‘Lunch?’ Rico asked. ‘Help me celebrate?’
She froze, overtaken by terror and longing.
‘It’s a nice day,’ he said. ‘We could go to the park?’
Her body relaxed and she began to breathe again. Yes, she could go with him to the park.
‘I’d have to skip my Pilates,’ she said.
She’d paid in advance for ten classes but hadn’t gone for the past three weeks. She’d hoped, as she did with everything she tried, that Pilates would fix her, but the only effect it had was that – oddly – it made her want to smoke. Unlike the rest of her family, she’d only ever been a tourist smoker, but something about Pilates and its almost-nothingness made her want to rip the cellophane off a packet of twenty and smoke one cigarette after another until the terrifying boredom left her.
‘If you’d prefer to go…’ He looked disappointed.
‘No. Pilates, the watching-paint-dry approach to fitness. I’m glad to have an excuse. What are we celebrating this time?’
‘Sale of an office block.’
‘Only a small one,’ Craig yelled.
But still. Rico, charm monster, the youngest and best-looking of Guy’s brokers, was having an astonishing year, racking up commission after commission.
It was a bright sunny day, warm for the tenth of October. They sat on a bench, their feet kicking at the drifts of crunchy leaves, in russets and purples, which carpeted the ground.
‘Autumn’s my favourite season.’ Rico gave her her sandwich.
‘Mmmm.’ She hated autumn.
Autumn rotted. It was death and putrefaction. Beneath those leaves, God-knows-what was lurking.
But she also hated summer. It was too screamy-happy and hysterical.
‘What’s your favourite season?’ he asked.
‘Spring,’ she lied. She hated spring too. It got on her nerves. All that freshness and hope that ultimately amounted to nothing. If spring was a person, it would be Pollyanna.
Winter was the only season that made any sense to her. But she kept that to herself. If you go public that your favourite season is winter, you’re obliged to wax lyrical about snowmen and egg-nog so that no one discovers how weird you are.
‘Champagne, madam?’ Rico produced a bottle and two flutes, as if from thin air.
She was horror-struck. She hadn’t been prepared for this. It took moments to find her voice. ‘No, Rico, no. Put it away. I’ve scads of work. I can’t.’
‘I thought you liked champagne.’ Already he was undoing the foil.
‘I do, of course, but don’t, Rico, please. Stop. Don’t open it.’
‘You don’t want to help me celebrate?’ His voice was over-innocent.
‘Of course, but not at lunchtime.’
‘After work?’
‘Not today.’
‘Not today. Okay. I’ll keep it for some other time.’ Without obvious rancour he returned the bottle and glasses to their carrier bag.
‘Are you angry with me?’ she asked.
‘I could never be angry with you.’
Too quick, too slick a reply, but she hadn’t the equilibrium to start delving. Now she wished she’d let him open it.
‘Any plans for the weekend?’ Rico turned sideways to give her his full attention.
‘The usual. Ferrying the girls to their different extramural activities. We’ll probably go to a movie on Sunday.’
‘What are you going to see?’
‘Some Pixar thing. You know, I literally can’t remember the last time I went to a film that wasn’t PG. How about you?’
‘Few drinks after work tonight. Dinner tomorrow night.’
‘With a girl?’
He nodded and stared across the park, not meeting her eyes.
An arrow of something painful pricked her – jealousy? – not badly enough to lodge in her flesh but it felt good. A normal response gave her hope.
‘Jealous?’ he asked.
‘A little bit.’
‘Don’t be. She’s not as good as you. No one is.’
Don’t make me feel even more guilty.
‘But until you’re available…’
He picked up her hand and played with her fingers. She let him for a moment, then wrenched them away.
In the multiplex, crowds of kids milling everywhere, the smell of rancid butter in the air, Marnie thought, I am the only person alive. Everyone else here is dead but they don’t know it. I am alive and alone and trapped. For a moment she believed it and was overtaken by horror that was almost delicious.
Daisy and her friend Genevieve hurtled into her, using her legs as a crash barrier.
