One Thing Leads to Another

скачать книгу бесплатно


After ringing off, Geordie clenched his fist in triumph. ‘Yes, you little beauty!’ he shouted. She must be keen. Well, quite keen. She must be, she must be. It was only Monday. Five days to contain his excitement. He prayed it would be sunny.

His Thai was almost cold and both Flin and Jessica had finished theirs.

‘Just what I need,’ said Flin ruefully, ‘a delirious loved-up housemate.’

‘This is very thrilling,’ announced Jessica, then thought of her own situation. Despite her vows, she’d enjoyed Tommy’s attentions. Perhaps she would go to the cricket match on Saturday and see him then. She could ask Lucie to come with her and then she’d have someone to talk to while the boys were fielding. Cricket matches could be quite fun if it was a warm and sunny day and there were plenty of people she knew. Add a bottle of wine or two and it made for quite a relaxing day out. She felt rather pleased with her plan, and smiled to herself at the prospect.

chapter seven Money – Or the Lack of It (#ulink_73f5a79a-63bc-5022-b122-a216e1c66b1d)

Despite the enormity of the events that had occurred to him since he’d last been in the office, Flin had arrived back at work to discover nothing much had changed; he felt as though he’d never been away. Thanks to Tiffany, both his e-mail and voicemail had been regularly checked and his in-tray neatly sorted. She was away his first day back, but on her return had made a beeline for his desk and flashed him one of her huge dimpled grins.

‘Hi, you’re back! How was it? I’ve been itching to know.’

‘It was terrible. Worse than terrible,’ he confessed, the humiliation returning once again.

‘No way – why?’ She was sitting on the edge of his desk, her out-sized shirtsleeves reaching her knuckles, and thick rubber-soled pumps dangling from the end of her legs.

‘I don’t know if I can tell you. I’m too embarrassed.’ He was too, but somehow couldn’t help smiling at her look of utter incredulity.

‘Oh, Flin, you have to!’

He acquiesced, giving her the Geordie Heavily Edited Version. ‘So as you can imagine, I’m almost glad to be back at work.’

‘I’m so sorry. What a bitch – honestly.’ She bit her bottom lip for a moment, then added, ‘Well, it’s nice to have you back. It’s been really boring without you.’

Her sincerity was genuine and spontaneous. Flin felt cheered – this was the nicest thing anyone had said to him in a long time. ‘Thank you – and thanks for clearing the deck.’

‘Oh, no problem,’ she said, then trotted off to her own desk.

No one else really probed him too much about his holiday. Martina had said, ‘Wow! You look really brown!’ but didn’t actually ask him whether he’d enjoyed himself or not and by lunchtime his being away was old news and quite forgotten.

He had also phoned his bank to order new cards and made an arrangement to take out thirty pounds from his nearest branch. It was a sum unlikely to last him a week, but Flin hoped it would at least encourage him to try and be a bit frugal. Noticing a day later that two-thirds had already gone, he phoned his bank again to check his balance. He wished he hadn’t – just twenty-six pounds and eleven pence left until he was up to his overdraft limit. This revelation plunged him into renewed gloom. He knew he’d spent a lot of what he’d saved while being at his sister’s on the holiday, but was sure he had at the very least in excess of a hundred pounds. How could he be so far out? It was depressing but, none the less, he was confident he could pull through until pay-day, so long as there was no extra drain on his resources.

‘I’m broke too, if it’s any consolation,’ Tiffany told him later.

‘Really?’ Flin had never really given much thought to anyone else having cash crises. Obviously Tiffany earned less than him, being only an assistant publicist, but he just assumed everyone else was better than him at looking after their money. Hearing Tiffany’s tales of financial strife rather cheered him up, he shamefully realized. A partner in debt, a fellow money-mismanager. He had always felt he was the abnormal one among his group of friends; they all seemed to live their lives with consummate ease on what they either earned or had inherited.

Geordie arrived back shortly after him that evening and quickly brought up the subject of outstanding bills.

‘We’ve got to pay the gas, electricity and phone connection fee, I’m afraid. Here,’ he said, handing Flin the letters. ‘Sorry, but it always costs a bit to get everything set up in a new house.’

‘So how much do I need to pay?’

‘Your share is forty-eight pounds, I think. We really should send it off tomorrow. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.’

Flin felt sick. ‘The problem is, old man, I don’t actually have forty-eight pounds. I’ve got thirty-six quid to last me nine days and ten of that is in cash. Can’t we wait for a final notice before paying these?’ Why did Geordie always have to be so organized about such things, and why did he always have to make him feel so bad about being poverty stricken?

Geordie gave Flin a rueful grin. ‘Look, don’t worry about it. I’ll pay your share and you can pay me back next week when you get paid. But honestly, Flin, you are hopeless. I just don’t understand how you never know the balance of your account.’

‘I thought I did, and I thought it was a lot more,’ he said feebly and added, ‘But thanks – I’ll pay you back next Wednesday.’

‘You should keep a book and note down everything you spend, then you’d always know. Just get into the habit.’

