The legitimate sites were all great ideas. It was their execution and logistics and lack of funding that were the problem. Grabagadget.com was a fantastic site, selling all sorts of now products that no self-respecting technoed-up city boy could live without. Except they could. In droves.
The relatively few orders they’d had for bargain-basement glow-in-the-dark palm-top computers, radio-controlled flying saucers and James Bond-style wrist cameras had all disintegrated into a disaster of demand, lack of supply and an unwillingness in the office for anyone to take responsibility or control of the mounting pile of brown cardboard boxes whose ownership had been downloaded into cyberspace somewhere, never to be found again. As they had no sale or return arrangements, Declan’s company was now the proud owner of two hundred and seventy personal GPS systems, five hundred adult-sized space hoppers and an unknown quantity of Office Voodoo Kits. Who would not die to own one of those?
Sadgits.com was a great idea too. Funny, original and a potential cult site. Except that it was failing to find favour with advertisers, who didn’t particularly want their product linked with Anorak of the Day or Eighteen Ways to Be Extremely Boring. It was doing OK, with around two million hits per week, so there were enough people out there who wanted to nominate their friends or colleagues for the Wanker of the Week page, but that wasn’t good enough if he couldn’t get Tesco to cough up a few bob for banner advertising to plug their fruit and veg on it.
Datewithastar.com should also have been a corker. For a few quid each month, any lonely housewives or particularly desperate men could sign up to receive virtual emails from virtual celebrities and indulge in a virtual relationship. Virtually a certain winner! Or so he had thought. The trouble with Datewithastar.com was that it required a full-time writer to sit and compose the daily emails required by the clients, who probably should all have featured on Sadgits.com.
All three businesses were gobbling up money at an alarming rate. The office overheads were staggering, as he’d wanted a prestigious address befitting a young, thrusting, techno-savvy company. They had the upper floor of a converted chapel in Camden with huge arched windows overlooking the Grand Union Canal, which was great, very funky, very inspiring – and a shitload of rent-money every week.
The size of the staff was growing at an alarming rate, too. He’d started off with a young secretary, one nerdy computer programmer, (the aforementioned Alan), and a cleaner called Madge. Now he had an office crammed full of dot.snots – young know-it-alls of the techno age. There was an Office Manager, several young secretaries, an equally large number of expensive Webmasters alongside the nerdy computer programmer, and two young and hungry Sales Executives who, Declan was convinced, were creaming off half of the business they gained for themselves. It gave him very bad headaches.
The decision to go porny had been born out of genuine desperation. While all his business endeavours were slowly sinking without trace, all he’d done with Emily’s photo was circulate it to a group of contacts as a bit of festive fun and frolics – not wise, not exactly moral, but done without malice aforethought. And it had snowballed – to use a suitably festive analogy. He knew Emily was a stunning-looking woman, but he hadn’t quite realised how many others would appreciate that too. The whole thing had gathered momentum, rolling down the hill of cyberspace out of control and soon he was being emailed copies of his own creation. At the time, it seemed a sin not to capitalise on it.
Now, a paltry few weeks later, Emily’s bottom was attracting four million hits per week, all by itself. Every search engine happily chucked it up with very little prompting. Nearly half of the people who accessed the Internet did so looking for material of a dubious nature. Forty-two per cent, to be exact. That was a scary statistic. Not too many years ago you had to go out of your way to find sites like that. Now you had to take steps to avoid them. And there was no shortage of people who wanted to peddle their wares on porn sites. It had the potential to be huge. The site, not the bottom.
It was a pity Emily had launched herself into orbit when she’d found out. But then he always knew that she would. It was, primarily, the reason he hadn’t told her.
Alan shuffled towards him. He was the only person who looked out of place in the trendy offices and he was the only person Declan felt he could really trust. Alan was as gaunt as a heroin addict, due to the fact he rarely went out in daylight because he rarely ventured far from his beloved computer screen. He wore his hair down to his waist and parted in the middle, flares from the first time round, basketball boots and the look of the permanently stoned.
