How Hard Can It Be?

by Allison Pearson

  ‘Hi, Mum.’

  ‘Hello, my love, shall we go?’ Emily holds my hand and, as we turn towards the door, I say, ‘Oh, Cynthia, just one more thing.’

  ‘Yes, Kate.’

  ‘Per se you can fuck right off.’

  ‘Mummy, you swore at Lizzy’s mum,’ says Emily on the walk to the car.

  ‘Did I, darling? That was very bad of me. Now, who wants to share a Five Guys vanilla milkshake?’

  Julie to Kate

  Hi there, just to say Mum’s doing great, settled well at home. Don’t worry about that Steven business. Got it all sorted. Feeling much happier. Let me know if you need any moral support with the divorce. I’m a world expert! J xxx

  From: Kate Reddy

  To: Candy Stratton

  Subject: 50th

  Hi hon,

  No, there’s absolutely nothing I want for my Big Hideous Birthday. You know I’ve almost forgotten about it in all the chaos here and I definitely don’t want a party. Planning on spending it quietly with the kids and the dog.

  I don’t know how to tell you this, but found out Emily was self-harming. Her lovely teacher told me it’s extremely common. They’re all doing it apparently, boys as well as girls. I Googled some websites and it’s horrifying.

  It’s just so alien to me. I knew that I had to look out for anorexia, but THIS. I didn’t know anyone who cut themselves when I was 16, did you?

  Anyway, Em is doing much better, thank God. She’s seeing a counsellor she really likes and he prescribed some medication, just to get the anxiety under control. We have done some family therapy sessions at a self-harm clinic and I have to admit Richard has been really great and supportive. Finally, all that counselling training pays off. Result!

  It’s still a work in progress, and it will take time, but Em stopped cutting a while ago and she isn’t hiding her scars any more, which everyone says is a really good sign. She’s been sleeping in my bed, just like when she was little, and I feel this primal urge to hold her close and give her comfort. Tbh, I much prefer sleeping with Emily to her dad!

  Kind of you to say that Richard deserves to live unhappily ever after with the wellness elf. I sort of agree, but when I stop feeling angry I think that Rich was just really unhappy and our time of life can be brutal and shit happens. Particularly when a 26-year-old nymph is offering to get mindful with you.

  Trying to keep everything as pleasant as possible. Being really positive with the kids and saying that ‘Change is Good’, as Madam Jekyll said to Mrs Hyde. We need to find a way to make this work for all our sakes. I’m coming to the end of my contract at EMR in a couple of weeks. Really need them to renew it or I don’t know how we’ll manage, particularly as I’m probably going to end up supporting twins. Pray for me!

  In answer to your question, Jack was back in the picture and, briefly, my lover. Hammer every bit as able as we’d hoped. Plus, the guy bought me a clotted-cream tea so pretty near perfect. But I sent him away. Life is too complicated already. Plus, plus, I’m a big girl now, nearly that great unmentionable age, and I can manage by myself. For all the reasons above, I’m not exactly top of my own To Do List at the moment.

  I’m Still Standing. Love you. K xx

  25

  REDEMPTION

  12.20 pm: Just coming out of a meeting with a potential client on Threadneedle Street when I see Jay-B’s been trying to contact me. Three voicemails, two texts, one email. Blimey, must be important.

  From: Jay-B

  To: Kate Reddy

  Subject: Fucking Disaster!

  Kate, major redemption threat from Geoffrey Palfreyman, our biggest private-client investor. Says they’re unhappy with mediocre performance. Thinking of switching funds or increasing other asset classes at our expense. £25m down the toilet. Spoke to him. Doesn’t want to see any more sales people, fed up with sales talk, wants to see fund manager. Not sure it should be me. Palfreyman’s your aggressive, self-made Northern patriarch basically. Get in here as soon as you can. We need strategy or we’re fucked.

  I scan the street for a yellow light. Forget it. Cab will be too slow at this time of day. Run for Bank station. Shit. How many times have I told Jay-B that when the fund has a less-than-stellar performance that’s the time you need to get out and hold the client’s hand? Even if performance is dreadful over many years they will often stick with you if they feel loyal to their adviser. Who’s been looking after Palfreyman, then? Some jerk with a First from LSE and zero bloody clue about human nature.

