City of Friends

by Joanna Trollope

  She waited for a moment, and then she picked up the letter and made her way slowly to the door. She paused again, transferring the letter to her left hand, and with the right, opened the door to the corridor outside.

  Across the corridor, in a small glass-walled cubicle, Eileen was typing. Eileen had, she realized, opened the letter and had put it on her desk, unflagged and at the bottom of the pile. Quiet, competent, discreet Eileen had not known what to do with such a bombshell any more than Beth did, so she had opted for the most neutral action she could think of.

  Beth crossed the corridor and stood in the open doorway to Eileen’s cubicle. Eileen went on typing, but with a sudden tautness that betrayed her consciousness of Beth’s presence and what it portended.

  ‘Eileen,’ Beth said, quietly.

  She didn’t look up. She had taken, recently, to wearing spectacles for computer work, rimless spectacles that caught the light in an eerie fashion and gave her face a kind of halo.

  ‘Eileen,’ Beth said again.

  Eileen stopped typing and whisked her hands into her lap. She couldn’t look at Beth.

  ‘Oh, Beth,’ she said, in almost a whisper. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  ‘About?’

  Eileen gave a little gulp, and raised her head. ‘All of it,’ she said.

  ——

  In the kitchen at Wilkes Street, Scott’s mother, Nadine, had made herself at home. She was, she told Beth, very much a homemaker, she couldn’t help herself: give her a hotel room and she’d make it hers in ten minutes. And Beth’s kitchen was just crying out to be a kitchen again and not an overflow office with a fridge in it. Scott’s father, she said confidingly, had detested her domesticating instincts. He’d grown up north of Auckland, after all, and got claustrophobia if you even suggested being out of sight of the sea. Would Beth mind if Nadine just kind of took the kitchen in hand a bit?

  Beth didn’t mind at all. She had wondered if the letter from Claire’s solicitor would make her feel violently possessive about Wilkes Street, but discovered that her intense preoccupation with Claire’s betrayal had made almost everything else, including the house, irrelevant. If Nadine wanted to clean the kitchen floor and banish the cats from the table and polish all the granite surfaces, then she was welcome. A bright checked tablecloth and a jug of forced yellow roses from Kenya might not have been Beth’s first choice, but she found that the effect of both was undeniably cheering. It was also orderly and purposeful. Even the cats seemed to be aware that some form of domestic control was being reasserted, and it was to everyone’s benefit.

  Scott, Beth was pleased to see, wasn’t even thinking of apologizing for his mother. On the contrary, he was proud of her efforts, and the contribution she was making. He said Beth should try the results of Nadine’s baking and when he watched television in the evenings, he no longer lay on the sofas to do so, but sat on them with a cat on his lap, looking strangely alert.

  Beth did not mention the letter to anyone in Wilkes Street. Nor, when they had their weekly telephone call, did she tell her father. Stacey called to tell her about Peg’s Project and Beth, catching the energy and excitement in Stacey’s voice, said that she was delighted to hear about it, and if she could be of help in any way, she’d be only too happy. Melissa, phoning to recount the row with Sarah Parker and the remarkable day that had given rise to Peg’s Project, said, ‘How are you, Bethie?’ and Beth said, ‘I’m doing fine, honey. One of the kids has his mother staying for a few weeks, so I’m even coming home to hot food,’ and Melissa had laughed and said that, speaking personally, that’s what restaurants were for. Beth asked if Melissa had heard from Gaby recently, and Melissa’s voice had taken on the tone of intense sympathy.

  ‘I think she’s up to her ears in family stuff and personnel problems at work.’

  ‘Family stuff?’

  ‘Well,’ Melissa said, ‘my Tom had a bit of a thing for Claudia for ten whole minutes.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘It seems to be over. On Tom’s side anyway.’

  ‘I hope it didn’t create trouble,’ Beth said. ‘Between you and Gaby.’

  ‘Oh no,’ Melissa said. She sounded remarkably breezy. ‘In fact, we hardly spoke about it at all. What about you, though?’

  Beth took a determined breath. ‘I am fine. Absolutely fine.’

  ‘You sound so purposeful, Bethie. I’m so glad to hear it. I really am. No sight or sound of Claire, I do hope?’

