5 This morning, Carole steps off the escalator, exits Liverpool Street station begins to move down Bishopsgate with the inner force of a swinging wrecking ball through the choreographic chaos of the rushing hour as she takes the long way around to her place of work in order to get just a little more exercise in because she'll probably spend most of the next fourteen hours sitting down even though she went for her daily jog as she does every day while Freddy is still snug in bed until he'll spring out of it twenty minutes before he's due to leave, shower, shave, dive into a bowl of Rice Krispies and put on the suit he rotates with seven others ditto the shoes she runs from Fulham to Hammersmith every morning along with all the other fitness freaks in their bright designer jogging gear and pedometer wrist straps that measure everything from their blood pressure and heart rate to see how far and fast they're running a few like her even pound the pavement in the freezing dawn of winter when icy particles hang off the illuminated green and gold of Hammersmith Bridge with its eerily glowing towers and heraldry she runs for her life because to slip up is to begin descending the slippery slope to giving in to failure, to inertia, to feeling sorry for herself about that moment in her life which still creeps to the front of her memory when she least expects it she was a child at the time, how could those beasts have done that to her? how could she have blamed herself when she was so blameless? the only morning she doesn't run is when she's doubled over with period pains for which she takes extra-strength painkillers in order to haul herself to work or risk being accused of pulling a monthly sickie busted! yes, you are a woman she even contemplated having her womb taken out to eliminate periods altogether, which would surely be her greatest possible career move, a tactical hysterectomy for ambitious women with menstruation problems Carole arrives at the bank's headquarters overlooking the river, where it was clear from her first day on the job she was expected to be as groomed as
her counterparts on American television dramas about female lawyers, politicians, and detectives women who miraculously spend their working day wearing bondage-tight skirts and vertiginous, destabilizing heels which make their feet look bound the erogenous zones of crushed muscles and cramped bones, encased in upmarket strippers' heels and if she has to cripple herself to signal her education, talent, intellect, skills and leadership potential then so be it her morning mantra in the bathroom mirror forget the fact she's got Vivaldi's Four Seasons as her ring tone, the public face of her musical taste sometimes Carole loves dancing like a warrior queen to frenzied beats of the war- painted shamanistic godfather, Fela Kuti loves the way he rips apart her emotions with his polyrhythmic percussions and unashamedly flatulent horns blasting away all pretence at nicety-niceness with his anti-corruption-lyrical-political broadsides and the futuristic psychedelics of Parliament Funkadelic who teleport their freakilicious mothership logic into her brain, activating its neglected right side with their crazed imagination and outrageously costumed performances she loves to watch on YouTube while dancing for herself out of it out of her head out of her body feeling it freeing it nobody watching nobody judging
moving on to James Brown, the Godfather of Soul get on up, Carole, get on up which is exactly what she's doing as she disappears between the glass revolving doors of the tall office building steps on to the oceanic green and grey whorls of 900-million-year-old Connemara marble (proudly inscribed on a plaque) walks past the cheery school leaver receptionist wearing a cheap plastic weave (she really should tell her) who's so grateful when Carole stops for a motivational chat – what are your plans, Tess? you can't stay here for ever, you've got to move on up she swipes her card on the turnstile, enters the inner sanctum glides into the sleek lift when its glass doors slide silently apart, behind Brian, her boss who took her out for a drink a year after she'd joined the firm she spent hours trapped in a brick alcove with him in a basement wine bar, listening to him going on about how he's never got over the fact that while his father, grandfather and great-grandfather were fishmongers at Billingsgate who came home stinking of rancid fish, he himself had walked into a job as a trader at the Stock Exchange straight out of a crap secondary modern school (in the days when you could), with no qualifications other than a savant ability with numbers and the gift of the gab and worked his way up he was committed to opening doors for others such as herself, he said, because the idea of the meritocratic culture of banking was a myth, and you're never going to be invited to join any gentlemen's clubs or golfing clubs and get fast tracked that way even though her line manager had told him she was greatly admired for her research skills, scarily analytical thinking, concise yet comprehensive reports, confident presentation skills, unfailing adherence to deadlines, ability to grasp financial data at a speed not known to normal humans, as well as fascistic attention to detail – rumour has it that a stray or absent comma has yet to be detected so he was going to make sure the firm promoted her to Associate sooner than most because she deserved it
