She returned from the toilets to find that Janine had gone home and that Amanda was now standing at the bar with Carl and Andy and making a big show of being all friendly and ‘I understand-y’ and generally behaving like she and Carl had spent the last ten minutes planning their engagement, at which point Kate told her to sod off and went back to the table to swig another half bottle of Bacardi Breezer and sulk. Carl had then come over and said, ‘Get a grip, can’t you, Kate?’ (or something like that) and told her that Amanda (who had Geography in the morning) had called her Dad to come and pick them both up. To which Kate responded that she’d rather sleep in a cess pit than sleep over with her, and that she’d already called her mum and she’d be there in half an hour. At which point Andy had said he’d better push off and get back to his quadratic equations, and then Amanda had left in a huff and it was just the two of them. And it was closing time. And Kate was feeling very strange and couldn’t walk properly. And so on.
Carl had then decided (with some acuity) that he needed to get Kate out walking (after a fashion) in the fresh air, and preferably before the landlord started taking notice and asking them for ID. Which they had done for some time (interspersed with pauses for vomiting, wailing etc.), until it dawned on Carl that in fact I wouldn’t be getting there any time soon because I had not, at any point, been actually phoned. And would doubtless be somewhat cross. At which point he got rather cross with Kate, but deciding the best thing would be to get her back to his place (it being nearer) he had called his mum instead. However, his mum, who slept like a corpse (apparently), had failed to answer the phone.
And so in the end he’d called me after all. And so I’d arrived. And now – damn it! – it was a quarter past seven.
‘D’you think it’s true he wants to dump me?’ Kate sobbed now. ‘Do you?’
Having made a lightning re-appraisal of poor hapless Carl in the last six hours, I went and grabbed a bit of kitchen roll for her, and decided, in that hopeful, positive, mumsy way that one does, that, no, it wasn’t true. I said so.
‘However,’ I added sternly, ‘I think a) you should phone him and apologise, b) you should back off a bit, and give the poor boy some space, c) you should learn to trust him a bit more and d) you should learn that Bacardi Breezers are not Ribena and that as you are only sixteen, it is illegal for you to go into a pub and buy them.’
I chose my words carefully here. I had had more than a nodding acquaintance with acute gastro-intestinal irritation in my youth.
She wiped her nose. ‘Almost seventeen, mum.’
‘Kate, I am almost forty-two. But do you see me taking up macramé and bowls yet? No. You do not. There is no rush. You have decades and decades in which to experience the delights of post-alcoholic paranoia and remorse. There is no rush. Oh, and – where are we? E? –Yes, E. That you’re very lucky you have such an understanding mother. If your father had been here you’d be dead.’
She shuffled over to the sink and ripped another sheet of kitchen paper from the roll.
‘I doe,’ she mumbled. ‘I doe, Mum, honestly.’ Her lower lip quivered and she put her hand to her forehead. ‘Oh, God. I feel sick again now.’
So. There is justice after all.
Oh, blimey! And only forty five – no, forty – minutes in which to dress, put a face on, make my hair look half normal, and present myself to Nick Brown at the Meridien Hotel.
And my car smelt of sick. Oh, great.
After I had force fed Kate two glasses of water and put her to bed the previous night, I had gone back outside and scrubbed the inside of my car very vigorously. The passenger seat, the mat, the footwell, the outside of the glove compartment, the inside of the door. But it still smelt of sick. Badly. So much so that I had to drive all the way to the hotel with all four windows wide open and was greeted in the car park lift mirror by the sight of a completely deranged woman with hair that looked like it was a Harrier jump jet attempting a forced landing on an aircraft carrier. In the North Sea. In a gale. A very bad start to the day.
My acquaintance may only be slight, but it seems to me there is something reliably surreal and subterranean about the foyers of five star hotels. This one had all the usual attributes. A towering atrium, several vast expanses of well behaved water, click-clack receptionists with pony tails and talons who were always doing something with bits of paper and a stapler, and everyone being very very quiet. And despite there being clocks to tell you the exact time in ten countries, if felt spookily as if, in this place, time had stopped. There was, at least, one jolly family with an excitable toddler knocking about (what! Holidaymakers in our still haven of grave commercial important-ness!) but as his only foray into doing proper rampaging toddler stuff consisted of dipping one careful finger into the corner of one of the spooky black pools, and causing a very small ripple (and as he had a dummy in his mouth and was therefore unable to google and squawk at the top of his shrill voice about it), my breathless and crashy-bashy entrance was noticed by all. Heads turned on necks. Then turned back again, sniffing. I tried to pretend I was now in slow motion, and to glide smoothly on through, as if surveying a reef.
Nick Brown, fortunately, hadn’t yet noticed me, as he was sitting on a length of couch-thing in a far flung corner, pressing buttons on his mobile phone.
Which was nice, because it allowed me a moment or two to soak up and be caressed by the great wash of healing endorphins that the act of seeing him now flooded so uncontrollably through me. He had never strayed far from the apex of my thoughts, of course, yet with all the traumas of the last twenty four hours, I was quite unprepared for how powerfully his presence could suddenly knock everything else in my life into touch.
