‘So what do you think I should do?’ I say.
The man sidles into the gallery. ‘I wonder if you could tell me something about the sculptures in the window?’
Caron goes to answer him, but I cut her off in her prime.
I sigh. There’s no way this guy is a serious art lover. He has time-waster – and possibly pervert – stamped all over him. ‘Can’t you see that we’re busy?’
The man looks affronted.
‘Do you think we’re here – in this gallery and on this planet – so that you can treat us exactly as you like?’
Terror springs to his eyes and, before I can get into full flow, he scuttles out again.
‘So you haven’t tried the relaxation CD I bought you for your birthday?’ Caron says over her nail-file.
‘Yes, I have,’ I say with a huff. ‘This is me being relaxed.’
The man in the grey mac is fleeing down the street. ‘Bloody men!’ I shout after him.
Chapter Eighteen
Leo was with Grant and Lard and they were sitting at their favourite table in their favourite lunchtime haunt – Cash. Aptly named, as this place always managed to relieve them of plenty of it. The bar was a hop, skip and a jump from their office and was busier than usual today, so they were all huddled together at their small table, but in a blokey sort of way. Music was blaring out – Amy Winehouse or someone – and they were finding it hard to hear each other talk. So they’d kind of given up while they concentrated on their over-priced but freshly made ciabatta sandwiches.
‘You are looking very romantically-inclined,’ Grant said between bites of his bread, and Leo realised that he was staring wistfully out of the window.
‘She was very nice,’ he replied.
‘Miss Glitter Knickers?’ Lard didn’t appreciate that speaking with his mouth full wasn’t polite.
Nodding in response, Leo sighed in the manner of a romantic poet – Percy Bysshe Shelley or Byron or the one with the daffodils perhaps. ‘I can’t believe she just used me, abused me and then disappeared.’
‘I can’t believe you’re so bloody lucky,’ Lard muttered.
Grant scratched his head. ‘I thought you were in love with Emma?’
Leo couldn’t admit this out loud – he was a man, after all – and men had enough trouble admitting that sort of stuff to themselves, let alone to others. But this woman, Isobel. He had no idea what she’d done to him, but . . . well, she’d simply turned his world upside down. And his world hadn’t been turned upside down for a long time.
Leo had been with Emma for years. He knew nothing else. Not really. She’d been the only person he’d ever had a long-term relationship with – unless you counted his parents, which was fairly disastrous and not something you’d want to use as a blueprint. Anyway, that wasn’t quite the same, was it? And, the sad fact was that this new woman had walked into his life out of nowhere and, quite frankly, Leo was starting to feel a little different about things.
Take sex, for example. Leo would have said that his sex-life with Emma was good. Very good. Regular. Now he wasn’t so sure. When Isobel made love to him it was a revelation. And he chose those words very carefully, which he wasn’t prone to do. Isobel didn’t just have sex with him, she definitely made love to him – all night! Leo still couldn’t believe that. He hadn’t been so energetic since he was about nineteen. And, if he was honest, Isobel had been very much in charge. But not in a kinky way. In a soft and gentle way. Emma was always in charge during their lovemaking, but then weren’t most women? And Leo didn’t want to go into too much detail, because he was pretty hopeless at talking about this sort of thing, but Emma could be bossy. Very bossy. And not in a kinky way. Even between the sheets there was no ‘off’ button for her in-built bossiness – it was always ‘Leo, do this’, ‘Leo, do that’, ‘Leo, harder/faster/slower’. ‘Leo, any way but the way you were doing it’, really. And though Leo thought that it was wonderful that women were now men’s equals and they had the vote and could drive racing cars or play rugby and demand what they wanted in bed, he also thought: Sometimes, ladies, it would be nice if you’d pretend that men are in control; just every now and again. Faking it could be good. Really it could. Men were very simple souls – a bit of praise once in a while worked wonders. Leo didn’t think that Isobel was faking it, but she certainly didn’t have any complaints. And Leo didn’t mean that in a wink, wink way. He meant that she didn’t complain all the way through. And it was a revelation to Leo that someone could find him wonderful without him having to pretend not to be him.
