Leftovers

by Stella Newman

  ‘It’s simple,’ I say. ‘The Birkin is not about what it looks like, it’s about what it says.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘Which is: “I am rich. I mean proper-rich, Hermès-rich, not Marc-by-Marc-Jacobs rich. And what is more, I don’t care if you think I’m a spoilt brat for jizzing the cost of a car just to wear on my arm. Because guess what? I am proper rich (well, my dad is). Now do excuse me while I finish my gold sandwich …”’

  ‘Whoa. You can tell all that from a bag?’ he says.

  ‘It’s brands, Sam. It’s what we do in this building. Build something out of nothing. Find an object and give it significance, meaning, aspiration. This brick will make you happier, sexier, more popular. Then you can charge what you like for it.’

  ‘Forget Karly,’ he says, looking thoughtful. ‘I’d be more concerned about Nick.’ He suddenly looks worried. I never see Sam look worried. Even if Berenice calls down personally to shout at him that the world is going to end if her Boden delivery doesn’t get brought up in two minutes flat, even then he never looks fazed. But right now he looks anxious. It’s almost like he feels protective of me. Maybe he’s confusing me with his packet of fags …

  ‘It’s going to be bad,’ I say.

  ‘It is going to be bad,’ he says. ‘But … They’re team of the year in Campaign. They won gold at Cannes. It could actually work in your favour.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Suze – if you’re going to be on the board you’re going to have to get used to playing with the big boys. It’ll toughen you up once and for all.’

  Maybe I don’t want to be toughened up that much, I think, as I head back out of the mail room and towards the weekend.

  Sunday

  I’ve lounged around all of yesterday and most of today and achieved pretty much nothing other than catching up on last week’s TV, and making a rather good dark chocolate mousse. It’s now 4 p.m., the guilt is about to overflow and I can no longer put off the inevitable: a visit to my neighbour, Grumpy Marjorie, who lives on the other side of Peartree Court.

  My grandma and Marjorie knew each other well. They were not great friends.

  On a good day Marjorie can be decent company: fun, vivacious even. She and my grandma would occasionally sit having tea, chatting about the horrors of growing old. Or gossiping about the Langdons, or the new couple in number 14 who definitely weren’t married, and looked more like father and daughter, except they were always touching each other in public: ‘Disgraceful, always pawing her like a wild bear.’

  But Marjorie also has terrible black moods – she can turn from upbeat to aggressive in a moment. My grandma could go six months without exchanging a word with her. I wouldn’t be surprised if Marjorie was bi-polar. Ironic, given that she used to be a psychotherapist. Mind you, psychotherapists must be properly crackers, sitting all day listening to other people’s misery.

  Marjorie has a son in his fifties but he lives in Brighton and they rarely speak. He comes round once a year on Boxing Day, stays for two hours, then flees back to the coast claiming he doesn’t want to get stuck in traffic. ‘Traffic, on Boxing Day?’ she says, practically spitting. The only thing she’s ever said about him is that he is the greatest disappointment of her life. All credit to him for visiting at all.

  Still, since my grandma died and I moved into the block I’ve felt a weird sense of duty towards Marjorie. She doesn’t get many visitors, although you can see why. I try to visit her, and Terry the caretaker pops in most days, though she once threw a can at his head a few years back. She’d had a bad fall and broken her hip, and he’d merely suggested it might be time to consider her options, perhaps move to a residential home. ‘Why would I want to be around depressing old people?’ No point arguing that misery loves company.

  Today I head down to Waitrose to buy her a couple of punnets of raspberries and some seeds for her budgie, Fitzgerald. I’ll take her some bolognese I’ve defrosted too, and the chocolate mousse. She’s a sucker for sweet things and mousse is her favourite – the only dessert I make that doesn’t get stuck in her dentures.

  ‘Who is it?’ she says at the front door, though I know she’ll be squinting through the spy hole at me.

  ‘I have raspberries for you, Marjorie,’ I say.

  ‘Where from?’ she growls back.

  ‘Don’t worry, they’re not from Sainsbury’s.’ I wouldn’t dare.

