Hathaway, or being asked out for the first time by Connor Corbett. When she had spoken, during her talk, about the persistence of sexual advances by men in office life, there’d been a concerted and suddenly confident cheer from the young women in the room, and the bland approval on the faces of the men in the front row had suddenly frozen into abrupt neutrality.

  ‘Every male boss I had in my career before Hathaway,’ Melissa said, ‘would hit on me. Every one. And when I rejected them, as I inevitably did every time, I knew I would be punished as a way of them denying, or coping with, their shame.’

  At the end of her talk – twenty-five minutes that felt like five – the applause was loud and long. It was so long, in fact, that it took the chairman several minutes to make himself heard, and deliver his vote of thanks. He was graceful. He thanked Melissa for pointing out what he had long felt himself, namely that it wasn’t the biology, stupid. He reiterated his firm’s determination to maximize the potential of its workforce, irrespective of gender. He turned to Melissa and told her that she was an inspiration to men and women alike.

  Then Will, unmistakably glowing with emotion and gratified pride, asked her to have dinner with him. She said no.

  ‘Please.’

  She shook her head again, smiling. ‘No. No, thank you.’

  ‘A drink, then. Just a drink.’

  ‘Not that either, thank you. I must get back to Tom.’

  ‘Just a quick drink.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Jesus,’ Will said admiringly. ‘You are quite something, aren’t you?’

  For the length of the taxi ride, from the City to Kensington, she did indeed feel quite something. It had not just gone well, it had gone gloriously well. Everyone in that room – well, the majority of people in that room – had been, by the end, on her side. She had not only been approved of, she had been applauded. They had liked what she had to say. They had liked her. Gaby had always said that having a speech go down well was heady stuff. Heady was the word. Sitting in the taxi with her new shoes kicked off and the night-time lights and sights of London sliding past the taxi windows, she felt nothing short of intoxicated. On a glass of water, and success. When the taxi reached Holland Street, she gave the driver a 25 per cent tip on top of the fare, which he, misunderstanding, tried to return as change.

  She made a dismissive gesture. ‘No. Really no. It’s for you.’

  He raised his hand, as if touching the peak of a non-existent cap. ‘Well. Thank you.’

  ‘My pleasure,’ she said, and meant it.

  She went up the steps to the front door, in stockinged feet, her shoes in her hand, hardly noticing how cold the stone was. In the hall, Tom’s padded jacket and scarf were tossed on a chair and his trainers had been kicked off at the foot of the stairs. Beside them lay an empty soda bottle and a twist of coloured paper that had obviously once been wrapped round the kind of sweets that Melissa had tried, over and over, to explain contained nothing but tooth-decaying empty calories. Tonight, the sight of evidence that Tom was at home did absolutely nothing but lift her spirits further. She stood in the hall, holding her shoes, and called his name.

  ‘Tom! Tom?’

  He was apparently in the kitchen. She could hear the sound of the kitchen television, and the lights that illuminated the basement stairs were on. Still clutching her shoes, and her briefcase bag with her triumphant speech in it, she padded down the length of the hall and then down the stairs to the kitchen. All the ceiling and ambient lights were on, as was the television, and Tom was sitting at the central island, where he had left her flowers, with his headphones on and his face illumined further by the glowing screen of his iPad. Melissa, smiling, went silently across the room, dropping her shoes and bag, and lifted one headphone away from his head enough to say into his ear, ‘Hello!’

  He swung round, smiling and completely unsurprised.

  ‘Hi! How’d it go?’

  ‘Fantastic.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Amazing,’ Melissa said. ‘Brilliant. Better than I could have hoped for.’

  Tom took his headphones off and got up. He put his arms around her. He was, by a fraction, taller now than she was.

  ‘Cool,’ he said. ‘Congratulations. Was Dad there?’

  ‘He was.’

  ‘He was really excited about you speaking.’

  Melissa pulled away very slightly. ‘Was he?’

  ‘Course he was! He got you the gig, because of Matthew and all that.’

  Melissa looked at him. The skin on his forehead, under his car
efully arranged hair, was very bad, but he looked great otherwise – healthy and assured. She detached herself gently. ‘What are you watching?’

  Tom shrugged. ‘Dunno. Didn’t notice.’

  ‘Shall we turn it off, then? Did you eat?’

  Tom looked suddenly self-conscious. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why do you say it like that? Did you eat something that would appal me?’

  Tom said carefully, ‘We ate pizza. And salad.’

  ‘We? Who came back with you? Rufus?’

