Virtual Strangers (22 page)

Mad as hell.

Send;

[email protected]

Dear Adam,

What the hell am I supposed to do now?
I don’t want to know
that I’m on your list. I don’t want to know about
any
of that. Okay? Don’t you realise what you’re putting me through here?
You
are married. I am not. I don’t have to get embroiled in
any
of this stuff.

Yes, sure, it was nice. Yes, sure, I’m going to miss our little chats (or whatever they were), but the bottom line is that I can’t even begin to contemplate having any sort of relationship with you. You are married, remember? Married to my boss. Let’s just forget it, shall we?

Charliexxx.

Delete kisses. No kisses. But I so much want to do kisses. I sit with my cold face in my cold hands and await a response. Which comes - bing! - like lightening. Where is he sitting? Where is Davina? What does he tell her he’s up to when he’s doing all this?

[email protected]

Charlie, can’t we get this boss business out of the way? I know it’s uncomfortable for you, but the fact that Davina is your boss is really nothing to do with our situation. I am married. You are not. Fine.
Fine
. Point taken, believe me. I really don’t need telling, believe me. But I need to talk to you, to see you.
Can
I see you? Can we do something? Could we go for a drink? A walk? Sit somewhere? Whatever you want. I don’t mind. You say. But please don’t say ‘it was nice’ as if you’ve just been to see a show or something. Nice? Come
on.
You can’t mean that.

Adamxxx

I scroll the email back and then read it again, slowly. Mouthing every syllable of every word and picturing him thinking it, tapping the words out. I can see his expression shift and change as he types it. Can see his long fingers as they cradle the mouse. Every syllable of every word. Can see his strong yet gentle face reflected in the monitor. Can see his heavy brow creased in anticipation. I print out the email and then slip it inside
Trekking in Nepal
.

What now? Now nothing. Do nothing, that’s what. I sign off from Cymserve and, as the house is once again empty, I then allow myself the bleak luxury of a last noisy cry.

January 15th.
Whole two weeks post kiss. I am coping. Just. And recovering, if not quite my equilibrium, at least a foothold on the pigeon-pooped seat-end of the seesaw.

But I’m concerned that I
am
suffering from SAD and must purchase daylight bulbs and so on. Would book a sunbed, but can’t because I would then stress about getting skin cancer which would therefore negate the beneficial effect of UV rays on my psyche etc. Doubt that UV rays would have a sufficient beneficial effect anyway, as I am forced to admit the main cause of my sadness is not SAD but a broken heart. Am seriously blue, but in fact the same colour as my pond weed suit plus similarly stagnant of temper. Were it not for the fact that I keep remembering that at least I have my health and not fibroids query cervical cancer and so on, I would be in a right strop all round.

‘First week in Feb?’ asks Davina, picking from her suit what I assume from her expression must be decomposing fruit fly corpses, or similar. ‘You can’t be off then. We’ll be skiing.’

‘Oh! But don’t you usually go at Easter?’

She curls her lip as if I have the intellect of a slug. ‘Only in North America, Charlie. Where we are not, unfortunately, going this year. My dear Husband, in his infinite wisdom, has tendered the idea that a week of slush and queue bargers in the alps would be far more relaxing than ten days of good manners and decent snow in Aspen. Still, there you go. Can’t have too much of a good thing, can we? Dear me no. Wouldn’t be seemly. So, no. In answer to your question. Not Easter this year. We’re going the first week in Feb.’

Rats. Plus side-effect of intense, prickle-eyed moment of yearning. Will have to get used to this, I suppose.

‘Oh,’ I say. ‘Oh dear.’

‘Oh dear is about right. I can’t imagine anything more tedious. I can hardly be bothered, to tell you the truth.’ She starts turning the crystals that Ianthe arranged on the windowsill last week. Perhaps something cosmic and useful will happen. ‘Anyway,’ she goes on. ‘Why do you need
that
week off? Does it have to be that week?’

I nod. Or perhaps it won’t. ‘It’s to help Rose out,’ I say. ‘I said I’d go down and help with the children for her. Her hysterectomy, remember?’

She raises her eyebrows. She obviously doesn’t. In fact, she looks strangely alarmed.

‘Rose? Rose Griffiths? Is she having a hysterectomy? Why on earth? Good God! She’s only forty odd, isn’t she?’

