Friend of the Family

by Tasmina Perry

  ‘No,’ said Juliet firmly. ‘It’s going to be the best night ever. It’s the end of an era; let’s see it out in style, okay?’

  David smiled and leaned across to kiss her. ‘You’re right,’ he said. He slipped a throwaway camera into his pocket, deciding that he would try and take some snaps for posterity. This was his last big night at Oxford, and he should try and make it count.

  Chapter 20

  David looked at his watch, carefully concealing the gesture below the table. Ten thirty: God. The night was passing them by. For all his ambivalence about the ball, now that he was here, David was itching to get out there and have fun. Instead he was stuck here eating poached salmon and drinking warm white wine in some terrible parody of a restaurant. ‘Dining’ they called it, selling it as a VIP ticket for the ball, but despite the floral centrepiece and the candelabra, there was no disguising the low-rent wedding vibe. Or the dull conversation.

  ‘You with us, darling?’

  David looked up at Annabel and gave her a weak smile. ‘Sorry, miles away.’

  Annabel raised an eyebrow. ‘I can see that, David,’ she said under her breath, then, more loudly: ‘Bruce was just asking about your father’s yacht.’

  ‘Hardly a yacht,’ said David. ‘One of those wooden things, a Devon yawl, two little sails, or is it three? Very big on the purity of being one with the winds and the tides, my father. He’s always banging on about how boats should be sailed, not moored.’

  ‘Quite right,’ said Bruce, fiddling with his cufflinks. ‘Will you be at Cowes this year?’

  David could already feel himself drifting off, but forced himself to concentrate. He and Annabel had already had one hissed argument by the bar, and he didn’t think he could muster the energy for another, not tonight.

  ‘Doubt it,’ he said. ‘In fact, I rather hope not. I’m starting at Harvey and Keyne next month, so I’m hoping to be in the thick of it by then.’

  ‘H and K, huh?’ said Bruce appreciatively. ‘Well, don’t blame you. Imagine you’ll be up with the Tokyo markets and whatnot, hmm?’

  ‘Yes, that’s the plan.’

  David looked over at Annabel and was rewarded with a wide smile. Clearly the correct answer. Daddy would approve. He stole a glance past her shoulder towards the door of the marquee. In the early dark, illuminated by the red and green stage lights, he could see people weaving about, laughing, shouting, shuffling side to side in awkward dance moves.

  ‘Office is off Cheapside, isn’t it?’ said Camilla, Bruce’s slightly frumpy girlfriend. ‘I’m starting at PNH across the road in September. We should meet for lunch. Have you got somewhere to live in London yet? I hear it’s frightfully expensive in the centre now.’

  David was about to reply when Annabel leaned in and squeezed his hand.

  ‘We have a flat on Cadogan Square. My brother has the ground floor, but he’s in Hong Kong most of the time.’

  David looked at her in surprise. This was the first he’d heard of a flat. Or rather, he was aware that Annabel’s father owned half a dozen desirable places dotted about Mayfair, Chelsea and St John’s Wood, but they had never even discussed moving in together, let alone pinpointed a specific place.

  ‘Lovely,’ said Camilla with undisguised envy. ‘I’d die to be in Chelsea. Bruce and I have been looking at Fulham, haven’t we, darling? Until he gets all that pupillage stuff out of the way.’

  Bruce had the decency to look as uncomfortable as David felt. ‘Yes,’ he muttered. ‘That’s the plan anyway.’

  ‘Going to try and find another bottle of red,’ said David suddenly, standing up. Annabel looked meaningfully at his almost full glass, then gave a tight shake of the head. ‘Bruce? Millie? No? Won’t be a tick.’

  He strode across the hall, swerving around the identical long tables of young couples in ball gowns and white tie, all discussing the same things, all heading in the same proscribed arcs. He felt crushed, as if the gravity in the room had doubled.

  Out in the quad, he headed to the bar.

  ‘Vodka,’ he said to the barman, pulling a tenner from his pocket. ‘Make it a double, yeah?’

  He flinched as he felt a hand on his shoulder, and turned. Annabel, a look of concern on her face. ‘Everything all right, darling?’

