‘I didn’t know he wasn’t free when we met,’ Bella says sulkily, putting her two feet up on the dashboard – in a brand-new hire car. The gesture annoys me irrationally, but I let it go. Bigger fish to fry, etcetera.
‘Yeah, but you do now, don’t you?’ I say. ‘Just think of his wife—’
‘Oh God, do you have to remind me about her? I’ve already got a stress rash on my chest from all this.’
‘What did you say her name was again?’ I ask, all faux innocence.
‘Rebecca,’ Bella sighs reluctantly.
‘Then think of Rebecca. Because the chances are she’s not whatever he’s telling you she is. Chances are she’s just like you and me. If you could see Rebecca now, I bet she’s normal. Ordinary. I bet she’s a woman, doing her best, just trying her best to get by. If you met her, you might even like her. The only thing she did wrong in her life was to hook up with a commitment-phobic . . .’
Git, I wonder if I should say?
‘Arsehole,’ Bella says for me.
‘If you do go ahead with this weekend,’ I caution, ‘then that’s your call. Your choice. Look, here I am, even driving you to the airport, in good faith.’
‘But . . . ?’ says Bella, wavering.
‘But I think you’re having doubts.’
Because I took great care to put them there.
‘And as long as you’re having doubts,’ I go on, ‘then this weekend is going to be miserable for you. Totally shit.’
‘So . . . what are you saying?’ Bella asks, biting her lip.
‘I’m saying how about I turn the car around? How about if you don’t turn up for your flight?’
‘You mean . . . just, like, leave him standing at the departure gate, waiting for me?’
‘Just like Rick at the end of Casablanca,’ I say, guessing that Bella’s too buck stupid to get the movie reference, but still.
‘You mean . . . without even texting him or anything?’
‘Why would you bother?’ I reply coolly. ‘What about all the times he’s let you down at the last minute, because something came up with one of his kids? Doesn’t he deserve payback for that?’
‘Yeah, well . . .’ says Bella, wavering. ‘There’s been plenty of last-minute cancellations all right. And it would certainly serve him right for taking me for granted so many times.’ She pauses. ‘He took a sickie off work today and all, just so we could go to Paris for the night. And he paid for the flights, even though they were only Ryanair cheapies. He’d be raging.’
‘You could always post a load of photos on Instagram from where I’m taking you,’ I tell her, with a cheeky little half-wink, indicating to turn the car around and blanking out the cacophony of car horns blaring from behind. ‘He’d be sure to see them and they’d drive him mad.’
‘Where do you wanna go?’ she asks, curious.
‘To the Dylan bar in town.’
Because it’s your favourite. It’s your home from home, your comfort zone.
‘Come on, Bella, what do you say? I’ll buy you a glass of fizz and you can send him the pic of you being your gorgeous and fabulous self, drinking it? Maybe even surrounded by a few hotties’ – I cringe at using her vernacular – ‘like . . . born in the same decade as you, for starters?’
*
Exactly one hour later, that’s precisely what she and I are doing. One glass leads to two and, pretty soon, Bella’s way too sozzled to even notice that while she’s knocking back the drinks, I’m carefully staying sober.
‘Get him to send you a photo of him waiting at the departure gate,’ I suggest wickedly. ‘For the laugh.’
‘Brilliant idea!’ says Bella tipsily, bashing away on her phone.
The photo comes through almost instantaneously, along with a caption from her highly irate, abandoned boyfriend that reads, ‘Where the hell are you? It’s the final call for the flight!’
‘Hilarious!’ Bella squeals, tittering happily as the photo pings through.
‘Forward it on to me, will you?’ I say casually. ‘Just . . . you know, for the lols.’
She does as she’s told, and barely bats an eyelid when I slip off to the loo, with my own phone discreetly tucked down my bra.
I think about Cheater Man, currently standing at the airport in a hot temper.
Took a sick day off work today, did you? Yeah, right. Good luck with that, sunshine.
