The Square (7 page)

“Well, you could sell an old piece. What about one of the golf holes that nobody wants? You know, that one of the 4th at Augusta which was commissioned by the man who went bust. We’ve still got that in the gallery. You could have an auction for it. Might raise thousands, you know.”

He stands to leave, catches a glimpse of the photos of Gilda in her underwear, remembers the moulded genitalia and is struck by a bright idea.

“I’ve got it. Why don’t you offer tours around your house? £20 a head. You’d clean up. Probably make enough to redo the whole bloody Square, and then some.”

Chapter Six Tracey

It’s true. There isn’t much money in nails. Or, indeed, door-to-door makeup sales at the moment.

At the appointed hour, Tracey is ready. She is not a woman who is late, hates it. She looks at Belle and Grace, her daughters. She worries whether they are ever going to live up to the aspirational female attributes of their names. Each is intently focused on a tiny hand held screen.

“Dad’s going to look after you tonight. What about your prep, Grace?” she says.

“Talk to the hand, Mum,” says Grace, not looking up.

“What?” Tracey hates that phrase. “I am asking you about your prep.”

“No-one calls it prep any more. Too posh. These days, it’s just called homework.”

Stung, Tracey whips out a response.

“What, even at your posh school? It’s called The Prep, for God’s sake! How can you outlaw a word which is part of your own identity?”

Grace simply shrugs and carries on tapping the screen.

Tracey thinks of that school. The fees. The uniform. Her mind clicks through the whole morning routine. The mothers outside. Their perfect jeans. Their bags. Their bags. Sometimes she thinks it would have been better if they had never had any money at all, never had such a giant bloody windfall, then they wouldn’t have had to move house, sign up to the private way, BUPA, schools, bookshops not libraries, private clubs not the local pool, everything. Life might have been a bit easier.

The door bell rings.

“Prep, homework, I don’t care what you bloody call it. You’re doing it. That is Harriet and she is taking me out, so Belle you will have to be in charge for a while. Until Daddy gets home. Please make sure Grace does her homework.”

“Oooh, Mummy’s swearing,” sighs Belle.

“That’s £1 in the Swear Box for you, Mummy,” says Grace with prim delight. Why are my children ranged against me, thinks Tracey vaguely.

“But we’ll let you off,” shouts Grace, “because we know you haven’t got any money any more!”

She can’t even put a quid in the kids’ fucking swear box.

Which makes it two quid. Although she didn’t actually articulate that curse, so it doesn’t count.

The door bell rings again.

“Harriet.”

“Tracey.”

They embrace. Tracey grasps Harriet’s bulk, inhaling her personal bouquet of tobacco and perfume. Harriet must be one of the last people in London, if not the UK, to still be a smoker.

“Alright, so what are we seeing?” says Tracey.

“You’ll love it. We are going to the Book Fair and we are going to hear Alan Makin talking live,” announces Harriet, with a grin.

“Oh, my goodness!” shouts Tracey, clapping nail varnish to lipstick. “Really?”

To the Max with Makin. God, she thinks. I hope Harriet doesn’t think we are broke, because we are not. Just a bit skint. At the moment.

“Alan Makin, visiting our weedy little Book Fair?”

She is amazed that he is on the programme. Alan Makin is a star of financial daytime television. The man in a linen suit who says you should always keep a grip on your money. The man who advocates weekly budget sessions and spreadsheets and other things which just make Tracey’s head ache. Yes, that might be useful. She’s also excited to have the chance to see someone from television, just down the road in a marquee. As if they have been spirited directly from the airwaves. This is the sort of thing which happens in her life now. Her new life, her post-Lottery life. Christ, she is glad it happened to them.

“You are quite, quite brilliant,” she says. “Do you know, I’ve always wanted to meet him. Bye, girls.”

There is a hummed response from the screens. Neither girl looks up. Tracey leaves the room and opens the front door.

She smiles at a plump man in a very well-cut suit, walking quickly away from Philip Burrell’s house. He smiles back, nods his head.

“Anyone you know?” says Harriet.

“No, at least I don’t think so. See him quite often, though. I think he might have something to do with, you know, that artist Philip Burrell. His agent or something.”

“Probably runs his gallery,” says Harriet. “Selling all that stupid sporting stuff. Do you know I saw an ad for one of those golf sculptures the other day, it was going for £20,000. Loony.”

