Love Byte

by David Atkinson

  As lost in my thoughts as I was I hadn’t realized Sir Daniel had stopped speaking and had opened up the meeting to questions. As I had the bad luck to be sitting directly to his right, I was first in line. The whole room was staring at me, waiting for me to ask something intelligent and relevant, neither of which I was particularly adept at, especially under pressure. ‘Erm. . . . What about you? Is your job under threat?’

  This caused a few stifled giggles around the room and I noticed that Sir Daniel’s face had suddenly turned red. He now looked flustered and his answer was delivered in a stutteringtone, ‘Well, my position and the other erm . . . directors . . . have yet to . . . well, that is, we have not . . . the overall decision on the organization’s future direction has yet to be, well, decided.’

  The other disgruntled employees took the opportunity to pin Sir Daniel against the wall with follow up questions.

  ‘Well, are you leaving or not?’

  ‘Negotiations are ongoing—’

  ‘You got us in this mess and you’re telling us you’re getting to keep your job?’

  ‘Well, I may remain in a reduced capacity—’

  ‘Typical. You and your highly paid cronies bugger everything up and yet it is everyone else who pays the price.’

  ‘Well, it’s not quite like that—’

  ‘That’s exactly what it’s like—’

  And so the attacks continued. I’d opened up a whole can of emotional worms and any remote chance I may have had of keeping my job had disappeared in a barrage of aggressive questions and accusatory glances from Sir Daniel for bringing this down upon him. Eventually everyone ran out of steam and we filed quietly out of the room.

  Along with everyone else, I was handed a pack by Melanie, the company secretary, and went to the canteen, where I bought a coffee and a stale muffin before reading the contents.

  Once I’d digested the information, which was slightly easier than the muffin, I discovered that there would be a thirty-day period during which time the company would prepare my terms of redundancy. After that date I would receive a summary document of my final compensation and benefits. I was due six months’ salary and a small sum for the purchase of what the firm called ‘ancillary benefits’. I had no idea what ancillary benefits I had, and was quite happy to sell them for the three thousand quid they were offering.

  I returned and sat at my desk, feeling shell-shocked and apprehensive. I glanced at my phone and noticed that I had another missed call from Jamie. No texts from my wife. I doubt even she would have seen this coming. Jamie, however, was obviously desperate to get hold of me, but I really didn’t feel like talking to him right then.

  Before I had a chance to wallow in my self-pity I detected a strange aroma in the air which I could have sworn was fish and chips. Having hot food at your desk in Perennial Mutual was strictly forbidden. In fact, when I had my first day induction with the firm it was the first thing they covered. Not where to go in a fire, or what to do if there was a terrorist attack, but the fact that hot food MUST be consumed in the upstairs canteen or in the café area downstairs, and must NEVER be eaten at your desk.

  I wandered out of my room and across the open plan office, following my nose. My attention was drawn to a number of skinny waifs who had clearly sensed the mouth-watering aroma too and were practically drooling. I smiled at Lynne who was particularly skinny and wondered when she last ate a solitary chip, let alone fish and chips plural.

  I eventually traced the source of the food emanating from an office pod containing two desks. This was Perennial Mutual’s Human Resources department, which consisted of Alan Black, whose speciality was stress counselling – he was off on long-term sick, suffering from stress of all things – and Molly Jenkins, Jamie’s much better half.

  I sat on the desk beside Molly, who eventually noticed I was there, and acknowledged my presence with a weak smile.

  ‘Hi, Andy, how are things?’

  ‘Not great, Molly, I’ve just been given my marching orders, but you’ll know all about that I suppose.’

  She smiled sympathetically and flipped her dark hair out of her eyes. ‘Yeah, I know. Big changes afoot.’

