Satisfied that she really had the correct piece of paper, she began to fill it in, paying such attention to the details that she began to sweat. What had happened to her? When had she bruised her confidence so badly that she couldn’t trust herself to do this simple task?
‘Post,’ Guy said, dumping a large, messy pile of envelopes on her desk and making her jump. ‘Sorry. Did I scare you?’
‘It’s okay.’ She laughed shakily.
‘You’re a wreck,’ he said thoughtfully. To the uninitiated, his pale blue eyes looked cold, but when you knew him well you could locate kindness in there.
‘Can you open it quickly, please.’ Guy’s requests were always delivered politely. ‘The signed forms from the Findlaters should be in there. I need to get them off straight away.’
Guy trumped Wen-Yi; she had to do the post. She moved Mr Lee’s form to the safety of her in-tray and began tearing at the envelopes with her nails.
Guy frowned at her. ‘Use your letter knife.’
‘Of course.’ She couldn’t even open the post properly. She reached for her desk-tidy and drew out a letter knife, and had a sudden flash of plunging it into her heart.
Instead she mechanically opened envelopes and arranged their contents into tidy piles.
‘Guy, they’re here.’ She held up the Findlaters’ forms for him to see.
‘Excellent. Photocopy them and get the originals off to the bank.’
While she was at the photocopier, she decided to copy all the other signed documents which had come in the post. She forced herself to concentrate hard – on not mixing up the forms and on ensuring that it was the photocopies which went into the files and the originals which were put aside to be sent to the banks. It wasn’t rocket science, she was well aware of that, but so much of the time she seemed unable to get it right.
She grabbed a bunch of A4 envelopes and returned to her desk to mail the originals to the appropriate bank. It was soothing work and when she discovered that she was using the last envelope in her pile for her last document, it lightened her heart.
A coincidence, a happy one, she hadn’t counted out how many envelopes she’d need, she had just happened to accidentally select the exact number.
I feel better, she thought. It must be the Prozac.
Even though she hadn’t started actually taking it yet. Simply carrying the prescription in her handbag seemed to be having a positive effect.
Then her gaze fell on Mr Lee’s form – still waiting patiently in her in-tray, to be enveloped and mailed – and all the light went out. She didn’t have an envelope for him. The stationery cupboard was no more than four or five yards away, but she was unable to get her legs to stand up and walk. She couldn’t understand it. It wasn’t physical exhaustion, as if her legs were tired. It was like there was a force field around her, pressing down on her with irresistible weight. She could have jokingly asked one of the others to help – Rico would do it – but it was an odd thing to request. And by now, she couldn’t even speak. She’d used herself all up.
It’s urgent it’s urgent it’s urgent.
But that was why she couldn’t do it: it was too frightening.
I’ll do it soon I’ll do it soon I’ll do it soon.
But whenever she caught a glimpse of the form out of the corner of her eye, she felt as though she were being flayed alive, so she took it from the in-tray and shoved it in her drawer, beneath a jar of vitamin B5 –‘the happy vitamin’– and a packet of St John’s Wort.
‘Marnie!’ Ma cried. ‘How funny you should call. I was literally just reading Bid’s nasty tabloid – well, I say reading, not much literacy required, of course – and there was a picture of Paddy de Courcy and his “lovely bride-to-be”.’
It was like stumbling: Marnie had only to hear his name. Automatically she reached her middle finger into the centre of the palm of her right hand; any mention of Paddy and it began to itch.
Back in August, as soon as word of his engagement had got out, Grace had phoned. ‘I’ve news. It’s Paddy. He’s getting married.’
Don’t you dare be happy, you bastard.
‘You okay?’ Grace had been terse; she couldn’t bear to visit pain on Marnie.
Instantly Marnie’s unexpected spike of anger had died a death and it became more important to reassure Grace. ‘I’m fine. But I’m glad you told me. It mightn’t have been… good, to find out another way.’
‘Ma and Dad might bring it up. I wanted you to be prepared.’
