You Drive Me Crazy

by Anna Premoli

  Ironically, I’d invested my greatest hope in Mark Kim. I was actually convinced that he would rather gnaw off his own arm than take me to Seoul.

  Part of me was certain that I would never really end up going. Despite everything, deep down inside I wasn’t worried. I was sure that something would happen to prevent it.

  Unfortunately, events took an unexpected turn when, during a chance encounter in the elevator, Mark brought me up to date about the developments in the situation. True to our agreement, he had been trying to stir things up, but without results: it seemed that the company didn’t have the slightest intention of changing its mind about my transfer, despite complaints from both him and me. Coming out of the elevator he had told me, barely looking me in the face, “You must resign yourself to it, Miss Johnson, as I have. And I assure you that of the two of us, the one who must swallow the bitterest pill is me.”

  You lousy worm, you never miss a chance to insult me.

  After that for a few days I seriously thought about handing in my notice, but the truth is that I lacked the courage to do anything quite that drastic. And slowly, while my hope dried up like an autumn leaf, I had to face the inevitable and start packing my bags.

  So now, here I am stuck in the car with my parents as we make our way to the airport as though I was setting of for a camping trip with the girl guides or something. My mother decided to accompany me with the excuse of seeing me off, but I have the sneaking suspicion that she doesn’t trust her daughter: not wholly unreasonably, she’s scared that I’ll try to do a runner at the last minute, and wants to be there to make sure I don’t. In any case, it is excruciatingly embarrassing to be chauffeured there by my mum and dad at my age. Even more so because the reason I’m leaving is my job!

  At my age I should have some wonderful boyfriend by my side driving me to departures, or actually stopping me from leaving because he just can’t live without me lighting up his life. But, alas, of the famous Prince Charming there is no trace. Now that I think about it, there have only been toads who stayed toads even after I kissed them. A total waste of kisses.

  I was really grateful to Jane for turning up at my house this morning before going to the office: her parting gift was a collection of all of Jane Austen’s novels. A really nice thought, as my friend knows how much I love Austen. She tried to reassure me and promised to send me an email every day to show her support. I know she’ll be keeping her fingers crossed for me. If only that was enough. I doubt that even Merlin the bloody wizard himself could invent a magic spell to enable me to survive Seoul.

  Even my colleagues were really sweet yesterday – they’d organized a nice little farewell party to see me off, and it had given me the opportunity to learn first hand that farewell parties only cheer up the people who are staying, not the ones who are leaving.

  Having to clear out my desk only increased my sense of unease. As I emptied the drawers, taking out my knick-knacks and putting my stuff into boxes, I had a weird feeling that all this was incredibly final, as though it were forever. The truth is that at this moment, twelve months really does seem like an eternity. It doesn’t matter how hard I try, I just can’t seem to convince myself that this year will pass quickly.

  John hugged me for a long time in an attempt to reassure me, and told me that I was absolutely to call him every week. I just nodded disconsolately. I could hardly speak when the time came to actually leave.

  Throughout this period, Mr Kim has had the good sense to keep out of the way. I haven’t spoken to him since that last meeting in the elevator, and he has only shown his face on our floor from time to time. Not that I’ve missed his wonderful conversational skills, mind you.

  When my father’s car starts driving up the ramp of the airport car park, I’m still not totally prepared for this departure. My parents climb out of the car while I sit there, immobile, as though I’ve been nailed into the back seat. What I’d give to just put down roots right here in car park two instead of flying halfway round the world.

  My mother gives me a dirty look that produces absolutely no effect, so she decides to go straight into action and flings open my door with decision, as though annoyed by my lack of enthusiasm.

  “Good God, Maddison, do you want to get a move on? We’re going to be late!” she snaps at me in an agitated voice. What nonsense, we are extremely early, and certainly not because I wanted to be.

  I can’t help sighing sulkily in irritation, but then I give up and decide to get out of the car.

  Meanwhile my father has pulled my three suitcases out of the boot and is laboriously dragging them towards the entrance. Mum and I follow him straight to the check-in.

  I know, taking three suitcases is not exactly travelling light, but I really couldn’t manage to squeeze all the things I needed to survive into anything smaller. I tried, believe me, but it was hopeless.

  “Now make sure you stay in touch! And keep us informed about everything!” my mother is screeching. “I’m so happy for you! Back in my day this type of thing was just unimaginable… you certainly are the lucky one!” she repeats for the thousandth time. But for some reason, I don’t feel particularly blessed with good fortune. I’d be quite happy to swap places with her, if she was up for it – I’d do it in a heartbeat.

  In the distance I can just make out the figure of Mark, who is leaning on the check-in counter waiting for me. The closer we get, the more clearly I can see that he’s frowning. If we really want to work together he’d better learn to get rid of the bloody miserable expression that appears on his face every time he sees me. Otherwise he’ll really start to offend me.

  “Miss Johnson,” he greets me formally. “For a moment I feared that you might have been contemplating not turning up,” he adds, sounding serious.

  He has no idea how close I was to actually doing just that. Or does he?

