by Simon Brooke
Marion is still staring. 'Oh, what?' I whine.
'Can I have a word?' she says, pushing me out of the kitchen. She is surprisingly strong. Or am I just very weak?
As soon as the door closes she puts her face close to mine. 'Now you listen to me, young man, and you listen good. When I invited you to come and live with me I was making a big commitment and doing you an enormous favour, you understand?' She pauses. 'Look around this house.' I keep my eyes firmly on the floor. 'Look at it!' she hisses. I stare at her and then look around obediently, unable to take anything in.
'Everything about it is just the way I like it, designed for me, the best of its kind, absolutely perfect. Not a thing out of place. Everything arranged exactly the way I like it. Just like my life. And I've worked fucking hard for that. You, on the other hand, are beginning to bore me just a little bit. You're the one thing that's messing things up round here and that's a real shame. You understand? Do you understand?' I nod. 'Good.'
There is a pause during which I begin to hear that hissing sound that you get just before you faint. 'Andrew,' she says gently. 'You're a real disappointment to me. I thought you and I could have a proper relationship, that I could teach you things, show you another world, help you to grow, but now I'm not so sure. Please prove me wrong.'
She pauses again and adjusts her gloves and then adds in a jolly way, 'OK, I'm going for a cranial massage and then to the reflexologist and then my usual epidermal rehydration session. Call me on the mobile if you want to have lunch.' She strides off towards the front door, stopping briefly to rearrange a stray lily.
Getting dressed very slowly, still in the spare bedroom, I stop for a moment and hold my thumping head in my hands. That was probably one of the worst bollockings of my life but what spooked me about our encounter was the fact that when she saw me appear at the kitchen door it wasn't just revulsion on Marion's face, she seemed to be rather amused.
After a couple of glasses of orange juice and two aspirin I begin to feel a bit better and so I sit down to watch a bit of I Love Lucy and some American chat show in which a girl called Shanaya, who is wearing huge gold loop earrings and a hairstyle that looks like a fairground helter skelter, is telling the heavily lip-glossed hostess that she won't have sex with her boyfriend until he stops doing her mother as well. 'Go on, girl,' shouts someone from the audience and everybody whoops and claps.
Ana Maria, meanwhile, is warming to her task: 'Here you are - breakfast for bery sick baby,' she says, bringing a pot of coffee and two slices of toast dripping with butter and marmalade. As my initial nausea begins to subside I realise that I am really quite hungry. The toast is delicious.
'Thanks, Ana Maria, you're a life saver,' I say, watching her pour some coffee.
'Here - more sugar make you well,' she says, adding two spoonfuls.
'Thank you.'
'Oh, poor sick baby,' she laughs.
'God, I'll say,' I agree, holding the cup m both hands.
'Marion's furious with me, isn't she?'
'Madam is old bag.'
'Ana Maria!' I say in mock outrage. This provokes more giggles. We both laugh, glad to release the tension.
'Madam say "Don't be kind Mr Andrew, he bring it on himself. His own fault drinking whisky".'
'Don't remind me, I think I drank half that bottle.'
'Half bottle of whisky?' shrieks Ana Maria. 'You bery sick. My poor husband.'
Oh, fuck. Why did she have to say that? I'd almost forgotten. I look up at her. 'Sorry,' she says, embarrassed. She looks away for a moment, then picks up the toast plate and goes quickly back into the kitchen. I look down at my coffee in my gilt-rimmed china cup and realise how quickly I've got used to having someone make it and pour it for me. When did I last wash up a cup?
I find myself thinking about Jane walking back to the Tube station trying not to cry like a little girl. Then I imagine having this toast and coffee in bed with her. Like I used to do with Helen at college and when she came to see me at weekends in London. Would toast taste the same with Jane? I imagine going down to the kitchen in Fulham and making it. Odd mugs and chipped plates. Bringing my badly buttered slices up to her. Eating it in bed, getting into trouble for dropping crumbs everywhere - giggling and wiping the butter from her chin. Snuggling down and making love again.