so what if she was only interested in spreadsheets and not spreading her legs, although those days have long passed as a way for a woman to get on, quite right too, he said, plunging into tales of the heady hedonism of his stock trading career in the eighties, when boozy lunches ran into 'gin & tea time' and from thereon spilled tipsily into the 'cocktail hour' before a pack of them trawled West End bars eventually ending up at strip joints he'd been tamed by middle age, he said she saw no signs of it as he became progressively inebriated, leery and confessional about his increasingly plasticized wife, who was at risk of becoming more man-made than organic who put up with his affairs in order to hold on to the lifestyle he offered her, recently buying a fish tank for their conservatory filled with the rarest, ugliest, most expensive fish in the world what else was she going to spend his money on when she had everything? and until recently he's had an indecently juvenile mistress from Lithuania ensconced in his pied à terre in the Barbican, who'd since graduated with a degree in computer science freeing up space for a third woman in his life, if you're ever tempted, I mean that body with those brains, he has fantasies, he said, before rushing off to the loo to throw up before he had a chance to divulge them Carole and Brian greet and exchange pleasantries as they stand opposite each other in the see-through lift that shoots six people at a time in six seconds up to the top floor offices whereupon Brian turns towards his suite to sit facing a glass wall that overlooks the spires of the City's gothic churches and the baroque guild halls of the livery companies, including his own The Worshipful Company of International Bankers he still wants her, she can tell, the filthy old lech, how dare he talk to her like that, she still got promoted to Associate prematurely, she almost respects him for that, and she recently became a Vice President, one of several hundred in this bank, as opposed to the thousands in others her mother tells everyone about her daughter the Vice President as if she's VP of the United States of America Carole stops a while and looks out of the glass wall on to the undulating wave of the Millennium Bridge
elegantly slim-line and initially so unstable it closed for two years shortly after opening because no one suspected that so many people crossing it at the same time would begin to walk in lockstep and the effect, like armies of marching soldiers stamping the ground in sync, created vibrations that caused the bridge to sway it's how she sees herself, walking in silent lockstep with the people who are going places she watches the stream of people crossing the bridge this morning, most of whom are more engaged with their phones, taking selfies, tourist pics, posting, texting, than actually taking in the views either side of the bridge people have to share everything they do these days, from meals, to nights out, to selfies of themselves half naked in a mirror the borders between public and private are dissolving Carole finds it fascinating and appalling, she's read that one day humans will have a network of nano-electronics integrated into their neural pathways, implanted at the cellular level a month after conception, self- growing, self-repairing we'll all be cyborgs, she thinks, primed to behave in socially acceptable ways, instead of primal beings who cannot be so easily controlled perhaps it will stop vile men raping drunken little girls (and getting away with it) perhaps it will stop little girls feeling it's their fault (and never telling a soul) far off in the distance, Carole sees a plane begin its descent into City Airport, probably passing over her childhood estate in Peckham she wonders what happened to LaTisha, last seen by Carole sticking two fingers up at the school as she exited the doors of the former workhouse at sixteen, they'd been such great friends once – I swear, on my life, this ain't no joke LaTisha's probably a babymother now, or a gang leader, or banged up, or all three all of Carole's closest circle of friends are from university, most are high flyers Marcus, now a great friend after their relationship ended when he returned to Kenya after university, works in wildlife conservation, has a
Kenyan wife and mixed-race children, Carole is godmother to their eldest Rosie is a barrister for Slaughter & May, a Magic Circle law firm; Toby is a management consultant with KPMG, a Big Four auditor; Patricia is completing a PhD in Theoretical Physics; Melanie is an executive at Google UK; and Priya is in training to become a GP only two of them are straggling behind, Lucy, who doesn't know what she wants in the long term so takes short-term temping contracts, saves, goes off backpacking like a teenager, returns to England full of stories but her career hasn't moved on poor Gerry became a learning mentor in a Middlesbrough school to research the great novel he was going to write about northern working-class boys seven years later, he's still there and the novel hasn't been written they catch up when they