City of Friends

by Joanna Trollope

  ‘Well then, honey—’

  ‘Beth,’ Stacey said, interrupting, ‘do you know what’s going on with Gaby? And Melissa?’

  Beth sighed. ‘You must ask them yourself,’ she said carefully.

  ‘Aren’t you being plain priggish?’

  ‘No,’ Beth said. ‘You can accuse me of that if you want – Claire certainly would – but I think I’m respecting your own relationships with both Gaby and Melissa. I’m also saying that if you want anything to happen to ease your plight, you’re going to have to make an effort yourself.’

  ‘Did you lecture Claire like this?’

  ‘I tried not to.’

  ‘So you think I’ve got to pick up the phone to Gaby and pick up the phone to Melissa and stop wallowing?’

  Beth gave her a ghost of a smile. ‘Yes to one and two, and I wouldn’t dare suggest three.’

  Stacey tried to smile back. ‘Bethie. Will you be OK?’

  ‘In time. Possibly. Even probably. You can’t switch off loving someone just because they’ve switched off you.’

  Stacey gave Beth’s nearest hand a brief pat. ‘I know. Especially if, like Mum, they had no choice about switching off.’

  From upstairs, Bruno gave a few sharp barks. Stacey was off the sofa and across the room in a flash.

  ‘That’s Mum,’ she said. ‘He’s brilliant at telling me. She’s awake.’

  CHAPTER SIX

  MELISSA

  When Melissa suggested – gently but firmly – that all boards, especially those of public companies, should review their conduct and their performance once a year, the chairman of the huge retail group she had been asked to advise looked as if she had hit him.

  ‘Once a year? Every year? It’s a preposterous suggestion.’

  ‘When I started Hathaway,’ Melissa said, smiling at him, her hands loosely clasped on the table in front of her, ‘lots of people told me it was the worst idea I’d ever had. Several people, I remember, described it as outlandish. But that was fifteen years ago. So much has changed in fifteen years, including notions of infallibility.’

  The chairman, a lean man in his late fifties, with a set of top-quality golf clubs propped in one corner of his severely uncluttered office, fiddled with his fountain pen. ‘I’ve never thought of myself as infallible.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘My wife certainly doesn’t think so.’

  ‘I’m not suggesting anyone’s at fault,’ Melissa said. ‘That isn’t the point. Nor is it my aim, in trying to help. I’m just here to explain my methodology to you, in detail, so that you can make an educated choice as to whether I can be of use to you.’

  The chairman unscrewed the gold-rimmed black cap of his pen, and screwed it back on again. ‘Well, Miss Hathaway—’

  ‘Melissa.’

  ‘Well, Melissa. I did ask you, even if my arm was twisted by our mutual friend, and I must take the consequences of that. So. Let’s cut to the chase. What is, say, your one crucial question?’

  Melissa counted to five. The interview was following a familiar pattern, and her responses would therefore be equally tried and tested. To be measured in manner, she had discovered, was the most effective response, even to outright hostility. After five, she said, still smiling slightly, still looking at him, ‘How well are you prepared for the future?’

  ‘Excellently.’

  ‘Could you describe . . . ?’

  He gestured with his fountain pen. ‘Trial stores in America, production shifts out of one Asian country to another, constant innovation in food lines, experiments in homeware collections . . .’

  ‘Excuse me,’ Melissa said, ‘but are these ideas, or projects in the course of implementation?’

  ‘Ideas, mostly.’

  ‘And is somebody in charge of every area of development?’

  ‘I am,’ the chairman said.

  Melissa counted to five once more. Then she said, ‘May I describe something to you?’

  He gestured again. He was, she reckoned, exceptionally good at what he did. It was just that, collectively, the board could assist his flair to make the business so much better.

  ‘Of course,’ he said with elaborate courtesy.

  ‘What I would like,’ Melissa said, ‘is to give to you the backup and the implemented support that you both need and deserve. I propose the following plan, the plan I use for every company I have helped in the last fifteen years, none of which – none – have failed to increase, at least, their output and their profits.’

  The chairman put his pen down at last and leaned back, folding his arms. ‘Fire away.’

