by Carmen Reid
‘No,’ he remembered her replying. ‘I think I should take you home,’ she’d said against his ear. ‘Where do you live? I’ll get us a cab.’
They had snogged greedily, noisily in the taxi all the way back to his flat, Jo running hands over his soft hair, softer skin, feeling breathless, dizzy at the thought of getting him bare, solid and real against her.
But she’d had to help him out of the back of the cab, then she’d had to get his keys out of his back pocket, unlock the door for him and get him up the stairs.
Once they were in his flat, he was still trying to kiss her but he could hardly stand up and she could see that for tonight, at least, he was a lost cause.
She’d helped him out of his shoes and jacket, then put him into his unruly tangle of a bed, complete with the kind of grimy, flowery sheets she hadn’t encountered since college; his eyes had closed and he’d immediately fallen into a heavy, drunken sleep.
She’d searched for the kettle and tea bags in his kitchenette and made herself a mug. Sitting on the sofa with the hot drink, she’d wondered what on earth she was doing. Getting someone many years your junior rolling drunk then taking them home was the kind of behaviour middle-aged men got into trouble for. Was she having some sort of role reversal? Midlife crisis?
Yes, definitely a mid-life crisis.
She’d dialled for another cab on her mobile and had taken several minutes to decide what to write in the farewell note that she intended to put on the counter beside the kettle.
‘I’m sorry. I think I bought you a vodka too many.’ No. Way too sinister.
‘This wasn’t what I’d planned.’ No . . . even more sinister.
What the hell to write? ‘See you again’? ‘Give me a call’?
She’d gone for the totally noncommittal: ‘Night, night. Jo.’ Then had decided to add an V and her mobile number.
Written out as a note, it had looked like something you’d leave a child. She’d scrunched it up into her pocket and replaced it with ‘Good night, Jo x’ and, again, her mobile number.
She’d gone through to his room before she left. To check he was OK, she told herself, but really to have another look.
Marcus was still curled up on his side, his breathing rumbling a little in and out of his mouth. His closed fist was up beside his face on the pillow and she saw the faded sweatband on his left wrist. Hadn’t noticed it before, blue and red separated with a grubby band of white. Two black leather ties and a beaded one on the same wrist. Carefree, teenage. Reminded of a long time ago, she’d felt a glimmer of guilt. She didn’t belong here, intruding on his sleep, his privacy.
She’d slung her bag over her shoulder and closed the door on his flat, deciding to wait for her taxi downstairs.
Chapter Four
We each generate seven times our own body weight in rubbish annually. Only 14% of this is recycled across the country, on average, despite a wealth of targets, directives and recycling programmes.
news.bbc.co.uk
Tuesday: 9.18 a.m.
‘Morning, Jo. Good holiday?’
‘Yup. When do I get another one?’
‘Oh . . . in a couple of years, if you’re good,’ came the reply from news editor Jeff, who was already in full swing.
His number two, Mike Madell, was wading through the full set of papers and magazines spilling across the desk. His number three, Rod Butcher, was reading one of the stories that arrived every minute on the newswire screen in front of him.
But they all took a moment to wave, nod or say hello as she passed the desk. Jeff looked as if he was about to say more, but his phone rang. He picked it up, answered, listened and then made the finger-waving gesture that she knew meant ‘Busy now, speak in a minute.’
Fine, fine, she thought. She wasn’t quite together enough for the first news-gathering chat of the day just yet. She needed to sit at her desk, drink tea, switch on the computer and psych herself up for the hours ahead.
Her mother had arrived at her house at 8.15 a.m. prompt but looking tired, Jo thought.
‘Everything OK?’ Jo had asked her, over the breakfast plate-clearing melee.
In the usual morning rush, Jo had managed to spill her glass of orange juice into the rattan seat of her kitchen chair. How on earth were you supposed to clean that up? Arse . . . frigging . . . bloody. That wasn’t covered in the ‘rustic country charm’ brochure.
‘Everything’s fine, Jo, just leave that,’ her mother had insisted. ‘I’ll sort it out once the girls are dressed.’
