Clapham Lights (28 page)

‘Mark, I think you’re underestimating the consumer,’ Fred says, shaking his head. ‘Members of the general public would not spend small fortunes on ice cream, particularly in a country where the weather is primarily cold and wet.’

‘I don’t agree. It would all be about marketing. If you can give me a small amount of financial backing, I’d get the first place up and running and it would be a huge hit. I’d make ice cream sexy. I’d have the
waitresses
they have in the best nightclubs dressed up in skimpy outfits. It would give the place a touch of class and elegance.’

‘I don’t think a few girls in skimpy outfits is the difference between a successful business and a failure. How much of an investment are you looking for?’

‘Only seven hundred thousand,’ Mark says.

Fred laughs. ‘That’s completely out of the question.’

‘But I read that you were meant to be helping new businesses, to kick-start the economy.’

‘We loan the average small business around twenty thousand pounds. 
Seven hundred thousand pounds is an incredible amount of money. In fact I have never been asked for anywhere near that amount from a start-up in the entire time I’ve worked for IBS.’

‘But I could repay that within two years.’

‘Mark you have not presented me with any evidence that you could repay it. Your business plan is pure fantasy and I’m astonished that you even think we’d consider loaning you any money when you take such an amateurish approach.’

‘I am not an amateur. I know about money and business. You can’t spot a good investment.’

‘Mark, the International Bank of Scotland has a responsibility to its shareholders. We are a business. We don’t just hand out great big lumps of cash to everyone who walks through our doors and asks for it. I have to make a judgement. If someone comes in with a sound business plan, asking for a level of investment that I deem suitable then we will offer support. However, this is not the case with you. If I gave you what is frankly a staggering amount of money I would be hauled up in front of the board. We have to make sure that when we do invest, we do so to
people
we feel would make good use of the money. There is no evidence to suggest that your business would succeed, particularly in such an
uncertain
climate, so I’m afraid we won’t be able to help.’

‘I can’t believe this,’ Mark says, snatching back his business plan. ‘I’ve offered you a golden opportunity to support a young, gifted
entrepreneur
and you’re not interested. No wonder the economy is in trouble.’

‘Mark, please don’t be angry. If you expand your business plan and do some more research into the market and downgrade your demands, particularly if you’re going to continue to look for support from the banks, you may find that in the long run someone may want to invest.’

‘They will. You’ll see.’

‘Well, I hope they do. I can see you’ve got a lot of passion for the business.’ Fred gets up from his seat, tweaks his gold watch and offers his hand to Mark, who takes it fleetingly. ‘Oh and Mark, one last thing you may like to consider; I’d think about changing the company’s name. I don’t think Fatman Scoops really sets the right tone.’

‘I was going to change that anyway,’ Mark says, tucking his folder under his arm. ‘I’m going to called it Licked Out.’

Craig is watching Sky Sports News when Mark gets home.

‘You look knackered. Tough day?’ Craig asks.

‘You could say that.’ Mark chucks his folder into his room and gets an apple from the fridge. ‘You haven’t seen the news today have you?’

‘No. Why, what’s happened?’

I
t’s a bright Saturday morning. Craig has opened one of the French doors and is in the kitchen eating peanut butter on toast. On the
television
, a footballer dressed like a gangster rapper on
Soccer A.M
. is laughing about how he slept with his teammate’s wife before the Carling Cup final.

Craig kicks on his trainers and shouts to Mark - who is in bed
reading
Nuts
- that he’s off to get his hair cut and will be back to go shopping in about an hour. He suggests that Mark might want to start tidying the flat. Mark says he is going to.

There is a letter from MenDax and a statement from ING Direct for Mark in their post box. The ING envelope has come unstuck and Craig reads the contents. Mark’s balance, which was once £26,455, is now £1514. Craig puts the envelope back, gets his sunglasses from his car and strolls up Wall Street.

