On Wednesday it rained all day. I’d slept badly, hounded by nightmares involving rain and flowers as big as Triffids, and DI Fox telling me off. During the day my mood only got bleaker as I worked up the ridiculous
You’re Dumped
proposal. I stared out of my tiny office window at the sheets of rain, despising myself, longing for the sandy beaches of North Cornwall. For the umpteenth time this week, I considered hurtling into Charlie’s office and resigning, never mind the consequences – but he was in Paris for the day, so my plan was foiled.
I went to get coffee around eleven, walking behind Joseph’s desk to the machine. He was swinging back and forth on his chair, talking loudly, oblivious to my presence. I heard him say, ‘Yes, seriously, I’m the director. We need a pair of Bose earphones, yeah, that’s right. Yeah – and the Sony. Fabulous. I can send a bike if it helps.’
I put my hand on his shoulder and he nearly fell backwards off the chair in shock.
‘I’d like a word, Joseph, please.’
He couldn’t have been more sulky if he’d tried as he stalked into my office. ‘What?’
‘What do you mean, what?’ I raised an eyebrow. ‘Who were you talking to?’
He shrugged. ‘Just someone. About props.’
‘And what props are those then?’
Joseph met my eye with watery grey ones.
‘You were on the blag, weren’t you?’
He scuffed his foot on the nylon carpet.
I sighed wearily. ‘Joseph, it’s the oldest trick in the book. Everyone does it, and it’s fine for a ticket to a concert or a club –but use your head. Don’t blag really expensive stuff – and
don’t
tell people you’re the director of a network show, for God’s sake. You’ll only get rumbled.’
He glowered at me and I was aware of a new emotion beginning to emanate from him. Adulation was turning to serious dislike.
At lunchtime I ate a cheese sandwich at my desk, and avoided Joseph’s daggers, reading an article from yesterday’s
Guardian
on child labour in India until I felt quite tearful. Guiltily I glanced down at my high-street top and pushed away the
Dumped
proposal in disgust, the limpid eyes of a little boy in the Calcutta sweatshop gazing blankly at me from my desk. I thought despairingly about booking a psychologist to make sure Darren from Wembley would survive once girlfriend Sandra had dumped him live before the nation because he wouldn’t ever clean the loo. Given that he’d also shagged Sandra’s sister three times behind her back, Darren was probably tough enough to survive the ordeal, but I found I’d lost my appetite anyway.
I chucked my crusts in the bin and checked, for the first time in five whole minutes, that my phone was actually working, which of course it was. I was pretending really hard that I wasn’t waiting for Seb to ring, and that I didn’t mind that he absolutely indisputably hadn’t. Then, galvanised finally by my indecision over flying Charlie’s coop, I phoned Naz to ask about a
Dispatches
programme on childcare that I’d heard was crewing up. She promised to make enquiries.
To compound my misery that afternoon, I was just going into a meeting with Renee and her stylist when Susan rang from Gar’s nursing-home.
‘Is everything okay?’ I asked anxiously.
‘It’s fine, lovie. Your nan’s tickety-boo, honest. It’s just –’
Renee tapped her Cartier watch officiously at me through the conference-room window.
‘I’m so sorry, Susan, but could we talk later?’ I interrupted apologetically. ‘I’ll call in after work. Will you still be there?’
‘Course, lovie. Mustn’t keep those celebs waiting, eh?’
I tried to laugh in agreement, but my guilt at not visiting my grandmother again in the past week was already intense. Susan’s remark only made my crime seem worse.
To me, Gar had signified a peace, a kind of sanctuary, since I’d lost my mother at the age of thirteen, and now I desperately missed the grandmother who’d half brought me up. Part of me feared the vacant look in her eye as she skimmed over me, the feeble smile she sometimes managed. I had to remind myself that she was still there somewhere deep down; that, like a shiny little onion under the browning outer layers of illness, she was the same Gar at heart. I could still just about find a vestige of that sanctuary as I sat in the quiet of her room, and it was vital for both of us that I kept that going.