My own presence was not long in making itself felt either, as I was in appallingly unfortunate footwear. A pair of spindly court shoes that worked well among the pink fronds of the new Drug u Like carpeting, but that on the resonant acres of mirror-like marble beneath me now, made my approach sound like someone was felling a tree.
He looked up, watching me teetering towards him with an expression that made my knees begin to buckle. Then stood, as if bringing himself to corporate attention. ‘You’re late!’ he boomed heartily, in that way thrusting Americans do, and on which he had obviously based his management style. He then dipped his head, and pecked me lightly on the cheek. Oh, my. ‘Another family crisis?’ he added cheerfully. I hoped it wasn’t because I still smelled of sick.
‘Um, yes,’ I replied, given that there was really no point in doing otherwise. ‘I’m terribly sorry,’ I added, pretending to adjust my right earring with my left hand so I could sniff my sleeve. ‘My daughter’s…er…going through a bad time at the moment. Er…exam today. Usual crises. You know.’ It wasn’t true. Her next exam wasn’t until Friday. But it would do.
‘Tell me about it!’ he said, putting his hand gently against my jacketed back and steering me towards the restaurant. He lifted the hand with the phone in it. ‘My son – Will – just had a text from him. He’s a fresher at Harvard.’ He paused to beam slightly, bless him, then consulted his wrist. ‘Jeez, it’s twenty past three there. The guy needs to be in bed. Takes after his father, I guess. Anyway, shall we?’
Smiling indulgently (where Kate was concerned, this was a circumstance I had not had the luxury of enjoying in a long time – though there was, at least, Starlight Express to look forward to) he led me towards a large man wielding a snowy tea towel and a supercilious smile, who then led us in turn to a table in the far corner of the restaurant. It was fairly quiet – just the odd restrained cough and a sprinkling of big newspapers. Behind which, I guessed, various captains of industry chewed thoughtfully while considering the Big Issues Of The Day. I felt very suburban in my little coral coloured suit.
‘Well,’ said Nick, rubbing his hands together and smiling happily at me as we sat down. ‘Isn’t this nice? And am I starving or what! What’ll it be?’ The man had sidled up again. ‘Tea? Coffee? Hot chocolate?’
> I opted for tea as I had quite enough stimulants on board as it was, and, once we’d placed our orders and been advised of the rules of engagement for the procurement of the breakfast buffet selection, he sent the waiter away. He was very bouncy. Very smiley. Very businesslike, this morning. I wondered if, like our last phone call, our meeting was being monitored and/or recorded for quality assurance purposes too. But perhaps I was just feeling unduly drugged. By sleep deprivation and lust.
Or love?
The cereals, fruit salads, cheeses, juices, croissants and so on were all laid out, in magnificent abundance, on a quadrangle of tables, extravagantly clothed, and dotted with implausibly stiff flower arrangements and towering jumbles of oversized fruit. What did they do with all this stuff after breakfast? We ventured across to graze upon the bounty before us. Him, a glass of juice and two croissants, me, a brace of diminutive pastries. By the time we returned to our table, the tea had already arrived. He poured me a cup, and smiled.
‘So,’ he said, stabbing his thumbs into a croissant. ‘You.’
I liked the way he did that. No nonsense. Lots of crumbs. ‘Yes. Me,’ I replied.
‘Indeed.’ He smiled at me again, in an altogether less corporate fashion this time, before his eyes slid away and he cleared his throat. ‘So, Sally.’ He leaned forward, having corrected his expression again. ‘The way these things generally work is that I now spend a lot of time now running through your appraisals and so on, and how your profile as an employee fits in with the Drug U Like human resource criteria, and then I spend even more time banging on about how-we-see-your-role long term in the development of Drug U Like’s Optometry services to the UBP –’
‘UBP?’
‘Unsuspecting British Public – it’s an internal thing. And, finally, I spend more time still telling you how exceptionally impressed we have been with every facet of your performance – productivity, attitude, level of expertise, interactive stroke people stroke time management skills and so on and so forth –’he ticked all these off against a finger as he spoke. ‘But then I think you know most of that already, don’t you? And as, basically, the bottom line here is that we’d like to interview you for the post of Optometry Manager, I thought I’d spare you the pitch and crack on with it.’ He grinned. ‘Of Amberley Park, of course,’ he added. ‘Not the entire Developed World. There you go. What do you think?’
He leaned back in his seat again and popped a hunk of croissant in his mouth.
I stayed hunched over my miniature pain au raisin and blinked at him.
‘Me? Manager?’
His mouth was full now so he nodded.
‘But what about Dennis?’
He flapped a hand as he swallowed.
‘Oh, don’t you worry about him,’ he said, picking up his glass of grapefruit juice and taking a man-sized gulp from it. ‘Not a problem. He told us very early on that he wouldn’t be adverse to a healthy early retirement package and a chance to devote more time to his exhibition dahlias. Nice guy. Anyway, so no problem. Not relevant, Sally.’
