Capital

there was a thing. It was some bank do for one of the charities Pinker Lloyd supported to advance the social ambitions of its senior partners. Arabella couldn’t quite remember which – it was Spina Bifida or Aids Orphans or the Soil Association. Something like that. It was a big thing too, she remembered, some sort of ball or banquet or ball-banquet. These occasions were, for Arabella, half fun and half ghastly, depending on the exact social mix much more than on the entertainment or venue. Now and then she would buy something for charity, a frock or cooking lesson or holiday week at somebody’s house. That would be out of the question tonight, of course, for two reasons: one, since the Christmas bonus disaster, they were officially tightening their belts; two, with this hangover, it was out of the question for her to go to the thing. It would literally kill her.
    Roger came out of the shower and Arabella broke her news.
    ‘Well, that’s great. A pair of tickets at two hundred quid each and I’ll be sitting there on my own like a spare prick at a table of my senior colleagues. Still, it’s fair enough, though, I suppose, given that I didn’t give you any warning. Oh wait, hang on a minute – now that I think about it, I’ve been reminding you at regular intervals for three bloody months, up to and including yesterday.’
    ‘Darling, I said I was sorry.’
    ‘Actually no, in point of fact, you didn’t. What you said was that you were too ill to come.’
    ‘Well, I meant that I was sorry.’
    ‘Oh, fine, so that’s all right then. That’s fantastic. Fabulous. And I only agreed to go in the first place because I knew you wanted to.’
    Which wasn’t true, and both of them knew it; Roger liked the firm’s charity dos, where he could show off his good nature and his good manners and his gift for work-related socialising; but Arabella, under the circumstances, allowed it to pass.
    ‘Take someone else, darling. Take—’ and Arabella, who had been about to suggest Saskia, caught herself just in time, a. because Roger didn’t like Saskia, b. because she didn’t entirely trust her friend with her husband, and c. because Saskia would be just as hung-over as she was, and if Roger called her and she turned him down he would be even more cross than he was already. ‘Take Matya.’
    Roger blinked and blushed slightly and stood a tiny bit straighter. Arabella, who was often oblivious to things, had not consciously registered that her husband fancied their nanny; but as she saw Roger’s reaction to her suggestion, she realised that he did. Not to worry. Roger was not the kind of man to sleep with the nanny, he just wasn’t the type; he was too lazy and too vain to make himself ridiculous in that specific way and Matya wasn’t the type either, and besides, if she fancied Roger so much as a tiny bit it would have shown up on Arabella’s radar. No, it was all fine. All it meant was that Roger would be more likely to go along with the suggestion, which was so much the better. Except – shit! – she herself would have to get the children ready for, and then into, bed. Shit. But that was still better than five hours or so given over to clean drinking water for Haitians or whatever it was.
    To cover for the fact that he liked the idea, Roger began to make objections.
    ‘She’ll be bored out of her mind.’
    ‘It’ll be a nice change for her.’
    ‘She’ll be out of her depth.’
    ‘With your colleagues? Don’t be stupid. She won’t have to talk much, just sit there looking pretty and silent and pretending to listen while they go wanking on about shooting and the congestion charge.’
    And then finally something real:
    ‘They’ll laugh at me if they know I’ve taken the nanny.’
    ‘So don’t tell them. Just say she’s a friend. We’ll brief her to say the same thing.’
    ‘They’ll think she’s an escort.’
    ‘When you’ve got me at home to come back to, I don’t think so.’
    So Roger found himself in a good mood, and looking forward to his evening. He began humming show tunes as he opened the wardrobe and flicked through the racks, looking for his Armani dinner suit.

59
     
     
    Matya had an ambivalent relationship with the currents of money on which much of London seemed to float. It was part of the reason she was here: she had come to this big city, this world city, to try her luck, and she would be lying if she said that the idea of making money was no part of that luck. She