Lavender Hill Bob is squeezed in between Ladbrokes and El
Gringos
Mexican cantina, just down from the Cinq Estates office. Inside, the salon is blindingly bright. The chairs, sinks, and walls are brilliant white and there are lightbulbs around each mirror. Even the hairdressers are dressed head-to-toe in white.

Craig waits on a bench in the window and, after flicking through an old
Esquire
, watches the row of four hairdressers snipping at the hair of their female clients.

Brian, Craig’s hairdresser, appears from behind a door at the back of the salon. His white vest shows off his big tattooed arms and he has clipped brown hair flecked with grey, a beard, and a studded earring in each ear. He walks with his shoulders hunched and has scars on the bridge of his nose and forehead.

He has a gravelly south London accent and apologises for making Craig wait. Craig, holding a copy of
Heat
magazine, sits in the barber’s
chair. He says he hasn’t had his hair cut in months and wants it a lot shorter. He’s seen a picture in a magazine of a style he likes and wonders if Brian could do something similar.

‘I’m a hairdresser, not a plastic surgeon mate,’ Brian says, laughing at the photo of Brad Pitt that Craig shows him.

‘I’m not expecting to look like him, I like his hair. It’s choppy but smart. Can you do that?’

Brian slaps a rubber cutting collar around Craig’s neck and says that he’ll start by taking a lot of the length off.

‘It’s good to have a bit of sunshine,’ he says as he starts trimming. ‘The summer was awful.’

‘Yeah,’ Craig says.

‘I was going to stay here but business was really slow, so I ended up heading off to Ibiza for a couple of weeks. Did you go away anywhere?’

‘No, I wanted to, but I couldn’t get the time off, or afford it. I just stayed here and worked.’

‘Who do you work for?’ Brian asks, concentrating on the back of Craig’s head.

‘An estate agent.’

‘Oh yeah, which one?’

‘Cinq Estates,’ Craig says, managing to sound both depressed and embarrassed.

Brian stops cutting and looks at Craig in the mirror. ‘You don’t do you? I’m sure that’s not what you told me last time.’

‘I don’t think it came up.’

‘But you seem like a nice bloke. What are you doing working for that bunch of crooks?’

‘I’ve been trying to leave for months.’

‘Good.’ Brian starts cutting again. ‘You know, I sold my flat through you lot a couple of years ago and it was a fucking nightmare.’ The woman in the next seat along glances across and he apologises for swearing. ‘They were trying to rip me off every step of the way. Charging me fees for everything imaginable and telling me to drop the asking price all the time.

‘I had a place just off Northcote Road, and they were telling me it was worth about thirty thousand more than the other agents, and
initially
I believed them. I started off dealing with this girl, Karen I think
she was called, but then she left and I had this greasy bloke Christian D’Souza dealing with me. Do you know him?’

‘Yeah. He’s now the boss.’

‘You’re joking? He was the most dishonest bloke I’ve ever come across, and that’s saying something. Stuff always went missing from my flat after he’d been there.’

‘Like what?’

‘Nothing major, just CDs mainly, and some cash once. I confronted him and of course he denied everything.’ Brian closes the scissors with a snap. ‘I wish I’d beaten some sense into him.’

‘Um, yeah.’

‘The housing market’s gone down the pan recently hasn’t it?’ Brian says, moving round to start on Craig’s fringe.

‘A little bit.’

‘It’s going to be a tough few months for everyone they were saying on the news last night. I suppose that’s one of the good things about hairdressing; people will always need their hair cut. I wouldn’t like to be one of those poor mugs in the City who turn up to find the office has shut down. Although I don’t feel sorry for them, greedy bastards most of them.’

‘Umm.’

A tubby man in his forties with a mop of blond hair saunters into the salon. He helps himself to an iced tea and then wanders over to Brian and kisses him on the lips before heading into the back room. Craig looks bemused.

‘That’s my partner, Clive. We set this place up together after I got out in 1997.’

‘Got out of where?’

‘Prison.’

‘You were in prison? Oh, right. What were you in for?’ Craig asks quietly.

Brian stops cutting and glares at him. ‘Don’t ever ask someone what they’re in for.’

