I sit back as the barista clears away the table, utterly lost in thought. When was the last time I’d actually sat still like this? Without my phone-hopping, and my daily round of places to go, people to meet and comeuppances to deliver?
But I can’t relax, I can’t even allow myself to focus on the bitter unfairness of it all. I’d go nuts if I did. Jesus Christ, it’s hardly my fault that Harriet Waters has bounded back into all of our lives again, now is it?
I can’t possibly be held responsible, I think, as my mind spins furiously. I’d done exactly what I’d been paid to do regarding Harriet – was I really expected to supply a statute of limitations along with it? It wasn’t like I’d signed some class of legally binding document testifying that from here on in, Harriet would not only go away, but stay well away too? Did Ellen de Courcey not realise the skill it took to do what I’d done? The Olympic-sized levels of manipulation and gentle coercion, plus months of building up a relationship with Harriet to earn her trust in the first place.
The more I think about it, the more I’m almost ready to scream in frustration. And now, like it or not, as the café gets increasingly busier all around me, I’ll have to do a major bit of damage control and spin, such as I’ve never done before in my entire career.
I whip the one and only phone I’m down to out of my pocket and call another high-profile client, who I’m due to meet later tonight. The phone is answered on the very first ring, so I deliberately keep my voice low and distinct, reminding myself to stay as businesslike and professional as ever.
‘Good afternoon,’ I say briskly, ‘just to say that I’m actually running ahead of schedule, in case it might suit you to meet that bit earlier? At our usual spot? Or if it’s more convenient for you, I could always call over to your house?’
Again, not a phrase I’ve ever had to use before. Clients come to me, not the other way around. What can I say? I’ve been in such high demand, that’s just the way it has to be. Generally I meet clients wherever and whenever it suits me, and they’re all so pleased to get a hold of me at all, they pretty much agree to anything. But this time, there’s no response. Just a long-drawn-out sigh, with the noise of dogs yapping loudly in the background.
‘Hello?’ I say, taking care not to say her name out loud. Not in public anyway. ‘Are you still on the line?’
‘Oh, I’m still here all right,’ comes the flat reply.
‘Good, great,’ I say, trying to stay bouncy and positive. ‘Anyway, I have a lot of updates for you regarding that delicate situation we discussed, and I think you’ll be pretty pleased with how it’s all shaping up. I’ve made contact with Nicole via her yoga classes, and am planning to take puppy-training classes with her too. It’s early days, of course, but I’m confident that I’ll have good news for you imminently.’
‘Please don’t call me ever again,’ my client says as rudely and as dismissively as that, and a second later, she’s gone.
Bugger, shit and feck it anyway. This is so much worse than I’d thought. So, so much worse. Jesus Christ, what kind of a number has Ellen de Courcey done on me in the last few hours anyway?
A full twenty minutes pass, as I just sit there, thinking, and tap, tap, tapping a spoon off my coffee mug, counting out beats of frustration. I take my phone out of my pocket for about the twentieth time to check I haven’t missed anything.
My phone is my lifeline. My modus operandi. I’d even been so run off my feet, I even had to invest in a second one, the one that’s probably sitting on the hall table back at the apartment just now, so my most important clients could get to me immediately. These are people who most definitely do not appreciate being kept waiting. Promptness of service is my hallmark.
Over the past few years, I’ve become so adept at juggling both mobiles, it’s like second nature to me. Frequently, I’m on one phone call, while checking out Twitter updates or fresh Instagram posts from various ‘targets’ on the other. Rarely do I ever go to check either phone without there being a minimum of a dozen texts, WhatsApp notifications or voice messages, and that’s before you factor in all the emails that would be stacked up for me, all demanding urgent attention.
Until now. When there’s precisely none. Nada. Zero.
I order another coffee. Feck it, I might as well have a panini to go with it. It’s been an age since I actually had time on my hands to eat a lunch.
I sit back, breathe long and hard, and try to remember a time when I was a normal person, living a normal life and doing a normal, ordinary job.
