Chrysalis Read online

  “Oh Christ! Who will take my place?”

  “Darren will be replacing you as head of sales and head of trading. It has been in discussion for some time now.”

  “Bastard, hope he never sees another Mojito Monday again.”

  “These two gentlemen will see you out. Have a great day.” JP blinked clearing something from his eyeball.

  The escort took up sentry post either side of Sebastian, shoulder to shoulder, squeezing him like a sandwich filling. In step the trio walked towards the exit; no eyes were raised. Everyone concentrating on tasks at their desk, their computers or clutching pieces of paper en route to a fictional meeting. All but one avoiding eye contact, Darren the exception, his feet planted on the desk top and his buttocks flopping over the side of his chair like stabilisers on a child’s bike. He smirked; he had known. They had all known, Children of Janus. Bastards.

  Stepping into the warm air of summer Sebastian took off his tie, dropped it on the pavement and walked away from the office. Lighting a cigarette he weighed up his options. There were three:

  Option 1: tap dance naked through the fountains of Cobalt Square at his new found freedom.

  Option 2: burst into tears at his new found unemployment and go to the nearest bar to get sloshed.

  Option 3: return to his lair of a flat and caveman-like spend the rest of his days licking the moss that would grow on the walls.

  He took none of the three on offer; he did cancel the BUPA appointment. Sebastian needed someone else to unravel the chaotic threads of his thoughts. He dialled the number of the only skilled weaver he knew who could unravel his current mess; she had past history of exactly this task.

  “Hello, is Zoe there? It’s Sebastian.”

  “Oh, it’s you,” was the rather frosty reception. He knew this gatekeeper of a receptionist having accused her of being a lesbian at the last Pinkerton and Smith Auctioneers Christmas party; help was not going to be immediate.

  “Oh hi Janet!”

  “Jane actually.”

  “Of course, Jane, how silly of me, found a boyfriend yet?”

  There was a pause, a ripping noise, a sniffle and the blowing of a nose.

  “Why are you such a shit?” she cried. “You must know he left me last month, Zoe would have told you.”

  Two things came to mind. He would rather have his brain removed with only a phial of vodka as an anaesthetic by a blind first year medical student than know anything about Jane’s love life. The second was he hadn’t spoken to Zoe in more than two weeks.

  “Of course she did, I’m sorry.”

  “Hello, Zoe here,” was the reply to the simpering apology.

  “You are my oldest friend, I am your most useless friend, but I need to see you now, this minute. I’ve been fired. Please?” he implored.

  “What? When? Oh Sebastian, I’m sorry. Come round to the office, South Kensington tube, opposite is a café called Mario’s. Give me a call from there, and don’t stop anywhere for a drink on the way!”

  “Be there in forty-five minutes, and thanks.”

  It was odd travelling on the tube in the middle of the afternoon. Quieter, more peaceful and populated by less harried individuals than rush hour. As the train pulled away from Canary Wharf Sebastian thought of his first meeting with Zoe.

  They had first met at the Theatrical Society at Edinburgh University. Knowing he couldn’t act he specialised in makeup and headed that particular department. He had learnt that skill at school and become a master of disguising and changing an actor’s physical appearance. He actually met her feet first at the end of a Romeo and Juliet production party, as on all fours he introduced himself by vomiting onto her leopard-patterned kitten-heeled shoes. They studied English together and although an inauspicious start, became firstly lovers, then flirts and finally friends. She became confidant, tutor for lectures missed, nurse to stitch the duelling scars of mistaken lust for love, bridging loan broker in times of fiscal depravity and company in times of sloth. Her counsel always sought as he tried to extract himself from the bear pits of life. Post-university, and with the passage of time, her circle of friends increased as did his attempts of drunkard telephone seduction of her. Both of which he resented.

  Zoe opened the door; her body blocked the sunlight. The shape of her legs silhouetted against the opacity of her skirt, her silk blouse see-through with the light. She looked pretty standing at the doorway, head turning in search of him. She was dressed with stylish indifference. Her only jewellery was a cheap and slight bracelet he had given her in their twenties on a weekend in Amsterdam.