  ‘None.’

  ‘And Wilkes Street?’

  Beth had instinctively straightened, standing in her study whose waste-paper bin, she noticed, Nadine had emptied. ‘We’re fine, here, honey. A full house, as I said.’

  ‘And no plans?’

  Beth smiled into the telephone. ‘No plans.’

  In the kitchen, Nadine was dicing a butternut squash, for soup. Last time she had made it, she had sprinkled Parmesan cheese on the top and added a shining spoonful of truffle oil. Beth and Nadine and Scott and Phil from Hull had sat at the kitchen table, their elbows on the checked cloth, and eaten the soup with real respect. It was, as Nadine had promised, excellent soup. And when it was finished, both the men had got up and stacked the soup bowls in the dishwasher, without being asked.

  ‘Respect,’ Beth had said to Nadine.

  Now, chopping up the chunks of squash, Nadine offered Beth a cup of tea.

  ‘I won’t, thank you.’

  Nadine said cheerfully, ‘I’d take the offer while you can, if I was you. I’ll be gone in three days.’

  Beth was startled. ‘Gone?’

  ‘I came for two weeks,’ Nadine said, ‘and I’ve been here for almost three. Time to go home.’

  ‘We’ll miss you,’ Beth said, meaning it.

  Nadine began to scoop up double handfuls of squash, to dump them in a saucepan.

  ‘I’ve had a great time.’

  ‘It seems to me you’ve done little except sort my house.’

  ‘It needed doing.’

  ‘I’ve not,’ Beth said, ‘much of a house-proud disposition.’

  Nadine poured water from the kettle into her saucepan. She said, ‘We aren’t all. And you shouldn’t try. You’re brilliant at other things.’

  ‘But once I thought, you know . . .’

  ‘Things were different then, weren’t they? I’m not a brainbox like you, but I think we all have to do what we’re designed to do. Obey our instincts. When it all fell apart with Scott’s father, all I wanted to do was get back to South Africa and plant a vegetable garden and make my own kitchen curtains. You don’t want any of that. So you shouldn’t do it.’ She put the pan on the hob and adjusted the heat. Then she added, ‘What do you want? You’re the same age as me and a big shot in your world. Seems to me you could do pretty much what you want.’

  Beth sat down by the table and put her elbows on it. ‘What do you think I should do?’ she said, seriously.

  Nadine put a lid on her saucepan. Then she turned round and leaned against the counter beside the hob. She was wearing jeans and a green and gold Springboks rugby shirt of Scott’s. She looked, suddenly, about sixteen.

  ‘Well, Beth, if I was in your position, I’d just make the most of my freedom.’

  ——

  ‘Can you talk?’ Beth texted Gaby.

  ‘10 mins. Will call you,’ Gaby texted back.

  Beth was in her office, standing by the window. In half an hour, she was due to give a tutorial – What Has Changed in the Working Consciousness? – to a group of final-year students, and although she knew what she would say, indeed was well rehearsed in the theme of the class, she was beset by restlessness. Behind her, on her desk and table, lay the usual piles of books and papers that needed sorting. She was the only person who could do this task but she couldn’t make herself, any more than she could make herself cross the corridor to Eileen’s cubicle and smooth all the jagged edges left by their unsatisfactory conversation two days earlier. All she could do, she discovered, was drum her fingers against t
he rain-spotted glass, and fidget. Texting Gaby had been an unthinking impulse. Why Gaby? Why, indeed, text anybody? And why, as a result of that texting, was she waiting for Gaby’s call with all the tense fervour of an expectant lover? When her phone actually rang, she snatched it up with ridiculous eagerness.

  ‘Gaby.’

  ‘Beth? Are you OK?’

  Beth pressed her phone hard against her ear. ‘I have no idea,’ she said, almost laughing.

  ‘If it’s any comfort,’ Gaby said, from Canary Wharf, ‘me neither. And I have a meeting in fifteen.’

  ‘I have a class.’

  ‘Busy busy. Aren’t we? Do we love it, though?’

  ‘Work?’

  ‘Yes, work.’

  ‘Work,’ Beth said, ‘is where we feel most creative and innovative. It’s exciting. We make friends at work.’