Dear Jesus, I think. Has it come to this? That I’m actually contemplating having to go back to my old way of life again? Are things really that bad?
Twenty-four years ago . . .
There once was a little girl who started big school with all of the other little boys and girls her own age, but who, unlike the rest of them, found it – a bit boring, really. Spelling? The alphabet? Seriously, she thought? She was five years of age and had been reading and writing since she was three, thanks very much.
However, this particular little girl was lucky. She had a teacher who, mindful of how intelligent and gifted her young pupil was, bumped her up a class, thinking that would be more challenging for the child. Such a bright little girl, they all said in the staffroom. She’ll go on to great things, wait and see.
That’s all well and good, Miss Scott, the headmistress, replied crisply, but clearly she gets a lot of help from home. Because how else could a child her age possibly be reading to such an advanced level?
But it only took one family meeting for Miss Scott to correctly assess the lie of the land. Turned out this girl lived with her mother and grandparents in one of the council estates close to the school. Her mum was a separated single parent who worked selling flowers in town and her grandad worked in a butcher shop close by, while her granny stayed home and kept the show on the road. No sign of the girl’s father, nor was he even referred to. All Miss Scott could glean was that he was in a new relationship and barely saw his daughter. The child’s immediate family seemed loving and united, but at a glance, Miss Scott could see that there was absolutely no home-schooling going on. None of them had the time, apart from anything else.
So Miss Scott kept a special eye out for young Megan, because that was the girl’s name, Megan, and when the time came for her to go to secondary school, Miss Scott pulled every string in the book to land the girl a scholarship place at The Academy, a high-end, high-achieving boarding school, where the fees were roughly equivalent to a cripplingly high interest rate mortgage, on a five-bedroomed property in the swishest part of town.
So off young Megan went, twelve years of age, in a too-big uniform that scratched and made her skin itch, to a part of the country she wasn’t familiar with, to sink or swim in her scary new school. At a single glance, however, she knew she’d have to adapt or die. Her accent, for one thing, would have to go. The other kids were posh, worldly, talked about skiing trips and trust funds and winters in Antigua. Megan knew she couldn’t compete, so didn’t even bother trying. Instead, she kept herself to herself and learned to watch. She developed a brand-new skill: acute observation. At a glance, she’d be able to tell what her classmates had for breakfast, whether they’d heard from home recently or what they were planning to do after lessons.
There was nothing to it, really. All Megan needed to do was look a little closer, and listen carefully, not to what her classmates were saying, which, by and large, was innocuous rubbish, but to what they weren’t saying, which was infinitely more interesting.
Over time, it became like her party piece. ‘Megan! Megan!’ the kids in her class would clamour. ‘Take a look at Hugo and tell us everything!’
The whole room would go deadly quiet and all eyes would turn her way.
‘Only child,’ Megan would tell the room, as Hugo looked on, bemused and delighted with himself. ‘Asthmatic. Plays rugby, but hates it and would far rather join the school debating team instead.’
‘But .�
��. . but how did you know?’ Hugo asked, as Megan took a rambunctious round of applause from the common room.
Her friends were many, because Megan was a girl who was funny and quick-witted; the kind of kid who sat quietly at the back of the class, saying and doing nothing to attract attention to herself, then, at the perfect moment, would lob in a witty, insightful comment that would have the entire class in stitches.
Over time, even the posh kids, the ones with trust funds and holiday homes in Marbella, came to accept Megan as one of their own. But by then, Megan had learned one of the two most valuable lessons school had to teach her. First, it didn’t matter where you came from; all that really mattered was how well you got on with people. And the best way to make friends and influence people was a doddle; all you had to do was be whomever they wanted you to be.
With the sporty gang, you were athletic. With the nerds, you carried comics around with you and quoted reams from obscure TV shows with virtually no viewers. With the drama queens, it was easier still; you just had to learn to laugh at yourself when asked to play the rear end of the panto horse in a school play. But the first time Megan got the train home for the school holidays and spotted her grandad standing proudly on the platform waiting to collect her, she quickly realised her most important role play of all.
