Prelude: December 12th, 2008, somewhere near Tower Hill.
There's only one problem with being a fantastic listener, Gemma Woodhouse thinks as she nods and takes a sip of flat champagne. If you truly excel at it then the people you're listening to think you enjoy it, so they never stop. They go on. And on. And on. Right now, Gemma is doing such a sterling listening job, it seems this evening might never end.
Gemma is listening to her "n+5", her boss's boss's boss's boss. He sits on the bank's Board of Directors. She is giving him more or less the same look she gives her nephew Quentin, aged two and three quarters, when he grazes his knee. There there, her eyes say while the man goes on about inverted yield curves and growth-stifling Basel IV capitalisation ratios. n+5 is well into his fifties, but Gemma's look works the same wonders on him as it does on Quentin: for a short while, and even as he tells her how horrid it's been to sack all those poor bond traders three weeks before bonus time, n+5 is able to look at her pale round face and feel better about himself.
He sees in her blue-grey eyes, calm and wide-set under arched blonde eyebrows, that she understands: it's not his fault, it's the fault of those inverted yield curves and stifling Basel IV capitalisation ratios. He wishes his wife could understand him the way this exceptional young Graduate Trainee does, when he explains to her that he really didn't want to have to sack all those people. He only did it for the good of the bank. Hence the economy. Hence the country.
Yes yes, it's the market, Stupid, Gemma is thinking. She's heard it all a thousand times before: men, starting with her dearly beloved father, are quick to take personal credit whenever they make money. Then as soon as they start losing cash, it's the fault of "the market". Gemma's patience is wearing thinner than her spanxed-in size four waist, but with her face she still smiles and says: Poor You!
They break eye contact for a moment. They both have enough manners to do this at regular interval, each time re-establishing that their conversation, if a little one sided, continues by mutual consent. Not that Gemma indulges him just because he is her n+5: that would be mean, and small minded. She enjoys listening to him because, unlike most people tonight, he speaks and behaves like a gentleman. He hasn't so much as eyed Gemma up. Not once in… oh goodness, what? Unless someone's been messing with the clock above the bar, he's been talking for almost three quarters of an hour. Talking and not ogling, Gemma reminds herself and besides, she really does feel sorry for him. "It's the markets, Stupid", notwithstanding, it is to this man's credit that he does feel bad about sacking people. It's also to his credit that he has remained gracious considering how everyone, from the receptionists to the CEO, has shunned him like a leper all evening.
n+5 is a banker: like estate agents and journalists, he is used to not being liked but give the man a break, he is not a complete baby. He has feelings. He does feel genuinely bad about sacking good people. Why else would he be standing here talking to her for… 52 minutes now, 52 minutes of her young life, which she will never get to live again.
With all the sympathy in the world, it does become a little hard not to resent n+5 when they next look away from one another. Gemma's eye catches Dylan's, who has been busy punching the air to something too loud for her taste on the dance floor. Dylan's look means trouble. She knows. She knows, and she would love to smile back at him, but n+5 is talking. Again. She turns reluctant eyes back to him and her hand reaches for the princess cut diamond dangling from a short, gossamer thin rose gold chain around her neck. This stone used to be the largest of three in her mother's eternity ring. Her father had it reset for Gemma's eighteenth birthday and she's never taken it off since.
Over on the dance floor, Scott hasn't let go of Kirsty's waist the whole time n+5 has been talking to her. They are as good as glued to each other – good for them! Scott's been planning this move for months but, for n+5's sake, Gemma represses the warm glow she feels at the sight of the two of them so happy. Oh dear: Dylan's walking over.
"Stanley's looking for you," Dylan says to n+5, with that wide-mouthed grin that always, always spells trouble.
n+5 doesn't know Dylan, or his grin, or that it always spells trouble. He reacts in the only rational way, that is by gasping:
"Stanley?"
