Not What They Were Expecting

by Neal Doran

  ‘Fuck it,’ he hissed to himself. He wasn’t thinking of it like that. This was just a work social occasion. OK, so yes. She was attractive. And seemed to fancy him a bit. But that was normal, right? There’d always been good-looking women where he’d worked, and he’d always had a respectable share of attention, and done his bit of flirting. He hadn’t felt the need to go into every detail of every exchange with Rebecca then, and this needn’t be any different. She was probably the same. He could always tell when one of Rebecca’s clients was good-looking, or if one of the trainees was a bit of a hunk by the way she talked about them without her saying anything specifically about it.

  They’d swapped messages around lunchtime, confirming a drink was still on. Then he’d avoided seeing her for the rest of the day. He just didn’t want to talk about it. As five-thirty approached, he strolled over to the stationery cupboard and thought he caught a glimpse of her long black hair against her standard waitressy white shirt heading out of the kitchen. By the time he got back to his desk he had an email telling him to be at the exit in five minutes, or she’d go without him. Tapping he was on his way, he hurriedly shut down his computer. Staring at his reflection in the dark blank computer screen he sat up a little, adjusted his tie, and combed his fingers through the hair above his ears. It needed a trim. With a cough he stood up, grabbed the rucksack he always pointlessly brought with him, and headed for the doors.

  As he wondered whether they were supposed to meet at the way out of the office, or from the building exit down on the street, she emerged from the toilets, changed out of her work clothes. She was wearing a pair of jeans that hung low on her hips, the curve of her waist making a funslide that caused his eyes to land on her arse. Then he noticed the top she was wearing: skimming the top of her jeans was a fitted checked shirt, not dissimilar to the one he’d shown up in on his first day, although he was pretty sure his didn’t look like this on him. It had popper buttons along the front, most of which seemed to be undone. For a second he couldn’t help try and work out just how far down her chest you had to go before the shirt was properly secured, with no danger of gaping.

  ‘I thought this look might make you feel a bit more comfortable.’

  ‘I’ve er…’ He gestured to his suit, which he suddenly felt made him look more like an accountant than he’d ever felt before. ‘I thought we were going to the pub. We’re not taking the forklift are we?’

  ‘I don’t like wearing those work clothes for a second longer than I have to.’

  He thought about maybe losing the tie to look more relaxed. The top button was certainly feeling a little restrictive at the minute.

  Banter. It’s just office banter.

  ‘These clothes I can take my time getting out of,’ she said looking right at him with her sullen eyes and tiny pout.

  Fucking hell.

  They got to the pub in two minutes. It didn’t look like a nice one by any stretch. The concrete exterior made it resemble a nuclear bunker, although James suspected a war was more likely to kick off inside the place rather than outside. It looked like it would feature on a Sky TV programme called Places We Can’t Pay Even Ross Kemp Enough To Go To. But it was offering ‘£2 pint’s’ so hey, it was worth a go. Most importantly, it was very near the office, and James really needed that drink.

  ‘Cheers,’ he said as he came back from the bar with his lager and her JD and Coke. He took a large gulp and had a look around. They were the only people in at the minute. It was actually not too bad inside, he thought to himself. Bit dated, but very clean and tidy. That was probably too boring a thing to say to Gemma. But then again, it was safe. He finished his scan of the premises and turned back to her just as she got up to leave the table. She walked to the high bar, tiptoed so she could lean on the surface, and ordered another whiskey and Coke and another pint without saying please or thank you. The middle-aged barman didn’t seem to mind, giving her a big grin and a cheery ‘here you go’. He got nothing but the exact change for the drinks in return.

  ‘So,’ James said as she sat down.

  ‘You’re getting behind,’ Gemma said, ‘you might want to try downing that one in under ten seconds.’

  James could feel himself blush a little.

  ‘Those days are behind me I’m afraid. Now I’m a grown-up I’ve learnt that a pint of slightly flat Carling is something to be savoured.’