  “What happened? Sorry, I’ll start again. Hello Sebastian, what happened?” Zoe was the only person that called him Sebastian. She pushed her hair behind her ears with her middle fingers to ensure no detail of the disaster was missed. With open palm she gently stroked his cheek then gathered his hands tightly into her protective grasp.

  “I am now a morsel being digested by the corporate juices of my previous employer. Some odious shit from New York arrived, bit, chewed and digested me in less than five minutes. No doubt to be passed, via his rectum, into the Thames before he flies back. What am I going to do?” It was not the first appeal to Zoe to solve his problems. “No one will give me a job. I know no one left in finance, most have been fired, a few escaped with a premier card and a Swiss bank balance to go skiing for the rest of their lives.” His mouth was bitter with stale wine.

  “Well you knew it was coming, you hated your job, you hated the people and you hated the industry. Yes it’s a shock, but look at the other people you know who have been fired, they’re all doing something. You have lots to offer.” she said with more confidence than he felt.

  “What have I got to offer? I have been a student, then an army officer changing a camouflage uniform for a suit and penny loafers, City battledress.”

  “Exactly, it’s time to do something else, wander more widely. Think of what you wanted to do at uni. You were going to be creative. What happened to your book?”

  Sebastian looked at her with exasperation.

  “For Christ’s sake, I was twenty, I’m now thirty-five, broke, unemployed, unemployable and need a salary! If I thought I could in any way avoid sipping from the trough of corporate slops I would do it. But I can’t!”

  Her hair had slipped from behind her ears. Her sympathy had ended.

  “For someone who was employed in the risk business you sure don’t know how to take one! Sebastian, can’t you remember what it felt like to be alive? Passion, Sebastian, passion. If you don’t have that you have nothing. How do you think you got such a good degree in English? Passion. Why, when we were… well you know… did it seem to go on forever? Passion.” She was flushed with anger. “It all died when you went into the City.”

  “What ended when I went into the City?” he asked with a flicker of hope without looking up from the table.

  “When we left Edinburgh you could have done almost anything. You wasted that opportunity by following the soulless crowd into the City, and for what? Money, probably the only thing created by man whose Genesis is passionless! Well it’s not worked. Fifteen years later and you’re broke.”

  He opened his mouth to defend himself but with her hand raised it closed.

  “I have defended you all these years against friend and foe who have spoken badly of you, and in most cases they were justified. I know it’s still there, so do you, all you have to do is find it. That something that you feel passionate about.”

  “Christ, the crowds are hard to please tonight.”

  “I know you, you came to me to hear what you most need to learn, it’s always been that way since I met you. Do you really want to spend the rest of your life playing paper battleships in some anonymous corporate building? You need to do something spontaneous and more importantly something you want to do. You always wanted to write, be a writer. It
’s that time, Sebastian, now is the time! For the first time in years it’s time for you to make a decision about your future.”

  He looked angrily at her. She knew she had strayed onto forbidden turf. He had spoken to no one else about it, just her and just once on his return from Iraq. The crack of the sniper’s round. The panic of a young officer in command, his panic. The decision made, his decision. He ordered the three eighteen-year-old soldiers to cross the road. The whoof of the IED. The following silence. Then the cries of the three. Screaming for their mothers. Each fell silent before he made it to them. The last noise he could remember was the zipping of the body bags. The last thing he felt was the pain on his wrist as he looked at the broken watch face. It was all over by seven thirty, but his decision wasn’t.

  “Thanks. Fucking thanks!”

  She knew this was unfair as he had tried and failed after university to write a novel. The unanswered letters to publishers and agents crushing his hope. Her voice softened and she gave him a look of affection.

  “God help me, Sebastian, I really do care for you, but you alone can rekindle the fire, find a reason to do it and then do it. In fact you now have that reason.” She squeezed his hands with willingness. “Look, I have to go back as I have a meeting. You going to Arabella’s tonight?”

