Thanks For Nothing, Nick Maxwell

by Debbie Carbin

  He was dead sexy but stank the flat out. Plus, he put me second, like I said. He had to go.

  I have never been in Sainsbury’s at this time of night before. It’s populated by people in shorts and cardigans picking up milk and wine. I feel like a gatecrasher at some stranger’s party.

  I head directly for the fruit and veg aisle and grab two cucumbers, hesitate and then pick up two more. They are hard and heavy in my hands, their skin faintly glossy. After paying I hurry back to the car, the weight of the fruit in my carrier bag deeply satisfying. The drive home is a blur, dominated by thoughts of dark green skin and pale green flesh. My eyes keep flicking over to the four heavy bars lying on the passenger seat and I imagine the cool paleness within. Their two-tonedness is intoxicating.

  Here I come, struggling into the living room with my teeth round one of the cucumbers. I drop the carrier bag, purse and keys on the floor and sink down on to the sofa, cold watery flesh and pips coating my lips, filling my mouth. Nothing has ever tasted this delicious and in fact if you look closely at the expression on my face there, doesn’t it look suspiciously similar to my face while Nick was on top of me, all those weeks ago?

  I finish the first one and make a start on the second, less feverishly now but with no less enjoyment. The pleasure is in biting off more than I can decently chew, overstuffing my mouth, then swallowing it before it’s really thoroughly mashed so I can feel its cold hardness going down my throat.

  Two-thirds of my way through the second one, I’ve had enough. Just like that. The intense longing and passion has stopped, as if someone has switched it off. In fact, now I can’t bear to look at the cucumber left in my hand. The smell of it is in my nostrils, on my fingers, down my clothes, and bizarrely, in my hair. I drop the piece I am holding and cover my mouth with my hand, feeling immediately nauseous and bloated. Standing up shakily, I stagger from the sofa along the hall to the bedroom, burping and hiccuping, and haul my swollen body on to the bed, where I fall asleep almost instantly and dream of my mum with glossy green skin.

  Let’s draw a veil over the rest of my weekend. Suffice to say that the following day, the Sunday, I am not at my best. By the end of the day, my skin had become green and glossy too. Actually, unless you’ve ever eaten almost two whole cucumbers in the space of about four minutes, you can have no idea of the pain they can cause. As I was writhing around in acidic agony that day, I couldn’t help thinking about all those cheesy greetings cards that list the superiority of cucumbers over men – they don’t monopolize the remote control, won’t moan when you buy more shoes, don’t need to have their egos soothed, etc, etc. Of course, if I had chosen a cucumber over Nick two months ago, I wouldn’t be in the predicament I’m in. But if I had chosen a man over a cucumber last night, I could easily have made my heart cold the next morning. As it was, it burned all day and no amount of Gaviscon could help.

  Let’s move forward three or four days and catch up with me at work on the Wednesday after the cucumber incident. Hold on – that’s my empty desk. I must be in the toilet. Oh, yes, here I come now. And walking relatively slowly, in fact. That’s quite a change from the ridiculous and, let’s face it, utterly inefficient slow stiletto sprinting I used to do to and from the toilet and the vending machine before all this started. I was so worried about not missing a sale, I actually used to pump my arms as I moved. I’m pretty sure now that I wasn’t really running, I just felt as if I was running. Of course, any saleswoman worth her headset would be able to make enough sales in the time she was in the sales room, even allowing for toilet, cigarette, food, drink and EBay breaks. So I’m not charging around the place like a rhino in nubuck any more.

  Oh, God no, not a rhino. A gazelle. With those fabulous long black eyelashes. And gorgeous legs.

  Beep. My turret has just signalled the arrival of an incoming call, so I press the ‘I’ button and announce, ‘Good Morning, Horizon Holidays. This is Rachel speaking, how may I help you?’

  ‘May I speak to Marion, please?’

  ‘Hold on a moment, please, I’ll see if she’s free.’ At precisely this moment, the mobile phone – Hector’s mobile phone – goes off in my bag.

