by Jane Renshaw
But the weird thing was that being with Moir had let her begin to understand, a little bit, what Suzanne had seen in Rob. Not just physically. She was beginning to get why Suzanne, so assertive in other ways, had allowed Rob to dominate her. She suspected it was all about tapping in to your inner cavewoman; realising that there was something innately sexy about a man telling you what to do, however un-PC that might be.
She smiled.
In the end she decided on a photo taken in the garden at Parks of Clova: Mum and Dad behind, Suzanne and Helen in front, Helen holding a blurred Baudrins in her arms. They all looked so happy – well, apart from Baudrins.
‘Good choice,’ said Moir when she showed him. ‘I see you were adorable from an early age.’ He plomped himself down beside her and fitted her against him, snuggled under his arm.
‘Look at my knobbly knees!’ She leant over the coffee table to prop the photo against the silver frame.
‘Hey, I love your knobbly knees.’ He pulled her back against him and pushed his nose into her cheek.
She turned her face to his, breathing in the scent of him: masculine and animal and alien. The photo album slid off her lap, and Moir stooped to pick it up.
‘This can go back in the cupboard now, yes?’
‘Thanks. It goes in the box that’s open, on the left-hand side.’
He got up and left the room with it. He couldn’t stand what he called ‘mess.’ That was why most of her stuff was still in boxes.
She looked at the three photos in a row, wondering about his parents. So sad, what had happened to them –
‘What the hell is this?’
Something came flying over the back of the sofa – a magazine, she thought at first, but no – as it landed on the carpet she realised what it was.
A scrapbook.
‘Keeping tabs on your ex?’
He strode after it, snatched it up, threw it down on the sofa next to her.
The scrapbook had been in the same box as the photo albums.
She didn’t touch it. She said, ‘No,’ and ‘It’s not important.’
‘Not important! You’ve got a whole fucking scrapbook of stuff about this guy and it’s not important? Who the fuck is he?’
‘He’s not my ex. We hardly even –’
Moir was standing foursquare in front of the mantelpiece, his face red. Behind him, where a cool film poster used to have pride of place, the horses in her painting looked serenely on.
‘Please. Moir. I’ll tell you about him, but not while you’re like this. Not while you’re so angry.’
‘Oh, I’ve no business being angry when I discover my fiancée’s obsessed with another man?’
Two, three beats.
‘Your what?’
He put a hand into the pocket of his suit jacket; took out a small red box. ‘I was going to ask you to marry me.’ He opened the lid of the box. Inside was a ring.
Her heart thumped.
‘I’m in love with you, Helen. I’ve never been in love with anyone before – I realise that now. But you obviously have. You obviously still are, or you wouldn’t have kept this stuff –’
‘Come and sit down. Please. Sit down and I’ll explain.’
He sat, but not next to her. He put the ring in its box down on the coffee table, and sat on his own leather sofa, and looked at her.
And she told him everything: about Hector, and Pitfourie, and the cyberstalking.
‘Ridiculous. I know it’s ridiculous.’
He shook his head.
‘You probably think I’m a complete lunatic.’
And then he was across the room, and holding her, and telling her he was sorry, that it was all right, that it was perfectly understandable, after all she’d been through. Probably there was a psychological explanation – post-traumatic stress syndrome or something. ‘Regressing back to your life before the trauma, to your old home, to your crush on this Hector guy – that was probably your brain’s way of coping with everything – Suzanne, the break-up with Jeff, and work, and your aunt... Taking you back to a happy place.’ He rubbed her back. ‘After Dad’s funeral, Bec and I spent a week in a holiday cottage we used to rent on Skye when we were kids... Remembering the good times...’
She held on to the wonderful bulk of his shoulders. ‘I’ll get rid of it. The scrapbook.’
‘You don’t have to do that.’
‘No, I do. I don’t need it any more.’
And she didn’t – she really didn’t.
Because this was her happy place now.
‘Hey. Shh. It’s all right.’ He wiped her face with a tissue, and kissed her, and said, ‘Helen.’
She blinked.
‘My sweet girl: will you marry me?’
◆◆◆
He was snoring softly, right in her lug, one heavy arm draped across her. She was too hot. Carefully she started to pull away from him. He grunted, and the arm was suddenly tight around her ribs.
She moved back against him, and the arm relaxed.
The extent of his physical need for her, his passion, was something new. She’d never imagined it could be like this. Sex with Moir was like one of those fairground rides that hurtled you round impossible, vertiginous corners; a thrill that was all the more thrilling for the feeling that it wasn’t quite right; that it wasn’t something you should be enjoying.
How could she ever have thought Jeff was good in bed? It was like the difference between a rollercoaster and a merry-go-round.
But sometimes, when Moir was asleep like this and she lay awake, she couldn’t help remembering... Another bed, and another man’s arms. Not a birl on a merry-go-round or a rollercoaster ride, but a stratospheric soaring –
Daft Janet.
No. She was done with all that.
Moir was amazing.
The feeling of not right had nothing to do with him. It wasn’t his fault that sometimes when he really lost control, really hurt her, she’d flash on Suzanne’s narrow back in the firelight; the stalkers’ path; the hand across her mouth.
