From Julian Monkford to All Members on March 8, 2019 at 8:06 am
RE: International Women’s Day
Dear all,
To mark International Women’s Day today, please join me in #breakingtheglass and celebrating the women of Reuben. As a firm, we place equality at the heart of our culture and are deeply committed to the advancement of our women. I am therefore proud to announce today that 11% of our partnership are now women, a rise from 7% last year.
Today, I urge everyone to challenge their gender biases and take the opportunity to recognize the contributions of women to the firm, past, present, and future.
Julian Monkford
PARTNER
“Hello, hello, hello.” Linda swanned in. Zaynab, who Linda first mistook me for, was already sitting. She was beautiful, with soft pillowy lips and honeyed eyes, complemented by her ochre-colored hijab. She infinitesimally lowered her chin in a barely noticeable gesture. I could breathe more freely now that I knew Josh wasn’t on-site. I knew he was still working; I checked his Skype status like a nervous tic. The little green sign confirmed that he hadn’t actually been suspended. Hadn’t stopped putting in those hours for the Firm.
“Q1 has been great, well done, everyone,” Linda began. “People ask me Linda, now that you’ve got the ball rolling on diversity at Reuben, what next? And I tell them that it doesn’t stop there, we have to keep striving.” Linda did a one-eighty-degree look around the room like a cult leader appraising her following.
“In order for us to have a constructive conversation about inequality and the specific disadvantages that some people face,” Linda said, pulling her hands toward her chest, before gravely nodding, “we must first acknowledge our own privilege.” Bailey looked rather panicky as Linda said, “So I thought we could go around the room and think about how we are personally complicit in upholding oppressive structures.”
One by one, the members of the committee timidly offered olive branches.
“Although I am a woman, and therefore diverse to some extent,” Linda said, “I am white.” People nodded as if this were groundbreaking. “And that gives me certain advantages, which I have to remember to be grateful for.”
She looked expectantly at Bailey, who cleared his throat before publicly flogging his entire existence.
“I’m a straight white man,” he said, somber enough for a support group for meth addicts. “I went to Eton, and then Oxford. My dad’s a Silk.” He rubbed his eyes. “When you say it all out loud, I realize just how lucky I have been.”
“Thank you,” Linda spoke, bringing her palms together in a namaste move, “for being so self-reflective.”
I looked up from my lap to see Zaynab. We locked eyes, and she widened hers by only a millimeter and flicked them toward the exit door: get me out of here.
Offerings of penance continued. A guy from finance said he wouldn’t be able to sleep thinking about his third investment property in Croydon. Eventually, Zaynab and I were the last ones standing.
“Zaynab, as our newest member, do you have anything to add?”
Zaynab said, “I am able-bodied. I can come in and out of work without much difficulty, and I don’t need to manage a full-time job with a long-term illness or disability. That is something I am very grateful for.”
I added when the eyes shifted to me, “I’m heterosexual. I don’t have to come out to each new colleague I work with, or feel isolated by the heteronormative language that pervades our day-to-day vocabulary.”
“Yes, thank you both,” Linda said. “What a great exercise this has been! Because we’ve all been so honest with each other, do you see how it acts as an equalizer?” People nodded. “For example, we can see how Zaynab”—Linda smiled in a way it was obvious she thought she was being inclusive of her new recruit when she spoke of equality—“is just as privileged as I am.”
I drifted back to my office afterward and checked my emails. Still no countersigned contract from Arrow. “HR are slow everywhere,” I grumbled. I should know. I was about to complain to Adele when I noticed she was sitting with her head in her hands. Without saying a word, I walked around her desk and hugged her from behind. After a few minutes, she looked up.
“What’s up?” I asked.
“Gabby’s pulled the plug,” she said quietly.
“What happened?”
“She’s back in touch with her ex and she said they’re going to give it another go.”
“I guess we’re not listening to The xx for a while, then?”
Del laughed.
“No, I guess not.”
We sat in silence, while I carried on hugging Adele’s back.
“All right,” I said, standing up. I switched off Adele’s monitor as her mouth gaped like a fish out of water. “Let’s round up Eve and head out tonight.”
The Ned was a grandiose building, formerly the Midland Bank, decorated to art deco perfection. Opulence dripped from every orifice of the Banking Hall. It was a millennial members club, with the core clientele being City workers who got a hard-on when they heard that the place was “exclusive.” It was populated with wanker bankers who slapped each other on the shoulder and said stuff like, “Boys, the City ain’t ready for us!” You’re right, James, London has never seen three white guys with signet rings and mid-2.1s from a Russell Group university, who rent an overpriced flat in Shoreditch and drop their salary on minimum-spend tables.
“Over here!” Eve waved at us from across the hall, already seated at one of the Ned’s restaurants that were open to the general public (the “pleb bits,” according to Will). Del and I ducked and weaved through the crowd to reach the pink velvet sofa Eve was perched on.