Jo read reproach into the comment. Mel had to leave the house by twenty to nine at the very latest, or she would be late for school – but she was down on her knees on the kitchen floor with Annette, playing dolls. There were ratty-haired Barbies everywhere Jo stepped. Grubby, ripped evening dresses revealed their anatomy-defying moulded plastic chests, bright blond tresses all snarled and ragged. This was heroin Hollywood Barbie. A whole new look.
‘Mum.’ Mel looked up. ‘I’ve got a new joke.’
She didn’t have time, she really didn’t, she still had to put on her suit, her lipstick, fly round the house for all the other essential bits and pieces, but. . . the sweet little heart-shaped face looking up at her. Daddy’s dark gold hair falling below her shoulders, Daddy’s sparkling eyes and shapely eyebrows . . .
Quickly Jo sat down on one of the orange-juice-free kitchen chairs.
‘OK, let’s hear it.’
Mel sprang up and stood on one side of her. Annette, not wanting to be left out, rushed to the other.
‘I got a joke too,’ Nettie announced.
‘Oh good. Two jokes,’ Jo smiled at them.
‘Knock knock,’ Mel began.
‘Who’s there?’ Jo obliged.
‘Alec.’
‘Alec who?’
‘Alec to pick my nose,’ came Mel’s triumphant punch line.
‘Yuck!’ Jo said, but still managed to drum up a hearty laugh. ‘And now you have to get dressed. Upstairs, quick, quick, or you’ll be late.’
‘My one!’ Nettie reminded her in outrage. ‘You have to listen to my joke.’ There was hardly anything Nettie asked for which Jo could refuse, because her youngest daughter was as insistent and stubborn as she was gorgeous.
‘Of course.’ Jo fixed on the improbably blue eyes and tiny pink lips. ‘You tell me.’ She wondered what was coming now, because Nettie’s grasp of the joke, as a concept, was still pretty sketchy.
‘Knock, knock,’ Nettie said, leaning back on her heels and sticking out her tummy.
‘Who’s there?’
‘Nose.’
‘Nose who?’
‘I like my nose.’
Jo laughed, ‘Very funny. I like your nose too.’ She landed a kiss on it, then scooped Nettie up into her arms.
‘I don’t want Granny,’ Nettie said into her ear, ‘I want you.’
‘I know,’ was Jo’s reply. ‘I want you. I want you and Mel all day long. I miss you,’ she said, stroking the velvety head. ‘But you know what, I’m going to be home early tonight, so what shall we do when I’m back?’
‘Have supper in front of the TV?’ Nettie asked hopefully. It was enough to make Jo weep. You painted with your children, you baked, you talked, you read them stories, you took them out, you dressed up, you played games, you went with them to the park, wind, rain or shine, but if you ever asked what their idea of heaven was, it was eating toast in front of the TV.
‘Maybe,’ she said carefully, not wanting to upset or promise anything she didn’t mean. ‘What are you going to do with Granny?’
She looked over at her mother, hoping this would be a good moment to do the handover. It was best for everyone if it went smoothly; nothing worse than leaving the house with the sound of outraged sobs ringing in your ears.
‘Shall we collect all the bread crusts from the plates?’ Her mother took Annette from Jo’s arms and held her up, although her daughter looked far too big for a carry against her mother’s delicate frame. �
�We’ll put them in a bag and then take them out to the ducks, shall we?’
‘Mummy doesn’t let us feed the ducks,’ Nettie replied. ‘She says it gives them a sore tummy.’
‘No it’s fine, honestly, it’s fine to feed the ducks with Granny,’ Jo said quickly. There wasn’t time to give the environmentally friendly duck-feeding explanation and anyway, she didn’t like to deliberately criticize anything her mother did with the girls. God knows, quite enough unintended criticisms surfaced without her even trying. She was extremely grateful for her parents’ share in the childcare: she loved that her daughters were so close to their grandparents and all other concerns about how her parents looked after them were secondary to this.
‘You collect the bread crusts, I’ll round up Mel.’
As she’d expected, Mel was still in her pyjamas, reading a book on her bed. She’d got distracted somewhere between the kitchen and her wardrobe.