Will that ever happen? I'm phoning to marry someone else, someone I don't love. Someone I can't even bear to look at anymore. Would I tell Jane - or any other girl - what I'd done? I couldn't spend the rest of my life without telling her that I'd been married before, could I?
I watch a bit more telly and listen to Shanaya's sister reveal that she is also sleeping with Shanaya's boyfriend and then I get up and go into the kitchen to break the news to Ana Maria.
She is sitting at the kitchen table looking at a clothes catalogue. I sit down opposite her. She knows something is up.
'Ana Maria, this marriage thing. I've been thinking about it. I-' Her reaction catches me and she just bursts into tears, pushes the magazine out of the way and puts her head on the table. 'Ana Maria, listen ... I ...'
After a few moments she looks up at me, her breath still slightly irregular. 'Please Mr Andrew ... look what I get.' From the pocket of her uniform she extracts a folded letter. It is very flattened and the edges are well worn. I open it carefully and immediately recognise the Home Office logo. It basically tells her that she has less than a month to leave the country or give a reason why she can stay. 'I cannot go back dere,' she sobs again.
'Ana Maria, I know.' I reach across the table and take her hand with its stubby fingers and bright red nail polish. 'I'm sorry, I just don't think I'm the one ...'
'You want more money, I have money,' she says quickly.
'Oh no, it's not the money, I don't care about the money,' I hear myself saying. Did I really say that? 'It's just that ...' I don't actually want to explain that going through this illegal charade makes me feel sick and that I'm afraid of us both getting caught by the police and that it might rob me of the possibility of a real wedding at some point in the future. Or force me to live a lie. Ana Maria's probably more worried about food and sending money to her family than she is about issues like flowers, choral music and making my mum happy. As I watch her shoulders heaving and tears falling on the catalogue pages I ask her, 'Isn't there someone else who could do it? Mark? Don't you know someone?' All of which sounds bloody insulting but the whole situation is too weird to worry about that.
'No, we try. My friend, Maria, she might know a guy who do it, but he want too much money and madam won't pay him because she don't trust him and there is no time.' She fingers the letter as if it were a death warrant. We sit in silence as I try and think of anyone I know but then I realise that every single one of my friends, hip, urban, fun though they might be, would be just simply appalled at the idea of doing this. I've got to try and remember how normal people think, difficult though it is these days.
Then I think about the ceremony - ten minutes, horrible, a bit like going to the dentist, but then I get £15,000, yes fifteen thousand quid, let Jerry sort out the legal stuff, Ana Maria's dream is fulfilled and a year later the divorce thing comes through and no one is any the wiser. I'm single again. After all the hassle I've been through over the last few months, I'll finally have something to show for it. I look at Ana Maria again, she is staring up at me through huge, brown, watery eyes. Oh, God, I've come this far, raised her hopes, made plans for myself with it, let's just do it.
People do worse things for money.
I nod at her. 'OK,' I almost whisper. I try to smile.
She smiles back up at me and then begins to cry again. I squeeze her hand and wander out of the kitchen.
Back in the living room I stare out of the window for a while and think about Jane. I'm about as low in her estimation as I could be, so it's not like this marriage thing, even if she ever possibly knew about it, could make things much worse. OK, Jane, with your shared flat in a crappy old house in Holloway and y
our job at Paperchase, your nights in front of the telly with tea or cheap white wine and your friends who bring their own cans of lager to barbecues - you've got it made. Congratulations!
It's no good, I start envying her again. That's the life I know.
I lean forward and let the cool glass of the window soothe my aching, burning forehead. Then I reach for the phone and start to ring Mark's number but I hang up quickly before it rings, realizing that I need to talk to a real person about this, someone who would understand that you might want to spend some time with someone without crisp fifties being involved so I ring my old direct line at the office. Unsurprisingly I don't recognize the voice that answers. I ask to speak to Sami.
'Who?' says the voice.
'Sami. That is Classified Ads, isn't it?'
'Yes, but I don't think there's anyone here called Sami.'
'There must be: Sami, Asian girl with long hair, sits at the end by the photocopier.'
