by Naomi Joy
‘I should have done this a long time ago? My job comes first? I no longer love you?’ he barked, reading snippets from the note as rhetorical questions. ‘You just said yes to marrying me! What’s wrong with you, Ava? Who put you up to this? Was it him? Stein?’ I tried my best to shrink into the wall as he drew closer. ‘It was him, wasn’t it?’ I so desperately wanted to say yes; anything to divert his anger. He shouted at me again. ‘Ava!’ I could smell last night’s vodka seeping out of his pores as he pulled me to standing and pressed a hand to my sternum, pinning me against the wall. He started to laugh in hearty, horrible cackles that filled the broken room. ‘And to think I was going to forgive you for being unfaithful, wipe the slate clean, use our engagement to start again…’ His breath smelt like poison. ‘It would be funny if it weren’t so fucking tragic.’
6
Jade
I’d hardly stopped looking at Josh’s page since he added me. There were just ten photos so far, all uploaded pretty recently, and I’d checked through his friends. It was only me he was following from work – he wasn’t even following Ava. His profile was like fine art, honestly, you could hang these pictures in a gallery and I’m sure people would queue in droves on Saturday and Sunday mornings, flocking like eager little pigeons to see them. Looking into his eyes, even on a screen, was like staring into the purest blues of the ocean and my feelings for him poured over me like waves, lapping at my heels at first, then at my waist, my neck, my eyes. As I continued to study each picture I walked further out to sea. Soon, I would drown.
I knew this was an infatuation, not quite love, but to be honest I wasn’t sure what love really felt like. I thought I was in love once, but my ex’s grand plans of opening a restaurant turned out to be more important than my grand plans of starting a life together. February 29th. Seven years and four months together. I’d set up everything perfectly: A Cab Sav ‘08, melt-in-the-mouth lamb shanks, his and hers silver bands, one knee. His eyes had popped out of his head, his jaw had hit the floor, and his feet couldn’t have run away fast enough. People had told me not to do it – it’s emasculating, it’s desperate – but whatever, at least I’d found out for sure he didn’t want the same things as me, even if it had taken him years to figure it out. I’d booked the cheapest plane ticket I could find after he’d rejected my proposal, had sent him a final goodbye in seat 33A, and set off to Sri Lanka. I suppose you could say I’d been having a crisis – world travel the most important thing on my bucket list, even though it had never really featured there before. I’d planned to stay for six months, maybe longer if things went well, but it all ended rather abruptly after just two. Those eight weeks had been beautiful though, lush and smelly, chaotic and exciting, and I’d learnt a lot. Such as: do not go on a group elephant ride alone, they are only designed for couples. I did not know this at the time. I’d gone, with my bumbag and my awe for these mighty creatures, and stood alongside five other blissfully happy gap-yah twosomes as we’d stared up at the five almighty elephants ahead of us. Because I was alone and they were all paired up, I’d been matched with the elephant equivalent of the runt of the litter, brought out once I’d paid in the cash for the ride; blind, lame in one leg and suffering from chronic diarrhoea. Imagine elephant diarrhoea, for a second; the smell, the volume, the explosiveness. It was a bit like riding a malfunctioning hoover wildly spraying watery, rancid poo in every direction. All the other elephants had behaved extremely well so, there I’d been, taking up the rear, breathing in the rear of my elephant, watching as each of the couples ahead shot nervous, Is she ok? looks back at me, giggling, then out-performing each other with their revoltingly public displays of affection. So, after that, world travel slipped back down my to-do list and a romantic relationship shot straight back up to the number one spot. Once the ride was over, one of the elephant tamers with kind grey eyes and a shoulder to cry on had comforted me, with alcohol mainly, and we’d spent the night together at my hotel. I’d felt myself falling for him as the sun had set and we’d snuggled together under a blanket beneath the stars. I’d wondered how difficult it would be to get a visa. We could move to Mumbai and make a fortune in the city, then head back to Sri Lanka and help build a better home for his family. But he left before sunrise with my heart in his hands and 16,000 rupees in his pockets.