  ‘Then you can come in.’ She opens the door and greets me with a neutral expression; not huge on warmth, our Marjorie. She’s wearing her usual floor-length grey robe and mid-brown suede sheepskin slippers. She has terrible gout and her ankles are purple with swelling. She shuffles slowly down the dark corridor and into her living room. The air is heavy; the smell reminds me of my junior school – a mix of canned soup and disinfectant.

  ‘Marjorie, how can you see where you’re going? It’s practically pitch black in here, why don’t you open the curtains? Let some light in.’

  ‘What’s to see?’

  She slowly winds her way through the chaos in her living room: stacks of Radio Times are piled on the floor, and a collection of side tables house Sudoku books and mail-order catalogues; magnifying glasses bookmark pages of dressing gowns and neck pillows.

  ‘Marjorie, do you want me to help you tidy up in here? It’s getting a bit messy.’

  She ignores me. She’d only tell me that she knows exactly where everything is and to mind my own bloody business.

  Finally she reaches her destination and her face lights up. ‘Look who’s come to see us, Fitzgerald,’ she says, bending down slowly to talk to the little green and yellow bird, twittering loudly on a perch in his cage. ‘You’re right, Fitzgerald, it has been a long time,’ she nods at him. ‘Yes, she does live very nearby, we could almost throw a stone, couldn’t we?’ I wouldn’t put it past her. ‘And that’s correct, Fitzgerald, it wouldn’t be so hard to visit us more often, would it, my darling? What a clever bird to remember where Susie lives when it’s been so long. Isn’t he clever, such a good memory?’

  ‘I bought Fitzgerald a little treat,’ I say, following her through the obstacle course and handing her the seeds.

  ‘Oooh, look at what we get when someone has a guilty conscience!’ she says. ‘Your favourite, Fitzgerald! Sunflower seeds!’

  ‘And I brought you some bolognese sauce and your favourite chocolate mousse too.’

  She tries not to show that she’s pleased.

  ‘Just think,’ I say. ‘If I’d left it another month you might have got a whole suckling pig.’

  She looks at me out of the corner of her eye. A tiny smile creeps up the side of her mouth.

  ‘Put that lot in the fridge, make me a cup of tea and come and play a round of cards with me.’

  Marjorie’s fridge is the size of a shoebox. All that’s inside is a pint of full-fat milk and three half-eaten, uncovered cans – one of Campbell’s condensed chicken and mushroom soup, one of pilchards and one of steak and kidney pudding.

  ‘Marjorie, shall I pop home and bring you back some clingfilm?’

  ‘That stuff gives you cancer,’ she says. There’s no point in arguing with her, or pointing out that she’s more likely to get ill from leaving food in cans, half-opened.

  ‘Do you want me to cook you some pasta?’ I say. ‘I could do some nice shapes with bolognese?’ I can’t bear to watch Marjorie eat long length pasta. The sucking noise she makes and the mess that ends up all over her face when she eats spaghetti is gross. I mean, I’m sure I do exactly the same but I don’t have to look at myself while I’m eating.

  ‘I’ll get the girl to cook it tomorrow, if she can boil water without burning it: a half-wit of the highest order this new one, even worse than the last. She can’t understand basic English. She just looks at me with these big eyes like she hasn’t a single thought in her head.’

  I bet she does have plenty of thoughts, Marjorie: all of them about throttling you. I head back into the kitchen and make her tea,
which she drinks whiter than milk. I don’t know why she wastes money on teabags – I’m only allowed to introduce the bag into the cup for a millisecond. It’s like that quote about how to make the perfect Martini – hold the gin bottle next to the vermouth and let a beam of sunlight pass through. That’s all well and good but there’s no sunlight in Marjorie’s flat to pass through this teabag anyway.

  Those poor carers the agency sends round here: I have nothing but gargantuan respect for them. None of them have a hope in hell of ever hearing those immortal words ‘thank you’. Quite frankly it’s a good job most of them don’t have English as their first language or they’d walk out a lot sooner, the amount of verbal she gives them. I know you’re not supposed to say things like this about vulnerable old ladies with osteoporosis and gout, but more often than not Marjorie is a complete cow.

  Now where’s she hidden the kitchen bin today, I wonder … Marjorie’s living room is like a junk shop but for some reason she can’t abide the sight of a bin anywhere in her flat. Well probably those two things are connected, I suppose. She doesn’t like throwing things away so she pretends bins don’t exist. (Good grief, what’s it doing in there? I know I’m a bit of a hoarder but at least I don’t hide my kitchen bin in a shoe cupboard.)

