I remembered an early conversation with Greg, when we were getting to know each other and obsessed with every detail about each other’s life. I’d teased him about being an accountant. Wasn’t it just about adding up columns of numbers and filling in forms? He’d laughed. It wasn’t like that at all, not with the clients he had. It was a mixture of being a psychiatrist and a magician, a hostage negotiator and a bomb-disposal expert, with a bit of form filling at the end.
‘Beth’s not handling this very well,’ said Frances. ‘The thing about Beth, who, incidentally, has not arrived yet, is that she’s very young, very decorative and very confident. You can take her anywhere and she seems very busy all the time but at the end of a day it’s never particularly easy to work out exactly what she’s done. She’s good at events. The clients are very keen on her. The male ones, I mean. It’s to do with her being twenty-two. And her breasts.’
‘They’re very nice.’
‘Well, breasts don’t get the VAT done. And Christmas is coming at us like a train. Gwen, are you sure I can’t give you a job? Or a three-month contract to get us through this?’
I shook my head and tried to think of what Greg used to say about situations like this. ‘What you really need,’ I said, ‘is to know exactly where you are just now. What you owe, what you’re owed, what you’ve got, and what your plans are. We can sort that out in a couple of days and then you’ll be fine again.’
‘I wanted to be an artist,’ said Frances, ‘and when I met Milena, it was all going to be fun. We liked going to parties, we liked having parties, so why not do it as a living? And I could be an artist on the side. It didn’t turn out like that. You know how you never properly enjoy your own party? You always worry that the drink’s going to run out or that someone’s not happy? It’s like that all the time.’
‘Was it like that for Milena?’ I asked.
‘No,’ said Frances, with a sad smile. ‘Milena didn’t let the details get her down.’
‘The details are my job now,’ I said. ‘At least for the next few days.’
Somehow, when it isn’t your own life, it isn’t so hard. For two hours, I behaved like Frances’s view of an accountant. There was nothing magical involved, no smoke and mirrors, no cleverness. I just piled up pieces of paper that looked alike. I made lists of dates, which I also, surreptitiously, transferred to my own notebook, I checked receipts against bank statements. At eleven o’clock Beth arrived. I gave her a list of phone calls to make to check delivery dates. She was as shocked as if I had asked her to clean the drains. She pulled a face and glanced resentfully at Frances, but she did what I said.
Twenty minutes later, Johnny arrived; he nodded at me, then sat next to Frances and talked menus. I barely looked up. I was holding a lot of information in my head temporarily. If I spoke or thought about something else, even for a moment, most of it would dissipate and I would have to start again.
My sense of time was imprecise, but a short while later I felt a presence beside me. It was Johnny.
‘I’m a bit worried walking around here,’ he said, gesturing at the piles of paper circling my chair.
‘Then don’t,’ I said, frowning at the distraction.
‘This isn’t –’
‘Stop,’ I said, holding up my hand. I wrote down a date followed by an amount of money and then the VAT. Then I looked at him. ‘Yes?’ I said.
‘I was going to say that you’re doing all the boring bits of the job and none of the fun bits.’
I waved at the office. ‘That’s what seems to be needed,’ I said.
‘Whereas,’ said Johnny, ‘my own strategy is to do the fun bits and leave the boring bits to sort themselves out.’
‘That sounds like a recipe for going bankrupt.’
‘All restaurants go bankrupt in the end.’
‘That doesn’t sound much fun.’
‘It’s great,’ said Johnny, and added thoughtfully, ‘until the end. And then you start again. It’s got a sort of rhythm to it. But what I really wanted to say, really wanted to ask, in fact – you remember I mentioned my restaurant – was whether you might want to come over and I could show you the sort of food I do. Some time. Today or tomorrow or whenever.’
He was handsome in a louche sort of way, well dressed, a man who went bankrupt and didn’t let it get him down. He was perfect, in a certain fashion. Perfect if I wasn’t me – although, of course, the person he was talking to wasn’t actually me. ‘I can’t,’ I said. ‘Not at the moment. I’m not in the right place for that. In my life.’
‘Oh, no,’ he said, unruffled. ‘I wasn’t suggesting a date. I’m not harassing you. I just thought, as one professional to another, it would be interesting and useful for you to see the kind of food we do.’
‘I’ll think about it,’ I said. ‘My life’s a bit confusing right now, but I will think about it.’
In my own job, I had got used to scraping away at a chair, varnishing a chest, with no company but the radio, which drifted in and out of my consciousness. The Party Animals office was almost a public space, with people coming and going, packages being delivered, clients or potential clients dropping in. Sometimes the potential of the client seemed very vague indeed. I came to feel that Frances had exaggerated the degree to which she was burdened by the bureaucracy of the business. Much of the morning and the early afternoon disappeared in a series of long, loud conversations, on the phone or in person.
Some clients seemed to know Beth as well, and I saw a different side of her, a glow about her, confidence, as she flirted with the men or gossiped with the women. As I listened to her – and it was impossible not to – I came to realize I had entered a different world, a richer one than mine, with its own rules and standards and culture.
Of the visitors, several were smartly dressed women who seemed to have a lot of time on their hands. I might have felt a jab of resentment at this if I hadn’t forced myself into this situation. Anyway, the less Frances and Beth did, the more chance I had to learn something. I sat on the far side of the room, with my back to them, my head in my hands, covering my ears so that I could concentrate.
Shortly after three I heard a visitor come in. I was faintly surprised to hear a man’s voice and looked round, and was jolted.
It was Hugo Livingstone. A man I had seen just once, at the inquest. For a moment I was pointlessly and ridiculously angry: what on earth was he doing there? Then I cursed my stupidity. He was Milena’s husband. Wasn’t it natural for him to visit his dead wife’s office? Hadn’t I done the same thing myself? I tried to think of a way, any way, of getting out of the room without him seeing my face. I could crawl; I could climb out of the window. But I knew it wasn’t possible. All it would take was a glance. The idea of being seen, recognized and forced to attempt an explanation was so terrible that I felt feverish anticipating the nuclear explosion of exposure and embarrassment.
I tried to continue working or, rather, to make it look as if I was working. I bent over some papers as if I was scrutinizing them with particular attention. Other people had come and gone without paying me any heed. If I could just sit tight, maybe he’d go away. I tried to make out what he was after, but he was speaking in a mumble from which I could only hear the occasional word. There was no such problem with Frances. I heard murmurs of sympathy and talk about the chaos she was in, and then I knew what was coming.
‘Oh, that’s Gwen,’ she said. ‘She’s been an absolute treasure. She came from nowhere and she’s sorting things out. Gwen?’
Frozen in panic, I grasped for something, anything, that could prevent me having to turn round. There was no trap-door, no rope to climb, but my mobile phone was on the desk. Switched off, so nobody could ring me. I picked it up.