There had been every chance that Ma and Dad might have referred to it; they didn’t approve entirely of Paddy’s politics but they had been unable to shake their interest in him.
Ma was wittering on. ‘It says here that Sheridan is going to be the best man at the wedding. Heartening, isn’t it, in these disposable times that their friendship has lasted all these years? I must say I look at Paddy now in those suits, and I think back to him sitting at my kitchen table, without an arse to his pants and those big hungry eyes, and none of us knew he’d grow up to become this… well, statesman is the only word. A bit thin on concrete policies, but the irritating thing is that with his kind of charisma, people don’t seem to care. Of course your father insists he never liked him, but he’s simply being awkward.’
‘Mmm.’ She was okay now, she usually managed to right herself quickly.
‘In some ways Paddy reminds me of a young Bill Clinton,’ Ma said. ‘I wonder if he has the same problem keeping his cock in his pants.’
‘Ma, you musn’t say cock.’ Luckily all the others were out at lunch, there was no one in the office to hear her.
‘Thank you, lovie, you were always such a kind girl. What should I say instead? Penis? Johnson? Dick?’
‘Dick is probably best.’
‘To repeat my earlier question, I wonder if he has the same problem as Bill Clinton over keeping his dick in his pants? Is it okay for me to say pants?’
‘It depends. Do you mean trousers or jocks?’
‘Trousers, I suppose.’
‘Then say trousers. Pants is American for trousers.’
The one thing Ma didn’t want to be accused of was being American. ‘I wonder if he has a problem keeping his dick in his trousers?’
‘I would imagine so.’
‘So would I. Of course I have no reason for saying that except that he’s often “linked” to beautiful accomplished women. If you’ve got a taste for it, it must be difficult to give up. “Men need four things: food, shelter, pussy and strange pussy.” Jay McInerney, I can’t remember which novel. Of course I’m being ironic, I can’t abide unfaithful men using the biological imperative as an excuse, nevertheless Alicia Thornton has her work cut out.’
‘She knows what she’s getting into.’
‘What’s this about her being a widow? What did her husband die of?’
‘He probably killed himself because he couldn’t take being married to her.’
Ma was astonished. ‘Now why would you say that? And what age is she?’
‘You know what age she is, she’s thirty-five, same as me.’
‘How would I know that?’
‘… Ma… because you know her.’
‘I assure you I don’t.’
‘… Ma, I can’t believe… I thought you knew…’
‘Knew what, lovie?’
‘Take a look at her picture, Ma. Imagine her without the blonde highlights.’
There were rustling noises as Ma picked up the paper.
‘And without the make-up. And with longer hair. And a lot younger.’
Ma took a sharp intake of breath. ‘Christ on a bike, it’s not…’
‘It is.’
She hadn’t taken any vitamin B5 all day – no wonder she felt so wretched – but when she opened her drawer she saw, lurking beneath the vitamin jar, Mr Lee’s form. Still there. Still unsent. The floor tilted beneath her. How could she not have done this? When it was so important?
And it was too late now, she had misse
d today’s post.
She vowed, with fierce promise, that she would mail it first thing the following morning. But what if Wen-Yi found it? What if he decided to check up on her and look through her stuff when she had left for the day?
Seized with terror, she slid the piece of paper from the drawer and shoved it into her handbag in a quick, jerky movement.
As if Wen-Yi had sensed something, he lifted his head and asked her, ‘Did you send Mr Lee his residency form?’
‘Yes.’
‘Marnie? Quick drink?’ Rico asked. ‘Help me celebrate my biggest-ever commission?’
She considered it. Only briefly, but long enough to trigger a powerful yearning. The possibility of escape… But she couldn’t. The kids were expecting her home at a quarter past six. Melodie, her nanny, would be in the starting blocks, ready to run to her next job. And remember what had happened the last time she’d gone for a drink with Rico.
‘No, I –’ Suddenly she was aware of being watched. She twisted her head: Guy was following the exchange. Immediately he looked away and she turned back to Rico.