  Molly had a fantastic figure which she usually kept concealed under baggy clothes and trousers. I knew that Jamie hated her showing off her body which is why she usually dressed so dowdily. (He would have loved the Garden Ranger uniform.) When Lindsay was alive we’d occasionally go out as a foursome and although Lindsay disliked Jamie, she was very fond of Molly. I remembered one evening when we were out together, and Jamie went off on one after noticing Molly staring at a good-looking blond hunk standing at the bar. Lindsay had been staring at him too. He looked like an Australian surfer dude with long blond locks and tanned skin. He had on shorts and a cut off T-shirt and stood out amongst the normal crowd of milk white Scots. The thing was, if Lindsay had a major strop every time I stared at a pretty girl we’d never have been speaking. Window shopping was fine in my book as long as you didn’t go in and try anything on. I suppose it should maybe have been a warning sign to Molly back then, but at that point she was still starry-eyed and thought his jealousy was endearing and meant that he cared.

  Physically, Molly and Lindsay were very alike. Personality-wise they were miles apart. Lindsay was strong and opinionated. Molly was a gentle soul, with a desire to please and a hater of conflict.

  I glanced at the half-eaten fish and chips on her desk.

  ‘Do you want a chip?’ she asked.

  I laughed, ‘No thanks. Are you aware that by flouting company policy so blatantly, you are driving some of our undernourished administrators out of their minds?’

  Molly laughed out loud with the dirty laugh I used to love when she got drunk. I laughed along with her and realized how long it had been since I’d actually spoken to her properly. Yes I’d bumped into her in the office occasionally and sometimes said hello if she’d answered Jamie’s mobile but it had been too long since I’d spent any time in her and Jamie’s company. It made me realize just how deeply my wife’s death had affected me. I used to crash at Jamie’s place a lot when we were both young, free and single, but since we’d both shacked up with our respective women this had stopped, and since Lindsay’s death I had become positively anti-social. I still didn’t fully understand why I avoided going to their flat. It probably had something to do with them still having what I’d lost but perhaps it was something deeper than that. Self-analysis wasn’t one of my strengths.

  I noticed for the first time as Molly looked up that she had been crying. Her eyes were red-rimmed and in confirmation she blew her nose into a paper tissue.

  I suddenly realized why Jamie might have been so desperate to speak to me.

  ‘Are you OK, Molly? Anything I can help with?’

  She shook her head sadly. ‘No, I think me and Jamie are splitting up.’

  That came as a bolt out of the blue. I didn’t know what I was expecting to hear, but it wasn’t that. I hadn’t had a clue from Jamie that things had got that bad. Jamie had initially moved into Molly’s rented flat, then once they’d bought a place together I’d thought that would be it, despite my misgivings. I remember asking Jamie if that was such a good idea given the way he lived his life and his anti-capitalist views. I wondered what had happened and suddenly wished I’d phoned Jamie back before coming in to Molly’s office. I no longer felt close enough to Molly to initiate the conversation so I waited.

  Molly sighed and pushed the food away from her. Meeting my gaze she said, ‘You know what Jamie’s like as well as I do, always away trying to save something from someone or someone from something. He works late pretty much every day and I’ve never had reason to doubt what he tells me.’

  Tears welled up in her eyes and some slipped down her face, tracing a well-worn line through her foundation. She wiped them with her hand and continued. ‘Then last night completely out of the blu
e I get this email, from Anna Stavosky, Polish or Czech or something. Anyway she says that she and Jamie were lovers for a few months while she was volunteering on some project he was running. “Lovers.” Doesn’t that sound very grown up, very civilized. Except he’s not a grown up and it’s not civilized. It’s fucking tragic. Anyway, she says he called it off before it got serious as he was feeling guilty about cheating on his long-term girlfriend, which I assume is me though I’m not so sure anymore. Her final words in this email are that she had been mulling it over for some time and decided to write to me now because I deserved to know what had happened.’

  Anger had made her tears dry up and she fixed her dark hazel eyes on me. ‘You probably knew about Anna, didn’t you? Jamie probably even got you to cover for him or something stupid.’

