City of Friends Read online

  ——

  The girls had assured her that work wouldn’t refuse her either. The girls. Well, they were none of them remotely girls any more, they were women: capable, high-earning, professional women. But they had known each other since university, since that first term of being the only girls in a lecture room of men, reading economics. Only Melissa had actually intended to read economics. The others, Stacey included, had started out with ideas of history, and Spanish, and political theory, and had been drawn to economics because it was a new department, and the senior lecturer was possessed of an infectious enthusiasm and eloquence, and the idea of economics had had a heady dash of rule-breaking in it, as a subject for girls.

  So they had been a conspicuous minority, the four of them, Melissa and Stacey, Gaby and Beth, and that minority had slowly segued into a companionship which became a friendship, and then a firm friendship which was, Stacey sometimes thought, better than the relationship she might have had with some non-existent sister. They saw each other through their annual exams, then their final exams (only Melissa got a first-class degree) and then through boyfriends and a few fiancés, and a couple of marriages, Gaby’s time in New York, Beth telling them, as if they hadn’t known already, that she was gay. And the relationships produced some children, and running alongside and behind it all was the steady, strong, highly coloured landscape of their careers, all on a constant upward trajectory, Gaby out-earning her husband, Melissa starting her own company, Beth a professor in a field she had almost invented, the psychology of business.

  Even when they couldn’t meet, they rang each other, or texted, or tweeted. The inevitable crossed wires of their twenties and thirties had mellowed into a much less judgemental support system in their forties. They knew about Stacey’s mum. They discussed and advised on Stacey’s solution to her work dilemma. They knew, all three of them, that on Wednesday afternoon, Stacey would be working out some pattern for her future with Jeff Dodds. What they did not know – and anxious messages and texts on her phone indicated that they wanted to – was that she was sitting on a bench like any old unemployed person, having, she was now queasily realizing, simply lost her temper.

  Had she, in fact, got nobody to blame but herself? Had she, for once – possibly for the first time in her life – let her temper get the better of her? If she had worked through a definite, timetabled schedule, even of a gradual and dignified departure, and parked it under Jeff Dodds’ unimaginative nose, might she still be in that office, and not on a public bench in a public space with a chaotic-looking man digging through a nearby litterbin and stuffing discarded sandwich crusts into his mouth? Had she, in fact, managed to engineer her own downfall, after decades of rescuing other people, in a business sense, from theirs?

  She glanced at her phone again. There were appeals from the girls, from her ex-colleagues, a text from Steve saying with uncharacteristic imperiousness, ‘Call me.’ She couldn’t. She couldn’t call anyone. She couldn’t communicate with anybody right then, having somehow succeeded in separating herself from everyone and everything she knew by what had happened, by what she had done. Or not done. She wondered if she should stand up. She wondered if she could stand up. Was this a panic attack? Was this what panic attacks felt like? Was this what Mum felt when she tried to reach for a word that wasn’t there any more, or remember whether she had had breakfast, let alone what she’d eaten, if she had? She leaned forward, gripping the edge of the bench, and stared at the ground. God, she thought, am I losing my mind? Is this what happens when you lose your job?

  It occurred to her, suddenly, that she had almost stopped breathing. She must breathe. She knew that if you clenched your teeth and held your breath, nothing worked, not your body, not your mind. You couldn’t think, if you weren’t breathing. But she couldn’t seem to breathe, she couldn’t let go of the grip of her muscles. She closed her eyes. Pant, she thought, like Bruno. Little breaths, short breaths. Just through the nose to start with. Then deeper, just a little deeper, pushing into those lungs, just a little way—

  ‘You OK?’ someone said.

  She nodded. Her eyes were still shut. There was no breath to speak with.

  ‘You want to throw up?’ the voice said. It was female, and foreign.

  Stacey shook her head.

  ‘I got water,’ the woman said. ‘You want water?’

  Her breath was coming easier now, not all the way down to her lungs but easier. She opened her eyes a little. The woman who had been speaking in Arabic at the other end of the bench was holding out a plastic bottle of water towards her.

  Stacey smiled and gestured a no thank you.

  ‘You had a shock on your phone?’ the woman asked. She was wearing a headscarf decorated around its edge with tiny silver discs. ‘These phones bring more bad news than good. That’s for sure.’

