Don't Marry Thomas Clark Read online

  ‘Court? You think someone might take it to court?’

  ‘Well… It’s not a certainly, but I’ve got a list in front of me of at least twenty organizations who risk losing a nice little nest egg if you get married.’

  ‘True. OK, go on,’ says Thomas.

  ‘Right, if she’s available you’ll need to meet her. Asking to marry her out of the blue might make her suspicious, and we shouldn’t underestimate the possibility of her getting word about it through mutual friends. If the question of the will gets out, you’re done for.’

  ‘So what do I do?’

  ‘Good question,’ admits Frank, taking a moment to reflect. He stares blankly at the will as though it might be able to answer his questions, then suddenly exclaims, ‘Got it! You have to tell her everything!’ and give his friend a bright smile.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘It’s a brilliant idea! Tell her about your grandfather’s death, about the marriage, about the six months of cohabitation…’

  ‘But didn’t you just say that I shouldn’t mention it?’

  ‘You don’t understand,’ Frank interrupts. ‘I’m not saying to tell her everything.’

  ‘Oh, no?’

  ‘Of course not! You should hint at the will, but not explain what she stands to lose if she turns down the offer of marriage. You’re going to tell her a version of the truth, and you’ll pay her to obtain her cooperation.’

  ‘Hang on, I’m not following,’ Thomas interrupts, confused. ‘What do I have to do?’

  ‘Let me give you an example,’ says Frank, crossing his hands on the desk and preparing to dispel his client and friend’s doubts. ‘Thursday, coffee break, the two of you at a table in a café.’

  ‘I’m busy on Thursday.’

  ‘Thomas!’

  ‘OK…’ he puffs.

  ‘Atmosphere: waiters passing between the customers, steaming cups of coffee, you pull her chair out for her. You’re kind, you get her to relax. Don’t get down to business straightaway. A bit of chit-chat, “How are you? How’s your father doing?” blah blah blah. And when you feel comfortable, turn on the old charm, give her a few compliments.’

  ‘I can still manage to make small talk with another adult, Frank, we can skip the foreplay?’ Thomas snaps, but his friend ignores him.

  ‘Flirt with her a bit, make her feel important, bring up a couple of old personal details. A few memories of you as children: funny stories, a bit of nostalgia, stuff like that. Focus her attention on your relationship and the deep bond that existed between your family and her parents, tell her about your grandfather’s death. Hint vaguely at the funeral, the deep sense of emptiness. And pause,’ he adds hastily. ‘Pause a lot,’ he recommends energetically.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘To underline how much pain you’re in. You’re still upset. So upset, you can’t talk about it. Seeing you in that state, her sentiments’ll get the upper hand, believe me,’ says Frank, and mimics the scene, lifting a hand to his tie. ‘A moment of emotion,’ he says, resuming his normal voice. ‘Gentle words, held breaths. You’ll mourn the deceased for a few minutes. Let it simmer, and once it’s cooked, tell her, in a moment of transport, that in his will, Sir Roger specified that you get everything except the old Canterbury estate unless you decide to marry her after a mandatory period of cohabitation lasting six months. You explain that the illness, unfortunately, had made him more and more confused. That’ll be convincing enough to get her to believe it all. And at that point you start building on her feelings. Confess that you care too much about Garden House to risk losing it. It’s a place full of happy memories, where you often take refuge from the difficulties of life, especially since your parents died. Add a big cheque, with five zeros, and you’ll see – she won’t say no… She’s a woman.’

  ‘Perhaps you haven’t understood, I don’t want to get married,’ reiterates Thomas, unconvinced.

  ‘And in fact you’ll get her to sign an agreement where she specifies that after the six months of living together she’ll leave you. In fact, we’ll make it spectacular: she’ll leave you at the altar, in front of everyone. Family, friends, acquaintances…’

  ‘Is that really necessary?’ asks Thomas, turning up his nose and not at all enthusiastic about the prospect of being dumped in front of three hundred guests.