  There was a short pause, and then Gaby said, ‘It’s also the most frustrating part of our lives. Exasperating.’

  ‘Do you want to talk about it?’

  ‘Actually,’ Gaby said, ‘no. Not even to you. I’ve had a go at candour and in my experience, it doesn’t work. Nothing seems to affect the – randomness of other people.’

  Beth relaxed her grip on her phone a little. She said, ‘Tell me about it.’

  ‘Your turn,’ Gaby said. ‘Do you want to talk?’

  ‘No. I want to scream, but that’s different.’

  Gaby laughed. ‘It doesn’t get easier, does it?’

  ‘Change is never easy. This is what we’re going through, change.’

  ‘Did you text,’ Gaby said, ‘to have a quasi-philosophical conversation about the journey of life?’

  Beth said simply, ‘I just had this urge.’

  ‘OK,’ Gaby said. ‘But – are things falling apart?’

  Beth pressed her forehead against the window. ‘Our future – working future – will be increasingly defined by innovation,’ she said, in a more formal tone. ‘We’ll have to combine mastery of our specialities with an ability to connect with other people, and their other competences.’

  ‘Oh God,’ Gaby said. ‘Don’t be all professional with me, please, Beth.’

  ‘It’s just my way of coping with temporary chaos, honey.’

  ‘I have to go to my meeting.’

  ‘And I to my class.’

  ‘Beth,’ Gaby said suddenly, her tone altered, ‘is Melissa seeing someone?’

  ‘Well, there was a resurgence of Tom’s father . . .’

  ‘No,’ Gaby said, ‘not Will. There’s been some kind of drama there. But she’s suddenly quite different, kind of – kind of skittish. And she’s stopped being all tiger mother about Tom. Just like that. Dratted Tom, actually.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘No time to tell you now. Can we meet?’

  Beth took her forehead away from the glass. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Soon. When I’ve unpicked a few knots.’

  ‘Hollow laughter to that ambition, sugar,’ Gaby said, and the line went dead.

  Beth dropped her phone into her pocket and glanced at the clock on the wall. She had five minutes before her class, which she was going to start, she decided, by asking the students – all mature, all intelligent and motivated – if they had ever, in workplace situations, felt that they were being taken for granted. Then she opened her office door and crossed the corridor.

  ‘Eileen.’

  Eileen stopped typing. ‘What can I do for you?’ She spoke in the neutral tone she used to convey information.

  Beth put her hands in her pockets. ‘Have lunch with me,’ she said.

  Eileen looked startled. ‘Lunch?’

  ‘Or dinner. But I think lunch might suit you better.’

  Eileen – pale, composed Eileen in her rimless glasses – went pink. She looked down at her keyboard. ‘I’d love to,’ she said.

  ——

  The estate agent’s office in Curtain Street was dotted with primary-coloured low armchairs, as if to create the illusion that what took place there was not, in fact, all about money. Beth chose a yellow armchair and was brought tea and a fridge-chilled bottle of sparkling water by an elaborately friendly girl apparently dressed for a cocktail party. When Beth was joined in the purple armchair beside her by a young man in a suit and dramatically patterned tie, she was feeling sceptical to the point of regret.

  The young man held his hand out. ‘I’m Shaun.’

  Beth didn’t take it. ‘And I am Professor Mundy. To you.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘No need to be sorry,’ Beth said. ‘Just don’t let either of us pretend that this is about anything other than what it is.’

  Shaun sat rather more upright in his chair. He said, ‘I don’t know what that is yet, though, do I?’

  ‘Whether I want to buy a house or I want you to sell a house?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Beth put her hands on the arms of her yellow chair and waited until they were quite still, and then she said, ‘The latter.’

  ‘Then I know where I am,’ Shaun said, and smiled.

  Beth didn’t smile back. She said, ‘But I don’t, yet.’

  Shaun said, in a much less practised tone, ‘Are you selling against your will?’

  ‘Let’s just say that from my perspective, the timing isn’t ideal.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘I’ve come to you because I want impersonal, swift, professional service. And a good price.’

  ‘May I ask where the house is?’

  ‘Here,’ she said. ‘Shoreditch.’

  ‘We have seen a 22 per cent rise in property values in Shoreditch in the last year or two.’