'Look, I'm sorry, there's no one here called Sami,' says the voice, obviously getting pretty irritated that I'm stopping him using his phone to do what God put him on earth to do – sell space. 'Can't help you, goodbye. Oh, hang on ... What's your name?'
'Andrew. Andrew Collins. I used to work there.' I hear my name being repeated to someone else. I decide that if it's Debbie I'll just put the phone down but it isn't, it's Maria. 'Andrew, look, I can't really talk because Debbie will be back in a minute but Sami's sort of disappeared.'
'What?' I get up quickly and start to pace around the room.
'What do you mean she's disappeared?'
Maria sighs deeply. 'Oh, God. Listen, you mustn't ring here again, OK and please don't try and do anything because you'll make things worse.'
'Maria, what the hell do you mean she's disappeared?'
'She's gone away for a while,' says Maria. 'Thing is, Andrew, she was having a bit of fling with Ken Wheatley. The finance director? And anyway, her brother found out and went ballistic. He came here, beginning of last week, threatening to kill Wheatley. God, it was awful - such a mess. It was too much for security, old Ted nearly had a heart attack. They had to call the police and they calmed him down - Sami's brother that is. Seemed like a nice bloke, really, just very, very upset. Can't really blame him can you? What a shit!'
'Wheatley? I'll say, I just can't believe it. There was no clue, was there?'
'No one can believe it but it's true. So, anyway, he's on what do they call it? Gardening leave, or something, probably going to get the sack I should think-'
'Where is Sami?' I almost shout at Maria.
'We don't know, I think she did go home in the end. She didn't even have time to clear her desk. I had to do it. Didn't take long, very neat and tidy, actually, that's Sami for you-'
'Have you got her home number?'
'Can't give it out, Andrew.'
'Oh, Maria, for fuck's sake-'
'Debbie's the only one with it and she wouldn't give it out to anyone, certainly not-'
'To me. Yeah, s'pose not.' Debbie probably thinks I'm the last person who could help her - and she's probably right. 'Poor Sami. Where does she live? Somewhere in Ealing, isn't it?'
'No, Hounslow, I think.' Christ, I can't even remember that. How little I really know about her. Poor Sami, always smiling, always good, doing all the right things and look where it got you.
Maria suddenly whispers, 'Gotta go - Debbie's back.' The phone goes dead. I put the receiver down. Suddenly there is a tight feeling in my throat and a pressure behind my eyes and I realise I'm about to cry. Oh, Sami, perhaps if I'd been there I could have helped. You could have told me about what was happening with Wheatley. I could have calmed your brother down. I could have helped you sort out your life. Perhaps instead of your thinking about me all the time and about the mess I was slowly getting myself into I could have been there for you a bit. Poor, poor Sami.
I arrive early at Joe's and order a bottle of Badoit with lots of ice because I'm still dehydrated from the night before. Marion arrives just as I'm downing my third glass.
'Hi, sweetie.' She'd rung me an hour earlier, all love and kisses, to ask me if I would have lunch with her. The complete character U-turn had spooked me a bit. I agreed to have lunch partly because I want to get this wedding thing sorted out, well, all right, tie up the money aspect after the way Jonathan has ripped me off so royally - and partly because I'm hungry and there is no food in the fridge and, as usual, I don't have enough cash to buy any.
I smile. It must be pretty unconvincing.
'Aw, poor baby,' she says, putting her bag down. 'I feel terrible.'
'You boys. You must have been really bad last night.' I look at her for a moment, wondering how she can do this. Aren't I the one thing in her life that isn't perfect and is screwing everything else up? She's either being sweet to me as part of some sadistic mind game or she really just does not have normal emotions. I begin fingering my fork, looking at my Picassoesque reflection in it. A shattered, distorted face.
She knows perfectly well that I didn't go out with Vinny last night.
'How much did you drink in the end?' I just look at her for a moment. 'You were still at it when I came back, weren't you?' She waits for me to say something. 'Channing says "Hi".' There is another pause. 'You must feel bad. You needn't have come if you didn't feel up to it.' She reaches across and runs the back of her hand down my cheek. I turn my face away from her and tell her to get off me. Two Prada princesses on a nearby table turn to look at us and then carry on talking. Marion looks disapproving.