Without a second thought, I log into a fake email address and forward the photo on to the security company that Cheater Man works for. A highly incriminating photo too, of him with a backpack at his feet, standing in front of a Ryanair priority check-in queue, with ‘last call – Paris’ writ large on a monitor behind him. Absolutely no mistaking where he is, no grey area here, thanks very much.
And it serves the lying fucker right. Best of luck to him explaining that to his line manager when he goes back to work. Sickie, my arse.
Then I send a second text – but this time to his wife Rebecca, who is, of course, my client here.
Mission accomplished, it reads simply. Even managed to teach him a lesson he won’t forget.
I sign off as I always do whenever I secure a great result.
Game over. Game won.
Then – an odd thing. Automatically, I go to check my messages, now that I’m well away from my companion’s incessant, self-indulgent, vacuous stream of chatter. In the privacy of the ladies’ loos, I glance through everything, emails, voice messages and texts, noticing that there’s quite a few missed calls, all from the same number.
A new client, maybe? Someone who’s heard about the ‘special services’ I can offer? Well, if it is, I think, with no false modesty, they’ll be lucky if I’m able to take them on. I’m out the door with clients and there’s only one of me to go around. This job demands quality time; you certainly can’t cut corners or short-change people. An assistant, I think with a wry little smile – that’s what I really need. A PA, who I can trust and delegate to.
Then I listen to the first of my voice messages, and suddenly I’m not smiling anymore.
No. Just no.
No, no, no, no, no.
The voicemail is fuzzy and indistinct, with whooshing, windy background noise that all but drowns out the message, which keeps cutting out on me anyway. Just like a call from overseas, from a country with a particularly shit signal. But the voice is familiar. Scarily, terrifyingly familiar.
And there’s one word that rings out loud and clear. ‘Dublin’.
Now a cold clutch of fear grips me and my breath will only come in short, stabbing gulps.
Dublin. Dublin. I definitely heard the word Dublin.
Which can’t possibly be right. There has to be some kind of mistake. I rarely make mistakes, but, as my nan always says, what’s seldom is wonderful.
I must have misheard. That’s all there is to it. It’s a rubbish signal, there’s loads of background noise from the bar. There’s no way this person is back in town again – in a million years, that’s the last thing that would ever happen. Didn’t I make good and sure of that?
At that more steadying, soothing thought, I start to breathe again. Pulse rate lowers. I glance in the mirror to check my pupils have gone back to normal size.
It’s OK, I tell myself. It was a simple, straightforward voice from the past, nothing more. We’ve spoken before and we will do again. But there’s nothing to concern me. Nothing that can rebound on me. After all, it’s not like anyone can turn up on my doorstep and derail everything now, is it?
Calmer now, I switch the phone off and stride out of the ladies’ loos, to rejoin a pleasantly pissed Bella.
Fixing a bright smile on my face, I hop back up on the bar stool.
‘So, come on, what do you say?’ I beam at her. ‘One more for the road? My twist?’
‘Oh Meg,’ Bella slurs back. ‘You’re like . . . so cool and amazing . . . You wanna know something? I honestly think you’re the best friend I ever had.’
<
br /> Chapter Five
Meg
Finally, finally, finally, I sense now is the optimum time to leave Bella at the bar, as she seems to have hit on the Holy Grail, in that she’s chatting to a reasonably normal guy who seems to be a) single, b) straight and c) interested in her particular line of ‘take no prisoners’ full-on flirtation. Seizing this as my cue to beat a retreat, I say my goodbyes, abandon my hire car and nab a passing taxi.
Hard to believe, but my day still isn’t over. I give the address to the driver, strap myself into the back seat of the car, then relax, and for the first time all day allow myself to rest, close my eyes and breathe. I’ve been on the go, go, go ever since dawn, but instead of flagging and crawling home to the sofa and Netflix, I have to steel myself for one final task of the evening.
This isn’t just any old job though; this is a regular appointment of sorts, one I half look forward to and half dread, never knowing quite what to expect. Sometimes it goes brilliantly, sometimes it’s so disastrous it puts me in bad form for days on end.
