I felt icy cold. I wasn’t going to cry, I wasn’t. I dug my nails into the palms of my hands.

Gareth walked down the table until he was standing over me. Against my will, I looked up. His eyes were as hard and as black as the coal his forefathers had hewn from the mines. In them I could read only hatred and utter contempt, as though he was at last avenging himself for all the wilful havoc I’d created in the past, for breaking up Cathie and Tod, for jeopardizing Gussie and Jeremy.

‘You’re nothing but a bloody parasite,’ he said softly. ‘I’m going to make you sweat, beauty. No more helping yourself to everyone’s money and their men too. The party’s over now. You’re going to get a job and do an honest day’s work like everyone else.’

I couldn’t look away. I sat there, hypnotized like a rabbit by headlights.

‘As your creditor,’ he went on, ‘I’d quite like to know when you’re going to pay up.’

‘I’ll get it next week,’ I whispered.

‘How?’

‘I’ll sell shares.’

He looked at me pityingly.

‘Can’t you get it into your thick head that unless I can put a bomb under them Seaford-Brennen aren’t worth a bean any more? We’ve also had enquiries from the Inland Revenue; you owe them a bit of bread too.’

The Debtor’s Prison loomed. I gripped the edge of the table with my fingers. Then I lost my temper.

‘You bloody upstart,’ I howled. ‘You smug, fat, Welsh prude, walking in here and playing God. Well God’s got a great deal more style than you. You’re nothing but a bully and a thug. They’ll all resign here if you go on humiliating them. See if they don’t, and then you’ll look bloody silly after all your protestations about waving a fairy wand, and turning us into a miracle of the eighties. God, I loathe you, loathe you.’ My voice was rising to a scream now. ‘Marching in here, humiliating Xander and Tommy Lloyd, with that fat slob Ricky lapping it all up.’

I paused, my breath coming in great sobs. Then suddenly something snapped outside me. It was my bra strap, beastly disloyal thing. I felt my right tit plummet. Gareth looked at me for a second, then started to laugh.

‘You should go on the stage, Octavia; you’re utterly wasted on real life,’ he said. ‘Why not pop down to Billingsgate? I’m sure they’d sign you up as a fishwife.’

‘Don’t bug me,’ I screamed, and groping behind me, gathered up a cut glass ash tray and was just about to smash it in his face when he grabbed my wrist.

‘Don’t be silly,’ he snapped. ‘You can’t afford to be done for assault as well. Go on, drop it, drop it.’

I loosened my fingers; the ashtray fell with a thud on the carpet.

I slumped into a chair, trembling violently. Gareth gave me a cigarette and lit it for me.

‘I’ll pay it all back,’ I muttered, through gritted teeth. ‘If I do some modelling I can make that kind of bread in six months.’

‘Things have changed, beauty. You can’t just swan back to work and pull in ten grand a year. There isn’t the work about. You’re twenty-six now, not seventeen, and it shows. Anyway, you haven’t the discipline to cope with full-time modelling, and it won’t do you any good gazing into the camera hour after hour; you’d just get more narcissistic than ever. For Christ’s sake get a job where you can use your brain.’

My mind was running round like a spider in a filling-up bath, trying to think of a crushing enough reply. I was saved by the belle — the luscious Mrs Smith walking in with three cups of coffee. She put one down beside me.

‘I don’t want any,’ I said icily.

‘Oh grow up,’ said Gareth. ‘If you give Annabel a ring she’ll help you to get a job and find you somewhere to live.’

I got to my feet.

‘She’s the last person I’d accept help from,’ I said haughtily, preparing to sweep out. But it is very difficult to make a dignified exit with only one bra strap, particularly if one trips over Mrs Smith’s strategically placed briefcase on the way.

‘I expect Annabel’s even got a safety pin in her bag, if you ask her nicely,’ said Gareth.

I gave a sob and fled from the room.


Chapter Sixteen



From that moment I was in a dumb blind fury. The only thing that mattered was to pay Seaford-Brennen back, and prove to Gareth and that over-scented fox, Mrs Smith, that I was quite capable of getting a job and fending for myself.

