by Andi Osho
Meagan loitered in the corridor outside her office, watching the lift. It was less than twenty-four hours after the showdown at Jemima’s and she had already set the legal wheels in motion. The only missing piece of her puzzle was Todd. She glanced at her watch. He was three minutes late. If they were going to stop Jemima’s pile-of-crap novel going to press, they had to act fast.
Jemima had messed with the wrong people and it didn’t matter how far she ran, Santa Monica, Saint Lucia or the Sea of Tranquillity, Meagan was coming for her. With every recognisable trait, conversation or story Meagan read, her fury had grown. She was not just angry at Jemima’s full-blown betrayal. She was furious at herself for ignoring her instincts, which she’d done for weeks. Now, it was all so embarrassingly obvious. Why would a chronic singleton suddenly want to start dating? Well, it was over now. At the end of the corridor, the lift doors opened and Todd paced towards her, his face fixed. Good, she thought. He means business just as much as she does.
‘What’s going on?’ he fumed.
‘Don’t worry, I’ve got it all worked out,’ she said, hobbling behind him into her furniture-less office. ‘We can get her on defamation of character, invasion of privacy and unreasonable publicity. That’s just for starters. There might be something we can do around libel too.’
‘Meagan, we can’t do anything because you’re not supposed to have read the book,’ said Todd.
‘Then why did you let me see it?’
‘Look,’ said Todd standing even taller than normal. ‘I get that you want to have it out with your mate but this cannot happen.’
Meagan pounded her fist on a print-out of Jemima’s manuscript which still sat on top of her filing cabinet. ‘I’m going to do more than have it out with her. I’m going to bury this.’
Todd pressed his fingers into his temples, angering Meagan even more. He was behaving as though she was the one missing the point. His question shouldn’t be why was Meagan suing but why wasn’t he? If anything, he should be leading the charge.
‘Meag, I’ve breached company confidentiality sending you that draft. I could lose my job,’ said Todd.
‘You’ll lose a lot more if you don’t get on board, mate,’ Meagan hissed.
‘Meagan?’
‘We are going to make this book toast,’ she said jabbing a finger into his firm chest.
‘Meagan,’ he said moving her hand.
She pushed him aside and began a maniacal circuit of her empty office.
‘Once Hudson Hicks hear about this, they’ll drop her like a rubber brick in a swimming pool,’ she cackled.
Todd stepped in front of her. ‘Meagan, stop.’
‘What?’ she said looking up at him. ‘Look, this has “settle out of court” written all over it.’
Todd stepped aside, pushing his hands deep into his pockets.
‘Don’t worry. Hudson Hicks won’t fire you. They’ll thank you for saving them the embarrassment,’ Meagan scoffed, hobble-pacing even more manically.
‘Think about what you’re saying.’
Against her will, Meagan’s hand began to contract into a fist.
‘What do you want me to think about? The betrayal or the theft or both?’
‘How about me? My job,’ said Todd.
Meagan felt that same burning sensation in her eyes she had that night outside Bruno’s and at Jemima’s yesterday morning. Despite her best attempts to quell them, tears came. But she knew better than to give in to them. They were just a bodily function like coughing or having a wee. As the hardness in Todd’s expression fell away, her upset was replaced by anger.
‘Don’t you dare pity me. My eyes are crying but I’m not!’ she said as a huge sob burst from her without permission.
Todd took a step towards her but she put her arm out, locking it at the elbow. He wasn’t using this as a way in.
‘Meagan,’ he said, moving her hand from his chest.
‘No,’ she sobbed, squeezing her eyes as though trying to wring the tears from her body.
‘My God, do you have to do everything yourself? You won’t even let someone comfort you,’ said Todd. ‘Right, I need to go. I’ve got my Monday team meeting – if I’ve still got a job that is.’
‘What do you want?’ Meagan wanted to yell. Whatever it was, she couldn’t give it to him.
Todd buttoned up his jacket and looked towards the door.
‘Have a nice life with your new girlfriend!’ Meagan scoffed as another sob burst from her.
