Payday

by Celia Walden

  ‘Where are you? Christ, Jamie. I’ve been calling and calling. Everyone’s worried about you.’

  ‘Everyone?’

  Jill extricated herself from the pull of commuters and put a hand over one ear. Wherever Jamie was, there was a lot of background noise, and his words were running into each other. ‘Well, Maya, for one. Why didn’t you call her?’

  ‘And say what?’

  She was going to have to tell him. ‘Listen I just spoke to her. I thought you might have gone home, and she sounded so worried. I had to say something.’

  ‘Course you did.’

  ‘I was only trying to help.’ A burst of song in the background drowned her out. ‘Just tell me where you are.’

  It took her less than fifteen minutes to get to the Crown & Sceptre, a triangular end-of-terrace pub in which they’d celebrated Paul’s birthday years ago, but the place was already rammed with boozers in QPR shirts. Of course, there would be a game on. Craning her neck she saw him, hunched over a full pint at the end of a long table of men in blue-and-white-striped scarves.

  ‘Sorry. Excuse me. Can I get by?’

  Relief at finding a chair and finally being off her feet buried any initial awkwardness, and they sat there in silence a moment.

  ‘Why are you here?’ His eyes were glassy and disconnected.

  ‘Stan asked me the same question.’ She attempted a smile. ‘The way he sees it you’ve made your bed. And part of me feels the same. I know about Alex, Jamie, about you using her as a scapegoat for your bungles and scams. I know that you’ve cheated and lied and used Stan’s illness and my distraction to push yourself ahead. And I know about the letter you sent to the board. The email was doctored, yes, but the letter was all you.’

  A flicker of something. Not contrition, more annoyance at being caught out.

  ‘And you may feel no loyalty to me, Stan or your employees, for that matter. You may be comfortable with the lying and the scheming, but I’m not. That’s why I’m here. Because you deserve to be disciplined – but only for what you’ve done. And I’m worried that there’s been some kind of …’ she was on shaky ground here ‘… vendetta against you.’

  Sucking the beer foam off his top lip, Jamie widened his eyes and laughed. ‘You don’t think I know that? You don’t think I’ve spent the past few hours going over and over what’s been happening in my life lately – and putting two and two together?’ Jill wished she had a drink in her hand. ‘Because let me tell you that when you get sacked—’

  ‘Suspended.’

  ‘Let’s call it what it is. When you get sacked for something you didn’t do, and the woman you had an eighteen-month affair with not only doesn’t call you but is uncontactable, it’s not hard to do the maths.’

  ‘You and Nicole?’

  ‘Ha! It was her. I knew it was her!’

  The men sharing their table glanced over.

  ‘Christ, Jamie, I’m not supposed to say anything. HR are in charge of this now.’

  ‘Well thanks for the heads-up. And yes, Nicole and I were together. We were in love!’ Jamie squealed out the words, one hand to his shirt front. ‘And we were going to try and make it work.’ He paused, frowned, drank some more. ‘But I let her down. I couldn’t … go through with it. And now she’s accused me of assault. So I guess Biarritz is off.’

  He’d stopped making sense, but Jill knew enough to work out the rest. Of course the two of them had been together. Something about them – a hardness, an inner darkness – made sense. She didn’t know why she hadn’t seen it before.

  ‘I should have guessed. Maybe I just thought you’d be mad to cheat on Maya.’

  He smiled at that. ‘My saintly wronged wife. You have no idea. Nicole wasn’t the first. I did something stupid a few years back.’

  ‘Your PA.’

  ‘Yeah.’ He met her eye. ‘Always thought you might have twigged.’

  Jill thought back to the conversation she and Stan had had by the canal the day after Joyce’s leaving do: the PA who had left suddenly, without explanation.

  ‘It was irrelevant; she was irrelevant. But Maya’s never let me forget it. And let me tell you, she’s been the one calling the shots ever since. Nicole was her idea … to start with. But then it got out of control, hers and mine. You know what?’ He leaned forward. ‘We’re meant to be the bad guys, but women are twisted, manipulative – fucked up. Nic liked our games. Least I thought she did. Then everything started going to shit: the “mix-ups” at work, and at home. I don’t know how I didn’t see it, and God knows how she was doing it, but all the time it was her …’

  Jill put a hand up to stop him. ‘No. No, Jamie, it wasn’t all—’

  He wasn’t listening. ‘This is going to destroy everything. Maya will never be able to forgive me.’