  Right. I’m done in this kitchen, it’s too depressing. I take her tea through and set it down on the Duchess of Cambridge coaster on Marjorie’s side table. She nods.

  ‘Cake’s still going strong?’ I say, walking over to a Perspex case in the corner to examine my handiwork. For Marjorie’s eightieth birthday last year, I’d baked a large cake in the shape of Fitzgerald’s head. It had taken me ages to match the perfect shades of green and yellow for the buttercream icing, and two hours to pipe them precisely in short little strokes, like feathers. I suspect it would have tasted more of food colouring than of vanilla but no one ever managed to find out. Marjorie was so smitten with this replica of her beloved that she refused to let anyone cut into it, let alone eat his face. She’s gone full Havisham and had it under Perspex ever since. God knows what they put in that food colouring – formaldehyde by the looks of it – but it’s held up pretty well.

  ‘OK,’ she says, taking a deck of cards from her side table. ‘Gin rummy, I’ll deal.’

  We play three rounds of increasingly frustrating rummy. I would probably let Marjorie win just to cheer her up but there’s no need for that. She thrashes me every time. In each hand we play I’m just holding out for a couple of cards before I lay mine down, but she nips in and declares ‘Gin’, leaving me with a handful of deadwood. I swear she’d clean up in Vegas, she’s a total card-sharp. Defeated, I head to the kitchen to make us more tea. She’s still chuckling away to herself when I return.

  ‘So what’s going on with you?’ she says. ‘Still in that terrible office?’

  I nod. ‘I’m working on this one last project, and if that goes well I’ll be promoted to the board. And then I’m going to leave.’

  ‘What I don’t understand,’ she says, pulling herself forward in her chair with her elbows, ‘is why you don’t leave now, if you’re so damn miserable. Makes no sense wasting time when you should be getting on, you’re not young any more.’ Marjorie loves to attack. It’s her favourite pasttime and the main thing keeping her alive, along with bile and re-runs of Columbo.

  ‘Well Marjorie,’ I say, trying to be patient; we’ve discussed this before. ‘There are three reasons, aren’t there? I can’t leave because I need my bonus.’

  ‘Money’s never a good enough reason!’ she snaps. ‘How much is this bonus?’

  ‘Several thousand pounds,’ I say.

  ‘That’s neither here nor there. You’ll have to support yourself once you’ve left.’

  ‘Well yes …’

  ‘Your grandmother was never good with money either. I told her you can never go wrong with shares in ICI.’

  Lay off the dead grandmother please, Marjorie. ‘Of course I’ll need an income,’ I say. ‘But that bonus money will give me a cushion, pay off my debt, that’s all.’

  ‘Nonsense, it’s clearly fear, a classic evasion technique; you’re not fooling me for a second.’ I can only imagine what a delightful time Marjorie’s patients must have had in their therapy sessions, being torn to shreds like this. ‘I could write you a cheque for five thousand pounds right now and you wouldn’t leave.’

  ‘I would too!’ I say.

  ‘Bring me my cheque book,’ she says.

  ‘Marjorie …’

  ‘Bring it to me, it’s in my brown bag, in the hall. Bring it!’

  I have no idea how much Marjorie has in the bank but I couldn’t take her money even if she was rich. Still, to humour her, I fetch her bag and she writes me a cheque, signing her name in a frenzy and handing it to me with venom.

  ‘That’s your first excuse gone. Put it in your pocket. Do it, right away! OK, good. What’s next?’ she says, warming up now. I can see how much she’s enjoying this, though there’s a manic glint in her eyes that’s a warning sign she’s about to get nastier.

  ‘Well, secondly, if I ever need to go back into working at an agency, I want to go in at board level. I couldn’t bear to have to jump through all the hoops again.’

  ‘Gobbledygook. What do you think, Fitzgerald? Flawed reasoning, failed before she’s even started, self-defeatist, weak, cowardly. Yes Fitzgerald, I agree with your diagnosis.’

  I feel my face flush. I know this is her idea of fun but I can think of many other things I’d rather be doing than sitting here: ‘not sitting here’ would be foremost.

