How Hard Can It Be?

by Allison Pearson

  ‘Oh, Donald, I’m so sorry. Is Barbara distressed?’

  ‘No, love, she’s happy as Larry. Took quite a shine to the police sergeant who brought her home. Ryan, Sergeant Protheroe he is.’

  ‘Oh, that’s nice.’

  ‘Not really, Kate, love. I’m afraid Barbara thought because Sergeant Protheroe was in uniform that he was me. Well, me about seventy years ago, any road. And she did try to have a bit of a kiss and a cuddle with him, you know. Quite embarrassing it was.’

  I shudder to imagine my eighty-five-year-old mother-in-law grabbing the copper’s goodness-knows-what because she was under the impression it was her lusty young RAF navigator. This is a thought simultaneously funny and impossibly sad. Barbara, thirty-five years my senior, whose mind is as unmoored as my body feels, is still capable of believing herself to be that gorgeous young seductress who jumped on Donald, a Justin Trudeau lookalike, just back from a bombing mission to Germany. The thought of Barbara’s untethered animal hunger as she chased the Ghost of Sexcapades Past is mortifying.

  I experience a momentary twinge of fellow feeling. Hadn’t I been humiliated when I was looking longingly at Roger Federer’s twin on the Tube and he offered me his seat? Our bodies continue to make fools of us as we age. Lust doesn’t die to spare the sensitivities of the grossed-out young who prefer not to think of wrinky couplings, and – this is really cruel – carnal feelings are among the very last to check out.

  ‘I don’t understand, Donald, so did the police arrest Barbara?’

  ‘At first, yes, but that was a young constable did that. Sergeant Protheroe, well, when he turned up he could see Barbara was very confused, so they’re not pressing charges. Quite the drama we’ve had here, Kate. I hope you don’t mind me calling. Cheryl and Peter, they’re in Italy, you see.’

  I can hear the strenuous attempt to make light of it in his voice. He must have been terrified when Barbara went missing and mortified by her trying to get off with Sergeant Protheroe.

  ‘Donald, I think we should come up. We could start looking—’

  He stops me before I can go any further. ‘Barbara doesn’t want to leave her garden, Kate, love. Well, neither of us does. The magnolia tree, well, we always know it’s spring once that’s out.’

  ‘I know, I know, but … OK, look, we’ll discuss it when we’re all together at Christmas. Not long now. Will you be all right till then?’

  ‘Oh, aye, don’t you worry about us, Kate, love. Look after yourself.’

  In the minicab on the way to the Rock Widow’s country pile, I Google care homes in the Leeds area. Finding the one that looks least grim and institutionalised, and which allows pets, I dial the number. ‘Hello, yes, I’m calling on behalf of my in-laws, Donald and Barbara Shattock. I wonder if we could make an appointment to look round Hillside View.’

  2.30pm: ‘Laylah. Belshazzar. And Mikk.’

  ‘And, sorry, they are how old now?’

  ‘Um, Belly just turned twenty-one. I remember having to give his date of birth to the police the day after the party, and one of them said, ‘‘Happy Birthday for yesterday’’, which I thought was not very nice.’

  ‘No, quite. And, forgive me, I just need to get this clear: your late husband had, I believe, other children, besides these three? There were, um, other …’

  ‘By the cartload.’ Bella Baring takes a drag on her BO Vape – the kids were smoking them at Emily’s party – and releases a delicate plume of smoke circles. ‘We know of nine for sure, including my three. It was six until Fozzy died, and then three more came out of the woodwork. There’s a coincidence for you. Once it was clear how much money he’d left, they suddenly thought, oh, he might just be their dad. Honey?’

  I look around, but nobody has entered the room. Is she addressing me?

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘Honey in your tea? Makes the medicine go down and all that.’

  ‘Oh, no, thanks, I’m fine as it is. Delicious.’

  My tea is not delicious. It is pale and bitter, with what appear to be cuttings of hedgerow floating on top. At the bottom is a sluggish dust, possibly shaken from an upturned Wellington boot. But it is what I was offered by Bella upon my arrival, and the rule is that you must, as the briefing document puts it, ‘accede whenever possible to the demands of the client’. So I am acceding, sip by sour sip, and trying not to make a face to match.