'Are you going to eat something? It'll make you feel better.'
'I'd better since I'm here.' I'm starving actually.
'Well, don't force yourself.'
Marion begins to chat a bit about how funny Channing was last night and about how there was a boy called Tony there who was so adorable and so funny and so cute she'd invited him to dinner next week. Then we eat just one course - bangers and mash for me, caesar salad for her - in silence.
As we wait for the bill, Marion says, 'Don't forget your wedding is on Friday.'
'I know.' Of course! So that's why she's being so nice to me, she wants to make sure it's all going ahead.
'I thought you might have forgotten.'
'No.'
'I've given Ana Maria the morning off.'
'Very kind of you.'
'Have you thought what you're going to wear?'
'Christ, no. Just a suit, I suppose. Do you want to buy me one as a wedding present?'
'We'll see. Charles and Victoria have agreed to be your witnesses.' Marion looks down at the table and smiles. 'You think this is funny, don't you?'
'No,' she says, hurt. 'This is a big commitment for me.'
'For you?'
'Yes. To make sure the Home Office believes your story, you'll be married to Ana Maria for at least a couple of years.' I look at her for a moment. Which is worse - having your lover married to another woman for two years or having your maid shackled to a no-hoper like me for that long? And, more importantly, which of us is she planning to get rid of first? She raises her eyebrows quizzically. 'Besides, I don't think you realise what kind of effect it's having on me.'
'What kind of effect is it having on you?'
'I'm quite cut up about it.'
'You're cut up about it?'
'Of course, seeing my lover marry someone else. That's a pretty bitter pill to swallow.'
I laugh. The Prada princesses and some other customers turn round.
'It's a pretty bitter pill for me to swallow,' I say through gritted teeth.
'I think it's the least you can do for me,' she says coldly, her dark eyes narrowed. 'I've given you a home for the last few weeks, taken you on trips and how have you repaid me? Getting drunk, abusing my staff. Cheating on me - yes, I know about that Australian slut. You're certainly making plenty of money out of it.' Her tone lightens. 'Which reminds me, I'll give you a cheque this afternoon.' I don't answer for a moment. 'If that's OK with you?
' I still don't answer, wondering whether to tell her to stuff it and walk out now. 'Unless you don't want it.'
'Thank you, thank you, I'm very grateful.'
'If you want cash it will take a bit longer,' she says, looking around the room to see if there is anyone she knows.
'No, a cheque is fine.' I mutter. Cash would be safer, but makes it all even more demeaning. But this is the last time she'll taunt me like this. And somehow it makes me all the more determined to get that money, her money. I know now what I'm going to do with it. I'm going to use it so sensibly, invest it, make every penny work for me. It's small change to her, a couple of trips to New York, a shopping trip to Paris, but it's a massive sum to me and I'm going to use it to start a business or put down a deposit on my own flat, something worthwhile, something laudable, something that will give me some security so that I never have to do this, never have to beg again. Something that even Jane couldn't disapprove of even if she would be appalled by how I got it.
The bill comes back and as Marion signs the slip for the first time in our relationship I get a close look at her credit card.
She goes off for a seaweed rub and I wander down Fulham Road, window shopping as usual, until it occurs to me that the only way I'm going to get one over on Marion, the only thing that will really spook her is if she realises I know who she is. If she knows that I know she told me a pack of lies on our first lunch date and that I know she is not the Upper East Side aristo she pretends to be but ... who is she? Someone else. I'm sure it won't help me get anything out of her financially but it will just make feel better. Besides, I think I deserve to know the truth: father in the discount furniture business, dodgy South American hubbies, Kremer Holdings and all. Not least I want to know why her credit card has 'Mrs J Martinez' written on it. The only person who can help me and corroborate Davina's story is Victoria. I can't go to Channing because he'll just go running back to her and besides, I can't stand the sight of him. I didn't get to ask Victoria the other night but now might be my chance.
I grab a taxi with the £20 Marion has given me.
'Where to?' asks the driver and I give him Victoria's address.