She shook her head. ‘No, Rico, I can’t.’
‘That’s a pity.’ He seemed genuinely sorrowful.
But he’d find someone else, a good-looking man like him.
Five a.m. Too early to get up, too late to go back to sleep. She should do something useful with the time. She could go downstairs and do yoga, but it didn’t work. Not for her. It was supposed to be calming. Or uplifting. Or life-changing, if you were really lucky. Jennifer Aniston had said that it had got her through her divorce from Brad Pitt.
So why did it grip her with such a frantic, panicky boredom that the only way she could attempt it was by doing a sudoku at the same time?
Mr Lee’s form. Why couldn’t she have posted it? It was a small, small job. It would have taken her all of twenty seconds. But she hadn’t done it and now she was suffering for her laziness, lying awake in the early hours, worried and afraid.
The only comfort available was to promise herself – again – that she would do it the moment she got into work. She wouldn’t even take her jacket off. Until then, she was powerless: I can do nothing I can do nothing I can do nothing. She let her mind drift, seeking something soothing to latch on to. Words spoke in her head: In some place in the world, right now, someone is being tortured. Make it stop. Make it stop. Make it stop. Make it stop. Make it stop. Make it stop. Make it stop.
Whoever they are, wherever they are, give them some relief.
This was her own fault. There had been an item on last night’s news about two teenage girls who’d been kidnapped by four men. The men had inflicted a variety of unspeakable acts on them in revenge for a soured drug deal involving, not the girls, but their fathers.
She’d known that she shouldn’t stay in the room. She’d known that, at some stage, she’d pay the price. But a hideous fascination kept her immobile before the screen, desperate not to hear and yet appallingly curious about the range of terrible things human beings do to each other.
She thought about it happening to the girls. To Grace. She felt like vomiting.
Torturers were so much more imaginative than she could have known and she had to wonder what kind of people they were. Were they forced to do it? Some had to, in order to avoid it being done to them. But others must enjoy it.
And why did no one else seem to obsess as she did? When, as a teenager, she’d taken her horrors to Grace, Grace had responded with cheery practicality: if it ever happens to you, she’d advised, just tell them everything they want to know.
That was before Marnie had discovered that some people torture just for fun.
She stretched her arm to the floor and picked up her book. She was reading The Bell Jar. Again. No wonder she felt depressed, Nick said. But she’d tried reading cheery stuff – novels which promised she would ‘laugh out loud’– and had had to stop because it was all so silly. At least with Sylvia Plath she had the comfort of knowing that someone else had been through it. Mind you, look at how she’d ended up.
She held the book close to her face, trying to decipher the words in the grey, early morning light. Nick shifted in the bed: she’d woken him by turning the pages.
‘What time is it?’ he mumbled.
‘Twenty past five.’
‘Oh for God’s sake.’
He bunched into an angry ball under the duvet, and flung himself against the mattress, trying to get back to sleep. There was a tap at the door. Light fairy feet. Verity.
Poor Verity. Or ‘Variety’ as the other kids called her. Or ‘Freak.’ She never slept through the night.
‘Can I come in, Mum?’
Marnie nodded, put her finger to her lips – don’t wake Daddy – and threw back the duvet in invitation. Verity’s small warm body squirmed into the bed and she gathered her tight.
‘Mum?’ Verity whispered.
‘Sssh, don’t wake Daddy.’
‘Daddy’s awake.’ His voice was thick and petulant.
‘Mum, what will happen if you die?’
‘I won’t die.’
‘What if you get ill and have to go to hospital?’
‘Whisper it, sweetheart. I won’t get ill.’
‘What will happen if Daddy loses his job?’
‘Daddy won’t lose his job.’
But he mightn’t get this year’s bonus. Again.
She stroked Verity’s hair and tried to soothe her back to sleep. Where was she getting all this anxiety from? She couldn’t conjure it up just from thin air.
