Wake Up Happy Every Day

by Stephen May

  This Catherine woman speaks.

  ‘The babysitter and her boyfriend.’

  ‘Mary? Bollocks.’

  ‘Daddy.’ A small, disapproving voice. I can’t believe it. What did she just say? What did my beautiful, clever girl say?

  ‘Daddy don’ swear,’ she says now, and I find I’m crying. This is all too much. I put my hand to my eyes. ‘Daddy sad,’ she says now.

  ‘No,’ I say. ‘Daddy not sad. Daddy happy.’ And I bury my face in her neck. She smells of leather and amber. Paco Rabanne. Jesus’s aftershave.

  ‘I doubt they’ll try it again. It was all very G4S.’

  ‘Very what?’

  ‘Sorry, work slang. I mean the work was shoddy, not very robust. DIY in the extreme. Unprofessional.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘And I think I scared the poo out of them.’

  ‘Bad word.’ This is Scarlett again. I laugh. And then I start crying again. I have to take several deep, deep breaths.

  ‘Not really, sweetheart. Poo is not really a bad word.’ And then I can’t speak any more. No matter how many deep breaths I take. I’m all tears and snot. Scarlett uses her good arm to stroke my hair.

  This Catherine woman sighs. I guess I might have to stop thinking of her as a mentalist. ‘Thank you.’ I cough out eventually. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘No problem. But, sir, the other things I’ve told you, you need to act on them.’ Her voice is urgent. For a moment my mind is blank and then I remember. Oh yes, right, the other things, like dropping down dead at any moment.

  ‘And that’s all certain is it? Definite?’

  She shrugs. ‘I’ve never known it not work.’ She pauses and then says doubtfully, ‘We could have got a duff batch, I suppose. We might have switched suppliers. Everyone is trying to make savings these days. Does usually work before this, to be honest.’

  ‘Or maybe I’m super-strong, super-immune, super-resilient.’ I’m sure that to Catherine it sounds flippant. But my baby’s back. And she’s talking, so I don’t really give too much of a shit about anything else.

  ‘Hungry,’ Scarlett says now.

  ‘Of course, darling. I’ll get you something. What would you like?’

  ‘What you got?’

  ‘You’ll have trouble there.’ This Catherine is not smiling, not joking, clearly. Telling us our little princess might be a bit spoilt. And she’s probably right. But who the fuck cares if she is? My feeling is that spoilt people often get on. It gives them a high opinion of themselves and means they attempt things others wouldn’t because they think they can do anything. Get anything. And I would say that if you’re a wonky-bodied kid, then you need that self-belief. That sense that the world actually does owe you a living.

  But Catherine’s got something else to say, anyway. She is trying to make sure I understand her properly. She walks over to where we are. It’s only fifteen metres or so and she walks them deliberately and I am reminded of old Sunday afternoon westerns. The slow walk of a righteous gunslinger.

  ‘You need to assume it will happen. You need to make plans. I’m sorry. I wish it was different. I really do.’ And if I retained any thoughts that she might still be a nutter, I shed them now. I’ve never seen anyone radiate such certainty, such clear-eyed common sense.

  ‘OK,’ I say. ‘OK.’

  She puts her hand on my shoulder. She ruffles Scarlett’s hair. I wouldn’t say she was a natural hair ruffler.

  ‘Bye-bye,’ says Scarlett.

  ‘Ooh, you chatterbox,’ I say to her, and then I am startled as this Catherine leans in very close to my ear almost as though she were going to kiss me. She doesn’t though, instead she whispers hard and low and fast, ‘Also, you do need to get out of here. Do it as soon as you can. Tonight. And do it discreetly and don’t tell anyone where you’re going.’

  ‘Jesus and Mary?’ I whisper back.

  She wraps her arms around me and Scarlett. A big hug as if she can’t bear to be parted from us, and under cover of this she breathes, ‘No, I think you’re safe from them – but there are people watching the house. Not amateurs. Pros. Or more or less.’

  ‘What do they want?’

  I feel her cheek against my face, her breath warm against my ear. She smells sharp, clean. Fresh earth.