And want him to hurt her again.
29
Stuart poked his head round the door. ‘Helen. Do you have a minute?’
‘Yes, come in.’
He walked to the cabinet in which she kept the finds she was currently working on, opened a drawer at random, looked into it, shut it again. Helen moved her mouse to close the document she’d been working on and sat back in her chair.
‘I’m sorry Helen, but we’ve decided to give the position to Marc.’
‘Marc.’
‘I realise it’s a disappointment. To lose out again.’
When the Section Head position had come up two years ago, just she and Eilidh had applied. She’d been pretty confident she’d get it as she was quite a lot better than Eilidh at the job, but they’d given it to Eilidh. And yes, it had been a disappointment, but at least she and Eilidh had roughly similar levels of experience –
‘Marc?’
Marc Watkins. Living proof, as Moir said, that the British education system was in crisis.
The old Helen would immediately have blamed herself, assumed it must be because she wasn’t good enough, that a Section Head had to be more than a good curator, that she didn’t have the necessary social facility, wasn’t enough of a team player.
The new Helen was angry.
‘Why?’
Stuart blinked at her. ‘Well um, there were a number of factors to consider, of course. For one thing, Marc has a PhD rather than an MA. And he has excellent people skills.’
‘You mean he laughs at your dirty jokes.’
‘Ha ha. Yes. But he’s got the skill set we’re looking for.’
‘Really? What particular skill set are you looking for? Does it include any of the skills required to actually do the job? Because in terms of subject knowledge... the ability to apply that knowledge... the number of papers published in peer-reviewed journals... I think I just about have the edge.’
Oh God. Her
heart was racing, her voice had gone shaky, but she’d said it.
And Stuart was staring at her like she’d grown another head.
‘When another institution needs our opinion on something, who is it they ask for? Who was it had to go hotfoot up to Westray to do their instant analyses? Not Eilidh, not Susan. And certainly not Marc. Me.’
‘Your knowledge is second to none.’ He was almost simpering.
‘But next to Marc’s knowledge of the bars and clubs on George Street, it counts for nothing?’
‘We felt that Marc’s people skills were a fit for the Section Head post. But of course we value your contribution to the team enormously.’
‘Stuart, if there was a problem with my performance in the “people skills” area, you should have told me so I could have worked on it. That’s surely a basic management principle. You have to tell people where they’re going wrong or they can’t fix it.’
He smiled at her again and turned away to the window, and she only half caught what he said: ‘... to that issue in your yearly reviews.’
‘No. You didn’t. It looks like there is a problem with people skills, but I don’t think it’s mine.’
When he’d gone she opened the Word document back up and stared at the screen. She swallowed, and frowned at the black type on the white background. She read a sentence, and another. But she couldn’t make sense of the words.
Oh God.
She found a tissue in her bag and blotted her nose, her eyes. She rummaged in her bag for her mobile.
‘I didn’t get it,’ she choked when he answered. ‘They’ve given it to Marc.’
‘Are they stark raving mad? Hey, hey, it’s okay. It’s okay. I’m coming to get you, okay? Helen?’
She should tell him no. He was really busy at work. They had this horrible client they were designing a holiday complex for in Bulgaria, who kept making them change things. He was too busy.
‘Okay.’
◆◆◆
As she crossed the road, he got out of the Audi and came to meet her. He put his arms round her, right there in the middle of the road, and she clung to him, to the muscled solidness of him, and breathed the tangy smell of his aftershave – no, his cologne, that was what he called it – and pressed her face against his chest as he led her to the car and eased her into the passenger seat.
He got in at the driver’s side and put his arms round her again and said, ‘Stupid bastards.’
She couldn’t stop crying.
He had a whole box of tissues in the well in front of the gear stick – had he bought them on the way? She grabbed a fresh one. He was saying something about an industrial tribunal.
‘I can’t take them to an industrial tribunal. In a way they’re right about the people skills thing. I don’t socialise with them. I don’t sit talking to them in the staff room at lunchtime. I usually just work through with a sandwich in my office.’
‘That’s not a people skills issue, that’s about not being in their pathetic little clique. That’s about you being overworked because you’re ten times better than any of them.’
‘But they’ll say I’m not a team player... Moir, I couldn’t face it. I couldn’t go through a tribunal. I’m just going to have to grin and bear it. Again.’
‘Why don’t you tell them to stuff their job?’
She stared at him.
She loved the way the hair grew at his temples. The way it almost curled. She loved twisting it and trying to make it curl, and watching his face, and he’d be smiling but trying not to, pretending to be annoyed, and then he’d go and look in the bathroom mirror and huff and puff, and flatten it with water.
‘I can’t just leave.’
‘Why not?’
‘There aren’t exactly many job opportunities out there for curators of Iron Age and Roman collections.’
‘There are always opportunities for the best people in any field.’
‘I’m not one of the “best people”.’