  Jill pictured pretty blonde Maya at the school gates – the sidelong looks, the whispers. No, she wouldn’t forgive him. And despite everything, she felt for Jamie. He might not have been the man she’d thought he was, but he wasn’t the man they’d conjured up in the pub that night, either.

  ‘There will be a full investigation, and I’ll make sure you’re dealt with fairly.’

  ‘Big of you – thanks.’

  ‘Hey. I’d take it. Your behaviour to me, after I brought you in, after I taught you everything, promoted you and had you at my dinner table … We’ve been on holiday together, for Christ’s sake.’

  He made a face: not this again. ‘Does any of it matter now?’

  Jill shrugged.

  ‘No,’ he answered for her. ‘So I’ll speak frankly.’ Having lost the ability to pronounce his Rs, the word came out a feeble ‘fwankly’. ‘I’m gone. I’m out. But you should go, too. You’ve been at the company forty years,’ he slurred. ‘Isn’t that enough?’ He was staring at Jill, eyes unfocused, head swaying loosely on his neck, like an articulated doll.

  ‘Right. I think we’ve both said our piece.’ She reached for her bag beneath the table. ‘Let’s get you an Addison Lee.’

  ‘Always the grown-up, eh Jill? Do fuck off.’

  The curse landed like a slap, and this time when the QPR supporters looked over, they weren’t laughing. But Jamie was oblivious to the attention he was attracting, his mouth twisted into a snarl as he raged on: ‘We’re not in the boardroom now. And we both know there’s nothing “fair” about what’s going to happen to me now. BWL are never going to clear my name, are they? Only Nic can do that – but she won’t, not now. I knew it was her, that’s why I went to her house, had a word with her wet husband.’

  ‘You spoke to Ben?’

  ‘Damn fucking right. I went over there. Had a cuppa with Mr Harper. Saw the house. Met Nicole’s little one. Very cute, by the way.’

  Jill’s hands flew up to her face. ‘No, no, no.’

  ‘He’s a nice bloke, Ben. Or he was until the moment I told him that his wife had just got me fired. And that if I did assault her, she must have really liked it because she just kept on coming back for more. Even planned to leave him for me.’

  This was Jill’s limit. ‘I’m off.’

  ‘Wait.’ As Jamie stood he toppled his pint, sending it crashing to the floor.

  ‘Mate!’ The man beside him leapt to his feet, staring down in disbelief at his soaked jeans. ‘What the … ? Are you even going to apologise?’

  But Jamie was non-reactive, scarcely even registering what he’d done.

  Jill looked from him to the man. ‘Sorry. He’s … pretty out of it. Let me get you a—’

  ‘I’m not fucking out of it.’

  ‘Hey! Instead of talking to the lady like that, how about you apologise?’

  Jill didn’t like this and began to look for an exit pathway through the bodies. Stan was right: this had been a bad idea.

  ‘Sorry about your fucking jeans.’ Reaching in his back pocket for his wallet, Jamie pulled out a twenty-pound note and tossed it at the man. ‘Primark, I’m guessing? Here. Buy yourself two new pairs. Jill – where are you go
ing? I thought we were going to talk?’

  She hadn’t thought for a minute that Jamie would try to stop her, but his hand was on the strap of her handbag, pulling her down.

  ‘Stop it. You’re embarrassing yourself.’

  Whipping out her phone, she clicked on the company Addison Lee account app and called Jamie a car. That was her kindness used up for the night. ‘The car will be here in six minutes. Get yourself home to your wife.’

  ‘Yeah, ’cause that’s a conversation I can’t wait to have,’ he leered. ‘Just one last thing: I was being loyal. I was being loyal to the company when I told people you’d be better off at home. You were a mess, you are a mess, and you’re going to be a mess long after he’s gone.’

  The words hovered there between them: after he’s gone. It sounded like the title of a book by that Aga saga woman, whatever her name was, about some well-heeled Buckinghamshire woman who learned to live and love again. After.

