‘It’s getting harder and harder to . . . to compete,’ Joel tells me. ‘Things have been really going downhill since . . .’
He leaves it hanging. He doesn’t need to say much else. I know exactly when since was. It was the day I managed to stop myself from crying like a baby until I was in my car and a good two miles away from the office.
The look on Roland’s face when he told me he was letting me go. It’s seared into my conscious brain, and will float there until the day I shuffle off this mortal coil.
But apparently I don’t actually have Joel Sinclair to blame for my departure – not if what he’s saying to me now is anything to go by.
I just have him to blame for the catalyst that led to my exit – which is bad enough as it is. But I genuinely don’t believe Joel is an evil man. Disorganised, yes. Reckless, certainly. Prone to thoughtlessness, without a shadow of a doubt.
But I don’t think he’d deliberately force me out of my job. Not anymore.
‘Well, I’m sorry about that, Joel,’ I tell him, trying to maintain a cool tone of voice. ‘But what goes on at Rowntree’s is not my concern anymore.’
‘More’s the pity. I swear that place would have fallen apart if it wasn’t for us. And then you were gone, and it did.’
I turn to face Joel for the first time. ‘Then why didn’t you treat us better, Joel? Why didn’t you act like it was that important?’
‘I did! I really did!’
So why did you cock up the appointment time in our calendar?! I want to scream at him, but what good would it do? Just spark off the argument again, and I don’t want to upset the dugong’s digestive system any further, if I can possibly help it. There’s only about ten of them left, and I don’t want to be responsible for edging them closer to extinction by giving one of their kind fatal indigestion.
‘We had something special,’ I eventually elect to say, trying to keep things as neutral as I can. ‘Both at work and at home.’
Joel then takes a step forward. I am painfully aware that there’s barely a foot of space between us now.
‘Yes, we did,’ he tells me. ‘And I have no idea how we managed to throw it away.’
I stare him straight in the eyes. ‘Like I said, Joel – we got lost. For a while there we were totally together, and everything was easy – but then we weren’t anymore, and it’s almost impossible to know where you’re going at that point.’
‘You always did have a good turn of phrase, Ames,’ Joel says ruefully.
‘Well, maybe sometimes. When I’m in the right mood and standing under the star—’
Joel kisses me.
My eyes go wide and my back stiffens as he does it.
But then, for a moment . . . for the absolute briefest of moments . . . both relax again, and I allow it to happen.
Then my hands come up and push him away hard.
‘Bloody hell, Joel!’ I exclaim, trying to catch my breath.
‘Sorry! I’m sorry!’ he says, his own hands up now, as if to ward me away.
‘I can’t believe you did that!’
‘No, neither can I!’
And I can’t believe I didn’t push him away immediately . . .
‘I, er, I think I’m going to go now,’ I tell him, taking a very conscious step backwards.
‘Yeah, okay. I will too,’ he replies, trying to look everywhere but into my eyes.
I don’t want to look at him either.
What the hell was that?
Why did he kiss me?
And why didn’t you push him away?
I did! I bloody did!
Not straight away, girl. Not straight away.
It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t. It was just a split second. Nothing to worry about. Nothing to think about anymore.
I just need to get away from here, and forget this ever happened.
‘Joel? What are you doing?’
I look past Joel to see that we’ve been joined by a third person.
It is, of course, Cara Rowntree – whose grandfather’s sad face as he fired me will haunt my memories for the rest of my days.
‘Cara!’ Joel exclaims, turning to her.
Jesus Christ. How much did she see?
Did she see Joel kiss me?
The starlight doesn’t give off much illumination, but would it have been enough for her to see him do it? And to see me not push him away for that split second?
How close was she? Has she been standing there the whole time?
Oh fuck me, these are not questions I want to consider. I have to get out of here.
‘Hello, Cara,’ I say to her, trying to keep my voice as bland as possible – as if I haven’t just locked lips with an ex-husband I’m supposed to hate and despise. ‘Hope you’re well.’ I turn back to Joel. ‘Goodnight, Joel,’ I say, continuing to affect that carefree, completely disinterested tone. ‘I hope you enjoy the rest of your walk.’
Yes. That’s it.
We’re just two people who happened to bump into each other briefly on a night-time walk. Nothing more than that. That’s all you saw, Cara. Nothing else.
I don’t wait for a response from either of them, but instead turn on my heel and start to walk back in the direction of my water bungalow and the sleeping Ray.
Ray!
Good, kind, wonderful Ray!
It meant nothing!
I pushed him away, I really did!
Not straight away. Not for a split second.
It doesn’t matter! I was just in shock. I didn’t know what was happening!
Shocked people don’t let their shoulders relax.
No! It meant nothing! Joel and I were over a long time ago. He betrayed me. He ruined what we had. Not like Ray!
So why did you do it?
I didn’t do anything!
This internal war with myself lasts all the way back to the bungalow, and I have to take a couple of deep breaths outside the front door before I go back inside.
