It's Not Me, It's You

by Mhairi McFarlane

  In contrast to Delia, Kurt clearly loved his attire; a black double-breasted suit with wide white pinstripes, spats, a black shirt and white tie and black trilby. Cartoonised Al Capone.

  Despite saying Delia would have to carry his BlackBerry, he couldn’t bear to part with it, and it peeked out of one of his shallow jacket pockets.

  She scanned for the outline of the Superman stick in his other pocket, while trying not to be caught – as she emphatically didn’t want Kurt to think she was eyeballing his crotch.

  He must’ve swapped the stick into that jacket. Must have. Adam was right that there were a lot of ifs and buts and suppositions in their scheme, however. The world usually threw up more variables than you ever allowed for in a planning session.

  Kurt himself was one big belligerent variable, a dangerous person who Delia had decided to cross for the greater moral good.

  After passing a few bored-looking paparazzi, they were in the domed atrium at the V&A, where their names were crossed off a guest list. Delia cricked her neck gazing at the extraordinary neon green, blue and yellow glass chandelier that tumbled from the ceiling, looking like the tangled innards of some crash-landed alien spacecraft.

  Now they were somewhere so magisterial and proper, Delia felt the full force of the plan to rob Kurt. This was scary.

  She followed Kurt through the marble tiled hall, steps echoing.

  They came out into the courtyard with its oval, lake-sized pond, light glinting on the water in the early evening sunshine. Delia felt as if she was in an episode of Doctor Who: the space was thronged with Incredible Hulks, Stormtroopers, fairytale princesses, and Cleopatras. This was certainly a high-end fancy dress do where everyone had gone all out. Delia was only used to half-arsed, cheapo student ones where people turned up in Stetsons and spotted neck ties and mislaid them within a half hour of their arrival.

  Waiters in Phantom of the Opera masks with trays of Martinis circulated, an ice luge in the shape of a swan dribbled vodka. The brand’s inspirational theme slogan of Become Who You Want To Be was plastered around the place, to remind everyone why they looked stupid. Delia was glad of her costume now; she was no longer out of place and it made playing tonight’s role easier.

  She accepted a cocktail, grateful for Dutch courage, and yet equally aware that she needed to stay sharp.

  She’d looked up YouTube videos about pickpocketing, thinking how useful and also worrying it was that there were How To videos on crimes nowadays. She learned she needed to distract Kurt by mentioning something else about his person, so his ‘area of concentration’ was directed elsewhere.

  Delia also had to weight his pocket with something equivalent to the drive so he’d think he had it while he didn’t have it. She’d almost used a Lil-Lets holder until, doh, she twigged: buy another Superman-shaped USB drive. She was paranoid about getting them mixed up, or Kurt spotting hers every time she opened her not-very-Fox-ish handbag: Steph had judged them identical.

  One Martini down, she felt emboldened enough to breathe deeply and say: it’s time. She palmed the empty drive, feeling the clock-tick of her heart.

  ‘Is your pocket square sewn in or did they give you a real one?’ she said, leaning over in a supposedly tipsy manner and twitching at the red silk in the upper right-hand side of his jacket.

  Kurt’s eyes followed her hand.

  Simultaneously, she slid her fingers into the jacket pocket nearest her, feeling for the drive – yes! It was there! Oh my goodness! She’d never truly believed that theory would become reality. She swapped one for another, holding Kurt’s drive with her fingertips and letting go of the second one in her palm. Her palms were slick with the transgressive, self-conscious guilt of a shoplifter.

  Kurt, chin on chest, said: ‘It’s the real McCoy, should be for this money,’ and yanked it out, waving the hanky as demonstration, as Delia withdrew her hand sharply. Amazing – distraction worked like a dream. She got the impression she could’ve been less dexterous and still got away with it.

  She didn’t dare look at what she had in her hand, her fingers closed tight like a vice over the ridged plastic bullet.

  ‘Just nipping to the loo,’ she announced gaily, voice brittle. ‘Is the gun getting in the way, shall I see if they can cloakroom it?’

  ‘Nah, I kinda like it,’ Kurt said, miming machine-gunning the guests. Lovely.

