Rebound

by Aga Lesiewicz

  What better to improve a foul mood than a brisk walk on the Heath with your dog? Wispa agrees it’s the best idea. We walk down Merton Lane and enter the Heath by the ponds. It’s a glorious afternoon. There are people milling around with their dogs, a few still silhouettes of the guys watching their fishing rods, serious joggers with greyhound expressions on their faces and a handful of birdwatchers visibly excited by something invisible in the bushes on the other side of the pond. Wispa and I quickly march up the hill, putting distance between ourselves and the crowds. At the top of the hill we turn right towards Kenwood. It’s quieter and darker in the woods. I love this part of the Heath. It’s never crowded and the thick bushes and old gnarly trees give it an air of seclusion and mystery. I sit on the bench dedicated to ‘someone who loved this place’ and close my eyes. Bell is right. I need time to process all the things that are happening in my life. It seems I’ve lost control over the direction I’m heading in, and I’m following a pattern of accidental twists of fate, both at work and in my private life. Opportunities, sideways moves, promotions that got me to where I am at work as Head of On-Air, Programming and Creative for a major TV company – not bad for a girl from a scabby little Essex town. But is that it, professionally? And then there is my personal life. My personal mess, as Bell calls it. The sound of a twig breaking under a boot interrupts my thoughts. I open my eyes. A guy with a shaven head and elaborate tattoos on his bare arms passes my bench and disappears into the bushes. I’m just about to close my eyes again when I see another guy, in washed-out jeans with a small rucksack on his back, following the first guy. Surely not . . . I’ve heard the stories of gay cruising grounds on the Heath, but I thought they were further in the woods, towards Spaniards Road. The second guy disappears into the same bushes and I’m suddenly overwhelmed by curiosity. I check on Wispa, who seems obsessed with gnawing on a big tree branch, then I get up and gingerly approach the bushes. At first I see nothing except the mass of greenery. Then I hear something. I move towards the sound. And there they are, the guy with a rucksack kneeling in front of the tattooed guy, who stands with his back to a massive old oak tree, eyes closed, a look of intense pleasure on his face. A twig cracks under my foot and I quickly move back, losing sight of the men. I turn round and face Wispa, who is watching me with her ears pricked up, tilting her head slightly as she always does when she is curious.

  ‘You and me, kid,’ I say quietly, and pat her head. ‘Let’s find you a proper stick.’

  Saturday night and I’m not going out clubbing, I’m not meeting a man in a swanky bar, not even hooking up with friends at the Flask. I’m going to have a quiet evening at Bell’s. We’ve been promising it to each other for months and now the time is right. I pack Wispa and a couple of bottles of wine – Shiraz for me, Viognier for Bell – into my newly glazed and valeted car and set off on my short journey through Hornsey and Finsbury Park to Stoke Newington, where Bell has a flat just off Church Street. I like Stokey, used to live there before I had a salary big enough to just about afford a move to Highgate. It’s changed a lot since then, Clissold House having received a massive facelift, the park turning into a posh nappy valley, with stay-at-home mums sipping their decaf lattes, their offspring asleep in fancy prams. Church Street itself has been desperately hanging on to a few decrepit buildings and residents, being slowly pushed out by new cafes, organic grocers and a few second-hand shops dressed up as ‘vintage’. I nostalgically think of the good old times at the smoky Vortex, replaced now by Nando’s.

  Bell opens the door with a glass of wine in her hand. Her evening started some time ago.

  We finish her excellent chorizo and spinach risotto and move onto her spacious leather sofa. I’m grateful she hasn’t mentioned James.

  ‘Do you consider yourself a failure?’ Bell is opening a second bottle of white for herself.

  ‘A failure in what?’ I’m not sure I want to get into this conversation.

  ‘In everything. In life.’

  ‘It all depends on your point of reference. What do you measure it against? Your mother’s dream for her only child? Ambitious plans you had at uni? They’re all pies in the sky.’

  ‘So we’re all failures by default. I personally don’t have a problem with it. I practise it every day.’

  Bell is not doing that badly. Having left the teaching job that was driving her insane, she retrained as a massage therapist and has a respectable group of clients who adore her. She doesn’t commute to work, she works when she wants to and is her own boss.

