by Pippa Wright
I’ve taken a seat by the window, even though it’s steamed up so much I can hardly see outside. I pull my coat sleeve over my hand and use it to rub a little porthole on the glass, just enough to give me a view of the street. I’ve no sooner taken my hand away than two narrowed eyes appear, squinting in. There’s a sharp knock on the window and then the eyes are gone.
Seconds later the door of the cafe swings open and Mrs Curtis appears, waving brightly.
‘Yoo hoo,’ she calls, approaching me determinedly. ‘I said let’s have tea, and here you are! What a coincidence.’
I stand up and pull out a chair for her, but she brusquely pulls it aside and settles herself in, fussing with a flotilla of plastic bags that must be arranged just so on the floor. She throws her coat off with the exuberant gesture of someone disrobing in front of an admirer, but keeps her pink knitted hat on.
‘Left my wig at home,’ she whispers.
She points to the pot on the table.
‘Now then. What kind of tea are you having?’
‘Earl Grey,’ I say, stunned into monosyllables by this unexpected whirlwind of activity.
She grimaces. ‘Can’t stand the stuff. Emily! Emily!’
The teenage waitress ambles over, drawing her order pad out of a pocket in her apron. Although Mrs Curtis clearly knows her, Emily’s red-cheeked face doesn’t offer a flicker of recognition.
‘Hello, Emily. One pot of Darjeeling please, dear. Three bags – not two, three. A jug of full-fat milk, none of that nasty skimmed. And I think a piece of the Victoria sponge, don’t you? Wait, there’s a fly in this sugar bowl, so let’s have a new one, please.’
The waitress writes this down unhurriedly, and tucks the pad back into her pocket, before picking up the sugar bowl with a heavy sigh.
‘Chop chop, Emily!’ trills Mrs Curtis, drumming her red nails on the tabletop. ‘I haven’t got all day.’
As Emily leaves, casting dark looks behind her, Mrs Curtis leans towards me and confides, ‘Of course I do have all day, don’t I? But Emily’s mother tells me she is a terrible dawdler, so I like to come in here every now and again and give her a bit of a push.’
The mutinous set of Emily’s shoulders tells me she’d like to give Mrs Curtis a push right off the top of a cliff, but she does seem to have picked up speed, so perhaps there’s a method in the old lady’s madness.
‘Now, Kate,’ says Mrs Curtis, patting at her bags to check they haven’t rearranged themselves while she wasn’t looking. ‘Why do I have the feeling you’ve been avoiding me? Hmm?’
‘Oh! I haven’t,’ I say. ‘That is, I’m sorry if it seems like that. I just haven’t felt very sociable since I moved in. I didn’t mean it to seem rude, Mrs Curtis.’
I should have known that, in a small town like Lyme, hiding away only serves to draw attention to yourself. But if I had run all over the place telling everyone my problems I’d only have been criticized for making a song and dance of it. I can’t win.
Mrs Curtis ducks down for a moment to pick up her handbag, and takes out a plastic packet of tissues, which she places on the table between us. ‘I suppose this is because of that man?’
She nods pointedly at the tissues, as if even the mention of my husband will make me start wailing.
‘I suppose,’ I say weakly.
‘Needless to say I’ve heard all about it, dear. People are terrible gossips, you know. But why should you be hiding yourself away when it was that man that caused all the problems?’
I remove a tissue from the plastic packaging, to Mrs Curtis’s evident satisfaction. She pats the packet approvingly, as if it is a pet. I don’t actually feel like I will cry, it’s just something to do with my hands.
‘It wasn’t just him,’ I say, picking at the tissue.
‘Of course, I know it is very modern, dear, to say that both partners are to blame. Not like in the old days when there had to be a guilty party or you couldn’t get a divorce. But I do think,’ she leans forward with her elbows on the table, ‘that when someone has been unfaithful, then it very much is their fault and there is simply no point in pretending otherwise.’