  Making sure she hadn’t been followed, Delia headed for the toilets, texting Steph with nervously clumsy fingers.

  I have it.

  Delia pretended to be touching up her whiskers at a mirror. She felt a light tap on her shoulder and a shorter version of the killer from Scream stood at her elbow.

  They’d agreed Steph’s costume needed to be both completely anonymous and easily removable, as Adam was holed up in a rented office across the road. Drawing large amounts of attention once she was outside the V&A wasn’t ideal.

  Delia slipped the tiny superhero into her black gloved hand and hoped she’d dealt with the right cloaked slasher. She felt as if she was in the movies, only instead of the events happening to someone else onscreen and being resolved by the credits, she was right at the centre of the tornado.

  She made her way back to Kurt and set into her second Martini, not listening to a word of a work conversation between him and a man from Avatar, complete with dreadlocks, electric blue body paint and giant spear.

  Delia still couldn’t believe the switch had gone so smoothly. In a different version of the plan, that’d be it, done – they’d discussed whether or not to leave Kurt with the decoy USB. As appealing as it had been to only do the switch once, they’d come to the conclusion that Kurt would realise he’d got a dud very soon after leaving the party. Adam thought leaving him any time to mount legal actions and get injunctions before he published his article would be a bad idea. Or, something worse.

  ‘If he guesses what we’ve done, I wouldn’t put it past him to have someone come and take a baseball bat and smash my hard drive up, and they might have a go at smashing me up while they’re at it. I mean, we’ve not exactly played fair, so we’d have trouble going to the police. He needs to know right at the point I’m ready to post the article about Lively Later Life and no sooner. Publication is protection.’

  The thought of Adam getting a pasting after a scheme Delia had dreamed up had been horrible to contemplate, and she acquiesced to the logic. It still didn’t guard against Kurt suddenly deciding he was leaving the party and it happening anyway, another variable that gave Delia a gippy gut.

  Having told herself to go steady with the booze, she already felt slightly blurry and off-kilter. She remembered the wisdom that Martinis were like boobs – one was not enough and three too many – and only pretended to sip this one.

  Time ticked past, and Delia knew they must have used most of the hour maximum they’d allowed for the hacking. It had been one thing to agree in principle that it might fail. In the event, Delia had to admit it was incredibly dispiriting to think they might be empty-handed, and she still had to perform the switch again.

  She felt her phone bip in her bag.

  It had been at least forty-five minutes. This was obviously going to tell her to prepare to take delivery of an uncracked stick.

  BINGO. IN. Bloody hell, your boy is good. On its way back to you. Ax

  Delia had to absorb this air-punching news without betraying a flicker of emotion. She’d never quite believed they could do it. She knew Joe was good but this should see him get an award.

  Delia waited five minutes and excused herself to the ladies again. Inside, the Scream killer with warm gloved palms pushed the talisman into her hand, as Delia pretended to touch up her vulpine nose. Despite Steph’s face being entirely obscured and Delia’s being heavily disguised, she could feel the moment that passed between them.

  Once back at Kurt’s side, she struggled to stay level and make conversation when she was on a euphoria-, adrenaline- and Martini-high. Perhaps master criminals who turned over casin
os and stole famous art did it for this sort of illicit buzz, as well as the money.

  Nevertheless, with the end in sight, Delia surprised herself by her hesitation in doing the swap back. She was almost home. She’d proved to herself she could do it. In a way, the second part was harder. There was more at stake now.

  Prevaricating, she let time pass. She felt her mobile buzz with texts. She didn’t want Kurt to wonder why she was checking her phone constantly, and left them ten minutes before looking.

  Is everything alright? Sx

  Did it go OK? Ax

  They were obviously fretting she’d been grabbed by the wrist by Kurt and he was attempting Sharia Law with a rubber meat cleaver prop.

  What should she use as distraction? It couldn’t be the hanky the second time. It’d have to be something in their eye line.

  ‘I hope that Klansman isn’t a Twist & Shout client,’ she said, conversationally. Kurt had mentioned that Gideon Coombes was here, somewhere, under a layer of panstick or a wig. He wouldn’t be speaking to him as he ‘didn’t believe in fraternising with clients in a social setting’.