‘Listen to you, love,’ her grandad said, as he picked up Megan’s suitcases and walked her to the car park where his butcher’s van was waiting. ‘And your fancy new accent! Since when did you start talking posher than the Queen?’
In a flash, Megan knew the best thing by far was to drop her classy new accent and go back to speaking just the way her family did.
As time went on, she became expert at it, like a chameleon. No matter where you dropped her, she’d blend right in; she’d look the part, sound the part, be whoever she was required to be.
At school, Megan was popular and thriving, with just one black spot on the horizon, as far as she was concerned. One Christmas, when she was about seventeen, she came home for the holidays, as usual. But this time her grandad wasn’t there to meet her off the train, as he usually was, standing tall and proud. He used to even take off his butcher’s apron, so Megan wouldn’t be embarrassed by him in front of her posh friends, whose parents all seemed to drive BMWs and the newest, most top-of-the-range Mercedes.
Megan eventually realised she wasn’t being met at the station at all and had to take two buses home, dragging her luggage behind her.
‘Grandad hasn’t been too well lately,’ her mum told her, when she eventually did get home. ‘Nothing to worry about, but we’re just keeping a careful eye on him, that’s all.’
‘Not too well’ was a careful understatement though; Megan actually got a shock when she saw how thin and pale her grandad had got. Nor was there any sign of him getting better; he couldn’t hold down food, and in a scary amount of time, he was a shadow of the formerly robust, fit, healthy man he’d always been.
His boss at the butcher’s called to the house over the holiday with a hamper for the family and a bottle of whiskey for Grandad, but quietly, well out of earshot, he told Megan’s mum and granny that really, the best thing for Grandad would be to take a bit of time off work, for the foreseeable future.
‘He needs to see the best consultant you can afford,’ he said. ‘My own mother passed away from cancer, and she started just like this, you know. Early detection is so important – the sooner you get him to a good oncologist, the better. Trust me on that.’
There it was. The C-word. The one neither Megan nor any of her family had wanted to hear.
‘We’ll get through Christmas,’ Megan’s mum had said worriedly, ‘then we’ll get him to a good doctor and take it from there.’
But by Megan’s Easter holidays, things had got so much worse. ‘A particularly aggressive form of pancreatic cancer,’ the consultant had diagnosed. ‘We can set up a home care package for you for now, but long term, it’s going to be very difficult to look after him at home. You really need to start looking at nursing home options. Which can be very costly, I know.’
‘He’s staying at home with us, where he’s happy and where he belongs,’ Megan’s mum told him tartly, blinking back her tears, and that was the end of that.
But by that summer, Megan could see the toll it was taking on her mother and Nan, who, in spite of their best efforts, just weren’t able to manage the full-time care of a very poorly seventy-five-year-old man who needed help with everything.
When Megan came to her final year at The Academy, she aced all of her mock exams ahead of her Leaving Cert. Great things were expected of her from her teachers, and her dream was to get the grades she needed to do law at college. Not just ‘good enough’ grades, though; Megan was chasing after a scholarship, so only top marks were acceptable.
‘But if anyone can do it,’ her school principal told her proudly, ‘I’m confident that you can. And, of course, I’ll be sure to write a warm letter of recommendation on your behalf. All you need do is work and study harder than you ever have in your whole life before.’
Which is exactly what Megan did, even as the whole axis of her warm, stable family life seemed to be shifting from underneath her. A nursing home now seemed like the kindest and most humane option for her grandad, who’d got to the point where he needed round-the-clock medical care.
‘It costs a fortune,’ Megan’s mum took pains to explain to her. ‘Literally, the price of a house, which we don’t have. I’ll have to keep working every hour I can get, but . . .’
It was all in that ‘but’.
That ‘but’ meant that Megan had to start pulling her weight too. Which meant a job the summer after she finished school, while all her schoolmates went off celebrating to the sunny beaches of Mykonos and Magaluf.