  ‘No, not really. I don’t appreciate being ambushed like that.’

  ‘Ambushed? Whatever do you mean?’

  ‘Don’t play the innocent. All that stuff about your brother’s flat in Chelsea?’

  ‘What’s the matter with that? I thought you’d appreciate a decent place after living in that fleapit with Max.’

  ‘It’s not the place, Bel. It’s the fact that you’re making decisions about my life without even consulting me.’

  She pouted. ‘So you don’t want to live with me now?’

  ‘Don’t try and turn this around. It’s not about us, it’s about blindsiding me in front of your stupid friends before we’ve even talked about it.’

  ‘And now you don’t like Bruce and Millie?’

  David glanced back towards the dining hall. ‘They’re fine,’ he said without much enthusiasm.

  ‘Fine? These are my friends.’

  ‘Come on, Bella. You only tolerate Bruce because his father is in the same club as your father.’

  ‘Well I’m sorry if he’s not as exotic as some of your new friends.’

  Her tone needled him.

  ‘Exotic?’

  Annabel didn’t respond.

  ‘I hope you don’t mean Amy.’

  ‘Well I did hear she might be serving us wine later.’

  The smug look on Annabel’s face confirmed everything he’d suspected about her attitude to ‘other people’, her term for anyone who didn’t come from exactly the same background as her.

  ‘And Amy being a waitress is wrong how exactly? Because she’s working rather than getting pissed? Or because work is inherently distasteful?’

  ‘Oh don’t be so silly,’ said Annabel, flapping a hand. ‘Work is fine in the right context.’

  ‘Working for Daddy’s firm is fine, I suppose. Whereas working in a factory or an office is not.’

  ‘Are you calling me a snob, David?’

  Yes, I am calling you a snob, he thought. You’ve always been a snob and so have all your friends. I can’t believe it’s taken me this long to work it out. She was, however, also the adored daughter of the chairman of the bank he was about to join. He took a deep breath.

  ‘Of course you’re not a snob,’ he said, downing the vodka in two gulps.

  ‘So why are you so angry about the flat?’ she said, reaching up to adjust his bow tie.

  ‘I’m not angry,’ he lied. ‘Just surprised. Especially as you’ve spent the last six months planning your trip to Thailand. Aren’t you and Sophie leaving in two weeks?’

  Annabel shook her head. ‘Sophie’s mother’s taken a turn for the worse, and anyway, Thailand’s much too hot. I’d rather be with you in London.’ She gave him a suggestive smile. ‘Just the two of us, in our own flat, no one to disturb us.’

  David turned back to the barman and gestured for a refill.

  ‘But Bel, I won’t be there,’ he said. ‘That was why it was such a good plan you going away. I’m going to be working stupid hours from day one. Hopefully by the autumn it will have settled down a little, but I have to make a good impression from the start.’

  She gave a little giggle. ‘My businessman,’ she smiled. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll have a word with Daddy.’

  ‘NO!’

  She flinched as if he had slapped her.

  ‘No, Annabel, you will not have a word with Daddy,’ said David. ‘I don’t want any favours. I want to make my own way on my own merit. Is that too hard to understand?’

  She jutted her chin out like a chastened child. ‘Excuse me for helping you ge
t started in one of the top banks in the City.’

  ‘I appreciate it, Bel, of course I do, but I won’t have you telling me where to live and how to run my life.’

  ‘Is that what you think I’m doing?’

  David just snorted.

  Annabel’s eyes narrowed. ‘Well if you don’t want my help, you know there are plenty of men who would be glad to date me.’ She turned and stalked back to the dining hall, her shiny dark hair flashing in the light.

  David took a half-step forward. His instinct – no, his conditioning – was to follow her, to apologise, his first thought for her feelings and not wanting Bruce and Camilla to think badly of him.

  He coughed out a laugh. Seriously? Did he really care what those brain-dead stiffs thought of him? He watched Annabel disappear through the doorway, her back ramrod straight, head held defiantly high.

  Yeah? Screw you too, thought David, and headed into the party.