After work it was still raining. I dashed through the rush-hour to pick up my car, tensing in anticipation as I neared the flat. I hoped fervently the painter I’d called had made it while I was at work.
Rounding the corner, I saw the foul graffiti had been covered. But, sliding the key into the lock, I was sure I could still see the shadow of those words through the fresh cream paint that smelled so strong, and I fled through the front door as quickly as I could.
Grabbing the car-keys from the bowl, I tried not to mind about the distinct lack of flashing lights on my answer-phone. Despite Seb’s call to the police on my behalf, the fact I hadn’t heard from him since we’d parted yesterday was compounding the increasingly sick feeling I had with myself. I really wasn’t ready to start worrying about a new man ringing me; I wanted
to be strong, free and single. I caught my eye in the mirror and nodded at myself coolly, like the strong, free, single woman I was. The phone rang. I leapt on it as if it were a live thing about to escape.
‘Hello?’
‘Goodness, Maggie, you sound a bit breathless.’
Crashing disappointment, followed by a creeping sense of disquiet.
‘How did you get this number?’
Fay laughed breathily. ‘You’re always so suspicious, Maggie. Honestly! You gave it to me when we met a while ago. Don’t you remember?’
I wrinkled my forehead. ‘No, I don’t.’
‘Anyway, it’s only a quickie. I’m sorry about our little spat. I never saw you at
Love All
. Are you avoiding me?’
‘Oh.’ I thought about Seb’s lips on mine and I blushed. ‘I never made it inside actually. Something, er, something came up.’ I smiled to myself. Oh yes, it had most definitely come up.
‘It was very good, you know, the film. But look, never mind. I was just ringing to tell you I’ve forgiven you and we’re having our first meeting next Monday.’
I felt a sudden pain.
‘Do you want to come? I wish you would.’
I realised I was clutching the car-keys so hard they were digging into the soft flesh of my palm. ‘What meeting?’
‘You know, the trauma survivors’ meeting. I’d love it if you came.’
‘Fay, I don’t want to be rude again, but I thought I’d made it pretty clear I’m not interested.’
‘Oh, I know you said that, but a girl can change her mind, can’t she?’
I glanced at the clock and pulled myself together. ‘I’ve got to go, Fay. My grandmother’s expecting me.’
‘Of course. But look, if you change your mind, yeah, you will
come along? It’s at the Tabernacle in Notting Hill. There are quite a lot of us. It’ll be fun. I’ll be really, really cross if you don’t come.’
Just get her off the phone now, Maggie
.
‘Right. Thanks for letting me know.’
‘You’re welcome, Maggie.’ She sounded like someone off
Oprah
. The girl was a natural, everything she said was imbued with all the sincerity of a psychopath. ‘Take care out there, won’t you.’
‘I will.’ I rang off. As I left the flat, I cast a look up and down the street first. Nothing but a group of twenty-something girls in their finest Burberry, splashing arm in arm through the puddles to the Oyster Bar opposite the flat. I had a nasty gnawing feeling in the pit of my stomach as I got into the car. A feeling I was getting used to – but a whole new suspicion.
Susan’s cold was still streaming when I arrived at Elmside House an hour later.
‘Ooh dear, sorry.’ She sneezed loudly. ‘I just can’t seem to shake this off.’ She blew her nose energetically and then tucked her hanky up her sleeve. ‘You go on to Vera while I get us a nice cuppa. She’ll be so pleased to see you.’
She wouldn’t really, we both knew, it was unlikely she’d recognise me at all, in fact – but I acquiesced politely and started up the hall. On the way I passed Emmeline. She was at least ninety but insisted on wearing smocks in little-girl pink, velvet bows in her hair, and was always accompanied by her imaginary poodle Toy-toy on a lead.
‘Hi, Emmeline,’ I smiled at her.
‘Have we met? My dance-card is full, you know,’ she simpered back and wandered off to stretch Toy-toy’s legs.
The apricot-coloured corridor didn’t smell quite the same as normal. There was the usual stench of disinfectant, but something else was fighting it hard; something sweet and rather sickly.