Leo did the romantic sigh again. ‘I thought I was in love with Emma.’
‘But not any more?’
‘I have absolutely no idea.’
‘Well, here’s your chance to find out. Emma alert!’
Leo glanced up and Grant was right: Emma was walking past the window and peering in. She knew that Leo was there, regular as clockwork, virtually every day of the week. ‘Oh no.’ He gave Grant and Lard an impassioned look. ‘I can’t do this now. Really I can’t.’
Emma’s shoes were circling the table slowly. Leo knew it was her from the determination of her step rather than recognising her choice of footwear. He was ashamed he had to admit this, but to avoid Emma, Grant and Lard and Leo all slid under the table. They sat with their knees up round their ears and their heads bent down which made them look like leprechauns – but without the green clothes. It was a frightfully grubby little space and you wouldn’t believe how much chewing gum was stuck to the underside of the table – none of it theirs, of course. People these days were very dirty. And cowardly. Leo clutched his beer to his chest and dreaded the fact that at any moment Emma could look under the table and he would be sprung. The shoes tippy-tapped around with a menacing air and then they disappeared.
‘She’s gone,’ Lard said.
‘Check,’ Leo advised. Emma was very devious and could just be lurking ready to pounce.
Lard peeped his head out. ‘She’s definitely gone. The coast’s clear.’
They unfolded their knees, realising that they might have benefited from a few years of hatha yoga before adopting this extreme position. ‘Did she have any blunt instruments with her?’
Lard shook his head.
‘Sharp ones?’
‘Not that I could see.’
‘Emotional torture then,’ Leo said. This was the worst form of punishment and the one at which Emma was most effective. She was like the love-child of Freddie Kruger when cheesed off. They crawled out from under the table, trying not to spill valuable droplets of their beer.
‘You could just talk to her,’ Lard suggested, picking bits of fluff from his trousers with a scowl on his face.
Grant and Leo stared at him open-mouthed. Leo couldn’t even begin to locate the power of speech.
‘What?’ Lard said, when they remained silent.
‘Are you mad?’ Grant asked eventually. ‘Completely mad?’
‘We’re guys,’ Leo pointed out. ‘Talking is an alien concept to us.’
‘Sorry,’ Lard said sheepishly. ‘I don’t know what I was thinking of.’
There was a pink Post-It note stuck to the top of the table amid the white rings and bits of stale peanut. As they resumed their places, Leo picked up the note as, quite rightly, he expected that it would be for him. Grow up, it said and was signed, Emma.
Chapter Nineteen
Isobel stood and regarded the towering offices of Thornton Jones, before hitching her bag onto her shoulder and stepping purposefully inside. The building was all shiny and hard-edged, very different from the type of place she was used to. Her eyes widened in wonder. There were tall trees growing inside and she’d never seen that before. Where she came from, trees grew outside in woods. Amazing. She was learning so much. Thrilled rather than daunted by the strangeness of her surroundings, Isobel checked through the list of companies displayed on a stainless-steel noticeboard in the foyer until she found the floor she wanted.
Followi
ng the steady stream of men and women in smart suits, she stepped into a small glass room that took them up, up, up on the outside of the building. Isobel pressed her face against the glass and watched as the pedestrians scuttling by on the streets below her grew smaller until they were tiny, tiny people that made her think of home. She was pleased that she’d done her homework well and looked just like the other women in her neat black suit and kitten heels. She’d twisted her long flowing hair into a tidy bun and had produced some horn-rimmed glasses to complete the look. Isobel smiled to herself. Fitting in here would be seamless. She couldn’t wait.
There was a small reception area with another tight-lipped woman behind a desk. Perhaps it was a requirement here for women behind desks to be unpleasant.
‘Yes,’ the woman said without looking up.
‘I have an interview,’ Isobel told the top of her head. ‘With a Mr Baldwin.’
‘Name?’
‘Isobel Hewlett-Packard.’
‘Take a seat, please.’ When the woman finally looked up, she glowered at Isobel who smiled politely back.
