‘It would be nice to have a little drinks party for you.’
‘I’m not sure about that.’
‘At your house. You don’t have to do anything but be there. I’ll do everything else. I’ll even clear up for you.’
‘You’re making it sound as though you’ve already organized it.’
‘Not exactly. But I’ve made sure that people like Mary can come.’
‘What do you mean, “people like Mary”? Who else?’
‘Just a few. Me, Mary and Eric, Fergus and Jemma, of course, Joe and Alison, Josh and Di. That’s about it. And anyone you want to ask.’
‘I don’t know, Gwen.’
‘I’ll do little eats and Joe said he’d provide the wine.’
‘When’s this supposed to be happening?’
‘Day after tomorrow.’
I gave up protesting. ‘I’ll check my diary,’ I said ironically, ‘but I’m pretty sure I’m not busy then.’
‘Good. That’s settled. I’ll come round at five, straight from school, and we’ll get everything ready.’
Chapter Fourteen
When I arrived at the office, Frances was on the phone. She waved me in frantically. It sounded as if she was on the receiving end of a lecture. ‘Oh, yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, I can see that… Is that really true?… Didn’t we?… Is it serious?… So what do we do?’
I tiptoed across the room, made two mugs of coffee and handed one to Frances. She pulled faces at me like a silent-movie actress, signalling thanks for the coffee and, at the same time, frustration and exasperation. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘But things have been a bit difficult, you know, with what’s happened… Yes, but couldn’t you explain it to them? Would that make things better?… Oh, I see… Yes, all right.’
Finally she put the phone down. I thought she was going to cry.
‘I never wanted to be a businesswoman,’ she said, her voice almost a wail. ‘Did I tell you I went to art school?’
‘No, you didn’t.’
‘I was going to be a painter. That was the plan. I was good at it, but in the end there’s only room for about four painters in England at any one time and it was clear I wasn’t going to be one of them.’
‘Who was it on the phone?’ I said.
‘That was our horrible accountant,’ she said. ‘He’s meant to be working for us – we certainly pay him enough – but all he does is shout at me. He’s like a disappointed parent. Apparently we’re late with our VAT and apparently that’s bad. I thought the point of accountants was that they were meant to deal with that sort of thing. Oh, God, Gwen, I hate this – I’m out of my depth.’
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.