‘Sorry, I’m really sorry.’

‘I’m only messing with you, you big girl,’ he says, laughing. ‘It was drugs and ABH. It was the best thing that ever happened to me though, being put away. I learnt how to cut hair when I was inside and when I got
out I thought I’d try and make a go of it. It’s kept me on the straight and narrow.’

Brian trims Craig’s neck with clippers, assesses the cut from all angles and then holds a mirror up to the back of Craig’s head.

‘That’s brilliant, thanks,’ Craig says.

‘You still look nothing like Brad Pitt though.’

Craig stands up and removes his gown whilst Brian brushes hair from his collar.

‘That’s twenty-two pounds fifty,’ Brian says, going behind reception and opening the till.

Craig’s smile sags and he digs around in his pocket for change. ‘I’m really sorry but I’ve only got nineteen pounds in cash and I’ve left my cards at home. I’m sure it was less last time.’ He looks worried. ‘Can I drop the rest in later? I’m really sorry.’

‘Don’t worry about it mate,’ Brian says. ‘We put the prices up a couple of weeks ago. Give it to me next time.’

‘Cheers, that’s really good of you. I really appreciate it.’

‘No worries, have a good weekend,’ Brian says, slamming the till shut.

Outside, Craig checks his phone. He has four missed calls and a text message from Christian. The text tells him to cancel his plans and come to the office. Craig texts him back saying ‘
Impossible
’. Christian phones him incessantly for the next five minutes. Hannah texts saying Christian’s going ballistic because five people have phoned in sick.

He gets another text from Christian telling him to ‘
gt bac to office NOW!
’ so he turns his phone off.

He walks home via NatWest and tries to take £20 out of a cash machine but a message flashes up on the screen that the bank cannot authorise the transaction due to insufficient funds. He tries for £10 and gets the same response. Craig swears to himself and stands motionless as the machine beeps at him to retrieve his card.

By the time he gets back to the flat, Mark has rearranged the living room. The sofas and table are flat against the walls and he has moved the new television and the dining table’s chairs into his room. The old television is back in its corner and the floor has been vacuumed.

‘What the cock have you done to your hair?’ Mark says as he throws newspapers into a recycling bag.

‘I thought I’d go for a new look. You’ve done well,’ Craig says, taking in Mark’s handiwork.

‘Yeah I thought I’d move the old TV back in. I didn’t want someone spilling drink over the new-y. Are we going shopping in a minute?’

Craig pauses. ‘Mark, I’ve had a bit of a nightmare and I need to ask you a favour.’

‘It depends what it is.’

‘The cash machine swallowed my card. I can’t get any money out.’

‘Is that all? I’ll lend you whatever you need, mate. Christ, I thought it was something serious for a minute.’

‘Cheers, you’re a life-saver.’

‘No worries. Let’s get to Whole Foods. I’ve written a list of what we need.’

Mark loads the four funky house CDs he’s bought into the stereo.
It Just Won’t Do
blares out and he quickly turns down the volume. He switches off the main lights and admires the flat.

Rows of fairy lights zigzag across the ceiling creating a pearly
canopy
. Mark has also wound a set of multi-coloured garden lights around the railings on the terrace and lit sixty tea candles which glow against the night sky.

On the kitchen worktops there are over a hundred cans and bottles of lager and cider, a crate of Guinness, a crate of white and red wine, five bottles of vodka, and bottles of Jack Daniels, Gordon’s gin, Coca-Cola, lemonade and tonic water.

Mark transfers the lager and cider into three plastic barrels they’ve bought from Homebase and covers them with ice. He then carries two of the barrels, with great difficulty, into the living room, placing them either side of the table where he’s placed bowls of Doritos, cocktail
sausages
and chicken nuggets.

Craig - wet and dressed only in a towel - is tidying his bedroom, which Mark has nominated as the cloakroom and toilet. He hides his iPod in a cupboard and stashes all of his letters and bank statements in a bedside drawer. He selects a short-sleeved pink shirt and dark jeans to go with his white belt and canvas shoes.