  Thankfully, Gemma had slowed down the rate she was knocking the JD back, so the situation seemed to be calming a little. Although he noticed she had got herself a large one.

  ‘I saw the new Raimi is out next week,’ he said, trying to keep things neutral.

  ‘You wanna take me to it?’

  ‘No! No, I mean, we could go. But I was just wondering if you’d seen any reviews.’

  ‘Nah.’

  James took another big gulp of beer and tried to remember the name of the slasher pic Ryan Gosling had made before his big break. He started to ask her about it.

  ‘What was the name…’

  ‘Look,’ she cut in, ‘movie trivia’s fine for the shithole next door, but it’s not what I want to spend my whole night talking about.’

  ‘OK.’

  They sat in silence for a minute. She was staring off in the distance where the fruit machine was silently running through its prize sequence.

  ‘I’m sorry, I can’t do this,’ he said.

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘This… We’re drinking and…’

  That was a point. If you looked at them now, they weren’t really doing anything. The thing was, he’d been telling himself that all day and had never quite convinced himself.

  She stared at him with an expression he could only think of as a blend of innocence and contempt. Strangely, it was a look that worked for her.

  ‘And, nothing,’ he continued. ‘Just I forgot to get crisps.’

  He finished off the first of the pints sitting in front of him and held her stare with what he hoped was nonchalant disdain.

  ‘You know, I’ve got some decent Russian vodka back at mine,’ she said.

  Chapter 32

  Rebecca barely moved from the sofa while she waited for James to come home. Except to get herself some ice cream. She was getting to the point where she didn’t even like the stuff that much any more, just needed to have it. She’d said to James at the weekend she was beginning to worry she might not actually be pregnant but just changing shape because of the cookie dough.

  She winced. Just thinking about talking together when nothing was going on was painful to her. She kept almost forgetting that Ben was gone. And every time she thought of that she remembered James had lied about where he was going and what he was doing. And he’d been getting increasingly distant since he’d lost his job, which she’d assumed was worry because he’d lost his job, but she was now even more worried it was because of something else.

  In the silence of the living room she could hear the footsteps on the path and James’s cough before he opened the front door. She tensed, then went to jump up from out of the sofa so she could be standing when he came in the room. Then she slumped back on the arm of the seat, dizzy, realising why you don’t hear about seven-month-pregnant women jumping up out of chairs that often. He came through the door as her head cleared.

  ‘Hey darling,’ he said.

  ‘Have you…’ She didn’t know what to say.

  ‘Have you spoken to your mother?’

  ‘Ah no,’ he sighed, dumping his bag at the base of the stairs and dropping his coat heavily on the banisters. ‘What’s she done now? Is she still going on about going through the spice rack to make sure we haven’t got any unethically sourced cumin? I told her everything in that cupboard was bought in the last days of Empire and the damage has been done, but where there’s a principle…’

  Rebecca noticed he seemed to be hovering in the hallway, reluctant to come into the room.

  ‘Tell you what, love, I’m knackered. I might head straight up,’ he said, drummin
g his fingers on the doorframe.

  ‘There’s something we need to talk about, James,’ she said, her voice catching just saying that. She had no idea how she was going to do this.

  He froze in the doorway, gripping the door handle.

  ‘Are you all right, darling?’

  Rebecca had to push down a surge of nervous irritation. Why wouldn’t he just come in, sit down, and let her tell him!

  ‘Sit down, darl—’

  ‘It’s not Bomp?’ he asked starting to stand again halfway down towards sitting on the armchair.

  ‘No,’ she said, ‘Bomp’s fine. James, Ben’s died.’

  The final words came out almost as a squeal, and the tears started.

  He sat there, staring at her.

  ‘Shit. When did it happen?’

  ‘Late this afternoon I think. Your mum said—’

  ‘I suppose I better go over. There’ll be stuff to do.’

  ‘Are you OK?’

  ‘Yeah. Yeah, just… Jesus.’