The tea arrives and Mrs Curtis busies herself with sending back a cup, claiming to see traces of lipstick on it, and then trying to force me to eat half of her Victoria sponge. It gives me an excuse to change the subject and I manage to sustain a fairly lengthy conversation about how tea should be made, whether tea leaves are better than bags, and whether milk should be poured in before the tea or after. Mrs Curtis, I am unsurprised to learn, has strong opinions on all of these matters, and does not hesitate to share them.
But it doesn’t take long before she turns her shrewd eyes on me again. ‘I expect you think I’m dreadfully nosy, don’t you? Asking about your husband. Believe me, I don’t want to upset you. But it is one of the few benefits of being old – ageing is so full of indignities otherwise, dear – that you are suddenly allowed to say whatever you like. Everyone already expects you to be batty, you see.’
She waves a forkful of cake in my direction and I shake my head to decline it. Behind her Emily folds napkins, one at a time, placing them into a wicker basket with deeply felt resentment.
‘I used to be much more polite, I can assure you. But where’s the fun in that, dear? Anyway, I can see that you don’t want to talk about it, and that is quite all right with me. God forbid I should be one of those encroaching women who can’t take a hint.’
‘Not at all,’ I demur. I pick up my teacup, and put it down again when I see it’s empty. It clatters loudly in the empty tea room. ‘It’s all just . . . it’s very raw. I’m not—’
‘Quite understood!’ She leans forward again, waving a red-painted finger commandingly. ‘There will come a time when you do want to talk about it, dear. All the time, to anyone who will listen. Believe you me, I know.’
Before I can follow this intriguing line of enquiry, she looks up at the clock on the wall behind me and gasps. ‘Goodness, will you look at the time, dear! I have bridge at four!’
She summons poor Emily over to the table to instruct her on how to package up the leftover tea leaves into a parcel that Mrs Curtis can take home to put on her roses. The plastic bags are mustered, the coat buttoned and offers of help with either are brusquely rebuffed. She is gone before I realize that she has left without paying.
Emily looks happy for the first time, a tight-lipped little smile spreading across her face as she watches the door swing shut.
‘Thought you must be new in town,’ she says. ‘Her always does that. Famous for it. Never seen her pay for her tea once. She’ll have followed you down the street.’
She presents me with a round silver dish containing the bill, the only time so far that I have seen her move with anything approaching speed.
‘Service ain’t included.’
I leave Emily a large tip for no other reason than she is the first person I’ve spoken to in Lyme who seems to have no interest in, or knowledge of, my private life. If only I could pay off everyone else so easily.
9
London
The Hitz Christmas party had been cut back that year, for reasons unspecified. It was as if they thought we wouldn’t notice that we’d been relegated to a wind-battered marquee in London Fields instead of the ballroom of the Dorchester, as usual. Or that, rather than a sit-down meal, we’d be happy with a spread of sandwiches and sausage rolls, much as if we were attending a provincial wedding rather than a party held by a multinational corporation.
Some said it was because Leila had been cautioned for possession when leaving last year’s do, and it had made the papers, which reflected badly on the company as a whole. But everyone knew that was rubbish as the scandal just made Hitz sound like a rock and roll sort of place, which in our line of work was a good thing. Also the publicity had brought Leila a lot more business, so she was delighted. Some said it was because our former head of marketing had woken up with a black eye and a missing tooth after last year’s p
arty, and had to attend a meeting the next day looking like a tramp. But he’d left now, so that couldn’t be it.
I thought it was more likely that our head of finance had wielded the anti-fun scissors; no one had got a bonus this year, and it hadn’t escaped my notice that they’d failed to replace the last two people to leave the production team.
But there was one Hitz Christmas party tradition that would not die, no matter what cutbacks were forced on us. For the last three years, Sarah and I had pulled a stunt at the Hitz Christmas party. In truth I wondered if we’d ever top last year, when we’d stripped down to leotards and broken into the full ‘Single Ladies’ routine. But that had taken weeks of rehearsals. With Lagos having got in the way this year we just hadn’t had the time to practice.
