Me and My Sisters (30 page)

27

Sophie

After seeing how upset Jess was by the tension in the house, I’d realized I had to try to keep her life as normal as possible, protect her as much as I could. Every morning I forced myself out of bed, had a cold shower – our heating had been turned off – got dressed and tried to be normal under very abnormal circumstances.

But I still couldn’t face taking Jess to school. I didn’t want to see anyone – I wasn’t ready yet. I was still too shaken, too emotional and too ashamed. I couldn’t even speak to Julie or Louise. I knew they’d be sympathetic, I knew they’d want to help, but I didn’t want to admit it. I didn’t want to tell my sisters what a mess my life was. Besides, what could they do? Julie had no money, and Louise needed to save hers because she was raising Clara alone. Anyway, I always sorted out my own problems. I didn’t like burdening people. There was no way I was telling Mum and Dad. They’d be so upset for me and they had enough on their plate worrying about Gavin and his lack of direction. I didn’t want to worry them. I was thirty-eight years old: I’d have to figure this out on my own. Somehow.

Jack continued to bring Jess to and from school. We had given Mimi a few weeks off while we tried to work out what to do. We seemed to spend most of our time going around in circles, blaming, shouting, cursing, crying …

A few weeks after Jack’s revelation, I woke up one morning and decided I had to take action. I had to get some kind of a handle on our situation. I sat alone in my vast kitchen, overlooking my manicured garden, and willed myself to be strong. I picked up the phone and cancelled the appointment I had made with my doctor. I had called yesterday to see him and get a prescription for Prozac. I wanted to numb the pain of this. I wanted help in getting through the day. I wanted something to make me not feel so crushed, devastated, bereft. But deep down I knew this wasn’t depression: this was shock, anger, confusion and turmoil, not a chemical or hormonal imbalance, not something that could be treated with drugs. I had to find another way to cope with this. I had to find a way to make money, a way to keep a roof over my daughter’s head.

I looked down at my nails. I had started biting them again. They were a mess. I went over and opened the fridge. I wasn’t hungry, but I knew I had to eat something. I couldn’t afford to get sick. I had to stay focused and be clear-headed.

I forced myself to eat two slices of pumpkin bread with sugar-free jam and drink a cup of organic green tea. When Jack came back from dropping Jess to school, I offered him a cup of coffee. It was the first time I’d done that since he’d told me about the Ponzi scheme.

‘I’d love one.’ He looked pleased. ‘You seem brighter today. Do you feel better?’

‘Not really, but I can’t avoid reality for the rest of my life.’ I told him to sit down. I took out a pen and paper and began to make a list of all the people we owed money to. ‘The cheque for Jess’s school fees bounced and they’ve left six messages about it. I also have tons of other irate messages on my phone. The gardener is waiting to get paid, my personal trainer’s cheque bounced, Jess’s ballet teacher called, her swimming teacher called, her drama teacher called and her music teacher called. None of them have been paid.’

Jack rubbed his hand across his eyes. He looked like hell. ‘I tried to postpone telling you for as long as possible so any cheques written since early May have bounced.’

I bit my lip to stop myself crying. ‘Mimi has to be told. She’ll need to find another job. I’ll write her a reference and see if I can think of anyone who needs help. We need to get rid of our expensive cars and get a small one to share. Now, what’s happening with the house?’

‘It looks like it’s going to be repossessed by the bank, but Anthony is trying to stall it to buy us some time.’

I swallowed the bile rising in my throat. The thought of being homeless was terrifying. ‘I’m going to stop putting it off and call Jess’s school, explain our situation and ask them to let Jess stay for the final few weeks of this term. I can’t imagine they’ll kick her out now. But she can’t go back next year.’

‘She loves that school. I’ll find the money somehow.’

‘Where, Jack? Where are you planning to come up with nine thousand euros for Jess’s fees next year? Did you suddenly remember stashing some under the mattress? It would have been a lot wiser than giving it to a gangster.’

He glared at me. ‘There’s no need to be so cold. I didn’t do this on purpose. I’m a bloody good trader. I made millions for the fund over the years. I made one bad decision. Which, by the way, was an investment that Brad and all the other partners in GreenGem agreed on. The same investment that ten of the other top hedge funds in New York went in on too. It was just one bad decision.’