Isobel sat down and leafed through the magazines on the coffee-table. If there was anything destined to make her feel like an outsider it was the fashions. She’d have to get a grip on those. Her outfit today was a success, but it was difficult when so few of the women on the street looked like the women in the fashion spreads. Women here were all shapes and sizes and yet there appeared to be a separate long, thin race of women without blemishes who were the only ones allowed to feature in magazines.
‘Mr Baldwin will see you now,’ the woman informed her crisply. ‘Third door on the left.’
Isobel walked down the hall, aware that from the open-plan office many heads had swivelled in her direction and a phalanx of popping eyes were watching her progress. She turned and gave the men in the office a dazzling smile, before disappearing into Mr Baldwin’s private office.
Mr Baldwin was hurriedly swallowing two tablets as she went in and clearly looked unwell. He stood up and walked from behind his desk to greet her. Mr Baldwin, too, looked taken aback by her appearance and Isobel wondered if all women had this effect on men. If they did, it was rather nice.
‘Good afternoon, Ms . . . er . . .’
‘Isobel.’ She shook his hand.
‘Isobel.’ He smiled and rolled the word around as if savouring it on his tongue. ‘Please sit down.’
Isobel sat down opposite him while Mr Baldwin rifled through the piles of paperwork on his desk. It was a terribly untidy office. There were mountains of documents that looked as if they should have been filed away, and the potted plants drooped listlessly. This man definitely needed her help.
‘I don’t seem to have a CV here for you,’ he said at length, then abandoned his search. ‘I must have mislaid it. Have you brought one with you?’
‘Yes.’ Isobel opened her handbag and pulled out her wand again. She zapped Mr Baldwin.
‘Oh, my word,’ Mr Baldwin said.
‘I’d like to start tomorrow.’
Her future boss shook himself, like a dog shaking off water. ‘Yes, yes. That’s fine. It all seems to be in order.’
Isobel tucked her wand away.
‘Welcome on board.’ Mr Baldwin shook her hand, starting as if he’d touched an electrical socket by mistake. ‘We’ll see you at nine o’clock prompt.’
‘Prompt?’
‘If that suits you, of course,’ Mr Baldwin said.
Isobel stood up and went over and kissed Mr Baldwin on the cheek. ‘That suits me just fine.’
‘Good, good.’ Mr Baldwin stroked his cheek.
‘I’ll see you in the morning.’
‘Yes, yes. Wonderful. Marvellous.’
‘You should start to feel better now,’ Isobel said, and she went out to survey her new empire.
‘I’m fine,’ Mr Baldwin said, dazed. ‘Absolutely fine.’ And he picked up the packet of tablets to check exactly what it was he’d taken.
Chapter Twenty
Leo hadn’t chosen this particular career path, it had chosen him. Basically, Leo was doing this job because his father had secured it for him through one of his old cronies. A terrible admission, Leo knew. But when he’d left university, after he’d enjoyed three very nice years of drunken debauchery and yet somehow managed to blag a passable 2.2, he still had no firm idea of where his life was headed. His father took over and within weeks Leo was in the City, in finance, in this office.
And all these years later, having managed to hang onto his job by the skin of his teeth, he still really had no idea what he was actually doing or why, indeed, he was doing it. Throughout the morning, he’d been crunching numbers for a purpose that steadfastly eluded him. If he were saving lives by curing cancer or teaching children with learning difficulties or something that had a tangible end product other than simply making more money, then he might have felt it was worthwhile. Grant and Lard had no such compunction – they loved making money for the sake of it. In fact, they loved it so much that they excelled at it and, therefore, had time to cover Leo’s arse when he fell woefully short of expectations. And for this, he thanked them regularly.
Before Leo could lament this further, his eye made an involuntary glance up at the clock – not for the first time today – to check the time and see how much longer this interminable afternoon had left to run. And – double-take! Flip. Flip. It was her. Ms Glitter Knickers!
She was grinning at him and mouthed, ‘See you later,’ before she disappeared round the corner towards the bank of elevators.