‘It was a date, Meagan. It was just a date,’ he said reaching out to comfort her.
‘Well, good riddance anyway.’
Todd pulled back.
‘Wow. Okay, you know what, good luck,’ he said before heading to the lift.
Meagan hobbled after him, scrabbling for something to say. Before she could think of anything, the elevator doors closed behind him and the noise of computers and conversation from the other offices seeped into her awareness. Once again, Meagan was on her own. She limped back into her office and leaned against the wall sliding down until she was seated on the floor. Feeling the coarse carpet tiles under her hand, she slipped further until she was lying in the foetal position and she wept. Meagan wept like she had never wept in her life. She wept for herself, for the loss of her friends, her heart, for the betrayal, the deep betrayal, and out of sheer fatigue.
She was exhausted.
Meagan had worked since the age of 16 and never leaning on anyone had left her without the energy to even stand. She looked around her empty office, desperately wishing it were filled with nice things. Nice things took the pain away but in this room there was nothing, just her immense misery. She hated nothing. Nothing was the space left behind when debt collectors took the family TV. Nothing was what was in her mum’s purse when she wanted a new top or to go out with friends. Nothing was the contents of the fridge when she got home from school not just once but many times. ‘Nothing’ had made a 16-year-old Meagan decide not only would she always have ‘something’ but she would most certainly amount to something too. Life had let her know, it was all down to her. But after fourteen years of grafting, on her empty office floor, what did she have to show for it? Even if she owned all the possessions money could buy, unshared things meant – nothing. Tears welled from the pit of her tired, broken heart, a heart that had never trusted the world, and instead coped by controlling everything, even who she loved. Was that why she was alone, why that arm’s length she kept between her and everyone else suddenly felt like a chasm?
She laughed wearily at her oh-so-clever plan, a worthless fantasy as unreachable as any of Simi’s cosmic wishes. Her plan wasn’t a strategy. It was a futile attempt to strangle the spontaneity and glorious messiness out of life. Jemima was spot on. Even with Simi’s acting Meagan had wrung out all natural impulses by trying to control it. Furthermore, it hadn’t been to help Simi but to protect herself. She’d created that absurd, arbitrary rule so she didn’t have to move on with her life plan because now the next step was upon her, she was terrified. From here on in, every phase involved leaning on someone, trusting them with no guarantees. They involved being vulnerable, which, like eating sushi and riding a bike, Meagan did not do. She curled herself into a tight ball on the floor. She didn’t have a life plan. She had a cryogenic chamber. In work Meagan was fearless, but in life taking care of someone else’s heart and letting them care for hers was the most terrifying prospect of all. More sobs poured from her, but this time it was a release, one that had been a long time coming. She sobbed as she realised all she had lost by controlling everything – Simi and Todd, a bigger life that didn’t gravitate solely around work. In fact, if she weren’t such a control freak, she might actually have a desk and chair to cry on but she’d controlled that out of existence too.
Just as her misery threatened to consume her, the landline phone rang. She groaned into the floor and snivelled her way across the carpet to hit the speaker button.
‘Yes?’ she blubbed.
‘It’s Denise on reception. Your lawyer’s here. Are you—?’
‘Send her up,’ Meagan whimpered.
She ended the call and rolled onto her back.
Chapter 43
Simi
Simi piled up the remainder of her belongings in Jemima’s hallway and she stared wistfully at her tiny tower of things. Had it really been seven weeks since she’d moved out of Oscar’s place? And now she was moving again. This time it was into Alice’s Norwood flat on the dreaded south side of the river. Just days ago, the thought of living so far from the girls had been unthinkable. Now, it didn’t matter. Simi checked her watch. Her cab was due at quarter past giving her ten long minutes to decide what kind of farewell Jemima deserved. When she’d been packing earlier, she’d felt so incensed, an apartment-shuddering door slam was all she could have managed. Now her departure loomed, however, a curt ‘bye’ from the other side of Jemima’s closed bedroom door, seemed only fair.