‘We got sweets!’
Verity and Nick brought up the rear. Nick had bought them way too much at the pick’n’mix but she couldn’t be bothered to berate him. Let their teeth rot. One day they were all going to be dead and it wouldn’t matter then if every tooth in their head was a black stump.
Then Marnie saw the woman: tall, slender and smiley, her brown hair in a swingy ponytail. At first she didn’t know where she knew her from. When she remembered, fear closed around her heart like a fist.
Don’t see me don’t see me don’t see me.
The woman – what was her name again? Jules, that was it – had noticed her and was walking in her direction. She was about to say hello, even stop perhaps, when she saw Nick at Marnie’s side. She dropped her eyes and passed by with a bland smile.
Nick, of course, noticed. He noticed everything. He was always watching.
‘Do you know her?’
‘No…’
It was building. She felt it. He felt it. They both knew it was going to happen.
‘That’s enough!’ Wen-Yi said, when Monday’s post didn’t reveal Mr Lee’s signed form. ‘Send another one right now! Bike it. Get the bike to wait while he signs it, then courier it directly to the bank.’ He’d been talking to the vendors over the weekend. ‘If we don’t close today we’ve lost the sale.’
Which meant that Wen-Yi would lose his 1 per cent – a lot of money – but far worse, from hints that Wen-Yi had been dropping, Mr Lee would be ‘displeased.’
Heart pounding, she picked up the phone. It would all be okay. To find out where she should dispatch the bike, she rang Mr Lee’s mobile; a woman answered.
In a Chinese accent she said, ‘Mr Lee not here. He in China. Be back next month.’
God, no.
Panic rushed into her mouth, making it tacky and sour.
‘When did he go?’
‘Last week.’
‘I’ll… I’ll call you back.’
She went to Wen-Yi’s desk and said quietly, ‘Mr Lee is in China. He won’t be back until next month.’
Wen-Yi wasn’t a shouter. He conveyed rage in a quiet, terrifying way. Speaking barely above a whisper, he bit out the words, ‘Why didn’t he say he was going to China when you spoke to him?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Did you speak to him?’
‘Yes.’ The word had left her mouth without her involvement.
He stared at her; he knew she was lying.
‘You didn’t speak to him. You didn’t ring him.’
‘I did.’ But her voice was weak and unconvincing.
He looked at her in disgust.
‘If we lose this property, Mr Lee…’ He wiped his hand over his face and thought for a moment. ‘Courier the form to China.’
‘Will do,’ she said, in a travesty of efficiency, earning herself another look of contempt.
Almost unable to breathe, she rang the mobile again and asked the woman, ‘Can you give me Mr Lee’s address in China?’
‘In Shanghai. No address. Phone number.’
‘If you could give me the number, then.’
With a shaking hand, she wrote it down, then reached for the phone book, searching for the code for China. What time was it in Shanghai?
‘I don’t care how late or early it is there.’ Wen-Yi read her mind. ‘Ring him.’
/>
Her fingers were trembling so badly, it took five attempts before she managed to hit the numbers correctly. After many clicks and hissing, a phone began to ring on a faraway continent.
Answer it answer it answer it.
A woman speaking, a foreign language, her own voice shrill and wobbly, her tongue clicking against her dry palate, as she tried to explain.
‘I need to send something to Mr Lee. You know Mr Lee?’
Please know him please know him please know him.
‘Yes, I know Mr Lee.’ The woman’s words bounced like rubber bands. ‘I give you address.’
Thank you God thank you God thank you God.
But the woman’s accent was difficult to understand and something got lost in translation because UPS had no knowledge of the Shanghai suburb that Mr Lee was allegedly staying in.
‘No such place,’ the cheery Australian booker said. ‘Can’t do anything without an address.’
‘Does it sound similar to another suburb?’
‘Not even close.’
Ring her back ring her back ring her back.
I can’t I can’t I can’t.
