Loads of my friends are going out of business. But I’m hopeful. I’ve got a new col ection I’ve just finished designing.’
‘Real y?’
‘Yes,’ I say. This is a lie, but it’s a hopeful lie. ‘I’ve just got to get the cash together to get it made up. And take it to the shows. And I have to start doing the market stal s again. That brings in the money.’
‘I don’t understand why you haven’t been doing that al along,’ Clare Lomax says. ‘According to my notes when you opened the account you were sel ing at a stal at least twice a week, and always Sundays.’
‘I don’t do that any more.’
‘Why not?’
person I hired, who told me I didn’t need to stand in the cold on a stal next to lots of other jewel ers al vying for attention and space. After the up-and-coming pop star was photographed wearing my necklace the orders started flooding in, and the website was launched a few months later. I listened to them, to Oli and Joanna, when they said I didn’t need to do that any more. And it was expensive – eighty quid a day for the stal , and the Truman Brewery near where I live has too many stal s anyway, and not enough customers, I told myself. I – Oli and I – decided I could live without it, that it’d be a better use of my time to take myself out of that scene, try and move up a level.
I was so wrong. I was wrong about that, about overpaying for the website, about the people I listened to, the way I changed my focus. Ben, in the studio next door, warned me but I didn’t listen.
‘You love the stal , Nat,’ he’d say. ‘You like meeting the people, it keeps you fresh. It’s not good for you, sitting at home or in the studio al day.’
I started trying to become a brand. A brand like the ones Oli promotes. He thinks everyone is their own brand and I’m sure he’s right, but al I can say is, I was better off when everything was simple, when I could sketch in my book, pay the nice old man off Hatton Garden to make up my gold and silver pendants, and sit there in my studio happily making up the necklaces, cutting the chains, choosing the right pair of pliers from my set to bend gold and silver wire, researching suppliers, thinking up new ideas and just trying them out, listening to my iPod, and chatting to Ben and Tania, his girlfriend, who works with him. The trouble is, most of the time I’d prefer to be in their studio with them, instead of on my own. Everything’s OK
when they’re around. There’s a distraction, someone to talk to, instead of sitting alone amidst the accessories and pliers, staring into space, wondering what on earth comes next. It’s so easy to pop next door and ask for a cup of tea, or bring them biscuits.
Ben never seems to mind. He’s one of those open, friendly people who can work in Piccadil y Circus and stil concentrate. He likes chatting and so do I. We like the same humour, the same old films, the same biscuits, we were meant to be office buddies, as we continual y say. I think Tania is not quite so keen on me hanging around like a bad smel al the time while she’s trying to mark up contact sheets or negotiate with a magazine. I think she knows I’m lonely. She wants to tel me to back off and go and do some work. And so I’ve started limiting myself to one knock on the door a day.
When I realise I’ve started thinking about it like that, I suddenly see that I have to control my loneliness – that crying al over Ben when Oli left, while Tania made some tea and went and got Jaffa Cakes (and she is French, so Jaffa Cakes are unfathomable to her, so I appreciated the gesture even more) is something you do once, because it’s a crisis point, not every week, every day.
The new strong confident me looks at Clare Lomax to see if she’d understand this, the mind that has too much time to think. She wouldn’t. I wouldn’t either if someone else explained it to me. It’s as though my life has veered way off track, and although I stil can’t quite see where it began, at least I can recognise this. I put my hands on the desk and take a deep breath.
‘Look, Miss Lomax,’ I say. ‘I have real y screwed up, but I can show you how and why, and how I’m going to change things. I know I’m good at what I do, and I want to work hard. I’ve just taken bad advice, and I know how to fix it.’ I look at her imploringly. ‘Please, please believe me. I’ve ignored you and I’m real y sorry, but I’ve been an idiot, keeping my head in the sand. I’l get the money to repay the default loan payments, I can pay them with my credit card today. But please, please don’t withdraw my overdraft facility. I just need a bit more time, but I’m going to pay it off.’
She narrows her eyes. ‘I am,’ I say. ‘I don’t want it to be like this any more. You need to trust me.’ I smile and I can hear my voice is shaking. ‘I know you’ve got no reason to, but I real y hope you do.’
I sit back in my chair and clutch the papers again.
Clare Lomax sighs. ‘OK, look, there’s a way out of this.’ I hold my breath. ‘You wil have to pay us back a regular amount each month and if you default just once more, that’s it. We’l cal in debt col ectors. You’l have to cut back on your company expenditure. And I see you’re married, right?’
‘Yes.’
‘The flat is in both your names?’
‘Just my husband’s.’
‘So they can’t take that.’
‘They can’t take what?’
‘You won’t lose your flat.’
My head is spinning. ‘Lose the flat? No, of course we wouldn’t . . . would we?’
She says musingly, ‘Miss Kapoor, I honestly don’t think you realise how serious this is.’
‘I do,’ I say, my voice practical y begging. ‘Absolutely I do.’
‘Your husband’s working?’
‘Yes – yes, he is. But—’
