It made me catch my breath to recall it. In spite of everything, I wanted it again.
‘Money? What money?’ I said again, dazed by the powerful physical sensations rising in me.
‘I took the rap, Jan. I served eight years for armed robbery, and you took the money to look after until I came out.’
‘I don’t remember,’ I said weakly, but in the same moment I thought I probably might. ‘I need to sit down.’
I sank down to one of the big cushions on the floor. He squatted on his haunches in front of me, trying, I think, to be threatening, but instead once again blurring my senses with the smell of him. He leaned towards me and I could see a resemblance to the young man I had briefly known. He had not been called Theo then – we agreed on that. He had had a headful of greasy hair, long and falling across his eyes, no moustache. He was lean, angry with the world, out for what he could get. What he actually got, he said now, jabbing a hand at me, was a long jail sentence. After release he went to find me, needing the stash of money. No one knew where I was so he went abroad – Sweden, Russia, then Thailand, Australia, back through India and eventually to Europe, always on the move and burning with the injustice of losing the money to me.
Now he had found me somehow and he wanted the fifteen thousand pounds. Cash, he said. This week.
‘I can’t just find fifteen thousand pounds,’ I said.
‘It was a lot then, but not any more. I want what is mine, what was mine all along. Fifteen grand is nothing to someone like you, a middle-class bitch with a job and a place out of London and fancy friends.’
‘Don’t call me that.’
‘You used to like being called a bitch. Jan the bitch.’
‘You don’t need money,’ I said, glancing around at the stuff he had in his room, the general ambience of the house, which if not prosperous was certainly comfortable. ‘How do you afford this place?’
‘Mind your own business. Let’s say you’re not the only bitch who owes me.’
I was trembling – with fear, but also with a irresistible impulse to have him. He terrified me, but he was reawakening familiar old urges.
‘Theo, don’t,’ I said.
‘Jan, don’t,’ he said, mocking me. ‘A good-looking woman like you always has a way of raising money.’
‘All right.’
I believed I knew what he wanted, that the solution was swift and sure. Inexplicably, I wanted it too. Staring into his cold grey eyes, the light from outside glancing off the shiny dome of his shaved head, I stood up, undid my skirt, allowed it to slip down my legs. We did it then, roughly and noisily across the cushions, with the sunlight on us and the trains rattling past the open window, again and again, slowing down for the points.
Afterwards, he pushed himself away and stood there over me as I sprawled on the floor, a close-up image of the man I saw at the window, his face and chest shiny with sweat, and even after what we had just done he remained threatening. It was not because of what he might do, but for what I might want him to do.
He kicked my clothes back to me across the carpet.
‘Good try, lady, but you don’t pay me off that way. You still owe me fifteen grand.’
It took me three hours to travel home after this. His last words as I left the house: ‘One week.’
It had happened the night I was in the van with him. Theo, or whatever he called himself then, had made me drive him to an office building he knew, took a gun, pulled a balaclava over his face and ran inside. A minute later he ran out again, fired the gun in the air, swung into the passenger seat and yelled at me to get the hell out of there. I drove fast for half an hour, into the gathering night. Theo eventually decided we had got away with it so I parked the van on the side of the highway and we scrambled to the back where the filthy old mattress was. We celebrated.
Later that night I drove him to the place he was staying, and took the money to the place I was staying. (Where were those places? Probably best forgotten.) I never saw Theo again, because a snatch squad of a dozen cops smashed down the door while he was still asleep and the law took its course.
What happened to the stolen money? I know I held on to it, determined never to spend it. I knew that the man was not one to mess with and I was frightened of him.
But the months went by and turned into years. My life, as I said, started to change for the better. I made new friends, found places to live that weren’t either falling down or deep in filth, took on a few jobs, and in general detoxed myself. That period is almost as much a blur to me as the dark days preceding it, but at the end of it some matters were certain. I had a permanent place to live, I had a job, I was no longer living on the razor’s edge of my dangerous old life.
And I had no idea what had happened to the stolen money.
Somewhere along the line I had spent it, lost it, given it away – whatever, I no longer possessed it or the shabby old bag that it was contained in. I did not waste too much time worrying about it. The years slipped by and I heard nothing of Theo.
Well, now it seemed he wanted his money back.
As he and I more or less agreed, fifteen thousand pounds in the present day was not an impossible sum to find, or raise, or borrow, or even earn. I had savings accounts, a few shares, I had equity in my apartment, my credit rating meant a loan would be simple. I could even draw the money on credit cards.
Somehow, though, I did not feel like doing any of those. Everything around me, my home, my possessions, my savings, all were symbols of the moderately successful woman I had become. I simply would not give any of it to Theo.
It was not even his money. It was stolen, so it belonged to the people from whom he had stolen it – or, more likely, to the insurance company that would have covered the loss.
The weekend came, then on the Monday morning I caught my usual train and went to work. The train duly passed Ennert Road and there was Theo, naked again at his window. He waved to me.