  Stacey made a huge effort. ‘Just – not a good day.’

  The woman stowed her water bottle away in an immense old cloth bag on the bench beside her.

  ‘I have those every day.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Stacey said, automatically.

  The woman regarded her. ‘Nice bag. Nice shoes.’

  ‘Well, I—’

  ‘Troubles don’t care about nice things.’

  To her abrupt relief, Stacey found that she could stand up. She seemed to be breathing again, too. She said, ‘Thank you for asking. And for offering the water. Thank you.’

  The woman looked straight ahead of her. ‘I didn’t get that job.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘They said . . .’ She flapped an arm. ‘No. They didn’t say. But I knew. Wrong person. Wrong clothes.’ She glanced at Stacey’s handbag. ‘Wrong bag. Place filled, they said. Already taken. But I knew.’

  ‘I’m so sorry.’

  ‘Only filling shelves. Evening job. Filling shelves.’

  Stacey shifted a little on her heels. ‘It isn’t easy, is it?’

  ‘Not for me,’ the woman said, staring ahead again.

  ‘Nor me, actually.’

  The woman glanced at her again. ‘You got a home to go to?’

  ‘Well, yes . . .’

  The woman raised a hand and shook her forefinger at Stacey. ‘You go there, then.’

  ‘But will you—’

  The woman made a silencing gesture and indicated the phone lying in the capacious folds of her lap. ‘I going to ring my daughter. Tell her. I tell my sons and my husband. Now I tell my daughter.’

  ‘You’ll be OK?’

  The woman picked up her phone. ‘I get by,’ she said. ‘You do the same. You go home and get by.’

  ——

  Every morning and evening, since they had moved to Islington ten years before, Stacey had caught the number 4 bus down to work. It had been an especial pleasure, somehow, to be on public transport dressed for a City office, tidy brown bob smoothly in place, among people of the same kind altogether. The bus ride had been, even in the rain, a brief breath of another air, a piquant alternative to the intense preoccupations of a working day, and a pause before she arrived home to Steve and Bruno, and Steve’s beloved jazz playing more often than not, and a feeling, kicking off her shoes in the hall, that she had, in every sense, earned this downtime.

  Approaching the house now, from the alley through from Almeida Street, she found herself anticipating, almost imagining, an entirely other homecoming. She would have to recount what had happened, of course she would, but then she would move on, almost briskly. She would start planning, both her own future and Mum’s, she would not allow Steve to be sorry for her, or rant about Jeff Dodds, or offer to be some kind of knight in shining armour. The past, she told herself on the bus journey among tired people reading free copies of the evening paper, was the past now, and that was where it was staying. Beth lived with a head-hunter for goodness’ sake, so where better to start the next chapter than with Claire? ‘You get by,’ the woman on the bench had said to her, making it sound like an instruction. ‘You go home and get by.’ Well, s
he would do just that, and more. Steve would only be permitted a very brief expression of outraged sympathy, and then the subject would be firmly closed.

  As she crossed the square towards the terrace of houses in which she lived, it struck her that her own house did not look like a house in mourning. It was late September, and far from dark, but lights were on, on all floors, and it looked very much as if Steve had even lit the candles in the huge glass storm lanterns that stood in the sitting-room windows. She was very touched. How lovely of him, to read her like this, to understand that for her, if one door in her life slammed shut, it would only mean that another – and probably better – one would shortly open. He was, she thought gratefully and with a surge of optimism, treating this whole episode as worthy of celebration.

  She put her key into the door and let herself in. Bruno, waiting for her three feet inside the hall as he always was, went into his usual ecstatic ritual of welcome, forbidden to jump up, so squirming rapturously on the floor round her feet, his tail pounding the flagstones.

  She stooped to caress him. ‘Hello, Bruno, hello, lovely boy, ooh I’ve missed you, aren’t you good, aren’t you gorgeous, who is my own—’

  ‘Hi!’ Steve shouted from the basement.

  ‘Hi.’

  ‘Come on down!’ he shouted. ‘Come down here!’

  ‘Goodness,’ Stacey said to Bruno, ‘what a day of surprises. What’s going on?’