  ‘I start,’ Melissa said, ‘by interviewing everyone on the board alone, for two hours. After that process is complete, I attend every divisional and board meeting – I live with the company basically. I then tell you all what I see as the strengths of the board, and what I see as the challenges, and then I produce a report of about twenty pages, in which, from past experience, there will be very few surprises. Then, finally, I interview everyone separately again, and to top the whole process off, we have a board meeting. Everyone, all together.’

  The chairman said nothing. He was frowning at his own thoughts.

  Melissa went on in a deliberately reasonable tone, ‘You called me, after all. Did you think I’d praise you? Did you think you needed a health check? Or . . . ?’ She stopped, and waited.

  ‘Bad figures,’ he said, slowly and reluctantly.

  ‘Yes.’

  He glanced at her. ‘Which you knew all along.’

  ‘Yes. When things are going well, nobody thinks about the board. They only do when things start to go wrong.’

  He sighed. Then he looked at her properly for the first time. ‘An educated choice? Is that what you said?’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘And these interviews . . . ?’

  ‘They take place in my office,’ Melissa said. ‘It’s a neutral space.’

  ‘Neutral?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He sighed again and uncrossed his arms. ‘When can you start?’

  ——

  Melissa’s office was in a small, secluded mews house off the Gloucester Road. In deference to the stables they had once been, the roadway between the two lines of little houses was still cobbled, with a deep central drain, and there was a ceremonial archway leading off the street outside. The office, rented on a long lease, was at the far end, a modest building, painted cream with a dark grey front door. Beside it was a small brushed steel plate which said, simply, ‘Hathaway’.

  Inside, there was an open-plan space housing a modern coat rack, Melissa’s assistant, Donna, and a flight of stairs leading up to the area which had been fitted out like an unthreatening consulting room, furnished with a sofa, and several padded chairs around a painted wooden table. In one corner was Melissa’s desk and computer and in another an enormous weeping fig tree in a galvanized container. There were no overhead lights, only lamps, and the sofa had rugs folded over its arms; hanging above it was a large black and white photograph of shadows cast across a sunny city pavement. It was as bland and unobtrusive a setting as Melissa had been able to devise, as well as being eerily quiet. If anyone slammed a car door in the mews outside, whoever Melissa was talking to at the time would jerk upright as if they had heard a gunshot.

  Donna had worked for Melissa since the infancy of both Tom and Hathaway. She had come to work, on a trial basis, as a typist with potential, and had steadily morphed into being the most indispensable person in Melissa’s life. She had not only grown with the business, but had also, despite being married herself with a pair of daughters, found time to buy Tom’s school uniform, and fill the fridge in Holland Street with something he could raid when he came in, late and ravenous, to a still-empty house. Donna knew everything about Melissa’s private life, and Melissa had been invited to Donna’s daughters’ naming ceremonies. At Christmas, Melissa gave Donna a substantial gift voucher, and Donna gave Tom something her daughters had chosen for him. Donna
was blonde, and trim, and efficient. Several of Melissa’s clients had tried over the years to poach her with lavish offers of an increased salary and unlimited expenses. She declined each one, and reported the details to Melissa afterwards.

  ‘It’s like marriage,’ she said to Melissa. ‘I know what suits me, and this does.’

  She was at her desk, blonde hair smoothed back into a tidy ponytail, navy suit jacket draped symmetrically on a nearby hanger, when Melissa reached the office. There was no need, between them, for Donna to enquire if the meeting had gone well, and Hathaway had got the job. It was understood that Hathaway would get a hundred per cent of the business of companies who applied for its services, and they had not yet had occasion to revise that understanding. Sometimes, the initial meeting did not produce immediate results, but in the end, no chairman worth his position could deny that somehow, somewhere, improvements might be made. This time Melissa put her briefcase down, gave the thumbs-up sign, and said, ‘It’s a huge board. Twenty-seven of them. It’s going to take weeks.’

  ‘I’ll start timetabling. And liaising with all their PAs.’ Donna held out a piece of paper. ‘Tom called.’

  Melissa looked at it. ‘Tom? Here? Why didn’t he call my phone?’

