Having It All (10 page)

‘Of course not. But don’t you think that maybe things have swung too far? I mean look at you all.’ He gestured to the women round the table. ‘You call yourself liberated,
yet you’re more in chains than your mothers were. I’ve seen you all arriving exhausted from the broken nights then rushing off after work to the supermarket when any sane person would
be sitting down with a glass of wine.’

Looking round at the horror on every face, Mel tried to suppress a giggle. It might be his last speech at
Femina
but he certainly had an attentive audience for it.

‘You’ve taken on men’s ambition but you’re still saddled with women’s responsibilities. Hasn’t something got to give? I mean what happened to fun, to
pampering yourself at The Sanctuary, to the occasional bit of nice, healthy selfishness? You may drive BMWs but it seems to me you’re drudges all the same. I’m sorry to rock the boat
but from where I stand working motherhood looks like a mug’s game!’

‘So you agree that
Femina
has been misleading its readership?’ Olivia’s voice tinkled like the ice in a very dry martini.

‘As a matter of fact I do.’

Silly, silly boy. He was handing himself to Olivia on a plate, an apple in his mouth and an onion up his bum. Mel couldn’t watch. She hated bloodsports.

‘In fact,’ Garth continued unperturbed, ‘there may even be a new trend here that no one has noticed. We may be sitting here looking at the biggest unfaced issue of the
nineties.

‘It strikes me’ – he smiled disarmingly at the group of silent women –‘that
Femina
’s great strength has always been to know when to change tack. To
recognize when the goalposts have been moved and indeed to claim that it was
Femina
who moved them. You see,
I
believe’ – Garth gave Olivia his most dazzling smile
– ‘that this is an issue
Femina
could make its own.’

Clever, thought Mel. Tempt her with being first in on a new philosophy. She held her breath.

Slowly Olivia turned to him and smiled like a praying mantis contemplating lunch. ‘I’m sorry, Mr Brook, but I’m just not convinced. Women today are not enslaved by work,
they’re freed by it. And now it’s time we moved on. We’ve wasted long enough on this subject already.’

Through the forest of shoulders, Mel exchanged a sympathetic glance with Garth. He might be wrong but he was still the most delicious thing she’d seen in months.

Britt Williams looked at her watch and swore. Ten p.m. and she had another hour to do at least. The trouble with running your own business was that if you didn’t put in
the work, you could be sure as hell no one else would.

For a moment she thought about her empty flat. Usually the thought of having her own space with no one around to squeeze the toothpaste from the middle and leave dirty socks everywhere appealed
to her. But not tonight. It was probably just the dregs of the hangover she’d woken up with this morning making her morose. After all, if she needed any reassurance that she’d made the
right choice in staying single and concentrating on her career, Liz had provided it last night. She didn’t envy her lifestyle one bit: to her Liz’s life seemed to be nothing but give,
give, give. And if Britt had any choice she preferred the idea of take, take, take. If it meant you had an empty flat waiting for you, well maybe that was the price you had to pay. After all, sex
was no problem. You could get that easily enough away at conferences and business trips, with no strings attached.

She shivered slightly remembering the lost weekend she’d had in Cannes last month with an Italian film producer. They hadn’t got out of bed in thirty-six hours. He’d been the
most incredible lover and had spent hours bringing her to the very edge of ecstasy before even starting to think of himself. When he’d produced the sodium amytal, she had to admit she’d
been shocked. But then, she’d told herself, if you’re not going to have a relationship you could at least have some adventure. And she had to admit the effect was incredible. When they
finally got out of bed he kissed her tenderly and wrote down her phone number. She told herself he wouldn’t ring. But she stayed in by the phone for the next three nights all the same. She
wasn’t surprised when he didn’t call. It was no strings attached, after all, and that was the way she liked it. Didn’t she?

Anyway when she looked at the company’s profits it was all worth it. Four years ago she’d had the idea to start a company making corporate videos and they’d had trouble
scrabbling together a £20,000 overdraft. Now their turnover was £3 million.

