Meltdown (2 page)

On the other hand, what had they been dreaming of in the first place, illuminating the steps of their basement staircase internally? It seemed rather a strange idea now, viewed from his new perspective. Now that his dreams involved feeding his children. But it really had seemed important at the time.

He would have liked to replace those bulbs. As a gesture of defiance, to prove to himself that he was still good for something. That he might be down but at least he could make the discreet interior lighting hidden in his basement stairs work. But he couldn’t even do that. He didn’t know if they had any spare bulbs. If they did have, he didn’t know where they were kept, and anyway he wouldn’t have known how to take the frosted glass off the stairs to get rid of the dead ones. Someone had always sorted that kind of stuff out for them.

Those were the days, when they had somebody to sort out their kids and somebody to sort out their light bulbs.

A nice little earner

The stairs had shone and twinkled like Piccadilly Circus a year earlier, looking as bright and jolly as Jimmy did himself as he perused the stock market on the gleaming new seventeen-inch MacBook that nestled on the breakfast bar among the cereal boxes.

‘Wow,’ he said. ‘Whatever you’re getting Rupert for Christmas, it isn’t enough.’

Monica looked up from the couch on which she was languishing, her pyjama top pulled up over her huge tummy. She was rubbing coconut oil into it in a futile attempt to ward off stretch marks.

‘Why? What’s he done?’

‘Only saved us about a hundred grand.’

‘Jimmy, shh!’ Monica admonished.

She didn’t like him talking about money in front of their son Toby, or in front of Jodie the nanny for that matter. Particularly not such ridiculous sums. She said it just felt wrong somehow.

If Jodie had heard she certainly didn’t let on. She and Toby were happily engaged in making an advent calendar for school. Constructing little cardboard doors that open requires concentration, even from a bright seven-year-old and a totally focused and almost insanely enthusiastic Australian girl with a degree in pre-school care and a Bondi Beach gold life-saving medal.

‘’Nother cup of fruit tea, Monica,’ Jodie asked, laying aside the scissors and the Pritt Stick, ‘before I get Toby in the car?’

‘Go on then, let’s go crazy,’ Monica replied.

Jodie leaped to her feet, leaving Toby to his cutting and pasting.

‘Strawberry Zinger? Lemon Pick-Me-Up?’ she said, sifting through the various boxes.

‘I don’t know why you bother asking,’ Jimmy said, still staring intently at his screen. ‘None of them taste of anything at all.’

‘Yes, it is weird,’ Monica agreed, ‘how anything that can smell so strong can taste of so little.’

‘You might as well sniff a fruit pastille and drink a cup of hot water,’ Jimmy suggested, trowelling butter on to his toast.

‘Don’t spoil her few pleasures, Jim,’ Jodie said with a laugh. ‘These things are about the only luxuries a preggers mum is still allowed.’

‘They’re only luxuries because they cost so much,’ Jim said through a mouthful of toast. ‘Work it out, it’s 50p a shot for the smell of a raspberry. Insane. My dad would simply not believe it.’

‘Five
pounds
fifty when I have one at the patisserie,’ Monica admitted.

‘Five pounds fifty for having a fruit tea in a patisserie in
Notting Hill
, dahhhling!’ Jodie joked. ‘Can’t put a price on class, can ya?’

Having made Monica a Blackcurrant Booster, Jodie gathered up Toby’s things, brushed his hair, sorted out his lunch money, assembled his sports kit, slipped a pack of Kleenex into his pocket because he had a sniffle and with her usual huge, cheery smile bundled him off to school.

‘Come on, Tobes mate,’ she said as they left. ‘We’ll play some more AC/DC in the car. This boy loves his full-on Aussie rock. He has to, I’m indoctrinating him.’

Toby spun round happily, sticking out his tongue and making the ‘devil’s horns’ finger sign.

‘For those about to rock,’ the boy shouted, ‘we salute you!’

‘Right on!’ Jimmy shouted back, punching the air. ‘School is the new rock ’n’ roll.’

‘Do you want me to take Cressida as well?’ Jodie asked Monica. ‘She likes a bit of rock herself.’

Cressida, Jimmy and Monica’s two-and-a-half-year-old, was currently exploring ‘her’ pan cupboard. The cupboard had been one of Jodie’s many brilliant ideas.