  ‘Oh, come on. I know a lot of people who’d swap with you right now.’

  ‘Hey, don’t take my failure away from me. It’s mine.’ She pours some wine for me. I watch Wispa snore blissfully at our feet.

  ‘I think it’s about being happy with what you have. Being in the present.’

  ‘So you’re happy?’ I know she’s edging towards the subject of James. Or the absence of him.

  ‘I think I am.’ I hesitate. ‘At least I feel free.’

  ‘You don’t miss him?’

  ‘Well, to be perfectly honest, I did miss him this morning.’ I know this will annoy her, so I pause, but she doesn’t take the bait. ‘Someone had smashed the window in my car and I nearly rang him to ask for help. I suppose I’ll have to toughen up . . .’

  ‘I thought you’d toughened up enough during your divorce.’

  ‘God,’ I groan at the thought of my psycho ex-husband Andrew. ‘Please don’t remind me of that creep. Thank goodness I don’t have to go through the same with James.’

  ‘How’s work?’ She changes the subject at last and tops up my glass.

  ‘Work?’ I yawn and shrug my shoulders. Wispa lifts her head and looks at me questioningly. It reminds me of the look she gave me on the Heath.

  ‘Do lesbians go cruising?’ I ask Bell, and watch her eyes go round with surprise and then amusement.

  ‘Cruising?’

  ‘Yeah, you know, in the bushes, I don’t know, loos and stuff . . .’ I’m already regretting having broached the subject.

  ‘That’s cottaging.’

  ‘Whatever.’ I shrug again. I don’t want to continue this. But Bell presses on.

  ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘Oh, it’s nothing, it’s silly.’

  ‘What?’ She nudges me and I know she won’t let go until I tell her.

  ‘I went to the Heath with Wispa this afternoon and I saw these two guys having sex in the bushes.’

  Bell makes a face.

  ‘No, it wasn’t like that . . . I mean, they weren’t doing it in the middle of an open field. I actually spied on them . . .’

  ‘You did what?’

  ‘I crept behind a bush and . . .’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t know. I was curious, I suppose.’ Embarrassed, I take a gulp of my wine. ‘And then . . . I kind of got into it . . .’

  ‘You JOINED them?!’ Bell nearly knocks her glass over.

  ‘No, no, no. No. I just . . . understood what they were about. Why they were doing it.’

  ‘Anna, let me tell you.’ Bell sounds drunk and serious at the same time. ‘Lesbians don’t go cruising. They don’t run around the Heath looking for another dyke. WOMEN don’t do it. We don’t stick our minge in some glory hole and wait for a stranger to poke it.’

  ‘Sorry!’ I raise my hands. ‘I was just asking.’

  ‘And let me tell you WHY we don’t do it. Because we’re wired up differently to men. Because our testosterone levels are much lower. Because our needs are different.’

  ‘Bell, I get it!’

  She stops ranting and takes a sip of wine. ‘Anyway,’ she winks, putting her glass down, ‘it’s about time you climbed down from that fence you’ve been sitting on for as long as I’ve known you and join me on my side.’

  ‘I know, Bell, I know.’ I lean over and kiss her on the cheek. ‘If only it were that easy.’

  ‘But it ain’t,’ she says, and pours us more wine.

 
Thirty-four Days Earlier

  The next morning I’m greeted in Bell’s guest room by a hangover from hell. Wispa drags me out for a short stumble around Clissold Park. I pick up some freshly baked croissants in Church Street and by the time I’m back at Bell’s she’s standing in her kitchen by her coffee machine. She looks as bad as I feel. We don’t talk much, which is fine. It’s good to have a friend you can have a laugh with, but also be silent when you feel like it.

  I drive back home around midday, knowing that it’s not going to be one of those productive and soul-restoring Sundays that make you feel smug and on top of everything. It’s going to be a waste of time in a can’t-be-bothered kind of way. It’s OK, everyone needs one of those from time to time. I call them Wispa Sundays. She loves them because she gets me, slouching around the house in a pair of old track bottoms, all to herself.

