Page 80 of The Last Train Home
‘To commiserate,’ I say.
‘That’s all the poor sod needs,’ he replies. ‘Imagine losing your job, and someone on the other side of the world lets slip they’ve seen you crash and burn on TV. I’d be mortified.’
He has a point. I think for a while. Maybe I won’t message Tom. Not yet anyway. He’ll be going through hell. The last thing he wants is to hear from me.
Chapter 51
Tom
March 2009
I don’t know how I ever made Christmas work. By mid-November our finances were dwindling, but I dug deep because I couldn’t let Teddy know, in a roundabout way via Father Christmas, that things were tight here. I never expected money to be this stretched, what with Samantha having been made partner. But it turns out our outgoings very much rely on a two-person-salary kind of set-up.
No longer doing the weekly food shop in Waitrose was about the only concession I was able to make – that and negotiating a better package with Sky, so I could keep the sports channels. But I’m going to have to get rid of them altogether. The film channels went months ago. I am remarkably low-maintenance. I rarely go out drinking, don’t remember the last time I bought clothes and I don’t have a gym membership. Running is free.
Samantha needs to be out a lot for work, which I get, and not all of it can be claimed back on expenses. I’ve started ignoring the credit-card bill, which makes for painful reading. It’s money spent in bars and restaurants, the odd hotel for conferences.
I think of Abbie joking with me about how we should grind on each other, like we were at a conference gala night, and I laugh out loud. And then I’m sober. I hope Samantha’s not grinding on anyone at a conference gala night.
I’m so grateful she’s keeping us afloat, just. But this mortgage. I don’t know how long we can keep it up. I can’t seem to get a job at the minute. I’m unemployable. And as an ex-member of the banking industry, I’m the Devil. According to one of the nursery mums whose husband’s building company has just gone under, thanks to his bank calling in his loan early, I am the root cause of everything wrong with the world. The fallout is astronomical.
I need to find something else to do. It might be for the best if I don’t go back into finance. But I don’t know how to do anything else.
Samantha’s home from work early and she’s in her office, which used to be our office, but I’ve got no use for it any more and notice all my stuff’s been pushed to the far end of the long workbench we had installed. I wander in and hand her a glass of wine.
‘Thanks,’ she says. I watch her fingers fly over the keyboard, bashing out an angry email. She stops, turns. ‘Yes?’
I baulk at her tone. I’m not one of her little apprentices, or whatever you call them. I decide I’m not going to comment. ‘The weather’s looking good for the weekend. I thought we could take Teddy to the seaside.’
‘Yes, lovely.’ She turns back to her screen. I look around at all her legal textbooks and journals. She moves back from her screen, takes a sip of wine and I think she realises I’m not leaving quite yet.
‘So you’re coming?’ I say.
‘I have a lot on, Tom. I’m earning for two now.’
I try my best not to rise to that. But then I cave and say, ‘You know I’ve been looking, applying.’
‘Yes, I know. But nothing’s arisen, and consequently I need to keep going over the weekend.’
‘It’s only a day. I thought Brighton.’
‘I’ll have to let you know in the morning,’ she snaps and turns back to her screen. There’s no point me pushing the fact that we hardly ever do anything as a family these days.
‘The nursery fees need paying,’ she reminds me.
‘Oh God, really? I feel like we only just paid them. We could probably send Teddy to Eton, for what we pay that place. Why don’t we pull him out of nursery a couple of days a week? That would take the pressure off a bit.’ I’ve suggested this before and Samantha always says no.
‘He needs the stability,’ she says. ‘And what if you come down with some sort of bug on one of the days he’s not in nursery … and what if my mum’s not free to help? I’ll have to stay at home with Teddy.’
‘That combination of events is quite unlikely,’ I say. ‘The bills are mounting. We can’t afford to keep living like this.’
‘Tom, you’ll have a job soon. Don’t tell me you’re planning to sit around here like this for much longer?’
‘I wasn’t planning on it. I didn’t plan any of this.’
She ignores me. Her voice is shrill. ‘Let’s review things in September, when we renew the nursery place. If you don’t have a job by September, that will be a whole year. You’ll have been unemployed for awhole year, whichcannotbe possible.’
Fuck me. All I did was bring her a glass of wine and ask if she wanted to go to the beach.