  Bruno sprang to his feet and raced towards the basement stairs, then tore back again to herd her down in front of him. There were candles on the basement stairs and a blaze of them on the kitchen table, clustered round an ice bucket and two champagne glasses on the silver tray Stacey had been given by a cattle ear-tag company whom she had rescued from oblivion and sold, at considerable profit, to Argentina.

  She looked at Steve, smiling, and put her hand out. ‘You’re amazing,’ she said. ‘Are we – are we celebrating?’

  He came across the room and seized her in his arms. It occurred to her, randomly and perhaps unfairly, that he’d been drinking already. He had on a smile so broad that it almost split his face.

  ‘We sure are, sweetheart,’ he said. ‘I’ve been promoted!’

  CHAPTER TWO

  MELISSA

  Melissa’s son, Tom, was standing in front of the fridge in their basement kitchen. It was an impressive American-style fridge of brushed stainless steel, with double doors, both of which were open, while Tom ate salami and potato salad and blueberries straight from their plastic containers with his fingers.

  He was a handsome boy, with thick hair and bad skin. Melissa spent a lot of time and money on Tom’s skin, which had begun to erupt a year before, when he was fourteen, to the point where she frequently wondered if it troubled her far more than it did him. He was wearing his games socks, tartan boxer shorts and his school pink football shirt, and there were some streaks of mud on his bare legs. His striped school tie and dark uniform trousers were slung over the back of an Italian-designed kitchen chair.

  She dropped her handbag emphatically onto the table. ‘Darling.’

  ‘Hi.’ He didn’t turn round. He had a gobbet of potato salad balanced on his forefinger.

  ‘A spoon, perhaps? Or even a plate?’

  Tom put the potato salad in his mouth and sucked his finger. Then he peeled off three more slices of salami, dropped the rest of the packet on top of the punnet of blueberries, and slammed the fridge doors shut. ‘Don’t need one.’

  Melissa tried not to notice the smears left by Tom’s fingers on the doors of the fridge.

  ‘But I would like you to try and be a bit more civilized, darling. Aren’t you even going to say hello?’

  He grinned and rubbed the back of his hand across his mouth. Then he padded across the room and planted a garlic-scented kiss on her cheek. ‘Hi, Ma.’

  She looked at his shirt. ‘Football this afternoon?’

  ‘Hockey,’ he said. ‘At which I am total rubbish.’

  ‘Why do you play, then? Did you sign up for it?’

  He shrugged. ‘Dunno,’ he said. ‘Can’t remember.’

  ‘I’m sure you’re not total rubbish.’

  ‘The Indians are amazing. Three in my year. They are – wow.’

  Melissa took off her jacket and hung it neatly on the back of a second chair. She had asked Tom that morning if he liked her dress, and he had peered at her, headphones on, from the planet of heavy metal music that he currently inhabited, and said, ‘I dunno. They’re all black.’

  ‘But different. Different black.’

  He’d turned up the volume by way of reply, smiling at her to ward off further engagement. His teeth were perfect, she’d seen to that, at a stage in Tom’s life when he was definitely more biddable than he seemed to be now. She only – and only ever had – wanted the best for him. It was increasingly hard, however, to get him to want it to any meaningful degree, for himself.

  He lunged forward now, unexpectedly, and dropped a second clumsy kiss somewhere near her right cheekbone. ‘Can I have some money?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Ma . . .’

  ‘You’ve had your allowance for this week. It’s only Wednesday. Anyway—’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I would like us to have supper together tonight.’

  ‘Why?’

  She looked at him. ‘Because I want the company.’

  He put a finger into his mouth to dislodge some salami from his teeth. ‘Why?’

  ‘I need to be distracted from being worried about Stacey. I don’t think Stacey has had a very good day.’

  ‘Well,’ Tom said, inspecting his finger, ‘ring her.’

  ‘She’s not picking up. I’ve left umpteen messages. So have Gaby and Beth. I’ve spoken to both of them. None of us can get hold of her.’

  ‘Tell you what,’ Tom said, suddenly galvanized by an idea. ‘Let’s drive over there and find her.’

  Melissa sat down on the chair where she had hung her jacket. ‘I thought of that.’

  ‘Well, come on then!’

  ‘You’ve got homework.’