Even though she’s won the Lottery, Tracey doesn’t want to grapple with the idea of people spending the equivalent of a year’s school fees on a sculpture of a golf hole.

“Do you think I am smart enough?” she asks Harriet. Harriet surveys the tight skirt, the tiny cropped jumper with the words
Bien Sûr
emblazoned on the front, the leather coat. Dear Tracey, she thinks. She never gets it quite right. Well, that’s what happens when money just falls in people’s laps, isn’t it. Wasn’t brought up to know how to spend it.

Harriet conceals her thoughts, and smiles. “You’re fine,” she says. She is swathed in a giant pashmina and Ugg boots.

“So, is it true that you really always wanted to meet Alan Makin?” They step out into the Square.

Tracey arches her eyebrows. “Are you kidding? My mum thinks everything he says is gold dust.”

“Well, I don’t know if you’ll meet him, but you’ll certainly hear him and see him. I’m so glad I got you a ticket. Are you interested in his financial brilliance? Or do you just like seeing people off the telly?”

“Both,” says Tracey. “I mean, it’s not like we are stony broke, or anything, but… ”

“Oh, I know… ” says Harriet quickly, opening the car door.

“… Its just nice to know you are doing the right thing with the money that you have.”

“Absolutely.”

“Because, you know, sometimes you feel a bit, you know… ”

“I know.”

“You know.”

“I know.”

“Skint.”

“Yeah!”

Why are English people so crap at talking about money, thinks Tracey. Ever since we, ever since she and Larry, since IT happened, talking about money has been more difficult, not easier. You’d have thought that having money, a lot of money, would make it better, but it hasn’t. And now, what with the money they spent on the house and school fees and her cosmetics business slowing down quite a lot, things are beginning to look a bit tight again. Tracey doesn’t quite know how that has happened, even having two million quid suddenly slammed into her life, but somehow, it has. Everything suddenly went up a notch. Bags, cars, houses. Piano lessons.

Harriet drives ferociously to the Book Fair, quickly smoking two cigarettes on the way.

“Love smoking at the wheel,” she says. “Best place to do it. It always gives me a thrilling illusion of being in control.”

Tracey smiles and quietly opens the window.

At the Book Fair, several hundred chairs are set up in front of a small temporary stage, on which is positioned a large easy chair behind a desk, with a microphone and a large name board. There is also a banner over the desk. Both read ‘ALAN MAKIN, Taking You Through The Good, The Bad and The Ugly in The Finances Game!’

A steady stream of people are taking their seats in the tent. Most people are over forty. No students or teenagers here. These are all grown-up people with money issues, thinks Tracey. She hopes very much that she won’t bump into anyone she knows. Or any of her cosmetics customers. God, that would be awful. She’d have to pretend she was there for professional reasons, make out that Alan had hired her or something. It would be so embarrassing.

She and Harriet take up their seats somewhere towards the back, and shiver out of their coats. Tracey starts to think the event might be quite amusing after all.

“This is great,” she whispers to Harriet. “A night out, watching a celebrity but also doing something virtuous.” It’s fun to be out of the house, and at an event. Even if it’s an event devoted to thinking about overdrafts. She notices that other people are quite brazen about being there, waving and shouting ‘Hi!’ to acquaintances on the other side of the marquee. Maybe, she thinks, that because there is a famous person in the room, they think they have become a little bit famous too.

At precisely 7pm, the lights dim, and Alan Makin springs onto the stage. He is a very fair man with aviator glasses. He is wearing one of his famous light-coloured linen suits. He waves at everyone.

Alan Makin’s Unique Selling Point is that he tries to make paying off debt seem thrilling.

“Good evening, all!”

Harriet turns round and pulls a face.

“He’s a lot smaller than he is on the TV, isn’t he? I hope I haven’t wasted your time, sweetie.”

“No,” says Tracey. She is transfixed by watching someone from the screen existing in real time just before her eyes.

“Tonight, I am going to educate, entertain and inspire! I am going to help you all become better investors and to learn how to deal with debt. Because debt must be dealt with. Do we not agree?” thunders Makin.

The audience murmurs sheepishly.

“Doesn’t it?” booms Makin.

“YES!” shouts the audience back at him.