  ‘Who knows? Be as low profile as you can. Go as soon as you can.’ And then she releases us. ‘I’m sorry,’ she says again. And she does look it. In fact now she looks like she’s about to cry. There’s a lot of it about today. I try for a cheery grin.

  ‘Hey, like you say – maybe a dodgy batch . . .’ She looks at me seriously, and seems to come to a sudden decision.

  ‘OK look,’ she sighs. ‘Go and pack – I’ll try and sort something out.’

  I’m in the house stuffing pants and socks into a large Adidas holdall with one hand, while holding Scarlett with the other – I’m not putting her down, not just yet, she can wriggle and squirm all she likes – when I remember a case in the papers from years back. A bloke had convinced his best mate and his best mate’s girlfriend that they were wanted by the IRA or someone, and managed to keep them prisoner in his flat because they were too shit scared to go outside. He’d also managed to con them out of hundreds of thousands of pounds along the way, though I can’t quite remember the details of how he’d done it.

  I wonder if something similar is going on here, because it all seems so mad. But then I think, what if it is? I hate this house. I hate everything about how we’ve been living our lives. So, if this Catherine is some kind of master con artist, with some plan that doesn’t make sense yet, well, who cares? Who gives a shit? Let’s just go along with it, see where it leads.

  And that’s when Sarah comes in, so red in the face and breathless that I almost laugh. Grace Cathedral isn’t that far away. She needs to let Linwood get her on a programme.

  She sees Scarlett, who just holds out her good arm. Sarah crosses the room and takes her from me.

  ‘What happened?’ she says. ‘I thought she’d been taken.’

  ‘Well.’ And I can’t face going through it all.

  ‘Well, what?’

  ‘Well, I think we just had a bit of a Noel situation. Mary let Scarlett wander off and it was panic stations for a while, but a nice neighbour found her.’

  ‘She got a gun.’

  This is Scarlett, and Sarah’s mouth forms a perfect O.

  ‘Yeah, apparently our baby can speak now. I sacked Mary by the way. And we’re going away – all of us, right now.’

  ‘Are we?’

  ‘Yes, we are. No arguing. We’re going to England, but we’re going via Las Vegas.’

  ‘Vegas? And why would we do such a thing?’

  ‘So that we can get married in the Church of Elvis or somewhere.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Really. And because marriage is so good, we’re going to do it twice. One time we’re going to come out Mr and Mrs Knox and second time – in a different church – we’re going to come out Mr and Mrs Fisher. We’re going to cover all bases.’

  ‘Is this a proposal?’ she says, but she’s smiling and I think the whole Scarlett being kidnapped hysteria has been safely buried under this avalanche of new information. I have no doubt it’ll work itself to the surface again in time. She’s a smart cookie, Sarah, she doesn’t really forget anything.

  ‘No, it’s an order,’ I say.

  And I’m about to show her the amazing thing I found on Russell’s computer, when Catherine comes back and drives it out of my head.

  ‘I reckon you got an hour,’ she says.

  Forty-six

  LORNA

  ‘We could never be a proper couple.’

  It’s deep into the afternoon and they are drinking tea and eating toast in Lorna’s bed. Lorna feels that she is in better shape than Megan, and she’s meant to be the finest female white-collar boxer in Alameda County or whatever. She doesn’t look like such an athlete now. At least Lorna can sit up, at least she can talk – Megan just
groans, puts a pillow over her head and pulls the duvet tighter around her.

  ‘No, you’re pretty fine and everything when we’re out, but get you home and into bed and you fall straight asleep, start snoring, farting, and stealing all the covers. It would never work. Frankly, you’re too like a man.’

  Well, that gets her going. Megan groans again and coughs like an expiring heroine in one of Lorna’s novels, the ones she reads for her course where conspicuous consumption means something very different from what it does now. And then, ever so slowly, ever so carefully, Megs sits up, scratches her head. Gets ready to fight back.

  ‘And you, missy, you drop crumbs in the bed. And you reek of marmite. And I do not snore. Or fart.’

  ‘You did last night. And this morning.’