Britt Williams wasn’t doing badly, thank you. For a moment she thought of her home town, its abandoned mines, its ground-down grey feeling, its lack of energy. Such a depressing little
place. It didn’t even have a Next. In this day and age! How her Mum and Dad could stick living there she didn’t know.

The familiar bitterness set in at the thought of her parents. They were so blinkered! You’d think they’d be proud of her, but oh no. They still believed in socialism and what they
called ‘solid working-class values’. They wouldn’t even buy their council house because they thought it was immoral! Dad was so busy despising the enterprise culture he
couldn’t even see the good things the last ten years had brought, even to working people like him. All Dad harped on about was unemployment and inequality. Every time she went home they had
blazing rows. So she didn’t go home any more. Not that she wanted to go back to that poky little house where everything was old and cheap and shabby.

She thought about her converted warehouse in Canary Wharf with its dazzling views of the docks. Her father loathed it. He’d come down once on his way to a Miners’ conference and had
got beside himself with rage at the Yuppies turning the old Docks into marinas and wine bars. He never came again.

She gathered up her papers. Suddenly she didn’t feel like doing any more work. The office was deserted and she locked up and went down to the underground car park. Her red Porsche Carrera,
the glossy symbol of success she’d given herself because the business was doing so well, was waiting for her. She stroked it lovingly and thought how she must be the only Porsche owner whose
father was ashamed of their owning one.

Her Mum and Dad would probably have been happier if she’d married some local fitter and had three screaming kids. Well, she wasn’t going to. Not now. Not ever. Marriage wasn’t
all it was cracked up to be. Look at Liz baring her soul to Steffi Wilson without even telling David she was having doubts. She’d have thought they told each other everything. It just showed
you there was only one person you could depend on: yourself.

Even though it was late she put down the roof and let in the summer night. Outside her office she heard Soho’s regular flautist playing Greensleeves on the steps of St Anne’s Church,
and down by Shaftesbury Avenue a sax player foot-tapped alone while a huge swing band backed him up on the ghetto blaster. The smells of the city floated by, Chinese takeaway, Vindaloo, hot dogs.
It was this mix of the exotic and the daring, the sense of people living on the knife-edge that made London so special, made it feel not three hundred miles from her home town but three
thousand.

It was so beautiful driving back that suddenly she felt lonely. The pavements outside every pub were crowded with people, each one like a party she hadn’t been invited to.

It had been on a night like this that she’d first met David at a drinks do in the quad at Christ Church. They’d been the only Northerners amongst a bunch of pukka Old Etonians and
their braying girlfriends and, without even being introduced, they’d drifted together, stolen a bottle of champagne and gone punting on the Cherwell. The two months that followed had been the
happiest of her whole three years at Oxford – until he’d told her that he had to concentrate on work, but she’d known it was a polite way of rejecting her.

As she drove east the streets became emptier and she found herself wondering how David was taking all this. David who was so much more like her than Liz. She’d never been able to
understand why he preferred Liz to her.

Poor David, if the rumours were true then although the skids might not be under him, he must at least be losing sleep. How was he coping with Liz risking her job and causing all this stir just
when he was under so much pressure himself? Liz was probably too caught up with Metro and the brats to notice that David must be feeling pretty insecure. That was the problem with trying to juggle
a career and kids. You didn’t have any time or energy to think about your partner. David probably needed as much reassurance as Jamie and Daisy just at the moment. Except that, if she knew
David, he would never ask for it.

And, of course, she did know David. For those two glorious months before he met Liz, she’d known him very well indeed. And sometimes she thought that she’d never had quite so much
fun since.

Britt reached out, put a tape in her cassette-deck and turned up the volume. It was Eric Clapton singing ‘Wonderful Tonight’. And it had been a present from David. Just before he
left her for Liz.

Liz looked at her watch for the second time in half an hour. When the hell was this meeting going to finish? Only Conrad would dream of calling a routine meeting at five-thirty
on a Friday.

Downstairs in Reception Susie would be waiting with Jamie and Daisy in their pyjamas, David’s Mercedes parked outside packed to the gunwales with groceries, travel cots, teddies and
Wellington boots. It was their six-weekly pilgrimage to the cottage in Sussex Liz’s grandmother had left her.

