Just My Luck(53)

The accountant continues to talk about a sliding scale of tax, he tells us what the laws are between spouses and much more besides. I do my best to take it in but all I want is for the meeting to end. For people to stop talking about money. Just for a few minutes.

Finally, we are outside, on the busy London street, the wind whips at the skirt of my dress and bits of rubbish scuttle across the road with pedestrians. It’s a chilly day, the air pinches. It’s been a weird spring weather-wise. Bright one minute, wet and nippy the next. Sometimes we have all four seasons in a day. It seems the mercurial weather is reflecting our situation. Unprecedented. Unforeseeable. Gillian says goodbye and Jake hails a cab. Once inside, he asks the driver to take us back to Bucks.

‘I can do, mate, but it will cost you a few hundred quid.’

‘Let me worry about that,’ says Jake. He taps his breast pocket. A flair of frustration slaps me. He is behaving like a dick.

‘Don’t be insane,’ I snap. ‘Please just take us to Marylebone Station,’ I say to the cabbie. The cabbie nods, seemingly unconcerned about missing out on a huge fare that would have taken him far out of his usual zone. Most likely he is relieved; he probably thinks no amount of money is worth sitting on the A4, M4, M25 and A41 on a Friday afternoon, breathing in traffic fumes.

We sit in silence. I fiddle with the air-conditioning. I suddenly feel hot inside and out. I stare out of the window, not wanting to catch Jake’s eye but unsure why. Shouldn’t we be constantly celebrating? If Jake had his way, we’d be popping open a bottle of champagne in the cab, have it on tap. Anyone would. Right? My eyes fall on one grubby sleeping bag after another, legs poking out of cardboard homes. Many homeless people set up camp on the busiest London streets.

Jake sighs. His thoughts are clearly travelling along a similar path. ‘Why are you resisting this?’ he asks.

‘I’m not resisting anything, I’m—’ I can’t explain it to him, I can’t explain it to myself.

‘Don’t you remember what it was like, Lexi?’ Jake’s voice oozes an attractive mix of emotions. He sounds sincere, concerned, reasonable. The brash, overly confident, idiot-man who was annoying and confusing has apparently slipped out of the cab. ‘How many times have you woken up in the middle of the night, worried about money, about our future?’

I sigh. It’s true. I remember the helpless black, when my worries chased and chased around my head. Snowballing until I felt immobilised, unable to think, a panic-induced brain-freeze. Last year we’d agreed that Emily could go on the school skiing trip to Norway and, to ensure things remained fair and even in our home, that Logan could go on a geography field trip to Italy. I lay awake for many nights, running the numbers through my head, over and over again. How come the trips were so expensive, considering the kids were travelling by coach, and flying on airlines that were little more than buckets with an engine? What about group discounts? And another thing, my kids were flying in buckets! This worry also kept me awake, but it wasn’t related to money, or was it? Does money increase safety and security? I think of Toma, Reveka and Benke. Yes, of course it does.

When the kids came home from their trips, they both reported that the accommodation and food turned out to be dreadful. Not that they cared because they had been with their friends, joining in, they were not the ones being ignored or left out. Left behind. But I had cared because I value value for money. I knew I could have created the exact same holidays for a fraction of the price. And besides the outlay for the holiday (which we’d scrimped for), there was the cost of the equipment and kit. I’d bought Emily’s ski jacket and salopettes from TK Maxx and yet it still came to hundreds. Logan had needed waterproofs, climbing boots and a rucksack. I sold clothes on eBay to raise a bit extra. I’ve never told Jake, but I started to buy from there too. T-shirts and stuff, mostly for Logan. From about the age of eleven he wanted Nike like everyone else, Superdry and Jack Wills. They were brands that I could only justify if I picked them up second-hand. Logan believes me when I say I always pre-wash shop clothes before he wears them to ‘soften them up’. I’ve never tried the same trick with Emily. Emily needs the security of price tags. We paid for the school trips in instalments. The final payment for both trips happened to fall in the same week. I sold the ring my grandmother had given me for my twenty-first birthday. No one noticed when I stopped wearing the little ruby. No one other than me.

So yes, I do remember the dark nights of worry. We weren’t starving, we weren’t living on the street, but we had to be careful. We were a family that made do. That managed.

And now that was all gone. That is all over. I am safe. We all are. We can pay off our mortgage, we will never again see a red demand bill. It is bliss. I should be feeling something pure and uncomplicated. Joy. Happiness.

‘Haven’t you always wanted to be rich, Lexi?’

‘Well, yes of course. Everyone wants to be rich, don’t they,’ I reply, trying hard not to make it sound like a question. It is obviously true that money solves a lot of problems, that is a given.

The news is, it creates some too.





25


Emily


Monday, 13th May

Dad’s idea of throwing a party is inspired! Just what I need. A great distraction. A way of not thinking about it. I don’t like thinking about it. Even when I try, I can’t. It’s like I leave my body. I float above myself and theoretically think, what should that girl have done? What should she do now? And I don’t know. So I’m not doing anything about it. Staying in the moment is the best. That’s what I have to do. Not think about what has happened or what might happen next. Hey, basically I’m practising mindfulness for screwed teens.