How Hard Can It Be?

by Allison Pearson

  The clinic’s brochure, so glossy you could use it as a mirror to touch up your lipstick, promises to painlessly streamline what it calls, with exquisite tact, ‘those stubborn areas’. As I ascend the vertiginous open staircase, made of giant Fox’s Glacier Mints, I just know that I shouldn’t be here.

  What are you doing, Kate? Is your fear of looking frumpy at your reunion so great, is your self-respect so fragile that you would pay the price of a John Lewis cooking range to have the pouch beneath your waist sucked out by a fat-guzzling Hoover thingy?

  Sadly, that does appear to be the case.

  The two women seated behind the clinic’s Reception desk are like air hostesses from a previous era, when flying made you feel like a glamorous globetrotter rather than a galley-slave with an overpriced tub of Pringles and no room to breathe. Immaculate make-up fixed with shimmery powder, intoxicating wafts of perfume. All they lack is those jaunty little hats with a badge, which is a pity. They ask me to take a seat and offer a dizzying choice of beverages. Because I’m nervous I opt for the one I want least. Liquorice. Is that really a tea? Think about changing my order and asking for cappuccino, which would be comforting, but, no, I am here to have my stubborn areas recontoured. It’s probably frothy coffee that got them so bloody stubborn in the first place.

  There are three other people sitting in the waiting area, and we are all studiedly avoiding each other’s eyes. Despite the soothing, Zen-like decor and the piped music there is a sticky shame in being here. Everyone wants to stay young, but no one wants to be caught in the act of trying to stay young through artifice. It has to be our guilty secret, as ‘undetectable’ as the clinic’s work.

  When one of the receptionists comes over to collect the man behind the newspaper opposite, I glance up from an article on shortening your big toe (all the rage, mysteriously) and realise that it’s a famous actor. Well, famous in the Eighties, less so now. The sandy hair has been strenuously backcombed, perhaps to disguise how little there is of it left. Once handsome and commanding, the actor now looks vulnerable; his blue eyes are watery. He sees that I have recognised him – I feel sorry about that – and gives a sad little nod of the head before scuttling into a side room. What work does a man in his late sixties, in the business of saving his looks, have done? Must ask Candy; she knows more about fillers than Mary Berry.

  5.43 pm: Turns out that the simple, painless ‘lunchtime lipo’ was not simple, and not strictly a lunchtime procedure either. As for being painless, tell that to a pin cushion.

  I came out woozy, swaddled in bandages and equipped with a post-surgical compression garment, basically a weapons-grade Shaper Suit.

  I am wobbling on the pavement outside Harvey Nichols, trying to hail a cab, when the phone rings and I answer it.

  Without any preamble, and picking up where she left off, my mother says, ‘The thing is Kath, love, if I do bring Dickie for Christmas he’ll have to come in Peter and Cheryl’s car and you know how particular Cheryl is. What if Dickie has an accident? No, I don’t think I’ll risk it, love. Better stay home this year. I’ll be fine, I can go to our Julie’s …’

  I pretend that the signal is bad and hang up.

  In the cab, I think about taking the strong painkillers the clinic gave me, but I daren’t in case I fall asleep during the presentation. What was that old torture device, with the spikes on the inside? An iron maiden? Well, that is me after lunchtime lipo.

  The traffic is appalling. As a result, I am late for my meeting at Brown’s Hotel with Grant Hatch, known to his contacts in the retail sector as Brands. Obviously. Worse still, it was my firm that had requested the meeting, so to roll up late is a terrible start. Nor can I run in spouting excuses, what with Grant being a bloke – and I mean bloke, in the fullest sense of the word. Also, after my puncturing, am genuinely liable to spout. Visions of Earl Grey tea pouring out of my lipo holes in manner of Trevi Fountain. Grant wouldn’t want to know about that.

  As I enter the bar, he makes a point of glaring at his watch, which is the size of a snow globe and covered in multiple dials, with at least four knobs on the side. It could probably launch a nuclear strike on Pyongyang, but can it tell the time?

  Grant stands up, flexing his shoulders as if to square up for a fight. He wears a black polo shirt that strains to contain what is inside it, and excessively ironed black jeans. He is hulking, and totally hairless, like a buddha who has traded contemplation for capitalism and never looked back. I can just make out the top of a tattoo behind the gold medallion at his throat. When he speaks, it is in a sarf London accent so thick you could write your fears in it.

