‘You’re lucky,’ she says, pul ing her papers together. ‘You can live off him for a few months while you sort yourself out. We’l draw up a payment schedule for the overdraft too and then work out a new way for you to go forward with the business.’
I nod numbly. Maybe I’l have to, but I don’t like the idea. I want to get back together with Oli, but not because he’l pay for everything. I’d rather lose him, and the business, than feel that I’m taking him back so I can ‘live off him’ the way Clare Lomax suggests. But I don’t say anything. After al , what choice do I have? I’ve got to make this work for myself. I’ve got to change the way things have been. I quiver with purpose, I’m surprised Clare Lomax doesn’t notice.
‘And then we’l ask to see that you’re conducting your business more profitably. So it’s viable.’ She clears her throat. ‘Does that sound like a way forward to you, Miss Kapoor?’ She looks down at her pad. ‘I’m sorry. Is it Mrs Kapoor then?’
‘No,’ I say. ‘It’s Mrs Jones.’ I hate being Mrs Jones, for al the obvious reasons. I shift in my seat again, and the papers in my pocket wrap around my thigh.
‘Oh. Sorry.’ She isn’t real y paying attention. ‘Don’t be,’ I say. ‘It’s fine. So—’
‘I think we’re going to be able to work this out,’ she says, pul ing the keyboard out in front of her and swivel ing round to face the computer. ‘Like I say, Miss Kapoor, things are going to have to change. The question is, are you wil ing to make those changes?’
‘Yes, I am,’ I say, nodding, and this time I hear myself speak and it’s clear, low, confident and I believe what I’m saying, for the first time in ages.
‘I real y am.’
Chapter Twenty-Two
It is a cold day but sunny as I walk down from Liverpool Street towards the studio, hands in my pockets. I’m the other side of the City, heading back to my beloved East London. Pushing past me on either side are bustling City workers in black and grey, enlivened only by the flash of a red tie or the glint of a gold earring. I shiver in the icy wind, walking briskly.
I hug the papers to myself, trying to keep warm. Now I’m out of it, the meeting seems almost funny, it’s so awful. And one thing’s clear: though Clare Lomax and I are not destined to be friends who meet in unlikely circumstances and form a life-long bond, she’s completely right. She could see it. Things need to change. I’l be thirty-one in May. I’m a grownup, for God’s sake.
Five minutes later, I am opening the door of the Petticoat Studios at the bottom of Brick Lane. ‘Studio’ is a euphemistic name for the room I rent. It is basical y an old sixties warehouse that has been roughly divided up into different spaces of different sizes. My aunt Sameena says that when she was over visiting relatives in the seventies, she’d come to Brick Lane and see row upon row of Bangladeshi men asleep on the floors.
They’d wake up in the morning and go to work on a building site nearby, and their beds would be taken by the night-shift workers who’d come back as they were getting up. Now it has exposed brick and steel girders, and Lily the textile designer has stencil ed huge patterns onto the wal behind the erratical y manned reception desk. Being bohemian and cool does not necessarily mean the heating works or the loos flush al the time, I’ve found.
‘Hel o!’ I say to Jamie, one of the two receptionists whose salary is paid for by our extortionate rental fee. Jamie looks up and moves part of her blonde fringe away with her finger. She is wearing a black velveteen hoodie with the hood up, and is flicking through
‘Hiya, Nat!’ she nods perkily. Jamie is very perky. She’s pretty and sweet and kind, like an East London version of Sophie Dahl. ‘How was the funeral?’
‘Fine,’ I say, reaching into my pigeonhole and pul ing out the post. ‘Wel , you know.’
‘Oh, of course.’ She nods understandingly. ‘It’s real y hard, isn’t it?’
I am in no mood for trite funereal conversations, and I’m in no mood for beautiful sunny Jamie, whom I sometimes want to punch in the mornings, she’s so upbeat. I smile and nod, then trudge up the cold concrete circular stairs and unlock my studio.
It’s only been two days since I was here, but it feels longer. It’s very cold, and the big square windows don’t keep in the heat, though it’s always light. My own studio is about twelve square feet. It’s al painted white. There are floor-to-ceiling shelves next to the window and an alcove with a safe in it, covered with a curtain, a red, lemon and grey geometric fifties material from one of the bedrooms at Summercove. I keep my unsold pieces in there, and any metals I’ve bought. There’s a smal wooden table with an old, battered, paint-spattered radio, a kettle and a few mugs on one of Granny’s old trays, and the rest of the room is taken up with the workbench with al my tools on it. A hammer, pliers, dril s, wire and chain cutters, sharp knives, al covered with tiny pel ets of old copper or gold wire, my apron which makes me feel super-professional, and my sketchbook, where I used to be constantly scribbling down ideas. I haven’t drawn or written anything new in it for months.
Above the work table six big cork tiles are glued to the wal , onto which I have stuck photos – the one of Granny when she was younger; me and Jay at Summercove when we were five, squinting into the sun, both dark, fat, smal and serious; and Ben and me last year when we went as Morecambe and Wise to the Petticoat Studios Christmas drinks. Tania didn’t get it, but as she grew up on the Left Bank that’s excusable. No one else did either, though. Their average ages are about twenty-three. The photo makes me smile every time I look at it; there’s such panic in our eyes as we realise what a mistake we’ve made, and behind us are grouped our effortlessly trendy fel ow studio-renters in a variety of super-cool fancy dress outfits, from Betty Boo (Jamie, of course) to Johnny Depp as Captain Sparrow (Matt, one of the writers in the writers’ col ective in the basement). I never remember that about fancy dress: that you’re supposed to look bril iant, but gorgeous as wel . I always just look insane.
Final y, there’s a picture of Oli and me on our wedding day two years ago at the Chelsea Physic Garden, he in a light khaki summer linen suit, me in white Col ette Dinnigan. We’re in profile, black and white, laughing at each other, and we look for al the world as though we’re in a photo shoot in
I have to cal Oli now I’m back. We need to talk again. It’s been nearly three weeks, and coming back from Cornwal , from everything there and the meeting this morning, has made me see one thing clearly: this state of in- between nothingness can’t go on.
There are window boxes outside with pansies and geraniums which have died. I need to sort them out now
