Invincible Summer, page 21
Eva stared up at the ceiling. ‘I can’t get another job, not in the City, anyway. And what the hell else can I do? Go off and become a yoga teacher?’
‘I don’t know,’ snapped Sylvie. ‘But you’ll get another job eventually and everything will be fine. So what if Julian left you? He should have done it ages ago, you never loved him and frankly it showed.’ She sat down heavily on the edge of the bed and rubbed her eyes. ‘Look, I’m sorry if this sounds harsh but to be honest, it’s quite hard to stomach when all of your problems are temporary. In a year’s time they will probably all have disappeared. I face far bigger challenges than you every single day, and do you know what I do? I get on with it.’
‘I know you do. You’ve been really brave,’ conceded Eva.
Sylvie shrugged. ‘Brave? Everyone loves going on about how brave I am and isn’t it great that I’m coping so well, because they need a narrative that tells them everything’s okay. And do you know what? Everything’s not okay, and it’s not going to be okay, and I still get out of bed every morning and stick a smile on my face even if I feel like my heart is breaking, because what’s the alternative? That’s life. You play the hand you’re dealt.’ Sylvie stood up and moved over to the door, adding as she left the room, ‘There used to be more fight in you than this. Pull it back, Eva, because we still need you.’
The irritation Eva felt at Sylvie’s lecture was the strongest sensation to pierce her listlessness in weeks. Sure, Sylvie had problems, but she didn’t have a monopoly on them. One person having a very bad time didn’t nullify everyone else’s. And hadn’t Eva been right there beside her every single step of the way? Yes, Allegra was Sylvie’s daughter and it was hardest for her, but she wasn’t the only one who loved her, had been devastated for her, fretted about the future.
But it was indignation rather than anger, and it dissipated quickly, leaving in its wake an acceptance that everything Sylvie had said to her was basically fair enough. Later that day she got out of bed and took Allegra for a walk for the first time in weeks, and when she woke early the next morning, her torpor had lifted a little. She noticed the birds singing outside and their tones sounded clearer, sharper. Eva dressed and went down to the kitchen and made coffee, taking satisfaction as the beans in the grinder moved from an agitated rattle to a smooth whirr. She poured a mug and took it upstairs.
Sylvie looked thin and tired, Eva noted as she watched her friend sit up in bed and take the drink from her hands. Her eyes were puffy and her arms protruded stick-like from her nightie, and her hair and was a two-tone tangle of light brown roots and copper ends.
‘I’ll get Allegra up and do breakfast this morning,’ Eva told her.
‘Are you sure you’re okay on your own?’ Sylvie raised a sceptical eyebrow. ‘You’ve got to be really careful to make sure she doesn’t choke. And she’s getting so uncooperative about having her nappy changed, she had a tantrum and nearly fell off the changing table yesterday.’
Eva held up a reassuring hand to halt her. ‘I know I’ve not exactly been showcasing my resourcefulness lately, but I can handle this. Have a lie in and I’ll call you if we run into any trouble.’
As the days slowly grew longer, a tide was turning. Despite keeping her feelers out, no job offers had materialised and after almost a year on the market the flat still hadn’t sold, but with the longer, lighter days came a sense of optimism so pervasive that Eva decided to take the plunge and try to raise capital for the business idea that had been niggling at her for years. She quietly worked up a business plan, but the trouble was that there couldn’t have been a worse time because the banks weren’t lending. The credit crunch had made capital scarce and there weren’t exactly millions of investors out there looking to put their cash into risky start-ups, as Eva explained to Sylvie over breakfast one morning.
Sylvie looked up from spooning porridge into the mouth of an uncooperative Allegra, who was using her good hand to smear the lumpy gruel across the table. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘there’s always me.’
Eva blinked. ‘What? When you say you, you mean ‘you’ as in you? Like, you personally?’
‘Yes, me. Don’t sound so surprised. This comes at a good time actually, because the NHS Litigation Authority is about to pay out the first tranche of Allegra’s compensation and I need to invest it.’