‘Yeah, yeah, I know.’ His friend was right and Flin also knew that it was decent of Geordie to bail him out, but being patronized by his housemate made Flin feel resentful. It must be so wonderful, he thought, to have money like Geordie.

‘Maybe I should change jobs altogether – perhaps that’s the way to get ahead in the competition,’ Flin told him resignedly.

‘Don’t be ridiculous – you love your job.’

‘I know I do on the whole, but I clearly don’t make enough to live on, do I? I’m sick of being perpetually broke and having to suck up to you to help me out.’

‘You’d be mad to chuck it in. Where else are you going to have the opportunity to meet all those film stars and so on? You may not get paid a fortune, but you don’t do too badly considering you’re being paid to watch films and visit sets. Can’t you just put a bit aside once a month or something?’

‘I do always do that, but then dig into it because I run out of the other. It’s all very well for you to preach at me, but you’re one of the main culprits in persuading me to do things.’

‘You can always say “no”.’

‘And watch you and Jessica go off and have fun without me? I’d like to see you try it – honestly, Geordie, you have no idea what it’s like always to be short of cash.’

‘Look, I’m sorry, but I have little sympathy. You have loads of good mates, a fantastically interesting job, you still manage to go on holidays abroad and do nearly all the things you want to do. I know this Poppy thing’s been a blow, but really, you have a pretty good life. You’re just feeling sorry for yourself, that’s all. And it’s not my fault I’m not poor like you.’

Before Flin could respond, Jessica walked in. ‘Hi, darlings, can you give me a hand? I decided to do a shop on my way back from work.’

The taxi outside was loaded with Tesco bags, a crate of beer, washing powder and an enormous bag of potatoes. Flin and Geordie dutifully obliged and took everything straight into the kitchen while Jessica paid the taxi. As they were filling up the fridge, she came in and gave them both a kiss and told them they owed her twenty-six pounds each.

‘You can add it to the tab,’ Geordie told a distraught-looking Flin.

‘Thanks,’ he mumbled quietly. Regardless of what Geordie had just said, he really hated life at the moment. How different things had been a few years before. At school and then university, no one had had a lot of money. They all seemed to be more or less in the same boat. Geordie may have had a trust fund, but they all had to do temping jobs in the holidays and during their years off; and somehow money was never much of an issue. And there were grants, parents and overdrafts to pay the bulk of life’s costs. Now, they were all totally on their own, with no help from anyone. And there was an increasingly obvious divide between those who earned a lot (i.e. all his friends), and those who did not (i.e. him). He was wallowing in self-pity again. It was unlike him to feel down for long, but he really had to try and snap out of it, and fast.

chapter eight A Sunny Afternoon in Richmond (and a Bit in Borehamwood) (#ulink_c3216728-a5cf-59bb-8710-f3b962d4272c)

Geordie had begun to think his boss had almost forgotten he existed when Burt uncharacteristically gave him the challenge of coming up with a new marketing package. He was to work on it with Mike, another sales manager who’d joined FDU just before him. The two had always got on well and Mike had even played in Geordie’s rugby team on a couple of occasions. He was really the only person at FDU that Geordie saw for the odd beer outside work; Mike was bored too and was one person Geordie could whinge to about Burt and work who truly appreciated his grievances.

‘It’s time you two got your brains into gear,’ their Taiwanese boss told them with typical frankness. ‘You’ve both been cruising along for too long on your soft arses, so you better make it good.’

This had come as something of a shock to Geordie, who had become unaccustomed to applying his brain much at work. After all, he’d hardly had much need: he could sell monitors in his sleep. What was more, Burt had only given them a couple of days to get their plans together. All the same, he and Mike had worked hard and Geordie felt pretty pleased with their efforts. Furthermore, he’d quite enjoyed the whole exercise. His excitement about Molly had, he felt, if anything, given him a sharper edge that week.

Their plan was to link up with a graphics card company. This was something that was put into a PC to improve all the computer graphics and presentation. Geordie’s premise was that if an individual wanted improved graphics it stood to reason that he would want a decent monitor too on which to use his improved presentation. Therefore he proposed to strike a deal with a graphics card company whereby FDU placed a voucher worth a small discount off any FDU monitor. This would give the graphics card company a competitive edge over other graphic card companies. He and Mike had worked out the finer points of how to implement this dazzling piece of marketing initiative and enthusiastically presented their plans to Burt.

‘I am thinking this,’ he said to them deliberately, ‘it is like a flower in a piece of shit: you made it look very pretty and attractive, but underneath it, it is full of crap.’

‘OK, fine,’ said Mike, after a short pause, ‘how about this: we create a link-save with a graphics card company whereby a buyer gets twenty-five per cent off both products when he or she buys them together.’

‘Different flower, same piece of shit,’ Burt said flatly. ‘A whole lot of trouble for very small feedback. You come up with an idea that is simple to set up and makes us big money on big order, and then I might be interested. This idea of yours will never make us much money as we are only talking about individual sales. But keep trying. I want you two to keep thinking of a plan.’