  ‘It’s a good house,’ Beth said. ‘Four bedrooms.’

  ‘In?’

  ‘Wilkes Street.’

  Shaun looked straight at her. ‘The renovated one? Next to the old factory?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘A very good house,’ Shaun said emphatically.

  ‘Yes,’ Beth said again.

  Shaun looked at the floor. Then he glanced back at her. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said again.

  Beth gave a little shrug. She said, ‘You could walk into it. Everything works.’

  ‘I’ll confess,’ Shaun said, ‘I put a broken desk chair in your skip once. During the renovation.’

  ‘We did everything.’

  ‘Plainly.’

  ‘I expect someone else found a use for your chair.’

  ‘And now we,’ Shaun said, falling back into sales mode with some relief, ‘must find a new and profitable use for your house.’

  Beth winced, very faintly. ‘Please.’

  ‘So we’ll start with a valuation.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Although I can say, straight off, seeing what I’ve seen, that we’re looking at well north of one. Nearer one and a half, maybe.’

  Beth gave no indication that she had even heard him, let alone registered what he had said. She was looking at her fingertips. She said, ‘After a valuation and all that, a brochure?’

  ‘Well, we only print brochures now if clients specifically request them, because so much of London property changes hands with online advertising these days.’

  ‘I do want a brochure,’ Beth said.

  ‘Of course, if you—’

  ‘Although, on second thoughts, a good online presentation would do. It is simply that I want details of the house and the fact of its being sold to be made very evident.’

  Shaun smiled at her. ‘Oh, it will be,’ he said. ‘That’s our speciality. We get in everywhere, to everyone.’

  Beth smiled back. At last. ‘I’m not really concerned with everyone, Shaun. I just want the information made very plain indeed to one particular person.’

  ——

  Eileen had chosen a prawn salad. She wasn’t really eating it, Beth noticed, but kept neatly moving bits of it about, cutting up a tomato slice or wedge of avocado to give an impression of busyness, and enjoyment. She had declined a glass of wine and opted for tap water on
ly, which sat in its unsmudged glass beside her, as untouched as the salad.

  ‘Eileen,’ Beth said, ‘you’re not eating.’

  Eileen put her knife and fork down. ‘It’s lovely. It really is. Prawns are my favourite. I just – don’t seem to have much of an appetite.’

  ‘Any particular reason? Like, this is the first meal we’ve eaten together in all these years?’

  ‘I never expected . . .’

  Beth put a hand out and laid it on Eileen’s wrist. ‘I know you didn’t. It was me. I should have asked you. I should have done a lot of things differently, like not taking you for granted.’

  Eileen removed her hand in order to bring her napkin up to her eyes and blot underneath them. ‘Please don’t go and be nice to me.’

  ‘I’m cross with myself,’ Beth said. ‘Won’t you let me say so?’

  Eileen lowered the napkin. ‘No need for that. You didn’t know what you’d have to deal with if you’d asked me anything.’

  Beth was holding her own water glass. She put it down with deliberation. ‘What is it, Eileen?’

  ‘All I can say,’ Eileen said, sniffing, ‘is that working for you has held me together. I don’t know what I’d have done without the job.’

  ‘Oh my dear,’ Beth said.

  Eileen gestured at her plate. ‘It’s awful, not to eat this. It’s lovely, really lovely.’

  ‘Forget it. Forget it, please. It’s just a salad.’

  ‘Maxwell left,’ Eileen said suddenly. ‘He left me four years ago. With the bank’s receptionist from the Holborn office. And then Becky lost her job and came back home and she’s got a boyfriend, a married boyfriend, so we aren’t seeing eye to eye about that. And, well, Peter’s got a job in Brussels, and he’s living there with a girl from the Congo who won’t come to England because she says we’re all racists, and so Peter never comes, either, and I can’t go there because she won’t meet me. Even though he’s white and British. There’s no logic to it, but the result is that I haven’t seen him in over two years. So you see, Beth, coming to work has saved my sanity. Booking your flights and circulating your speeches has been the one thing in my life that I could rely on.’ She stopped as suddenly as she had started and then said, in confusion, ‘I never meant all that to come out, I never meant to burden you with all my problems.’