Ella remembered the terror she had felt when she first walked on to the trading floor. She had been training with Human Resources for two months, in which time she had taken her regulatory exams. That morning she was so full of nerves and excitement that she spent it being sick.
Everyone turned to look at her. She was not just the new girl, she was the new black girl, and in an office that was full of white faces, she felt conspicuous. Jeff, whom she had met at the interview stage, soon put her at ease, and when he introduced her to her fellow traders her knees had almost stopped knocking.
The rest of the desk all eyed her with mild interest. They were civil, they were polite and sometimes they were even kind. However, until she could prove that she was good, they did not accept her. As soon as she started making money, they thawed slightly, but still they whispered that this might be beginner’s luck. Her ‘beginner’s luck’ lasted three years, which culminated in her getting the biggest bonus and making more money than anyone else. Their attitude turned to respect and now they were even offering a kind of friendship.
She felt that although initially she had perhaps not deserved to get the job, she had justified herself.
They piled into a cab, and Ella knew that, whatever happened, tonight would be a long one. They had dinner at Indigo before moving on to the Met bar. Ella enjoyed the food, the wine, the champagne. They were all drinking as if Prohibition were to be introduced the following day. The guys were getting through twice as much as she was, but that was because they were animals. The jokes were blue, the language was unrepeatable, but they were courteous towards Ella.
She, however, was more than able to handle anything they threw at her. At the Met bar, she was fascinated by the handful of celebrities they encountered. Although most were wannabes, there were people that Ella recognised: a few music stars and a couple of sexy actors whose names she wasn’t sure of. Liam was ordering champagne and smiling suggestively at anyone female. Trevor’s tongue was hanging out – he was standing near some girls who looked like models. Bob was asleep on a table, and John and Jimmy were taking care of Ella.
She got home at some time in the small hours and fell into bed. When her alarm clock went off at 5 a.m., announcing that it was a gym day, she mumbled, “Fuck the gym,” and reset the clock for an hour later.
***
On Wednesday Virginia kept her head down, and worked twice as hard as usual. She completed Isabelle’s tasks efficiently, and was thankful that due to ‘hangovers from hell’ the desk were too ill to ask her to do anything apart from get them bacon sandwiches in the morning. She logged into her directory of investment banks, looking for any to which she could apply.
She made an alphabetical list, then looked at it despondently. 2Change career,” a voice in her head told her.
“No,” she replied. “No, no, no.” If anyone else on the desk noticed her talking to herself, they didn’t say anything.
Virginia went through the list again. She knew she didn’t want to work for anyone as much as she wanted to work for SFH. But her loyalty to a bank that made her miserable and gave her no opportunity to advance was inexplicable. Except that it wasn’t SFH, it was Isabelle. If it weren’t for Isabelle she would get somewhere. For a moment Virginia felt faint: her grip was going, as was her reason and rationale.
How can you carry on when you have nothing? Virginia rubbed her temples, she felt like she was going mad, and there was no way she could go mad.
She left the desk, rushed to the ladies”, and sat on the loo seat with her head in her hands. She had to think. She knew that today was Wednesday. Right. Her routine had been as usual: she had got up, she had had her tea, she had come to work, it was quiet, and she would go for lunch in twenty-seven minutes. That was OK. Everything was OK. She wasn’t going mad.
She washed her face and went back to her desk. Everyone seemed to be leaving for lunch and they told Virginia not to expect them back for a while. Isabelle had already left for her afternoon meetings; Virginia could expect a quiet afternoon.
She left for lunch exactly twenty-five minutes later. She went to her usual sandwich bar; she walked past the banks she always walked past. She returned at the same time she always did, she sat at her desk, she ate her sandwich. She had her composure back.
In the afternoon, Virginia made lists. Her first list was her work list. Then she wrote a shopping list for the weekend, which was unnecessary as she bought the same things every week. She followed with a list of clothes that needed washing and a list of clothes that had to go to the dry-cleaner’s. Then a list of shoes that needed polishing, a list of household items that would run out soon – washing powder: one more week; shoe polish: two months; shampoo: three weeks. Her final list was her dinner menu for the following week – Monday: pasta; Tuesday: tuna salad; Wednesday: soup; Thursday: chicken and vegetables; Friday: fish and chips (takeaway). She made a separate menu list for the weekend. Then she filed her lists in her Filofax and felt better. How could she be going mad when her life was so well organised?
Virginia’s routine was military. She could not cope if she didn’t know what she was doing and when. If she broke it, as she had a couple of times recently, it unnerved her – if she went to bed half an hour late, if she got up even minutes late, if she didn’t watch the news. She wasn’t a control freak, she knew she wasn’t, but what she did know, her big secret, was that due to her many failures her grip on her life was so fragile that if her routine was disrupted she would lose that grip altogether. The only way she made it through the day was by behaving like a robot.
Virginia often told herself that she had failed at getting a personality as well as failing at everything else. She often wondered if her life had purpose, but the one thing she was certain of was that she would prove her parents wrong. One day they would no longer call her a failure.