  It’s interesting to note that there’s no hesitation over which is the most important. I simply cut the caller off immediately, switch over to ‘B’ for Busy and snatch my handbag off my desk.

  ‘Hello?’ Why do I still answer it with a question, as if I don’t know who it is on the other end? It’s going to be Hector, every time.

  ‘Rachel.’ There’s a long, deep breath in and out. He sounds relieved. I’m smiling before he’s even said anything. ‘It’s Hector.’ It sounds like he’s got a stinking cold. It makes me want to clear my own throat.

  ‘Well I know that, Dippy. Who else would ring his own phone?’

  ‘Of course. Sorry. Not thinking straight.’

  ‘You’re forgiven.’

  ‘Thank God. How are you, Rachel?’

  ‘Oh, you know, fine. I’ve got millions of cells inside me dividing and aligning and forming an utterly dependant second person that is throwing my hormones all over the place while diverting some of my food, water, blood and oxygen away from me towards itself, making my heart beat faster and shrinking my brain. And a slight headache.’

  ‘Oh, it’s so good to hear your voice. I can’t tell you how much.’

  ‘Try.’ I’m grinning a bit too much, which has alerted Jean. No one grins while they’re selling holidays. She’s staring at me from her desk, so I duck my head.

  ‘No, I really can’t. I’ll explain to you . . . another time.’

  I’ve finally noticed what you no doubt noticed immediately – his voice is a bit strained. He sounds quite emotional, even. Is my well-being really that important to him?

  ‘Hey, I’m all right really,’ I say, trying to ease his concern. ‘I’m not feeling sick any more, except when I’m hungry, I’m not revoltingly fat yet, and I’ve still got loads of time left to . . . er . . . make the big decision. I’m trying not to think about it too much, actually. Just getting on with things, you know, kind of hoping the answer will pop into my head one day over EastEnders.’

  ‘Well, if you use that as a guide, you’ll decide to terminate, then won’t be able to go through with it at the last minute, tell the wrong bloke he’s going to be a father and when the real father finds out, they’ll have a fight, one will club the other over the head with an ashtray and your innocent brother will go to prison for it to protect you.’

  He’s joking and I laugh, but there is definitely something not right with him. What do you think? He sounds, I don’t know, sad, I suppose. And although he’s speaking very quietly, his voice is all echoey, as if he’s in the bathroom, or at the swimming pool. Or underground.

  ‘You’re right, perhaps that’s not the best idea . . .’

  ‘Um, can you hang on a minute, Rach, please? I just need to speak to someone.’

  That’s very odd. I’m a bit miffed, if I’m honest. I mean, he rang me, for God’s sake. But I do like the way he’s just called me Rach.

  ‘OK. But make it quick.’

  I glance up as I wait and find Jean frowning at me. She even looks as if she’s going to come over, so I get up. While Hector is talking to someone else, I take the phone away from my ear and conceal it in my hand, then head quickly out of the room towards the corridor. I go into the ladies’ loos and lock myself in a cubicle, just in case Jean is in hot pursuit.

  When I put the phone back to my ear, Hector is apparently still chatting away to this other mysterious person. Irrationally, I hope it’s not a woman. I hear a voice saying something about ‘. . . so very sorry . . .’ but that’s all I can make out. Weird goings-on at the local underground cavern.

  Eventually, he comes back. ‘Are you still there?’ he says quietly. ‘Rachel?’

  ‘Yes, I’m still here, of course, dangling on the end of the phone, just waiting for you to come back and speak to me again.’

  I hear him rele
ase a long breath. ‘Thank you. Thank you so much. I’m sorry to keep you hanging around. It’s just . . .’

  ‘No, it’s fine. I’m locked in a toilet now, so I can take as long as I want. We women are known for it.’

  ‘Yes, I’d noticed that.’

  I can’t see him, obviously, but from the tone of his voice it sounds as if he’s rubbing the back of his head with his eyes closed.

  ‘What’s going on, Hector? Is everything all right?’