‘Flip. Flip.’ Leo tried to log off from his computer and in the process pressed all the wrong bastardy buttons. ‘Flip. Flip.’ And then he knocked his coffee into the keyboard which meant he had to use his suit jacket to mop it up. And then his jacket knocked all his papers to the floor. ‘Flip. Flip.’
Finally, he managed by some miracle to disentangle himself from his desk, leaving a trail of devastation behind him. As he arrived at the lift, he saw the doors close with Isobel inside. She lifted her hand in a delicate wave.
‘Isobel! Isobel!’ Oh bollocks. The only thing for it was the stairs. If Leo took them two at a time, he could head off the lift by the time it got to the bottom. Even at this point, Leo realised that he was failing to take into account that he was on the tenth floor and was, basically, an unfit bastard. All those hours he could have spent in the gym rather than wasting his money in seedy bars would have come in very handy now.
What was he thinking of? They did it in films all the time. Heading off villains and departing romantic heroines with consummate ease. Leo sprinted to the Emergency Exit door which led to the stairs. What Thornton Jones had lavished on marble and chrome for the public areas of the offices they had saved by making the back staircase the most dingy place on earth. It was a dimly lit underbelly of unpainted concrete and it echoed eerily. The sort of place that any self-respecting serial killer would be happy to call home.
As Leo had promised himself, he took the steps two at a time, sprinting athletically while still clinging to the black iron handrail for balance. His feet clattered on the concrete steps. Leo hadn’t run like this since . . . probably since the egg and spoon race in primary school. Generally, he tried to avoid exerting himself at all costs. But these were extreme circumstances. Whatever it took, Leo had to find her before she walked out of his life again. If nothing else, he needed to know what on earth was going on. In times of crisis it was well-known that humans are capable of producing superhuman effort. That was all that was required here.
One floor later. ‘Ouff. Ouff.’
Not. That. Fit. At. All. Puff. Puff. Deep unpleasantness. Two floors later.
‘Shit.’ Pant. Pant. Stop for minute. Breathe. Breathe. Hot air in lungs. Give up smoking. Again. Go to gym.
Three floors later. Superhuman effort not yet kicking in. Bollocks. Can’t speak. Wheezing. Asthma attack surely.
Four floors. Dying. Seriously. Barely alive. Collapse on stairs.
Lie here and let vultures peck out eyes. Breathing heavily. Knackered. Like fat Labrador. Major depression. Will never catch her now. Probably halfway to Outer Mongolia.
‘Bugger.’ Gasp. Gasp.
Stand up. Amble down rest of stairs. Carefully.
Chapter Twenty-One
In the blazing summer sunshine, Grant and Lard were sitting on one of the granite walls that surrounded the flowerbeds outside the Thornton Jones building – originally installed to soften the hard edges of the brash architecture, but in effect, a great refuge for the hardened smokers among the largely nicotine-encrusted staff. They were just the perfect height for the perching of a bottom, and a regular prayer of thanks was said to the man who designed them for that fact. Otherwise, they’d all be forced to stand up with their fags. Terrible hardship.
Lard was merely a social smoker, but he chain-ate Mars Bars which also made him something of a leper in the offices where carb-free seemed to be king. He alternated puffs of his low tar whatever with gargantuan gobblings of chocolate and toffee. Grant, however, was dragging deeply on his outsize, full hit ciggie. A tiny silver butterfly flitted past Leo’s eye, brushing his hair, and he wafted it away with his hand – but in a nice way, not irritably. Mainly because he was too exhausted to do irritable and it was a very pretty butterfly. It was depressing that they had such short lifespans, so Leo tried not to think about butterflies too often. The butterfly eschewed the fragrant flowers and fluttered off into the congestion of cars.
Leo wandered over to Grant and Lard and sat down next to them. The traffic on Leadenhall Road trundled slowly past, horns blaring, filling the warm summer air with the acrid smell of petrol fumes that won the battle with the scent of roses struggling up from the flowerbeds. Leo breathed in the toxic mix of pollution until he got his breath back.
‘I’m on the cadge,’ he said when he could speak again.