‘Well, I can help you do that. But I can’t let you invest in the business. It’s too risky. You’re going to need that money and there’s no way I would risk losing it.’
‘It’s okay, I trust you,’ Sylvie reassured her. ‘If anyone can make it work it’s you and I’d rather invest in somebody I know and have faith in, than some company I know nothing about. I wouldn’t recognise an Enron if it bit me on the backside.’
Eva smiled and shook her head. ‘It’s really lovely of you to offer, but look, half of all new businesses fail in the first year. I believe in my idea, I really, do, but start-ups are risky for all sorts of reasons. God knows the middle of a global recession isn’t the time I’d have chosen to start a business if it didn’t happen to be when I was out of a job. Obviously I wouldn’t be doing this if I didn’t think it was going to work, but there’s no way I could take responsibility for the money that Allegra needs for her future. I can help you decide where to invest but you need to be really conservative, gilts, inflation-linked bonds, that sort of thing.’
Sylvie looked crestfallen and returned to mopping up the table-top porridge swamp. ‘Are you sure? Because I was thinking that maybe it would be good for me to come in on the business. I’m going to need to make some money sooner or later, and it’s going to be tough to find a job that I can fit around Allegra.’
‘Well,’ said Eva slowly, ‘this doesn’t mean that you can’t come in on the business. I’m going to need an extra pair of hands, and it would be great for that to be someone I trust. Why don’t you come in as a partner?’
‘What, without investing any money? That’s not fair though, is it? What with its being your idea and all the work you’ve done on it.’
‘Well, consider it payment in lieu of rent for squatting in your spare room. For that, I am going to give you half of the business. Since at present the business is worth the princely sum of zero pounds sterling, I actually feel like I’m getting a pretty good deal.’
‘You really mean it? I’m going to be a partner?’ Sylvie leant across the table and took Eva’s face in her hands, depositing a kiss on her forehead. ‘That’s amazing. Thank you. You won’t be sorry, I promise.’ She sat back down and frowned. ‘But that doesn’t solve the money problem. If you won’t take our money, you’re going to have to get it from somewhere else. Maybe you could hit up some of your old City contacts?’
Eva took a long swig from her coffee mug. ‘Yeah, that’s exactly what I was thinking.’
‘Hullo there, Fatboy. How’s it going?’
‘Eva, old girl,’ Big Paul boomed down the phone line. ‘Long time no see. How are things with you?’
Eva moved over to the window, took a deep breath and launched into her sales pitch. ‘What matters, my friend, is not how things are with me, but how they are with you. And I’m going to answer that question: things are great with you, because it’s your lucky day. I’m calling to make you an offer you can’t refuse.’
‘I always knew you’d succumb to my animal magnetism eventually. Tell me, it was the rippling abs, wasn’t it?’
‘Well, there’s that, obviously, but I also have a business proposition for you.’
‘Proposition away.’
‘I’m looking for an angel.’
‘Baby, I can be your angel. Assuming you happen to be into big fat hairy unkempt angels.’
She grinned at the mental image. ‘Thanks, but for this particular initiative I won’t need you in wings and a loincloth. I have this amazing business idea, and you are one of a select few lucky investors chosen to share in my inevitable success.’
‘Thanks. I love investing in start-ups, something about the tinkling sound of dreams shattering as they go to the wall.’
Eva continued undeterred. ‘Very tax efficient, this sort of investment. Did you know that you can do it as an Enterprise Initiative Scheme and claim thirty percent of your investment back from the taxman on day one?’
‘Keep talking.’
‘Come over for dinner and I’ll pitch it to you properly. It’ll be at Sylvie’s place in Hampstead, she’s my business partner. It saves us having to sort out a babysitter for Allegra.’
‘Ah yes, Robert’s sprog. How’s she doing? What with the, um, retardation, or whatever the politically correct term for it is these days.’
‘Allegra’s doing pretty well actually. She’s two and a half now, and she’s saying a few words and almost walking. All stuff they’d normally do earlier, obviously, but given how uncertain the prognosis was in the beginning we’re over the moon. Do you see much of the lovely Robert these days?’