  He splutters a bit, and sniffs, then falls silent. I’m wondering if that was actually spluttering and sniffing, or the sound of interference or static on the line. Perhaps we’ve been cut off.

  ‘Hector?’

  He clears his throat. ‘Rachel, can I ask you to do something for me? It would mean . . . It would really help me.’

  ‘You’re not going to ask me to do something weird with a pantomime horse, are you?’ I don’t know why I’m still joking around, but I can’t seem to help it. It must be the tension.

  He snorts faintly. ‘No, you’re all right. Not today. Although I may want to explore that another time. What I want you to do today – now – is, well, just to stay on the phone. Will you do it?’

  I’ve drifted into the Twilight Zone. This request makes no sense at all. He’s rung me up to ask me to stay on the phone? I have to stay on the phone all the while he’s on the other end, don’t I? Unless he’s about to say something really horrible to me, that would normally cause me to slam the phone down – or rather, furiously press the ‘end’ key – and he’s making me promise that I won’t.

  ‘I will, but if you say something horrid, I can’t guarantee . . .’

  ‘No, no, I won’t be speaking. That’s the thing.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Rachel, I’m calling you from St Stephen’s church. In about three minutes, I am going to bury my mum, and I really don’t think I can get through it on my own. It would help me so much if you could just . . . stay there, just so I know someone is there for me. Even though we’re strangers, and I really don’t know you well at all, I feel that somehow you’re connected to me, to this, because of the message you left on my answer phone the other day, just when I was feeling at my lowest point.’

  I’ve put my hand over my mouth. And there I was, joking around and being silly. ‘Oh, Hector, of course I will stay on the phone. Of course. But isn’t Glenn . . .?’

  ‘He’s with Sarah, and Jake. They’re a unit. It’s fine, I don’t mind. I just don’t want to go through it alone.’

  ‘I understand.’ Something occurs to me. ‘What message?’

  ‘Oh, God, this is it. Hold on, Rachel, please. Just stay right there.’

  So I do.

  If we take a look at Hector, and the service he is enduring, we can see, at any point during the next hour, that he has his mobile phone earpiece tucked firmly in his ear. Apart from the few minutes that he spent standing at the lectern, reading some thoughts about their mum he and Glenn had put down on paper earlier that morning, he has one hand covering it. The phone itself is secreted inside his jacket.

  Sitting in the toilet cubicle, tears are sliding down my face as I hear Hector’s beautiful voice talking about the costumes his mum sewed for school plays and fancy-dress parties; the magical Christmases she created; the time their dad prodded her playfully with a fork and she sulked for two hours and refused to come down to dinner. He spoke about his dad’s death too, and how strong his mum was, for the sake of her two boys.

  ‘Mum,’ he is finishing, and I can tell from his voice that he’s letting himself cry in front of everyone, ‘you did well. We never told you, but you were a great mum, and we had a fantastic time. Thank you so much.’

  In the cubicle, I hear quiet steps as he returns to his seat, and then I can hear him breathing again, sucking in rapid breaths through his mouth, letting them out slowly. His hand is back on the earpiece again, almost cradling it, as if he needs to be in contact with it. His head is slightly bent over towards that side, as if he wishes he could lay his head on a shoulder.

  Eventually, the congregation moves outside, and I too have to head off. Here I am, pulling the door to the Ladies open a crack and peering out, phone clutched to my head. About three minutes ago the door banged open and Jean entered. I know it was her because she shouted out, ‘Rachel, are you in here still?’ I kept absolutely quiet and still, like a child in a dinosaur movie, waiting for her to give up and go to look elsewhere for her prey. It took two minutes of shallow breathing, but eventually she went.

  So now I’m up and out of there, heading towards the lifts. I still have Hector in my ear, breathing quietly, talking to other people who are expressing their sadness to him and then waiting for him to say something cheering and make them feel better. Why aren’t they trying to cheer him up?

  Every so often he says, ‘Still there?’ really quietly, and I reply, ‘Still here.’ And he breathes on.