  He stood up quickly, but didn’t move any further. She wanted to go and hug him but the tension radiating from him felt like it was pushing everything away.

  ‘I’ll get the car keys,’ he said.

  ‘I’d better drive you, hun.’

  ‘What was it an accident? His heart?’

  ‘We don’t know. I don’t know yet. I think Maggie was still waiting to find out the details.’

  ‘I guess we need to… I ought to…’

  A noise got stuck in his throat and the barriers collapsed. He engulfed his wife and sobbed suddenly and violently. She smoothed his hair as he buried his head in her shoulder and put a hand on his waist. Almost as soon as it had started the crying stopped.

  ‘Jeez, sorry darling. Dunno what that was,’ he said, blinking heavily.

  ‘Don’t be silly. You’ve just…just had some terrible news. You’re supposed to be in pieces. Are you feeling all right?’

  He let out a little hmph as he looked down and massaged his eyebrows together with one hand.

  ‘Come on. I’ll get you to your mum.’

  Rebecca thought it was quiet in the car on the way to Maggie and Ben’s. Maggie’s, she corrected herself. The roads were clear and she felt very aware of everything going on around them – the people putting out their bins, or waiting for the bus, or heading for the corner shop. It felt like normal life was being played out in front of them like a piece of elaborate street theatre. James hadn’t said much at first, just stared out the window, occasionally drumming his fingers along the handle above his door.

  ‘What do you think happened?’ he asked again.

  ‘I don’t know, love.’

  ‘Maggie didn’t give any indication?’

  ‘I don’t think she knew herself when I spoke to her.’

  ‘I guess that means it’s something medical. If he’d been hit by a car, they’d tell you straight away.’

  Rebecca nodded her head non-commitally.

  ‘It must have happened at work.’

  ‘I think that was what it was. But she was waiting to hear more.’

  ‘You’d think she’d call.’

  ‘I think your phone’s off, hun.’

  Rebecca felt guilty for knowing that. For a minute the atmosphere felt different inside the bubble of the car. James tensed, she thought, and shifted his weight around in the seat.

  ‘Battery, it must be,’ he mumbled.

  ‘Maybe it was his heart,’ he said after a while. ‘But heart attacks don’t have to be fatal. It could just be a warning.’

  Rebecca glanced across at him through her mirrors.

  ‘Jesus…’ He looked like he was going to say something, but stopped as he concentrated his energies on not crying, grinding his teeth as he took deep breaths.

  ‘Always look on the bright side of life,’ he sang quietly to himself.

  These little attempts to, what, cheer himself up a bit? Test out just how awful he felt? Cope with the shock? They were breaking Rebecca’s heart. There was nothing she could do to help him. Nothing.

  ‘Watch out for that idiot,’ he muttered to himself as a red Volkswagen pulled out into the traffic without looking, and veered too close to the opposite lane.

  Rebecca noticed a man giving his girlfriend a friendly hug as they waited in the queue in the chip shop.

  Life goes on. You’ve just got to get on with it. She wasn’t going to ask him where he’d been tonight. Not tonight. Not ever.

  At Maggie’s, Rebecca felt almost like an intruder as she watched a mother and son comfort each other. To think they didn’t really get on most of the time. It was an uncharitable thought. To escape she’d headed to the kitchen to make tea. ’Cos that’s what you do…

  As always Maggie and Ben’s – Maggie’s, she was really going to have to try harder not to make that mistake – Maggie’s kitchen struck her as the polar opposite of what James wanted. There was barely a surface that wasn’t covered in junk: newspapers, paints, food that probably should be in the fridge, or the bin. Ben’s tobacco… At home, if Rebecca left the olive oil on the counter for a second while she went looking for a tin of tomatoes, she’d come back and James would have hidden it away in a cupboard. It drove her mad, but she guessed if this was the alternative, it could be worse. She filled the plasticky old food-speckled kettle with water and tried not to imagine the extent of the limescale that furred the inside of it. Then she hunted around among the herbal teabags and tins of exotic foul-smelling blends to find something she could use that would be the closest to normal.