David wouldn’t be coming yet of course. He’d put it off as long as possible. He hated going, loathed the fact that they were usually asked to Sunday drinks at some boring
Colonel’s house and that Liz insisted it would be rude to say no.

But Liz loved it there. She’d visited the flint and thatch cottage often when her grandmother lived there and had happy memories of walks on the Downs and childhood visits to the seaside
three miles away. And nowadays there was nothing she liked more than to throw off her City clothes and put on jeans and wellingtons and dig the garden with Jamie and Daisy.

Anyway, this Sunday they would be safe from dreary drinks. They were going to Ginny’s for lunch and Mel and Britt would be there too.

Mel studied Garth’s face on the pillow next to hers for any signs of regret. She’d thought about slipping off before he woke so that she didn’t have to watch
him open his eyes and notice her and wish she wasn’t there. But so far he was sleeping peacefully and he looked so beautiful that she couldn’t bring herself to get up and set out for
lunch at Ginny’s. She thought for a moment about inviting him too. But at this tender stage of their relationship the merciless glare of her friends’ eager interest would probably be
enough to murder the thing at birth.

She couldn’t exactly recall how they’d ended up in bed. She
did
remember giving him a lift, arguing furiously, telling him that he and Liz between them would set women back
twenty years.

‘You haven’t convinced me yet,’ he’d grinned back, flicking down her left indicator and guiding the car to a halt outside a garish wine bar called Hiccups, stuffed with
rich Arabs and car dealers. The champagne was revolting and breathtakingly expensive and they’d drunk two bottles. And she still wasn’t convinced by his arguments.

‘Oh dear,’ he’d said, looking mock-dismayed, ‘I wonder what more I could do to persuade you?’ He ignored her car and flagged down a taxi, and without even
consulting her he’d given his address.

In the taxi she’d felt like a greedy kid at a party: everything on display was so tempting she wanted it all. In her excitement she even forgot how she never went to men’s flats,
always insisted they came to hers. Taking her clothes off made her feel so vulnerable that the only way Mel could handle it was being where she felt safe, somewhere she could set the stage herself,
make sure the lighting was subtle and flattering, a kimono by the bed to camouflage the fab, with no knowing flatmates to bump into on the landing.

But from the moment she’d got inside Garth’s front door she forgot everything except how much she wanted him.

And Garth had been a revelation.

He seemed to know instinctively what would turn her on without even asking. Where did he learn all this stuff? she remembered wondering, before she stopped caring. Maybe girls these days really
were taking
Femina
’s advice and telling their men what they wanted in bed. Mel was amazed. She might be the editor of the modern girl’s bible but the most she’d ever
asked a man to do in bed was switch off the light.

And he’d even been as glorious naked as she’d expected. If this was what new men were like, she wished she hadn’t wasted so long on the old ones.

Yet, as she studied his face on the pillow this morning, she realized there was something worrying her, some small detail nagging at the back of her mind. Finally she dragged it to the surface.
It was the sense that in spite of the enjoyment they’d had in each other, a slight distance had remained between them. As though these acts, so intensely pleasurable and satisfying, were
inspired more by skill than passion.

‘He did whaaaat?’

Liz tried to keep the shocked amazement from her tone as she glanced round at the others. They’d all come to Ginny’s for a relaxing lunch and instead they were getting a rerun of the
Kama Sutra starring Mel and her new boyfriend.

For God’s sake, Liz, she told herself, you sound positively priggish. She was probably jealous. Just because she and David were too exhausted for more than five minutes in the missionary
position. Funny to think how once they’d done it all over the house, the stairs, the kitchen table, even on one memorable occasion that made her smile to this day when reaching for her
Philips Spray-Steam, on the ironing board. But of course that was all BC. Before Children.

She wondered how the others were taking it. Ginny kept glancing nervously towards the children splashing in the paddling pool at the other end of the garden, but they were making far too much
noise to have heard. Gavin was smiling mischievously and trying to catch her eye. Ginny turned to him and he winked. They’d obviously had quite a night too by the look that passed between
them.