  ‘People always think I have pots of the stuff. They think I’m a real Baring. As if poor old Fozzy would have lasted a day in a bank.’

  Only five minutes in, and this already feels like one of the strangest client meetings ever. Jay-B was absolutely insistent that I needed to get down here to ‘hold the hand’ of the famous Rock Widow. After the fuck-up with Grant Hatch, I must redeem myself. This has to go well. Jay-B heard rumours that Bella might be thinking of taking her loot elsewhere, which would be a disaster. Consulting the file on the train, before Donald broke the news about Barbara and the chainsaw, I have discovered the following: Philip Rodney Baring, born Stockton-on-Tees 1947, died 2013, was known to millions of adoring, if permanently deafened, fans as Fozzy. His ashes were scattered at Glastonbury and promptly trampled into the mud. Bella, his widow, presides over both his financial estate, much of which is invested with EM Royal, and his geographical estate, which stretches for many green acres in every direction.

  ‘Actually, Bella, one of the things I’m here to tell you today on behalf of EM Royal is that you really needn’t worry about your assets.’

  ‘That’s what Fozzy said to me in nineteen eighty-three, when he saw me in a bikini.’ And with that, the veteran blonde explodes into a combination of cackle and coughing fit, gasping for breath and waving a hand at me to indicate that she is not, despite appearances, about to follow her husband to the grave. When the laugh has subsided, I press on.

  ‘As a sterling investor, you will naturally be concerned, above all, with your global asset allocation. I can assure you that the spread of your portfolio, which we set up at your request and whose fluctuations we monitor on a daily basis, is designed to ensure a minimisation of risk, so that if, for instance …’

  Bella stops me, palm raised, like a traffic cop.

  ‘Yes, Tereza?’

  A maid has appeared, possibly from a trapdoor in the rug.

  ‘Miss Bella, the llama he is in the hi-hi.’

  ‘Oh, God, not again.’ She turns to me. ‘It’s Phil. They’re very loyal, you know, and when Don died in the spring it was simply awful. Off his feed for weeks. We were told they were brothers when Fozzy got them, but now we think they may have been gay. Have you heard of same-sex llama love before?’

  ‘Well, not recently—’

  ‘And now he’s taken to wandering into the ha-ha and staying there all day. Either he’s moping or he wants to escape. See the great wide world. Sorry, back in a minute. Lead on, Tereza.’

  She levers herself out of the faded Kilim armchair, stretches, says ‘Old bones’ out loud, lights a cheroot, and follows her maid out of the door.

  I gaze out of the window at the sopping parkland. Rain has not spared Dullerton Hall today, or, from the look of it, any day this year. It’s more like staring at a watercolour than being in a real place. A large grey patch, some way beyond the terrace, marks the spot where the helipad used to be. Weeds have festered in the cracks. Why does Bella linger on here? Why not sell up, bank the cash with us, and move somewhere warm and dry?

  ‘I should move, I know,’ she says, barging back through the door to answer my unspoken question. Yikes. Don’t tell me she’s a mind-reader as well as a wealthy widow. Maybe decades of smoking weed has lent her psychic powers.

  ‘But Mikk hasn’t quite finished school. He’s on his fourth, poor boy. Even Bedales had enough of him in the end, which is saying something. Anyway, the new place in Devon suits him down to the ground, though you can’t find it in the league tables. I think they’re so unfair, don’t you?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘And
I would hate it if he had nowhere to come with his friends in the holidays. They’re such interesting young people. Very fluid.’

  ‘Bella, as far as the children go, your children that is, again, I can put your mind at rest. The yield from the trust funds Fozzy set up is amply sufficient to—’

  ‘It’s Chuckup that really bothers me.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Chuck—’

  ‘The Ukrainian. Can’t remember her full name, sounds like a bad hand in Scrabble, but Chuck’s in there somewhere, so we just call her that. Boobs like hot air balloons. Face like a knife. The one Fozzy fell in love with towards the end. Or thought he did. He was on so many drugs in the last months – you know, medical drugs rather than play drugs – that he could have fallen for the bedside table. Or the dog bowl.’

  ‘From what I understand, though, Miss Chuck— has no legal entitlement to any—’

  ‘Course not. But she has all these ghastly texts he sent, saying, my love, my only Chuckup, you mean the world to me, everything I have is yours, rhubarb rhubarb. And the papers can’t get enough of that sort of stuff.’