‘Well, it was a bloody big one.’

‘I do have some good news. I forgot to tell you we still have a pension.’

My head snapped up. ‘Where is it? How much is in it?’

‘It’s worth three hundred thousand euros, but I can’t touch it until I reach retirement age, fifty-five at the earliest.’

‘What do you mean
can’t touch it
? Did you tell them we’re homeless?’

He shook his head. ‘It’s locked in. There’s no way of getting any of it out. No way at all.’

I slammed my cup on the counter. ‘Well, that’s fantastic, Jack. Jess can go back to school when she’s twenty.’

‘There’s no point talking to you.’ Jack stormed out. That was the way most of our conversations ended, these days.

‘Go on, walk away. Leave me to clean up your mess and try to explain to everyone why they won’t be getting paid and that their jobs are gone,’ I shouted after him.

The front door slammed. I took a deep breath and continued to make a list of all the people I had to call to explain why we couldn’t pay them.

I had always found writing lists calmed me down. When you wrote down everything you had to do, it became clearer, less daunting, and once you began to cross things off you felt in control again. But this list was endless, awful, humiliating and heartbreaking. Why hadn’t I gone to college and studied something proper? If I was a lawyer like Louise I could go back to work, earn good money, keep Jess in school and pay our mortgage.

Who the hell would hire a thirty-eight-year-old ex-model who hadn’t worked in six years? What was I good at? Posing and smiling at the camera. I hadn’t scored enough points to study law, but why hadn’t I become a nurse or a teacher or a beautician, something I could go back to, something that would bring in money? I was useless to Jess. My baby would have to leave the school she loved because her parents were a pair of losers.

My phone rang. It was Mum again. I ignored it. I’d been hiding from everyone for weeks. I think my flu story was beginning to sound fake, but I just couldn’t face people: I knew that once I started telling everyone it would become a complete reality. It would be out there in the public domain – our private business, our personal affairs – out there for people to gossip about and judge and exaggerate and speculate on. I felt sick every time I thought about it.

What would people say? What would they think? I knew that Victoria and her gang would probably turn their backs on me. Look at how they had shunned poor Annabelle when her husband still had a job and they still had a house. What was to become of us? Where were we going to live? I knew my parents would put us up if we were stuck, but for how long? Would Jack ever get another job? Would anyone hire someone who had lost money in a Ponzi scheme? What kind of a life were we going to have? I felt panic rising in my chest and tried to breathe deeply. I had to stay calm. I had to find a way to make some money.

I racked my brains – what could I do, what did I have, who would hire me …? I looked down at my Jimmy Choo boots and then it came to me: eBay! I could sell my clothes and jewellery on eBay and make some money. I had accumulated lots of things over the years – they must be worth a few quid. I felt a tiny wave of relief. Maybe all my shopping would actually help us now. I ran upstairs and switched on my laptop.

The eBay site gave a simple step-by-step guide to becoming a seller online. It told me exactly what I needed to do to sell my things. I decided to put them up for international sale. I wanted as many people as possible to see them. I also decided to put half of the things on at auction and half at a fixed price to see which did better. If two people wanted my Dolce & Gabbana coat badly, they might bid up to a good price. Then again, I needed cash quickly, so I wanted to put a lot of things on at a fixed price to get some money coming in.

I trawled through the eBay site to get an idea of pricing. The things selling quickly seemed to be marked at about a third or less of the original price. I was going to be selling my clothes, shoes, bags and jewellery at knock-down prices, but it was better than nothing.

I knew that taking photos and describing my belongings would be easy enough for me. I was good on detail. I could describe the materials and fabrics of my clothes and shoes with my eyes closed. I knew the carat and clarity of my diamonds. I went through my wardrobe, pulling out everything. I found clothes that still had price tags on them. Things I had completely forgotten buying. I discovered shoes that had never been worn, bags that had never been used. Sitting there, surrounded by mountains of stuff, made me realize how much I had. Far too much. It was kind of obscene. I had twenty pairs of black boots alone; one hundred and fifty-six pairs of shoes in total, most of which I never wore.