Simi looked around the living room, her home for almost two months. Without her clutter, it was decidedly neater. Simi felt pangs of guilt at Jemima’s generous hospitality. She owed her a thank-you for that, at the very minimum. Unless, thought Simi, as a creeping suspicion gathered momentum, Jemima let her stay so she could harvest intel? Two months’ rent was a small price to pay for such priceless data. Simi stomped towards Jemima’s bedroom door, thumping hard. She listened to her move across the room. When the door finally opened, Simi stopped. Jemima’s eyes were puffy and drained, her body slumped. Simi wanted to hug her and tell her everything was going to be alright. She wanted to stroke her ashen face and reassure her that before she knew it they’d be sipping cocktails at Ripley’s like none of this had happened. She wanted to say all that. But she couldn’t. She was still so, so hurt.
‘Did you want me to stay here so you could get more stories?’
‘Of course not,’ said Jemima visibly crumbling.
‘Hmm.’ Simi nodded, studying Jemima’s earnest expression.
What she had done was unspeakable but even Simi knew she wasn’t that underhand.
‘Can I help you with your things?’ said Jemima.
‘I can manage,’ Simi said, more brusque than she’d intended.
As tough as it was seeing Jemima unravelling, Simi still couldn’t access the warmth and love she’d always had for her. Was it gone forever? She didn’t know. Forgiveness was certainly a long way off. They’d bickered in the past, even fallen out for a few days but nothing like this had ever happened and the sense of loss was numbing. Good girlfriends were so hard to find, friends with whom you could be totally you, who would love you no matter how ridiculous the things you did, said, loved or wanted. Why had Jemima done this to them all?
‘I know what it is. You think I’m a wally, a soft touch. That’s why you thought it would be okay.’
‘I don’t,’ Jemima pleaded.
‘It’s like you preferred me unemployed, single and with my life in a mess. But now I’ve landed a job, got a place to live and finally found a good man, you don’t like that.’
Remorse flickered through Simi as the lie tumbled from her. The truth was, she knew Chance’s true feelings for Jemima. That didn’t stop her wanting to push the dagger in just a little, make Jemima hurt as she was. The reality was Simi hadn’t seen or spoken to Chance since he’d left on Sunday morning. She also suspected the only reason he’d arranged that second date was as an apology for the London Eye incident. He really was a good man. If only Jemima could bring herself to let him in. Simi shifted her gaze. If she was going, she had to do it now. As much as she couldn’t inflict any more pain, neither was she ready to give Jemima the absolution she desperately wanted.
‘Please, Sim. Tell me how to put this right,’ Jemima begged, holding out her hand.
Simi wished she had the answer but her mind and her spirit were blank. With nothing more to say she turned away from Jemima’s outstretched hand, scooping up her bags. She yanked open the door and began hauling everything downstairs as a heart that had previously beaten as one was unnaturally torn in three.
Chapter 44
Jemima
Jemima’s phone blared for attention and she knew its klaxon ringtone meant one thing. It was Shaheena. She scrambled around in the folds of her bedding to silence her phone – again. It rang through to voicemail and she collapsed back into her pillows. She had been in bed for three days getting up only to say goodbye to Simi, pee and eat what she could scavenge from her bare cupboards. Last night she’d eaten baked beans from the tin and, if she didn’t get her act together, today it would be sauerkraut for breakfast again. Make that lunch, she sighed. It was already 2.15 p.m.
Jemima forced herself out of bed. She padded to the window to pull the curtains open and grimaced. It was a bright, crisp day but all she wanted was to block out the sun and extinguish its joyful rays. She wanted to pretend the world wasn’t happening, like somehow, existence itself was some huge, clerical error. Defeated, she slipped back under her duvet. She felt exhausted, as much by the daylight as her futile attempts to put right the waking nightmare she’d created. Her reconciliatory overtures to Meagan had been met with a nuisance-caller-whistle blown down the phone at her. She’d tried calling Simi but every time it had just rung and rung. She had even called Todd but as she’d listened to the ringing tone, she’d realised she hadn’t a clue what to say – sorry for outing your southpaw penis? In the end she’d hung up, eaten a mouthful of sauerkraut and gone to bed. Once more her phone klaxoned. Again, she let it ring through to voicemail purgatory. Straight away, a text message whooshed in.