  A look of alarm must have appeared on my face because Molly said, ‘Oh don’t worry about it, Andy. I don’t blame you. I’m the one who should have confronted him. He was at least big enough to admit it when I asked him if it was true.’

  I did know about Anna. This was the girl who got Lindsay so mad about Jamie and had made her call him a hypocrite. I remember her being furious that I was party to Jamie’s infidelity and that we should tell Molly what was going on. Eventually, when she had calmed down she agreed to wait until I could find out more about Jamie’s plans. We never followed up on it because soon after that Lindsay was diagnosed with cancer and that took over our lives.

  ‘The one good thing we did last night when I confronted him was actually have a proper conversation, where we actually talked and I almost forgave him, especially as he swore it was a one off and would never happen again. He spun me the line about how having an affair can make relationships stronger and all that crap, and I almost fell for it until we had the talk.’

  At this point I am reminded that I do not possess a vagina, and as such have absolutely no idea what that meant. She looked at me expectantly. I smiled politely and shrugged my shoulders.

  Molly sighed with exasperation as she realized too that I didn’t possess the female genes or genitalia to understand what the talk is.

  ‘Kids, Andy, we had the talk about kids, starting a family, getting pregnant, fucking without protection, getting up the duff, bun in the oven, being with child or actually . . . you know what? We didn’t actually have the talk. I talked and he listened. I’m trying to plan my future. I’m not getting any younger, I’m thirty-one next week, and after three years together you would think he would know me well enough to know that by now, wouldn’t you?’

  I nodded non-committally, if it was possible to nod in the style of an adjective.

  ‘Yeah you do know, because you are a grown up. You’ve been there. You and Lindsay made that commitment. I always envied your relationship because it was everything I wanted, and hoped to have one day. So what do I do? I tell you what I do, I sit down and take both his hands in mine. I look deep into his eyes and I say “Will you marry me, Jamie?” Even after all the shit he’s put me through and the pain I’m feeling. I was emotional and I wanted to make everything good again.’

  This sounded incredibly romantic, but judging by the binge eating and her indignation, I’m guessing that things didn’t go well.

  ‘Can you guess what the moron then says to me?’

  I opened and closed my mouth like a goldfish gasping for air a few times and shook my head. I seemed to be doing that a lot lately.

  ‘Bearing in mind we’ve been pouring our hearts out to each other for about twenty minutes – well, I have anyway, I doubt he even has a heart at times. Well, he does for his waifs and strays but not for me. You know what the bastard says?’

  Noting he had changed from moron to bastard and guessing that this was not a good progression, I shook my head again.

  ‘He says . . . he says. . . .’ At this point she burst into tears again and mumbles, ‘Ask me again next year.’ She then repeated it four or five times, getting quieter each time. ‘Ask me again next year. How can he say that?’ I assumed the question was rhetorical so I stayed silent.

  Lindsay had always thought the two of them were not well suited – not just because Jamie was an immature idiot at times, like now, but because she also felt protective of Molly. Lindsay recognized that Molly was a quiet soul who only wanted to be loved, and that Jamie wouldn’t be able to do that unconditionally. He had too many causes to fight for and believe in. Lindsay connected with Molly partly because she recognized what a gentle person she was, and partly because they both smoked cigarettes in an age when it was easier to admit to being a syphilitic cross-dresser who enjoyed torturing kittens than a smoker. They used to sneak outside together to have a cigarette, and I am sure they connected during those moments.

  Lindsay could never quite put her finger on why she thought they weren’t suited outside of her dislike for Jamie. She did say that he tried to flirt with her when Molly and I were out of the room and she also implied that he might be gay. I’m not quite sure how those two things tallied. I also always believed that anyone who lived with a woman in a monogamous relationship was unlikely to be gay, or ‘a poof’, as Amy would say.

  Jamie’s natural conversation could easily be mistaken for flirting. When we were growing up he always went out with gorgeous-looking girls and I sometimes envied him his easy way with words, the casual confidence that really good-looking people all seem to have.