*
I pushed open the front door to my home deep in South East London, an identikit post-Second-World-War terrace to all the others on the street: hastily constructed, two storeys high, concrete garden, crummy brickwork. A build up of post had wedged itself under the base of the splintered front door and I bent down to dislodge it, dispersing envelopes in all directions over the hallway. I’ll deal with it later, I thought, for the umpteenth time. The brown-beige, tobacco-stained paint was peeling in some areas in the hallway, the culprit a decrepit leaky pipe, not quite bad enough to warrant a call-out, but chronic enough to fill the entrance with the smell of a thriving mould colony. It was crazy that this shithole cost me more than a grand a month. I slammed the door to the hallway shut, lit a cigarette and collapsed on the sunken settee in the living room. The evening sun hit my eyes as I tried to relax, inviting itself into my home so insistently it was as if it was trying to alert my attention to something. I cursed myself for not replacing the old curtains and for leaving the windows bare for so long, then slumped off the sofa onto the floor, clearing a space between the discarded dinner plates and empty packets of cigarettes. Basking in the shade, I picked up my phone. A notification. A new message on Instagram. I opened it. Josh had sent me a gif of a computer on fire.
My heart stopped.
How’s the Wi-Fi?
I smiled deeper and wider than the Grand Canyon. The mouldy pipes and bare windows didn’t matter any more: Josh Stein was interested in me and now everything was going to be OK.
*
That morning I took a hot shower to cool off. I shaved my legs. I scrubbed at the soles of my feet with decades-old pink body scrub. I slathered my limbs in a moisturiser that smelt of tinned pineapple. On went my flesh-coloured tights, pencil skirt and a simple, woollen pullover. I combed through my hair five times on each side, picked out the little specks of dandruff that rose to the top, and looked at myself in the mirror. Perfectly acceptable, I thought. Despite what the girls at school used to call me – dirty, germy, grubby – I scrubbed up OK. Not in a way that anyone would go out of their way to compliment me, not like Ava, but in a way that didn’t draw any unnecessary attention. I imagined most people left with a neutral opinion of my appearance, I knew I was non-threatening, disarming, unremarkable. Just the way I liked it. Just the way Josh seemed to, too.
*
David had called me for a meeting at an exclusive café round the corner from the office and I found him at the back of the room drinking coffee with no milk, a pristine napkin folded off to one side. I plopped myself in the seat across from him, feeling positive. My turn for a one-to-one with the boss.
I assumed he’d want to fill me in on whatever he’d spoken to Ava about yesterday and I decided I was willing to forgive him for discussing things with her first.
He asked if I wanted a drink and a skinny waitress with bulbous eyes, made bigger by the thick lenses that magnified them, appeared beside me.
‘What do you have?’ I asked, wanting to be sure I made the right order. One that would impress David.
She spoke fast, with an Italian accent I found impossible to decipher. ‘Caffe latilimo, caffe lungo, caffe diabolo, caffe michelangelo, caffe nuevo…’
David’s fingers were interlaced round his cup. I wondered what he was drinking. Should I ask for the same? Or was that embarrassing? Transparent?
I’d known this place would be fancy, six-pounds-a-coffee-fancy, and I cursed myself for not looking up the menu before I’d arrived. I cringed remembering a time I’d once ordered a babyccino at a posh coffee shop thinking it was probably a very small, very Italian, very sophisticated little cappuccino.
‘Do you have a
child with you? No? Then I can’t offer you a babyccino. They’re for babies.’
I’d shrunk through the floor that day and had resolved never to order something on a menu I wasn’t sure about again. Promise broken already.
‘The first one,’ I said eventually, cutting the waitress off from her list.
‘Caffe latilimo,’ she confirmed, I think, or something to that effect. I nodded hastily and she dashed off.
‘Jade, thanks for meeting me,’ David said, pulling my focus back to the table, his hair slicked back into position. I took a breath, reminding myself it was still of the utmost importance to impress David on my own terms. Ensnaring Josh was one thing, an insurance policy, but David was still the man in charge.