  ‘Stan’s not going anywhere. You know that.’

  As they stood there inches apart, eye to eye, she watched Jamie register her vulnerability. And she watched him home in on it.

  ‘Is this some weird denial thing? Or has he seriously not told you yet?’

  She tried hard to focus on the pain in her right foot, but that, along with everything else, seemed to be muffled by something so huge and heavy it would eclipse everything.

  ‘Stan’s not going to make it past Christmas. He told me that in January – that day I came to see him in hospital. You’d left the room and …’

  ‘No.’

  ‘He didn’t want you to know, back then, that it had spread to his spine and his lymph nodes. But I thought he’d tell you, when he was ready.’

  ‘No.’ She put her hand up to protect herself from his words, and Jamie grabbed her wrist and held it firm.

  ‘Why would I make this up?’

  Everything happened very fast, then. The freckled arm that came from behind Jamie, jamming him in a headlock. The distant shout of ‘You’d better get your hands off her now, mate.’ People parted as two, no, three of the men in blue and white scarves, led by the one in beer-sodden jeans, hauled Jamie through the pub towards the door, his damp shirt ruckled to expose a few inches of soft white belly, the heel of one of his suede shoes pulled free as he was dragged along the floor. And although Jill knew she should stop them, she waited until the first and second punches landed, the third flooring him, before begging the men to stop.

  Jamie was still lying by the pub bins, his lips slick with blood, when the car pulled up, and Jill pressed a twenty into the driver’s hand – ‘help him into the back and home, will you?’ – before walking away. All she was thinking about as she headed off in search of a cab, ignoring the persistent ringing of her phone in her bag, was ‘after he’s gone.’

  Only when she saw the back of her husband’s neck rising up from his armchair, did the tears come. Without a word Jill pressed her wet face into that neck, and after a small movement of surprise she felt Stan’s body slump as he registered what Jill must now know.

  Even as she was sobbing – ‘How did you think you could keep this from me? Why?’ – Jill understood why. It was seeing his wife reduced to this that Stan was trying to avoid. Had it been the other way around she wouldn’t have been able to bear it. ‘Hearing it from Jamie, Stan, having him know that, and not me … but there are trials you can go on. There’s a hospital in Bordeaux with an incredible success rate …’

  Her husband said nothing, shaking his head and pulling her to him in an awkward embrace. And for a while the two of them just sat there, Stan stroking her hair and Jill waiting until the heaving gave way to shudders.

  Then – because there was nothing else to say: ‘Camomile?’ And Jill had nodded and cleaned herself up before joining Stan in the kitchen, where they stood shoulder to shoulder waiting for the kettle to boil, the way they had a thousand times before – before today, after which nothing would ever be the same again.

  Spotting her laptop in its usual place on the counter, Jill surprised herself with the thought that she should check on Jamie, ensure he’d been dropped off safely.

  ‘After everything he’s done?’ Stan murmured, peering over her shoulder as she started to track his car on the company system.

  ‘I know. But he ended up getting into a brawl.’

  Stan blew softly on his tea. ‘Don’t you think he had it coming? He’s a liability, love. Let Jamie take care of himself from here.’

  ‘I will. This is just for my own peace of mind.’ As if to reinforce her husband’s pleas, up came the twirling rainbow wheel on her screen, and Jill was hit by a wave of weariness.

  ‘Come on.’ Stan took her hand, and with one last glance at the open laptop, Jill let him pull her off the kitchen stool. ‘Let’s get you to bed.’

  *

  Later, under the cover of darkness and blurred by the sleeping pill Stan had insisted she take, Jill allowed herself to cry again. She had hoped her husband was asleep and was dismayed when he reached over to her, his hand warm against her thigh.

  ‘My love …’

  ‘Sorry. I just wish you’d told me – not him. And I know you and Jamie had become close over the years, but …’

  Stan turned on his hip to face her in the darkness. ‘It wasn’t that. I was so out of it that I didn’t know what I was saying. So I told him what the doctors had found: how far the cancer had spread … the prognosis. And afterwards, I suppose I hoped I’d dreamt it up in the haze. I certainly never thought he’d betray me – us – the way he has.’ He took her hand beneath the covers. ‘But forget about Jamie.’