  “I could never have let you leave on your own,” I answer him drily. He raises an eyebrow slightly, the way I saw him do on the day we met. Apparently he does it every time he’d like to give me an earful, but manages to restrain himself.

  My mother’s expression makes no secret of how fascinated she is by him. It’s obvious that she’s quite taken with Mark – basically, in her eyes, he’s got it all anyway simply because he’s got a career. Not knowing what to say, my father – the wiser half of the couple – keeps out of the way.

  It looks as though we’re done with the small talk, so I resign myself to digging my passport out of my handbag. The girl at the check-in desk stares with adoring eyes at my future boss as he hands her his passport. I hand her mine too, but for some reason I don’t seem to have quite the same effect upon her. Just as I suspected I wouldn’t.

  “Would you like to sit together?” asks the girl on the counter efficiently.

  “Yes,” replies Mark, before I can even enjoy the thought of being at the opposite end of the aircraft to him and his evil glares.

  “Perfect. So if you could just give me the luggage you’ll be putting in the hold.”

  Mark promptly does as she asks, placing his on the conveyor belt and my father comes over to give me a hand lifting mine on.

  “You are traveling light, I see,” says Mark sarcastically, without removing his eyes from my huge suitcases.

  “Haven’t you ever travelled with a woman before?” I reply in the same tone, not at all intimidated. “No girl in the world travels with less than three suitcases, especially if she’s been obliged to move halfway round the planet.”

  “Oh, but these are only Maddison’s first lot of bags! As soon as she’s set up in Seoul, we’ll be sending over the rest,” says my mother, as though someone had requested her opinion. Why the hell did I think it would be a good idea to let her come here? I lift my eyes to the sky and try desperately not to lose my temper.

  After getting the formalities out of the way, we take our tickets and set off towards the gate.

  Before going through security, I say goodbye to my parents for one last time, and wh
en I turn round at the x-ray machine, I see that my mother is still waving while my father is shooting me one last desperate look. I don’t know which of us is worse off, to be honest: after all, he will have to put up with my mother on his own. But then I haven’t really got anything to be smiling about myself either, as I’m about to set off for a continent where the only person I know is the opposite of sweetness and light.

  I try to steel my nerve – after all, it’s not really that hard to make friends nowadays. I’m sure that Korea will be full of nice, easy going, fun people. Yes, I will admit that my hopes on that score did take a bit of a knock when I met Mr Kim, but never give up dreaming, as they say.

  I slump into a chair before boarding, full of trepidation about what exactly I’m going to encounter all the way over there on the other side of the world. I must look really pitiful, given that Mark actually feels compelled to try and raise my spirits.

  “Seeing as I’m going to be the only person you’ll know in Seoul, how about we try and get to know each other a bit better? I only had a quick peek at the file that the human resources department gave me about you, but I noticed that we are almost the same age,” he says, clearly striving to be affable.

  I don’t buy it, though – he’ll have studied my file with maniacal attention in the hope of catching me out, I know he will.

  “How old are you?” I ask, pretending to be interested.

  “I’m thirty-three,” he replies without another word. Several awkward seconds of silence follow. At this rate, the conversation is not going to take off.

  “The same age as Jesus was when he died,” I finally manage to say. Not exactly a brilliant joke, but for some reason the tension was getting so bad that I just had to break it somehow. Of course, that might not have been the ideal way. Why does stuff like that always end up coming out of my mouth? And why does he always seem to provoke me into saying inappropriate things?

  I hold my breath while I wait for his reaction. Fortunately Mark laughs. Nice to know that the foot in my mouth has that effect upon him. I’m glad that I’m useful for something at least, I reflect with a little annoyance.

  “I hope that doesn’t mean that you’re expecting to see me hanging from a cross before I get to thirty-four. That would only give me a few months left to live.”

  I blink several times, incredulous at his answer. It would appear that after all, very deep down, Mark is also equipped with a rudimentary sense of humour. Well, who would have thought it?

  The unexpected discovery makes me frown. At this point I would prefer him to be entirely lacking in human qualities.

  “Of course not. It’s just that for some reason when I’m around you I seem to always come out with things that sound terrible. I’m usually a normal person, but you…” I don’t know how to explain how I’m feeling. “You really bring out a certain side of me…”

  He does not seem too worried by my admission. “Does that mean that you will always be honest with me? And that you will always tell me what you think?” he asks. While he’s speaking, he looks at me with a strange expression that I cannot quite interpret. I’m not quite sure what response he’s expecting from me, or if there even is a right answer at all.

  “Whatever it means, I’m completely unable to hide what I think from you,” I admit resignedly, “although at the moment I don’t really know you at all. I mean, apart from your name and nationality.”

  Mark looks up at the ceiling and meditates upon my last sentence.

  “We have a very long flight ahead of us. You can ask me anything that you’d like to know,” he says finally, before adding in a very professional voice a few seconds later, “I would like to get started as soon as possible on explaining the merger cases that we are following in Seoul right now and tell you about our team.”

  Obviously I must have misunderstood. I wanted to ask him about more juicy, more personal stuff. What do I care about company business and the issues affecting the office? But Mark comes across as a very private person, and not at all the type to make an effort at this kind of thing.