  “Forgot about that, no I don’t think so, not tonight. Christ, what am I going to tell everyone? No I can’t bear it.”

  “Yes you can, pick me up at seven from my flat, I’ll pay for the cab. We can talk more on the way.” The tone was soft but it was an order.

  She kissed him on both cheeks, picked up her bag, placed the two fingers of her right hand to her lips and blew a kiss. All that remained of her admonishment was the perfume of her presence. Why is she always right? Since his return from Iraq he had been a piece of flotsam lazily directed by the currents; he had never once made a decision to go against the current. It had been easier to float along and blame circumstances, and others, when he was washed up on some reef waiting for the tide to come back in.

  Chapter 2

  1

  Arriving at the door, the noise of smug contentment was too much for Sebastian.

  “I really can’t face this, let’s go out for dinner and phone to say we’re ill. Arabella’s friends are awful. Bet that prick Joseph is there with his ghastly wife Mary.”

  Zoe pressed the bell. “Just be nice,” she said before brushing down her skirt and running her fingers through her hair. She had a look of anticipation.

  The door opened and Sebastian’s face cracked into a pantomime smile.

  “Come in, you two, how wonderful to see you both. Go through to the drawing room and meet everyone.” Arabella guided them through, holding back Zoe by the arm. “He’s here!” she said in a hushed excited voice. Zoe flushed.

  Before he could take in the congregation a Chernobyl-coloured drink was pushed into his hand.

  “You’ll like this, it’s a cocktail I picked up in Prague at my last conference.” Martin’s well-polished and whitened teeth smiled at him. Martin was dressed like an aged modern version of d’Artagnan: skin-tight black polo neck jumper, equally tight black trousers with a small middle-age continental shelf of fat poking out above his Hermes buckled belt. Goatee beard dyed black and crowned with what looked like an undernourished caterpillar masquerading as a moustache. Sebastian looked at the glass and knew Martin had anticipated, wrongly, his taste in cocktails.

  “Good to see you, Martin,” Sebastian lied. He had never liked Martin. Arabella had met him when they were at university and he was a lecturer in modern women’s studies. Sebastian remembered the day he oiled his way across the floor at the English faculty annual dance and performed a poor version of the salsa. For reasons known to no one Arabella had fallen for this oily creature and had been caught in his slick ever since.

  “There is someone I want you to meet, her name is Clarissa and she has joined me at London University.” His overly warm hand massaged Sebastian’s back as if he was a prize-fighter being guided back into the ring by his second. “Clarissa, this is Seb, Seb Clarissa. Seb works in finance.” His caterpillar moustache twitched with disapproval. “Clarissa specialises in the exploitation of women by the financial services industry.”

  Her hair was cut like a Wehrmacht helmet with a sharp branch of black coral hanging from her neck against the angry red of her tight cleavage.

  “Indeed,” Sebastian muttered through a nervous cough.

  Clarissa looked at him the way a gravedigger looks at a steak after a hard day at the cemetery – the certainty of finishing it with ease, speed and enjoyment.

  “It’s more about female empowerment than subjugation. I look to reverse the role of the rapacious male that prowls your industry to the detriment of the definitive Eve. Without a doubt the stereotypical female client is seen as a virgin to be deflowered by you.” The pronoun accusative made Sebastian uneasy. A swift movement of his forearm saw the radioactive-coloured cocktail drained and the colour transferred to his cheeks. She continued in a closing prosecutor’s address. “It is because of people like you that the minority female groups remain hindered in their aspirations and contained in a pen to await your rapacious demand to hand over their money.”

  He looked desperately around for Zoe. She was exchanging laughter with a blond man in a suit. With no escape he returned to the role as sparring partner receiving a new flurry of verbal punches.