She fought a compulsion to get up from her desk and abandon the office and go out into the street and walk and walk and walk, until she’d left London far behind, until she was out on the hard shoulder of the motorway, cars and lorries roaring past, walking and walking and walking for ever. The heels of her shoes would crumble to nothing, her trouser suit would become filthy rags, her feet would resemble steak tartare and still she would keep walking.
‘Ring her again,’ Wen-Yi said, flashing hatred across the room.
‘Okay,’ she whispered.
This time the woman’s spelling coincided with a suburb. She watched herself prepare the envelope and waited with herself by the office door until the UPS man came and she personally placed the envelope into his hands.
Her self-hatred was so enormous that she’d vacated herself. At some stage she’d have to return to face the music but, right now, she was nowhere.
‘Marnie? Drink?’
Rico stood before her, so handsome, so kind, so persuasive. Her only ally. There were so many reasons to say no, she knew them all, but, to her surprise, a decisive part of her brain intervened and informed her that she was going to say yes.
After the terrible day, after the succession of terrible days, all fear and restraint fell away and the decision was made. She’d endured weeks of clenched-jawed forbearance, and to let go – so unexpectedly – was giddyingly pleasurable. Suddenly she was gloriously, joyously light and free.
She was Marnie Hunter and she was answerable to nobody.
‘Let me ring my nanny,’ she told Rico. ‘If she can stay with the girls it’s a go.’
Even if Melodie couldn’t stay, she was still going for that drink. She didn’t know how but she knew it would happen.
‘Melodie, Marnie here. So sorry, but I’m going to be a little late this evening. A crisis at work.’ She saw Rico smile.
Melodie sounded worried. ‘Mrs H, I gotta be outa here by six-fifteen.’
‘I’ll pay you extra.’
Then she noticed Guy. From the other side of the office, he was listening and radiating disapproval.
Well, fuck him. She was going for a drink with a colleague. Everyone did it. It was normal. She felt like putting her hand over the mouthpiece and yelling at him: It’s NORMAL.
‘Mrs H, it’s not the money,’ Melodie said. ‘I’ve gotta get to my other job.’
‘I’ll be home by six-fifteen. For God’s sake.’ She couldn’t hide her impatience. ‘It’s just a quick drink.’
‘A quick drink? You said it was a crisis at work. Does Mr H know?’
Fuck Mr H. She disconnected and smiled at Rico. ‘Come on, let’s go!’
∗
......................................................................no..............................
.........................................................weight lifting.........................
....................................no............................................................
............................................getting lighter..............................
........................................................and rising steadily to pop the surface.
Suddenly she was there. She hadn’t been and now she was. She’d moved from non-existence to existence, from nothing to something. Like being born.
Where? Where had she been born this time?
An impression of ceiling, walls. Sealed. She was indoors. Probably in a house. Softness beneath her. She was on a bed. But she didn’t know the room.
Curtains at a window. She tried to focus, but double vision turned them into two sets. They lifted, floated, crossed over and blurred. Try again in a while.
Teeth ached, jaw ached, eye sockets throbbed. Nausea lay in wait, primed to activate on movement.
Now she knew the bed. This was her own bed. Better than a stranger’s bed? A hospital bed? Maybe not.
She was dressed, but in what? Her fingertips touched her stomach. She consulted the skin on her back. Cool, smooth cotton. A nightdress.
Checking now to see how bad things were. Face first. But her arm wasn’t under her control, it moved too fast and landed on her cheek with a heavy, useless slap. Pain. Shock. Vomit in her throat.
Bones in face bad but lip not split. Carefully she ran her tongue around the inside of her mouth and when a tooth wobbled, she felt the first wave of black horror. Other things can be fixed, but if you lose a tooth, you never get it back. Permanent damage.
Checking further down. Ribs bad. Pelvis bad. Vertebrae okay. All frontal damage this time. She tested her legs, using the sole of her foot to feel the opposite leg. Along their length, on both legs, were painful points that would bloom into round, black blossoms.