‘Mel! Get changed!’ Jo urged her, exasperated at the look of surprise on her daughter’s face. ‘School! Remember?!’
Just before Jo headed out of her front door, she planted big kisses on her daughters’ cheeks and squeezed them tightly: ‘Have fun,’ she urged them both. ‘See you soon.’
Then she gave her mother a peck on the cheek too: ‘No lifting,’ she warned her. ‘Not even if she screams! I don’t want to have to pay your osteopathy bills.’
‘Don’t be cheeky,’ was her mother’s response.
And Jo left, glad that her daughters were with her mum, glad also that her mum seemed to be forgiving her at least slightly for leaving her husband.
That was undoubtedly the good thing about Simon’s decision to move Gwen in with him: it had switched her parents’ sympathy right back in her favour. Before that, her loving, but nonetheless conservative Lancashire parents hadn’t been shy to voice their disapproval.
‘No marriage is perfect,’ her mother had told her. ‘Everyone goes through these phases. You’ve got to stick with it, for the children. Every child needs two parents.’
‘They’ll have two parents,’ Jo kept arguing back. ‘We’ll be two parents who aren’t at each other’s throats all the time. We’re both still here for them, totally committed, one hundred per cent. We’re only living a mile apart and the girls will spend three nights a week with Simon.’
This information had tipped her mother over the edge: ‘You’re going to let your daughters live somewhere else for half the week? What kind of mother are you?’
No pretending that hadn’t really hurt.
‘A practical one,’ she’d flung back. ‘I work late those nights anyway, and if they weren’t with their dad, they’d be with a childminder.’
‘You know we’d . . .’
But Jo broke her off: ‘No. It’s a very kind offer, it really is and I appreciate everything you do for us, but Simon wants to do this. It’s a surprise to me, quite frankly, but he’s their dad, we have to give him the chance.’
Still, the glowering had gone on for weeks. The snide comments, little digs – no opportunity was missed to make her feel she was a bad, reckless, selfish person.
Until the news broke of Gwen and at last it had stopped.
‘Do you think anything was going on between Simon and this woman . . . before . . . you know?’ her dad had ventured.
‘No,’ she’d told him, ‘I’m sure of it.’
But clearly, they’d formed their own opinion and now a ceasefire had been called on their daughter, whereas it was full guns blazing for Simon. ‘He’s looking a lot older, I thought,’ her mother had managed to get in just this morning. ‘And the little beard . . . it’s horrible. Do you think he dyes it?’
Anyway, back to the carnage of unopened envelopes on her desk and the computer declaring: ‘You have 781 new messages.’ And probably only two would be interesting.
See. She started scrolling down: Viagra, Viagra, penile implants, update yr MP3, free downloads, upgrade your software . . . and all the email press releases: Friends of the Earth announce new campaign manager appointment, stark warning re: seabird population decline, about one hundred alone from Tony Jarvis, the Green Party press officer. She dialled his number into her desk phone, clicked through to his answering machine.
‘Tone, answering machine?! You’re supposed to be running a by-election campaign. Get up, get to your frigging desk. Give me a call. It’s Jo Randall by the way, back in the office.’
She started to rip through the pile of envelopes on the desk, putting almost every one straight into the paper recycling bin as soon as she’d read it. Old news, last week’s press releases, the odd story suggestion, none of them interesting. Bin, bin, bin.
It was almost 10 a.m. and the entire staff of her Health and Environment department, all two of them, would be in soon. Dominique would be five minutes early, almost exactly, Aidan would be ten minutes late, almost exactly.
The TV suspended in the corner of the room closest to her desk caught her attention, another Health Minister press conference. She got up and went to stand underneath it, looking up at the screen, arms folded. ‘Oh ask him a bloody question, why don’t you?’ she muttered at it when the minister had finished his statement and was met with silence from the room although it was no doubt packed with cameras. ‘Bloody TV dollies,’ she hissed.