  “Some of my best friends are women,” he weakly replied, looking over her shoulder for help. Her top lip rose to further the pulverising as Joe and Mary mercifully joined the conversation. Normally Sebastian would have run into the path of fast-moving traffic rather than face these two. Joe was dressed to suit his chosen career, Prince of Wales check suit topped by a tight-knotted blue tie hanging like an icicle down his white shirt. His face gaunt confirming the time spent with his personal trainer. Assured, entitled and rich were the qualities on display. Mary was the clone of the fine ladies of Wandsworth. Her hair highlighted blond, fingers bejewelled with rings of congratulations, appeasement and guilt. Her branded jeans doing their best to contain and mould the expanding flesh of two parturitions. She was looking rather flushed, no doubt after a day spent flirting with her tennis coach whilst Joe fought off an angina attack in the world of advertising.

  “Mary, Joe, I cannot tell you how good it is to see you.” They both returned his greeting with holy smiles appropriate to their biblical namesakes. “Clarissa and I were discussing the merits of creating tailor-made financial services products to suit specific client groups.” He looked at the three with a wide-open smile. There was no reply from any of them. Escape, escape was screaming in his head. “Oh look, everyone’s glass is empty, let me find some drink for us all.”

  He retreated to the kitchen to find a much-needed refill for himself; he had only been at the party for twenty minutes. Whilst alternately swigging from a gin bottle and banging his head against the doorway muttering, “Fuck, Fuck, Fuck”, he was interrupted by the blond in the suit.

  “You alright? I was looking for the loo.”

  “I know it doesn’t look like it, but I certainly feel as if I’m in the U-bend and about to be flushed to oblivion… sorry, excuse me, feeling a bit, a bit, well… assaulted today. It’s under the stairs.” He reached out his arm, hand open. “I’m Sebastian, by the way.”

  “Simon, Simon Smith.”

  The initials enough to recall the disaster of earlier today. More SS!

  “You’re an old friend of Zoe’s. She has spoken about you, you were at uni together. You work in finance, I gather, perhaps we know some people in common.”

  How did he know so much about him? More importantly what was the occasion that had allowed the two of them to discuss him?

  “Perhaps I do, but actually I am thinking of changing career as I find the world of finance full of arseholes and egotists, especially the
rapacious crooked hedge fund managers. Who would trust those thieves with their hard earned cash, eh? What do you do?”

  His handshake gripping harder as unnecessary pressure was applied, he looked Sebastian in the eye with a look that would have the Brigade of Guards snap to attention and replied, “I run a hedge fund in the West End.”

  Sebastian’s response was unplanned; a little fart squeaked out.

  “Well good Lord, I’m sure you’re not all bad, some of you must make money for the widows and needy. Talking of which, do excuse me, must get the drinks to the thirsty masses.” as he harvested some glasses.

  Depositing the glasses, mostly empty having relieved them of their content, into the waiting hands of Joe, Mary and Clarissa he made his way over to the safety of Zoe.

  “I’ve just met an awful man, some arrogant hedge fund manager. Handshake like a vice, awful-looking creep, one of those marble-carved bodies. Bet he spends most of his time keeping fit and pruning himself at the Harbour Club in Chelsea when not pickpocketing the poor and stealing from church collection boxes.”

  Her lips bloomed into a smile. A serpent’s arm slipped round Zoe’s waist pulling the prey closer to its mouth.

  “Simon, you’ve not met Sebastian, have you?”

  He felt like a heretic on a medieval bonfire with the peasant torch bearers getting closer. The Papal reprieve came from the unlikely black-clad Martin.

  “Come through for dinner, everyone.”

  In the dining room the table was meticulously laid with a name tag at the head of each place setting. Sebastian scanned the name tags knowing that anyone other than Zoe at his side would leave him with the feeling of slipping quietly into quicksand. Clarissa on the right and Mary on the left. He felt the first tug of the hungry sand.

  It didn’t take long for the conversation to follow the template of a Daily Mail leader column. House prices and personal wealth accumulated thereby reflecting self-admitted canniness rather than luck. The seemingly ever-rising cost of private education, the overpopulation of our green and pleasant land by illegal immigrants and our indigenous benefit baby breeding underclass undermining the foundations of our society. Sebastian was never sure if to agree was part of the protocol at dinner parties and had decided a long time ago to avoid engaging as none of these subjects encroached on his life.