‘Yes. You see, after Mary’s father retired, he appeared to have had a crisis of conscience about how much money he’d made, joined an evangelical church and gave half of his fortune away to charity. He then told his three children that they could only have access to the rest of it if they followed his example. Mary had been a real wild child. This was his way of saving her.’
Matt smiled. ‘So that would explain the apparent contradiction between her behaviour at Lisa’s wedding and tonight.’
‘Exactly. God knows how much she actually believes it all – ’
‘Yes, I suspect He does.’
‘The point,’ I continued, ‘is that her choice appears to be between being poor, independent and damned, or rich, shackled and saved. However much she’s faking it, it’s still a no-brainer.’
‘I’m sure God will be delighted that she’s going to church for all the right reasons,’ said Matt.
‘Given that he doesn’t exist, I doubt he gives a toss,’ I said. ‘Although even I don’t remember the parable of the daughter of a rich man who found God in order to inherit riches on earth.’
‘The irony, though, Sam, is that you and Mary are potentially in a very similar boat.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean, you might both end up faking it in order to get your hands on the money.’
I sat in dumb silence for a moment while Matt waited patiently for the penny to drop. I used to be as sharp as Matt. Is this what happened when you didn’t use your brain at all?
‘No!’ Finally, I’d got it. ‘Do you really think so?’
‘It’s the logical next step.’
‘I thought you said you’d seen people convert to born-again Christianity and it wasn’t pretty.’
‘I didn’t say I’d seen people pretend to convert. If you could convince her, and convince her father, then… ’
I didn’t say anything. So much for being a Christian: Matt was actually far more depraved than I was. It was just like him to egg me on with subtly outrageous suggestions. He wasn’t the performing monkey who would have to carry them out. He knew as well as I did that I could never resist a challenge.
‘Enough about me,’ I said. ‘How is your online campaign going?’
‘Not so great at first.’ He sighed, running his hand over his newly acquired stubble. It suited him. Bloody Matt could spend three days inside by himself and still look better than the rest of us. ‘It turned out that all the Russians were men and most of the Arabs were women.’
‘Not the best way round.’
‘No. But I have been chatting to a nice Spanish girl. Come into the War Room and have a look at her profile.’
*
The following day was uneventful, which is how I like my Thursdays, especially if they follow an eventful Wednesday and precede a ridiculously eventful Friday. One can deal with an uneventful sandwich of a week. It’s only when one’s life becomes all events, or all non-events, that it is time to take stock.
Eventful Friday, as I shall call it, started with a text message at breakfast time from Lisa: ‘Hi Sam. It really was good to speak the other night. Please don’t go out with Mary. It would make me jealous. Hope you’re well. I’d love to see you soon. Lisa x.’
Make her jealous? How did she think I’d felt when she’d got married within a couple of years of breaking up with me? Of course I didn’t want to marry her myself – just as she didn’t want to go back out with me. Our break-up had been genuinely mutual. We’d fallen rapidly in, and then slowly out of, love. We were better afterwards as friends than we had been as unhappy boyfriend and girlfriend. Still, none of this seemed to stop our relationship remaining complicated. I read the text a second time then deleted it, which somehow made it easier. Out of inbox, out of mind.
More to cheer myself up than anything else, I got dressed in one of the good suits my father had given me ten years previously, once his middle-aged paunch had finally defeated him. The last time I’d had a chance to wear it, I reflected ruefully while tying one of my better ties, was while playing the young barrister in A Voyage Round My Father, which had started at the Edinburgh Fringe and transferred to London. My father never came to see it, but I still have the Guardian review which described me as ‘thrillingly promising’. That was five years ago.
Still, I felt good, for some perverse reason, as I walked from the station to work that morning. Sometimes, I thought, as I joined the mirthless throng of workers, you have to embrace being right at the bottom of your luck curve before it starts to turn. Adversity was good. If I couldn’t make a living out of my art, I could, at least, turn my life itself into an art of sorts. There was nothing wrong with living as if in a soap opera. Nothing wrong with trying everything and seeing where it led you. Nothing wrong with being confused and whimsical and different. Today, I resolved, as I took the office escalator two steps at a time, was going to be a good day. I would be thrillingly promising at temping. And very well dressed.