  It has to be said though, they did have a right laugh. They’d been in the Bison first for noodles and honey-basil ale, and they would have stayed but there was a band on and everyone knows that a bar band kills the buzz pretty effectively, so then it was on to the Albatross where they’d played skinny-hipster boys at pool and darts and drunk good Guinness. And Lorna had been reminded just how much fun Megan was.

  It was Megan who’d suggested Brennan’s. And done it at a perfect moment, when they were both pretty wasted, but still had just enough sense left to know that they needed to get out of the pub before something embarrassing happened with a couple of the skinny-hipster boys.

  Megs had found a cab and got them to 4th and Uni where they had sat over cold ones with the beer-bellied truckers and talked about guns. At least that’s what Lorna had thought they’d talked about, though it seemed unlikely. She did remember that a big bearded biker-type had asked Megan for a kiss and she’d told him to ‘swivel, asshole’, and the whole pub had choked on its cheap suds because big biker guy was meant to be such a hotshot hood, but he had just blushed and left. And they hadn’t had to pay for any more beers. Or the Jägerbombs. Lorna had been shocked to find that they didn’t really do Jägerbombs in the States so she taught J-bombing to the blue-collar barflies in Brennan’s. They were enthusiastic students.

  And then they were somehow back at home, and they’d just crawled into Lorna’s bed. And it didn’t need talking about, they’d just stripped to knickers and T-shirts, cleaned their teeth and got into bed. Though she did remember Megan insisting they each drank a pint of water first. Good old Megan, always sensible even when wankered. And then she thought they’d laughed about nothing for quite a while, before she’d noticed that Megan was noisily asleep. Lorna had been genuinely put out by the racket, but before she’d had time to get properly cross, she’d obviously dropped off too.

  And then it was daylight but there had been a long, long period of really quite effective denial about that. They’d both got up for a piss but got back into bed and dozed and moaned and sipped at new pints of water until just a few minutes ago when Lorna had made them toast. Marmite for her, peanut butter for Megan, only Megs hasn’t touched hers yet, said there’s fire behind her eyeballs.

  ‘And you kept fiddling with me,’ says Lorna.

  ‘I so did not,’ says Megan.

  ‘So did. Rubbing up against me and everything.’

  ‘In your dreams, honey.’

  ‘It’s OK, I quite liked it.’

  ‘You’re such a liar.’

  ‘You don’t think I liked it?’

  ‘I know I didn’t do it. If I’d done it, you’d have liked it a lot.’

  ‘Ooh, such confidence. Well, I suppose it could have been Armitage Shanks. Come here, boy, come have your belly rubbed.’

  ‘It was probably him snoring and farting too,’ says Megs.

  And they watch as the fat cat stirs himself from his position on Lorna’s feet and tries to sashay up to her waiting, waggling fingers. Only it is hard to sashay across bobbly knees, and bony shins, so it’s probably not the big lion strut old Armitage has intended. Lorna laughs. ‘You silly sausage,’ she says. She tickles him. ‘Were you touching me up in the night? Were you? You big old randy thing, you.’

  And Lorna can tell that it’s probably going to be a good day. Maybe they’ll watch an old movie, something romantic but with a strong female lead. Maybe they’ll have a hair of the dog around six.

  And then they finally start the glacially incremental process of getting up and getting dressed. There are interruptions like American Come Dine With Me, and lots more tea to be drunk and quite a lot of sitting down holding their heads, and problems with finding clean clothes, and texts to be answered including some shyly pleading ones from numbers she doesn’t recognise. She guesses these are from the skinny-hipster boys they’d met in the Albatross. She won’t go there. It could be fun, but she’s probably still too young to start getting all Cougaresque just yet. They’d been mostly Jezes in the making anyway. Baby Fuckweasels. She wonders briefly what he’s up to. I wonder how jolly old Jez is doing, she thinks, but she has no urge to call him or text him or anything.

  And then she checks her emails.

  She goes into the kitchenette, where Megan is making a smoothie.

  ‘Russian Hill then.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That’s where we’re going today.’

  ‘Oh, babes. Does it have to be today? We both look like crap.’

  ‘Cheers, mate. Thanks for that. As if I wasn’t paranoid enough already.’

  ‘It’s true.’