‘Yes sir,’ I replied, from nowhere, like I’d adopted the vocabulary of a marine, about to follow up my words with a salute. He took a long sip of his coffee, put it back down. He unfurled his serviette and pressed it into his lips. Dry. He folded it back up to a perfect triangle and placed it back by his side. I kept quiet as he carried out his routine, letting my mind wander. What kind of father-in-law would David make? Kind, I think. David adopted Josh when he was a boy and has looked after him ever since as though he were his own. If that doesn’t show enormous compassion, I don’t know what does. Josh was the son of David’s older brother who died, along with Josh’s mum, in an horrific fifty-car pile-up on a motorway in the South of France. I’d read about it online. A lorry driver had fallen asleep at the wheel, jack-knifed into the central reservation, and foggy conditions on the day meant that Josh’s parents in their 1930s classic Jaguar – with its enormous headlights, sweeping wheel arches, open top, and flimsy, flaky bodywork – had driven headfirst, full-speed, pedal-to-the-metal, into the side of it, not able to see the wreckage ahead of them until it was too late. The fuel from the accident sparked with the flammable cargo the lorry had been carrying, sending Josh’s parents’ car, the lorry, and a handful of nearby drivers to tragic, fiery deaths. After being adopted by David, Josh had spent his childhood growing up alongside Olivia, the pain of losing parents something they both shared from a young age. He’d hurtled off the rails with her in his late teens; you can still find endless pictures online of the pair of them falling out of nightclubs, dead behind the eyes, hospital thin, just a glimpse of Josh’s beauty detectable behind the shaggy hair and dilated pupils. He was hit really hard when she died, maybe he blamed himself for fuelling her destructive lifestyle for so many years. Poor Josh, so plagued by death – he must have felt cursed that those closest to him always met their end in such gruesome ways, plucked from the earth way ahead of their time. Today the story is brighter, though: Josh is David’s protégé, grooming him to fill his shoes with a view to eventually running the operation with a partner of his own. I often find myself lost in the fantasy of that partner being me… now more than ever. I imagined we’d change the name of the company to Stein & Fernleigh and do things like smoke a fat cigar together every Friday night in the office, spend the holidays at our home in the country. David would be a peculiar father-in-law, certainly. Particular in his habits. But generous, I thought. If not troubled. Distracted. Grief-stricken. He’d spend Christmas reflecting, sat in an armchair looking into the fire, his family opening presents round him.
‘We need to talk,’ he said abruptly, slicing through my daydream, cutting me out of the Christmas-at-the-Steins tableau I’d created.
The worst four words in the world.
‘Listen, Jade.’ He was cushioning the blow. ‘Charlie attacked Ava this morning at their home.’ His eyes bored into mine, my imagination running in circles already. Was she OK? Was he about to offer me the job? How did David know? Why was he telling me? ‘It was nasty.’ I looked at him, goldfish-like. Bob, bob, bob, my mouth went as I failed to think of a single thing to say out loud. ‘And I’m hoping I can rely on you to steady the team until she’s back.’
The warmth in the air around us was stifling and I wrestled to remove the woollen jumper I was wearing. He’s literally spelling it out: you are Ava’s second in command.
‘OK…’ I said after a while. And then I took a risk. ‘Do you mean you’d like me to sort out the mistake she made with Kai yesterday? Has she told you about it? Has he?’
‘Excuse me?’
‘Oh, I’m sorry I didn’t…’ He looked basically disinterested but allowed me to elaborate. ‘It’s not really my area but I’m happy to step in. I’m sure I can fix it.’
‘Jade,’ he said slowly. ‘Have you ever heard of the expression “kicking a woman while she’s down”?’
He sipped, dabbed and folded.
‘I didn’t mean it like that…’ I swore internally at myself for being too eager to put Ava down.
David interrupted my feeble protestation to speak. ‘Let me be clear—’ he began, interrupted by the reappearance of the bug-eyed waitress. She was holding my drink with two hands, a lit sparkler on top, thick winds of squirty cream circling the glass, multi-coloured hundreds and thousands dotted all over it.