  Kurt glanced over. Delia quickly delved into his pocket, grabbed the spare and dropped the drive. And yet – unexpected variable – Kurt glanced back and said: ‘I think it’s a shit ghost.’

  The movement meant his body pushed closer to the pocket, and the pressure of her hand, holding the decoy drive, was greater than intended. He would very likely have felt the contact and Delia had a split second to decide what to do. She couldn’t think of anything other than to pull her hand out swiftly and pretend she’d been intending to clasp him at the waist, praying desperately he hadn’t sensed precisely where her hand had been.

  ‘I’m going to get off, anyway,’ she said, leaning up to peck him on the cheek, as if the whole thing had been an overfamiliar, over-refreshed way of saying farewell.

  It was an odd moment, with Delia seemingly behaving completely out of character, and she could see Kurt trying to make sense of it.

  ‘Wanna go somewhere quieter? I could be into that,’ he said, reciprocating with his hand on her waist.

  Ordinarily, Delia would’ve knocked him right back. Here, she was trapped in the charade where she’d suddenly become inappropriately tactile towards him. If she broke the spell, he might wake up to what she had been doing.

  ‘I best get off. Early start in the morning. I’m off to Newcastle. A christening.’ A christening?

  Still, it tied with her plan to call him on Monday and say she was gone for good.

  ‘It’s not early if you don’t go to sleep.’

  With revulsion, Delia realised Kurt was moving his hand up her ribcage. ‘Never thought a woman with chest hair could look this good.’

  ‘Haha,’ Delia forced a laugh and moved his hand away, trying for a coy but knowing smile. She still had the spare drive clasped tightly in her left hand. ‘See you on Monday.’

  Kurt’s eyes narrowed.

  ‘Hot and cold, eh? Are you asking me to do a spot of fox hunting? What’s with the …?’

  As Delia backed away, she collided with a passing masked waiter. Or more accurately, her giant appendage did. The size and volume of her tail meant she effortlessly took out a whole tray of Martinis which went crashing to the ground, spattering an Elmo from Sesame Street and an Eve, in flesh-coloured bodysuit with fig leaves, who shouted things that didn’t sound either very kids TV or Garden of Eden.

  As she whipped round, the drive flew from her hand. Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck oh no … her body was hopefully obscuring Kurt’s view. She had to retrieve it before he saw the stick, or all was lost.

  The waiter waved his hands angrily and dismissively at a flapping Delia, crouching down over the wreckage of broken glass and Queen Green olives on cocktail sticks. Delia watched in horror as with a gloved hand, he briskly swept up the stick with the rest of the detritus, back onto the tray.

  Regroup, regroup, think, she told herself: there was nothing on that stick. As long as Kurt didn’t see it, it didn’t matter if it got thrown in a bin. She stayed directly between Kurt and the waiter, blocking Kurt’s line of sight. The waiter had the tray on both palms and was striding back towards the main building.

  ‘Bye, Kurt!’ Delia called, barely looking at him, threading her way out through the multicoloured, multi-species crowd to the interior of the V&A, and then to freedom.

  Delia burst into the road outside, euphoric, like she’d managed a prison break. She texted Adam and Steph that she was on her way to the meeting point, a few streets away, untying her mask and taking the hood down. It was pretty embarrassing being in public with a giant white-tipped tail bouncing behind her, yet there were bigger things at hand.

  Heartbeat ticking at ‘managed panic’, she glanced over her shoulder a few times. As far as she could tell, she was on her own. Success? She wouldn’t believe it until there was high five-ing and chest bounces.

  Steph was there in plain clothes, having stuffed her costume in a rucksack, her unruly long hair gathered back in a crocodile clip.

  ‘Did we do it? We got the information?’ Delia said, and Steph grinned from ear-to-ear while nodding. ‘Where’s Adam?’

  ‘You didn’t see him?’ she said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘We were worried you’d been caught when you didn’t text back so he went into the party. He looked like one of the waiters.’

  ‘No …? I didn’t even know Adam had a costume! Or an invite.’

  ‘He brought one on the off-chance he needed it. He said he’d go in and look for you. I was going to go too but he asked me to look after his laptop.’ Steph held up a bag.