As I rounded the corner my skin rose into goose-pimples. Through the partially open door I could see Gar slumped awkwardly in her chair, her radio tuned to something sombre, something that I knew and had reason to hate. It took me a moment to recognise it as Mozart’s
Requiem
. Gar’s hair had come loose from its usual bun, flopping across her veiled face, the strange light dappling her skin. My heart skipped a beat and I started to run.
‘Gar,’ I shouted, but she didn’t move and I was beside her now, my hand on her shoulder, shaking her as vigorously as I dared. She was so thin she felt like a rag-doll, like I might snap her clean in two, and I realised the horrible smell was the smell of lilies. ‘Gar, wake up!’ I cried, and then she did, she started and looked up at me, bewildered and confused, blinking her faded rheumy eyes. ‘Lily?’
I shocked myself by bursting into tears. ‘Oh, Gar.’ I hugged her frail form, pressing my face against her crumpled cheek, her skin as soft as ash. ‘It’s Maggie, not Lily. I thought – I thought you were dead.’
‘Don’t upset yourself, Maggie.’ Susan came in bearing a tea-tray. ‘She’s as right as rain, honestly. Aren’t you, Vera, love?’
‘I’m sorry.’ I was embarrassed by my loss of control. ‘She just gave me a bit of a fright, that’s all.’
Gar patted my hand kindly as I wiped my eyes, although I knew she still had no idea who I was. ‘Pretty girl,’ she murmured. Her wedding ring was so big these days that it rattled round her bony finger, clicking on my skin as she patted me. Susan shook her head as she set the tray down on the table.
‘I’m glad you’re here.’ Susan offered me a tissue from the box by Gar’s bed. ‘I didn’t want to panic you on the phone, but I’ve been a bit worried by these calls she’s started getting.’
‘What calls?’
Susan pulled Gar’s hair gently back into its bun, hairpin between her lips. ‘Someone keeps ringing and asking for Vera
Knowles. They wouldn’t say who it was until this morning, when they finally announced they’re a friend of yours.’
‘A friend?’ I frowned. ‘Is it a man or a woman?’
‘A woman. She’s perfectly polite but – I don’t know. I don’t want to be rude, but she gives me the willies, you know.’ Susan patted Gar’s head fondly and stooped to pour the tea.
‘What does she sound like?’
Susan pursed her lips, her big face ruddy with disapproval. ‘It’s hard to say really. Quite posh, I suppose. And she just won’t say what she wants. But she’s rung every day for the past three days now, the bugger, and this morning she rang four times before lunch. We’ve explained you don’t live here, and we’ve offered to take a message, but she just keeps ringing back. She’s becoming a bit of a pest, to be honest.’
Exhausted suddenly, I flopped into the small armchair opposite my grandmother and accepted the tea Susan passed me. ‘Thank you. How weird.’
Gar suddenly turned and smiled at me, and her eyes held that lucid light that I had come to long for. ‘Is Alex with you?’
My stomach lurched again. ‘No, Gar.’ I tried to smile. ‘Not today, I’m afraid.’
‘He was here the other day, you know. Such a dear boy.’ She leaned back and closed her eyes again. ‘He read me something.’
I looked at Susan and smiled sadly. ‘She gets more and more confused, doesn’t she?’
‘She’s right actually. He did come.’
‘What?’ I sat bolt upright. ‘Alex was here?’
‘He’s come a few times, bless his heart. Actually, it was after he left the other night that these turned up.’ Susan moved over to the lilies and pulled off a broken stem. ‘I mean, they’re lovely, aren’t they, cheer the room up no end – but it did seem a bit odd.’
‘You’ve lost me, Susan.’
‘To leave them here. I suppose he’s shy. Now you’ve split up.
You know, to say how he still feels.’ She dug down into her pocket and came up with a half-packet of Tunes, a stub of a pencil –and a small envelope, instantly recognisable. My stomach turned over as if someone had flipped it like a pancake. ‘It’s addressed to you, lovie.’