“Tonight, we are going to understand THE WAY FORWARD.” He steps one pace forward on the stage. Harriet and Tracey exchange grimaces.

“I am going to leave you wanting to TAKE ACTION!”

“I believe this is what’s known as ecstatic economy talk,” whispers Harriet, laughing.

“Who feels their debts are impossible to deal with?” continues Alan Makin, stalking the stage. A few people raise their arms, but it is only to take photos of Alan Makin on their phones.

“Who is trying to bury their head, and their bank balance in the sand? Like an ostrich? Who thinks they cannot live without going shopping? Who has been fooled by promises of 0% interest rates, and then finds themselves shelling out interest to credit card companies which comes in at 35%?”

Various hands go up.

“Ostriches, you are going to change your ways. Earn it first, then spend it,” says Alan. “That’s what you are going to learn tonight. Earn it, then spend it. Not the other way round.”

He then dives into an anecdote. It is not a long and winding road. In Alan’s expert hands, it is a short, straight road.

“Once upon a time I had more debt than I was earning on an annual basis. Can you possibly imagine what my bank charges were?”

Knowing laughter ripples around the room. Tracey looks at the audience. Nobody looks obviously impoverished. They all look like people who would normally attend an annual Book Festival. She’s feeling happy, in the presence of Alan Makin. He seems to be exuding a sort of glow. She nudges Harriet.

“He’s rather adorable.”

“I gave myself eighteen months to pay it off,” continues Alan. “I was working at the Post Office. I took no trips. I bought no clothes. Whenever I travelled anywhere, I went on the bus. I sold my car. I worked every nightshift, holiday and extra hours that I could. I substituted for everyone on my team. Gradually, I shifted that debt. And do you know what it taught me? It taught me that nothing is worth having the stress of a huge debt. Earn it first! Then spend it! Not the other way round.”

After the anecdotes, Makin encourages people to come up on stage. They sit on a stool, Alan sits behind his desk, and gives them a four-minute Money Makeover, as honed on his eponymous
TV Makeovers
, as explained by him in his
Daily Mail
columns, and as written about in his numerous books, sold at airports around the world. Because debt, as Alan is fond of saying, is global. Tracey finds herself wondering whether he is married.

“Do you think he’s gay?” she whispers to Harriet.

Harriet tilts her head back, and surveys Alan.

“Could be. That suit. But no. I don’t know.” She looks at him through half-closed eyes, as if that will give something away.

“I don’t know,” she finally says.

Meanwhile, Alan, unaware of this scrutiny, is well into his stride. He deals with each person on stage in the same way.

First, he starts with praise:

“You should be proud of yourself. Your own business? Five children? A sculpture studio in the garden? Well done.”

Then it quickly transmutes to humiliation.

“What? You have an overdraft of £25,000, and an addiction to catalogue shopping and a beach hut worth £60,000, and you can’t make ends meet? Sell it! Sell it, unsubscribe, and don’t look back!”

A middle-aged man grins and stumbles away off the podium.

A serious-looking woman of fifty is next up.

“Am I hearing you correctly?” yells Makin. “You are earning an annual income of £55,000 and you can’t work out how to pay your tax bill? Don’t avoid those letters coming in. Tax evasion is dealt with so seriously!”

She nods furiously.

Then she leans over and gives Alan a huge kiss. Being publicly humiliated by Alan Makin has clearly delighted her.

“Thanks, sweetie. Next!”

His next victim is a younger man with glasses, who confesses he wishes to build up a property portfolio.

“You want to do buy to let? With debts of over £48,000? You are out of control with your desire to own property. Take control of yourself!”

The man shrugs his shoulders and looks at his shoes.

“What is your overdraft like?” demands Alan. “Well, I’ve got about £20,000 in unsecured debt,” he confesses.

“Talk me through your assets,” says Alan.

“Err, house. Flat in Courchevel. Er, Car. Sports car. Merc. Err, plasma screen telly,” says the man. He grins cheekily. “Although I don’t know that I could call that an asset, since what’s on is just rubbish.”

Alan glares. He is the gag master around here. Plus, he gets a lot of income from his daytime TV franchised shows.

“Well, you need to simplify your life,” he says. “Minimalism. That should be the life-changing mantra for you. Say it as you cut up those cards, as you sell the plasma TV, as you flog the ski flat. You need to be rational. You are way over-leveraged. Thank you.”