A little too well dressed…
At the top of the escalator I was met with the beaming smile and bone-crushing handshake of a genial giant.
‘It burns,’ said the giant. He had a light German accent. Or maybe Dutch.
‘I’m sorry. What burns?’
He laughed. ‘No, no. Esbern. It’s Danish. And you must be Max Anderson-Bickley.’ The genial Dane looked me up and down appraisingly. ‘It’s good to meet finally.’
If I’d been sensible, I might have mentioned that I had absolutely no idea why it was good to meet this guy finally, given that there had been no preamble to this encounter. I would certainly have pointed out that I wasn’t called Max. Sensible Sam would have explained that he was merely an out-of-work actor-cum-intern who had turned up overdressed on a dress-down Friday he didn’t know about in order to feel better about not having a proper job.
But I wasn’t feeling sensible, so I simply said: ‘Yes, it is great to meet you too, finally,’ which seemed to be enough to satisfy Esbern because he led me towards a large meeting room on the top floor which even I knew from my week’s worth of temping was reserved for this venture capital consultancy’s more important clients.
‘It’s very good of you to come here to meet us,’ said Esbern as we walked. ‘It certainly beats corresponding by email.’
I nodded and murmured and generally made the non-committal sort of noises I imagined important clients of the firm might go in for. I talked about my weekend in the country, my plans for my next city break and the nightmare traffic around Battersea. I think I might even have passed favourable comment on a hideous and expensive piece of modern art hanging in the corridor.
Whatever it was I said, it was enough to satisfy the Dane. ‘Of course, we normally go to our clients’ premises ourselves,’ he continued, as we got into the lift. ‘It’s good to see the office, kick, how do you say, some tyres… ’ He laughed as if this was a joke. I decided to laugh, too. ‘But when it comes to a start-up like yours, and a start-up with such potential, then, well, it’s really the intellectual property that excites us.’
I laughed again and Esbern looked at me strangely as the lift’s doors opened. I’d misjudged it this time. The intellectual property reference hadn’t been a joke. It was very difficult to judge with this man.
I turned the laughter into a cough – a trick taught by a teacher at drama school that had often been useful to prevent corpsing in various third-rate plays since. ‘Yes,’ I spluttered, as I was finally ushered into a spacious room I’d only entered previously in order to collect half-finished plates of biscuits. ‘Exciting intellectual property, indeed.’
Many people don’t believe in the concept of love at first sight. Lust, yes. Love, no. Love takes time to develop, time to mature. Love is familiarity, respect, understanding. Love is not the desire to get jiggy every second of the day. And as someone who has often enjoyed the latter in a distinctly loveless form, I always used to agree with them. But the moment my Danish venture capital friend opened the door to that sacre
d room, that holy of holies, and introduced me to Rosie, whose business card confirmed her position as a junior analyst and whose smile established her as the most beautiful girl I had ever met, I changed my mind. You can laugh at me – and God knows, I’m laughing about it now – but I didn’t just want to sleep with Rosie. I didn’t want to shag her or date her or shack up with her money. I wanted to love her. And I wanted her to love me.
Rosie was not perfect, even at first sight. Five years previously, I would have said that her brown hair was a little too long and her legs a little too short. I might not have taken to the freckles on her nose or the small spot on the left of her chin. I would certainly not have approved of the slightly frilly shirt she was wearing. But I was a man now, or almost a sharing an intimate secret. When she talked, I hung on her every word. When I spoke, she made me feel endlessly and irresistibly fascinating. And all the time there danced behind those laughing green eyes an intelligence, an irony, an understanding that life was one big joke which she wanted to share with you. To me, Rosie was perfect. In those ten seconds, I found love. I found it at first sight.
As the meeting progressed, however, I was reminded that Rosie’s principal motivation in being in Meeting Room 12 was not love. She seemed to like me well enough, but more importantly, she liked ‘Max’ and his business idea.