  I get through the barrier when, suddenly, I remember. Oh, God. Bank. The escalator. It’s OK, Kate. If you move towards it in this group of people, all you have to do is step on. No need to look down. No need to see the terrifying Escher drawing of moving stairs with steely teeth beneath your feet. Such a long way down. Heart pounding. Nearly my turn to step on. No, I can’t. Sorry, I need to step back. Sorry. The man behind me is furious. ‘Make up your bloody mind!’

  He shoves me out of the way. I see a guy in uniform watching me. ‘Excuse me,’ I say, ‘are there any stairs I can use?’

  ‘One hundred and twenty-eight steps down, Miss,’ he grins apologetically. ‘Come along, young lady, I’ll get you on.’ Grabs my elbow and steers me back towards the escalator. ‘Don’t look down, just keep looking at me, yeah?’ What a lovely face he has, a kind face. ‘There you go.’

  He releases my elbow, and I’m on! The escalator jolts my bones, but I steady myself. Heart rate slowing. No worries. Think of Conor: ‘Yer doin’ grite, Kite.’ Think of the kids, keeping the job for the kids now I am a single parent. Strange that Palfreyman would withdraw now. More likely to pull out after three years of crap performance, not one, which suggests he’s fallen out with the guy looking after him. Years ago, Rod Task would give me all the clients that were complaining or about to leave. I used to challenge myself to not just turn them around, but to make them even more profitable and to stay with us even longer. More often than not it was about listening, empathising and finding mutual interests. Once I had got their trust back I could then recommend someone new to take on the relationship. Almost always, I would recommend a woman.

  1.01 pm: The whole team is gathered in Jay-B’s office. There is an uneasy silence when I walk in and take a seat next to Alice. Our boss is parchment pale, his cocky Tintin quiff drooping over his forehead. No time for styling products this morning, eh? Things must be bad.

  ‘So,’ Jay-B begins, ‘now that Kate’s joined us, we need to work out what’s happened with Palfreyman.’

  ‘Gone to bloody buggery,’ murmurs Gareth on my other side. On the pad of paper in front of us, Gareth is busy drawing a hangman scaffold.

  ‘What we have to work out, guys, is whether this is a process failure or a human failure. Troy, you were handling the client. What’s your explanation for this fucking mess?’

  Oh, joy. Troy is in the firing line. It couldn’t happen to a nicer guy. Alice nudges me and we turn to look at the office stud whose face is puce to the pointy tips of his ginger sideburns.

  ‘It was all good,’ says Troy, ‘last time I spoke with him. No problems that I could see.’

  ‘Did you go up to Yorkshire to explain to Palfreyman when the quarterly results came in?’ That’s me speaking now.

  Troy squirms. ‘Didn’t see the need. I explained on the phone that things were good.’

  ‘Good?’ says Gareth incredulously. I see he has added a noose to his scaffold. ‘In what way can a return of only two per cent seem good in these markets?’

  ‘He, Palfreyman, well, he was a bit bummed we’d sold Rolls-Royce, said he wouldn’t have done anything that stupid or unpatriotic …’ Troy trails off.

  ‘Did he say anything else?’ I ask.

  ‘Well, he was screaming at us by email about performance compared to three of our competitors,’ Troy admits miserably.

  Ah, we’re getting to the nub of it now.

  ‘And did you go back to him and say that our performance is as good as the othe
rs, but it only looks weaker because of the layer of fees taken by the controlling company? Plus, he needs to look at like-for-like time scales – even being off by a month or a quarter can make a big difference. Our performance is not great right now, but it’s actually better than those competitors’. It’s a question of making him trust that we know what we’re doing. We’ve been in a bad place before – nineteen ninety-eight was much much worse, two thousand and two was dire – and the fund has always bounced back brilliantly. That’s a matter of historical record.’

  Christ, I feel like leaning forward and banging my head on the table. The stupidity of these, these children.

  ‘Kate, how do you know what happened here in nineteen ninety-eight?’ Jay-B is standing over by the window, hands clasped protectively over his crotch. In the dazzling sunlight, it looks like the distant Shard is coming directly out of the top of our baby boss’s head.