  ‘No, but it guarantees you an army of witnesses ready to speak in your defence, and proof that you did everything possible to make it work. Try and imagine the scene: you standing there grief-stricken beside the priest, and she, cruel and insensitive, leaving you with a broken heart.’

  A mischievous grin creases the corner of his mouth. ‘Good God… you’re evil.’

  ‘Thank you. I do my worst.’

  ‘When can I contact her?’

  ‘Right now, if you like. Actually, you know what we’ll do?’ he asks, tapping his lip with his index finger. ‘After you’ve spoken, we’ll arrange to meet in your office so we can get it all down in black and white.’

  ‘What for? A contract like that wouldn’t be worth the paper it was written on. In fact, if someone got hold of it, I’d lose everything.’

  ‘I know that and you know that, but she mustn’t find out.’

  ‘It’s risky…’

  ‘Have you got an alternative?’

  Chapter 3

  ‘I’m sorry Miss Price, but the bank cannot grant the loan if you do not provide some form of security.’

  ‘And can you tell me where I might get hold of it at this time of day?’

  ‘I’m afraid I can’t.’

  ‘Are you completely heartless? Do you realise that if we don’t pay off the debt we’ll lose our deposit?’

  ‘Miss Price, believe me, my hands are tied. You’re unemployed, and so are your partners. If you had a guarantor, or if there were some property that belonged to you or to the company, that would change everything.’

  ‘But if I had a job, a guarantor or property I wouldn’t be here asking for a loan, would I?’

  ‘I realize that, but we’re talking about a hefty amount. What would happen if you couldn’t pay the instalments?’

  ‘If the business were to go under, God forbid, we could sell the premises and pay off the debts with the proceeds.’

  ‘At the risk of sounding obstructive, at present you have no premises. So how can you sell something you don’t have?’

  ‘I know perfectly well that I don’t have any premises, and that is precisely why I’m asking you for the frigging loan! No… No, sorry, I didn’t mean to be rude. No, don’t hang up, please… Oh, bloody hell!’ I snap, slamming the cordless down onto the table.

  How can anybody be that dense? And what am I going to tell the girls? I want to cry.

  We’d used all that was left of our savings to put down a deposit on that little bistro. Debby has even given up her flat and moved back in with her parents. It wasn’t exactly our lifelong dream, but what with the times we live in and the unemployment figures nowadays… We seem to spend all our time running from one recruitment agency to another, and we’ve got no prospects. Three graduates, chucked out on the street by globalization, without so much as a clue as to what we could have done to offend it. And I’m even a fan of it, for God’s sake!

  I’d almost found something. It lasted about ten days: just the time from when I got the call confirming the start of the research program until the time when it was postponed to an unspecified date. It was a six-year project to be carried out at Oxford, where I was doing my masters. Everything was ready: documents, equipment, European funding. The only thing missing was my signature on the contract. But it all went up in smoke before I even managed to find a decent suit for the meeting.

  The reasons they gave me? Overstaffing, insufficient funds, new priorities, change of direction.

  The real reasons: thanks to my bloody abominable luck, Andrea Holden, beloved daughter of well-known MP Gregory Holden, had just graduated in Sociology with a thesis on the impact of permanent
make-up upon mass communication media. The ink wasn’t dry on it before Daddy Dearest had organized for the darling creature a series of European conferences on the importance of the image in Western countries. I’d made a bitchy comment on the fact less than two weeks before when I’d come across it on one of the university blogs, but I’d decided to ignore it, not imagining that it would concern me directly. And to think that I’d actually felt a bit sympathetic for Gregory Holden at the idea of an intelligent person like that desperately attempting the impossible: to save a daughter as useless as his from poverty and disgrace. Come on, who wouldn’t have done the same? Put your hand on your conscience and ask yourself if you wouldn’t have tried everything possible to improve your offspring’s CV by pulling a few string to get her into some conferences of international importance?

  Of course, going from that to finding her a job for the next six years using my research funds… Just long enough for her to hook up with some brilliant professor of noble birth. The sad reality is that not only had she nicked my job, she’d also pinched my hypothetical husband, the thieving cow!