‘It’s a wonderful idea,’ said Rosie.
‘The best we’ve seen for a long time,’ agreed Esbern.
‘Is it really?’ I asked, as bashfully as I could. It’s not easy pretending to be someone who is pretending to be modest.
‘Of course it is,’ said Rosie. ‘It’s genius.’
‘What is your favourite bit about it?’ I asked, fumbling desperately.
‘Oh, we like all of it,’ said the Dane, giving nothing away under pressure.
‘Definitely,’ enthused Rosie. ‘But it’s not really about us, Max. This is your idea. So, what’s your favourite bit about your new business?’
‘I just like how, er, new… ’ I started to say before checking myself. My brain was planning on telling my tongue to say, ‘I just like how, er, new-y and business-y it is.’ That would not do. I took a deep breath and decided to take a gamble. These people were deferring to me. There must be a reason. I looked at them both authoritatively, imagined I was Michael Douglas in Wall Street and said: ‘I like it because it’s a fucking good idea which is going to make us all very rich. Now, I believe I’m paying you clever, expensive people for your clever, expensive time so I suggest we get on with it.’
I’d made the right call. They both laughed and agreed it was time ‘to get on with it’. I sat back expansively in my leather armchair while Rosie dimmed the lights and fired up a PowerPoint presentation. Of course! I should have guessed that was what ‘it’ would involve. I had listened to Alan discuss his job enough times to know that nothing counted as work in the world of finance unless it involved a PowerPoint presentation.
The first slide showed an artfully framed bicycle. Rosie pressed a button on the remote and it dissolved prettily to be replaced by the second slide: a man in a suit riding a bicycle. Rosie smiled at me and I smiled back for far too long, before remembering to smile at the Dane as well, who smiled across at Rosie. What the hell was all this about?
Eventually, by slide 10, I had got the gist of my business idea. It involved providing a garage system for commuting cyclists in central London. The logic, according to Max, as re-packaged and summarised by Rosie, was that cycling had expanded exponentially in the capital over the last few years, but cyclists were worried about the security of their increasingly expensive bicycles. They were also worried about smelling like stale cheddar at their desks. So the ‘Max House’ – I’m afraid I’m not making this up – would provide them with a secure haven for their bike during the working day and a shower room to use in the morning. Slides 11 to 19 dealt with the results of the surveys carried out by Rosie and the Dane’s firm (and, I suppose, mine, too) into whether or not people would use it. Slides 20 to 37 were more irrelevant pictures of people cycling – strangely none of them was pictured in offensive lycra, running red lights or under the wheels of a bendy bus – while slides 38 to 60 dealt with financial projections and marketing techniques. The last dozen showed the ways in which their firm, Taylor Williams, could help.
Just as I was dropping off, Rosie flicked to the final slide, number 73 – a handsome businessman on a tandem with his photogenic daughter. Then Esbern turned on the lights and asked what I thought.
‘It’s excellent,’ I answered, truthfully. Their presentation had indeed been excellent. They had successfully polished the turd that was Max’s idea. Even a rank amateur could see that it was not a goer. People cycle to save time and money. They don’t want to pay over the odds in the middle of a recession to share a shower in the morning with people they don’t know in a location nowhere near their office.
I examined the eager faces of Rosie and the Dane. Surely now was the time to back out. Perhaps if I owned up to Rosie that this was a case of mistaken identity, she’d like me on my own terms. She might admire me for having had the balls to see it through. She might come and watch my next play, whenever that might be. We’d fall in love. We’d get married. In years to come, we would look back and laugh at this meeting. ‘Oh, the Max House,’ we would chortle to our cute and clever grandchildren. ‘The dreadful idea that brought us together. Now, has Granny ever told you – ’
‘On a personal note… ’ My reverie was broken by the Dane building up to another heroically dull monologue. I tuned back in as he continued: ‘I’d just like to say how much we admire you as a person. It is a brave thing to quit somewhere as secure as Goldman’s on the remuneration you were on in an economic climate such as this and break out… ’
I tuned out again, thinking ferociously this time. They thought I was a former Goldman Sachs banker? No wonder they wanted to indulge me. They didn’t want my idea. They’d give up on it if it ever went beyond an initial feasibility study. They wanted my stupid money. Max could afford the consultancy fees Taylor Williams had started charging recently in addition to taking equity in a start-up. Max could afford to come up with an idea this bad and not go bankrupt. So that meant… Well, that meant that Rosie thought I was very rich. And beautiful, charming girls, even those with freckly noses, hair that is slightly too long and legs that are marginally too short, like very rich men.