I glanced at my grandmother, nodding back off to sleep, as oblivious to this threat as a newborn baby, and I wiped my damp eyes resolutely. I’d kill anyone who laid a finger on my grandmother. With unsteady hands, I opened the sealed envelope –but I already knew what it would reveal.
‘
In Loving Memory
,’ it said, next to a badly printed spray of purple flowers. ‘
In Loving Memory of Maggie – and Vera
.’
That night I slept in Gar’s armchair again, after accidentally polishing off the end of her sherry. I didn’t turn the light off till I woke up the next morning.
I arrived at work with a cricked neck, a sherry hangover and a truly foul mood. Sally was waiting outside my office, flicking through
Hello!
.
‘Your friend’s in here.’ She waved the magazine under my nose.
‘What friend?’ I scrabbled in my bag for my key.
‘That Fay girl, at some perfume launch. She’s very photogenic, isn’t she?’ Sally pointed at a small photo. ‘She looks a bit like you in this picture.’
I shuddered. Donna shot past, snarling into her phone. ‘You cannot be serious, Max. You promised me Kerry was hot to trot, not about to bloody OD.’
‘We need to talk about Joseph Blake, Mag.’ Sally dropped her voice theatrically. ‘You’ll never guess what he’s done now –’
The post-boy knocked on my door, bearing a beautifully wrapped basket of fruit and champagne with a glossy white envelope. My heart beat faster, my instinct screeched
don’t open it
– but to my huge relief, inside were two tickets to a concert at the Festival Hall that night and a handwritten note from Seb.
‘
Guess what?
Gershwin’s
playing tonight,’ specially for you. Come
with me, please
.’
I wondered if he knew Gershwin was long dead. At the foot of the note there was a PTO.
‘
I want to lick every inch of you
,’ he’d written. Lord! I blushed as hot as the boiling radiator and shoved the card into my
bag, knocking the grapes and lychees all over the carpet in my haste.
‘Clumsy Maggie!’ Sally picked up a peach, already bruised, and handed it to me, her broad face intrigued. ‘You’ve gone all red.’
‘I have not.’ I blushed hotter.
‘Who’s that little lot from then? Lover boy?’
Donna flounced into the office without knocking. ‘It’s him or me, all right?’
‘Fine, thanks, Donna,’ I said dryly, ‘and how are you today?’
‘You don’t want to know. That flipping PR’s giving me brain-ache.’
‘Right.’ I switched my computer on. ‘So what’s the problem?’
‘It’s not the PR – it’s bloody Blake. He’s been going through my drawers.’
‘How exciting.’ I raised an eyebrow. ‘Lucky you.’
Sally giggled. ‘I’ll leave you to it.’ She shut the door behind her.
‘This is serious, man.’ Donna scowled at me. ‘He’s been nicking all my contacts.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘First of all my Rolodex went missing, and so did Lisa’s. Then we found them in the bogs. God knows why. Some of the pages are missing.’
‘How do you know it’s him?’
‘Because then my address book, the one I keep everything in – email addresses, private mobiles – it went missing last night, out of my desk drawer.’ Donna slumped onto the sofa. ‘God, there’s numbers in there I’ve had to do you-don’t-wanna-know-what to get hold of. There’s all sorts in there, and Christ, if any of them lot find out their numbers are floating around London, they’re going to go NUTS!’ She was practically crying now, her head in her hands. ‘I’m talking big celebs, agents, addicts, politicians, convicted paedos. The blinking lot.’
‘All right, Don, calm down.’ I sat beside her on the sofa. ‘So why do you think it’s Joseph?’
‘Because he was the only one here with me last night. He said he was doing some “extra research”. God knows on what, cos he’s so bloody whack anyway.’ She looked disgusted. ‘My drawer’s always locked – but I left my keys on my desk when I went downstairs to have a fag. When I came back, he’d gone, and so had the book when I came to look for it.’
‘And the keys? Are they missing?’ I felt like DI Fox.
She shrugged. ‘No. They were still on my desk.’
‘And you’re sure the book was in your drawer?’