‘Leave ’em one cupboard they can open,’ she had suggested, ‘but don’t tell them it’s theirs. Fill it with plastic stuff and wooden spoons and let them find it themselves, then tell them they’re very naughty when they do. Hopefully after that they’ll never go looking for the knives and power drills.’

It had worked a treat.

‘Aussie, Aussie, Aussie!’ Jodie called across at Cressida.

‘Oi, oi, oi!’ Cressida responded dutifully, waving a plastic spatula.

‘No, she’s happy, let’s leave her here,’ Monica said. ‘I’ll watch her.’

‘Okey-doke.’ Jodie and Toby disappeared through the door.

‘She’s truly wonderful, isn’t she?’ Monica said after they’d gone.

‘No better,’ Jimmy agreed, eyeing with some suspicion the exquisite bowl of fruit salad that Jessica had prepared last thing the previous evening and left in the fridge. ‘I suppose I ought to have some of this to make up for the toast and half a pack of butter. Want a flat tum for my new tatt.’

Jimmy had four tattoos: a Maori bracelet design round an ankle, a Gaelic cross on his right shoulder and the names of his two children in gothic script on each inner forearm. Having run out of arms, he had decided to locate the name of his third child beneath his navel in the manner of a number of premier league football players he admired.

‘Yes, stretched tatt’s not a good look,’ Monica admitted, eyeing ruefully the cooing love doves she had had inked in above her right hip. ‘Our wedding logo’s starting to look like a couple of fat pigeons having a fight.’

‘Looks good to me.’ Jimmy smiled. ‘I find preg birds sexy.’

‘Hmm,’ Monica replied. ‘I seem to recall you don’t find post-preg birds quite such a turn-on.’

‘All I ever said,’ Jimmy insisted, ‘was that if you’re going to spend five grand a year on gym membership you should use it occasionally, that’s all.’

‘Yeah. Right.’

‘It was a financial observation, not an aesthetic one.’

‘Oh absolutely,’ Monica smiled, ‘which is why you’ve decided to save the five grand by spending a quarter of a million sticking an entire flipping health club on the second floor of our house.’

‘That’s right.’ Jimmy smiled disarmingly.

‘Not very subtle, Jim.’

‘I’m just saying if you want to use it, it’s there. No pressure.’

‘I’ll think about it,’ Monica said.

‘And in the meantime Jodie can use it for her kick-boxing.’

‘Speaking of whom, we’ll have to give Jodie a raise when this one arrives, you know.’ Monica patted her stomach.

‘Do you think she’ll be all right looking after three, or should we get another girl?’

‘Don’t even breathe it! Jodie would go mental. Can you imagine two girls trying to divide the childcare? How would it work? One and a half kids each? No. Jodie will want the lot and I don’t even think she’d expect to be paid extra, but of course we would.’

‘Oh for sure. Gotta be another third. Don’t know what it is with these Aussie girls, they’re just so positive.’

‘It’s because they know they’re only doing it for a few years before they go and climb Everest for charity then marry a cricketer.’

‘Well, she definitely gets a raise.’

‘Amanda says we’re insane what we pay. She says it isn’t only workers that get exploited. It can happen to employers too. She says if you pay people too much it distorts the market and in the long run everybody suffers. Like the seventies car industry.’

‘Amanda is a Nazi.’

Monica sipped her fruit tea. ‘Yes, a nice Nazi but a Nazi nonetheless. We should certainly offer Jodie a raise. Everybody always seems to have an excuse for acting badly. It’s like with recycling. Amanda says we’re mad to bother because it’s all a con and it gets shoved in landfills just the same. Or exported to China where
they
shove it in landfills. But how does she know that? It’s a convenient theory because it means you never have to rinse out any bottles. But how does she
know
?’

Jimmy shook his head. ‘We’ll bloody double Jodie’s cash and Amanda can stuff her distorted market up her cosmetically whitened rectum!’

Monica spluttered into her drink. ‘
God
, Jim, I didn’t tell you about that, did I?’

‘Yes you did and I wish you hadn’t. The image lives with me still.’

‘She swore me to secrecy. I must have been a bit pissed.’

‘You were.’

‘God, I’m
awful
. Poor Lillie.’ Monica caressed her bump.

‘Don’t worry, you get drunk on a sniff of the cork at the moment, you’re so hormonal.’

‘I shouldn’t have told you though.’ Monica giggled. ‘Mand said she was just getting Botoxed and they offered it up. I said God, Rupert doesn’t bother you round
there
, does he? She said certainly not and that she did it for herself.’