‘Hey, man. Late night,’ Alan said and sat down next to him.
The light from Declan’s desk lamp bounced off the stark white walls. Madge had pulled down the black Venetian blinds as she left, shutting out the cold night. Declan felt trapped in what used to be his sanctuary, his baby, his dream and his life.
Declan sighed before he said, ‘Yeah.’ He sat back and nodded at the screen. ‘Emily found out.’
Alan grimaced. ‘Heavy.’
‘Very.’
‘Emily’s page has to go?’
‘Yeah.’ Declan rubbed his fingers round his lips. If only there was a way. ‘I didn’t really want to go into porn, Al. It’s not my style.’
‘It’s big money.’ Alan pulled a tobacco pouch out of his jeans and rolled a tiny joint. There was a strict no-smoking policy in the office which saw everyone else who indulged huddled outside in the chapel porch, exposed to the elements. Alan was the only exception. Without a roll-up in his mouth, everyone was terrified he would implode, desiccating into a pile of dust on the non-static flooring before their eyes. He looked as insubstantial as the liquorice papers he used to encase his suspicious-smelling tobacco. ‘A friend of mine was a lap-dancer who got tired of doing the clubs. I set up a basic site for her. She makes seven million a year from guys ogling her in a g-string.’ Alan shrugged as if mystified by the ways of the world.
Declan inhaled sharply and not because Alan looked like the most unlikely person in the world to have a friend who was a lap-dancer. Seven million. It was a considerable amount of money in anyone’s book.
‘What did Emily say?’ Alan enquired, lighting his spliff.
‘Nothing that was fit to broadcast on children’s television.’
‘I guess it’s to be expected.’
‘Yeah,’ Declan agreed. ‘Except I didn’t expect her to find out.’
‘These things have a way of escaping into the universe.’
‘Yeah?’ Declan wound his fingers together, leaning back in his black leather chair and trying to look as if he hadn’t a care in the world, when it actually felt like he had too many to count. ‘She’s left me, Alan. I didn’t expect that either.’
‘Hea-vy.’
Declan looked up. There was no one else he could talk to. He certainly hadn’t been able to tell Emily how much he was in for with the business. The numbers were racking up daily and they were now starting to scare him. ‘I don’t know what to do.’
‘We need this site, Declan.’
‘I’ve told Emily I’d ditch it.’ He pressed his lips hard together. ‘Tonight.’
‘It’s the only thing that’s bringing us any cash in.’
‘I know.’
‘Declan. The damage is done,’ Alan wisely pointed out. ‘Go out. Fast. Get some models. Get some pictures. It can’t be that difficult. We’ll replace Emily.’
Replace Emily. Just like that. It might be easy to do that on the website. Quite how it would work in real life was a different matter. ‘Phone the lap-dancer for me.’
‘I can’t, man. Competition.’
Declan tutted. ‘It’s money, Al. Money that I haven’t got.’
‘It’s your only hope, Declan,’ his friend said. ‘Buy yourself some time. Leave Emily’s butt on there for a few more days. It can’t do any more harm. Maybe she’ll even see the funny side of it. Women can be like that.’
‘Yeah.’ Declan wished he felt as hope
ful as he sounded. ‘And maybe she won’t.’
‘Then you’ve lost her anyway.’ Alan eased his gangly frame from the chair. ‘I have to go, man.’
‘Yeah. Yeah. Thanks for your help, mate.’
‘No worries.’
‘And Alan – not a word of this, OK?’
‘Declan. You’re the man. You’ll fix it.’
‘Yeah.’
Alan shambled off, making the office look untidy as he progressed.
Declan heard the front door bang as Emily looked out at him from the screen. He hadn’t imagined making his money from sleaze when he’d entered this business. He’d had aspirations of being a bright young thing, a dot.com whizz, a star. He’d wanted to follow in the footsteps of Martha Lane Fox and her online ticket agency Lastminute.com, and others such as Zoom and Boo.com which burnt brightly but were blown out far too fast. Declan wanted his dream to be bigger, bolder, better and without the inevitable crash that seemed to be afflicting all dot.coms and turning them into dot.bombs. What had happened? They were the new gold rush, everyone vying to stake their claim in cyberspace. And now they were all in one big shoot-out, with only the wiliest not ending up full of holes and dying in the dust.
