James nodded. You didn’t have to be much of a planner to know that it was not meant to have turned out like this. So much for the vision, so much for the strategy. Although, despite everything, he still didn’t know for sure if he had overplanned it or not.
‘Maybe see you out clubbing again one night?’ said Ian.
‘Yeah, maybe,’ said James. ‘Thanks for everything.’
Rachel and James got into the jerky, treacherous lift that still hadn’t been serviced. They travelled down and through reception, moving against the thick flow of Southwark Council finance managers, policy officers, regulators, inspectors and administrators arriving for work. The men in charcoal suits, the women in long dark skirts, all looking in a way that James had never quite noticed before: purposeful, necessary and salaried.
And now they were outside, standing on the steps for the last time. Rachel lit a cigarette, but James had quit smoking. He looked out on to the busy street, where everything was still conforming closely to his worldview: drivers stuck in queues beeped their horns pointlessly, cyclists went through red lights and pedestrians dropped litter. The rush-hour traffic hadn’t peaked yet: as they both knew from Neil Tuffnel’s studies, this wouldn’t happen for at least another twenty minutes.
‘You’ll be fine,’ said Rachel. ‘There’s a whole world out there. God – in six months’ time you’ll be saying it’s the best thing that’s ever happened to you. That’s what everyone who loses their job always says.’
But James wasn’t so sure. After all, he was James Crawley and he was a town planner. What else was he going to do? Sit on a beach in Vietnam selling hair bands? Secure venture capital investment for a high-growth nano-technology start-up? The truth was – he wasn’t going to be fine. He was actually pretty badly fucked.
‘At least we got you three months’ notice. That will keep you going for a bit. You know, Lionel didn’t have to do that.’
‘And what about after that? Do you think I can get back?’
‘Well, obviously not here.’
‘No, but somewhere else. I can still be a planner, can’t I?’
Rachel blew out cigarette smoke and paused to think. But, unlike with Lionel, he didn’t think she was doing it for effect.
‘Look, it’s the public sector. You can be incompetent and lazy. But you can’t fuck up in the way you did. What did Lionel say to you?’
‘I don’t really want to talk about it. But he’s not giving me a reference.’
‘Well, whatever, your problem is that you are no longer regarded as a safe pair of hands. And in public administration, that is always a basic requirement. No one wants a planner, however brilliant, who smashes up artworks and gets into fights with the police. The whole point of being a planner is that the public have no idea who you are.’
Rachel was right. Even in places like Nottingham, especially in places like Nottingham, that kind of thing mattered. Could he go and work for a developer? But that seemed unlikely too – it was influence rather than planning skills that they were interested in. Developers didn’t give a fuck about skills. He wouldn’t be going to many more football matches now. Nor was it likely that he’d get invited to many art exhibitions either. Although he could, he supposed, still go to the odd book launch.
‘You know what – this isn’t necessarily going to make you feel any better, but it looks like I’m going to get a promotion out of this. Lionel had a word with me before you came in. Nothing’s settled, but he wants to enlarge my role, and give me some of your responsibilities. It helps him out, what with the budget cuts.’
James nodded. Yes, he could see that. It made a lot of sense. No need to replace him with someone new. No recruitment costs or redundancy payouts – from the perspective of the public good, it had worked out rather well.
‘Christ – the others are going to be in a state about you going like this. It’s not the kind of thing they’re good at dealing with. Neil is going to most probably pass out.’
‘I know, I know. I’m sorry. Christ, what a fuck-up.’
‘Well, don’t worry about that now,’ said Rachel. ‘I’ll give them all your love. We can arrange leaving drinks or something when things have quietened down.’
James checked his phone. There was a text message from Harriet: ‘OMG! Crazy night!! I’m OK. Felix took me back to his place. Hope you don’t mind xx’
Did he mind? He probably would a great deal at some point, but not yet – there were too many other things to mind about. At least biologically, things were starting to stabilise. He was starting to feel normal again, neither saturated with bad chemicals or emptied of all the good ones. The problem with that, of course, was that he was now beginning to feel terrible – almost as terrible as he ought to be feeling. There was still no word from Felix. Or maybe, that was the message? He was, after all, a master of communication. He had first contacted him with a two-word email, maybe Harriet was the medium he’d chosen for saying goodbye.