  Jill wanted to tell him that she couldn’t, and why she couldn’t. She was ready to do that now, and admit that although her former partner had been guilty of so much – infidelity, opportunism, double-dealing and a disloyalty so shocking towards both her and Stan that it had rocked her very foundations – she too had played a part in something full of lies and deceit.

  ‘Stan, there’s something you should …’

  Only, before she could go on, Jill’s eyes flickered shut.

  CHAPTER 31

  NICOLE

  Because none of the mums had mentioned Ben, Nicole knew that they knew. It had been less than a week since she’d moved out, but somehow they knew. And somehow the fact that she and her husband were splitting up had made her popular in a way no previous attempts at ingratiation with these women had been able to.

  Since they’d arrived at Bella Boos, the sickly pink kids’ café where Chloe’s school friend was having her birthday party, a steady stream of mums had come to ask how she was, and the hostess had refilled her cup with Prosecco twice.

  ‘They say it’s the white make-up,’ the birthday girl’s mum announced now, sitting back down beside her after a loop with the sandwich tray.

  ‘Sorry?’ Nicole spoke over a blare of party horns.

  ‘Clowns: they say it’s the white make-up that scares the little ones – even grown-ups. So when Annie mentioned she’d used Trudy Tickle for her eldest, who’s got that condition, coulrophobia – coulrophobia?’

  ‘A fear of clowns?’

  ‘That’s it. Anyway, I thought she’d be perfect for Lizzie’s party. They should all be a bit less scary-looking, don’t you think? Given how easily spooked they are at this age?’

  As she moved on to the ‘night terrors’ Lizzie had experienced that autumn, Nicole nodded and sipped her Prosecco. She didn’t care that it was tepid and too early to be drinking. She didn’t care about whether or not clowns were whited-up, either. She just wanted the normality and purity of this pink balloon-filled moment to last for ever, for these women’s inconsequential worries and chatter to drown out the memories of the last twenty-four hours and silence the noise – that stomach-churning noise – of Maya’s head cracking like a nut on the kitchen tiles. How had this never been enough for her? Why had she courted excitement and danger when everything she needed was right here?

  Wh
en Nicole had called Ben that morning, begging him to let her take Chloe to the party that had popped up as a reminder – and a reprieve – on her phone, she hadn’t expected him to say yes. But after the scene she’d witnessed in Maya’s kitchen the previous afternoon, and the hours spent talking to the police and in the hospital waiting room – where only after midnight had she been assured, ‘Mrs Lawrence is OK: shocked and sore but stitched up and OK’ – she needed to see her daughter.

  Ben had let her second ‘please’ hang there, enjoying the humiliation, turning it back on her, before finally muttering: ‘OK. But I want Chloe back here by six. If she eats any later she gets hyper and it takes hours to put her down.’ As though Nicole were already an outsider who needed to have her daughter’s foibles explained to her. ‘And actually I got that gig with the software company in north London, so I could use the time to start prepping for that.’

  When she’d tried to congratulate Ben on the job, he’d cut her off and hung up. She didn’t get to be surprised or pleased for him any more. Not after everything. Not after Jamie had turned up on their doorstep drunk out of his mind. And although her husband had said that their conversation was brief and Jamie ‘too out of it to make any sense’, Nicole still felt sick at the thought of what could have been said. What could have happened in Maya’s kitchen, if she hadn’t been there and called the police?

  When a traffic accident is narrowly avoided, it’s only afterwards, when one pulls, trembling, to the side of the road, that the imagined impact is felt. Nicole was at the side of the road now, relieved and grateful that the worst hadn’t happened – that Jamie hadn’t told Ben and that Maya was going to be fine – but still trembling at her own recklessness.

  She’d done everything she could to put it right. She’d filled in the police on Alex’s obsession with the man who had sacked her and given them her address – surely by now they would have found her? But there was one thing she hadn’t summoned the courage to do yet, and that was tell Jill. Nicole had got as far as bringing up her number, finger hovering over the call button, before turning her phone off, unable to bring herself to describe yesterday’s events. It was she, not Jill, who should have noticed how unstable Alex was, and yet her violent behaviour implicated them both.