She sucked her teeth. ‘Positive. Come on, Maggie, you know what he’s like.’
I sighed. ‘Okay, granted, he’s a bit of an – oddball –’
‘That’s an understatement.
And
I caught him skulking around your office.’
‘Really? When?’ I frowned.
‘The other day. He said he was finding some file, but he looked proper guilty.’
‘Well, maybe, but that doesn’t mean he’s a thief. Are you absolutely sure your book’s not at home?’
‘I checked. Believe me, I turned the place upside-down. I didn’t get to bed till two.’ Judging by the state of her desk, she’d turned that upside-down too.
Joseph Blake walked into the main office at that moment, wearing brothel-creepers and a huge pair of earphones, clutching his brown leather briefcase. He’d quiffed his floppy hair today; he looked like a ten-year-old Teddy boy wearing his father’s clothes.
‘Bloody bastard.’
I restrained Donna from marching straight out and confronting him. But, gazing at Joseph thoughtfully, I wondered again why Charlie didn’t want to let him go. ‘It could be him, I guess.’
We watched an oblivious Joseph take off his Crombie coat and hang it carefully on the coat-stand in the corner. He smoothed back his hair and sat down at his desk, opening up a copy of the
Daily Telegraph
.
‘Jus’ take a look, man. He’s well pretentious. There’s a name for types like him down my way.’ Donna glowered at him through the glass. ‘I’m going to give him a piece of –’
‘Let me deal with this, Donna, okay? It’s not good, I know – but it’s hardly the crime of the century.’
‘Whatever,’ she shrugged. ‘It’s just – he makes me properly uncomfortable, d’you know what I mean? It’s not the same vibe out there since he came back.’
‘Look, go and get yourself a coffee. I’ll have a chat with him.’
‘I can’t leave now. I’m waiting for Fergie’s people to call back.’
So in the end I took Joseph out with me, dodging the black cabs and the couriers, back to Crepey Lips’s café on The Cut.
‘Are your eggs free-range?’ Joseph asked the waitress, whose roots were oily-black against the bright peroxide.
She smirked. ‘They’re out of a box, pet, that’s all I know.’
‘Yes, but is it a free-range box?’
‘Joseph, it’s a caff, not the flipping Ivy.’ I suddenly felt like a mother with a truculent teenager in tow. ‘Have something else. Have a bacon roll.’
He looked at me like I was mad. ‘I don’t eat meat. I’ll just have tea and toast. Brown toast, green tea, please.’
‘You can have white bread and brown tea or none at all, pet.’
I fumbled for my cigarettes to hide my smile. He looked at them pointedly and gave a little cough. Every bit of sympathy I had left for him flew out the door.
‘Actually,’ he said, ‘I was thinking, we could do a show about intensive farming.’
The waitress plonked my coffee down in front of me.
‘Have you seen the way animals are treated in this country?
The hormones the cattle and pigs are injected with, the terrible cruel transportation, the –’
Crepey-Lips slammed my bacon roll and Joseph’s mug down with such gusto that tea sloshed onto the Formica top. ‘One brown tea. With white milk in it.’
I smiled at her politely.
‘White sugar, brown
and
red sauce are on the side.’
Joseph rattled on oblivious. ‘The immoral pens, the fat on the animals that shouldn’t be there. I mean, bacon’s a prime example. They’re given such high-energy food that they swell to twice their size.’
I looked down at my roll miserably, and had a slug of coffee instead. ‘It’s an admirable idea, Joseph, but can you actually see Renee going for it? It’s not really her style.’
‘I don’t see why not.’
‘Why don’t you make a list of your ideas for me?’ I put my mug down carefully. ‘But look, what we really need to do is talk about your future at Double-decker.’ I tapped my fingers against the china. ‘I mean, it’s not really working out, is it?’
He paled visibly. ‘Don’t sack me, Maggie, please.’
My heart went out to him. He really was pathetic. ‘I don’t want to sack you, Joseph, really I don’t – but I am worried. There’s been a few allegations against you now.’