  Five minutes later, downstairs in reception. Can you see me? No? Good. I’m hiding in the stationery cupboard that’s at the end of the corridor where the lifts are. No one ever goes in here because each floor has its own stationery supplies, so these are purely for reception. No one ever uses stationery in reception.

  Upstairs in Telesales, Jean is going berserk. Look at her, her hair is practically on end. She’s tapping a foot and her eyes are fixed to the clock.

  ‘Graham, take over. I’m going for a cigarette,’ she says, heading fast to the door.

  Thank God I thought to hide in the cupboard down here, because here she comes out of the lifts now. Bloody hell, I am so in trouble.

  ‘Rachel,’ says the phone, and I start a little. I had gone into a bit of a trance in the dark here next to boxes of three-year-old brochures. Who wouldn’t?

  ‘Yes, I’m here.’

  ‘It’s over. They’re all leaving.’

  ‘Oh. Where are you now?’

  ‘I’m standing here, next to the grave. She’s in there, right at the bottom. Cold and on her own. How can I leave?’

  ‘Would it help if I talk to you while you walk away?’

  He doesn’t reply, so I start anyway.

  ‘I am in so much trouble now. Jean, my supervisor, has been pounding round the building looking for me. She even came into the loos with a torch while I was in there. Now she’s got SWAT teams at every exit, and there are dogs and men with sticks and lanterns. They’re doing a fingertip search of the carpet in reception at the moment. There’s even a guy in a white paper suit, picking up Biros with tweezers and dropping them into plastic bags.’

  I hear what I think, hope, is a faint snort of laughter, so I carry on.

  ‘I’m not kidding. Jean really, I mean really, doesn’t like us to miss the sales. When my friend Chrissie went to put mascara on once, there was an APB out on her and within five minutes her unmascaraed face was on Crimewatch. She was annoyed about that, I remember.’

  ‘What’s APB stand for?’

  ‘Um, I think it’s something like, All Personnel Beware, or something.’

  Again, the laughter. ‘I’m sorry to have got you into trouble.’

  ‘No, you haven’t. They haven’t found me, so I can sneak back upstairs and pretend I’ve been sitting at my desk the whole time.’

  ‘Aha. That’s a good plan.’

  ‘I thought so. So tell me something. You said that I had left a message on your answerphone.’

  ‘Hah, yes. It cheered me up so much, I can tell you. I don’t know when you left it, but I got it the day before yesterday, when I went into the office.’

  ‘But I didn’t . . .’

  ‘I was back to work after one of the worst weekends of my life, so you have got to imagine my state of mind. I was very depressed when I sat down at my desk, but in spite of that I start going through my messages. There’s one about some contract or other that needs to be adjusted, and one about a meeting I need to attend, and then suddenly you, all out of breath and agitated, saying “Arses”. I think your
actual words were “Arses, arses, arses, ARSE!”’ He laughs, a bit more enthusiastically. ‘Those four words, at that moment, summed up succinctly and absolutely exactly how I was feeling, and hearing you say them on my answerphone made me feel so much better. I was suddenly less alone. I actually laughed out loud, which I really didn’t expect to be doing when I woke up that morning. You are such a tonic for me, Rachel Covington.’

  ‘Thanks. I’m glad I could help.’

  ‘You really did. And thanks for supplying the music, too. It was really comforting.’

  ‘Music? What music?’ What’s he talking about? I can’t have supplied anything because I didn’t know until an hour ago that this funeral was happening today.

  ‘Your humming. It was lovely. So appropriate.’

  ‘Humming?’

  ‘Honestly, Rachel, are you having another X-Files moment? Don’t tell me you don’t remember?’

  ‘I don’t remember.’

  ‘Well, all through the service, while we were all saying goodbye to my mum and I was struggling to keep it together, you were humming “Lean On Me”.’

  Chapter Eleven

  THAT’S A BIT embarrassing, isn’t it? During that long, silent phone call, I was feeling well chuffed that Hector was leaning on me, to help him through that awful time, and apparently my thoughts were plainly audible. I didn’t even realize I was doing it. I’ll have to watch that doesn’t happen again.