  Months later I found out I’d been wrong about that too: the aim was not to give her time to set herself up. No, it was nothing to do with a six-month contract – it was a permanent teaching position, with my researcher’s job as the sweetener. Dear Old Daddy didn’t want to find her a husband to try and breed out the genetic errors in his grandchildren, but to make sure that his beloved birdbrain of a daughter was tasked with the preparation of thousands of students – malleable, fee-paying clay, by definition – in order to reduce our cultural elite to the level of stupidity of those, like her, who need Wikipedia to get ahead in life. It was a diabolical plot to dumb down cultural standards and boost the employment figures. I was witnessing the national redistribution of IQs and could do nothing about it!

  But that’s an old story. It’s water under the bridge at this point. I don’t even think about it any more. See the miracles a couple of bottles of vodka and a box of Valium a week can perform?!

  I had no choice – I resigned, packed my bags, left the university and went home. For a while, I lived with my folks in Cork, then I found a job as a part-time secretary in London and I moved back over. Since then I’ve been collecting ex-jobs, ex-boyfriends and ex-flats, I live off pizza and I’m attending a course in aromatherapy to try and keep the stress under control. It’s not much use, but gazing at my aromatherapy teacher’s firm bum is the closest I get to a state of profound well-being in this grim age of Facebook, Skype and that bloody Candy Crush. Stupid bloody game! Two weeks and I’m still stuck on the twenty-eighth level. Do you think there’s any way to sue the developers?

  Reflecting upon the failures of recent months drags me irrevocably back into a miserable mood.

  I shuffle about the house in search of alternative solutions, but all I find is a gummy bear jammed down between the cushions on the sofa, surrendering in exchange my last shreds of optimism as I walk down the hall.

  Is that a crack in the wall? Oh, God – not the building collapsing, on top of everything else!

  Dejected, I seek refuge in the bedroom, taking the cordless with me. I throw myself under the covers and dial Kelly’s number, hoping she won’t be at home. I’m not asking for much, just a couple of days’ grace. Just long enough to find a way to tell her we’re broke.

  ‘Hello?’ she replies immediately, without the phone ringing even twice.

  No such luck!

  ‘Hi, it’s Sandy.’

  ‘I knew it, I knew it, I knew it…’ she screeches, sounding euphoric.

  ‘You knew what?’ I ask seriously.

  ‘They’ve called, right?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘What do you mean, “who”? The bank!’

  ‘Ahhh, yeah… the bank. Yeah, I just spoke to them.’

  ‘Aaaaand…?’ she asks, hopefully.

  ‘And…’ But I can’t seem to get it out, not straightaway.

  ‘Come on, don’t keep me on tenterhooks! Do you know what I did today?’

  ‘No, what did you do?’ I say, playing for time.

  ‘I told my boss to get stuffed,’ she says airily.

  ‘You did what?’ I shout in panic, springing back upright with such violence that my hipbone clicks so hard I might never be able to stand erect again.

  ‘He asked me to stand in for Bert again, but I’d promised David that I’d spend this weekend with him. It’s his birthday. So I suggested asking someone else. He went bananas. Would you believe it? Him! What was I supposed to say? This is my third month of unpaid internship.’

  ‘I thought you said he’d agreed to give you five hundred pounds a month?’

  ‘Yes, but after travel, food and rent I’m just not making ends meet. I’m paying the bills by selling old clothes on eBay. So when he said that, I lost it. I said, “Look here, Mr. Morris, you are the worst kind of parasite. All you do is treat us all like dirt. I’ve had enough of it. Either take me on properly or I’m not setting foot in this office again!”’

  ‘And what did he say?’ I ask in a small voice, gripped by a sense of impending doom.

  ‘He fired me on the spot,’ she answers cheerfully. ‘But what do I care? I’d have been leaving anyway in about twenty days. The bistro’s going to be taking up all my time.’

  ‘Kelly, are you crazy? What if the bank had refused to give us the loan?’

  ‘But they can’t not give us it. The manager’s a close friend of Debby’s dad. How many times has she told us not to worry?’