‘So. Are we getting stuck right into this then?’ Jeff was up beside her. A blast of coffee, Old Spice and fresh cigarette smoke. His steely below-the-collar hair was combed back and still damp. Allegedly, he worked out for an hour in the company gym before getting to his desk at 8 a.m., but Jo didn’t know if she believed this. He was a broad and beefy man, whose thick leather belt was doing an impressive job of holding him at bay.
‘Aha,’ she said, not wanting to get drawn into the specifics just yet. There was still an hour to go before the first news conference of the week. Still time for her, head of a whole section, to draw up her ‘list’, which on Tuesday would be merely a list of possibles, potentials, ideas and ideals that would bear hardly any resemblance at all to the stories her department would have in the paper by Sunday.
‘How’s it been?’ she asked Jeff, noticing his immaculately ironed pink shirt, open at the neck despite the knitted navy tie. She wondered idly when he ironed. He was always here or in the pub across the road. Maybe his wife ironed . . . maybe they sent out to the dry-cleaners.
There was a comfortable familiarity in standing beside Jeff, scanning the TV news and contemplating the week ahead. He’d been here at the paper for years and years. Longer than the editor, most of the reporters, longer than her, of course, and she’d been here five years – good grief, five years.
‘It’s been a great fortnight,’ he said, which meant exactly the opposite. ‘All that nonsense about the Labour MP and his lap dancer: total stitch-up. Don’t think she’d ever met him. Spikey had to up his Valium dose after that.’
She smiled . . . Spikey being office code name for their strange, unpredictable, tantrum-prone editor, firmly believed to be at the mercy of the vast range of pharmaceuticals rumoured to be stashed all around his mega Thames-view office.
‘Then Declan’s wife’s left him. Met someone else.’
‘No!’
Jeff nodded, adding: ‘Shouldn’t have kept him on nights so long. Poor sod. Might as well keep him on nights now, though. Otherwise he’ll be straight off the wagon.’
‘How sensitive of you,’ she teased. ‘And how’s my department been behaving?’ She’d just seen Dominique enter the newsroom, but she was still well out of earshot.
‘Well they cocked up their electric car investigation, the lawyers are dealing with the fallout. Don’t think it will be too bad.’
‘I have no idea why they went ahead with that. We were going to do it this week, when I was back.’
‘Because they’re two over-ambitious little dickheads,’ was Jeff’s verdict
‘Why did you run it?’ she asked.
‘They didn’t have anything else. I was busy
at the start of the week, I forgot I was babysitting. Then, come Thursday, that was all they had.’
‘Anything else I should know?’
‘Yup.’ And then he told her the latest unprintable, unprovable, totally outrageous rumour about the Prime Minister’s family currently doing the rounds.
‘Oh bollocks,’ she said. ‘Where’s that supposed to have come from?’
‘The coppers at Downing Street.’ Then, ‘Savannah Tyler?’ he asked without a pause. ‘Where are we with Savannah Tyler?’
Aha, they were still on the trail of the elusive environmentalist set to become Britain’s first Green MP then.
‘Trying . . . still trying,’ Jo replied. ‘Well, give me a chance. I’ve only been in for ten minutes.’
‘But are we going to get her?’ Jeff wanted to know. ‘Spikey is gagging for it. Think he’s in love with her or something.’
‘If she does a profile piece, she’s doing it with us. That much I have been promised. Tony Jarvis has promised.’
‘Yeah well, make him sign it in blood. No, his infant child’s blood.’
‘Jeff! We’re the caring, sharing, family paper now, remember.’
‘My arse,’ he said and turned away. ‘You’ve got thirty minutes left to come up with a list,’ he smiled. ‘And please put Savannah Tyler at the top of it.’
Jo turned back to her desk, where Dominique was already on the phone. ‘Yes, yes, I understand,’ she was saying into the receiver. ‘But if you have a complaint, you need to put it in writing . . . yes . . . a letter or an email will do. Yes . . . I’ll give you the address.’
They smiled and nodded hellos at each other.
Dominique looked stunning, Jo couldn’t help noticing: hair wound up in a monumental bun, a glamorous multicoloured sleeveless tunic over trousers thing going on. It was too much of a cliche to think that black women could make anything look better. But Dominique, thin with shiny conker-brown limbs, always looked sensational.