“So, Eve, talk to us,” Adele said. Twarhk to us. “What’s new?”
“I’m proper falling off the wagon, guys,” Eve said, pouring us a glass of wine from the bottle of chardonnay that she had ready and waiting at the table.
“Go on,” Adele laughed.
“It’s complicated. There’s this guy, he’s no good,” Eve said. She was referring to her embroilment with Julian, but I didn’t let on and neither did Eve. “That whole situation is such a complete shit show and I thought to myself—” She put her finger to her lip. “You know what will help me with the crippling state of anxiety I’m in twenty-four-seven now over this man? More toxic men.”
“Noooo!” Adele and I both groaned in unison.
“I’m talking the kind of guys who aren’t even ashamed of the red flags they are waving around. They’re like red rags to a bull.”
“Do I even want to know how bad?” I asked, silently grateful for Kit.
“There’s like this new trend among twentysomething men who live in the Hams—”
“The where?” I laughed.
“Balham. Clapham. Fulham.” Eve drank as if it were her lifeblood, while cymbals clanged in the background. “They all go out of their way to mention several times on the first date that they consider themselves feminists. All right, like, do you want a medal? It’s so obvious they want to split the bill at the end of the date.”
“This guy I slept with last week”—Eve saw my questioning look—“from Bumble, keep it distant. He’s got a few drinks in him, so he’s feeling emboldened, saying how he’s going to rock my world or whatever.”
“Eww.”
“He came back to mine, we’re having wine and talking. And then obviously we start having sex and it was…” She jiggled the tips of her fingers on her lips as she found the right words. “You know when a guy has been watching too much porn?”
“Staaap,” Adele spluttered her drink.
“Like, no one wants their legs bent behind their head and their clit to be rubbed like it’s a DJ booth. I’m not going to be able to come if you’re going to pound-town on me, just stop jackhammering me!”
Adele was banging the table with her palm, her laugh booming.
“Can’t say I’ve ever had that problem,” Adele said.
“I couldn’t have called him an Uber any faster.”
“Although”—she physically shook herself—“I can’t complain. Someone always has it worse, right? My new housemate is going through the most horrific breakup.”
“How did you meet her?” I said.
“She responded to my SpareRoom listing in three minutes flat. I’ve been doing my best to nurse her, bless her.”
“Do you know what happened?”
“I gather her fella pushed her around.”
“God, that’s scary,” Adele said.
“She told me, the night they broke up, he comes home after a night out and wakes her up, grabs her out of bed, and throws her around while she’s shouting for him to get off her. He only jumped off her when neighbors came knocking.”
Adele reached under the table and squeezed my knee.
“She told me, the next morning she got a DM. From a friend of a friend.”
“What did it say?”
“This girl had seen her boyfriend at Infernos that night.”
“Scaliest club in London.”
“He had been trying to kiss her. Not just her, lots of women. Just walking up to them and trying to kiss them.” I felt sick. Eve caught my look and stopped in her tracks. “I’m sorry, J. I wasn’t thinki—Let’s talk about something else.”
“No,” I said stoically, “go on.”
I didn’t admit that I found comfort in her story. So I’m not the only person this can happen to.
“You sure?”
I nodded.
“Well, she told me, this woman told him to fuck off, so he grabbed her and stuck his hand in her knickers.”
I felt like my stomach was crushed in Eve’s bare hands. Should I have trusted her with what happened to me? What if she recounts my story over dinner to other people?
“She was so distraught that the bouncers noticed and kicked him out. So he decided to go home aggro and take it out on his girlfriend. She said that was the final straw, which makes me wonder if it’s happened before. She moved out the next morning.”
“I really need to wee,” I said, immediately getting up. I clambered across the Ned. Is anywhere safe anymore? Jazz music sang around me and suddenly I felt like I was trapped in a hedonistic roaring twenties nightmare.
By the time I returned to the table, Eve and Del were talking about whether veganism was the only sustainable route for humanity. Adele had been on the road to conversion by Gabby. We ate and drank for hours. No one mentioned work. No one mentioned Josh. No one mentioned Arrow. After three bottles of wine and two rounds of champagne, we shared a chocolate bomb for dessert. I leaned over the plate to spoon myself and I saw Eve’s phone light up.
Incoming call from Suzie Carter
Eve clocked the call and chose to ignore it.
“How do you know Suze?” I asked, perplexed.
“Ah, she’s my new housemate! Do you know her?” The phone vibrated again. “I bet she’s gone and locked herself out.”
The phone went dark. Then lit up again.
Incoming call from Suzie Carter
The booze clouded my mind as I slowly put the pieces together.
“Your new housemate?”
“Uh-huh,” Eve said, texting her back.
“Oh my God,” I gasped, my hand flying over my mouth.
“What?”
“I think I’m going to be sick.”
They both looked at me quizzically.
“Leo.”