  By midnight, David was drunk. After his bust-up with Annabel, he’d headed over to the crowded fug of the main bar, where he’d bumped into Dorian, a prep school friend. Dorian was going out to Stanford to begin a postgrad in something innovative and exciting – information technology, whatever that was – which had done nothing to lighten David’s mood. Instead he sought out Max, who he found snogging a ginger girl with braces and a gigantic pink meringue of a dress. Seeing David’s face, Max immediately dismissed the girl and ordered a round of tequilas, then led David in an arms-around-the-shoulders chorus of that song about living for ever, followed by the one about being common people, which obviously he found hilarious. David had then made the mistake of going on the waltzer with a couple of blondes from Wadham, feeling both dizzy and vaguely unclean as he stumbled back towards the bar. He stopped in a doorway, feeling the heat of bodies and the pulse of bass in his chest. Perhaps more booze wasn’t the answer, he thought. Not right now, anyway. It was a long time until dawn, and he was determined to make it to the traditional survivors’ photo at sunrise.

  Pulling his cigarettes from his jacket pocket, he turned away from the beer tent, skirting around the side until he found the college cloisters. He lit up and took a grateful drag, the red tip dancing in front of him. Just another of the things Annabel disapproved of. Smoking, drinking anything but champagne, work, poor people, cars with four seats, and using the word ‘toilet’. For all her eyelash-batting, she wasn’t exactly keen on sex either. But David knew he had painted himself into a corner with his placement at the bank. Harvey and Keyne was as good as it got if you wanted to be in investments – and David did, badly. That was where the glamour was in banking, the high-risk, high-reward engine that powered the finance industry. It was where the real money was made. Not that David wanted to splash the cash on yachts and Rolexes and Lamborghinis; what he wanted was what money could give you: independence, the ability to make your own choices, run your own life. Since the age of four, on his first day at pre-prep, he had been told what to wear, who to talk to, what to say. He’d been through the class machine and come out the other side, shiny and fully formed, ready for a life of luxury and leadership. Ready to make money.

  He gave a gentle snort and blew smoke at the sky. The irony was that while a job at H&K might give him financial independence, it came with golden handcuffs: the expectation that he would follow the rest of the script and marry Annabel. The flat in Chelsea would be followed by the house in Gloucester, then two angelic children named Ollie and Lottie. Couple of dogs, a horse or two. A social life that revolved around the local hunt. Did he want that? It wasn’t the worst thing in the world, obviously. It was just so predictable. Regimented. Expected. And that was what had turned him off the whole gilded Oxford existence: you had to do what was expected.

  He looked up as he heard soft footsteps on the grass, saw a dark figure silhouetted against the sky. ‘Got a light for a lady?’

  He smiled, recognising Amy’s voice and feeling his mood lift immediately. She moved into the light and he could see she had changed out of her waitress uniform and into a ball gown, a slinky black number that clung to her curves.

  ‘Wow,’ he said.

  ‘Yeah, shut up,’ said Amy, sitting next to him and using his cigarette to light her own. ‘The best I could do in the Portaloos.’

  David stole a sideways glance. Her hair was pinned up, exposing her neck, and he was seized with the crazy impulse to kiss it. It unsettled him. He knew Amy was fit, of course; he wasn’t an idiot. You only had to see the reactions of other men when they walked into a bar; but David had never really thought of her like that. They had always been too close as friends, as equals. God, what did that say about him?

  ‘Seriously,’ he stammered. ‘You look amazing.’

  Amy laughed and nudged his shoulder with hers.

  ‘God, you are drunk, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yeah, maybe that’s it.’

  They sat in silence for a while, smoking and watching couples stumble about on the grass.

  ‘So why are you sitting here on your lonesome? You lost Annabel?’

  David blew smoke through tight lips. ‘Kind of on purpose, actually. We had an argument.’

  Amy turned to look at him. ‘Bad?’

  ‘Dunno. Maybe. I sort of told her I hated Camilla and Bruce.’

  Amy hooted with laughter. ‘Really? Well it’s about time. Whenever those two walk into the room, it’s like the end of The Wizard of Oz: like all the colour has been sucked from the world.’