Instead of trailblazing, he’d now joined the lowest of the low in the lowest of the low way, selling out the only person who cared about him. And yet it had to be done. There was no way he could let all this crash around his ears. ‘I’m the man,’ he said flatly to her trusting, grinning face.
Standing up, he stretched his aching shoulders and turned off his desk lamp. Leaving his girlfriend staring inanely out into the gloom, he walked wearily out of his office without looking back.
Chapter Seven
I hardly slept a wink last night. When I did drop off, I had all these terrible nightmares about computer bugs with millions of legs and viruses that looked like Anna Kournikova chasing me with tennis rackets. When I was awake the reality was even worse.
It’s strange not being in my own house. Normally, if I can’t sleep, I get up, make a cuppa, read for a bit, something slushy and mind-numbing if possible – and I don’t mean students’ essays – then I go back to bed when my brain’s calmed down and I nod off straight away. Sorted. In someone else’s house you can’t do that. Not even in your best mate’s. You can’t prowl round in the dead of night without arousing alarm. Instead I lay awake counting the array of lucky, fat-bellied Buddhas with cheesy grins that Cara has lined up on the bookshelves. Thirty-one, to be precise. One of them that actually worked would do me.
Cara had to go to work first thing this morning and I was already awake when she kindly stuck her head round the door bearing a cup of nettle tea – mmm, yum – before she shot off to do important news-type things.
I had the urge to spend the night looking at my near-naked image on the screen, willing it to go off, yet now that I’m up and about, I haven’t got the courage to face myself in my full glory. Instead I’m rooting around in Cara’s cupboards looking for something to eat that hasn’t got the word ‘organic’ in the title. Even the loo cleaner is ‘organic’. How can you have organic loo cleaner? What am I saying? I’m just trying to avoid the fact that I have more pressing problems.
I phoned the School Secretary first thing and told her that I was sick. Which I am – to my stomach. Thankfully, most of my colleagues are as computer illiterate as I am and probably haven’t seen me doing my bit to spread goodwill to all men. The School Secretary, who is a harridan, tutted loudly down the telephone at me, because my absence means she’ll have to draft in a supply teacher for Form 5S of Year 10 who were due a double lesson of Shakespeare. Personally, given what I’m going through, I reckon it’s lucky I haven’t taken to my bed and am refusing to come out ever again.
I also have to go to one of the rash of estate agents on the High Street and arrange for someone to come and do a valuation on the house. I wonder idly what Declan and I will get for it and my stomach rolls again. It is still a struggle to fit this into my structured shape of reality. I can’t believe that he has really done this. Oh, don’t get me wrong. Declan is no angel. Not by a long chalk. Over our five years of fairly turbulent relationship there have been more than a few sticky patches. He’s been very stupid at times. And stubborn. And reckless. But I don’t think he’s ever been deliberately cruel. I’m talking more about missed anniversaries, crap birthday presents and an inability to share cooking duties. Which, given the global scale of this particular misdemeanour, was mere fumbling foreplay.
I look out of Cara’s window into the garden. January is a good time to be betrayed. The greyness I feel inside matches perfectly the bleakness of the day outside. Imagine being dumped in July when the sun is cracking the flags. That truly would be awful.
It’s drizzling – that miserable type of rain that Britain does so well and so frequently. Even in the relative sparseness of winter, Cara’s garden looks a bit overgrown and the ivy, which seems to be overtaking everything else, is being batted about by the wind.
It’s a shock being betrayed like this. I trusted Declan. Trusted him enough to risk playing ‘adult games’ involving photographic equipment. Lesson number one learned. You can never truly know someone, I guess. You can love them, lie in their arms, iron their shirts, make their favourite meals for them, allow them access to your bank details, lose yourself in their life, you can think you know them. But you never really see what’s in someone’s heart.