  Oh God, and what if the Koreans are all like him? With this smug air of superiority and communicating in monosyllables the whole time? For a moment I’m genuinely frightened. I don’t think I can hold out a whole year in the midst of people who only think about work.

  My rising panic is calmed by the voice which invites us to board the aircraft. We wait patiently for our turn, surrounded by a lot of Koreans who are on their way home. I wish I were in their place.

  Despite the fact that this flight is going to take several hours, the plane looks exactly like all the others – that is, narrow and claustrophobic. The space between one seat and the next looks particularly small to me, and I receive confirmation of this when, having found my seat, I try to sit down. I am about to complain about how cramped it is for my long legs when I realize that Mark is even taller than me and so will be even more uncomfortable. I know it’s not very nice of me to enjoy it, but the thought gives me a feeling of immense satisfaction. If this gentleman can stoically endure the discomfort, then I do not intend to show any weakness either.

  My seat is next to the window, while his is on the aisle.

  I admit it, perhaps this might be the ideal time to reveal to him that I am not particularly fond of flying. Phrased like that it actually doesn’t sound too bad, does it? Ok, I’m absolutely terrified of flying.

  Absolutely. Terrified.

  It’s a fear which is completely irrational, instinctive and primitive, and which drags me down into a black vortex of terror where I feel like I’m drowning.

  But because I’m a modern, independent girl, I refuse to let it affect my life. In fact, I fly all the time for holidays and for work. It’s all fine until I set foot on the plane, because it’s only then that my fear starts to emerge really violently. Usually I go very pale, my palms start sweating, I feel dizzy and I start having trouble breathing. Once I even fainted. Okay, I admit it – more than once…

  As we have the delight of twelve hours of flying ahead of us, it might be a good idea to warn my hapless companion about my panic attacks. I wouldn’t like him to get the wrong idea about me. Although, thinking about it, in all probability a panic attack is exactly what Mark would expect from somebody like me, and seeing as it’s his fault that I’m on this bloody plane anyway, maybe it would actually serve him right if I did throw up all over him. He should have worked out some way of allowing me to stay in London with my feet planted firmly on the ground.

  A couple of years ago, Jane and I booked a dream holiday – a week in a great apartment in the Balearic islands. I was so sick during the flight there that it took me the whole week to get over it. Not counting the time it took me to get over the flight back. Moral of the story: I came back to the office more haggard and pale than I was before I left.

  To tell the truth, I think that my fear has actually got worse: as time has passed, it’s grown from mild discomfort to irrational terror, and there’s not much you can do about it when you are overwhelmed by that type of panic.

  While I fasten my seat belt – which is harder than you’d think when your hands are shaking – I try to tackle the subject.

  “There’s something I want to tell you before we take off…” I whisper, leaning over towards Mark.

  That wasn’t the right way to start – I said it in such a faint tone of voice that I’ve alarmed him. He raises those dark eyes of his from his seatbelt and gives me a serious look.

  “Well, erm, it’s like this… I’m not a massive fan of flying,” I stammer. There, I’ve said it.

  He hasn’t known me long, but I have to admit that he’s already pretty good at interpreting my words. In fact, he looks at me with the expression of someone who knows exactly what’s going on.

  “Tell me, Maddison, exactly how sick are you going to be during the flight?” His question is less of a question and more of a command.

  I blush under that intense gaze of his.

 
“I don’t exactly get sick – I just have these… these little panic attacks. During which I can’t breathe.”

  Oh God, he’s going to think that I’m a total nutter. Or perhaps he already does? Never mind, I try and reassure myself. I wasn’t interested in getting into his good books in any case.

  He continues to study me thoughtfully, never lowering his eyes. I would like to defuse the situation but don’t know how to, until suddenly I remember some tranquillizers that my mother put in my handbag for emergencies just such as this. Ultimately, it’s her fault that I’ve never managed to get over these bloody neuroses of mine – in fact, having a mother like her only makes them worse.

  “Now that I think about it, I’d probably better take something to relax before we take off,” I say, and begin to rummage in my bag. It only took a few moments of that irritable stare of his to make me decide to do something, anything, to avoid looking like an idiot in front of him.

  As expected, my pills are hidden away right down at the bottom, and I’m forced to practically empty it before I manage to find them. Packets of tissues (I honestly don’t remember packing this many, but a girl always needs tissues), various bits of make-up in case I stumble upon some blond Adonis during my trip (unlikely as it might be on a flight like this, which is heading for Korea and not for Sweden), and an infinite variety of miscellaneous objects emerge.

  After much rummaging, the packet of pills is finally found in a little hidden pocket: on the box it says to take one tablet and not to exceed the recommended dosage. I opt for two. Whoever wrote the instructions couldn’t have known about my personal case history.

  Mark has noticed the number of pills I’ve taken, as I can tell from his disapproving expression. But that’s nothing new, so I’m not going to let it get to me. I bet he holds the world record for the number of disapproving glares that a single human being has ever given. And that’s after only knowing him for a couple of weeks. By the end of this long Korean year he’ll probably be up for another entry in the Guinness Book of records.