  ‘I—’

  Think for a minute, Kate. Think about your birthday coming up. Think about what it will mean to lose this job and have to go back to Women Returners and start all over. Think about Richard leaving you. Think about how much we need the money. Think about the fact that you will be owning up to your true age if you tell him the truth now.

  ‘Well, Jay-B, the fact is I was running this fund in nineteen ninety-eight and, I have to say, I was doing a much better job of it than you are, young man.’

  Alice grabs my wrist as if we are on a giant rollercoaster cresting a hill and she’s about to scream. Gareth clamps his mouth shut in an attempt to cut off a guffaw, and ends up making a squeaky fart sound like a whoopee cushion.

  ‘You were running this fund?’ Jay-B repeats robotically.

  ‘I certainly was. In fact, I should probably say that I set it up, and it did surprisingly well in what were pretty hostile conditions back then. And, yes, everyone, that makes me scarily ancient; forty-nine, almost fifty, I should say.’

  I think of going to pitch the fund to Jack in New York that first time (did I really have nits?). He loved it. No, he loved me. And I loved him. Don’t we know within a few minutes of meeting someone if we have to adjust the frequency? I knew instantly with him, we had our own wavelength (do not adjust your set) and I remember that burst of pure happiness. Only very rarely do you get that sense, once or twice in a lifetime, if you’re lucky. We were lucky, Jack and I. Several billion people on the planet and we found each other. How great is that?

  It was a gift and I gave it back. And now, here I am, at half-time. At best, fifty is half-time, isn’t it? And the need to feel alive, to be reminded one is still alive, not merely chauffeuring one’s kids to their own lives, is suddenly intense.

  ‘This is fucking incredible. I don’t know what to say,’ Jay-B says.

  ‘Doesn’t matter, we haven’t got time for a chat anyway. We need to get someone up to Palfreyman asap. Alice, see if you can get us a helicopter from City airport. Quick as possible, please, and dig up as much as you can on Palfreyman: wives, kids, background, hobbies. Gareth, I need you to pull up everything we have on the client’s assets, returns and our relative performance with competitors over the past twenty years.’

  ‘Helicopter?’ Troy’s mouth is agape like an oriental carp.

  ‘Yes, Sir Geoffrey needs to be made to feel important. We need to show him how very important he is to EM Royal. And if we land a helicopter on his lawn and crawl across it on bended knee before he can pull a very large amount of cash out of our fund then maybe he’ll get the right idea. Oh, and Troy?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Tuck your shirt in, boy.’

  3.10 pm: Never been in a helicopter before. Not a major fantasy of mine, to be honest, and now, having done it, I think I was spot-on. True, there is a passing kick of liberation, as you take off – going not along and up, like an airline passenger, but just up, as in a lift – and ascend into the heavens, gazing down at London as it shrinks. After that, however, it’s just noise. Clatter and wobble, with a side order of mortal fear. Some people may have Tomb Raider ideas of jumping out of their dream chopper into a jungle, on a classified mission, but, believe me, not for a second did I feel like Lara Croft. I felt like a mug in a dishwasher. Also, I wasn’t entering a combat zone. I was landing in Yorkshire, to the surly annoyance of some sheep.

  Still, we got to duck down as we disembarked, as custom requires. (Who has ever been tall enough to get beheaded by a helicopter? Apart from basketball players?) And it worked. Not for us – Alice and Gareth and me, the crack squad dispatched by EM Royal, or at least the only trio that was up for mission impossible – but for our target. Geoffrey Palfreyman. I could see him, standing at his French windows, legs planted firmly apart, hands on hips. The assessment began before we even hit the ground.

  ‘So, you’ve joined the Rotory Club’, he says, as we take our seats in his drawing room. I can just about make out the far wall, although binoculars would help. ‘’Ow was it?’

  ‘Fabulous,’ says Alice.

  ‘Smooth as anything,’ I say.

  Gareth says nothing, because Gareth is not here. He is still in Sir Geoffrey’s bathroom, throwing up helplessly into Sir Geoffrey’s loo.

  ‘Thanks for coomin’,’ says our host in a Yorkshire accent so dense you could cut it like fruit cake. ‘Sorry about the wasted trip.’

