then all the Pinker Lloyd fuss has died down, and he sends out his CV and gets another proper job. None of this rubbish about moving to Ludlow to make widgets – a City job. Six-figure basic, seven-figure bonus in a good year. The way it’s supposed to be.’
Saskia gestured for two more lychee martinis. The waiter bowed and glided.
‘That sounds more sensible,’ she said.
‘Yes, and the good thing about this is that it’s made my parents wake up a bit. They always thought that because Roger did what he did and because we live like we do – correction, we lived like we did – we were made of money. They thought we were rich instead of your typical London struggling well-off. So they’ve woken up to the realities a bit, and the fantastic thing is, they’ve offered to pay the boys’ way through school – boarding school – we’re resolved on that. At least I am. So all we have to do is get them through to eleven, and then Mama and Papa will do all the rest – prep school first and then somewhere decent. It’s all a long way off but you do need a plan, don’t you?’
The martinis arrived and the two women toasted each other. Across the room there was someone Arabella thought she recognised from TV. Or did she?
This lunch was a rare moment of luxury for Arabella, a rare glimpse of her old life. Josh was at his nursery, pick-up at 3.30, and Conrad was on a play date with a woman Arabella knew from NCT classes, who she’d reconnected with when bumping into her in the coffee shop. They hadn’t seen each other for years. There was something of an ideological difference, or at least a certain human stickiness, about the fact that Polly had chosen to give up work while her children were young, whereas Arabella didn’t work but also had full-time childcare. The thing about looking after young children was, you had to be cut out for it, and Arabella, quite simply and quite frankly – she said so herself – wasn’t. Her boys were lovely, but they were all-consuming, and Arabella did not want to be all-consumed. And now here they were again, both pushing Bugaboos containing sleeping three-year- olds.
The first play date at Arabella’s house had been a bit of a disaster because little Toby had had an incident in his knickers within ten minutes of being left there, and Arabella hadn’t been able to face the prospect of wiping his bottom – so when Polly got back from the hairdressers two hours later, he was pretty ripe. Arabella said, ‘Oh my God, that only just happened,’ but Polly would, once she saw the evidence first-hand, have reasons to strongly suspect that wasn’t true. Arabella’s next text to Polly had been ignored and she’d thought she’d blown it, but a fortnight later she’d called up and set up this play date. They were, for all the minor differences, from the same tribe. Arabella was due to collect Conrad just before she had to pick Josh up.
It felt like the first treat she’d had in months. The full-time-mother thing was hard.
‘Mrs Yount, so nice to see you again,’ said the head waiter, arriving at the side of their table. He made to pick up the two menus, which neither woman had touched. ‘Two set lunches?’ he asked. Saskia nodded, and then he again bowed and glided.
‘?34.50 for six courses,’ said Saskia. ‘You’re practically stealing from them.’
93
It had got to the point where Patrick could no longer bear to go to any of the meetings concerning Freddy’s future. Freddy’s injury, Freddy’s prognosis, Freddy’s insurance claim, Freddy’s future – they were all the same thing. If there were to be a single meeting which he knew in advance was going to be decisive, that would be different: Patrick could clench his teeth and get through it. But it was never like that. The insurance company’s lawyers were always there, stalling, dodging, and driving up the wall even the other professionals who were supposed to be used to this kind of thing.
The result was that Patrick asked Mickey to go to the meetings on his and Freddy’s behalf. He trusted Mickey. It was the man’s evident upset over what was happening which had caused this. Patrick could see that Mickey felt just as miserable as he did and with that could see the truth, which was that however he might have begun his relationship with the Kamos – seeing Freddy as a club asset to be exploited and milked and cashed in on to the maximum possible extent – he had now come to the point where he loved Freddy. Patrick finally had someone he could be completely open with about his son’s circumstances. So the strangest of things had happened and Patrick and Mickey had become, sort of, friends. They were not fully at ease with each other, and never would be – but on the subject of Freddy, they could be fully honest and open. Their relations had the freedom-within-boundaries of friendship.
‘I have a favour to ask of you,’ Patrick said. The two men were sitting downstairs watching Barcelona play Majorca in La Liga on a Sunday evening, while Freddy was upstairs in the games room. All three of them found it painful to watch football, and all three of them were continuing to do so out of principle and also out of the fear that if they ever gave the habit up, they might not get it back. ‘I must ask if you will represent Freddy alone at these meetings. I find them too difficult. I can’t go any more. Until there is real news.’
Mickey understood straight away what was being asked of him and what it implied.
‘Of course I will do that, Patrick. It would be an honour.’
And so that’s what Mickey had been doing – going to the meetings and soaking up the bullshit. In doing this, he had also been dishing out some stick. The absence of the Kamos allowed him to show just how upset he was, which meant it allowed him to be much angrier and much more explicit.
‘Who the fuck do you think you are?’ he said to the most senior of the four executives from the insurance company present at their last meeting. The senior one was the skinniest, as in corporate affairs these days was often the way. Next to him were two plumpish middle-manager types, Tweedledum and Tweedledee, one of whom was in charge of medical mumbo-jumbo and the other responsible for legal bullshit, and the fourth was a subordinate who, to judge from his contributions to meetings thus far, might have been deaf-mute. ‘What the fuck do you think you’re doing? You think Freddy Kamo’s some jungle bunny who should piss off back to the bush and still be grateful he’s got one good knee left? Is that it? You think he’s some unfortunate loser who’s so thick he isn’t going to realise he has a valid, legally binding contract with you?’
‘I find this extremely offensive,’ said the man, starting to get up from his seat.
‘Good. And you’ll fucking well sit still and listen to it unless you want to be reading all about your refusal to pay out in the
Mickey felt better. He knew that the bluster would have no effect, but the threat to go public might. The negotiations were protected by a non-disclosure agreement, but if the insurance company could be shown to be behaving unreasonably he would be able to go public. What was happening behind the scenes, almost certainly, was that they were putting together the final details of the settlement they were prepared to make. This would involve Freddy not being allowed to play football ever again. His pay-out would be conditional on his retiring from football permanently – for the obvious reason that if they shelled out a huge amount of money to compensate him for not playing, he shouldn’t subsequently go on to be paid for playing. Mickey had mentioned this to Patrick, who seemed to have taken it in, but he wasn’t really sure: he didn’t want to labour the point. People who knew him might laugh at the idea of Mickey trying not to labour a point, but the truth was, he didn’t want to, because he didn’t want to seem to be patronising Patrick. Who after all was not stupid, and who would realise what this meant: no more football for Freddy. Ever. He would be being paid not for doing the thing he loved, but for never doing it again. It was a hell of a thing for the boy to have to face, and Mickey was morally certain Patrick wouldn’t have alerted his son to what might happen. The news itself would be hard enough to take: no point building up the badness too far in advance.
‘I suspect you are well aware the medical evidence is much more complex than you are giving us leave to understand,’ said the insurance man. ‘Expert opinion about the condition of Mr Kamo’s knees is not unanimous. As you know, these settlements often impose conditions on the subsequent career of a player and it would be cruel and reckless to see such conditions imposed on a man as young and talented as Mr Kamo without feeling certain
