by Alex Marwood
She feels an urge to vomit and swallows it down. Flaming shooters. At your age. At any age. What on earth possessed you?
Because it was fun. Because I love the company of journalists. Because I love their casual, competitive intelligence, their ranty partisan opinions, the way they compete to reduce everything on earth to a five-word headline, their cynical search for the perfect pejorative. Because I’m tired of being good, and I’m tired of being patient, because I’ve been living it small for months now and I just needed to kick over the traces, and because I got caught early for my round in the White Horse and wanted to get my money’s worth back. Because you can’t describe what a town where people come to go on benders is like unless you’ve gone on one there yourself. Because, despite the heartless carapace we all carry around with us, spending a day digging up the detail on the deaths of five young girls is depressing enough to drive anyone to the bottle. And because I just bloody forgot about this dinner party.
The door bangs back and Jim enters, the sociable-host smile dropping from his face as he crosses the threshold. He lets the door swing to before he speaks. ‘Fuck’s sake, Kirsty,’ he mutters. ‘What’ve you been doing?’
Her skin feels raw under the thick layer of make-up she’s slathered on to hide her pallor. ‘Sorry,’ she says. ‘Had to take a painkiller.’
Jim’s jaw is set like concrete as he snatches up the salad bags. ‘Christ,’ he says. ‘I’ll do it. You open the salmon.’
He turns his back and rips open the packets. Pea-shoots, watercress and rocket, the TV-chef dream combo. A small earthenware jug of dressing he made this afternoon waits by the salad bowl. He dumps the leaves in, sloshes on the dressing and starts tossing. Miserably, Kirsty finds the kitchen scissors and begins cutting open the salmon. Her hands are shaking, visibly.
‘Sorry, Jim,’ she says for the eighteenth time, laying the slices of fish as neatly as she can on to the plates. ‘I’m really sorry. I didn’t mean to.’
He’s so angry he can’t even look at her as he dishes the salad out next to the fish. ‘I really don’t think sorry’s good enough right now. You knew how important tonight was. You’re just … selfish. I can’t think of another word for it. Just bloody selfish.’
‘Yes,’ she says, penitently. ‘I know. It was. I am. And I’m really, really sorry.’
Miserably, she cuts open a sachet of the mustard sauce that came in the packet. Squeezes it over a portion of fish.
‘NO!’ He grabs her wrist and his cry is loud enough to be heard through the door. The murmur of voices dies down for a moment. Someone giggles.
‘What?’
‘Don’t use the packet stuff, you idiot. I made some.’ He flourishes a beaker of identical yellow glop that’s been sitting by the sink.
‘Oh shit, sorry.’
He shakes his head again, suppressing his rage with difficulty. ‘Look, just get out of the way. I’ll do it. I can’t believe you’d do this to me. These are people who eat in restaurants all the time. Like they’re not going to notice the sauce came out of a packet.’
‘Sorry,’ says her autopilot. She feels so wretched she’s amazed she’s still on her feet. All she wants to do is curl up in front of the telly and doze until bedtime. I will never drink again, she thinks, for the 763rd time in her life.
Jim doles out the sauce, turns and hands her two plates. ‘Here. Take these through. You can have the bought one. I’ll bring it through last. And for God’s sake pull yourself together.’
Kirsty gulps. Together, they go back to their guests.
‘Here’s mud in your eye,’ says Lionel Baker, and she flinches: even in her fragile state, golf-club phrases make her skin crawl.
‘Cheers,’ she says, and raises her untouched glass. Puts it to her lips but doesn’t take a sip. Partly because she fears her liver will explode if a drop of alcohol goes into her body, but mostly because Jim’s eyes bore into her like a laser every time her hand strays towards the stem.
Sue Baker giggles and clinks her glass. ‘Such a funny phrase,’ she says. Sue’s the real deal: a woman who chose to Make a Lovely Home the moment she landed herself a stockbroker, and hasn’t had an original thought since she decided to have ornamental cabbages as the table centrepieces at her wedding. I must be nice, thinks Kirsty. If Jim’s going to tap these people up for a job, they need to remember what good hosts we are. Lionel’s ten years older than Jim, ten inches larger about the waist and ten times more pleased with himself. But he’s also been a partner at Marshall & Straum for years, and they all know he’s recruiting again now that the worst of the shitstorm is over. Jim and Gerard Lucas-Jones, the other husband at the table, were on his team when he got promoted. Everyone is pretending that they’re old friends.
