only a few minutes ago, was now so quiet Roger could hear a faint electronic hum, coming perhaps from the lights, or from somebody’s hard drive, a sound he had, despite years spent in and around this room, never heard before. He had never seen them, his crew, his colleagues, his soon-to-be-ex-colleagues, looking like this: Slim Tony literally had his mouth hanging open, tough Michelle looked as if she was about to cry, Jez was sitting with a phone handset held up to his ear, but was ignoring it, moon-faced, to stare at Roger. Jez’s eyes moved sideways to look at the security guard for a moment. Then they switched back to gawking at Roger. Then back to the guard. Then back again. It was like he was watching tennis. Never had so many screens of data been ignored by so many traders for so long.
In his office, Roger had a decision to make. Do I close the electronic blinds, or do this with the blinds open? Seem ashamed, or let people see my shame? Luckily, the choice was made for him by Clinton the security guard, who hit the switch, and turned the room opaque – which was thoughtful, or experienced, of him. But there nonetheless was a small humiliation even in that, because right up until this moment no security guard at Pinker Lloyd would ever have dreamed of touching any button, of making any adjustment, in Roger’s office, unless told to do so. Clinton felt right at home here. Clinton was in charge. That was how bad this was. That was how real this was. His passwords would already have been changed to lock him out from the bank’s computer systems.
The door opened. Another security guard, who was also black, came in, carrying an empty cardboard wine carton. He put it on Roger’s desk.
‘For your stuff,’ said Clinton. The guard who had brought in the wine carton – a Sancerre, Roger noticed – helpfully opened the cardboard flaps on top. The guard stepped back but did not leave the room.
Roger went round to the other side of his desk. My stuff. Right. The desk had a photograph of Arabella and the boys in winter clothes, taken two years ago at Verbier, the nanny who had just wiped Joshua’s nose out of shot except for a patch of shadow at the bottom of the frame. Arabella hadn’t liked the picture because she thought the light unflatteringly bright but everyone looked so glowing and healthy that it was one of Roger’s favourite pictures of them. He put it in the bottom of the cardboard box, then followed it with his pen. Then his desk diary. He opened the drawers of the desk, and Clinton came round to stand behind him. Roger knew why: to stop him taking anything belonging to the bank. In theory Roger knew the whole drill, because it was standard operating procedure whenever anybody was sacked. But there was, it turned out, a big difference between theory and practice, and it was this: theory was when it happened to other people. Practice was when it happened to you.
There wasn’t much in his desk, except – and this was something he’d entirely forgotten about – a spare shirt he’d taken in for some meeting a few months before but never bothered to put on, and a pair of trainers he’d taken in to work when he was thinking about using the bank’s gym. There was a Moleskine notebook Arabella had put in his Christmas stocking one year when they gave each other stockings (hers had a spa voucher and a pair of earrings). The notebook was empty apart from a set of numbers which Roger took a moment to recognise. They were the sums he had done back when he was calculating his expenditure and how much money he needed from last year’s bonus. The non-appearing million-pound bonus. He started to put his BlackBerry in his pocket, but Clinton held out his hand and coughed. He and Roger looked at each other.
‘What?’ said Roger.
‘That’s bank property,’ said Clinton. He was matter-of-fact about it. Roger put the BlackBerry back down on the desk. He was almost done. He put in a bottle of wine that a member of his crew had given him as a thank-you for something a couple of months back. His desk diary, largely unused, was the last thing to go in his box, which was about a third full. Roger picked it up.
‘OK,’ said Clinton, now clearly in charge. He opened the door, and Roger went through it, the two security guards trailing behind. This time one or two people pretended not to stare; one or two of them looked as if they wanted to say something but weren’t sure what to do. Slim Tony, bless him, held his hand up to his ear with thumb and index finger extended like a phone: call me, or I’ll call you. Then he made a drinky-drinky gesture. Roger smiled at everyone he made eye contact with, because after all, you had to act as if you could see the funny side.
At the edge of the lift lobby, he stopped. Clinton and his colleague stopped too. Roger straightened his back and, with his box in front of him, raised his head to address the whole room.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘it’s been real.’
Then he turned and went out to the lift. It took a very long time to come. Everything seemed too loud: the whirr of the cable as it ascended, the ping of the button announcing its arrival, the faint grinding as the door opened. Down they went. At the ground floor Clinton opened the security gate for him.
‘Do you want my pass?’ asked Roger. Clinton shook his head.
‘It won’t work any more,’ he said. ‘Goodbye.’
And Roger walked out of the door of Pinker Lloyd for the last time.
85
Arabella had her good points. She was, in her way, resilient. She had the toughness of her obliviousness. So if he had had to guess, Roger would have guessed that she would be brave and strong about what had happened. Her stronger, stuff-the-world side would kick in and she would be realistic and practical. She would be a rock.
That turned out not to be the case. Wrong, hugely wrong, mega-wrong. Arabella went to pieces, and did so in the most direct way possible: by bursting into tears, falling onto the sofa, and saying, over and over and over again, ‘But what are we going to do?’
The right move for Roger would obviously have been to sit down on the sofa beside her, put his arms around her, and tell her that everything was going to be all right. But Roger found that he didn’t have it in himself to do that. Wasn’t the first stage supposed to be denial? Roger felt a distinct lack of denial. What had happened wasn’t nearly deniable enough.
‘I don’t know,’ said Roger. ‘I have no idea.’
He had been feeling pretty shitty when he walked in, and Arabella’s reaction was making him feel even worse. The trip home had been hell. Not as hell as it would have been if he’d had to take the Tube; that, carrying his box of personal effects, would have killed him. So no, not that bad. But still pretty bad. The cab ride had been nauseating; the driver was one of those cabbies addicted to side roads and back-doubles, and he seemed to pride himself on never travelling in a straight line for more than fifty metres, with a special penchant for targeting streets featuring sleeping policemen, so the cab’s swaying, bouncing motion left Roger feeling physically sick. He also found himself, for the first time ever, thinking about the cost of the cab. All those other times he’d taken taxis, and never given it a thought… the time sweeping through the dark with Matya in the seat beside him, watching her reflection in the glass, looking at her smile, imagining giving her one right there on the wide back seat… and now here he was, his cardboard box and his rising nausea, one eye on the meter. Jesus it was expensive. When had the prices gone up so much? It was going to hit thirty quid, for God’s sake!
And now here was Arabella, making him feel worse. Maybe that was what she always did; maybe she always made him feel worse, and he’d never really noticed before. Maybe what seemed like the ordinary rough-and-tumble of marriage, combined with hard work and London, was something simpler: the fact that added to any equation, Arabella made it worse. What don’t you need, when you’ve just, completely out of the blue, lost your job? What’s literally the very last thing you need? A spouse convulsed with disbelieving grief. That’ll do it.
Arabella was now rocking backwards and forwards.
‘What are we going to do, what are we going to do, what are we going to do?’
‘I don’t know. Where are the children?’
‘What are we going to do? I don’t know. How should I know? Out somewhere. With Matya. What are we going to do?’
‘Well, for a start, we’re going to have to cut back on expenditure everywhere. Everywhere,’ said Roger. ‘No child-support money to spend on frocks, not any more’ – because that was where that ?1,500 a year went, a fact he knew she didn’t know he knew. Ha! Take that! Screw you very much! Arabella blinked. He’d got her! Yeah! Take that!
‘Gym membership… lunches out… all that stuff will have to go.’
Arabella kept rocking.
Sod this for a game of soldiers. Roger needed to get some air. He turned and went out the door thinking, I