But this is partly what I work so hard for.
My job certainly comes with perks of sorts. Nights exactly like this one, I think, snapping my eyes back open again. Ten seconds of rest; frankly that’s all I’ve time for.
Then I flip open a tiny glass compact mirror that comes everywhere with me and do a quick make-up touch-up. Next, I whip off the little black jacket I’ve been wearing, shove it into my bag, then peel off the tight-fitting Stella McCartney black T-shirt I have on underneath that, till I’m left sitting in the back of the taxi in my bra and very little else. Not giving a toss what the driver might think, I shimmy out of the sexy, clubby-looking, short black skirt I’ve been wearing, and fumble around the bottom of my handbag for a neat, pretty, floral dress I’d taken particular care to pack there.
‘Ah Jaysus, love, what are you doing?’ says the driver, staring at the goings-on in his rear-view mirror, horrified. ‘Some kind of a strip tease? Now, behave yourself – none of that carry-on. Do you hear me?’
I totally blank him though, as, in one quick, practised move, I pull it over my head and downwards, where it almost reaches to my ankles. I scoop up my hair, which has been hanging loosely around my shoulders beach-wave style, then expertly clip it up into a tidy little bun, before double-checking how it all looks in the compact mirror.
Good. Better. My ‘hot-to-trot, cocktail bar’ look is completely banished and now, in a maxi cotton dress, buttoned up to the neck and with a neat little belt nipping at my waist, I look demure. I look fresh and innocent. I look like a good girl, a hard-working girl. A primary school teacher maybe, or a librarian. But then looking perfect for whatever role I’m required to play, no matter what hour of the day, or night, is all part and parcel of my USP, isn’t it?
I should have been an actress. I’m that bloody good at this.
‘I’ve got a dashcam here you know, love,’ the driver gripes at me, ‘any more of that stripping-off lark, and I’ll report you. Do you hear me?’
I don’t even waste my breath answering. Instead, I sit back and allow myself the luxury of letting my thoughts wander for a moment.
The way things are going, I think smugly, I won’t need to take cheek from taxi drivers for much longer. Another six months of this and I’ll be able to afford a car and a driver. Easily.
My taxi arrives at the narrow streets of a 1940s housing estate in one of the rougher parts of town; the type of area where you grip your handbag extra tightly to you before venturing out on your own. The type of area where you wouldn’t dream of chatting on your phone while walking down the streets, lest it be whipped out of your hand by a passing mugger on a bike. The type of area where you’d be reluctant to leave a new car parked on the kerb, for fear it wouldn’t be there when you got back.
The type of area where I’m from, as it happens.
‘You sure this is the right address?’ says the taxi driver, carefully inching his car around a mattress and a mound of stuffed bin liners that have been abandoned slap bang in the middle of the street.
‘Just keep going,’ I tell him, ‘it’s directly after the bookies and before you come to the chipper.’
The driver looks warily to the left and right, where a gang of teenage lads are all sitting on a graffiti-covered wall, drinking cans and smoking a spliff. A drug deal seems to be happening right beside them, and everyone pretends not to see. The minute they notice the taxi though, the lads are straight over, smelling fresh blood, clustering around it and banging on the roof, boisterously wolf-whistling and catcalling and basically trying to intimidate the living shite out of us.
Automatically, the taxi driver clicks on the car’s central locking, but I don’t bat an eyelid. I’m well used to this carry-on; I’ve seen a lot worse.
I completely blank the gang as the car inches past and calmly direct the driver to the right house, telling him to pull over outside number forty-seven. It’s a nondescript, Coronation Street-style, Victorian two-up two-down red-brick bang in the middle of a row of terraced houses exactly like it, all of which are in varying states of disrepair/squalor. Number forty-seven at least, however, has a few half-hearted window boxes outside of it and a fresh lick of paint on the woodwork, in stark contrast to the house beside it, with its cracked windows and a boarded-up front door. The house opposite has graffiti sprayed on it that reads, ‘Scanger luves Bex. Up the IRA’.