His pulse rises and his eyes fly away from "that lovely young woman" he has been chatting with. Her name escapes him as the brutal realisation hits: as well as being an unfairly maligned banking genius, n+5 is now considerably more drunk than when he started talking to her. Stanley, the Chief Executive, wants to talk to him, and he's not even sure he can walk to Stanley in a straight line. Indeed, n+5 is also too drunk to question why the bank's Chief Executive should have dispatched an unknown junior equity trader with the message. n+5 only wishes he could stay here, with this small young blonde woman who understands him so well. Oh, why can't he?
"Over there, by the ski simulator," Dylan says, pointing to the very furthest corner of the very, very big marquee.
"I suppose I'd better go. Wish me luck?" n+5 says, holding his hand out to Gemma.
"You won't need it, but good luck," Gemma says, and after she's shaken his hand she reaches for her necklace again and looks at Dylan. He's well over a head taller than her, so up this close she has to crane her neck up. Dylan is still smiling.
"You never even saw Stan, did you?" she says to Dylan. His smile broadens and his overgrown black hair bounces around as he shakes his head. Not for the first time, she thinks Dylan has the same impishness as not-quite-three-year-old Quentin, only wrapped in the body of a six-foot-something rugby forward.
"Has anyone, ever? I'm not sure Stan even exists. Personally I think he's been impersonated by a hot air balloon all these years."
Gemma smiles, then rises up on tip-toe to point over Dylan's shoulder, "Oh wait, isn't that him over there?"
"Give it up, Gem. You're a hopeless liar," Dylan says without so much as beginning to turn and check. Gemma drops back onto her heels: slender two and three quarter inch patent leather heels in an almost-black blue, marginally lower but infinitely more elegant than stilettos, and just as hard to walk in. She would not dream of wearing anything more comfortable to work.
"You're right, shame on me: I'm a terrible liar."
"And can you try and be thankful, just this once? I did come and rescue you, OK? For your information I was having a great time over there 'til you started playing with your necklace."
"What?" she says, dropping said necklace.
"You only start playing with your necklace when you're bored to tears."
"Do I?"
He nods. And grins.
Gemma is surprised. Surprised and …offended? Why should she be offended? No, that can't be it, she's just… well, whatever she is, it almost makes her reach up to her necklace again, but stops herself in time, and thinks.
\
It is undeniable that, until Dylan arrived, she was bored to tears. Perhaps it bothers her that, while she made so damn sure n+5 never noticed, Dylan did. And all that way away too. That's vexing, yes, but … There's something else but what is it? Yes, that's it: it bothers her that Dylan should have known something she didn't about herself, even if it's only that she plays with her necklace when she's bored. She always thought she played with that necklace because she liked that necklace.
However: Gemma would rather die than let Dylan see that it bothers her. Just as she'd rather have died, and almost did, of sheer boredom, rather than let n+5 know how very boring he was. Gemma smiles at Dylan: not the way she was smiling at n+5 when Dylan arrived, but the way she smiled at n+5 when he first introduced himself. A calm, frank smile that says: go on then, tell me what it is you want to talk about, I'm listening. Dylan says:
"Cut the crap, Gem, it's me: Dyl?"
Her astonishment goes up another notch: the many shades of polite smiles, which have so long been a part of her repertory that she cannot consciously remember ever coming up with any of them, those same smiles which daily serve her so well with colleagues, clients, family members and bosses alike, those smiles appear to have stopped working on Dylan.
She wonders whether they ever did work on him, comes to the swift conclusion that they never did, and then wonders why it should have taken her the best part of two years to realise this. What is wrong with Dylan Mann?
Why did he know about her necklace when she didn't?
Why is she holding it now?
"Gem?"
He's still smiling, but she can't. Why? She takes a sip of champagne. It tastes cheap as well as flat. Probably that is what is making her feel ill. She sets her glass down.
"Yes, Dyl?"