‘Well that was a bit of a waste of time,’ Geordie grumbled to Mike after they left Burt’s office.

‘Yeah, it was a bit demoralizing,’ Mike added, ‘but he’s right, you know.’

It was a comment Geordie had not expected from Mike, but it came like a sharp slap round the face. Mike was right: Burt was right. Geordie thought quickly. ‘I can see that now,’ he said after a pause. ‘Well, we’ll just have to come up with something really good instead and dazzle him with our sensational business acumen.’ They chuckled, but Geordie realized he’d meant it; thinking up cunning marketing strategies was certainly more fun than not really having to think at all. And although he had little time for Burt as a man-manager, he greatly respected what he’d achieved. Burt was an entrepreneur, and had set up FDU from nothing, zipping between Taiwan and the UK. Although it was still a comparatively small company with only two dozen full-time employees in the Borehamwood office, it had a high annual turnover and Geordie reckoned Burt must be taking home at least a six-figure salary. What Burt had told him in so swiftly stamping on his idea was that it was no good wasting valuable time on small fry. You had to make the maximum use of time and expenditure and think big. If Geordie was ever going to make it alone, these were the sort of tenets he was going to need to follow.

Driving back home that night, Geordie realized he’d let complacency set in. He was a good salesman, but had been doing the job with his eyes shut. It was an attitude that would hinder his entrepreneurial dreams. He hadn’t been challenging himself and it was no wonder he was bored. Bored and becoming boring. Hardly surprising he couldn’t find a girlfriend. But now Burt had laid down the gauntlet: the challenge was there for the taking. He hadn’t understood until it was spelt out for him that what Burt wanted was people with initiative and drive, two things that had been painfully lacking from his life in recent months. His boss had been ignoring him because he hadn’t earned any attention. Successfully selling monitors was not enough.

It also became clear to him that the same principles applied to his quest for Molly’s heart and that his time of reckoning was painfully close. It was Friday evening, the weekend had arrived once more. Geordie felt convinced that the next twenty-four hours had the potential to be one of the most important days in his life. He knew quite a few people would be going to the pub that evening, but was determined not to waste away an evening with idle debauchery. Jessica was going for dinner with Lucie, but he had persuaded Flin to stay in with him, reminding him that going out would only mean spending money he did not have.

‘Well played,’ Flin told him when he saw the pie, ice-cream and cans of beer Geordie had brought back with him. ‘I’ll go out and buy some more cigarettes while you fix up the fodder.’

‘Look, I feel a bit guilty staying in on a summer’s evening, don’t you?’ Geordie confessed.

‘A couple of quick ones in the Rutland might not be a bad idea,’ suggested Flin.

‘Not a bad idea at all,’ agreed Geordie quickly, ‘although I’d sort of meant to stay in and prepare myself psychologically.’

‘Don’t be so pathetic. Honestly, Geordie, we’ll only have a couple of pints and anyway, it’ll relax you.’

‘Oh, all right,’ agreed Geordie. He’d always found it hard to say no to the lure of the pub.

‘So tomorrow’s the big date,’ said Flin, as Geordie put two pints onto the wall outside the pub.

‘Feeling a bit nervous about it, to tell the truth,’ Geordie confessed. ‘Honestly, old man, I took to her that night like I’ve never taken to anyone before.’

‘You’re making me very jealous. You’re about to embark on the love of your life, while I’ve just finished with mine. One of life’s strange little ironies, I suppose.’

‘Look, I’ve only met her once. She might find me totally repellent by the end of tomorrow. And anyway, Poppy wasn’t the love of your life, so don’t be so melodramatic. Furthermore it would never have lasted.’

‘How do you know?’

‘It just wouldn’t.’

‘So are you suggesting that if a relationship isn’t going to last it’s not really worth getting excited about?’

‘Suppose I am. I mean, what’s the point at our age? I, for one, do not want to be spending my entire life going out with people for a month or two and then moving on to someone else. I think the idea of long-lasting companionship is quite appealing. It’s different when you’re younger anyway – you’re surrounded by an enormous choice of women all after pretty much the same thing, so it’s a hell of a lot easier to chop and change. Nowadays, it’s a damn sight harder to meet new people, and, more specifically, new and single people. I don’t want to have to embark, again and again on an increasingly difficult quest for girlfriends. Anyway, I thought we agreed this in our pact.’

‘I didn’t realize a proper girlfriend meant girlfriend for life. You’re only saying all this because you’re so loved up. We don’t all have to follow Eddie Fussle’s example, you know.’

‘I never mentioned marriage, Flin. You say I’m loved up, but you’re just bitter.’

Talking of which, Geordie and Flin managed four apiece before they finally made it back to the house. They still hadn’t eaten and so were beginning to feel quite drunk. Geordie’s choice of stodge helped soak up the alcohol, but they also drank the tins of beer bought earlier. At the end of the video they felt pissed enough to put on Flin’s copy of Withnail and I for yet another viewing and sat sipping glasses of whisky, anticipating out loud their favourite lines.