The best find was an old mannequin I had stuffed at the back of one of the wardrobes in my dressing room. I had it from my modelling days – a designer had given it to me after a shoot I’d done. He didn’t want to keep it because its left foot had fallen off. So I’d taken it home and used it to pin my clothes when I wanted to take them in or alter them. That was before I’d had the money to have a seamstress do it for me. The mannequin would showcase my stuff perfectly.

I hung a white sheet on the door-frame of the dressing room, pinning it tightly so no creases would show up in the photos. I dressed the mannequin and began to take photos. It took a while to get the lighting right so that the clothes were shown at their best. I had learnt the importance of lighting from modelling. I wanted everything to look gorgeous so people would flock to buy my clothes. For the shoes, I covered my dressing table with a white sheet and photographed them above and from the side. I took pictures of my jewellery, mostly in the boxes it had come in, but for some of the bigger pieces I used a black background. I had a black velvet cushion, which I laid my diamond necklaces on. I adjusted the lighting so that you could see the diamonds sparkling in the photos.

Hours went by and I had gone through only a quarter of my wardrobe. I decided to put what I had up on the eBay site and finish the rest of my things over the next few days. I was anxious to see if I’d have any luck selling. I loaded up the photos I had taken and painstakingly described each item. Then I waited nervously for bids and purchases.

By doing a quick calculation of all of the articles in my wardrobe, I figured that if I could get around a third of the price for most things, I’d make about sixty thousand euros. I prayed that people would want to buy my things. The photos looked good, more professional than most of the others on the site, and my descriptions were very detailed. I began to feel calmer. Doing something was making me feel better, less useless, less pathetic.

Jess came running into my room after school. She stopped when she saw the chaos in my normally pristine bedroom. ‘What are you doing, Mummy?’

‘Well, I decided I have too many clothes and I’m going to try and sell some and make some money.’

‘But, Mummy, you always said that a girl can never have too many clothes or diamonds.’ Jess put one of my diamond bangles on her tiny wrist and twirled it.

‘I was wrong, honey. You can have too much. Look at all these things. I could never wear everything that I have. I even found things I’d forgotten I bought. So it’s time to clear out my wardrobe and just keep the things I’ll wear all the time.’

‘What about your jewels?’

‘I have too many of those too.’

‘But you told me diamonds are a girl’s best friend.’ Jess was looking worried again. She didn’t like the changes going on.

‘Yes, I did, but I only have two hands, two wrists, two ears and one neck. I can’t fit all of these jewels on, so I’m just going to sell some. Look, I have five diamond necklaces but I can only wear one, so I’m going to sell four.’

‘Are you going to keep this?’ Jess picked up the diamond Tiffany S Jack had bought me the Christmas before last.

‘No, sweetie, I’m going to keep this one.’ I held up a small diamond cross that Jack had bought me on my birthday six months after we had started dating.

‘But it’s so small. This one is so much bigger and shinier.’

‘I know, but small can be good too.’

‘Mummy, you always said the bigger the diamond the better,’ Jess reminded me.

I cursed my stupidity. I had said all those things to her in a joking way, but now I understood that they were really silly things to say to a four-year-old. I had been far too flippant. I had filled her sweet little head with idiotic notions. I had become so wrapped up in my luxurious lifestyle that I had unintentionally instilled ridiculous beliefs in Jess.

I sat down on the floor beside her. ‘Listen to me, Jess. When Mummy said all those things about diamonds she was just joking. Diamonds are fine, but they don’t make you happy.’

‘You always looked really happy when Daddy gave you diamonds.’

‘Yes, but only for a little while,’ I said, deeply ashamed of the heavy emphasis I had placed on material things. ‘What makes a person really happy, Jess, is having people they love close to them.’

‘I know that, Mummy. When you go away I’m always sad and then when you come back I’m always happy.’

A lump had formed in my throat. What kind of a mother was I, leaving my baby with Mimi all the time to travel around with Jack, always putting him and his needs before hers? What kind of mother tells her daughter that material goods matter so much?