‘But Sarah,’ I said, pulling down the hem of my dress, which kept clinging to my tights in a way that spelled trouble for later that night, when I was bound to be less sober and therefore less attentive. ‘We could get hurt. Can’t we just take a year off or something?’
She stopped in the entrance to the marquee, grabbing my shoulders with both hands, her eyes glittering with determination. This year’s cunning stunt had been her idea, which made her especially passionate about it.
‘Kate, the cunning stunt must continue. Don’t you see – they can take away our party, but they can’t take away what makes it great: you and me. Everyone is relying on us. We’re like . . . Father Christmas or something. We owe it to everyone.’
I must have looked dubious, because she shook me, ‘Do you really want to deny everyone the full Christmas party experience? Do you?’
‘I’m not denying anyone anything,’ I began.
‘That’s what Chris said after Lagos,’ Sarah sniggered, letting go of me.
‘What did Chris say after Lagos?’ I demanded.
‘Oh, nothing,’ she said airily, her back turned to me as she walked into the marquee.
‘Whatever,’ I said, trying to sound breezy.
To be honest I barely remembered what had happened after I’d downed a row of whiskys at the Airtel party. I’d found myself sneaking out of Chris’s hotel room at stupid o’clock the next morning, staggered to my flight, and had tried very hard not to think of it ever since. I firmly believe that a bit of brazen denial is the best way to deal with such things. Who wants to sit around talking about the stuff you’re ashamed of? Best to pretend it never happened and hope everyone else does too.
Sarah stopped in the entrance and took in the room. Smiling waiters greeted us with trays of champagne and dubious-looking bright blue cocktails. It was a given that at least half of the waiting staff were aspiring musicians and presenters who would try to thrust a demo CD into your hand, or turn the evening into an audition if the opportunity presented itself. It was important not to let yourself get into a conversation with any of them, or you’d never escape. Sarah and I, Christmas party veterans, took a glass each without making eye contact with the server.
Tables were laid out around an enormous dance floor where a few brave, or prematurely drunk, colleagues were already trying out their moves. Most people were, like us, just taking in the atmosphere, admiring each other’s party outfits and initiating flirtations they hoped might end in the chill-out tent later, aka snogging central. Over at a table in a dark corner of the marquee, Leila had already set up her dispensary; every few minutes a colleague would approach her and conduct a furtive transaction before disappearing off to the bathrooms.
Towering above all of us, beyond the DJ decks, past the buffet tables, stood a vast and imposing Christmas tree, its topmost branches brushing the canvas roof.
Sarah’s eyes lifted to the top of the tree, where a white-winged decorative angel looked down over the dance floor. ‘Look,’ she said. ‘I’m just saying that you and me, we’ve got reputations to uphold here. Bad ones.’
‘Okay,’ I agreed grudgingly. Over in a far corner, a familiar sight caught my eye.
‘Oh crap, the cameramen are all here,’ I muttered to Sarah. They stood in a huddled mass at the bar, in their best T-shirts and trainers. Jay had broken ranks to wear a festive jumper with a snowflake theme, and it was clear from the howls of laughter around him that his friends weren’t about to let him forget it.
‘Really?’ Sarah asked, opening her eyes enormously and suspiciously wide. ‘I wonder who let them in?’
I turned to glare at her. ‘Sarah, no one ever looks that innocent without being very very guilty. This is your doing, isn’t it?’
‘Not exactly,’ she lied, beaming over at Jay. He looked relieved to see someone who might save him from his piss-taking mates. ‘But I might have mentioned that the party was on tonight. And that they’re not very strict on the door.’
‘I thought you said you’d stopped seeing Jay after Lagos?’
‘I have,’ she said, not meeting my eyes. ‘Except on special occasions. Parties.’
‘Weekends?’
‘And, er, week nights,’ she admitted with a sheepish smile.
‘God, I don’t believe it. And you’ve kept it to yourself all this time?’
‘I don’t know what you’re so annoyed about, just because you and Chris never turned into anything doesn’t mean that Jay and I can’t give it a shot.’