‘I told you. She’s been having all sorts of symptoms. It may be cervical cancer, Davina. It’s a major operation and she’s going to need lots of help. Matt can manage the first couple of weeks, but then he’s due to run some computer training seminar in Brussels or something, and rather than him cancel it, I offered to go down and help out for a week.’

She shakes her head then moves back to my desk and picks up and flaps the latest copy of Cherry Ditchling details. The ones with the Christmas-card camouflage job. ‘Well I simply can’t spare you. Can’t you bring them to Cardiff?’

I shake my head. ‘Not in term time, I can’t. But what about Hugh? Couldn’t he manage for a week? I’ve managed alone before now. It’s a quiet time.’

Which comment is obviously a mistake. Her withering look makes the weeping fig shiver.

‘Hugh? On his own? Get
real,
Charlie.
Really
. Leave Hugh here on his own? Besides, if it’s quiet -’

‘Then there’s all the more reason - yes. Okay. Point taken. I shouldn’t have asked.’

She nods. Says ‘exactly’. Then shrugs. ‘Look, I’m sorry and all that. But it’s going to be out of the question. I’m sure you’ll be able to work something out.’

My own stupid fault, of course. I shouldn’t have promised Rose before checking at work. Bloody hell. Big mess. Cock up. Disaster. My best friend in the world is reliant upon my support in a time of a major crisis in her life, and I have failed her utterly. I scowl at
Homes Digest!,
rant at computer, stomp round cold office, hate Davina, hate work.

‘So what shall I do, then? Resign? tell Davina to shove it? Believe me, just one tiny reason and I’ll do it.’

I’m at the hospital, perched beside Minnie’s bed. Her mouth makes a series of small, mouse-like nibblings and her tiny, white, paper-dry hands squeeze my own. She has a stray hair just tickling the edge of her eye. I smooth it back, but she doesn’t wake.

‘Hmm,’ I say. ‘Maybe you’re right. Maybe the best thing would be to just ring Rose and tell her I’ll come down and collect them and bring them up here to stay for the week. The children are still only young, after all. What’s a missed week in school at their age? Just how much will they suffer? Besides, I could always give their old school a ring, couldn’t I? They could visit. Maybe sit in on some lessons as well. Yes, that’s what I’ll do. No big problem.’

Minnie opens her eyes. I’m so pleased to see her.

‘Did you bring me some tarts, then?’

‘Of course I did. Dad made them specially for you.’

‘And Edward.’ She sinks back to sleep as she mouths it. ‘Save a couple. Knowing him, he’ll be here in a jif.’

When I get back to the office I telephone social services. After an interminable wait and connections to various concertos, I get through to a lady who at least knows Minnie’s name. She’s not the social worker I’ve met (that’ll be Bernice, my lovely), but she knows Minnie’s history and at least sounds like she cares.

‘I just thought,’ I tell her, ‘that it would be nice to find Edward -’

‘Ah! The elusive Edward!’ she answers. ‘Believe me, we’ve tried, dear. But so far no luck. To tell the truth, we’re pretty much of the opinion that he simply can no longer be bothered with her. The last address we had for him is four or five years old now. And he hadn’t responded to our letters for some months before that.’

‘But you don’t know that he actually received your letters, do you? For all we know, something may have happened to him.’

‘I think you have a charming lack of cynicism, my dear. No use in this job, of course. No, dear. She gets plenty of postcards. From all sorts of obscure antipodean places. Sometimes you just have to accept the unacceptable. Could happen to any of us, truth be told.’

When I get off the phone I resolve that even if the social services have given up trying to track him down there’s certainly no reason why I shouldn’t have a try instead. At the very least, it will help take my mind off Adam. I call the matron at the Maltings and ask if I can come down and pick up a few bits for Minnie. She can see, she says, no particular problem with that. It’s not, she adds, quite in line with their policies, but admits that, as I brought the cases in the first place, then there’s really no reason why I shouldn’t rootle in them.

And speaking of rootling, I am suddenly reminded that I have agreed to go out with Rhys straight after work.

We’ve arranged to meet not at the Q bar this time, but in a less aurally stressful Peruvian bar down by the station, the better to discuss the finer points of hiking, kit and relations with the locals. As I walk down St Mary Street, I feel welcome stirrings of excitement about my forthcoming trip. Even, surprisingly, a smidgin of positive feeling about spending a chunk of the evening with Rhys. Enough, at least, to lead me to check how I look in
Howells
window. And then again in the glass of a restaurant further down. It is here, however, that I find something more than my reflection; the unmistakable outline of Hugh Chatsworth’s back view.