Declan bought me the wretched Santa outfit as a joke – so I thought, although I now suspect deeply ulterior motives. We had a few drinks, I put it on, pranced around being silly and posing as Declan snapped away for half an hour, then we made love and the outfit and the camera have remained in the cupboard ever since. The Santa hat played a tinny, mechanical version of ‘Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer’ and had a little red light that flickered on and off at the end. This is not a serious sexual deviation. I am not the whore of Babylon. It’s fun. Right? Not what you might call your classic turn-on. We had a laugh. When I let Declan write HO-HO-HO in black marker pen on my bottom that’s what I assumed we both thought it was. Funny.
I am an open-minded, millennium sort of woman. I have needs, a sex drive and hormones that clank together occasionally. I am still in sex bomb rather than biological clock mode. And I don’t think that’s a bad thing. Or didn’t. Declan and I were not like most of our coupley friends, whose sex-lives appeared to be flatter than a two-week-old bottle of Coke. Ours had fizz, sparkle, adventure. We made love outside in secluded places, when the weather warranted it. I have an array of feather boas and velvet gloves purely for entertainment purposes only. I have been known, on occasions when I didn’t feel fat and bloated, to wear stockings and suspenders instead of Marks & Spencers’ 10 denier tights – and very little else. I was liberated and felt free to indulge my sexual fantasies. Now that I have my arse on the Internet, however, I’m taking a different view. If we’d had a quick straightforward shag under the duvet on a Saturday night like everyone else, then I wouldn’t be in this trouble now. And trouble it is.
With luck, Declan has been true to his word this time and has taken it off – pronto. If not, there is something I’d like to remove for him – pronto.
Still, I can’t stand here staring at the rain all day, bemoaning my lot. I have my life to get on with. A life that no longer involves Declan Dead Meat O’Donnell. I am going to force myself to carry on. Force myself to live life to the full (so long as no one’s pointing a digital camera at me). Force myself to love again – in the fullness of time. And, first and foremost, I am going to force myself to eat.
I ferret round the kitchen a bit more. My batty friend even practises her Feng Shui in the fridge. I adore Cara even though she is slowly driving me insane too. We probably have the most prosperous, well-aligned cheese in North London. My search for calorie-laden comfort food is in vain. Cara has a loaf of organic, wholemeal, wholewheat, wholesome, wholly disgusting-looking, shrivelled brown bread covered in sunflower seed
s lurking in her bread bin. Frankly, the packet looks more appetising. I shut the lid and decide that it would be better to face the day on an empty stomach.
Chapter Eight
Adam had got to work early, before the others. He was already at his desk when Cara arrived and scurried his bacon sandwich into his drawer when he saw her approach.
‘Hi,’ she said brightly.
‘Hi,’ he mumbled. ‘Sorry.’ He flicked an apologetic glance at his drawer.
‘It’s OK,’ she said. ‘I don’t like to inflict my principles on everyone.’
Adam choked on a crumb and Cara felt the urge to pat him on his back.
She liked Adam. He was still a gorilla, like most of the other blokes in the office, but he was a nice sort of gorilla. Lovable in an undernourished way. He was tall, dark and scruffily handsome. His mad black hair curled round his pale face in a gloriously unkempt way, and a vaguely worried look stretched permanently between his eyebrows. Adam had a natural designer stubble due to an apparent aversion to shaving and he always wore black, which made him resemble a cross between a depressed New Romantic and a cheerful Goth. His green eyes were flecked with brown and he generally looked like he needed more sleep. He had a low, gravelly voice that made him sound like he smoked, but he didn’t.
‘How was your friend?’ he asked when he’d recovered from his coughing fit.
‘Bad,’ Cara said, dumping her bag down. ‘Very bad. The twit she lives with has seriously blown it this time.’
Adam’s look was genuinely sympathetic.
‘I’ve got a new lodger,’ Cara informed him. ‘Not out of choice, I might add.’
A Compromising Position Page 4