  I might have been mistaken, but I didn’t think bringing up Lindsay’s theory about Jamie’s sexuality would be appropriate right now and was unlikely to help the situation, so I kept my thoughts to myself.

  Molly recovered and dabbed her eyes with the now damp tissue before blowing her nose loudly. As she raised her head I noticed she had a large lump of snot on her left cheek. I didn’t feel that pointing that out to her right at that second would help things either, so I tried my best to avoid staring at it as she spoke.

  ‘Thanks for listening, Andy, I feel a bit better now that I’ve actually told someone who understands these things – and Jamie.’

  I smiled and reckoned she was giving me way too much credit there, but decided not to contradict her opinion of me. Instead I asked, ‘So what happens now?’

  It was her turn to shrug her shoulders. ‘I don’t know. He stayed at his mum’s last night, just because I was so furious with him. I think he thinks I will calm down and everything will go back to normal. He even phoned me to discuss getting the cat I’ve always wanted but he would never let me get because he was allergic to them. ‘

  I searched my memory banks. ‘I think he is allergic actually, but is the cat thing not some kind of baby substitute?’

  Molly welled up again. ‘Shit, I hadn’t thought of that. Of course it is. He’s such a manipulative bastard.’

  I should have kept my mouth shut. I tried to move her on from the cat thoughts. ‘So will you forgive him, do you think?’

  ‘Oh I don’t know. We’ve invested so much in each other and everything else. The thought of splitting up fills me with dread for a million reasons. The flat is worth much less than we paid for it, so that would be a nightmare to sort out. The car loan is in joint names and I’ve no idea what would happen to that. I earn much more than Jamie, you know that, so he couldn’t pay for anything if he was on his own renting a flat or whatever. It’s such a bloody mess.’

  She paused for a moment before carrying on.

  ‘Then there’s all that “being single” crap to go through again. I hated being single, it’s no fun at all, you sit in on your own all week then spend the weekend fighting off creepy blokes in bars and clubs. That is until you end up snogging one of them at the end of the night because you’re drunk and feeling lonely, and the attention of some creep is better than no attention at all. Being single is no fun. . . .’

  She suddenly realized she was speaking to probably the most reluctant singleton on the planet.

  ‘Oh I’m sorr
y Andy, I don’t mean you. I know you are single now but that’s different.’

  I knew that it was actually not different at all, but let her off the hook easily. ‘I know it is different. I’ve got Amy so I don’t get lonely.’ That was a lie obviously but Molly didn’t know that.

  ‘Maybe not having kids is a good thing, you know with global warming, melting ice caps, pollution, wars, famines and stuff – all the things that Jamie likes to rave about. It’s not a great world to bring a child into. . . .’

  Once again she had put her foot in it. ‘Oh Andy, ignore me please, I’m talking rubbish. I don’t know what to do. I do want to have children, I always have, it looks like I’ve picked the wrong man and it’s a decision I have to deal with, or live with, I suppose. I could always freeze some of my eggs if the worst came to the worst.’ At least she could laugh at herself, and she did with that wonderful dirty laugh that made her whole body shake. ‘No doubt you’ll get Jamie’s side of it later and he’ll have his own version, I’m sure. Actually, I bet you’ve had it already, haven’t you?’

  I shook my head. ‘No. He’s been trying to get me since last night and we keep missing each other.’

  ‘Well at least you know now why he’s calling.’ She changed the subject.

  ‘What’s happening with you just now? I’m not actually in the loop as a lot of the HR stuff has been outsourced for the top-level redundancies in here.’

  I stood up and stretched. ‘Well I’ve got the thirty-day thing then I’m out on my arse.’

  She smiled sadly, and said, ‘You’ll get another job. It might even do you good to get out of here. You never know, you might even meet a new woman in a new office where everyone doesn’t know your history.’

  That reminded me that I had a date tonight and I reluctantly left her in her small pod staring at her illicit food and headed home to break the news to Pauline.