I don’t stop for long, but long enough to register that it’s next to a rump of more generous proportions. Walking on, I consider the nipple ring situation. What
is
going on between Austin Metro and Hugh?

And then I spot Rhys on Wood Street, and our paths converge at the crossing.

‘Hell-o!’ he mouths, managing to convey with one glance that, for him at least, something’s going on now with me.

Did you kiss him?’

Rose, who with typical lack of fuss and flap has endorsed and applauded my revised childcare plans, now wants the gen on my latest encounter. Such as it is.

‘Well, sort of,’ I say.

‘Sort of? What’s sort of? Was it just the top lip, then?’

‘I was thinking ‘sort of’ in more of a temporal sense.’

‘A peck, then.’

‘Not really. We were in his car. I didn’t invite him in because I know he wants to sleep with me and that he’d be up the stairs like a whippet if I gave him the smallest indication I was up for it, so I told him I had an early start. And then he leaned over - like you do - and put his arm around my shoulder, and went to kiss me. So I let him.’

‘And?’

‘And nothing. Nothing happened. I mean, he’s a perfectly nice, attractive man, and no doubt a very competent kisser, but I didn’t find myself, well, responding, shall we say.’

Rose hoots with laughter.

‘You are
such
a case, Charlie. And still utterly stuck on the Doctor.’

‘No, I’m not.’

‘Yes you are.’

‘No I’m
not
.’

‘Yes you
are
.’

But at least one piece of good news. Paradoxically, from Davina.

‘Ah, Charlie,’ she says, just as I’m preparing to leave the next day. ‘Your week off. It’s okay.’

‘It is?’

She smoothes her honey coloured ponytail and nods. ‘Uh huh. Because we’re not going skiing.’

‘You’re not?’

She shakes her head. ‘Adam can’t make it. Some conference or other. And I can’t say I’m disappointed. So there you are.’

‘Well, that’s brilliant. Oh, that’s such a relief. Will you go later, as usual?’

‘Hmm,’ she says, collecting stray papers from her desktop. ‘Hmm. We’ll see.’ Then she gets back to her phone.

I’m tempted to indulge in all sorts of wild and ridiculous speculations about
hmm
s, but as soon as I begin to, I find myself in a state of extreme agitation caused not only by now familiar adrenalin surge but also by a scary vision of Davina screaming over the very same desk about Adam’s passionate declaration of love for that Simpson woman and vowing to rip out her lower intestine from the top. Must steel myself to avoid such flights of ridiculousness. Very bad habit, like picking the tops off of scabs.

Wednesday.

I realise, as I tootle across the hospital car park with my cake tin, that I really look forward to visiting Minnie on the way home from work. It is the ultimate in symbiosis. I provide Minnie with a familiar face, company and a plentiful supply of patisserie items, and Minnie provides me with some kind of therapy- at very least, a kindly and non-judgemental (as largely non-comprehending) ear. Today I bring a treat - dad’s state-of-art tarts.

‘Oh, Minnie, Minnie, Minnie, what
is
a girl to do? I’m trying so hard not to think about him, but since all that business at New Year happened, I’m finding it really difficult, you know?’

‘You’ve got that lovely titian hair, you have,’ she says, battling with the tin lid. ‘My Iris had hair just like that. Masses of it. Hopeless in the tropics. But there was no cutting of it. Not in those days. What are these, then? Are they from Tescos? There’s been things on TV about those people today.’

I look for the child in Minnie’s leathery features. Imagine the beauty that once softened the frame. ‘Was Iris beautiful? I’ll bet she was,’ I say. ‘We’ll have to find a picture some time.’ I prise the lid off the tin and place the goodies on the bed for her.

Minnie, ignoring me, chooses a tart and starts her usual sniffing. ‘Who’s the lucky man, then? Anyone I know?’

‘Well, yes, maybe. In fact, no, I don’t think so, actually. He’s, well, he’s - oh, he’s local, at any rate. But the point is I can’t
have
him, Minnie.’

‘And why, ye Gods, would you want him, dear? Nothing but trouble, men. Runner beans are the ticket. And courgettes. Grow like weeds. Hmmm. Best you don’t plant courgettes, come to think of it. Mice, dear. God bless them. Does he have a good job?’