Wake Up Happy Every Day (20 page)

And as I undress Sarah she tells me the price of every piece of clothing. For the cost of what she’s wearing, you could buy a decent family saloon. The knickers alone are the price of a premier-league season ticket.

And when, finally, she’s lying there naked, she giggles. ‘And this,’ she says, running her hands down across her breasts and over her stomach, ‘this is priceless.’

And then she turns over and I stroke her back, kiss the archipelagos of freckles on her shoulders.

‘Sleepy,’ she says.

And I sit there, every part of me aching, thinking what a privilege it is to be able to watch my naked Sarah sleeping. It is a much bigger piece of outrageous good fortune than the fact I’m now one of the richest people on the planet.

I go back into the living room. Mary is there watching
Millionaire
. It is the $500,000 question.

‘What, last year, was the gross domestic product of the European Union?’

‘What kind of question is that?’ Mary is aghast. She loves
Millionaire
, though she rarely makes it past $64,000.

‘Is it a) 16,500 billion US dollars; b) 16,700 US Dollars; c) 17,200 billion US Dollars, or d) 17,600 billion US dollars?’

The lights swirl, the music bleeps, sounds like an ancient ventilator in a provincial operating theatre. The contestant, a pudgy former steel-worker from Detroit called Norm, licks his lips and sweats. He has no lifelines left.

‘It’s d,’ I say firmly, though it’s a guess. I’ve chosen the highest figure and even then I’m surprised how low it is. Only 17,600 billion US dollars for the GDP of the entire European Union? Things are clearly worse than any of us thought.

Norm’s eyes flick towards the camera; for a second it’s like he’s looking right at me. And he looks desperate. He tugs at my heart. The presenter says he’ll have to hurry him. Norm’s in agony.

‘Come on,’ snaps the presenter.

Norm goes for a. The presenter relaxes.

‘Final answer?’ he asks, genial now.

Norm relaxes too. He even smiles. He’s taking comfort from the presenter’s easy warmth.

‘Final answer,’ he says. The house lights are up, the music collapses, the presenter slaps his forehead with theatrical relish.

‘Norm, Norm, Norm,’ the presenter says cheerfully. ‘It’s d. The answer is d.’

‘I nearly said that,’ says Norm. He sounds broken.

‘Oh, Norm. Oh, you,’ says the presenter. It doesn’t sound like he believes him.

Mary looks at me with shiny-eyed respect. ‘Good work, Mr Knox,’ she says. ‘You are definitely going to be my phone-a-friend.’

‘Where’s Jesus?’ I say.

‘In the blue room, getting himself sober I hope.’

The blue room is where Mary sleeps when she stays over, which she’s done a few times now.

Mary’s been over a lot in the last couple of weeks, because with me running, skipping, spinning, Zumba-ing and all that, and with Sarah shopping and – it turns out – drinking whale-skin cocktails, we need help with Scarlett.

They seem to get on, though it’s always hard to tell with Scarlett. If I had to guess I would say she’s generally pleased to see her and Mary keeps up a stream of chatter around her which we are told is a good thing to do. And I find it oddly comforting anyway. It’s been helping me, even if Scarlett can take it or leave it.

And now, sitting companionably with Mary, I wonder out loud about these all-day shopping explorations. It does cross my mind that while I am being stripped down, while I am hurting and hungry, maybe it isn’t just drinks Sarah’s been having in the Hyatt. Maybe the aphrodisiac qualities of all her new buying power, of all her gear, all her stuff, means that in some fancy suite with free Wi-Fi and discreet room service, she’s having her $25,000 finery ripped off her by a slightly overweight business studies grad student who is almost certainly in denial about his own sexuality. And come to think of it, it’s weird how Jesus stays ten pounds above his best weight when you consider he’s often running alongside me. Maybe it’s a glandular thing.

Mary thinks hard for a long moment. Then she says, ‘Mr Knox, you know what the most important three words in a long-term relationship are?’

‘No,’ I say, wondering that she can be so confident about this sort of thing at twenty-whatever, while still being the possessor of braces and pigtails. Of course it is actually only the young that are confident about this stuff really.

‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘No, tell me. I’d like to know.’

‘No, silly. Those are the three most important words. It. Doesn’t. Matter.’

‘Ah. I get it. Wise words indeed.’

And she’s right, isn’t she? Out of the mouths of babes and all that. It doesn’t matter. When your partner pisses you off, take a deep breath and say to yourself that it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. Most things don’t. In the end.

Then she says, ‘Anyways, Jesus wouldn’t cheat on me. And Sarah wouldn’t cheat on you.’

‘You sound very certain.’

‘I am certain. They love us.’

I laugh. ‘Of course. How could they not?’

‘Exactly. Me and you, Mr Knox, we’re catches. I’m hot and you’re a total high-baller.’

‘You know, Mary, I think you might be my phone-a-friend too.’

And then we hear Scarlett whimpering. I tell Mary to relax, to stay where she is and I go to see my little girl. Though it turns out she’s actually asleep again before I get there.

I sit by her bed and watch her dreaming. I wonder if she speaks in her dreams. I wonder if she runs, and skips and climbs trees in her dreams. Maybe she spanks the ukulele like a rock star.

When I go back to the living room Mary has gone to the blue room and the lights are off. And I sit in the warm dark, listening to the house whisper stories to itself. I’m beginning to hate this house. It’s like an ill-fitting suit. A second-hand Oxfam suit like the kinds Russell and I used to search for in the eighties. The kind you could pretend looked modish and didn’t smell of dead people. This house is loose and flappy, and it smells of dead people. Really. Every now and then I swear I catch a vaguely spermy whiff of Russell. Doesn’t matter how many plug-in odor-munchers we use, Russell is still lurking in the air con and in the underfloor heating. And I think this house is beginning to hate me. Sees me as an interloper. Which I am of course, but I don’t like the idea that the stories it tells are all spiteful anecdotes about my lack of suitability as a tenant. I fear this house is a snob.

Sarah sits up as I come into the room.

‘Hi,’ I say.

‘Hi,’ she says back. And that’s when I find out about her lack of stamina because she tells me that she’s sick of shopping, sick of clothes, sick of shoes. Sick, even, of Prosecco and chocolate. ‘I’ve had a fun couple of weeks. I’ve had a holiday. But now I want to use my time properly.’

‘You’re such a puritan,’ I say.

She looks sad. ‘I know. I can’t help myself.’ She pauses. ‘I’m going to spend time with Scarlett. If I do buy stuff it’ll be for her. And I’m going to learn a language. Really learn it. I’m going to stop shopping with Jesus and start paying him to teach me Spanish. It’ll help when we go travelling.’

She tells me that she doesn’t want to become one of those wealthy, purposeless women with expressionless faces that you see everywhere.

She says, ‘I don’t want to become a lady who lunches. Especially since I’ve no one to lunch with.’

I start to get undressed. It doesn’t take long. I’m wearing jogging bottoms, T-shirt and sweatshirt. Total value, maybe thirty dollars. I flex the new muscles on my arm.

‘Do you think Jesus is the best Spanish teacher out there? He certainly won’t be the cheapest.’

‘I know, but he needs the money. And he’ll be good enough.’ She pauses. ‘I think successful learning is more about the learner than the teacher in any case. Don’t you?’

I think about Sarah having Jesus as her teacher, having to repeat what he says. Having him correct her. Having him give her new words, new ways of thinking. It’s a pretty intimate thing to be doing. I almost say something.

‘What?’ says Sarah. ‘What were you going to say?’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ I say.

Twenty-two

LORNA

The thing about the dinner party is that it’s all nightmarishly grown-up.

Lorna has met Megan’s boss and her husband a couple of times before. They’d been in the bar when they’d all gone out for Megan’s last birthday but there had been loads of people out that night and Megan had – hilariously – been very drunk and very sick. Lorna had spent a lot of time in the bogs of some bar holding her mate’s head and stroking her hair while she had upchucked pasta, tiramisu and Sierra Nevada ale. It had been her twenty-ninth after all, and if you can’t get wasted on your last birthday of your twenties, when can you? Lorna had been quite pleased to see it actually. She had been beginning to think Megan’s self-discipline was a bit unnatural.