  ‘There he is,’ she pointed as Adam rounded the opposite corner, holding his mask.

  ‘You know, with any plan, you think “I hope we don’t end up having to use the back-up plan,” he said. ‘I stink of vodka Martini. I think this is yours, madam?’

  He proffered the Superman stick. He and Delia gazed at each other, him amused, her stunned.

  ‘What? Where were you?’

  ‘I was the waiter chucking the drinks around.’

  ‘I thought my tail knocked that over.’

  ‘I ran into you on purpose. I saw you getting groped and thought I’d lend a hand. As it were.’

  Delia had lost track. ‘Sorry. Yes. But we broke in? You got the goods from the flash drive?’

  ‘Took us right up to the wire but, yep. That lad is skilled to a scary degree.’

  ‘I wish you could’ve seen it, Delia,’ Steph said. ‘We felt like something in a movie. It was Adam pacing around: We don’t have much time left, dammit!’

  ‘It’s all backed up?’ Delia said.

  ‘It’s on my laptop, and Joe copied it too,’ Adam says.

  ‘I can’t believe it worked!’ Delia said, looking to each of them.

  ‘Oh. It might’ve gone less well than we thought,’ Adam said, face falling.

  He was looking over Delia and Steph’s shoulders, his expression anxious. Delia turned to see Kurt, looking like he’d willingly play a key role in any St. Valentine’s Day massacre, if only his gun weren’t a replica.

  Delia’s body went shaky.

  ‘Guess what you—’ he jabbed a forefinger at Delia, ‘—now have in common with her.’ He pointed at Steph.

  Delia, Adam and Steph stood frozen to the spot, aghast.

  ‘Think I can’t work out what’s happening, when you’re suddenly all over me?’ he said to Delia. ‘You can thank this prick,’ he gestured at Adam, ‘for confirming it.’

  ‘Fairly sure you were all over me,’ Delia said, trying to imbue her speech with considerably more confidence than she felt.

  Kurt pulled the USB stick from his pocket and every pair of eyes moved to it.

  ‘This what you were after, when you were feeling me up?’ he waggled it, and put it back in his pocket. ‘Thought so. Unlucky. It’d be less than useless even if you were good enough to take it from me. I’ve got a level of encrypti
on on there that’d give the NSA a migraine.’

  Delia looked to Adam and then to Steph. They stared at each other and then looked back at Kurt, who took their speechlessness as their being utterly bested, as opposed to mute relief.

  ‘This was his idea, to get him a scoop, I take it,’ Kurt gestured towards Adam. ‘Fucking hell, women are stupid.’

  ‘Actually, it was my idea. I think what you do, and how you treat people, is despicable. You can’t complain when underhand tactics are used against you,’ Delia said.

  Kurt reeled back in mock-amusement.

  ‘Oh darling, you think I’m some big bad guy? In this city? Bless you. You should go back to that place you’re from and get on with firing out babies. You’re custom-built for it, after all.’

  Adam took a step forward.

  ‘You’ve sacked her. Let’s call it an evening, shall we?’

  Kurt ignored him in favour of Delia.

  ‘Don’t kid yourself you’re any better, darling. You’re a worse whore than me.’

  Adam burst out laughing.

  ‘Is there a central plank to that argument? Other than you?’

  ‘You should’ve seen her rummaging around just now. She had her hands on it. Yeah, I don’t think she was going to tell you about that.’

  Adam said nothing and Delia parried with, ‘Kurt, unfortunately, everyone here knows you make things up.’

  Kurt addressed Adam.

  ‘If you publish one single full stop about me on your boring blog, I will sue you so hard your teeth will rattle and you’ll be pawning the fillings. I warn you, this is the last time we run into each other. Or you’ll regret it.’

  ‘Agreed.’

  ‘Honestly,’ Kurt shook his head at Delia and Steph, ‘you can’t get the staff nowadays. I give a pair of losers from the sticks a chance, and this is how you repay me.’

  All of a sudden, Steph shouted, loud enough to startle them all, going more Scouse than ever under stress: ‘Oh why don’t you just DO ONE, you arsehole!’