Another thing she doesn't like is this feeling of her dress being too tight under the ribs. Which it can't be since she hasn't so much as breathed at a chocolate biscuit since her finals at uni. Yet it does feel as if something were pressing into her below the ribs and she can't breathe properly. She wishes it would go away and suddenly it does. It goes away as Dylan's lips land on hers, warm after the coolness of her glass, but not too warm either - an extension of her own.
He takes his lips away, and the noise from the dance floor almost deafens her, though the volume can't have changed since before he was kissing her. She watches his black hair bouncing around his head: one might call it angelic-looking, but no angel could be so cruel as to do this to her, then stop.
He leans in to kiss her again, and all background noises switch off again. One of his hands is on the back of her head, his thumb hooked over the elastic of her ponytail. His fingers reach down to the nape of her neck. His other hand is somewhere below her shoulder blades and she is quite sure her feet are no longer touching the ground. It follows that she must suspended to him, rewriting the laws of physics with the world's first gravity-defying kiss.
He tries to take his lips away again, but she follows them and hears him make the same muffled noise she thinks she might have made when that tight sort of ache suddenly went from under her ribs. Somehow, that stifled moan is louder than the blasts coming from the dance floor because it's all she wants to hear, ever. She hears it one time more, about the time her own hands move around to grasp onto the back of his neck, and then she hears:
"Oow, Gemma, Gemma, Gemma! Oh no no no no nooOO!"
Followed by:
"Feck off, Rob," which means Dylan has switched to Broadest Belfast for Rob's benefit. Still, Rob's not getting the message:
"You lucky dog, Mann! Ow but come on, Gem," Rob says – how she hates it when any but her friends call her Gem - "We can't have Little Miss Perfect snogging Big Bad Dylan!"
"We weren't…"
"What she's trying to say is: feck off, Rob."
"… and don't swear!" Gemma snaps. The only thing she hates more than interruptions, is swearing.
"Oh, I'm sorry," Dylan says to her in his Cambridge voice, then to Rob, back from deepest Belfast: "Bobbo, do please go and so-dermise yer-self. Preferably using something long and shaaarp. Right noo'd be a good time, go-oe on!"
Rob rolls his eyes and lets out a cavernous burp, then Gemma watches him shrug, turn and walk off. Then she watches Dylan watch her, and realises she has no idea what to do with her hands. Her midriff is starting to ache again, so she puts them there. It doesn't work.
Dylan leans down but she stops him before he kisses her. She holds him a few inches off her, with her hands on the lapels of his suit. Smelling distance - how did she never notice before how lovely he smells? He tries to put his hands on top of hers but she says:
"No, Dyl."
"Gem, come ooon," he moans, and starts to lean into her again. She leans back until her back touches the edge of the bar behind her. He follows through and she has to turn her head away and his lips end up brushing her ear. She forces herself to forget about her ear, even though that's the only part of her body she now can consciously feel. She uses the cold edge of the bar behind her as a fulcrum and presses her hands hard against him. Somewhere, deep under the top of her Spanx, something's already aching again.
"Dylan, stop."
"Why?"
"Just stop, this isn't... we can't…"
"I think you'll find we just did. And very nice it was too."
Nice? How was any of this nice? The nice bits were way beyond nice, but the between bits are beyond horrible.
"It wasn't nice," Gemma says.
"How can you say that?"
He looks hurt, but he'll get over it. For a start, Dylan's half-drunk. That is one incalculable part of the wonderful smell about him, the smell of childish dance-floor excitement and cold pints. Half-drunk has always been Gemma's favourite kind of drunk, whether it be on cold sake at Nobu, or on tepid pints with that growing breed of bankers who like to pose as "geezers". Shame people never just stay half drunk. They have another one, then another, and then they turn into Rob: blind drunk and burping and swaying and staggering where they're not wanted.