Amelia and John had also been part of the group that went to the theatre a few months back, but Lorna hadn’t really spoken to them then either. She’d sat next to Amelia but she’d felt oddly shy.

Lorna knows that Megan admires Amelia. She often talks about her calm good sense, how organised she is, how well read, how funny. She tells her about her support for progressive causes – financial and practical. Lorna had always thought that she sounded a bit irritating to be honest. A bit too good to be true. Amelia was still a boss after all. Still a leech. But Megan, well, she always sticks up for her.

‘She’s a good boss. A good person actually. She listens. She values what I’ve got to say. She doesn’t belittle anyone, or steal their ideas.’ Lorna had to let it lie. Maybe there are decent people in the world of senior management somewhere. It just isn’t her experience is all.

Lorna and Megan are in a contented phase. Things are good. They have a much nicer, much bigger flat right on Telegraph. They even have a cleaner – Leslie – who comes on Mondays and Fridays for a couple of hours. They’d argued about this for days. But eventually Megs had caved.

They are both uncomfortable with it, a discomfort they resolve by overpaying her. And by frantically tidying and cleaning before she arrives. They have cable, they have new bikes. And now, apparently, they have dinner parties.

Lorna is also enjoying her course. Her days with minor Victorian women novelists are actually quite congenial. Like spending her time with a gang of eccentric, waspishly gossipy aunts. Mostly they take the genteel piss out of vicars while fantasising about getting off with the landed gentry. They’re quite modern really. On balance this course is probably better than taxidermy, though she will definitely do that one day.

They never did talk about the fight, even though Megan’s eye had swollen so much and become such a vivid supernova of angry reds and yellows and purples that she hadn’t gone out of the house for a week. And even after that she’d felt compelled to tell perfect strangers about this terrible bike accident she’d had after she had been cut up by some city-trader wanker in an SUV downtown.

There has, Lorna feels, been a subtle shift in the balance of power in the home. Megan maybe not quite so parental, not quite so bossy. Perversely this means Lorna working harder at being mischievous, playful. They can’t talk about this either. But they are more or less happy.

Happy.

Amazing how much happiness a bit of financial security can bring. Lorna read somewhere that the optimum amount of extra cash a person needs to improve their mental health is £30,000 – enough to have no debts. To have something in the bank. Enough to know that you can quit your job if the boss stops being a good listener, starts stealing ideas or just generally begins to get a bit belittling on yo ass.

It’s enough for a long holiday, for new books, for shoes, for funky wooden salad bowls and all the vital little treats that make life worth living. In a proper, decent-ordered Green Socialist society everyone would be able to live like they had at least £30k in the bank all the time.

Yes. Everyone should have enough for a cleaner. Everyone should have enough to host dinner parties to which your room-mate can invite her boss.

And inviting Amelia and John means gin and tonics, olives, spinach with nutmeg soup, lamb-stuffed green peppers with couscous and a spicy tomato sauce, different kinds of salads. And good old apple and blackberry crumble with custard and cream for dessert. Proper home-made custard. Proper thick organic double cream.

This had been Lorna’s contribution. Everyone likes a crumble. And custard is England’s signature food.
Crème anglaise
they call it in France, don’t they?

And there are fine wines. Yeah, since The Money life has become a great deal more like a TV-advert life. A magazine life. Life like it should be.

Lorna’s not sure how it happens but instead of books and politics and holidays and funky salad bowls they find they are talking about John’s work. He is in insurance. And – luckily – he is surprisingly entertaining about it. It helps that John is handsome in a TV way. In a state senator sort of way. He fills his suit well. Broad shoulders, straight back, laughing brown eyes in a tanned face. He looks well cared for but not fussily overgroomed. And he has a deep, reassuring voice. Lorna likes him. She notices his hands. Strong hands.