‘Amy?’ Ray says in a muffled tone as I close the door behind me. My heart leaps into my throat. It’s the first time that’s ever happened when he’s called my name.
‘Yeah?’
‘Are you okay?’
‘Yes, I’m fine!’ I tell him as I walk back across to the bed. ‘Just couldn’t sleep, so I went to get a little fresh air.’
‘Oh . . . everything okay?’
‘Yes! Absolutely fine. Go back to sleep, sweetheart. I’m totally fine.’
‘Okay.’
Ray rolls over and says no more.
I sit down on my side of the bed and stare into space for a second.
The second turns into a minute before I know what’s happened.
I then force myself to lie down. It’s now coming up to three o’clock in the morning, and I really should try to get some sleep.
I should never have left the bed in the first place.
. . . but I didn’t do anything wrong.
It was Joel. It was Joel who was at fault. He kissed me.
In the past, it’s always been very easy for me to blame my ex-husband for the trouble I’ve found myself in. After all, he is reckless, disorganised and thoughtless.
But this time, try as hard as I might, I can’t pin the blame for what’s just happened solely on him.
Because there was a split second.
A split second brought on by a dugong, a soft, warm, night-time breeze, and the stars reflecting off the surface of the calm ocean.
And maybe the realisation that Joel Sinclair isn’t quite the monster I’ve built him up to be in the past two years.
BUT.
It doesn’t matter. I just need to forget about it. The man I love is sleeping next to me as I speak . . . not standing around in the middle of the night with two mini tampons shoved up his nose because he’s an idiot.
That split second only happened thanks to residual memory. The memory of a marriage that had some wonderful times as well as some awful ones. And the most wonderful of those wonderful
times were the ones we had together here on this island.
Yes.
That’s it.
In that split second, I wasn’t Amy Caddick right now – I was Amy Sinclair back then.
But she’s gone again now.
I can go to sleep, safe in the knowledge that all of that is in my past.
That Joel Sinclair is in my past.
. . . okay, he’s also about half a mile away with a potentially broken nose, but he’s still in my past.
Eventually, sleep does come – but it’s a fitful one, full of dreams about things I thought long forgotten, and memories long buried. All dredged up from my subconscious by that split second I should never have allowed to happen.
Mind you, one dream does also involve me riding a dugong naked through a Chinese restaurant, so I’m not going to read too much into it all.
That way, inevitably, lies madness.
Saturday
JOEL – INTROSPECTION
‘Aaaaarghh!’ I scream in pain.
This is happening because my girlfriend Cara has just flicked me on the end of the nose.
Without warning, she has just reached out her hand – her brow furrowed with understandable rage – and flicked me right on the tip with her middle finger.
The bolt of pain that stabs into my brain is as terrible as it is deserved.
‘Bloody hell!’ I exclaim, as both hands fly up to my nose, to protect it from any more incensed flickage.
‘Don’t lie to me, Joel!’ Cara spits, hand hovering in front of her face, with thumb pressed over her tight middle finger. ‘There are other parts of your anatomy I can flick, you know!’
‘I’m not lying!’ I wail, now trying to debate whether it’s worth sacrificing some of the structural integrity of the barrier erected around my nose to send a protective hand down to cover my crotch. ‘I didn’t arrange to meet up with her, I swear!’
‘Really? Because it’s a hell of a coincidence, isn’t it? That you just happened to be walking along the beach at exactly the same time she was . . . in the middle of the fucking night!’
‘It really was a coincidence, I promise! It was the dugong!’
‘The what?’
‘The dugong! I only went back to that bit of the beach because I wanted to see if it was still there, and she was apparently doing the same, so we both just ended up in the same place, and—’
‘In the middle of the fucking night!’
‘Yes, in the middle of the fucking night. But it wasn’t planned, I swear!’
Cara’s eyes blaze. ‘Did you have sex with her?’
My eyes bulge, and my mouth opens to form a response, but such is the enormous horror of the question just posed to me that I am unable to speak. Instead I just make a strange noise at the back of my throat that I can only describe as ‘Geeb’ as my head vibrates back and forth under the intense gravitational pressure brought on by such an apocalyptically huge enquiry.
‘Well? Did you?’
‘Geeb.’
‘Joel!’
‘No! Of course not!’ I whine.
No, I just kissed her. That’s okay, isn’t it? I completely lost control of myself and was for a moment transported back to a better, happier life, in which kissing Amy Sinclair was one of the highlights of my day. But I don’t know if you’d understand, if I told you that, Cara. I should be one hundred per cent honest with you right now, but I don’t think I could get across to you the reasons why it actually happened. I don’t think I could explain . . . the history. I don’t think I could be honest with you about the whole thing, because I don’t know how honest I’m being about it with myself.
‘Are you sure?’
‘Of course I’m sure!’ I tell her. ‘Why would I do something like that? I hate Amy. You know that!’
‘You were married to her for a long time, Joel,’ she says, eyes narrow.
‘And that was a long time ago!’ I reply.
‘Not that long.’
Cara’s obviously right about that. It certainly isn’t long enough for me to forget what it was like to kiss Amy . . .