  The house feels stuffy. I open the windows to air it, but it’s wet and windy outside and the dampness immediately seeps into my bones. I feel tempted to turn on the heating, even though the calendar tells me not to. No one in their right mind turns the heating on at this time of year in this country. It’s supposed to be summer, for God’s sake, except it’s not. And, as the cheerful weather people tell us, this is what we’re going to get for the next ten years, if we’re lucky. It could be twenty, if we’re not. I decide to ignore the weather and warm up in a different way. I wrap myself in a green raincoat I picked up in a chandlery in a small coastal village while on a weekend trip to Norfolk with James and head out into the rain. It’s pretty disgusting outside but I push on towards the Heath, Wispa lolloping about like a happy seal.

  I would have thought the Heath would be empty, but there are quite a few hardened walkers defying the weather. I decide to do our usual loop and Wispa and I fall into a nice marching rhythm. As I enter the woods I’m reminded of the two guys I saw yesterday. No chance of catching any of them in this weather, I think to myself. But there is someone coming from the opposite direction, down the path leading from Kenwood. It’s a tall man in a grey Barbour wax jacket and as he approaches I’m struck by how handsome he is. Passing each other, we exchange a casual glance and he reminds me of the men from Dior’s moody ads. Probably gay, I think to myself. I’m distracted by Wispa bundling towards me dragging a branch covered in wet moss. I wrestle it from her and throw it high in the bushes where she can’t reach it. When I look round, the guy is gone.

  We climb up Fitzroy Park and reach the village, both totally wet. As we pass the charity shop something in the window catches my eye. I stop suddenly, pulling on Wispa’s lead. In the middle of the display, among the dusty crystals and yellow-with-age crockery, at the feet of a headless dummy in a flowery dress sits my teddy bear! I come closer to the window and stare at it. It definitely looks like James’s peluche; not an old toy with a wonky paw and matted fur like you’d expect in a charity shop, but a brand-new, clean and immaculate plush teddy. But it can’t be, mine got nicked from the car, I try to think logically. But what if . . . no, no, no, this is absurd. Why would anyone break a car window to steal a toy and then take it promptly to a charity shop? I walk away from the window, having decided it’s just a coincidence, the result of a sudden unexplained surplus of teddy bears in North London. Then a niggling thought stops me in my tracks. Could it be James, after all? No, it’s impossible. This is absolutely not the kind of thing he would do. I wouldn’t put it past Andrew, but thankfully he’s been out of my life for years. James wouldn’t do anything so creepy. Wispa pulls on the lead like crazy as we walk down our street. At least one of us is ready for dinner.

  I open the front door and remember I should get my keys back from James. I pick up the phone and dial his number. He answers almost instantly.

  ‘Anna? What a lovely surprise.’

  ‘How are you?’

  He tells me he’s great, has made some new resolutions, signed on a new fitness plan.

  ‘You know, burn that fat, build the muscle, reshape the body . . .’

  ‘There is nothing wrong with your body!’

  ‘Well, there’s always room for improvement.’ The way he says it sounds funny and we both laugh. I like his laugh.

  We chat for a while longer and I feel increasingly uneasy about the true reason for my phone call. Eventually we run out of chit-chat and I have to bite the bullet.

  ‘James . . . I know it’ll sound a bit mean, but it’s not really, it’s just that I need . . . could you possibly drop my keys off?’

  I waffle on about needing the spare set for my handyman, who’ll do a bit of work in the house. I know I sound like an idiot, a mean idiot at that. But his reaction makes it instantly all right. Of course, he says, sounding as if he’s to blame for the oversight, he’ll swing by and put them through my letter box. It’s no problem at all, he assures me. I thank him profusely, too profusely, and we say goodbye, wishing each other the best of luck.

  Revenge? What was I thinking? He’s a good man. But no, I warn myself, don’t even consider getting back together with him. It was nice while it lasted, but now you need time on your own, stay single for a while, I hear Bell’s voice in my head tell me.

  ‘OK, girlfriend,’ I say, partly to myself, partly to Wispa, and go to the kitchen to fill her bowl.

  Thirty-three Days Earlier

  As soon as I arrive at work I know it’s going to be a day from hell. Claire informs me my calendar has been cleared of all afternoon appointments to make room for a meeting with the President. Julian, as he likes to be called, although in my opinion Mr President would suit him much better, is coming to his London office personally. It can only mean bad news.