  She could hear the two of them talking quietly in the other room and didn’t want to go back in. She wasn’t sure if it was to not disturb them, or because she didn’t want to be there. Pull yourself together, Becs, she said to herself, looping a finger between the handles of two mugs and grabbing a third with the other hand.

  ‘Here you go, Maggie,’ she said, disentangling herself from one of the teas while trying not to spill it. ‘Are you hungry, have you eaten? I could get you something.’

  ‘Thanks, Rebecca. I’m fine.’

  ‘James?’

  ‘I’m all right, darling. I’ve had something.’

  There was that guilty silence again.

  ‘Maggie was just telling me what happened. I was right, it was his heart.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Rebecca didn’t know what that meant, or who she was saying it to.

  ‘A massive heart attack, as they call it. Massive.’

  She nodded, not knowing what else to do, and James continued.

  ‘The thing is, even something like that can be survivable if they deal with it in time.’

  ‘There was nothing you could have done,’ Rebecca said.

  ‘No shit? You don’t think my day’s corporate training on office first aid would have come in handy if I’d been following my dad around all day?’

  James shook his head and waved sorry at his wife. She gave him a squeeze of the shoulders, embarrassed for saying something so stupid in the first place. Rebecca sat down next to him, suddenly conscious that she’d been standing hovering over James and Maggie as they’d sat on opposite couches. He reached over and gave Bompalomp a rub as they sat together. Rebecca glanced over at Maggie, feeling a bit awkward at this moment of intimacy in front of her mother-in-law. Maggie was staring in their direction with a blank look on her face. She had never seen her so lifeless, so empty-looking. She looked old. It struck Rebecca that normally Maggie couldn’t look at anything without studying it, ready to challenge or question what she saw. It gave her an energy that was entirely missing now.

  ‘You won’t believe this, Becs,’ James said as they sat together. ‘The reason no one could help him when he had the heart attack? No one knew where he was, so nobody could find him. It was only when the office PA mentioned he hadn’t been seen since the time he usually disappeared with the Guardian crossword for half an hour that people realised. By the time they tracked him down and broke the cubicle door in he wa
s already dead. What is it with us and dads that get themselves into trouble in toilets?’

  ‘A Westernised shame about basic bodily functions certainly doesn’t help. It can make celebrity millionaires out of comedians who make fart jokes,’ said Maggie, still spaced out but with a ghost of her normal attitude around her, ‘and also stops women doing perfectly sensible things like going into a room to check on someone, just because they’re afraid to break the taboo of a gender-specific stick figure on the door.’

  Rebecca mmm’d thoughtfully.

  ‘Can’t put it off any longer. We’d better go,’ said Maggie, rising to her feet, ‘bureaucracy doesn’t end with death, it claims that too.’

  ‘Do you need me to drive you?’ asked Rebecca.

  ‘You head home,’ said James, ‘we don’t know how long this could take, and you need to keep rested. Maggie can drive and drop me home.’

  He gave her a hug, leaning his bulky frame down into her shoulder, squeezing her tightly. She hugged him close back, not thinking about the crazy mix of emotions they’d gone through in one night, focusing on the comfort they both needed. They stepped apart and she saw him hurriedly run his hand across both eyes.

  ‘Well,’ he said with a strained clearing of his throat, ‘you’ll know where to find me.’

  Chapter 33

  At the hospital, Maggie had wanted to go and see the body by herself. James knew it was understandable, but he couldn’t help feel a little twinge that this was typical Maggie, making sure the drama was all about her, the moment framed so she could tell everyone about how it affected her.

  The art would be next. There’d be a whole new type of art. With a sigh, he told himself off for being so uncharitable, especially at a time like this. But his brain was not behaving itself. He didn’t know how to act. He didn’t know how to accept the news. He almost felt like he shouldn’t. It was too sudden. It shouldn’t be possible that Ben was dead. He welled up a little at that.