Delightful.
‘You sure you want to get out here, love?’ the driver asks, looking worriedly back at me in the rear-view mirror. ‘Looks a bit dodgy, if you ask me.’
‘This is it, thanks,’ I tell him, briskly handing over a few crisp, fresh notes and waving at him to keep the change.
Then I step out of the car, glance the house up and down and steel myself.
Home sweet home. Back to the loving bosom of my family, where doubtless they’ll have the red carpet out, a warm welcome and a yummy home-cooked dinner waiting for me.
As if.
I ring on the doorbell and wait. Meanwhile, a gang of young kids come weaving dangerously down the street like a swarm of wasps on bikes, those city bikes that you hire by the hour, and which undoubtedly have been nicked.
One boy spots me as I wait on the pavement and immediately pulls up his bike on the kerb opposite.
‘Hey, you!’ he yells over. ‘I know you!’
‘Shouldn’t you be home in bed?’ I throw back at him. It’s a fine summery night, but still, it’s close to 10 p.m., and this kid looks no older than about eight or nine.
‘Piss off, you, I’ll go home when I feel like it.’
I roll my eyes and turn back to knock on the door again.
‘I definitely know you,’ the kid insists, as his mates cluster around him. ‘You’re mental Maddie MacMadser’s granddaughter, aren’t you?’
‘Your granny is a right nutjob!’ another kid yells. ‘She went for a walk in her nightie the other day and said we all had to get to a bomb shelter quick, before Hitler came to get us!’
‘Nutcase, nutcase, mentaler!’ the others all start to chant, circling around on their bikes like a mini-plague of locusts.
I could do a lot of things here. I could tell the lot of them to piss off, but I don’t. I could cross the street and throttle them, but don’t bother doing that either. Instead, I sigh and pull out my door key to let myself in, seeing as how no one inside the house is going to bother their arse.
‘Now I remember your name!’ the first kid taunts me. ‘You’re Megan MacKenzie, aren’t you?’
This time, I turn to face him, looking him straight in the eye with an icy stare that’s calculated to stop a charging rhino in its tracks.
‘I used to be.’
*
‘Oh, it’s you, Megan,’ my mum says flatly, opening her eyes and waking up from the peaceful snooze she’d been having in front of the telly, when she hears me letting myself in. ‘I forgot it was your night to call.’
‘Sorry I’m late,’ I
say, taking in the state of the room at a glance. It’s neat as a pin and all the utilities are brand spanking new, but other than that – it’s a pretty dark, dismal open-plan kitchen, really, with a tiny sofa and TV at one end, which Mum’s now crashed out in front of, as she so often does at the end of a long day’s work.
I have a good, long look at her.
Face: Mum is in her early fifties, but if I didn’t know that, I’d give her at least a decade older, mainly thanks to her twenty-a-day cigarette habit and the fact that she works out of doors in all weathers, selling flowers at a street stall right in the heart of town. She’s thin, far too thin. Lost at least another pound since I was last here. Clearly living off the fags and little else.
Dress: her work clothes – jeans and a warm fleece. Both ill-fitting and much the worse for wear.
Jesus, I think, momentarily frustrated. I give the woman money – lots of it. What the hell is she spending it on, if not herself and Nan?
There are a few empty beer tins shoved under the sofa though; I can still see them poking out, along with the tabs from said cans. That, and a telltale splodge on the rug (recent stain visible, thanks very much), tells me all I need to know. Clearly Mum heard my key in the lock and hastily went to hide away all trace that she’s had a few too many tonight.
Right then. Mystery solved. So that’s where my money has been going.
Some kind of reality show is on TV and the sound of a contestant mangling a song from The Greatest Showman is blaring out. In fact, the only bright spots in the whole room are the bunches of tulips in a myriad of colours that seem to be dotted all over the place, in just about any available container. Vases, jam jars, even the teapot is being used for the overflow of flowers.
The Fixer Page 4