Sue puts her glass down and picks up her knife and fork. ‘How lovely,’ she says, with a patronising edge. ‘I haven’t had gravadlax in years. Did you cure it yourself?’
Of course you haven’t, thinks Kirsty viciously. Gravadlax is so 1980s, darling. I’m sorry they were out of black-cod sashimi by the time I got to Waitrose.
‘Afraid not,’ says Jim. ‘Kirsty’s been away, working. I made the sauce, though.’
She smiles quietly. Jim takes pride in being ‘good’ in the house; always has done. But it’s not the right image for a Master of the Universe, he remembers. ‘It’s one of the great things about working from home,’ he adds hastily. ‘Two hours’ commute clawed back every day.’
‘And all of it spent cooking,’ jokes Kirsty experimentally.
‘Well,’ says Jim meanly, ‘it’s better than drinking myself into a stupor, eh?’
Everyone laughs, the barb floating over their heads. ‘Lucky old you,’ says Lionel Baker, sounding exactly like his wife. ‘I long for more time at home, of course. But tell me.’ He turns to Kirsty, and she can see that his enquiry isn’t steeped in approval. Lionel’s a dinosaur. Working wives are not his cup of tea. ‘Away working? How grand. Do a lot of travelling, do you?’
‘Not travel, exactly,’ she replies, trying to work out how to play things down so the job that’s keeping them all afloat sounds like an indulgent husband’s tolerance of the little lady’s hobby. ‘But, you know, a few overnighters here and there.’
She can see him placing her as a travelling saleswoman; wouldn’t mind, particularly, except that sales is probably not the top job for a wifey. Jim intervenes. ‘Kirsty’s a stringer,’ he says, ‘for the Tribune.’
‘What’s a stringer?’ asks Penny Lucas-Jones. She teaches French and Italian at a girls’ boarding school outside Salisbury. It fits in well with childcare.
‘A journalist,’ Jim tells her. ‘She covers a patch of the southeast so the staffers don’t have to leave London.’
‘A hack!’ says Lionel. ‘Well, well! Doorstepping celebrities, eh? Hacking phones?’
‘No,’ says Jim. ‘They have specialists for phone hacking.’
‘Mostly crime,’ Kirsty says. ‘And, you know – London people visiting the provinces.’
The joke falls flat. He’s taken me literally, she thinks. Of course he has. Prising him out of Belgravia was like pulling hens’ teeth, and now I’m blowing it. She feels another wave of nausea break over her, gulps it back. I bet I’m green, she thinks. Which at least will cover the yellow of liver damage.
‘How exciting!’ says Gerard Lucas-Jones. ‘We read the Trib une, funnily enough. Well, Penny does. I’m more of an FT man myself.’
‘I’ve not noticed you in there,’ says Sue. ‘Do you get published often?’
‘She got two pieces in this week, actually,’ Jim says. ‘She had a full page today, and she’s got two on Sunday.’
‘Clever girl!’ says Lionel, drawing out the ‘i’ in girl so it lasts two seconds.
Sue has the grace to look faintly embarrassed. ‘What about?’ she asks.
‘Oh, this rather sad-sack bunch of moral rearmament nutjobs who launched this week. But it was a bit of a damp squib, to be honest. And the other one�
��s on Whitmouth. The Whitmouth murders. I’m still writing that.’
‘Ah, yes,’ says Lionel. ‘Prostitutes, isn’t it?’
Mustn’t argue, she thinks. We’re here for Jim’s career. And frankly, I don’t have the spit for it anyway. I got most of my bile out last night. ‘No,’ she replies, ‘just girls on holiday. Teenagers having fun, you know?’
Her mind conjures up an image of Nicole Ponsonby’s sister on the Whitmouth Police station steps, behind a bank of microphones, weeping. Begging for someone, somewhere, to dob the killer in. The families always think the pain will go away if the killer is caught; that they’ll get some kind of closure. Like drowning sailors, they grasp at any straw of hope, anything that suggests that they won’t be feeling like this for ever. Kirsty’s seen them so often now, struggling to get words out, propping each other up on tottering legs. Knows that the weeping never ends, not really.