  I ponder all the unsettling scenarios. Reorganization. Hiring freezes. Budget cuts. Lay-offs. They all imply change. I’ve been around the block a few times, so I’m pretty used to change. I know I can survive, even if I get the sack today. But the majority of my staff, all those supposedly free-as-a-bird creative types, producers with the resilience of a butterfly’s wing, dread change. A rumour of lay-offs or even an unexpected promotion, anything that brings up fears of being unemployed, sets them off into a frenzy of panic or turns them into perpetual moaners who carry their hurt egos around like open wounds for anyone to see. Then there are the ‘permalancers’, who our business relies heavily upon. Freelancers who hang on to one job for months or even years, against the advice of their accountant and their own better judgement. They can be difficult and needy too, although in reality they haven’t got a leg to stand on and can be got rid of with a click of a mouse. Whatever change Julian will announce this afternoon, I’m not looking forward to it. And I dread its fallout.

  Gary puts his face through my open door. Damn, I forgot to shut it. My open door means anyone can pop in, in the spirit of the open camaraderie so painstakingly perpetuated by the company. Gary is my biggest promotion blunder. A fourteen-year-old boy trapped in the ageing body of a forty-year-old man, carrying his fat beer gut like an attribute of youth, Gary used to be a mediocre, but useful, senior producer until I promoted him to Creative Director. Big mistake. Now the boy thinks he’s a man. He shows his temper exactly when he’s not supposed to, then crumbles in tears like a baby at the sight of any challenge. Now he’s on a mission to destroy Bill. Bill is an editor, one of the longest serving in the company, and he has something Gary fears most: balls. And Bill has witnessed Gary dressing down, in a particularly nasty way, a shy and rather sweet-looking permalancer named Lisa. What Gary didn’t know was that Bill was going out with Lisa. So he ripped Bill’s girlfriend to shreds over nothing right in front of him, in his edit suite. Bill went straight to HR. HR reacted in their own wishy-washy way. Gary was gently reprimanded. Freelance work for Lisa had immediately dried up. Bill was left fuming. And Gary had embarked on a back-stabbing mission to get rid of Bill. But as nothing happens very quickly in our company, they are both still here, hating each other’s guts. I find Gary increasingly nauseating and I wish I could turn back the clock. But clocks go only one way in this p
lace, onwards and upwards.

  ‘You busy?’ says Gary with his boyish grin that is supposed to mean ‘Oh, I’m so cute.’

  ‘I am, Gary. Sorry. Can it wait till tomorrow?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Oh, Gary, can you shut the door?’

  My glass door closes and I’m left in peace. I hide in my glass sanctuary through the morning, nipping out for a quick bite to eat in a cafe everyone avoids. It has famously bad food, but at least it’s always quiet.

  At five to three my work calendar pings and I make my way upstairs to the executive floor. Julian welcomes me as if I’m a long-lost relative. He is a small man, always immaculately dressed and smelling of good aftershave. He has the air of success and satisfaction about him, something that evolves over many years of huge salaries and bonuses. He asks me to sit on his comfortable leather sofa. He offers me coffee, which I accept. And then he tells me the bad news, disguised as an exciting development. It’s actually a message from the Chairman, he hastens to add, relieving himself of the immediate responsibility for what he’s about to announce.

  ‘What we want to create is an efficient and streamlined organizational structure,’ he says and my heart sinks. As the vision of ‘accelerated growth’, ‘integration’ and ‘single operational structure’ fills the office I’m already imagining a long list of redundancies, people having to reapply for their jobs, tears, grievances, employment tribunals. And then he drops an even bigger bombshell. It appears an external management consulting company has been hired to, as Julian puts it, ‘manage the change’. From now on, and for the foreseeable future – the next three months to be precise – Cadenca Global will be our guardian angel. I’ve never heard of Cadenca Global, but Julian assures me they are the best money can buy. I don’t doubt that. Spend money to save money: that sounds like a standard way of doing business in our industry. Oh, what great news. The day from hell has just turned into the beginning of a whole season from hell.