‘I would love to join you both for a celebratory lunch,’ continued Esbern. ‘But I’m afraid I have another meeting. In any case, I would only be a burden on you two young things.’
He laughed, and we both laughed, too. We had correctly identified a joke this time.
‘Lunch is on me,’ I gambled wildly; all thoughts of contrition and honesty suddenly vanished.
‘Nonsense,’ said Rosie, holding open the door. ‘It is on me.’
‘Well, it’s on Taylor Williams,’ said the Dane. Rosie and I laughed again, and Esbern blushed at having made two successfully identifiable jokes in a row.
I shook his hand goodbye and escorted Rosie triumphantly downstairs. We walked out into the street and straight into an unsightly commotion, at the centre of which flailed a fat, balding, red-headed, ill-shaven drunk. Rosie and I looked at each other and smiled. ‘Difficult economic times,’ I quipped, Max-like. ‘He’s probably just been made redundant.’ She pretended to laugh and we turned in the direction of our restaurant. Then something made me stop and look again. I dropped my bag and plunged into the middle of the crowd.
‘Ed,’ I yelled, pulling the fat, balding, red-headed, ill-shaven drunk to his feet. ‘What the hell are you doing?’
‘My revenge plan didn’t go so well,’ he said, smiling ruefully, and collapsed into my arms.
Chapter Ten
There is nothing wrong with strong women. Strong women close business deals, bring up children, fight wars, grow crops, fly planes and generally keep the world turning. It is only weak men who cannot deal with them. But over
exposure to unnaturally determined females in the weeks following Jess’s proposal left me longing for the more fluffy, demure variety of womankind.
It all continued to go wrong as soon as I woke up with a raging headache on the Friday morning and had to clamber over a prostrate Sam and Matt en route to the office. It was all very well for them, sleeping off their hangovers until it was time for a fry-up, daytime TV and a spot of rich-wife-hunting. Some of us had work to do.
Work itself was predictably unpleasant. No sooner had I approached my pod than Amanda announced to the rest of the team: ‘Well, screw me sideways if it’s not Mr Jessica Gallagher in search of a dowry.’
The rest of our team sniggered, the pathetic little sycophants that they are. I might have been senior to them, but Amanda outranked all of us put together and had clearly briefed them in advance. No one does office politics quite like Amanda.
‘Well, shag me diagonally and shut the hell up,’ I retorted, uncharacteristically. My head was pounding from my drinking session and I really wasn’t in the mood for this. Maybe some of my wilder friends’ lack of inhibitions had worn off on me.
‘Oooh,’ cooed Amanda, mockingly. ‘It’s good to see you stand up to one woman in your life.’
‘And it would be good to see you sufficiently happy with your lot not to drag everyone down to your own miserable level. At least someone’s actually asked me to marry them. And meant it.’
I knew straight away that it was a stupid thing to have said. The shocked looks mixed with carefully concealed mirth on the juniors’ faces informed me, if I didn’t know already, that I would pay for this hollow victory, sooner or later. You can’t buck the office hierarchy.
‘Right,’ said Amanda briskly, a small twitch in her right eye betraying the true extent of her anger. ‘Shall we get down to work?’
Of course I didn’t know then that this early morning encounter with Boadicean brawn was only a taster of what was to follow, a mere hors d’oeuvre for an à la carte evening of recriminations and unnecessary arguments with the other two most important women in my life: my mum and my self-appointed fiancée.
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