  ‘He rang about an hour ago. This was the message he gave me. I suggested he ring you and he said he hadn’t got time.’

  Melissa took the sheet of paper. ‘Meaning that he didn’t want to speak to me.’

  ‘Or,’ Donna said, ‘that he daren’t.’

  Melissa looked at the message in her hand. ‘“Star Wars.” What does he mean? We saw Star Wars forever ago, when he was little.’

  ‘It’s the latest film in the sequence. The usual sci-fi action stuff. You know.’

  ‘“I’m going to see Star Wars with Jake and Ben,”’ Melissa said, reading. ‘“Then supper at theirs, and I’ll stay over. See you Saturday, I mean tomorrow. Have a good evening. Tom xx.”’

  She looked up at Donna. ‘Jake and Ben.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Will’s little boys,’ Melissa said.

  ‘Yes.’

  Melissa closed her eyes briefly. ‘Goodness,’ she said, faintly.

  ‘I suppose,’ Donna said thoughtfully, ‘it had to happen.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘They are his half-brothers. And he wanted me to add the kisses. He specified that.’

  ‘I – just didn’t think it would happen like this. That – that he wouldn’t be able to face telling me himself.’

  ‘Oh,’ Donna said, moving papers briskly about on her desk. ‘Don’t pay any attention to that. That’s just boys. Like the men they’ll grow up to be.’

  ‘He’s always told me everything.’

  ‘You think he has, Melissa.’

  Melissa glanced at the note again. ‘Do you think he has a crush on Marnie?’ she said.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why are you so decided? Why do you say no so emphatically?’

  ‘You know the reason.’

  ‘Do I?’

  ‘Yes,’ Donna said firmly. ‘Yes. Tom adores you, you know he does. But you can’t, on your own, be a family for him. Can you?’

  ‘I try so hard.’

  ‘It’s not a matter of trying. You do everything you can. But you can’t provide a houseful of kids and mess and big meals and noise and all the stuff that goes to make family life. Can you?’

  ‘No. And if he wants that so much . . .’

  ‘He doesn’t know if he does,’ Donna said. ‘He thinks he does because it’s different. Because he hasn’t got it right now, he has to try. He may hate it.’

  Melissa bent to pick up her briefcase. ‘But he may not.’

  ‘Well,’ Donna said. ‘There’ll probably be a honeymoon period. There usually is. Meanwhile . . .’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘There’s work to be done.’

  ‘I know, Donna. I know.’ She began to move slowly towards the stairs that led up to her own office.

  ‘Are you OK?’ Donna said in a different tone.

  Melissa didn’t turn. She began to climb the stairs with a briskness she didn’t feel.

  ‘Yes. Yes, I’m fine,’ she said, firmly.

  She put a hand on her heart. Donna couldn’t see. Nobody could see. There wasn’t, in fact, anything to see, but she could feel it acutely, a pain of a sharpness she hadn’t felt since that long-ago dinner in Paris when Connor Corbett had told her that they were over.

  ——

  The Holland Street house was very quiet. It felt, Melissa thought, intentionally quiet, as if it wanted to emphasize Tom’s absence. Friday night had become, in any case, something of a ritualized special night for both of them. Very occasionally a school friend of Tom’s would be there, scrupulously polite in the manner of someone playing a role to perfection, but more often than not it was just the two of them, and a takeaway dinner of Tom’s choosing, followed by a movie screened on the immense basement television set, which they chose in strict rotation, week after week. Without Tom, Melissa reflected, she would never have seen the Star Wars films which preceded the very one Tom was now watching with his young half-brothers, and his father, in some cinema only a few streets away, really, in Notting Hill. Without Tom, there was a dramatic hollowness to the prospect of a long evening of whatever music or food or form of relaxation she might choose. There seemed, suddenly, to be neither point nor savour in being able, for under twenty-four hours, to have nobody to please but herself.

  There was, of course, as Donna had pointed out, work to be done. Melissa plugged her laptop into the specially designated socket in the kitchen, and fired it up. The resulting emails all seemed absurdly mundane, and without exception could wait until Monday. People seemed to have a Friday-night habit of technological desk-clearing which filled everyone else’s inboxes with material that managed, always, to unsettle the transition from work mode to time off. She scrolled rapidly through what had come in in the last hour and then marked for Monday, or deleted, all of them.