She’d smile and grit her teeth and tell her school pals to ‘have a great night, enjoy!’ as they all went partying, while she stuck on a Smiley Burger apron and went to work in a cheesy 1950s diner; one of those places that played Elvis Presley and Buddy Holly on a permanent loop and that made her hair and skin stink of fried onions and garlic. To this day, Meg could still remember the acute humiliation of it. To her, onions and garlic smelt of poverty and mortification.
Worse still was when a few of her schoolmates actually came into Smiley Burger, intending nothing more than to see their pal Meg and catch up with all her news. As bad luck would have it though, Meg had been stuck on toilet duty that day and had never been so embarrassed as she was when her pals caught her in a horrible uniform with a mop and bucket, slopping Jeyes Fluid all over the gents’ floor.
They’d even left a tip for her – Meg’s manager handed her a crisp fifty note as soon as she was finishing up for the night.
‘Must have money to burn, those pals of yours,’ he’d shrugged, handing over the dosh.
Meg should have been touched; she knew her friends meant only to be kind. But this felt like charity and instead of being pleased, she felt nothing, only the deepest, acutest shame.
Her school friends all had the luxury of taking gap years to South America and Interrailing trips all across Europe, but there were no such privileges for Meg. Instead, it was straight to work for her in a job at the Sloan Curtis legal firm. It was a lowly, menial job, granted; basically, she was required to do nothing more than make coffee, answer phones, be the general office dogsbody and the butt of a lot of the senior partners’ jokes – all of whom were predominately male, middle-aged and boring as shit, by the way.
But Meg needed to work, her family needed the salary she was bringing in and that was all there was to it. As her own mother often reminded her, ‘Sure what have you got to complain about? Aren’t you working in a nice warm office with fancy coffee machines and lunch breaks? It’s an upgrade from the diner, isn’t it? You try selling flowers on the street in all weathers, then you’d know all about a hard day’s work, missy.’
So, Meg did what she always did. She plastered on her biggest, fakest grin, while h
er mind stayed ice-cold. One day, I’ll have all the money in the world, she faithfully promised herself. My family will be well taken care of and I’ll be able to do whatever I want, whenever I want.
She stayed at Sloan Curtis, worked hard and kept her head down and thought of her grandad. She thought of him every single time one of the legal interns, who seemed not to have a quarter of her intelligence, talked down to her or patronised her or came out with a sexist comment like, ‘What’s a nice-looking girl like you doing wasting away in an office like this? You could audition for Love Island, if you liked.’
She thought of her grandad every time she’d stand quietly at the back of the boardroom, laying out bottles of fizzy and still water, while meetings happened over her head. Frequently, she’d hear complex legal problems being discussed which she could see a way out of, clear as day, when no one else in the room could.
Every week without fail, Megan handed her pay cheque over to her mum, then went to visit her grandad, telling him that everything was hunky-dory at home, that they were all fine, thanks very much. ‘We just want you to get well and come home to us,’ she’d say.
But her grandad was too ill even to take in what she was saying. The cancer had spread by then, to the point where it was painful for the poor man to speak. All Megan could do was hold onto his bony, cold hand and think of her exam finals and the results that were due any day now. She knew she’d done well, but the bar was set high for her if she was to get the scholarship to college that she was counting on. So she let all the overpaid, overprivileged legal heads at Sloan Curtis talk down to her and pat her on the head and ask her what nightclub she was planning to go to when the results came in, and wouldn’t it be wonderful if she got into a night course to study beauty therapy or something?
You wait, she thought, her mind focused and clear. You just wait and see.
*
She aced her exams. A phenomenal result. One of the top marks ever achieved in her school. Her principal and year head were thrilled and Megan was the envy of all her friends. A meeting was hastily set up for her with the university interview board to pitch her case for a scholarship; the only possible way that Megan could ever have afforded four years of full-time education.
The Fixer Page 18