  ‘Kate. At last,’ he rasps.

  ‘Grant,’ I say, ‘please forgive me. Bit of a crisis at work. Just as I was about to leave. The markets have gone cra—’

  ‘Hey,’ he says, flashing a smile like somebody whipping out a knife. ‘I bet you’re the kind of girl who has lots to keep her occupied.’

  Oh, a lech. I get it. Jay-B did warn me Hatch was a Ladies’ Man. Normally takes longer than ten seconds to realise what you’re dealing with, but this time the creep alarm has sounded even before I sit down. To this man, I am a girl, and not just a girl: a girl who likes to have her time – and her pretty much everything else – filled up. Preferably by the likes and the lusts of him. Fine. One of those. Deal with it.

  ‘Yup,’ I say. ‘Busy times.’ (You have no idea, mate. When did you last lie awake worrying about the sad mental decline of your mother-in-law, your daughter’s anxiety and your stomach full of lipo drainage-holes? My guess would be never.)

  ‘So, Kate,’ he says. ‘What the fuck can I do for you? Or,’ narrowing his eyes a touch, ‘you for me?’ The eyes, little beads of black, may well have been on loan from a shark.

  He nods as he talks, unable to keep still. I half expect him to start running on the spot. One of those men whom you can’t help imagining as little boys, forever getting themselves into scrapes; picture his mum, exhausted at the end of every day, worn out by her devotion, old before her time.

  We settle down – an armchair each, thank God – facing one another over a table, rather than side by side.

  ‘Drink,’ he says, issuing instructions rather than asking a question.

  I pause. ‘Tea, please?’

  ‘Nah. Get yourself a real drink.’

  ‘What are you having?’

  ‘Single malt. Made by posh wankers in the fucking Highlands. Liquid gold, only it costs more. Same?’

  ‘That would be lovely, thank you.’ Probably unwise, but I need something strong to numb my lipo belly.

  ‘Good stuff,’ says Grant. ‘Hey, you.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘No, you there.’ He snaps his fingers, as if to begin a tango. Christ. Whatever happens, Kate, you will not dance with this man. A waitress behind me scurries to his call.

  ‘Yes, please, how can I help you?’ Smiling, anxious, polite, and possibly Baltic.

  ‘Yeah, more of this stuff. Por dos. Me and ’er. Comprendo?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Grant watches her walk away. ‘Needs to lay off the Danishes, she does.’

  Grant used to be a financial adviser. Now he runs a group – or, as I think of it, a hit squad – of financial advisers, which gives him access to a broad range of clients, running all the way from merely rich to so rich that their dogs have personal chefs. EM Royal plans to be one of the funds to whom those clients turn; it is my unenviable job to tell him so. How do you inform a man like this that you want his business, and that his business could really use what you have to offer, while making it perfectly clear that the wanting stops right there? Not for a long while have I encountered someone who so clearly thinks through his trousers.

  ‘Grant, I’m here to tell you that EM Royal is really good—’

  ‘Course you’re fuckin’ good!’ He makes a sound midway between a bark and a laugh. ‘Wouldn’t be ’ere if you weren’t fuckin’ good, wouldya, love?’

  I smile, as thoug
h savouring this witticism, before plunging on. ‘Yes, well, we realise of course that you have a strong panel of investment funds on your platform. But ours is nicely diversified by asset classes: a good geographical spread; broad exposure to other currencies; good mix of defensive equities and growth companies; consistent performers all round.’

  Where did I learn to speak this weird City language, which sounds like English but is not quite the real thing? Jack used to call it Desperanto, which is perfect actually. Trust Jack to express it better than anyone else. I’m impressed at myself, but also a bit alarmed, for slipping into the lingo so smoothly, after so many years away. Feel like somebody who moves back to France and immediately, with no practice, starts chatting with the locals.

  ‘And?’ he says, gratified to be praised for his strength but keen to move on. He glances at his watch again. Maybe it is telling an Aga in Weybridge to heat up his dinner or something.

  ‘And we would very much like to have EM Royal approved on your platform. We think it’s a natural fit.’ Damn. Come on, Kate. Don’t give the guy a sniff of a double entendre.