We need to talk lawyers. URGENT
Jemima buried her face in the pillow. So, Meagan’s lawsuit was happening and once she’d finished with Jemima, not even deep-sea rescue divers would be able to find the wreckage. Jemima felt like Atlas but instead of bearing the weight of the world on her shoulders, she was carrying a steaming pile of shit. Filth fest, a juvenile political statement, had been a colossal waste of time and upset the one person who’d given her a chance. She’d abused her friends’ trust, using them and because of paralysis in her own love life, she had all but killed Beverly’s. To win, Jemima had lost – massively.
She laughed sadly, realising how closely Beverly’s romantic journey mirrored her own. In her first book, which Jemima had written when she and Miles were still together, Beverly had been in love, entangled with her boss, Kane. That minor storyline had been sensual, dangerous. However, by the time Jemima started writing Beverly Blake Mysteries she and Miles were no more. She killed Kane with a heart attack, leaving him to die in an abandoned lock-up. He was slain in the same way a part of her had died, abandoned and with an unfixable heart. That’s when Beverly had become a single-minded workaholic with no room for anything but the job. Jemima’s push-back at Eve’s notes had been totally disproportionate but only now could she see why. Jemima had always thought she was defending a principle but really she was protecting herself from delving into waters she felt too weak to swim in. There were so many ways she could have handled Eve’s note, a deep dive into her own romantic past was just one solution. Damn it, there were probably YouTube videos on how to write romance but she had done nothing. Instead, she convinced herself that because of the deadline she had no other options. But this didn’t come down to time. It was about Jemima’s unshakable fear that love, true love, breaks you and that hadn’t even started with Miles. That had come from losing her dad. Jemima pulled herself up in her bed as the fragments of her life’s puzzle began to order themselves in her mind. After losing the love of her life, her father, Jemima had constantly settled when it came to relationships. In Miles she’d fallen in love with a compromise because the fear of finding and falling for a great man scared her so much. It scared her because if you loved, you lost – and that pain was unbearable. And this fear had bled into her writing. She had made Beverly so cold and closed off that readers never truly knew her heart. Jemima gasped as the penny dropped so lou
dly it practically clanged inside her head. Eve wasn’t asking for her to make Beverly need a man. She was asking for her to want one. It wasn’t even about a man. It was about passion, feeling and being fully alive. That’s why the backstory detail had worked so well, because readers could finally connect with Beverly through what she had once desired. Jemima wanted to laugh – a pain-filled, ironic, Alanis Morrissette guffaw.
She looked at Shaheena’s text again. If this was the end of Beverly, Jemima wanted to enjoy one last moment with her. She would call Shaheena later but while the executioner’s keys still jangled in the distance, she would head to Nostromo. Azi and Rania would say kind words and make her a nice, milky latte with a piece of cake she hadn’t asked for but would gratefully receive. Yes, Nostromo was ideal. It was where Beverly had come in to being and therefore the right place to hold her wake.
Jemima pushed open the café door. The blissful relief of being somewhere warm and welcoming, was instant.
‘Am I pleased to see you! My usual please, Azi,’ said Jemima as she went to sit in the airplane seats.
‘I’ve a good mind not to serve you,’ Azi stropped.
Jemima blinked at her, bewildered.
‘Is this… Are you joking?’ she spluttered, looking to Rania for clarity.
Rania shrugged and busied herself taking cups out of the dishwasher.
‘You threw away your chance, you silly girl,’ Azi fumed.
Jemima shuddered. She knew Azi had a temper but never imagined she’d be on the receiving end of it.
Rania rested a hand on her wife’s arm. ‘Az, you said you would leave it.’
‘Yes, well, I say a lot,’ Azi said wriggling from Rania.
‘He chose Simi. I didn’t do anything,’ said Jemima.
‘No, you didn’t. This is my point. Eight pounds,’ said Azi holding out her hand while pointedly turning away.
Shaking, Jemima rummaged in her pockets for change. ‘Have you put your prices up?’