Finally she rubbed her feet together. Even her feet were bruised. From my head to my toes… Another wave of black horror. More would come, the gaps getting shorter until eventually there were none and she was suspended in unending terror, wishing for annihilation.
The living will envy the dead. That was a line from the Bible, the only one that had ever really grabbed her.
How had it happened this time? She couldn’t remember. Not yet. Maybe never. Where are the kids? Panic. Where are the kids?
‘Nick.’ Her feeble voice surprised her. It didn’t fit with her urgency.
‘Nick.’ The last person she wanted, but there was no choice.
A shadow at the doorway. Nick. He stood and stared in silence.
‘Where are the kids?’ she asked. ‘Are they okay?’
‘They’re with my mum. I didn’t want them to see you like this.’
‘Sorry,’ she whispered.
‘If you ever tell anyone,’ he said, ‘I’ll kill you. Okay? Okay?’ he said, louder this time.
She was mopping the blood off her face, astonished at its quantity and redness. ‘Okay.’
Alicia
She leant closer to the mirror, inspecting for imperfections. Ah no. She’d just spent the past half-hour doing her make-up more carefully than she’d ever done it in her life and now look: flakes of skin had started to curl up in the hollows around her nose, like cracked earth in a drought area. Grace Gildee would definitely notice. Delicately, with her fingernail, Alicia lifted the flakes off. Gone. But now there were raw, red circles around each nostril. She reached for her foundation sponge and dabbed colour on the afflicted area. Flaky again.
Fuck.
Just fuck.
She was a wreck. She’d done several interviews since the news broke about her and Paddy but she’d never felt as nervous as this.
Not that she had reason to be. This was her time of triumph, her own personal Pretty Woman, ‘Big mistake, big huge mistake’ moment, when she got to say, ‘Ha!’ to everyone who’d ever been mean to her.
She was the woman who’d waited long enough and fin
ally got everything she’d ever wanted: Grace Gildee was having to interview her because she, yes, she, Alicia Thornton, was getting married to Paddy de Courcy.
So there was no need to be nervous, Grace Gildee was the one who should be quaking in her Doc Martens (or whatever brand of strident clumpy boots she wore these days).
She applied one more layer of lipstick then put her finger in her mouth and sucked hard. A handy trick to avoid getting lipstick on her teeth.
But she cast an anxious look in the mirror: had she sucked off too much? The balance was tricky – lipstick too obvious, you look desperate; lipstick too discreet, you look pitifully self-effacing.
She decided to add one more coat because the last thing she wanted to look was pitifully self-effacing. Not in front of Grace. She wanted to look… what? Sophisticated, confident, elegant. She’d never be beautiful, she’d accepted that a long time ago. And good job she had because for every fawning mention in the press of her ‘elan’ there was another sniggery reference to her long features. The first and most wounding had been, ‘Giddy up the aisle!’ She’d been devastated – and deeply confused – by the hostility with which some newspaper articles had greeted her engagement. One had even implied that the only reason she was with Paddy was because she was a social climber. Which was insane, she thought. Paddy was beautiful. Even if he’d been a puppeteer or the person who sat at a conveyor belt and checked for mutant-shaped M&Ms, she’d have loved him.
‘Can we sue?’ she’d asked, in tears.
‘No, we can’t.’ Paddy had been exasperated. ‘Get used to it.’
‘You mean there might be more?’
‘Yeah.’
‘But why?’
She’d had a starry-eyed expectation that the media would shower her with affection because it was Paddy she was marrying. Surely everyone adored him as much as she did?
‘They do,’ Paddy had said bluntly. ‘They’re jealous of you.’
Jealous! Once she realized that, it changed everything. She didn’t think anyone had ever before been jealous of her; she didn’t usually generate that kind of reaction. But now… well… jealous…
Sometimes, when she got dressed in the morning, she looked at herself in the full-length mirror and whispered, ‘I am jealous of me, you are jealous of me, he-stroke-she is jealous of me. We are jealous of me, you plural are jealous of me, they are jealous of me.’