can, individually, as a group, at dinner parties, the occasional wedding, or they decamp for the weekend to Rosie's parents' manor where she has the run of the place now since the parents retired to their second home in Barbados Carole, who took up horse riding there while still a student, considers herself an equestrian these days she also counts clay-pigeon shooting as a hobby she looks over at the Tate on the opposite side of the river, where she occasionally wanders the galleries to clear her head during lunchtime (when she takes one), to marvel at the ability of artists to make such mind-blowing creations out of their imagination imagination what was that? does she even have one? she allows her gaze to travel south along the river path that leads towards the National Theatre, opening an all-female production this very night about black lesbian warriors, according to Freddy, who was probably exaggerating for comic effect he has tickets, insists she attend, is going to drop by to drag her away to see hot lesbian action on stage and hopefully be turned on enough to entertain the idea of the mythical threesome: two women, one man, you know you want to, Honeycakes
no I flipping well don't, she replies, laughing he never fails to amuse her, never fails to be there for her when she wants him, to love her as she wants to be loved to leave her alone when she needs solitude Carole has only had two boyfriends, Marcus and Freddy, it's not that she consciously rejected black men, it was the other way round, they were in short supply at university and those that made it there didn't generally go for the few dark-skinned black women around nor in the City brasseries she frequented when single and on the lookout not that she's blaming them, it's what they have to do to get on, to reduce the threat they're supposed to be to society one thing she's learnt is that falling hopelessly, helplessly in love is actually a highly selective process she was never going to marry a street cleaner, was she? she met Freddy at a party a couple of years into her job when she was living back home with her mother to save money she was flattered that this handsome, preppy and genuinely plummy man was interested in her when the room was full of stunning debutante types eyeing him up she said yes to the Curzon Soho cinema date to see a Venezuelan film on a Sunday afternoon yes to the leisurely walk through the backstreets of the West End to Hyde Park yes to dinner in a Lebanese restaurant on Edgware Road and thereafter late-night drinks at his father's club in Pall Mall yes to his knockout humour and genuine interest in her life and opinions yes to his intelligence, conversational skills and easy-going personality yes to his romantic hand-holding and all-round good manners yes to his obvious infatuation with her he told her he was raised in a villa in Richmond with a lawn that swept down to the Thames with its own jetty where a motorboat was moored for excursions he was enthralled by her own childhood on a Peckham housing estate, impressed that she'd made it against so many obstacles
he said he had merely stepped rather casually into the grooves of a pre- ordained track laid down by his family, beginning with an eccentric boarding school in Wiltshire attended by almost every male in his family since 1880, a school that taught Latin and Ancient Greek for twenty-one out of the thirty-one classes a week when his father was there thankfully cut back to only seven classes in Freddy's time after a whirlwind world tour during his gap year, he flew to a private New England liberal arts college, most generously endowed by his alumnus father the year his Straight C son applied the son who graduated four years later with an embarrassingly low Grade Point Average on account of being side-tracked by about thirty other teenage boys left to their own devices for the first time in a frat house where he partied most nights and ingested various mind-altering substances which often left him out of it for days barely able to speak, let alone write not that it mattered in his final semester he was offered a well-remunerated starter position in the City as a result of his mother calling in a favour from a school friend who'd been one of her bridesmaids she said Freddy could start the day he landed back in Old England from New England no interview necessary, he'll just need to do a bit of boring old form- filling, darling ever since, he's found the corporate lifestyle so stultifying and soul- destroying, he dreams of living in a wigwam in a field and growing his own food Carole moved directly from her mother's flat where she stayed rent free for a couple of years after graduation to save for a mortgage into Freddy's house in Fulham where the relationship moved into the engagement phase I'll be the househusband in the relationship, he promised, hang prettily off your arm when required, mow the lawn, make jam, supervise the housekeeper and raise our lovely tawny offspring she loved that he was prepared to be subservient to her ambition she knew she'd go further faster with him at her side
he said his parents wanted him to marry someone whose lineage, like theirs, could be traced back to William the Conqueror you should have seen their faces when I told them.
Bummi