  ‘I bet you do. Natural fit is what I like. Nice and tight.’ Too late. ‘Because?’

  ‘Because of the strength of our research team, and because, frankly, we think we’re the only fund your clients will ever need.’

  ‘Nice try.’

  ‘We’re not as cheap as a tracker fund, and we plan to keep it that way,’ I reply, with a sinking sensation in my heart. ‘Think of us as reassuringly expensive.’

  ‘Yeah, good. Well, Katie,’ he continues, shunting me into the diminutive. To be fair, he probably does that with everyone. If Grant had bumped into Caesar, he would have addressed him as Julie. ‘I hear you. And, to be honest wiv ya, I’ve already done some poking abart. That’s me all over.’ He gives me a moment to let the beauty of this thought sink in, then goes on: ‘And I reckon we might well be interested in putting you—’

  ‘Putting EM Royal.’

  ‘Right. Putting you on our menu.’

  ‘That’s fantastic. I can assure you …’

  ‘But—’ he leans into the space between us, so I can look right down his polo shirt and see that the tattoo is one of a very busty mermaid, ‘—I think we need a private meeting to go over the details, look at the small print sortafink.’

  ‘Of course, Grant. My colleagues will be happy to—’

  ‘When I say we, I mean me and you, Katie. We. We need to meet. Somewhere quiet, just the two of us.’

  Those shark eyes. They rove up and down. I can feel the wadding from the lipo wrapped tight around my tummy. When Richard Dreyfuss went down into the water to meet Jaws, he had a cage to protect him and a harpoon to defend himself with. All I have is a table. And, thank heaven, two tumblers of whisky, which the waitress sets down at this moment, thus creating another barrier. Bless her.

  ‘Is all? Anything else I can help you with?’ she asks.

  Grant waves her away. She backs off. Again, he gazes after her.

  ‘Bit of weight training, she’d be fine. Lose the arse. Get her on a bike. Cheers. You work out, Kate?’

  I nod. ‘Try to, at least a couple of times a week.’

  ‘Yeah, thought so.’ He raps his glass against mine. I sip carefully, while checking for cracks. Come on Kate, keep it together. Keep it light.

  ‘So, are you a bike man, Grant?’

  ‘Am I a bike man? Is Gandalf a homo? Course I bloody am. Hundred miles every weekend. Up to my neck in fucking Lycra. I feel like an Opal fruit.’

  ‘You should meet my husband. Compare notes.’

  Grant frowns. It’s not that men like him feel challenged by other men. They just don’t like the idea of other men existing in the first place. Like bulls, they want the arena to themselves.

  ‘What’s he got?’ (That you haven’t got, you mean?)

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘What bike?’

  ‘Gosh, I don’t know. But it cost some ridiculous amount, five thousand and …’

  Grant laughs so hard that whisky comes out of his nose. Takes a napkin and wipes it off his shirt, still laughing.

  ‘Five thousand nuffink. Mine was ten grand before the wheels. Weighs like the same as a fucking apple. Lift it up with your pinkie.’ He throws the rest of his single malt down his throat and stays like that, head back, for a few seconds. (Am I meant to applaud?) Then he puts the glass down and looks at me. ‘So, Katie, how’s about it? You and me. Next week, ’ow you fixed? Tuesday afternoon’s a possibility. Treat you to the Dorchester, Claridge’s, name your venue. We really need to thrash out some of this stuff, get to know each other better, before we move to the next stage, don’t we, darlin’?’

  I finish my own drink, stand up, and hold out my hand. ‘Actually, Grant, I have to run now. It’s been a real pleasure. And I’m so thrilled that you are considering our offer. I will of course be happy to send over a full package of information in regard to our year-on-year performance, our protocols and investment strategies. As for Tuesday, I’m afraid I won’t be free, but I’m sure my colleague Troy Taylor will be happy to stand in for me and take this discussion to the next level.’

  Grant considers this, ill will seeping from every pore. He is good-looking, and well-dressed, and very very rich, but at that moment he seems like ugliness made flesh. Rejection sours the man. Then he speaks, quite slowly, doling out the words: ‘Yeah. Yeah, I know Troy. He’s the one who told me all about you. Said you were the new kid on the block, except you was old. Fucking good at what you do, though. That’s what Troy said. I suppose you’ve had more practice than the rest of us. Years of it. He thought we might, you know, get on.’