He stands in front of his bathroom mirror and perfects his new hair. He uses
Harry Potter and Half-Blood Prince
as a door stop and goes into the living room where Mark is on the floor picking out DVDs from a shoe box.

‘I can’t believe it, mate,’ Craig says, looking up and out onto the
terrace
. ‘It looks amazing.’

‘I told you it would look good. I’m going to put on some old retro DVDs. I saw it done in a bar in Old Street. They had old episodes of
The A-Team
and
Fall Guy
playing. It looked quality.’

‘What are you going to put on?’

‘A few old Wrestlemanias. I won’t put the sound on.’

Craig smiles and opens a Corona. ‘We’re never going to drink all this.’

‘We will, trust me. When it’s free people drink twice as much.’

Craig has a new text message.

‘Someone dropped out?’ Mark asks.

‘No, it’s just Hannah asking what time she should come over.’

‘Make sure she doesn’t come too early, and don’t get drunk before she gets here. What are you going to tell her?’

Daft Punk is booming through the crowded flat and a serious dent has been made in the alcohol stock. Craig drops more bottles of Heineken into the barrels of icy water, eats a sausage and goes back into the kitchen where Danny and two other male Cinq employees - whom Craig doesn’t seem to know - are drinking WKD.

‘You’ve got a cool place,’ Danny says.

‘Yeah, cool,’ the boy to Danny’s right wearing a long gold chain says. ‘What’s the rent on this?’

‘Too much,’ Craig says, mixing a strong vodka and orange.

He takes the drink to Amy, who has just arrived. She is wearing a short-sleeved black sequin t-shirt and has dark, smoky eye shadow on.

‘I hope that’s not too strong,’ Craig says.

‘That’s fine, thanks,’ she says, her whitened teeth shining. ‘I need a strong drink. Crap week.’

‘We’ve got tons so drink as much as you can. I don’t think anyone else from your work is here yet, I’m not sure where Mark-’

Mark comes up behind them and drapes his arms over their
shoulders
. He’s wearing a blue muscle-fit Hollister t-shirt with a black collar and his hug makes Amy spill some of her drink.

‘I’m glad you’ve made it,’ he says to Amy. ‘Craig, your Norwich mates were wondering where you were. They’re outside.’

Craig leaves them.

‘I didn’t think you were going to come,’ Mark says, leaning against Craig’s bedroom door. There is a queue developing for the toilet.

‘I’m sorry about the whole bonus thing,’ Amy says.

‘It’s OK, I’m over it. Have you done something different to your hair?’

‘I had it done yesterday. I had an interview.’

‘An interview?’ Mark says, taken aback. ‘With who?’

‘Salingers.’

‘How did you get that?’

‘Through an agency.’

‘Oh. How did it go?’

‘Not very well. What have you been doing?’

‘Umm, not much really. Been going to the gym a lot. I thought about signing up with a few recruitment places, but I thought I’d try using my contacts first.’

‘Have you got anywhere?’

‘No, not really. I might go on holiday. I need to take a bit of time out to think.’

‘I can’t afford to take time out with a mortgage to pay. I’ve got enough money to survive a few weeks but after that… I don’t really want to think about it.’

‘Amy, don’t be negative. You’ll be fine. This is just a minor setback. By Christmas everything will be back to normal and people will be
fighting
over the likes of us.’

‘Mark, are you sure you’re OK?’

‘Why?’

‘Well, you’re carrying on like nothing’s happened.’

‘Not much has happened.’

‘Mark, it’s not healthy.’

‘Yeah, well.’ He shrugs.

‘You know you can always talk to me.’

‘Thanks. Come on, don’t be miserable. Let’s get hammered, forget about things. Oh, and don’t say anything about MenDax to Craig, he doesn’t know.’

Craig is on the terrace with Adam, Tony and three more of their old
school friends. Adam, wearing a tight v-neck jumper without a t-shirt, is orchestrating a game of fives. Tony has lost four times in a row and been made to down a shot of vodka each time.