  ‘Well, anyway, babes, we do have to go today, because there is the small matter of a coupla million bucks that has appeared in my account, courtesy of Daddy dearest’s factotum.’

  ‘His what?’

  ‘His factotum. Anyway, apparently I’m a millionaire which is a bit of a brainfuck actually.’

  A long pause while Megan looks at her with eyes the colour of cigarette ash. Ash sunsplashed with blood.

  ‘And you want to go and say thank you?’

  ‘I want to go and say something. I’m not sure what exactly.’

  ‘I’d sure start with thank you.’

  ‘So you’ll come with me?’

  ‘Of course I’ll come with you. Old buddy. Old pal.’

  ‘Oh, all nice to me now I’m loaded.’ At which point Armitage Shanks comes into the kitchenette and begins rubbing himself against her legs.

  ‘Oh, not you as well,’ Lorna says, as she picks him up. ‘I can’t believe it. I’m surrounded by whores.’

  Forty-seven

  CATHERINE

  Chunking up, that’s all she’s doing really. Preparing herself for life as a freelancer, where everyone is your boss and you have to say yes to every job you’re offered. That’s what Catherine tells herself as she gets what she needs from the boot of the Camry. It’s just a tiny bit of extra pro-bono work. And the least she can do, considering. As she slips the aerosols into the pockets of her jogging bottoms she thinks again about the advances in technology that make her job so much easier these days.

  Minutes earlier she’d come out and jogged sedately around the block and concluded that the couple in the car were the only people watching the Knox house. This is not really much of a stake-out. Sortable.

  And now, as she trots towards their Subaru, she can see that the man looks like a classic grade C government worker. Cheap suit, limp hair boringly cut. He could be one of the more slovenly missionaries for the Mormons. The old lady is more interesting. She is kitted out as an ordinary pensioner in her grubby pink jogging suit and the rigid steel-grey helmet of hair. Either she’s pretty senior in the organisation, or she just didn’t save enough for her pension and can’t afford to retire. Maybe she didn’t ever expect to get to retirement age. Interesting that she’s in the driver’s seat.

  Catherine knocks on the passenger-side window. Resting on the dashboard of the car there are large Starbucks styrofoam mugs. Old newspapers are coming apart on the back seat. Sweet wrappers. It’s sloppy and self-indulgent. Not as Group 4 as the kidnapper’s’ operation but getting that way. The demoralising effects of cuts to public services
no doubt.

  As the window slowly eases its way down she can see the bloke has been reading The Economist, which he now chucks into the footwell of the car. She draws the can from her pocket. Gives it a gentle shake.

  ‘Can I help you?’ he says, and she lets him have it – a long squirt that envelops him in brackish-smelling vapour. He coughs once and goes quiet.

  The woman is slow to react. Reflexes are gone. Dead wood. They should have retired her anyway, pension or no. She just about manages to reach across the slumped body of her partner. She is clearly going for the glovebox and some kind of weapon she has in there, but she’s nowhere near sharp enough. Catherine leans into the car, and then she gives the old lady the second can full in the face. She can see the woman holding her breath, but there is forty-five seconds’ worth of gas in the can and the woman looks like she won’t last out for half that time.

  Sure enough, twenty-five seconds later the woman’s fingers stop scrabbling at the glovebox and she is quiet too, lying across the lap of her partner in a way that might be mildly embarrassing for them when they come round. Catherine gives her the final seconds of the can anyway, just in case the woman is faking.

  Then she uses the phone she’d nicked from Russell Knox to take photos of them both. She has to admit this kit is impressive on lots of levels, but to carry something like this around is to have a tracker device round your neck. Send even one text from a piece of hardware like this and almost anyone could find you, almost instantly.

  She’ll show Russell the pictures of who is watching the house, then she’ll make sure this gadget is destroyed in the approved manner.

  She goes to the boot of the Subaru and flicks it up. Nothing. That’s annoying. She thought it was standard equipment these days. So it’s back to her own car for the rope and gaffer tape. It is Catherine’s opinion that everyone should have rope and gaffer tape in the car, like they should have a spare tyre, a flashlight and some barley sugars. Basic common sense.