  There was a short pause and then Tom said, ‘No.’

  ‘No? Not Rufus? Who then?’

  Tom picked up his headphones and examined them. Then he said, ‘Claudia.’

  Melissa looked at him. ‘Claudia? Who’s Claudia?’

  ‘Claudia Henderson,’ Tom said.

  There was another pause and then Melissa said, ‘You mean – Gaby’s Claudia?’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘Tom.’

  Tom put his headphones on, with the earpieces behind his ears. ‘Yes, Gaby’s Claudia,’ he said, loudly.

  ‘You mean . . . ?’

  Tom shrugged. ‘Yes,’ he said.

  Melissa hitched herself onto a stool by the counter. ‘Goodness,’ she said, faintly.

  ‘It isn’t goodness,’ Tom said. ‘It isn’t anything. We’re – we’re just kind of hanging out together sometimes.’

  ‘I should certainly hope so!’

  ‘Mum,’ Tom said. ‘Don’t do this.’

  ‘Don’t do what?’

  ‘Don’t do this kind of heavy mother stuff. I’m fifteen.’

  ‘Claudia is thirteen!’

  ‘So?’ He remembered his Shakespeare. ‘So was Juliet.’

  ‘Does Gaby know?’

  ‘Quin knew Claudia was having pizza here with me.’

  ‘But . . .’

  ‘But what?’

  ‘Are you, I mean, if you’re thinking of Claudia as a girlfriend . . .’

  ‘You mean,’ Tom said, folding his arms, ‘sex. Don’t you?’

  Melissa looked at him. She nodded.

  Tom said, ‘If we were, do you think I’d tell you?’

  ‘I’d – hope so.’

  ‘If we were, I don’t think I’d tell anyone.’

  ‘Gaby ought to know.’

  ‘There’s nothing to know!’ Tom shouted suddenly.

  ‘Good.’

  ‘God,’ he said. ‘Do all kids have to go through this with their parents?’

  Melissa looked down at her hands. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘So you should be,’ Tom said. ‘I needn’t have told you anything. I needn’t even have mentioned Claudia. What have you got against Claudia, anyway?’

  ‘Nothing. I think Claudia is lovely.’

  ‘She is. She’s cool. I don’t know what’s the matter with me seeing Claudia.’

  ‘There’s nothing the matter,’ Melissa said. ‘Nothing. It’s just that Claudia is Gaby’s daughter. It’s – a surprise.’

  ‘Well, get used to it,’ Tom said, rudely. ‘You know now.’

  ‘Does Gaby know?’

  ‘Why don’t you ring her? Why don’t you get in a mummy huddle with Gaby and have a good old session about us?’

  Melissa put out a hand towards him. ‘Tom. Darling. I’m sorry. I said I was sorry before, and I meant it.’

  He sighed. ‘You make such a big deal of everything.’

  ‘I don’t. You know I don’t. What else have I made any kind of fuss over?’

  He straightened up, slid his headphones down to rest them around his neck, and said, ‘Sarah.’

  ‘Sarah!’

  ‘Seeing Sarah,’ Tom said. ‘I know Dad asked you ages ago and you said you would and you haven’t. You don’t want to, so you haven’t. You even cancelled coming to supper.’

  ‘No, I don’t want to,’ Melissa said, sadly. ‘And can’t you understand that?’

  His lower lip went out fractionally, as it used to when he was small. ‘But I asked you, too.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Look,’ Tom said loudly and abruptly. ‘I didn’t ask to be born. I didn’t ask you and Dad to have a fling because you were both on the rebound, and have me. I’m the consequence of you both fucking up whatever relationships you were in. I’m not the reason, I’m the result. So in my book, which you mightn’t like, because it doesn’t suit how you see yourself, you owe me. You both owe me. And so I’m asking. I’m asking you, Mum, at least, at the very least, to make an effort to get on with Sarah. So please ring her. Please just ring Sarah and make a plan to meet her. She’s OK. Sarah’s OK. And, after all, Dad likes her enough to have had Jake and Ben with her. OK? OK?’

  Melissa took some moments to nod. But nod she did. ‘Of course.’

  ‘Probably,’ Tom said, sensing victory, ‘I’ll screw up just like you have. But I hope I’ll listen to my kids. I hope I will.’

  ‘Please don’t spoil it all by getting pompous,’ she said weakly.

  He picked up his iPad. ‘I’m going up. I’m going to talk to Claudia.’