Gemma's seen Dylan drunk before. Twice. He's a very happy drunk. He just gets even bigger and louder. Especially on the dance floor, he becomes all arms and legs, and his smile gets even bigger too.
He's smiling again now.
"Gemma,"
"Don't let's be silly, Dylan."
"Silly?"
"You're drunk."
"I'm only half-drunk, just the way you like."
She doesn't remember telling him about her half-drunk thing before, and she doesn't like that he's guessed that too, about her.
"You and I, it would never work, Dylan, you know that."
"Then let us play."
"Sorry, what?"
"Why does everything have to work with you, Gemma? Our jobs, yes, they have to work, the shit has to add up, that's what they pay us for…"
"Don't speak trader to me, Dylan."
"OK," he says, "My PnL has to work, your balance sheets and your cash flow statements, they have to tally. But you and I aren't numbers, we don't have to "work" all the time, we just have to be us."
"I'm sorry, what us?"
She doesn't like to sound petulant, but sometimes Dylan leaves her no choice. He thinks about it, then:
"Us: you and I, Gem. Little Miss Perfect - and me. Together, we're greater than the sum of our parts," he says, with the kind of mock-solemnity you can only pull off when you're precisely half-drunk - damn him.
She is now certain that Dylan knows exactly what he's doing. Again she wonders, how does he know? They've never talked about drinking before, or about why, whilst favouring half-drunk in everybody else, Gemma never goes above a quarter-drunk herself. She does have one glass, of champagne preferably, every time politeness or consideration require it, and then she switches back to water.
It scares her that Dylan's worked this out too, trivial though it is, but what scares her even more, is the sudden realisation that perhaps she's not just some girl Dylan happens to fancy kissing tonight. That there is quite possibly an ounce, or more, of sober sincerity to his "greater than the sum of our parts" speech. Now that, she's got to nip in the bud, right this instant.
"You and I, we're not all that great," she says. "We spend most our time arguing."
"We're good at that too, yes. Makes us both better persons."
"Better? Speak for yourself."
She means it, and Dylan sees it. It's worrying how easily this vile sort of petulance spews out of her when she needs to push people away. But boy, does she need to push Dylan Mann away.
"I see," Dylan says, crossing his arms. She likes what that does to them in a well-cut suit, she likes it a good deal too much, so she stops looking:
"Good, I'm glad," she lies.
He shakes his head.
"I see what you're doing, Gem. Stop it, it's ugly, it's not you."
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"What's wrong?"
"Nothing!"
He re-crosses his arms and raises an eyebrow:
"My point exactly, Gem. Until Rob came along we seemed to be doing just fine you and I so please, tell me: what's wrong now?"
How does he not get this?
Oh no, wait, he does. Of course he does! Why would he not get that, as well? He's playing dumb, that's all. It doesn't suit him any better than it suits her to play the petulant, bitchy, superior Little Miss Perfect but OK, two can play this game.
"Where do I even start?"
"You tell me."
How to do so politely?
"You and I," she says, "we can't be right for each other, you know that."
"I don't, no. I know nothing of the sort."
Sort? So-art?
He's switched back to deepest Belfast: like hell he doesn't know. Suddenly Gemma is so annoyed with him, she starts smiling like a maniac. A superior, smarmy, pointedly annoying maniac. And batting her eyelids too, for good measure.
"Or rather I do know," he says, still in Northern Irish, with his head cocked back, "but I'd like to hear you say it out loud."
La-ah-oo-d – exactly how many mellifluous vowels can a man squeeze into one syllable?
"Really, Dylan? Are you some kind of masochist?"
"I'm not, I just think it'll cost you too. Forgive me, but if I'm going to be jilted after the best snog of my life I'd like it to cost you too, at least a bit."
Yet another thing Dylan's right about: it will cost her. That is so very, very annoying.
"So go on, Gem, tell me why you can't kiss me again."