‘Let’s not go there.’ Jimmy grimaced.

‘Speaking of Rupert, how did he save us so much money?’

Jimmy looked up from his fruit salad. He was doing his naughty grin. He put his finger to his lips and gave her a little wink. Jimmy could get away with winking. It never looked arch or smug with him, just
naughty
. He was blessed with a twinkle in his eye.

‘What?’ Monica insisted. ‘Don’t do your bloody little boy thing with me.’

‘Which, incidentally, you love.’

‘Which I do
not
love. I may have
said
I loved it, once, early on. But I do
not
love it. Now come on. What’s Rupert done?’

‘You don’t want to know.’

‘I
do
want to know.’

Jimmy grimaced as if he was about to confess to stealing the last biscuit.

‘You know Gordon Brown’s co-opted Rupert on to this Financial Services Advisory Board?’

‘No, I didn’t know actually,’ Monica replied, ‘or if I did I forgot somewhere between guzzling Gaviscon for my reflux and trying not to pee involuntarily on the sofa.’

‘Well, he has, and consequently Rupert hears all sorts of stuff. He gave me the heads-up yesterday morning to say Caledonian Granite was going to hit the wall.’

‘You mean the building society? It was all over Radio 4 this morning, I was listening in my bath. They wouldn’t shut up about it and all I wanted to know was if Britney had been allowed access to her kids. It’s collapsed or something, hasn’t it?’

‘Big time. First run on a Brit bank in centuries. Monumental balls-up, turns out they were giving mortgages away like loyalty points and now they’re fucked. We owned fifty thousand shares.’

‘Owned?’ Monica asked with a tiny touch of suspicion.

‘Part of a portfolio I put together a couple of years ago. Bought at 98p, yesterday morning they were at £2.02 and now . . .’

‘They’re worth one and a half pence, according to Radio 4.’

‘Exactly. Bloody disaster for some.’

‘But not us?’

‘No. Thankfully. We got out.’

‘So you sold up yesterday?’

‘Well, it would have been pretty stupid not to, what with Rupert telling me they’d gone tits up. Nice of him to think of me really. I suppose he was feeling guilty because he’d suggested I buy in the first place.’

Jimmy returned to his fruit salad, searching about among the mango and star fruit for the last strawberry. He was avoiding Monica’s eye.

‘Jimmy . . .’ She did not sound happy.

‘Mmm?’ Jimmy affected an innocent look. The same doe-eyed, open-hearted expression that prior to Monica’s entry into his life had persuaded so many girls that when he said, ‘You know, just for a last coffee,’ he actually meant it.

‘Don’t look at me that way, Jim,’ Monica said. ‘Are you seriously telling me you acted on a tip-off? You
sold shares
on the basis of a tip-off?’

‘Oh come on, Monica!’ Jim smiled. ‘What was I supposed to do? Sit there and watch us lose a hundred grand? That would be insane.’

‘Rupert should never have told you.’

‘But he did tell me. That’s not my fault, is it? But once he
had
told me, I was stuck, wasn’t I?’

Jimmy crossed over and took his wife’s empty mug from her hand, fishing out the dead tea bag and flicking an expert slamdunk into the waste-disposal unit installed in the third of the three massive stainless-steel sinks.

‘Jimmy, you
shouldn’t
have done it.’

‘Oh come on, why not?’

‘Well, for a start it’s hardly fair, is it?’

Jimmy frowned slightly and sprinkled grated chocolate on to his coffee while he thought for a moment.

‘I don’t really think
fair
’s got anything to do with it,’ he said finally. ‘I mean money’s a yo-yo, isn’t it? Everybody’s trying to guess the bounce.’

‘Yes, but not everybody has access to government information, do they? Jimmy, I really think it’s . . . it’s . . .’

Monica glanced at the illuminated stairway as if wondering whether somebody might be at the top of it, listening to their conversation.

‘Is the baby listener on?’ she asked.

‘Monica, it’s not a walkie-talkie, it doesn’t work both ways, besides which there’s nobody upstairs.’

‘Turn it off anyway.’

Jimmy sighed and did as he was told.

‘There’s no one but me, you and Cressie in the bloody house,’ he assured her. ‘What’s on your mind?’

‘I really think,’ she said with a face that was suddenly very serious, ‘that you selling those shares after Rupert told you what he told you could be construed as insider trading.’