I went out next day and sold all my jewellery. Most of it, apart from my grandmother’s pearls, had been given me by boyfriends. They had been very generous. I got £9,000 for the lot — times were terrible, said the jeweller but at least that would quieten the income tax people for a bit, and pay off the telephone and the housekeeping bills. A woman from a chic second-hand-clothes shop came and bought most of my wardrobe for £600: it must have cost ten times that originally. As she rummaged through my wardrobe I felt she was flaying me alive and rubbing in salt as well. I only kept a handful of dresses I was fond of. There were also a few bits of furniture of my own, the Cotman Xander had given me for my 21st and the picture of the Garden of Eden over the bed. Everything else belonged to the firm.

In the evening Xander rang:

‘Sweetheart, are you all right? I meant to ring you yesterday but I passed out cold. And there hasn’t been a minute today. How was your session with Gareth?’

‘You could hardly say it was riotous,’ I said. ‘No one put on paper hats. How did you get on this morning?’

‘Well that wasn’t exactly riotous either. He certainly knows how to kick a chap when he’s down. I thought about resigning — then I thought why not stick around and see if he can put us on the map again. He is quite impressive, isn’t he?’

‘Oppressive, certainly.’

‘Well tell it not in Gath or the Clermont, or anywhere else,’ said Xander. ‘But I must confess I do rather like him; he’s so unashamedly butch.’

‘Et tu Brute,’ I said. ‘Look, how soon can I put my two decent pictures up for auction at Sotheby’s?’

‘About a couple of months; but you can’t sell pictures — it’s blasphemy.’

It took a long time to persuade him I had to.

I spent the next week in consultation with bank managers, accountants, tax people, until I came to the final realization that there was nothing left. I had even buried my pride and written to my mother, but got a gin-splashed letter by return saying she had money troubles of her own and couldn’t help.

‘You can’t get your thieving hands on the family money either,’ she had ended with satisfaction. ‘It’s all in trust for Xander’s children, and yours, if you have any.’ The only answer seemed to be to get pregnant.

When everything was added up I still owed the tax people a couple of grand, and Seaford-Brennen’s £3,400. Both said, with great condescension, that they would give me time to pay.

The heat wave moved into its sixth week. Every news bulletin urged people to save water, and warned of the possibilities of a drought. Cattle were being boxed across the country to less parched areas. In the suffocating, airless heat, I tramped the London streets looking for work and a place to live. I never believed how tough it would be.

Just because one doting ex-lover, who’d put up with all my tantrums and unpunctuality, had directed me through the Revson commercial, I was convinced I could swan into acting and modelling jobs. But I found that Equity had clamped down in the past two years, so I couldn’t get film or television commercial work, even if ten million starving out-of-work actresses hadn’t been after each job anyway. Modelling was even more disastrous. I went to several auditions and was turned down. I seemed to have lost my sparkle. Gareth’s words about not being seventeen anymore, and it showing, kept ringing in my ears. The first photographer who booked me for a job refused to use me because I arrived an hour late. The second kept me sweltering for four hours modelling fur coats, expecting me to behave like a perfectly schooled clothes horse, then threw me out when I started arguing. The third sacked me because I took too long to change my make-up. I moved to another agency, and botched up two more jobs. After that one of the gossip columns printed a bitchy piece about my inability to settle down to anything, and as a result no one was prepared to give me work. Gareth was right anyway — it was no cure for a broken heart, gazing into the lens of a camera all day.

I tried a secretarial agency. I asked them what they could offer me. What could I offer them, they answered. Gradually I realized that I was equipped for absolutely nothing. I took a job as a filing clerk in the City. Another catastrophe — within two days I’d completely fouled up the firm’s filing system. Next the agency sent me to a job as a receptionist.

‘All you have to do, Miss Brennen, is to look pleasant and direct people to the right floor.’

I thought I was doing all right, but after three days the Personnel woman sent for me.

‘Receptionists are supposed to be friendly, helpful people. After all, they are the first impression a visitor gets of the company. I’m afraid you’re too arrogant, Miss Brennen; you can’t look down your nose at people in this day and age. Everyone agrees you’ve got an unfortunate manner.’

Unfortunate manor — it sounded like a stately home with dry rot. It was a few seconds before I realized she was giving me the boot. The third job I went to, I smiled and smiled until my jaw ached. I lasted till Thursday; then someone told me I had to man the switchboard. No switchboard was ever unmanned faster. After I’d cut off the managing director and his mistress twice, and the sales manager’s deal-clinching call to Nigeria for the fourth time, a senior secretary with blue hair and a bright red face came down and screamed at me. My nerves in shreds, I screamed back. When I got my first pay packet on Friday morning, it also contained my notice.