I thought back to my first proper work meeting with Nick Brown and the fact that though I had said all the right things in response to all the usual where-do-you-see-yourself-in-five-years stuff (which had I been honest would have run as ‘er, optometry? How should I know? I don’t do life like that’) I didn’t recall having expressed any particular ambitions in that direction. And yet here it was. Being offered to me anyway. As if it were the most natural next step in the world. Strangely, it suddenly seemed as if it might be. Could be.
‘I’m stunned,’ I said.
‘Excellent,’ he replied, grinning. ‘We like to keep the staff on their toes.’
Which was slightly unfortunate given the Ruth situation, but as she didn’t seem to care a hoot any more, I decided that perhaps I shouldn’t either. We exchanged a pointed look, and I finished mine with a smile, to let him know I wasn’t about to rant at him about it again. He smiled back and sat forward.
‘You’ll want to think about it, obviously. Which is just fine. The time scale we’re thinking is about twelve to fourteen weeks. You’d need to go on a couple of courses – neither involving outdoor pursuits this time, I hasten to add – just the standard stuff. Leadership skills, target-setting and so forth. And you’d need to continue with your practice, naturally. The branch isn’t really large enough to support a full time dedicated manager, but my guess is that you’d want to do that anyway, right? And we’d probably bring in a trainee optom, and you’d need to oversee their professional development.’
‘I’m stunned.’ I said again, abandoning my half eaten pastry in favour of watching him instead. ‘I suppose I just assumed Russell would –’
He shook his head then grinned at me.
‘Which is an aspect of your leadership style that you do need to look at, Sally.’ He spread his hands. ‘Why ever not you? You’re senior optom, you’ve been with the company a good long time now, you’re very good at your job, you’re committed, and most importantly, you have the support and respect of everyone I’ve spoken to.’
Why had I never thought of myself like that?
And thinking that thought made me realise something else. That Jonathan had never thought of me like that either.
‘Me included,’ Nick added, looking rather intently at me all of a sudden. My stomach flipped. ‘So,’ he said. ‘Do you think you might be up for it?’.
I sat there, gazing into his beautiful blue-ice eyes, and I thought ‘shall I tell him what I’m really thinking right now?’ Because right then, my thoughts were away with the fairies. In a meadow, I fancied, full of buttercups and poppies, in a long flowery frock, with his hand holding mine….. I lowered my eyes and felt the beginnings of a blush creep across my cheekbones. But it wasn’t just me. So much was being said here. Every time he dipped off his corporate line.
Another waiter wafted up and cleared a space for our breakfasts. His being pretty much everything you could fit on a plate, mine being two poached eggs; perfect whorls glistening on thick hunks of toast.
‘Yes,’ I said firmly, picking up my cutlery and smiling. ‘You know what, Nick? I do.’
There was a moment of silence, while a smile crossed his lips.
‘Great,’ he said at last, picking up his cutlery also. ‘That’s that sorted, then. Now we can get on and enjoy breakfast can’t we? So, tell me, what exam is your daughter taking today?’
In retrospect, I think it might have been the setting that doomed (if that is the word) this particular encounter, for we had an acre of table, a prettily placed sun shaft, hot coffee on tap and a congenial hour in which to do nothing more taxing than get to know each other a little better. We talked about him, we talked about me, we talked about all sorts of things. We even talked about the fact (me blushing furiously) that my car had recently played host to my inebriated daughter, and that if his intention was to come back with me to Amberley in it (which, alarmingly, it seemed it was – he had another meeting here tonight apparently, and might just as well leave his here and have a colleague bring him back), then he mustn’t mind the smell and must sit carefully on the green recycling bag I’d laid over the damp passenger seat so as not to infect my handbag.
One thing we didn’t talk about was my unfortunate shoes. ( Unfortunate being how I would intermittently come to think of them as I lay awake in the small hours of the night following this fateful day.) Right now, as we exited the lift that had brought us back down to the ground floor, I just went ‘Yeeaargh!’
‘Whoah!’ Nick Brown said, as I lurched out of the lift, cannoning untidily into the side wall and now minus my left shoe. He made a timely grab for my arm and managed to spare me an intimate introduction to the carpet pile. Staggering a bit, I prised the heel from where it was wedged between the lift and the frame, pulled my dangling handbag strap back on to my shoulder then hopped on one leg blushing furiously while I tried put the shoe back on my foot.
‘
God!’ I said, losing my balance and bouncing around like Tigger. ‘Stupid shoes!’
‘Here, hang on to me,’ he said, putting his arm around my shoulder.
I slid the shoe back on to my foot and straightened up. His arm was still around my shoulder. A firm, warm, familiar weight against me.
‘Must cut down on the early morning gin,’ I twittered, laughing
gaily to cover my sudden and electrifying recollection of our moment on the dune. I scooped the hair from my face. Felt a knot in my stomach. His arm was still around my shoulder.
‘The gin, period,’ he replied sternly. ‘Can’t have the management falling over drunk on the job. Not before lunchtime, at any rate.’ He laughed as well. We moved away from the lift, along the carpet, towards the doors and the sunshine in the distance. I was walking just fine now, and yet his arm was still around my shoulder.
Straight on Till Morning Page 16