He sighed. ‘Helen, have a bit of confidence in yourself. If those idiots don’t appreciate you, there are plenty of others who do. People are always ringing you up wanting your opinion, aren’t they? You could do consultancy work. Or go for a lectureship at a university –’
‘I’d need a PhD for that. I can’t just resign without anything else to go to.’
He took her left hand; turned the ring that still felt so strange encircling her finger. ‘Look. It’s not as if I’m exactly short of cash. I’m more than happy for you to live off me until you find something. I’m more than happy for you to live off me permanently, in fact – we want kids, don’t we?’
It was the first time he’d mentioned children directly.
‘I – yes.’ Oh yes.
‘You could go freelance in the meantime; look into doing a PhD.’
‘I can’t just sponge off you.’
‘Why not? Hey, sponge away.’
And into her head, suddenly, the thought popped: did Suzanne feel like this, when Rob was egging her on to do something outrageous?
Back in her office she typed up a letter of resignation. She didn’t even bother checking it for errors, she just shoved it in the first envelope she found and scrawled ‘Stuart Gourlay’ on the front.
He was with Eilidh in the conservation lab. They were footering about at the sinks, heads close together, obviously talking about Helen because when she came in they both stared at her like she’d caught them doing something disgusting.
She held out the letter. ‘My resignation.’
Stuart wiped his hands on a paper towel and took the envelope from her, his already prominent eyes goggling.
‘Helen. Don’t be silly,’ Eilidh said.
Stuart started to say something about Marc, but Helen cut him short.
‘Yeah, good luck with Marc.’
Eilidh followed her back to her office, and while Helen emptied her desk drawers, shoving her folding umbrella and her little wooden box for paperclips and her knife and fork and spoon into the bag she kept in the bottom drawer, Eilidh told her she was behaving like a kid in the huff.
‘You’re being completely unreasonable.’ And when Helen didn’t respond, ‘Have you something else lined up?’
‘No.’
‘This is a huge mistake. You won’t be able to sign on, you know. Not if you resign from a job. Not for six months. And you have to work a month’s notice anyway – you know that?’
‘I’ve three weeks’ holiday due.’
‘That still leaves a week.’
‘Considering all the unpaid overtime I’ve put in over the years, I think we can call it quits.’
‘It doesn’t work like that.’
‘I don’t care.’
‘There has to be a hand-over period. It’s not fair on whoever has to take over your workload.’
‘Don’t talk to me about what’s fair.’
‘If you want me to write you a reference –’
‘You think you’re qualified to write me a reference?’
Eilidh opened and closed her mouth. The skin on her face and neck had gone a mottled red.
And suddenly Helen felt sorry for her – this woman for whom climbing the greasy pole was everything. But not sorry enough to stop. ‘Eilidh, I love what I do. I love holding something used by a woman who’s been dead four thousand years, and feeling a connection to her. I love finding out all I can about what her life might have been like. I love that part of the job. What I don’t love is having to stay late to finish a report because I’ve spent the whole day helping you or Susan or Donna or Marc with yours. What I don’t love is having to always be the one to identify and classify new finds because no one else has a clue. And what I really don’t love is being screwed over because I don’t play the game. Just because I’ve never thrown up on Stuart’s feet in the back of a taxi doesn’t mean I’m not qualified to lead a team.’
‘I didn’t realise you felt like that.’ Eilidh’s lips were trembling.
‘
Of course you did.’
Carrying her bag of belongings down the stairs and out of the side door and crossing the road to the Audi, Helen felt like jumping in the air and clicking her heels and whooping like a lunatic.
‘I’m a horrible person,’ she said as they pulled away. ‘I made Eilidh cry.’
He flashed her a smile. ‘Feels good, yes?’
‘Oh God. Yes.’
He flicked on the music system. Christine McVie’s voice filled the car:
Cos I feel that when I’m with you...
‘But Moir. What am I going to do?’
‘You, my girl, are going to take a holiday.’
‘A holiday.’
‘Remember what one of those is?’
‘Um... No. Not really!’
He started to laugh.
And I love you I love you I love you
Like never befo-o-o-o-ore.
And now she was laughing too.
30
Toilet. Before she went for a taxi, she should go to the toilet. She didn’t need to empty her bladder – it was only two and a half hours on the train from York – but she did need to check that she looked okay. She was glad now that Moir hadn’t been able to meet her because he’d been held up at work. It gave her a chance to do any repair work necessary.
As she was going into the Ladies a woman was coming out, wrestling with bags and carriers, one of which swung against Helen’s hip. ‘Oh, sorry, hen.’
She was home.
It had been wonderful, doing nothing for two weeks, spending time with Mum, being pampered, going for walks, stuffing her face in tea shops, even spending a day with Lionel’s sons and their families – but it wasn’t home.
Home was here.
Home was wherever Moir was.
Cheesy but true.
She put her handbag down on the counter that ran under the mirror and lifted a hand to her blunt fringe. She’d told the hairdresser she just wanted a ‘tidy’, but had ended up with this short, boyish, choppy style, and she wasn’t sure it suited her. It wasn’t nearly as nice as the West End cut. She’d loved the way she could shake her head and watch it fall into place.