  Something about my silence seems to bring her back down to reality, because she asks me worriedly, ‘You’re not going to tell me that they’ve turned down our application, right? Sandy, I’m down to two pairs of jeans, a couple of T-shirts and a green dress, and you know how awful I look in green…’

  What a nightmarish situation. I don’t know what to do, I don’t know what to say. I can’t stand hearing her talk like that, especially because I feel terribly guilty. The bistro was my idea. If I’d just kept my mouth shut, we wouldn’t be in this pickle in the first place.

  ‘No, don’t worry,’ I lie, before I’ve even managed to think. ‘It all went fine.’ And I sink into the pillows. On the other end, Kelly breaks into shouts of pure elation and spends the next ten minutes jumping up and down and singing her heart out. I don’t have the guts to stop her – all I can do is lift my head up and slam it repeatedly into the mattress with all the force of which I am capable. When she’s finished torturing my eardrums, she takes a deep breath and start telling me off for my lack of enthusiasm about the news.

  ‘Come on… There’s no reason to start fretting now, it’ll be fine,’ she says, in an attempt to cheer me up. ‘We’ll work hard and you’ll see, in a couple of years’ time we’ll be the owners of the busiest bistro in all of London.’

  They say that you can live without a kidney. Or I could try prostitution. Or organized crime. Or assassinations.

  ‘Kelly, sorry, my mobile’s ringing.’

  ‘OK, I’ll see you tonight at Pearl’s, OK?’

  ‘I don’t know if I’ll make it, I’ve got a pile of clothes to iron and I’ve got my mum coming round tomorrow. You know what a pain she is if the flat’s a mess.’

  ‘But you can’t not come tonight, we have to celebrate.’

  ‘Honestly, I can’t.’

  ‘Mike will be there…’

  Oh, you sly temptress, you.

  ‘God, all right, then – but I can’t stay long, I’ll have to get up early to clean tomorrow.’

  ‘Fantastic! Come round and pick me up about eight,’ she says, and hangs up without giving me time to say goodbye.

  And now? Good question!

  I roll around in agony on the bed a little longer then go to the bathroom and jump in the shower. I come out an hour later, hopping barefoot across the floor to get to the phone, which won’t stop ringing.

  ‘Dad?’ I ask, certain it must be him.

  ‘Hello, am I spea
king to Miss Sandy Price?’ asks a sing-song voice.

  ‘Yes, who is this?’

  ‘Good evening, I’m Ally Green, Mr. Clark’s assistant. Am I disturbing you?’

  Clark… Clark… Clark… Could it be the nice old man who used to put us up in Canterbury every summer?

  ‘No, not at all.’

  ‘Mr. Clark would very much like to see you, and he asked me to get in touch to pencil in an appointment. He would have done it himself but unfortunately he’s away on business and won’t be back until tomorrow night.’

  ‘I see. Yes, I’d be delighted. It’s very nice of him to remember me. It would be a pleasure to see him again after so long.’

  ‘Would Friday be OK?’

  ‘Perfect.’

  ‘What address should I give?’

  ‘Er… what for?’

  ‘For the driver.’

  ‘What driver?’ I ask in confusion.

  ‘Mr. Clark was planning to have you picked up by his driver,’ she says, and in her tone and the long pause that follows I can sense her doubts.

  ‘Oh, no… There’s really no need. If you tell me where we’re supposed to be meeting, I’ll come in my car.’

  She gives me an address that’s about fifty miles from here, and I do a quick bit of mental arithmetic: if I do an average of forty all the way there, multiplied by the cost of petrol and parking, a cup of coffee, the interest rate on my credit card, minus the contents of my piggy-bank…

  ‘Actually, on second thoughts, I wouldn’t want to seem ungrateful by turning down his kind offer. Do you have a pen and paper?’

  Chapter 4

  ‘Hello? Sansy, are you there? Sansy, it’s mum. Can you hear me?’

  ‘Mmm…’

  ‘Darling, I’ve just arrived. I’m at the station. You’ll never guess who I ran into! What a horrible voice you’ve got. You haven’t caught a cold a cold, have you?’