She had been an unpopular child, a gawky teenager, and was now a boring adult. She had had one boyfriend in the whole of her life, Noel, a fellow economics student and member of the group she went round with. Noel was a committed Christian, and she was still a virgin. But she quite liked kissing him and having him hold her. With Noel, for the first time, Virginia had affection. He would hold her hand, hug and kiss her.
Noel was very bright, very bossy, and spent hours preaching either the Bible or economics at Virginia. She didn’t mind; she would sat for hours listening to him, and she felt wanted. Noel got a place at Stamford to do a postgraduate course. He had flown to the States where celibacy before marriage was fashionable and Virginia had gone where the prospects of having either sex or marriage were slim.
Virginia left work at a reasonable time. That evening she had a French class. She brightened: for once she could escape spending the evening in her depressing room. Her French class routine involved leaving the office at six, driving home, changing into her casual uniform of jeans and jumper, eating dinner, leaving at a quarter past seven and arriving, by scooter, at the local adult education centre at half past.
Virginia had thought long and hard about what evening class she would do. When she first moved to London she took classes to help her get a social life: she had tried pottery, art history and badminton. She had not made a single friend, or motivated herself in any way. The French class was as unsophisticated as the language was sophisticated. Its intellectual demands were few, and Virginia was nowhere near being fluent, but she believed that, one day, she would be if she kept going.
There were seven people in the group, which was taught by a frazzled middle-aged Frenchwoman. Virginia sat next to Pat, a housewife who had ideas of moving to France when her husband retired. She was plump and grey, and Virginia often wondered if she really had a husband. Two girls were taking extra lessons to help with their GCSE’s. A man of about fifty, called Graham, wanted to learn French to go with his Spanish and German conversational skills. Completing the group were the Trout sisters, two women of about eighty as far as Virginia could tell, who giggled through the lesson and had so f
ar never uttered a word of French.
Virginia applied herself to the class with the determination she applied to everything and she was good. Madame often said that she was the best in the class and she was a natural. Virginia basked in the pleasure of such a compliment and she tried harder and harder each week. The reality of the class made being the best quite easy, but at least she was the best somewhere.
After the class, Virginia hung back. The two girls rushed out of the classroom then Pat picked up her massive tote bag and trundled off, buckling under its weight. The Trout sisters collected their walking sticks and moved slowly out of the room, while Graham, the international conversationalist, stopped to ask the teacher something.
Tonight, Virginia waited to speak to Madame. “I just wanted to tell you I’m really enjoying the course,” she said shyly.
Her teacher smiled. “You are the best pupil I’ve got.” They laughed, and as Virginia had now collected her weekly compliment, she left. She didn’t think about how sad it was that the only person in the whole world who was nice to her was her French teacher; she thought that at least she had someone to be nice to her.
She drove home, had a shower and went to bed. The difference between the French night and any other night was that after the class she went to bed smiling.
***
Clara looked at the screen again. It was changing constantly, but she didn’t know why. She hated numbers. Tim was away on business in Paris, but would be back tomorrow with perfume, chocolates and a story about French whores. She could hardly wait.
Sitting at her desk, she checked her calendar and realised that she had to go to dinner with her family tonight. She checked her bag and felt relieved to find a wrap of cocaine sitting at the bottom. At least she would be able to cope with her parents. She called James and checked that he would be joining them. Clara had had what she thought was a good day, but wished that Toby would stop looking at her in that lovesick way – she still felt guilty about him.
Clara knew that she had a problem. She knew she was an addict. She believed she was addicted to sex. Ever since she had experimented with her roommate at boarding-school, Clara had been insatiable. She had climbed out of her bedroom window on numerous occasions to meet boys from the nearest boys” school. In the holidays, she slept with her brother’s friends, much to James’s annoyance, and when she was sent to Switzerland, she developed a predictable liking for ski instructors. But it had always been controlled. Clara had always liked sex, but she had been discerning about whom she slept with: only the boys she liked at school, only the best-looking of her brother’s friends, only the young ski instructors. Now she had slept with a number of men in London and was no longer in control of whom she took to bed. In fact, if you asked Clara how many men she had had, she would tell you that it was far too many to count. Clara knew it was in London that she had developed an addiction to sex.
Occasionally she wished she could control it, and in Toby’s case, she did. He was nice and he was hurt. Most of the men she slept with didn’t deserve her sympathy. There were rich businessmen who treated girls as trophies. There was Tim, who had so little respect for women she couldn’t give a stuff about him. There were a couple of family friends who were out-and-out playboys, and although in the past they had asked Clara to marry them and promised to give up the wild lifestyle, she knew they didn’t mean it. There were strangers. Now there was Toby. Toby was sweet, Toby was her friend, and now she was feeling guilty. Clara’s one foray into unrequited love had taught her how it hurt. But although she often hated herself for hurting people, she knew she couldn’t control her addiction.
There were only two ways she could resolve the problem with Toby. One, she could have a relationship with him, which didn’t appeal to her, or two, she could find him a new girl to lust after. Her eyes lit up. She would find someone to make Toby happy again. Then she would be rid of the guilt.