‘Ooh, so it’s Jay and I now, is it?’
‘You can take the piss all you like, Kate,’ said Sarah, giving Jay a flirtatious wave across the room. ‘I really like him and you’re not going to put me off him just because you’re always running away from relationships.’
‘Running away? Hardly, you would too if your only option was Chris, and you know it.’
Sarah shrugged. ‘Fair enough. I’ve never known what you see in him; I’ve hardly ever heard him say more than five words in a row.’
I snorted with laughter. ‘I don’t even know if I have, to tell the truth.’
I looked over to where Chris was studiously ignoring me in a manner designed to draw attention to himself.
‘Then aim higher, okay?’ said Sarah. ‘You deserve better than that. You deserve a proper relationship with someone who really likes you. It’s about time you found someone nice.’
I started laughing. ‘Jeez, Sarah is this like when you wouldn’t get a tattoo unless I promised to get one done at the same time? Do I have to have a relationship just because you’ve got one?’
‘You said you wanted a tattoo as well!’ Sarah protested, punching my arm crossly. ‘And fuck off, will you? I just want you to be happy.’
‘I am happy, you lunatic. I’ll be even happier when I beat you at the cunning stunt tonight, though.’
‘You reckon?’ said Sarah, looking at me challengingly. ‘We’ll see. I’m off to see Jay. Coming?’
I considered it, but once you got talking to the cameramen it was hard to get away, and it was best not to get trapped with them this early. Not when there were so many other people to talk to first. I needed to get a few words in with our boss Richard, who found this kind of work function – where he wasn’t fully in charge – stressful. And my assistant Kirsty was still new enough to need introductions to people. I’d reached an age where the annual shindig was not just about getting hammered and getting off with someone. Times were tough at Hitz, and I knew I had to focus on the work part of the work party.
As Sarah joined the cameramen, disappearing amongst the checked shirts, I saw Chris look over at me and then quickly look away again, busily checking his phone as if he had lots to attend to. He didn’t even offer a smile.
There was a time I’d assumed a deep soul lay behind his taciturn ways, but I seemed to remember I’d ended up snogging him in Lagos mostly because when he started talking he was so immensely dull.
Well. If I was Chris’s last resort, then he was mine. Surely I could have much more fun tonight without revisiting my lazy cameraman? And I still had my mission to consider. This was going to require tactics. I squeezed my way past a crowd of people just coming into the marquee, and started weavi
ng between the tables so I could scope out the room. It was too early for many people to be sitting down yet, though by the end of the evening it was a safe bet that the tables would be full of slumped Hitz staffers, snogging couples and glassy-eyed drunkards.
A movement caught my eye by the Christmas tree. Almost hidden by the branches, a barrel-shaped man stood, his back to the outside wall of the marquee. The muscles in his massive neck bunched and flexed as he chewed gum while surveying the dance floor from his half-hidden position. The tell-tale curly wire of a radio headset disappeared into the collar of his white shirt, suggesting hidden reinforcements close at hand. A security guard. This was a complication.
‘What are you up to?’ said a voice close to my ear. I turned around quickly and there was Matt Martell, looking far too gorgeous in a dark navy suit that made his eyes distractingly blue.
‘Hello, Matt,’ I said frostily. ‘What makes you think I’m up to anything?’
‘A little bird tells me you’re pretty entertaining at the Hitz Christmas party. You and your friend Sarah. I couldn’t help notice you checking out the security arrangements over there. Are you sizing up some sort of misbehaviour?’
‘You’ll just have to wait and see,’ I said, raising an eyebrow and hoping I looked mysterious and inscrutable. Although there was no hope of remaining mysterious and inscrutable once I was on the mission. Demented would be closer to the mark.
He smiled back with that confiding little head tilt of his. How did he manage to make every exchange feel like we were the only two people in the room? I could feel myself falling for it all over again. I felt like giving my own face a sharp slap. Or Matt’s. Get a grip, Kate, I thought. Don’t let your guard down.