‘A bit of a shithole, isn’t it, Whitmouth?’ Lionel asks, and crams half of his starter in his mouth in one go.
‘I suppose so. Depends on what you like, really. I think it has a – I don’t know, a sleazy charm.’
‘Went to Southend once,’ he says. ‘Someone’s idea of an ironic stag weekend. Now there’s a shithole. As bad as that?’
She thinks. She’s done a fair amount of time in Southend. It’s a fruitful venue, if you’re on the crime circuit. ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘But pebbles, like Bognor.’
‘Oh, Bognor,’ he says, as though he need say no more.
The conversation hits a lull. Kirsty looks down at her plate, struggles to find a new topic. Struggles not to vomit. She can feel Jim burning to start in on vacancies, but it’s too early. They need to wait till the crème brûlée is on the table. Business can never be discussed directly until you’re eating crème brûlée. She can feel herself getting hot, just from the contact of the wine with her lips. Thinks she might be about to break into a sweat.
*
The pinger goes off in the kitchen: time to take the meat out and put on the mange-tout. She excuses herself and goes through.
Taking the pork loin from the oven, she puts it on the dish to rest, then goes to the freezer and finds a packet of peas to press against her forehead. She’s closer to forty than thirty, but she still finds formal entertaining a strain. And that’s without a professional lady of the house like Sue Baker at her table. Kirsty has seen her eyes drift over their sitting room, their dining room, seeking out signs of non-conformity or dirt.
Come on, Kirsty. There’s something you’re meant to do. What is it?
She presses the peas against the back of her neck and checks the kitchen for signs of disarray. Sue’s the sort of person who will insist on helping clear, the better to snoop. Notes, lists, photos, clamped to the fridge door with Sistine Chapel magnets. A cork pinboard sporting the kids’ schedules: Sophie piano, Tues 5; Luke football, Weds 6; swimming, Sat 9. Sophie has arranged the leftover push-pins in the shape of a heart – her favourite image at the moment, apart from Justin Bieber. They’ve cleared the usual packets of breakfast cereal and thrown-down schoolbags from the work surfaces; now, just a bottle of excellent claret (two school uniforms’ worth at Tesco), open and breathing, stands below the newly scrubbed spice rack, the dishwasher humming beneath. A normal middle-class kitchen, she thinks, tarted up to impress the Lucas-Joneses. My mum would say I was a snob because there aren’t any chickens under the table.
She remembers what else she needs to do. Fills a pan from the kettle, puts it on the stove. God knows what she’d say about me serving mange-tout, she thinks.
Back in the dining room, the conversation has moved on. ‘I just don’t see,’ Lionel is saying, ‘why they should get anonymity. That’s this society all over, isn’t it? Everything skewed in favour of the perpetrator, not a thought for the victim. Have you been covering this?’ He turns to Kirsty as she takes her seat again.
‘Sorry,’ she says. ‘Lost track.’
‘Child F and Child M.’
‘Oh. No. Sleaford’s off my patch, I’m afraid. I’ve got a friend who has. He’s been finding it very depressing.’
‘Well, I was just saying. It’s disgusting.’
‘Yes …’ she says, vaguely. ‘Awful. That poor child.’
‘No, not just that. The way the establishment’s swung into gear to protect the little’ – he pauses; he’s obviously been about to say ‘shits’ ‘– sods that did it.’
‘Well, the whole thing’s sub judice,’ says Jim. ‘You’d want them to get a fair trial, wouldn’t you?’
Lionel snorts. ‘Fair trial? It’s on film, for heaven’s sake.’
Kirsty feels the blush creep up her cheeks. She always finds conversation of this sort difficult; feels exposed, endangered. A small, paranoid part of her wonders if the subject’s been raised because someone knows more about her than they’re letting on. ‘And they’ve got siblings,’ she protests. ‘Surely you don’t think the other kids deserve to get mob justice for what their brothers did?’
Lionel snorts again. ‘It’s that sort of woolly liberal sentimentality that leads to situations like this in the first place.’
She can see Jim’s woolly liberal hackles rising. Don’t, she thinks. Please don’t. You can’t get into an argument. Can’t piss him off, let him think you don’t admire every pearl that drops from his mouth. Not when we’ve gone to all this effort.