‘Not a lot, no,’ Big Paul told her. ‘I get the odd Bloomberg but we were never exactly besties, more workmates and drinking buddies. I wouldn’t be too hard on him though, he was in bits after the little one was born. I took him for a drink and I swear the poor bloke nearly cried.’
‘Yes, well. Sadly that didn’t translate into sticking around and actually taking care of her.’
‘Yeah, I hear you. How’s the mum, your friend Sylvie? Am I safe to come to this meeting or is she gonna hold it against me that the only time we met I was Rob’s wingman? And thus could be unjustly construed as bearing some responsibility for her having got up the duff in the first place? Robert reckoned it happened that night we were all out together.’
‘I doubt that’s top of the list of things she thinks about, but if anything she’d probably thank you. Not everyone understands this but Allegra’s a blessing, not a curse. You don’t have kids, do you?’
‘Nope. Not the daddy type. Couldn’t if I wanted to, in any case.’
‘How’d you mean?’
‘I shoot blanks, not to put too fine a point on it. I was married once, a long time ago. We were only youngsters, childhood sweethearts you could call it. I wasn’t too bothered about having kids, I was only about twenty, but after a couple of years she marched me along to the clinic to get tested and it turned out my boys were swimming backwards or something. It wasn’t long after that she ran off with a bloke who packed a bigger punch in the fertility stakes. Last I heard she was living in Hereford with a plumber and three or four of the little blighters.’
‘Wow, I’m sorry. I had no idea.’
‘Well, you wouldn’t, would you. It was a long time ago and it’s not on my CV. I was just Paul in those days, not Big Paul, before all the Dom P and lunches at Le Gavroche went to my waistline.’ He sighed nostalgically. ‘Still, it was probably for the best. Who’d keep the strip clubs of Soho in business if I turned into a family man? The fabric of this fine city would have been the poorer for it.
‘Indeed it would.’
‘Anyway. Enough about my stunning physique. When do you want to pitch Eva’s Widgits to me?’
‘…and that’s why we feel justified in projecting that we’ll break even at the end of year two and go significantly into profit by the end of year three.’
It was Friday night and Big Paul was sitting at Sylvie’s kitchen table, his fingers laced behind his head and an implacable expression on his face. In front of him were an empty dinner plate and an almost-empty wine glass.
‘It’s not a terrible idea,’ he said slowly. ‘There are some obvious obstacles, but it’s not utterly shit.’
Eva leant forward. ‘High praise indeed, and wholly justified. Think about it. How many times have you tried to order things over the internet only to find that it takes so long to retrieve the damn things from the sorting office that you may as well have gone and bought it on the high street? Internet shopping has vast potential but it’s being hobbled by twentieth century delivery systems unable to cope with the notion that people go out to work and don’t have a spouse sitting at home. The Plop-Box will solve all that. The basic design will be classic, like those old red post-boxes, and it will come in different shapes and sizes to fit the dimensions and style your porch or garden. You leave it unlocked and empty, the delivery man puts the parcel inside and closes it, it locks automatically and gives him a receipt, then you open it with a key or code when you come home. Simple, yet exquisitely practical.’
Big Paul looked thoughtful. ‘Well, first off, I’m assuming Plop-Box is a working title, because it sounds like a mobile khazi. Second, the distributors are your biggest challenge. They have to agree to accept a receipt from this thing instead of a signature from a person. Have you spoken to anyone yet? Royal Mail? DHL? The Post Office is pretty monolithic and hardly well adapted to change.’
‘We’ve had initial talks and they made promising noises, but we need to have a prototype in place to get them to commit, and that’s why we need capital now. I really don’t think it’s going to be that hard a sell once we have proof of concept. Think about it. Every time they fail to deliver a parcel, they have to take it back to a sorting office and then attempt to redeliver it. That adds costs for them. If the householder buys a Plop-Box, they’re spending money that will not only save them inconvenience, but will save the distributors money too. Everyone’s a winner.’