  Melissa said bravely, ‘Skype or Facebook?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  She looked directly at him. ‘I really don’t want to be the kind of mother you don’t want.’

  He bent forward to kiss her. He said, not unkindly, ‘Then don’t be,’ and then he went out of the kitchen and up the stairs, leaving her shoeless in the brightly lit kitchen with the broken remains of her evening.

  ——

  Later, she went up to Tom’s room. He was fast asleep, wearing a T-shirt and jogging pants, in a welter of sound and little winking lights from various technological devices round his bed, a sight that was simultaneously reassuring and disturbing. She tiptoed round the room, turning off what she could, opening the window a chink, pulling his duvet over his sleeping form. And then she bent to kiss him, and felt a rush of something so powerful and warm and right that, even in her jangled state, she knew to be her driving emotional priority. For a moment she stood in the doorway after she had kissed him and looked at his tousled head on the pillow, and reminded herself, sternly, that one day that head would belong emotionally to someone quite other. It might be Claudia, or Claudia could just be the beginning. Children, she reminded herself with a firmness she felt Beth would have urged, are lent to us only. They never belong to us. They belong only to themselves. The sight of Tom, deeply asleep on the lavish bed she had worked to buy for him, was a reminder that he was his own person, his own man. And if she wanted his reciprocal love, she was going to have to earn it. Just as she had earned his bed.

  Downstairs again, in her bathroom, her phone told her she had a text message. It was from Will. It read:

  You were spectacular. Please ring.

  Any time, any day. I’m waiting. W. x

  She looked at the message. It seemed to her remote now, detached from what was really of importance. She stood there in her bathroom, under the carefully designed mood lights above her washbasin, and pressed ‘delete’. Then she scrolled through her contacts directory to find Sarah Parker’s number.

  ——

  Sarah Parker was waiting for her in the downstairs bar of the building allocated for use by Friends of the Royal Academy. She was at a small table in a corner, by a glass door that led to the garden with its planting of tree ferns from New Zealand. Sarah wasn’t looking at her phone or reading the evening paper, she was simply sitting there with a bottle of mineral water on the table in front of her, and when Melissa approached her, she looked up, but she didn’t smile.

  Melissa sat down on the banquette next to her, but at a carefully judged distance.

  ‘Hello, Sarah,’ she said, and smiled.

  Sarah continued not to smile back. She said, neutrally, ‘Hello.’

  Melissa made a gesture at her clothes. ‘I’m afraid I’ve come straight from work.’

  ‘So have I.’

  ‘Of course.’ She indicated the bottle. ‘Are you drinking water?’

  ‘Ob
viously,’ Sarah said.

  Melissa stood up again. ‘Excuse me a moment.’

  She went across to the bar. There was a girl behind it in a white shirt and a narrow black skirt, polishing glasses. Melissa said, ‘Could I have a vodka and tonic?’

  The girl began to busy herself with the competent business of slicing a lemon and clattering ice cubes into a tumbler. Melissa watched her with extreme concentration in order to quell the turbulence that had flared inside her. Tom had said Sarah was OK. Tom seemed to like her. Tom had suggested Melissa let Sarah choose where they meet.

  ‘You’ll see, Mum. She’s fine. She’s just – kind of normal.’

  But Sarah wasn’t being normal. She wasn’t making any effort to be normal. She was pointedly drinking water and being – well, unhelpful and furious. Fury was what came across, plain rage at Melissa, at what Melissa was or at something she had done. She took a deep breath to steady herself, and turned from the bar. She walked back to Sarah.

  ‘Are you sure you won’t have a drink drink?’

  Sarah didn’t speak. She merely shook her head. Then, as if to make a point about her own self-control, picked up her water glass and drank deeply from it.

  Melissa went to get her own drink and carried it back to the table. She sat down again and pushed her hair behind her ears. Then she said, as a statement rather than a question,

  ‘Sarah.’

  Sarah put her glass down and turned deliberately to look at her. ‘What?’

  ‘What,’ Melissa said, ‘is the matter?’

  ‘You tell me,’ Sarah said coldly.

  ‘I would if I knew what to tell you.’

  Sarah made an angry little gesture. ‘Feigning innocence on top of everything else only makes me madder.’

  Melissa looked down at her lap. Beth would say, breathe. Breathe, and wait. Then she said, as steadily as she could, ‘This meeting is because of Tom. We don’t particularly want it, either of us, do we? But Tom wants us to meet, Tom wants us to be on polite terms with each other, so that is why we’re here. When I rang you, I thought that is what we agreed.’