She was Verity’s mother, it had to be her fault.
‘Mum, will you do my hair in a plait? Not a flat one, a high one.’
‘Mum! I can’t find my pink notebook.’
Marnie, frantically threading laces into Verity’s mud-covered trainers, cast a look around the kitchen. ‘There it is.’
‘Not that pink one, my pink sparkly one!’
‘Look in your schoolbag.’
‘It’s not in my schoolbag.’
‘Look again.’
‘Oh will you look, Mum?’
‘Mu-um,’ Daisy said in frustration. ‘Please can you do my hair? I never ask for anything.’
‘Okay, okay. Let me finish this, then I have to pack your lunchboxes, then I’ll do your hair. Verity! Where are your glasses?’
‘Lost.’
‘Find them.’
‘No. I hate them.’
Marnie’s heart twisted. ‘I know, sweetheart. But you won’t have to wear them for ever. Here, catch.’ She threw Verity her trainers. ‘Put them in your sports bag. Okay, Daisy, let’s do your hair.’
‘But you said you’d find my notebook!’ Verity said, aggrieved.
‘And you have to do our lunchboxes first,’ Daisy said. ‘You don’t want to forget them again.’
Jesus Christ. She’d forgotten them once. One day out of how many? But there was no such thing as absolution when you were a mother. Every transgression repeated on you, like onions.
‘I won’t forget, now give me the hairbrush.’ With fumbling fingers, she plaited Daisy’s hair incorrectly – doing a flat plait instead of a high one. ‘But what the hell’s a high one?’
‘Don’t say hell.’
Marnie was getting panicky now. Time was running away. She couldn’t be late for work again, she was pushing Guy too far. She didn’t know where his breaking point was, but she intuitively knew she was nearing it.
‘In a ponytail first, then a plait!’
‘Okay, quick.’ She undid Daisy’s hair and did it again, too quickly, so that it stuck up and out at a peculiar angle, like it was made of wire.
‘There you go, you’re beautiful.’
‘I look ridiculous.’
‘You’re too young to say ridiculous.’
‘I’m a child, I absorb what I hear like a sponge. How can I know what I’m too young to say?’
‘Either way, you’re beautiful. Come on, let’s go.’
‘Lun
chboxes!’
While Marnie flung grapes and sugar-free cereal bars into Angelina Ballerina lunchboxes, Daisy oversaw the operation with the gravity of a United Nations weapons inspector.
The tin of mini-bags of organic vegetable chips was empty – how had that happened?
‘Dad ate them,’ Daisy said. ‘I told him they were for our lunch but he said you’d find something else.’
Bloody Nick. So what was she going to give them instead?
What was in the fridge? Beetroot? For a wild moment, she wondered if she could get away with giving them each a beetroot? There was a small chance Verity might accidentally eat it, duped by its pretty colour, but Daisy had too keen an appreciation of what was and wasn’t acceptable lunchbox fare among their peers.
In the cupboard was a box of Green and Black’s chocolate wafers, brought along by someone who’d come for dinner. That would do.
‘Biscuits?’ Daisy asked sharply. If they were being permitted refined sugar, it meant that the barbarians were at the gates. ‘We’re not allowed to have biscuits. As well you know,’ she added with a world-weary sigh.
The biscuits were returned to the cupboard.
‘More grapes,’ Daisy suggested.
More grapes it was. There was no other choice. Marnie clicked the boxes closed and handed them over. But she couldn’t let Daisy out as she was – her plait was sticking up so much it looked as though it could pick up signals from outer space. ‘Wait, Daisy, let me do something with your hair.’
While she fiddled about with the root of the plait, she said, ‘Have a good day at school and take care of Verity.’
Daisy was aware of the natural advantages she had over Verity. She was pretty, popular, clever and good at sports, and she knew that with power came responsibility.
But instead of her usual solemn promise that she would look out for her sister, Daisy said quietly, ‘Mum, I won’t always be there for Verity. She’s got to learn to do it for herself.’