‘What kind of allegations?’
‘Have you been – borrowing stuff? Like the girls’ address books?’
‘No.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes.’ He wouldn’t look at me.
‘Is that the truth?’
‘Yes, seriously.’ He looked up at me defiantly. ‘Why would I steal phone numbers?’
‘I don’t know. You tell me.’
‘I can’t, because I didn’t.’ But he was screwing a twist of sugar
very tight. There was a pause. ‘You should be nice to me.’ It sounded rather like a threat.
‘Should I? Why?’
‘You know why.’
‘Remind me.’
‘Because my uncle will be furious if you don’t treat me correctly,’ he declared. It
was
a threat.
‘Your uncle?’
‘That’s right, my uncle.’
‘And he is…?’
‘Philip Lyons. But you knew that.’
I thought of Lyons, Double-decker’s MD; of his unprepossessing ways, his lack of social skills, his love of a fast dollar, the utter moral vacuum that he was. I remembered Charlie’s reticence to let Joseph go. It all fitted suddenly.
‘Oh, I
see
.’ I caught Joseph’s rather protuberant eye. Steadily we regarded one another. ‘I suppose there is a family resemblance, now you mention it.’
‘Had you forgotten, Maggie? Just like you’ve forgotten everything else.’
‘What everything else?’ I frowned.
‘If you can’t remember it’s not my place to remind you.’ He stared me out. ‘Can I go now?’
‘Joseph, just because you’ve got relatives in high places, it doesn’t mean you can just do whatever you fancy. It doesn’t work like that.’
He smiled. ‘Doesn’t it?’ It was a greasy, queasy kind of smile.
‘No.’ I ploughed on. ‘You still have to work hard, you still have to earn respect.’
With a great ache, I thought suddenly of Alex. He’d been so desperate for Malcolm to be proud of him for his own achievements – whereas his younger brother Tom had taken the easy route, going straight into Malcolm’s business out of school. Malcolm’s inexplicable contempt had only served to fuel Alex’s demons.
‘I do work hard.’
I pulled myself back to the present. ‘Not hard enough really, Joseph. You have to start at the bottom. We all did.’ I tried for schoolmarmish jolliness now. ‘So come on,’ I patted his hand awkwardly, ‘show me you can do it, okay?’
He shrugged morosely. ‘S’pose.’
‘And if you did take that book, Donna’s book, just put it back, all right?’
‘I didn’t, Maggie, seriously.’ He glared at me. ‘I said I didn’t and you should believe me.’
I considered my bacon roll for a moment, then reached for my cigarettes. ‘All right, Joseph. You go on back. I’ll be over in a bit.’
He stood up. ‘You smoke too much. I told you that in the summer.’
My stomach plunged. ‘I don’t remember that.’
‘Yeah, well, I’m seriously not surprised.’
I looked up at him. His old Crombie coat smelled of mothballs, pungent and acrid. ‘What does that mean?’
‘Forget it.’ He made a big play of doing his buttons up.
‘No, go on, Joseph, please.’
‘I just meant – well, I know what happened.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘You can’t hide much from me. Though obviously you did try. You’re just lucky I didn’t tell my uncle.’
I couldn’t tell if he was bluffing. ‘I’ll see you back at the office, Joseph.’ I was desperate for him to go now. I didn’t want to remember any more.
Ordering another coffee, I watched Joseph scoot across the busy road, a solitary figure weaving between the camera-crews smoking outside our building, leaning on their tripods, joking with one another in a way I could never imagine Joseph ever being part of. I felt a sudden wave of nostalgia for the business I’d signed up for all those years ago, for the excitement and novelty and camaraderie.
My telephone bleeped. Idly I opened the text message.
I WAS RIGHT. YOU SLUT
Oh God. I dropped the phone like it was hot. Then I cancelled the coffee and went across the road to the pub instead. Standing at the bar, I had a huge slug of nasty thin red wine and then I rang the bloody number back, just like I had each time before. But no one answered and of course there was no voicemail. The phone just rang and rang – until someone cut it off.