  ‘And what about Annabel?’

  ‘What about her?’

  ‘Do you like her?’

  ‘Oh no,’ said Amy. ‘You’re not dragging me into your relationship problems. I side with you and say you’re well shot of her, then five minutes later you’re back together and I’m a disloyal bitch. You two sort this out between you.’

  ‘No, but seriously, Amy, I need to know. Do you think we fit well together?’

  She looked at him for a moment. ‘Not for me to say, is it?’

  ‘Perhaps not, but I respect your opinion, you know that.’

  It was true. Amy was one of his social circle, just like Max or Juliet, but it was her opinion he always sought out. What did she think of the film? Did she like the hot new band? Did she think he looked good in this jacket? He asked other people too, of course, but he only really cared what Amy thought. In fact, now that he thought about it, the fact that his entire wardrobe was blue came down to the fact that Amy had once said he suited navy.

  ‘Seriously, David, I can’t tell you what to do.’ She paused.

  ‘But?’

  ‘But I will say that out of all the people I know, you’re the bravest.’

  He laughed, anticipating a punchline, but her face remained impassive.

  ‘Brave? I’d say I was the least brave person you’ve met.’

  ‘Well that’s crap,’ said Amy. ‘Take all this.’ She gestured towards the college grounds with her cigarette. ‘Oxford. It’s the playground of the rich and privileged, right? And you’re right at the centre of it, like the dictionary definition of a posh boy.’

  He gave a twisted smile. ‘Well thanks. Is this supposed to be making me feel better?’

  ‘It should, because you’re not like them, David, that’s your saving grace. You don’t kowtow to those chinless dicks and you don’t play their silly little games. Do you really think I’d be friends with you if you did?’

  ‘I was rather hoping that you found my clichéd posh-boy act sexy.’

  ‘Not my thing,’ she grinned. ‘Still, I’m trying to compliment you here. It takes a lot to stand up to your friends and to walk your own line – that’s why you’re different.’

  ‘But that’s just it, Amy,’ he said, sitting forward. ‘I don’t feel I am. I mean, what have I ever done other than what’s expected of me? I went to a posh school, I played in the first eleven, I got into Oxford
and I walked around wearing a bloody cape for three years. What’s so special about that?’

  ‘It’s not what you did, it’s the way you felt about it. You felt uncomfortable – you feel uncomfortable about it now, don’t you? That’s why you’re sitting here on these steps instead of doing shots with Max. And that’s why you’re going to leave here and do something special.’

  ‘What, like discover a cure for cancer?’

  Amy stubbed her cigarette out, shaking her head. ‘Uh-uh. You’re too selfish. And not actually bright enough.’

  ‘Hey!’ laughed David, pushing her.

  ‘No, I should think you’ll still be a banker and you’ll still make piles of cash, but you won’t be like all the nobs in that marquee.’ She turned to look at him, her eyes fierce. ‘I walked around this ball for eight hours handing out drinks. D’you know how many times anyone made eye contact with me?’ She held up her thumb and forefinger in an O. ‘And I think I got three thank yous the whole night.’

  David nodded. ‘They expect everything to be handed to them because it always has been.’

  ‘Exactly. And is that how you feel?’

  ‘No, I expect to have to work for it. But . . .’

  ‘But you feel bad because you’re getting a leg up?’

  ‘I suppose. I mean, I do appreciate the fact that I’m being given an opportunity – everyone needs a break to get their foot in the door. It’s just I hate all the baggage.’

  ‘Annabel, you mean?’

  He paused, thinking.

  ‘You know what? Bel said something to me earlier tonight; she said, “Plenty of men would be glad to date me”, and she was right. She’s pretty, she’s smart enough in her own way, and she can be good fun.’

  Amy raised a sceptical eyebrow and David chuckled. ‘Seriously. She makes me laugh. Sometimes.’

  ‘Oi!’ laughed Amy, reaching out and yanking his bow tie. David grabbed her wrists and they fell sideways onto the grass, giggling. He felt the warmth of Amy’s bare shoulders against him, smelled her skin, looked into her eyes. She stared back, the blue of her irises shining.