  ‘And what’s your third reason? It had better be less flimsy!’

  ‘Just because, Marjorie. It’s the principle of the thing. I deserve it, I have earned it, and I’m not going to walk out of there till I have been recognised.’

  ‘Ha, pride! And such stupidity! You must get that from your mother’s side of the family because your grandma was no beauty but neither was she a fool,’ she says.

  ‘Marjorie, do you mind not bringing my mother into this?’ I say. ‘I know you’re only joking but it’s really not necessary.’

  ‘I’m not joking at all,’ she says. ‘Though I can see I’ve offended you. You probably do get the over-sensitivity from your mother too …’

  ‘Marjorie. I’m quite tired so I think I’m going to head off now,’ I say, moving to stand up. I don’t care if you’re old and lonely. You are a rude old cow, plus you’re not even a blood relative. And you can stick some Paxo up Fitzgerald’s arse for all I care. I’m off.

  ‘You’ve only been here an hour! You can’t go yet, I’ll have no one to talk to.’

  You can talk to the bird, can’t you?

  ‘Marjorie, I’ve got a big week at work. I’ve left the food in the fridge and I can make you another cup of tea before I go if you’d like? Why don’t I do that?’

  ‘Don’t bother,’ she says. ‘Fair-weather friend. And you can give me that cheque back right now, trying to steal my money.’

  ‘Marjorie,’ I say, putting the cheque on her side table. ‘There’s no need to be like that. I’m just tired. I’ve got an early start – Mondays are always the worst.’

  She turns her head to the side and pretends I’m not even in the room.

  ‘I’m going to go home now, but I’ll come and see you soon,’ I say. We both know this isn’t true, and as I walk back to my flat I struggle to find some compassion towards her. No wonder she’s lonely if she behaves like that to the people who are trying to be nice to her. She’s not my responsibility and I refuse to feel bad about her. I’ve got plenty of other things to feel bad about as it is.

  Oh, and something to feel good about too, I think, as I ponder tomorrow’s wardrobe choice again. A date! Sorry, a ‘meeting’ with Jeff!

  w/c 19 March

  Status report

  Fat Bird – Pizza session with Jeff

  Brief creative team – TUESDAY A.M.

  Monday

  I have spent the whole of t
his morning looking at my watch and my inbox, willing it to be Jeff o’clock and worrying that he’ll email me to cancel between now and then. It’s now mid-afternoon and our department meeting has just drawn to a long, slow close. Berenice publicly savaged me for having failed to brief the creatives yet; when I explained that Robbie’s only just allocated the team and that I’ll be briefing them first thing tomorrow, she’d pursed her lips and said, ‘It’s super high-profile. It’s not just you who’s responsible.’ (She means it’s not just me who’ll take the credit. Naturally I will be the only one who’ll get the bollocking.) ‘If you slip any further, make sure you keep me in the loop.’ Given half a chance I suspect she’ll be turning that loop into a noose.

  I rush back to my desk to grab my things and when I look at my phone there’s a text from a number I don’t recognise: ‘Pizzas ready and waiting, plus I’ve got a little surprise! J’.

  I walk over to the Fletchers Head Office – sorry, ‘The Building’ – in my flats, checking my hair and make-up in as many reflective surfaces as possible along the way, then change into my heels on the corner of Wardour Street and head in.

  Jeff Nichols doesn’t make me wait twenty-three minutes down in reception! No, Jeff Nichols comes to fetch me within two minutes, which earns him brownie points in my book. And then even more brownie points when he takes me to the basement kitchens and presents me with some actual brownies.

  ‘I baked these off earlier,’ he says. ‘We’re doing trials on low-cal brownies and they tasted like an old sponge, so I thought I’d do a batch that weren’t soul-destroying just to keep myself sane. What do you think?’

  ‘Mmm, great,’ I say. ‘You’ve got salted caramel in there, haven’t you? I’m getting the sweetness and then something cutting through at the end.’

  ‘Good palate!’ he says. ‘I love that combo of salt and sweet. You know, for years, people thought that your tongue had different zones on it that tasted the different basic flavours.’

  I nod encouragingly. We’re a minute into this so-called ‘meeting’ and he’s already talking to me about tongues. Could this be any more blatant?