"Because you're not good enough for me."
x
On that bombshell, Gemma Woodhouse finishes extricating herself from between a bar and a speechless and no longer grinning Dylan Mann, and walks away. By the dance floor she waves at Scott and Kirsty, but neither notices. They're still glued to each other. She retrieves her coat tag from her purse and whilst standing in the queue for the cloakroom she dials Peter Rabbit. Thankfully traffic is good, and he picks her up barely twenty minutes later. By then Dylan's already busy laughing and flirting with that pretty receptionist from the 14th floor.
The same one he professes to despise when naught percent drunk.
In the car Gemma presses her temples and closes her eyes and thinks of the horrible things she's just said to Dylan. Why did he have to make her say them? He did, though, he made her, he wouldn't let up.
Besides it's true that he's not good enough for her. He's clever, undoubtedly. You don't get from a Belfast comprehensive and into Physics at Cambridge without a half decent IQ. He's very nice looking too, in a big, teddy-bearish kind of way. And easy to be around, somehow. They became friends halfway up Helvellyn - the easy half, as it later turned out - in the middle of the rain, on some stupid team-bonding induction march with the rest of the bank's 2006 graduate intake. To everyone else who'd yomped past her asking whether she was alright she'd smiled and said fine, fine, but somehow with one look from Dylan she'd dropped all pretence that her life was anything other than a wet, cold, windy hell, and handed him her rucksack.
Funny, to think now that for the first three hours of their acquaintance they'd barely said a word to each other – all she could remember was the wind, the rain, the blisters and the sick-to-the-stomach feeling that had gripped her as they'd walked into the white-out. After that: the picture of the back of Dylan's head in a yellow cagoule, lugging two identical bank-branded backpacks, and walking slowly so she'd have half a chance to keep up.
So: Dylan makes a good Sherpa, Gemma thinks as Peter Rabbit navigates the family Bentley around the Old Street roundabout. And he makes her laugh – but then that's not very difficult. More to the point, therefore: Dylan's impulsive. He's wild, and loud, and very disrespectful – often on purpose. He swears. It's as if he doesn't care what anyone thinks of him, as if he's not scared of anyone. She's not either, but in her case it's not because she doesn't care, but because she knows that everyone does likes her. Which in turn she knows because Gemma is always very careful never to vex, or hurt, or alienate anyone.
Apart from Dylan, occasionally.
She genuinely does care. About everyone: even Peter Rabbit, who's driven her home ever since she can remember and has quite the dullest life of anyone she knows. Yet she's never stepped into his car, however tired or ill or upset about anything, without asking him about his wife and his daughter. Tonight, for instance, he informs her that Sarah is fine but that Cath is suffering with her bad knee. By now Gemma knows more about Peter Rabbit's wife's bad knee than she does about some of the companies whose earnings she is paid to follow all day at the office. The point is, she cares about Peter Rabbit's family, just as much as she cares about her n+5, or about Kirsty or Scott or Dylan – she even does care about Rob.
Caring is not very popular at the moment, of course. Especially not in banking. The done thing is to be cynical about one's employment, to pretend one's only here for the money when the truth is, no one Gemma knows is a banker for the money. Dylan works in the City because building computer programmes to trade stocks on electronic exchanges is, by his own admission, the biggest buck he'll ever be paid to "play Lego" with data all day. Kirsty took to banking out of rebellion against her old-labour parents. Wearing a suit and now dating a banker is her vengeance for two decades spent wearing second-hand clothes and eating home grown alfalfa sprouts. Scott is a refugee from the family building firm. As a child he used to look at his father's big chapped hands and dream of a hot-desk in a nice tall clean glass tower in Canary Wharf. And of a smart, bookish, beautiful girl like Kirsty. Not even Rob joined the City for the money: he's here to forget that he's squat and ginger and, above all, a bit mean. He's here so he can feel powerful in a way the other boys on the football field would never let him feel, back at school.