I’d ordered a fucking dessert.
She put it down.
David coughed, crossed his legs, scratched his temple; communicating his disgust with these small adjustments.
‘Sorry,’ I said, embarrassed that I was having to apologise for a coffee.
‘Let me be clear,’ he tried again. ‘This difficult patch in Ava’s personal life won’t be affecting her chances of becoming our new Team Head.’
I conjured what little fight I had in me. ‘I’m sorry David, it’s just, you don’t know the full picture. You’re not aware of what I’ll have to pick up in her absence.’
‘Jade, stop talking, you’re not doing yourself any favours. If you so dare utter another word against her…’ Sweat pooled underneath my top and my mind stuttered. I scrambled for the words but I couldn’t find the right thing to say.
You have to be cleverer than her, she’s making you look stupid! The voice in my head was deafening in its criticism and I tried to block it out. I had to say something, anything, to make this better. David was getting up, he’d had enough and wanted to leave. I should have taken it in my stride, acted like it wouldn’t have been a problem, made him think I already steadied the team – with or without Ava.
‘I’ll make sure everything is under control while she’s gone.’
‘OK. Thanks Jade.’
His voice was laced with indifference and I tried to summon something else to say that might still save the conversation. ‘I hope she feels better soon.’
I was too late, though. A second later and he was already out of earshot. I sat, dumbstruck, as my sparkler fizzled out and dots of ash covered the cream.
*
I pumped my way back towards the office, my head thick with conspiracy theories. What was really going on between Ava and David? What was her angle? What was his? Were they an item? A couple? … Frankly, I couldn’t think of anyone worse as a mother-in-law. I let my brain work through the puzzle, the idea of Ava and David together reminding me of something Charlie had told me once. You think she’s Little Miss Perfect? She’d sleep with your dad if she thought it would further her career… My dad happened to resemble a kind of inflatable Chairman Mao, so it was quite the statement, and it had stuck with me. Was she sleeping with him to get ahead? Really? Like someone from the eighties?
I stopped dead on the pavement, an unsuspecting shopper crashing into my backpack as I did, and thought about Charlie. I’d met him (6’1, complicated, emotional) on multiple occasions, mostly on wild nights out before Olivia had died. Ava would always moan about how controlling he was when he was high, that he was high more often than he was sober, and that she wasn’t sure how much more she could take. I’d seen it first hand, too, thought it interesting that despite his prolific experience with illegal substances he wasn’t particularly good at handling the stuff. She was right, it made him twitchy and panicked and paranoid. I remember how he’d whisper to me about his suspicions that Ava was c
heating on him, his Irish accent always so aggressive when he spoke about her. I know it, she’s changing. She looks at me differently. We aren’t as close as we used to be. I’d actually stuck up for Ava at the time, which had infuriated him. Don’t lie to me too, I know that you know. You’ve probably seen her kissing him in the office. I know they’re together when she tells me she’s working late. I guess you girls will always stick together, but if I find out that you knew and didn’t tell me, I’ll never forgive you. Back then I hadn’t doubted Ava but now I’m nowhere near as sure. Maybe Charlie had been onto something?
Perhaps he’d been right all along.
7
Ava
Everything had happened so quickly. I’d woken up to what I’d thought was a mirage of black and yellow human-sized insects; but what turned out to be a heavy police response to three separate 999 calls from our adjoining neighbours. I’d been taken to hospital for a medical assessment and then to the station so the police could take a statement. So much for breaking up with Charlie, letting him calm down, then seeing him in a couple of weeks to end things amicably. After this I never wanted to lay eyes on him again. At the station I’d called David, the only person who truly knew what was going on, and he’d driven down immediately to be with me. He’d assured me I could take a couple of days to recover, not to worry about work, and that I could use the time off to move into Olivia’s old place and get settled. He’d moved me out of the station and towards his car with his arm round my waist. We’d driven fast to Olivia’s. No need to pick up your things, he’d said. Everything is taken care of. His little finger touched my leg every so often as he manoeuvred the gear stick.