  ‘Honestly, Bella, it sounds dreadful, and I know how upsetting it must be for all of you, but I can’t really see that this, er, this young Ukrainian lady—’

  ‘Young is right. Twenty-two. Not a lady, fuck no.’

  ‘—that she represents any substantial threat to the integrity of your holdings. Of course, on my return to London, I will ask our legal department to double check the status of—’

  ‘Two things.’ Bella sits upright. Suddenly, without warning, she looks like someone who means business, rather than a very weary witch, running out of potions. A gleam of purpose shines in her kohl-rimmed eyes.

  ‘Can I be frank with you, Kate?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘It’s Belly. He’s a bright boy, ever so charming when he wants to be, but he lacks motivation. No drive, not like Fozzy. Mooches around all day. And I feel that, if he could just get a foot on the ladder, in something solid, you know … I’m not sure, at the moment, he even knows there is a ladder.’

  Ah, so that’s it. The cry that goes up all over England, as the parents of the privileged run headlong into the brick wall of ordinary life. Money has eased their kids through school and college, and bought them tutors for each subject with A*s to match, and now the easing stops. And it turns out that the kids, after all that cosseting, are not very special, or not very able to get up in the mornings and go to work and do as they’re told, or just not very good at being anything other than kids. At which point, the parents panic, and start to call in the favours. Not that I would say as much to Bella, even though we both know the deal.

  ‘Bella, let me be honest with you. Internships are extremely hard to come by these days, and even though they’re unpaid they’re just as competitive as proper jobs; but, of course, I’ll see what I can do. I’m sure that Belshazzar,’ (don’t laugh, Kate), ‘has lots to contribute and, well, if EM Royal can help him find his mojo then it would be our privilege to assist a client we value very highly.’

  This is a flat lie. From what I have heard of Belly, he can’t be relied upon to find his own trousers. Not long ago, the Mail ran a grainy photograph of him and a friend trying to feed Big Macs to one of the lions in Trafalgar Square at three o’clock in the morning, ‘because it was hungry’. The thought of having that dopey druggie in the office as my assistant … Still, I may have to babysit Belly to keep the client onside.

  ‘Thank you, you’re a darling.’ Bella is beaming with relief.

  I think of Calamity Girl, of the problems I have with Emily and Ben, keeping them out of harm’s way, teaching them that there’s no such thing as a free lunch and, funnily enough, that lesson seems even harder here in the Land of Plenty. I think of Sally’s Will and Oscar, still drifting in their late twenties, and of lovely Antonia, moving from one internship to the next, pursuing the Holy Grail of a permanent job. People are not so very different really.

  ‘Do you have kids, Kate?’ Bella wants to know.

  I hesitate a fraction before deciding to tell her the truth. ‘I sure do. Emily will be seventeen next birthday. Had a bit of a rough ride this year to be honest. Pressure of exams, pressure of having to photograph yourself every five minutes to show several hundred so-called friends what a brilliant life you’ve got, plus having a party-pooper mum who won’t let you use a fake ID card to get into clubs. She has so much more than I had at her age, Bella, but it doesn’t seem to make her happy.’

  ‘You’re telling me,’ she sighs. ‘I grew up in a council house in Catford. And you have a boy too?’

  ‘Yup. Ben, typical teenager. Occasionally looks up from a screen to ask for a lift or some cash.’

  She laughs, that crackly smoker’s laugh.

  ‘You said there was something else, Bella?’

  ‘Yes. Fancy a ride?’

  For a second, I think I’m being invited to my first ever orgy. Blimey, a proper rock debauch, in a country house, with tiger-skin rugs, dripping wax, and lines of coke on the eighteenth-century sideboard. Mind you, I’m amazed she would even bother these days, with Fozzy not around.

  ‘Ride?’

  ‘On Samson. You’ll love him. He’s ever so gentle.’

  ‘Well …’

  ‘Don’t worry, I was a bit freaked out the first time, too. He’s enormous.’ (Save me.) ‘Come on, I’ll lend you all the kit.’