And Gemma? Gemma Woodhouse of all people did not get into banking for the money, obviously. For her the bank is the closest thing to a continuation of the very pleasant ten years she spent first at boarding school, then at university. It keeps her brain busy and the office is pleasant and very clean. She is amongst smart and, by and large, well-behaved people, who all like her. Apart from those who, like Rob, are bound to be a little jealous of her. Alone on the bank's Graduate Training Programme, this means Gemma has nothing to rebel against. She has nowhere to escape from. Her life has never lacked anything but for this: she's never had a dream.
Her father says unless there's a war or pandemic or some sort of natural catastrophe, it's perfectly normal not to know what one wants to do at her age. Apparently he didn't really either, until the Telecoms boom in the 1980s, just drifted from one bank to another. The thing is, always to behave in a professional way, whatever you do. To be polite, timely, respectful – to care about what you do and about the people around you. Even if what you do seems at times unbearably mundane because you haven't figured out what your dream is yet. Her father says Gemma is bright and promises that one day she will find her calling. He says that until then the City is the best place to learn about successful businesses, which after all is what dreams become, when they become reality.
In practice, like most of the few women on the Sales Analysis team, Gemma's been assigned retail companies: shops. She doesn't mind. She likes shops and shopping as much as the next person, no more, no less either. She's behaving in a professional way: learning about the value chain, about those eye-popping margins supermarkets charge on everything from frozen cod to tampons, about shelf-space optimisation and rightsizing the SKUs. A few years in she can get the gist of a balance sheet in five minutes flat. And the Sales guys love her: they've started taking her out on their client pitches and she's a big hit with everyone, which is nice.
Shame that does not add up to a dream. A dream should be noble and very, very important. A dream should change lives. Conversely, a person without a dream cannot hope to change the world, and Gemma feels certain she ought to be changing the world for the better. If only she could figure how.
She presses her head against the window, enjoying the coolness of it against her skin. Kissing Dylan Mann did feel like a dream back there, but she knows that that can't have been the dream. Kissing Dylan Mann may be nice - well not nice but… - anyway whatever it is, kissing Dylan does not change the world for the better. In fact kissing Dylan is the very thing life sends to snag a young woman and make her forget about making the world a better place.
Take Emmeline Pankhurst: had she got distracted by kissing Dylan then she, Gemma Woodhouse, still would not have the right to vote, let alone to kiss Dylan in public. It's not their individual faults of course but men, even the best of men, can't help but kill women's dreams. There's marriage, and babies, when what is needed is a room of one's own. Gemma knows she's very lucky to have one of those. It's not just any room either: Gemma has a large bedroom, a dressing room, an en-suite and a sitting room, all on the right-hand side of the first floor, overlooking the garden, pool and tennis courts. She has a four-poster double bed with a white muslin canopy, a pair of dark blue velvet sofas with matching curtains, and a deep cream carpet very warm and soft underfoot. She has a mahogany rolltop bureau, wardrobes and dressing table, which her great great grandmother brought back from India in the 1830s. She has lots of bookshelves. This used to be her mother's room and for the millionth time, Gemma promises herself that, one day, a dream worthy of Floris Woodhouse's memory will come out of this room.
For now, Gemma sighs and passes her hand over the side of her head, as if to tidy her hair but it's her left ear that's started tingling again, where Dylan's lips brushed against it. She pats it over once more, then gives up. Peter Rabbit is driving past Jack Straw's Castle, which means she's almost home. She starts rifling through her bag for the remote to the gates. When she's found it she reaches back inside her bag for a tissue. She blows a circle of steam onto the window, where she's leant against it earlier, watches for a moment, and then with slow steady circles she wipes clean the faint mark her skin had left there.
"Nighty night, Peter, thank you very much," she says as she leaves the car. "My love to Sarah and to Cath. Hope she gets better soon."
Copyright Mel Liffragh 2021, all rights reserved.
Updated weekly on Fridays, cross posted on AO3.