‘More wine, anyone?’ she says hurriedly. The two women assent volubly, praise the choice of grape, fuss over their husbands’ glasses: they too have read that there’s about to be dissent and join forces to keep things nice. Lionel’s having none of it. Kirsty wonders if he’s enjoying himself; if he knows why he’s been asked here and is taking full advantage of the company’s powerlessness to contradict.
‘The fact is,’ he says, ‘for the good of society as a whole we should identify the murderous little monsters and lock them up, and do it before they kill someone else’s child. We don’t seem to care about the victims any more. It’s all about the criminal. Poor little crim, let’s make excuses. And yes, actually – the public ought to be protected from them. And their vicious little siblings.’
The words burst out before she can stop them. She feels as though her heart’s about to burst from her chest. ‘But they’re twelve years old!’
‘Exactly!’ he replies. ‘Just goes to show. It starts young. You can’t just go, “Yeah, poor little kiddies”, because someone else’s poor little kiddie has ended up dead.’
‘But their brothers and sisters haven’t done anything!’
‘Yet,’ he says. Stares her in the eye. ‘Yet,’ he repeats.
There’s a moment’s silence. I must stop, she thinks. I’m close to going off on one here.
Sue is obviously having similar thoughts. She hurriedly polishes off her last sliver of salmon. ‘Well, I must say, that was a real treat!’ she says brightly. ‘I must remember gravadlax.’
‘Here,’ says Jim grimly, standing up, ‘let me take that for you.’
She follows him into the kitchen with the other plates. He’s tipping the mange-tout into the boiling water. There’s a high-pitched whine in the centre of her head, boring through her brain like an awl. She grabs another glass of water, downs it, prays hopelessly for relief. I will never drink again, she promises silently once more.
‘What can I do?’ she asks.
‘Not get so pissed you can’t function the next day,’ he mutters.
‘Oh God, Jim, I’ve apologised. I’m sorry. I’m doing my best.’
‘Yeah, well,’ he says, ‘it’s not just about today though, is it?’
‘That’s not fair. That’s so unfair, Jim!’
‘Not from where I’m standing,’ he says.
‘Please let’s not do this now.’ The water has stirred something up in her stomach. She feels it lurch, feels her gullet spasm. Oh shit, she thinks. I swear I’ll never drink again. Never. I swear.
‘We’ve got to talk about your drinking,�
� he says.
‘Oh, look! As if you’ve never had a hangover!’
Jim slams the mange-tout into the colander. ‘You knew how much it mattered that we did well tonight,’ he says. ‘Are you trying to sabotage me?’
Kirsty gags. Slaps a hand over her mouth and flees the room. Hears his muttered ‘Oh God’ as she goes.
She makes it to the downstairs loo with a second to spare. Retches over the bowl and drops to her knees as an explosion of old drink, water, this morning’s sausage sandwich and tonight’s starter pumps out of her body. She must have stopped digesting at some point in the small hours. She starts feeling better the moment it’s all expelled. Fortunately, she learned the knack of silent vomiting soon after she joined the Mercury. It’s one that’s stood her in good stead.
She stays leaning on the seat for a minute, waiting for the sweating fit to die down. She feels weak and tired now, but the giddiness is receding. God, I’m a lousy wife, she thinks again. And he’s right. I need to stop with the drink. It’s a really childish way of dealing with stress.
She gets up and checks herself in the mirror. Her eye make-up has smudged slightly, but the colour is rapidly returning to her face. She rinses her mouth out using the mouthwash that lives behind the curtain, fills the air with the aerosol scent of freesias. Puts on a new layer of lipstick, smacks her lips together. OK, she thinks. That’s better. I can face the world.
She goes back to the kitchen, finds it empty, the pork and its dish gone from the work surfaces, the vegetables dished out and waiting. She grabs them up and goes into the dining room, smiling brightly.
‘I’ll tell you what, Kirsty,’ says Penny, once everyone’s served and settled, ‘I was wondering if I could ask a favour.’
‘Fire away,’ says Kirsty. Favours done by her must put Jim in pole position for favours in return. ‘What can I do?’
‘Well, we like to have people come and give careers talks at the school. What do you think? Would you think about coming in and talking about journalism at some point?’
‘I …’ she says doubtfully. She’s not comfortable on stages, in front of crowds.