There was a few seconds’ pause and then Big Paul said, ‘Okay. Done.’
‘Done?’ asked Eva.
‘Done,’ he confirmed. ‘Two hundred.’
Sylvie’s face dropped. ‘Oh. Two hundred quid won’t go far.’
But Eva was smiling broadly. ‘Not quid, Sylvie. Grand.’
Eva and Big Paul watched in amusement as she processed the information, furrowed brow giving way to widening eyes. ‘As in, thousand pounds? Two hundred thousand pounds?’ she squeaked. ‘Just like that?’
‘Yeah, just like that,’ said Big Paul. ‘With one caveat. You have to change the name. Now, do you know why I’m doing this? I’m doing it because I know you, Eva. I trust and believe in you, but more than that, I know that you are so anally retentive that you would walk over hot coals before you let this business fail and lose a penny of my money. And just to give you some added motivation, let’s be clear that if you prove me wrong, I will hunt you down and destroy all that you love.’
Still smiling, Eva fetched the bottle of champagne she’d bought that day in hope there would be a reason to celebrate and Big Paul, satisfied that it was of a suitable calibre to pass his lips after scrutinising the label, uncorked the bottle and handed the first glass to Sylvie.
She waved it away. ‘I’ll stick with juice, thanks.’
‘AA, is it?’ He peered at her suspiciously.
Sylvie looked taken aback. ‘Not exactly. I never made it quite that far. But some people are better off not drinking and I’m definitely one of them. We all know what happened the last time you handed me a drink,’ she added, gesturing upwards towards Allegra’s bedroom. This was the first time that their previous meeting had been alluded to, and an uncomfortable hush descended upon the table.
‘Yeah.’ Paul shifted in his chair. ‘I suppose now’s a good time to say that I’m sorry about that. We may not have behaved in an entirely gentlemanly fashion on that occasion. I was sorry about the baby and Robert and everything.’
Eva shot him a glare across the table, causing him to backtrack.
‘Shit, I don’t mean I’m sorry about the baby. Probably you’re really happy about the baby. Actually, I’ve got no idea how you feel about the baby and I’m just trying to make the right noises but digging a hole so big I’ll probably emerge in Azerbaijan-’
‘Relax.’ Sylvie stopped him with a smile. ‘I’ve got a thick skin and I know people don’t always know what to say. I’d honestly prefer that they give it a shot, even one as incompetent as that, than ignore Allegra completely. For the record, I’m delighted about my daughter. She’s beautiful and I love her. Sometimes it’s tough and I worry about the future, but mostly she’s a huge source of joy in my life.’
Big Paul leant back in his chair. ‘Good. Great. I was really sorry to hear about what happened, that’s all. Really bad luck.’
‘Look,’ said Sylvie, ‘in my situation you rethink your ideas about what constitutes bad luck. Spend half an hour in the waiting room at Great Ormond Street and you’ll see children with feeding tubes, oxygen canisters, tracheostomies, colostomy bags. We don’t have any of that anymore. The kids themselves, they don’t sit around measuring themselves against other people or railing against the injustice of their circumstances, so unless their condition is really painful, and Allegra’s isn’t, most of the bad stuff is to do with worrying about the future. For the first year I did nothing else. I’d wake up in the middle of the night and lie there for hours thinking about what will happen to Allegra when I die. It blunts itself after a while. I mean, say I live to seventy-five, that’s more than another thirty-five years from now.’
Big Paul nodded thoughtfully. ‘True. And who knows what will have happened in thirty-five years’ time? What with global warming, probably all that’ll be left will be Keith Richards and a bunch of cockroaches sitting around on a rock. Maybe we should all be running through the streets screaming.’
‘Exactly,’ said Sylvie. ‘ But you’re not, are you? Because no one can live like that. I’ve given up stressing about it. I’m going to do what’s in my power to make each day a good one, and beyond that everything will just have to take care of itself.’
‘I’ll drink to that,’ said Paul, and raised his glass.