Later that day I thought of our Russian client, Yuri Maximov.
Maximov is in the top fifty of the Forbes List, and is one of the three richest oligarchs in Russia. Part of his wealth is based on arms deals with despots in the Middle East, but most of it comes from an area of Siberian tundra several thousand square kilometres in size, where oil shale can be found not far beneath the permafrost. The dirtily obtained oil helps keep the Russian economy working, it creates atmospheric and groundwater pollution on a scale so horrific that it cannot be imagined let alone measured, and it keeps Yuri Maximov supplied with all the palaces, luxury yachts and private jets that he and his family seem to need.
My own glimpse into the Maximov fortune was through a client deposit account his distant organization kept open in our firm’s accounts. This was used for many unspecified transactions, nearly all of which involved numbered bank accounts.
The interest alone on this client account came to more than twenty thousand pounds a week, credited in irregular, uneven amounts every few weeks. As a trusted executive I had managed Maximov’s client account for several years.
It had never occurred to me that I could steal any of it, but once the notion came to me it was irresistible. It was suddenly not a question of whether I should or should not, but more practical concerns: how to do it, how to conceal it, how to get away with it.
That afternoon I made a deliberate error on Maximov’s account, and ‘accidentally’ transferred a hundred dollars to one of his numbered accounts in the USA. I waited to see if the internal audit software would show up the anomaly, or if Kersey or anyone else on the network would notice, but by the time I went home there was not a stirring of awareness anywhere.
The next morning at the office (as the train passed his window Theo waved to me again and this time I waved back) the ‘error’ was still unnoticed and definitely unchallenged. Without further ado I transferred fifteen thousand pounds to a small internet acco
unt of my own. I had the jitters for the rest of the day, but all was well. On the train home that evening I tried to spot Theo at his window, but he was not in sight. I waved towards him anyway, my fist clenched.
Because I failed to see how Theo could force me to pass the money over, I sat on it for a while. Even a small amount like fifteen thousand makes up an impressive pile of banknotes, and I liked having them around me. One evening I spread them over my floor and ran my fingers across them. The theft was unnoticed and I was fifteen thousand better off. Theo had no hold over me – he had only the vaguest idea where I lived.
I soon discovered how wrong I was. He must have searched my purse for my address when I was at his house. One morning he was outside my apartment block as I left to go to work. He fell in beside me, matching my stride.
‘It’s thirty thousand you owe me now,’ he said.
‘Theo –’ My heart was thumping in fright. ‘You said fifteen.’
‘That was then. This is now. Let’s call it a penalty for late delivery. Thirty grand, within a week.’
‘I was going to hand it over at the weekend!’
He halted. I paused beside him.
‘You’ve got the fifteen?’
‘Well, yes.’
‘Where is it?’
‘Back there,’ I said. ‘In my apartment.’
We turned around. I made him wait outside the building while I went in to collect the cash. I had stuffed it into a large canvas bag, so I took this down and handed it over.
‘I want the rest in a week,’ he said. ‘Another fifteen grand, in cash.’
‘Aren’t you going to count it?’
‘You’re not crazy enough to cheat me,’ Theo said. ‘Just get the next fifteen. You’ve done it once, so you know how. Bring it to the house next week.’
‘Will that be the end of it?’ I said, but he was already striding away. I called after him, ‘Is this the last time?’
‘Just do it.’
He was gone, but I noticed he was not walking towards the station. I waited until he was out of sight, then hurried on my usual way. I caught the train with seconds to spare.
Theo was of course not at his window when the train went by, but I could not resist looking.
Alone in my office I stared at the monitor, with Maximov’s account details up. I ran the usual checks but there was no sign anyone had spotted the theft. Kersey, indeed, had attached a routine note to the account, saying Maximov had once again renewed our contract. Another great slug of interest had been credited that morning. It made me think, the kind of thinking I found irresistible.
I had the power to clean Maximov out, or at least the minuscule part of the financial empire represented by his client account. Inevitably I would be caught if I did that, but there was just a chance if I was swift and clever –
But I did not want to be caught.
Another fifteen thousand pounds was an unnoticeable drop in Maximov’s ocean.
I thought and thought. I set up the transfer, ready to go.
I could do it – should I? Wasn’t theft in itself wrong, no matter how abhorrent the victim might be? Was this going to be Theo’s final demand? Did I have the guts to try again? Was I tempted beyond endurance?
Yes, Yes, No, Maybe and Yes.
Maybe, Yes, No, No and Yes.
No, No, No, Yes and Yes.
The Yes was at the end of the line. Every time. My index finger twitched on the mouse button.
Continue Y/N?
Kersey had entered my office without my hearing. He walked up behind me, reached forward and cupped a hand around my breast. I went tense and my finger clicked the mouse. The transfer went through.
‘Let’s celebrate this evening, Janine,’ Kersey said.