  ‘Well, that’s what we’re here—’

  ‘Bloody waste of time. I’ve seen the figures, I’ve ’ad a look round, and frankly I could do better elsewhere. So I’m movin’ it all, the whole fookin’ lot, to one of your competitors. With whom you can’t compete, so don’t pretend otherwise. Should ’ave kept the chopper running, love.’

  Hence the lack of hospitality: no tea, coffee, biscuits, water, or, in Gareth’s case, a St Bernard with a small cask of brandy under its neck. Sir Geoffrey was not one for niceties, and small talk would only impede the process. Talk is meant to be big.

  Alice pipes up. ‘Actually, Mr Palf—’

  ‘Well, Sir Geoffrey,’ I say, shooting a ray-gun glance at Alice. If there is one man in England who will want to use his title on every occasion, at any time of day or night, it is the solid citizen who stands before us, athwart his hearthrug, toasting his arse at the five-foot fire. Him and a couple of actors, who want to feel as if they were personal friends of Falstaff. It could be that Lady Palfreyman murmurs ‘Geoff’ into his hairy ears, during the rutting season, but I wouldn’t put money on it.

  ‘I have laid out the figures for you here, Sir Geoffrey,’ I say, pressing on regardless, and taking a sheaf of papers from my briefcase, ‘and I hope you’ll see that they do not necessarily tally with the figures that your team arrived at. I won’t bother you now with every last detail, but the digest is all there on the opening page. Once the fees are taken into account, I think you’ll see that our performance, contrary to what you are proposing—’

  ‘Are you saying I’m wrong, love?’ he asks. His jaw juts out towards me, further than seems anatomically possible. This is what Sigourney Weaver must have felt like at the climax of those Alien films.

  ‘No, I’m saying that your advisers have not taken the full picture into account.’ Hit it back over the net, as the teachers used to say when getting us ready for school debates. The harder the shot coming towards you, the more power in your return.

  ‘My advisers, I’ll have you know …’

  ‘We at EM Royal have definitely been at fault, I admit,’ I say, keeping the rally going, ‘but the fault is not a statistical one.’

  That stops him. Now he has to show curiosity.

  ‘So what is it, then? ’Ow ’ave you fooked up, love?’

  ‘By not making it quite clear, across the company, that you are the single most substantial private investor who has ever engaged our services.’ Not true, not quite, but he won’t know that. And he wouldn’t want to know. ‘And that that is a great responsibility. And a privilege.’

  ‘Who for?’

  ‘For us.’

  ‘Why shoul
d I care about you?’

  ‘A good question.’

  ‘So answer it.’

  ‘Because we are able to offer you returns on those investments, year on year, that will rival anything tendered by the competition. We are also the most reliable custodians of your wealth, not just for now, but for future generations. For your children, for your clients’ children and their children. As these documents demonstrate. And also –’ he opens his mouth to respond, but I don’t let him ‘– that we are alive to your particular needs and concerns.’

  ‘What bloody needs? Look around you, love. Do you see anything I need?’

  I look around. Apart from a very large Gainsborough, the only object of interest is Gareth, loitering on the fringes of the action. His face is eau de Nil. Maybe he died in the bathroom and has come back to haunt us.

  ‘Well, it struck me, going through your file in recent days,’ (in fact, leafing through it in a cab on the way to City Airport), ‘that in comparison to some of our other major clients your involvement in the philanthropic sector has not received adequate attention.’

  ‘Calling me a mean bastard?’

  ‘On the contrary. It’s on record that you purchased a new MRI scanner for North Yorkshire Hospital trust, after your youngest daughter, Katherine …’

  ‘Kate. Like you.’ So he has bothered to learn my name. Good.

  ‘After Kate was, as I understand, taken extremely ill in her teens. She made a full recovery, thank God, and you were admirably keen to show your gratitude, but you chose to keep your donation private.’

  ‘That’s my business.’

  ‘Precisely. It’s your business. And we want to make every effort to help you run that business. Your records indicate, further, that you made a really very generous donation to several musical societies in the county and beyond, and to Opera North—’

  ‘That’s Jeannie. Loves her singing. Always did.’

  ‘Wonderful. But the names of yourself and Lady Palfreyman appeared only in small print at the back of the programme, for instance, for the recent production of The Magic Flute.’ Alice found that out, in a five-minute phone call.