‘How’s it going, Violet?’
She sighs, and before she can think of a suitably upbeat comment, Gillian reads her expression and asks, ‘Would you like to come out to Lloyd’s with me this afternoon, and meet some underwriters?’
The Lloyd’s Building, which is the hub of the UK insurance industry, is one of those too-tall, too-modern buildings the City of London is full of. It is designed by some architect guy called Richard Rogers, whom Gillian raves over. And sure, the view from the glass elevators is nice. But all that steel is too shiny and cold.
‘It’s one of the great modernist buildings in the City of London!’ Gillian’s tone could be interpreted as either instructive or condescending. ‘Like the Pompidou Centre in Paris. See how all the essential services are located on the outside? It increases the space for business inside.’
‘Cool.’ She pretends to share Gillian’s enthusiasm, but she’s thinking, for heaven’s sake, it’s only insurance, not a temple to some new religion.
But Gillian seems to come to life in that environment, cutting and thrusting as she puts her clients’ needs to a series of slick young men in sharp suits, who melt under her offensive. While at GRM Gillian often seems severe and distant, in this setting she has a tigerish magnetism that fills Violet with reluctant admiration. Will she ever be able to perform like that?
‘It’s all in the research,’ Gillian says as they ride down in the elevator. ‘You have to be confident of your ground, Violet, before you can win the best deal for your client.’ Her eyes are sparkling, her cheeks flushed with her successes.
Suddenly Violet sees why Marc Bonnier was attracted to her. But is he still?
Turning this thought over again in her mind, she brews up a jug of coffee in her kitchen after work. Her friends have messaged to say they’re meeting up at the Lazy Lounge, but she texts back that she’s too done in. It’s a relief to escape from the high-rise City echoing with the rush of traffic on to her quiet balcony. The stillness of the early evening washes over her like a wave of cool water. Her friendly pigeon flutters up and she crumbles up a chocolate biscuit for him. He gobbles it down, then thanks her with two minutes of chest-puffing and cooing before flying away. Cooo-coo, cooo-coo.
She’s surprised how little she misses Nick. Sometimes she struggles to remember what it was she’d liked about him. His smile? His cheesy socks? His weird ideas about astral projection? He was just another messy immature male who shattered her heart as casually as dropping a beer glass. She’s ready for someone more grown-up now, someone sensitive and intelligent, who will take her seriously. Someone with a good sense of humour. A bit like Marc Bonnier, perhaps. Until then, she’s happy living on her own.
Far below in the garden, where fallen cherry blossom dusts the ground like snow, a man in a wheelchair is rolling along the winding path between the trees, turning the wheels with his hands. Now here comes the baldie from Luigi’s making his way towards the flats. Their paths cross and they stop to talk. A lady in a purple coat comes along and joins in. What’s that weird thing on her head? The old lady dressed in black, the one she saw arriving in a taxi the other day, has appeared on the scene too. They’re all talking and shouting, but she can’t make out what they’re saying. It reminds her of her grandmother’s neighbourhood in Langata, when the air begins to cool in the early evening and the street comes alive with people hanging out. She decides to go down to the garden and see what’s going on, but by the time she gets there the little group of neighbours has dispersed. The purple-coat lady is heading towards a raised vegetable garden that has been fenced off for the residents. The weird thing on her head that looked like a plastic bag turns out to be a shower cap made of clear polythene protecting a stiff arrangement of curled bleached hair, even though it isn’t raining. The ladies in Nairobi wore hats like that in the rainy season when they’d had their hair straightened, chattering on the pavement like go-away-birds with their distinctive headgear, waiting for the taxi-vans to take them home. She says hello, and the shower-cap lady mutters something inaudible as she hurries off to the communal vegetable beds, letting herself in through a high mesh gate and disappearing like a kivuli into a wooden shed.
There are notices stuck on the lamp posts in the garden. She’s seen them before: they’re for a lost cat called Wonder Boy. Or are they? She looks again and sees they are not appeals for the lost cat but announcements of an application for planning permission. Town and Country Planning Act. Residential development. Area bounded by … All the street signs around here are missing, so she doesn’t know exactly where it refers to, but it must be somewhere nearby. Remembering her frustrating morning trying to phone the Planning Department in Nairobi, she decides to let this one pass. But — fourteen storeys — why does everything need to be so high? Why can’t they leave the sky alone for everyone to enjoy?
A familiar crooning sound above her head makes her look up. There is her friend the one-legged pigeon perched up in the branches of a cherry tree.
‘Hello, Pidgie.’
The pigeon lets fall a large glob of poop, which lands by her feet. A sign of luck!
She takes the bird’s picture as it perches up among the blossom and posts it on her Facebook page with a joke about her new boyfriend, the one-legged pigeon.
She is just about to go back up to her flat when a large shiny black car draws up by the pavement. It’s like the limos that Government officials in Nairobi drive around in. Everybody knows that nobody who just lives on their salary can afford to buy one, but they do it anyway. She expects the chauffeur to now get out and hold open the door for some big-shot, but instead the back door opens from inside and a schoolboy gets out, pink-faced and slightly plump, wearing a grey school uniform that is too tight in some places, and a bit baggy in others. He waves to the driver of the limo and steps out into the road, his head bent over his phone. An approaching car slams its brakes on. Oblivious, he ambles into the Madeley Court garden and sits on a bench by the path. The black car glides away into the traffic. As she gets closer, she can see the boy is still hunched over his phone, texting.
There are a few other kids in the garden, some are kicking a ball around, but no one comes and sits next to him or asks him to join in. It’s easy to see why: all the other kids are wearing a navy-blue school uniform, whereas his is grey. But that isn’t the main thing: all the other boys, even the little ones, are wearing long trousers. His are short. He looks ridiculous, poor kid.
A memory like a sudden wind whisks her back in time, whisks her up and sets her down in the playground of her primary school in Bakewell, where she is standing alone by the railings, painfully conscious of her wrong colour, her wrong hair, her wrong clothes, her wrong family, all her general can’t-put-your-finger-on-it wrongness, watching the groups of children playing together, pretending she doesn’t care. Then Jessie, the same Jessie whose duvet she’s been sleeping under this past week, comes up without a word and shoves the end of a skipping rope into her hand. And she turns it, turns with full concentration, while Jessie jumps over the spinning rope chanting, ‘My brother Billie had a ten-foot willy …’ She thought a willy must be some kind of a boat.
While she is wondering whether to say something friendly to the boy, a man appears at the end of the path, a tall good-looking man in a high-end suit with a briefcase under his arm.