  ‘Stuff that. I’ve always got homework.’

  ‘And anyway . . .’

  ‘Anyway what?’

  ‘I can never decide what I should or shouldn’t tell you.’ She looked up at him. ‘Even after all these years together.’

  He said, helpfully, ‘I should tell me. I can always blank you if I don’t want to know.’

  She laughed. ‘Too right!’

  Tom gestured at the fridge. ‘Glass of wine?’

  ‘No, thank you.’

  He perched on the table next to her. The mud on his thigh was flaking off as it dried, brownish grey and matte.

  ‘Tom . . .’

  ‘Yup?’

  ‘I think Stacey may have lost her job today.’

  ‘Wow,’ Tom said respectfully. And then, almost at once, ‘But she’ll get another one.’

  ‘It doesn’t quite work like that. It’s a most terrible blow to your morale if the end of a job is someone else’s decision, not yours. Stacey has worked in that company since before you were born. In fact, she got the job almost the same time that I found I was pregnant.’

  ‘Didn’t you mean to be?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Pregnant. You said “found”.’

  ‘Yes. Yes, I did. I definitely wanted to be pregnant.’

  ‘Sure?’

  ‘Very sure.’

  ‘But,’ Tom said, ‘Stacey didn’t.’

  ‘I don’t think Stacey has ever wanted to be pregnant.’

  Tom got off the table with sudden energy. ‘I know!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Ring Steve. Steve’ll know.’

  Melissa spread her hands out on the table and looked at her rings. A signet ring on the little finger of her left hand and a slender band of diamonds on the third finger of her right. No wedding ring. There had never been a wedding ring. That’s what happened when the only person you had ever r
eally wanted to ask you had married someone else.

  She said slowly, ‘I don’t think I can ring Steve.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because, darling, this has turned out to be a very complicated day. It might – actually, I think it is – the day that Stacey lost her job, but it’s also the day, quite by chance, that Steve got a promotion.’

  ‘So?’

  Melissa gave a little sigh. ‘I knew about Steve’s promotion.’

  ‘I don’t get it,’ Tom said. He was pulling off his socks.

  ‘Please don’t, darling, not in here.’

  ‘Why wouldn’t that cheer Stacey up?’

  ‘It’s complicated,’ Melissa said, again. ‘You see, I knew about Steve’s promotion because I recommended it. His company was one of my clients.’

  Tom straightened up, holding a sock. His bare foot was a wonderful thing, Melissa thought; if only the nails had been clean.

  ‘Oh my God. So you didn’t tell Stacey?’

  ‘No. It was going to be a surprise. If she didn’t get what she had asked for at work, Steve thought the blow would be softened if there was at least some good news from him. It was what he wanted.’

  ‘But, Stacey is your friend.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Ma,’ Tom said seriously. ‘That is not good.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What were you thinking?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Melissa said. ‘I feel awful. I suppose I went along with what Steve wanted. I can’t – I can’t have been thinking straight.’

  ‘You helped Steve?’

  ‘I recommended him. I recommended him to the board while I was reconfiguring them. I wasn’t wrong. He’ll be good.’

  Tom dropped his sock. ‘But you should have told him you’d have to tell Stacey.’

  She looked up at him. ‘Sometimes I think I’ve done an OK job in bringing you up, after all.’

  He glanced at the fridge again. ‘Hadn’t you better have that wine?’

  ——

  Melissa had been named for her father’s mother, a girl from Athens her grandfather had met in Cairo, in 1943, during the Second World War. She’d had a job with the exiled Greek government, and Melissa Hathaway’s grandfather persuaded her to follow him to England in 1945, after the war was over. Family lore insisted that the original Melissa had never come to terms with living in England, especially bleak, hungry, exhausted post-war England, and she had made several thwarted attempts to take her two little boys back to Athens, encouraged by her own family who had found her choice of husband incomprehensible. But, apart from a month each summer, she was doomed to England, and to a life in the North West whose beauty she was unable to admire through the constant sheets of rain. Her outrage at finding chilblains on her toes in winter became the stuff of family legend. She lived long enough to see her eldest son married – to a young doctor, from Hull – and to know that his first baby, a daughter, would be named for her: a second, and English, Melissa.