  Ah. The lech with the bastard at his back. The plot sickens.

  ‘And we have, Grant! So nice to meet you. See you again soon. Goodbye.’

  I walk off. Behind me I hear a snapping of fingers. Last tango for Grant but, sadly, not the last I will hear of him by a long chalk.

  8.39 pm: Dinner tonight is soup, healthy cottage pie with sweet potato mash, and green beans which I picked up from M&S at the station. Richard said he was going to cook, but he had a last-minute meeting with that annoying cat woman about some wellness retreat, I think. He is bent over his iPad at the table as I serve up the soup.

  ‘Listen to this, Kate. The Government Tsar for older workers just suggested that those of us with O levels should pretend that we took GCSEs so employers can’t figure out that we are, in fact, clapped-out, ancient persons of forty-three or over.’

  Rich swivels the laptop round so I can see the article for myself. The Tsar says that those holding what she calls ‘old-style qualifications’ – sounds like something written in bulls’ blood on papyrus, doesn’t it? – may suffer age discrimination. While she says that she wouldn’t condone telling outright lies, she says ‘if you are facing this kind of unfairness then maybe one needs to play the game’.

  ‘Play the game?’ yelps Richard, letting his spoon clatter in his soup bowl. ‘I know, why doesn’t this woman simply announce that, unlike GCSEs, O levels were properly hard qualifications and at least us oldies with O levels can be guaranteed to be able to read, write and add up in our heads without the aid of several electronic devices.’

  Oh, hell. Suddenly realise that on CV for my new job I put my O level results whilst simultaneously claiming to be forty-two. Didn’t even occur to me that my new fake age means I am too young to have taken O levels, and I should have put GCSEs instead. Such a minefield. At least no one at EM Royal seems to have noticed or asked to see any certificates. Whatever the Tsar for older workers may say, this fibbing-about-your-age lark is hard. You really need the memory of someone much younger to pull it off.

  There is a sudden wail from Emily, who is hunched in her chair, knees up to her chin, dressed all in black and swathed in a scarf made from what appears to be fisherman’s netting. She looks like a lobster pot going to a funeral.

  ‘That’s like so unfair, Dad,’ she shouts, ‘I did GCSEs an
d they’re like really hard, OK? You and Mummy always say things were better when you were at school. It’s not fair. You think I’m like totally stupid and it’s like really stressy because of coursework and stuff and I only got sixty-three per cent in my English essay.’

  ‘You are totally stupid,’ says Ben, not looking up from his phone.

  ‘Stop it, Ben. Get off that machine please. Richard, put your iPad away too. Can we have one dinner when the entire family’s not online? What do you mean, you only got sixty-three per cent in your English, darling?’ Now it’s my turn to sound aggrieved. ‘I helped you with your Twelfth Night essay. How come you got sixty-three per cent?’

  Her head withdraws, tortoise-like, into the cowl of netting. ‘Mr Young said it was really well written and very clever and everything, but it didn’t have enough key words, Mummy. You’ve got to put key words in to get higher marks.’

  ‘What key words?’

  ‘Hang on,’ says Richard, ‘what were you doing writing Emily’s essay for her?’

  ‘Mum didn’t write it, she was checking it,’ Emily says quickly to protect me. ‘S’not her fault I didn’t get an A.’

  Richard looks at her, then back at me before saying caustically, ‘Don’t tell your mother she didn’t get an A in something, Emily. That hasn’t happened since 1977.’

  I see Ben’s face light up in a delighted smirk; it’s a look I remember from that day at junior school when, aged eight, he decided to liberate the class gerbils, ‘because they wanted to be outside’.

  ‘Exams can’t be that easy if Mummy can’t get an A in Emily’s essay,’ our resident logician points out.

  ‘I didn’t say exams are easy, Benjamin. They’re just hard in a, I don’t know, in a pointless, tickbox, uncreative way. That’s not education in my book. Now go and start your homework, please. Emily, sweetheart?’

  Too late. My daughter has fled upstairs. What now? I can hardly march up to school and complain to Mr Young. What am I going to say: ‘Emily should have got a higher mark for her essay because I wrote half of it’? That’ll sound really good. You know, it would be nice to have just one area of my life where I’m not a total imposter.