Femme Maison
Joanna Walsh
You wanted to look different for him. You wanted a change of a dress. You wanted a new dress you had never seen before. You wanted to be someone else, someone neither of you knew.
But then you have not met Him yet.
He will take you away from all this. As things are, you can’t go on in any way: everything is missing. If you were somewhere else, you would already be wearing the different dress, a summer dress. You would be comfortable. But the dress you have is too big. You can’t wear your dress if you can’t alter it, and you don’t have sewing machine needles. You broke the last one and the shop didn’t have any more.
You were typing on your laptop: something important, you can’t remember, but you began to search for sewing machine needles.
It’s the same all over the house. You go to look for things but they are always in the wrong room. Where are they? They might have been left outside in the rain. They might have been put on a high shelf so the children would not get them.
No sooner is there something to do than it requires something else to do it with. The piece of information needed is always at one remove: scribbled on an envelope already in the recycling; printed on an old bank statement, perhaps shredded; written in a letter filed in the cabinet you don’t open any more.
It’s question of systems. Go upstairs and you’ll notice a tea towel that should be in the kitchen. Bring it down and there are the books that should be by your bed. How did they change places? Why didn’t you notice the books before you went upstairs for the tea towel? Then you could have taken them up and put them by the bed and picked up the tea towel and taken it down. Except it wasn’t the tea towel you went to look for, was it? It was something else, but exactly what you can’t remember.
Sewing machine needles.
You should have established some kind of process.
There is a process to the day. You eat at established times though it’s such a bother to make. Always afterwards you find a wrapper without a name snaking across the kitchen surface. What is it from? If it is vacant, why was it not cleared? How did you miss it? On tables small things migrate according to the season: the seals from plastic milk cartons, beer bottle lids (though it was He who drank beer whereas you drink wine). How did they get there? Why were they not removed? There must be a way to get rid of them.
You forget to wash your hands before re-opening your laptop. Its keys are slick with butter. At least not with jam but this is because the jam is still in the shop where you forgot to buy it. You came away with 250g of cherries and a pint of milk. The milk you needed, undoubtedly. You needed cocoa but they did not have cocoa. The queue was long and you were distracted by the labels of the wine bottles behind the counter, not the bottles with graphics and fancy typography but the bottles with pictures of chateaux, sea bays, farmhouses. You walked into each of these landscapes, as if you were visiting. If you were in those places, any of those places, you could wear the dress instead of tight urban jeans, the dress that needs altering. You could have been comfortable.
You go into the post office in case there is something else you need. Each time you go in you look at the magazines and consider buying Vogue. You do not buy it. Next time you shop you will do the same thing.
All your life you’ve been asked to choose: to be the woman who didn’t drink canned sodas, who didn’t watch American television programmes, who would never, even in fun, decorate her home with Anaglypta wallpaper. Some of these injunctions you have overturned, but there are always fresh ones. You choose not to choose any more.
It’s not only your fault. After the children left, bit by bit you and He abandoned the house, eating takeaways, spending evenings in cafes. At one point you had been able to afford to eat out every weekend. But the house missed you. The fresh flowers you bought were, it knew, an insult, a sop. That’s why you knew He had to go.
But how did your keyboard get so dirty? The dust builds all over the house, always on a different surface. You chase it with a corner of the dress’s sleeve. The dirt is still there, grey and furry. It has merely transferr
ed. You are now part of it.
After He was gone, things altered. You expanded into the areas of the house you hadn’t previously used: the study, the front room. You felt, for the first time, that they were yours. You also felt you owed it to them.
But the house is still not a perfect fit. Still things surprise you. When you try to get to the cupboard holding the dusters, there is something in the way: a stand of washing, a tall stool from the counter. Who put them there?
You turn, you remember – the laptop. You had forgotten. You remember. You had got up. You had wanted to clean the keyboard. You had gone to find a duster.
Something was altered. What was it?
Wait. You remember.
You had cut but you had not pasted.
Your words hover in vacant space. You turn. You run. You will save them.
You paste. They are still there.
How could you have left them? How could you have forgotten? How did you manage to leave your thought at its waist to search for the duster? How did you fail to get the duster but return to the laptop?
What you had written might have been lost for ever. The words are still there. But so is the dust.
You thought it would be OK after He was gone. You thought you’d have more time for work, for fusslessness. But the house is relentless.
The fridge must occasionally be defrosted. Something knocks in the icebox. Frost has grown on the walls of the cool section as moss does on a tomb but inverse, its fingers reaching down towards the salad drawer. An afternoon hacking though the ice forest may reach a single embryonically suspended fish finger.
You still attempt to generate one bag of rubbish each week: the bin demands it. The dishwasher is completely redundant. The washing machine begs to be used but your piles of laundry are dwindling, pathetic. They barely skim the bottom of the drum: they are hardly dirty.
The Best British Short Stories 2014 Page 16