  Then she poured a glass of sparkling water, congratulating herself on taking the trouble to add ice cubes and slices of lime, and carried it up to her bathroom, with every intention of running a luxurious bath in which she would lie, eyes closed, listening to Mozart. Or maybe Schumann. Or perhaps Tchaikovsky. Something romantic and melodic anyway, something that would buff away the spikes in her feelings, whose jagged edges she was both conscious and ashamed of. Wasn’t it right – yes, right – that Tom should want to know his father better? And, of course, his father’s family?

  She took off her black dress and hung it to air on a hanger by the open window. She put lasts in her work shoes, unclasped the pearls her father had given both his daughters, and laid them, and her pearl earrings, in the velvet-lined box in which they had arrived. Then she peeled off her tights and her underclothes and dropped them in the lidded woven basket for handwashed laundry in her bathroom, and put on a white towelling bathrobe. It had the logo of an upmarket health spa embroidered on it and Melissa had bought it when she took Donna there, for two nights, to celebrate her forty-fifth birthday.

  She was leaning over the bath, about to turn on the taps, when her phone rang. She raced to answer it, immediately thinking it might be Tom. But the screen did not say Tom. It said Gaby.

  ‘Lissa?’

  ‘Yes,’ Melissa said. ‘Yes!’

  ‘This is very last minute,’ Gaby said. ‘I’m just home and everyone’s in a horrible mood. It’s a case of real save-it-up-to-be-vile-to-Mummy Friday. And Quin’s out, the bastard, at some local conservation evening. Will you save me? Will you and Tom save me and come for supper? We’re going to have takeaway Japanese because Japanese is the only food there is even faint consensus on.’

  Melissa subsided onto the floor, overwhelmed with relief. ‘I’d – love to. I really would. But I haven’t got Tom.’

  ‘You haven’t?’

  ‘No. Tom isn’t here tonight.’

  ‘Is he at a sleepover? The o
nly thing to be said for the Henderson household tonight is that nobody extra is here for a sleepover.’

  ‘Yes,’ Melissa said. ‘Yes, he is.’

  ‘Well, you come. The kids have to improve their behaviour to me if you’re there. Come and stop me murdering them. If you can bear it.’

  ‘I can bear it.’

  ‘It must be weird,’ Gaby said, ‘being alone in that house without Tom.’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘I mean you never are, really, are you? Where is he?’

  Melissa took a breath. ‘He’s – quite near you, actually. He’s in Notting Hill.’

  ‘Oh!’ Gaby said. ‘Anyone I know?’

  Melissa smoothed down the towelling tie of her robe, along her thigh. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘What’s their name?’

  ‘It’s Will, Gaby, Will Gibbs.’

  There was a silence. Then Gaby said, ‘Will Gibbs? Tom’s father?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Oh, Lissa . . .’

  ‘Yes.’

  There was another small pause, and then Gaby said, in a different tone, more collected, more formal, echoing Donna, ‘Well, I suppose that was bound to happen. In the end.’ And then she added, almost as if making an effort, ‘But you come. Come anyway.’

  ——

  Gaby met her in the hall of the house in Ladbroke Road. Despite the stately presence of a mirrored console table and a pair of modern acrylic ghost chairs, the overriding impression was one of elaborate chaos, with school backpacks and random trainers and scarves and fleeces flung down all anyhow, as if their owners had been suddenly compelled to flee.

  Gaby said, stepping over everything disdainfully, ‘I’m not picking up anything. Not one single thing. They do it to wind me up so the only possible reaction is to ignore it all. Does Tom chuck everything about like this?’

  Melissa dropped her car keys into her jacket pocket. ‘There’s only one of him so the effect isn’t quite so dramatic.’

  Gaby kissed her cheek. She was still wearing her work clothes, black trousers and an emerald green jacket with black lapels, but she had huge furry slippers on her feet, striped like zebras, with green plastic eyes appliquéd on the toes.