That’s why I did what I did. In the heat of the moment, in the gloom of the beach, with five Sin Cities still partially sloshing around inside me, I just lost myself in the past and did something incredibly stupid.
It wasn’t just you. She liked it.
Did she, though? I thought – just for a second – that she responded, but then I could have been very much mistaken.
Rather than make me feel better, the idea that Amy wanted it too – however briefly – actually makes me feel ten times worse. Far better to put the incident down to a moment of weakness on my part, and leave it at that. The implications of any emotional connection still lying between us don’t bear thinking about.
‘Look, baby, I swear to you. There was nothing going on there, other than two people meeting accidentally.’ I shake my head. ‘Do you really, honestly think I’d want to meet up with her like that? After everything that’s happened on this holiday? After everything that happened two years ago?’
Which are all very good points. There is no chance that I’d deliberately arrange some sort of secret meeting with Amy, with our respective other halves only yards away. If for no other reason than she would have laughed right in my face.
I just wanted to do something other than lie in bed listening to my nose throb.
. . . yes, I know you can’t technically listen to pain, but when something hurts this much, you’d be forgiven for thinking that you can.
So, I went for a walk – and I did want to see if the dugong had come back. Unfortunately so did my ex-wife, which has led to this early morning argument.
Funnily enough, Cara didn’t say a damn thing to me last night, after I followed her back to the bungalow with my tail between my legs. She just climbed into bed and went to sleep. I actually thought I might have got away with my momentary lapse of judgement. Amy certainly tried to help in that regard with her cold pantomime before she left. She gave off absolutely no indication that we’d been kissing a few moments beforehand.
What’s this ‘we’ business, my laddo? It was all down to you, stupid.
I managed to get some sleep, thinking that things might not be as bad as I feared, and that Cara didn’t see me committing the heinous act.
But then this morning arrived, and it became quite apparent that I hadn’t got away with a damn thing. And if Cara didn’t actually see me kiss Amy because of the darkness that surrounded us, then she certainly knew something had been going on. How could she not? Amy and I were standing very close together – closer than two people who are supposed to despise each other, anyway.
Cara stares at me for a second, digesting my words, before turning away and walking on to our veranda with her arms crossed.
I heave a heavy, deep sigh and go after her, trying to construct my next sentence very carefully. The guilt and shame I feel are so all encompassing that I’m finding it hard to think. I should know what to say at a time like this. After all, I’ve made a career of being able to say the right things at the right time. That’s how I managed to sell so many houses. You have to have the gift of the gab to convince someone to part with more money than you or I will probably ever see in our lifetimes for a new luxury pad.
Mind you, I don’t sell houses anymore, do I? It’s been months since I had a decent sale on my commission sheet. In fact, the only things I’ve been able to secure the sale for have been a dreadfully dull detached house in the suburbs of Kent – something built in the late 1980s out of beige bricks and exhaustion – and a houseboat on the Thames. A fucking houseboat.
I used to make multi-million-pound deals with all manner of minor and major celebrities and business people, and now I’m reduced to flogging houseboats. Okay, it was rather a lovely one, and certainly wasn’t cheap for the artist who bought it, but when compared to some of the properties my younger colleagues have been securing, it’s kind of pathetic.
They’ve start
ed calling me Captain Pugwash, because of it. And Steamboat Joelly.
Not to my face, of course. I am the most senior member of staff at the agency, other than Roland and Michelle – but I know they’re calling me those names behind my back.
And I can’t even blame them for it – not really. Not when I used to be the one making up the nicknames for everyone.
But mine were funny, dammit. Amy certainly seemed to think so, anyway. Which was just as well, as she was the only one who ever got to hear them.
And I never gave any of my colleagues nicknames – just the clients who bought the houses from us, or the vendors who were selling them. I never wanted to make fun of the people I worked closely with.
That doesn’t appear to be much of a problem for the people I work with now. They’re quite happy to take the piss out of Joel and his amazing inability to sell a fucking house anymore.
In fact, just about the only person who has come to work at the agency in the past year or so who doesn’t treat me like yesterday’s tin of tuna fish has been Cara.
We became friends straight away when she joined as a new agent, and I was more than happy to show her the ropes. I’d seen her a couple times around the office over the years because she was Roland’s granddaughter, but it was only when she took the job eight months ago that we actually got to know each other.
I can’t pretend it didn’t make me feel good to help her. She was so enthusiastic. So willing to learn from me.
In many ways she reminded me of—
Well, no one that I need to mention at this juncture.
Our friendship became something else after about three months, despite my protestations. I knew I was too old for her, but she was having none of it. She firmly ignored the advances of the younger men around her at work and made a bee line straight for yours truly.
I can’t pretend it wasn’t the best thing that had happened to me in years.
And she’s been amazing ever since. Supporting me when others were whispering about me behind my back. Helping me to keep my spirits up throughout this long, lean period I’ve been having. In many ways, she’s rescued me from a long, slow slide that I might have never been able to stop on my own.
You Again? Page 20