  And so it comes to pass that, twenty minutes later, I am very slowly being led around a paddock on the back of the largest horse I have ever encountered in the flesh. Gazing ahead to the prow of his noble head, and turning round to survey his distant rump, I am left with the clear impression that Samson goes on forever. It’s like sitting on the deck of a furry aircraft carrier. And his motion, likewise, is stately and dignified, without a jolt or a jerk. I couldn’t fall off if I tried.

  Bella walks next to me, holding his bridle. Around us, the rain has lightened to a drizzle. Just as I am reflecting that this, of all things, was not in the job description, Bella says to me: ‘Kate.’

  ‘Still here, amazingly.’

  ‘You’ve passed.’

  I look down at her, far away. Samson must be eighteen-hands high, I reckon; I might as well be hiding in a tree house.

  ‘Passed what? Is there a test?’

  ‘I wasn’t going to tell you this, but I’ve been thinking of moving the Fozzy funds elsewhere.’

  Ah, so here it comes. Without meaning to, purely by way of a reflex, I pull the reins. Samson stops dead.

  ‘Where to?’

  ‘Gonzago Pierce.’

  ‘What? Why them?’

  Cool it, Kate. You’re stuck on an animal, but you’re still at work.

  ‘Forgive me, Bella, I mean, of course we’ll respect any decision that a client chooses to take, but in this instance I should strongly advise you, in your own best interests, against re-investing funds that we have rendered secure on your behalf for many—’

  ‘What’s wrong with Thingummy Pierce?’

  ‘Cowboys.’

  ‘Says she, sitting on a horse.’

  I laugh, and Samson picks up the slight shake in my hands and sets off again.

  ‘Anyway,’ says Bella. ‘It’s all off.’

  ‘What is?’

  ‘The cowboys. One of them came down last week, just like you, except he was a smoothie in a suit, a bit wet behind the ears, and we got along fine until I mentioned a ride on Samson, then he started making all these excuses. So, I dragged him out here, and he took one long at this gorgeous creature and did a bunk. Literally ran back to his Merc and drove away. And I thought, if that’s how he handles himself when faced with a horse, what on earth would he do in a crisis? All those bears and bulls you read about in the FT, I ask you.’

  Can’t be entirely sure, but I think Bella believes that bear and bull markets feature actual animals. Best not to say anything.

  ‘How could he panic,’ I say. ‘Samson is heaven. I feel
calmer up here than I’ve done in weeks. I don’t want to get off. Or down, or whatever you say.’

  ‘Exactly. That’s the right answer. So, thanks to you, I’m sticking with EM Royal. All right with you?’

  ‘Very very all right. Thank you, Bella. We will repay your trust, I can promise you that.’

  ‘Don’t push it, sister. You’re a bloody bank, you don’t repay anything. Hup!’

  And with that, at a single encouragement from his mistress, Samson starts to trot, and I begin to bounce.

  ‘Help!’

  ‘Hah. Wait till we try a canter.’

  Half an hour later, I find myself standing in the stable yard, tingling in all sorts of interesting ways and parts. Maybe once your sex life is over, big black stallions are the way forward? Bella is back at the house. Samson, safe in his stall, munches and gently steams. He has already received a carrot from my hand, with thanks. He may be the best new friend I’ve made in years. Sorry, Sally.

  6.27 pm: Got back to the office flushed with triumph, both from my ride on Samson and from knowing that I’d just saved EMR from losing a client. Checked my email, as I’d been doing pretty much on the hour every hour since I emailed Jack. Can’t decide who I’m more furious with: him for being such a bastard and not even acknowledging my message or me for being a bloody fool and caring so much. Emboldened by my success with Bella, I couldn’t bear to wait any longer. Started a new email to him. ‘Hi Jack, Just wondering if you got my …’ No, too fake-casual. ‘Hi, I know email can be slow but …’ Too sarcastic. ‘Hey, are you still alive?’ Too desperate. I decided not to send any of them. What if he didn’t reply again? I’d feel even worse. Have some self-respect, woman!

  Quick glance around the office. No sign of Jay-B, so I quickly email him a report on Bella, copying in Troy, making sure to point out my heroic role in saving the day. Can’t afford to be modest, not after I pissed off Grant Hatch. Not if I want to keep some sort of job after Arabella gets back from maternity leave. The time will be up before I know it.