Clara decided to talk to Alexandra Poole, a secretary she liked. She was blonde and pretty, and ideal for Toby. She walked over to Alex’s desk and told her that she had heard Toby was interested in her. Alex looked over at him and proclaimed him “cute”. Clara persuaded her to e-mail him and ask him out.
The plan worked perfectly, Clara watched as, that afternoon, Toby left his seat, went to Alex’s and obviously arranged the date. Clara hoped she would be invited to the wedding.
At six she left her desk and made her usual evening visit to the ladies’ loo on the accounts floor. She had her fix, went back to grab her bag, said goodbye to everyone and skipped out of the door.
As she arrived at Claridges to meet her parents, she was still in good spirits. She walked into the bar and straight away saw her immaculate mother. She was wearing a cream suit, probably Chanel, her dark hair was streaked with light brown, a Chanel handbag sat on the table, and Clara knew instinctively that she was wearing matching shoes. The same pearl jewellery that Clara received on birthdays and at Christmas decorated her throat, wrist and ears. Clara thought her mother dressed predictably, like all middle-aged rich women. Her father sat opposite her mother, looking tall, grand and grey. They were both sipping champagne.
Clara took a deep breath and approached them. “Mummy, Daddy. How are you?” She kissed them both and sat down.
“Fine, darling. You look tired – do you think she looks tired, Paul?”
“You do look tired, Clara. It’s all this work nonsense.” He poured her a glass of champagne. Clara knew what was coming next. “I’ve decided to give you a bigger allowance.”
“But, Daddy, I don’t need one. I’ve got my fund interest and my wages.”
Her parents tutted. “That’s my point. If you have a bigger allowance, you won’t need wages.” Her father smiled, her mother smiled, and Clara knew that she didn’t need wages anyway.
“And, darling, I know you think you look professional in your suit, but you can wear suits to lunch too, you know,” her mother pointed out.
Clara wondered how such a stupid woman could have conceived her and James. “I like my job,” she protested, although she cringed when she thought about telling them how she had got it, or how she kept it.
“Don’t be ridiculous. I didn’t send you to finishing-school to become a career woman. Look at your mother. At your age, she was married with James. You should be thinking about doing the same,” her father growled.
Clara was always pleased to see her brother, but never more so than at that moment. James strode confidently to their table, shook his father’s hand, kissed his mother then his sister, sat down and poured some champagne. Clara envied him. Envied and loved him. He was tall, good-looking, sweet, bright and hard-working. He was also male.
The conversation soon turned to business, as James and his father debated the future, the past and the present. Clara sipped her drink and watched her mother, who had cultivated the perfect wife qualities. She was decorative, classy and, most of all, she had an intent look of interest on her face as the men talked business, even though it was not only boring but double-dutch to her. If her mother understood a word of what was being said, Clara would eat her fur coat.
Eventually she had had enough. “Do you want to hear how my business is?” she asked, trying to get her father’s attention and to sound important.
“Of course,” James replied.
“No,” her mother said.
“Clara, I wish you’d stop pretending and give up that silly job of yours,” her father said.
Clara beamed at them and excused herself to go to the ladies”, where she put a much-needed line of cocaine up her nose.
As the powder hit, the sensation took away the desire to scream, and replaced it with calm. Nothing mattered. Everything was under control. She could handle it. She knew her parents only wanted her to turn into a carbon copy of her mother; she knew they would never appreciate that she needed something of her own. She herself could barely understand it. She was doted on, adored, lusted after and wanted. No one had ever expected anything
from her so she didn’t know what she should expect from herself. She knew she didn’t want to end up as her parents wanted her to, but she was also dangerously close to it. Her parents thought she was too pretty, rich and stupid to work. She hated the thought that they were probably right: that being pretty and rich had got her the job, and although she denied that she was stupid, she didn’t understand what she did.
At finishing-school her teachers, who had all loved Clara, were bitterly disappointed that, unlike her mother, she had been so uninterested in their classes. She had not learnt to play a musical instrument, or the art of dressing a dinner table and she certainly couldn’t cook. They felt she was useless.
Clara’s father had been upset. He had wanted the school to turn Clara into a good marriage prospect, and he belonged to a generation who believed that women should have talents. Brazenly Clara told him that she would hire a cook, a table-dresser and a musician. To which her father replied that women had to oversee their staff and if they could not do their jobs, they would not know how to supervise them. Clara replied that she would marry a man with no class who would never know, and her father said she was a waste of space. The row was never resolved. Clara’s mother watched them, fiddling with her pearls and never quite catching Clara’s eye. Eventually Clara stormed out, went to find James and cry in his arms.
That was how Clara had sunk into her confusion. She moved into a three-bedroom flat in South Kensington, which her father had bought her after a particularly nasty row. From the moment she started living there Clara loved London. She caught up with old friends and made new ones. She discovered the joy of parties, shopping, drugs and men. Clara’s life involved being out all night, sleeping all day and occasionally going for lunch with friends. She had a different man every night, and every night she was at a party or a club, and she was as high as a kite. She did what her parents expected her to do.
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