by Jon Rance
I filed a mental snapshot and gave Ed one last kiss before I turned around and walked away, too afraid to look back. Too afraid the life I was leaving behind was not only better than the one I was heading towards, but also that it wouldn’t be there when I got home.
As the plane turned to begin its take-off, I looked out of the window. It was a typical drab winter’s day at Heathrow. Sullen clouds drifted across the runway, making everything seem like a dream. England’s green and pleasant land was hiding behind a smokescreen of cheerlessness. I kept thinking back to what Ed said in the airport about not changing. I promised I wouldn’t, but I knew it was a promise I wouldn’t be able to keep. As the plane took off, slowly gaining altitude above London, fighting through the dark, leaden clouds to the bluer skies above, I began to cry. For months all I had wanted was to be on that plane. I had been so excited to leave and begin my adventure, but finally, sitting alone, all I felt was a terrible sickness and a craving for what I was leaving behind. I had wanted the change. I had wanted to feel the ripple of its excitement touch me again and move me the way it used to. I had wanted to travel, but now I was terrified it was a decision I might regret for the rest of my life.
Ed
‘Look on the bright side,’ said Emma from the front seat of her Mini Cooper. ‘It’s only six months and in the big scheme of things that’s nothing.’
I was crammed in the back like a piece of luggage: the price of having trendy friends with tiny cars. My legs were bent at a funny angle and my back twisted so I looked like I was skiing, but not in a cool way. Still, it was better than the journey there with Kate and her backpack squashing me against the window. Outside, the sun finally lost its battle with the gloomy, grey clouds and rain began to pelt against the window.
‘She’s right, mate,’ joined in Jack in his diluted Australian accent. ‘She’ll be back before you know it.’
‘Right,’ I muttered back.
I was trying to work out why I felt so shit about Kate leaving. I mean, obviously, just her leaving was enough, but it was more than that. I was hurt and angry. Really fucking angry, actually. Why did she need to travel the world? I’d promised her on more than one occasion we’d eventually go to Thailand, Australia and Timbuktu, if that’s what she wanted. I really thought she’d come to her senses and realise everything she needed was right here. I think that was why I was hurting. It wasn’t that she was leaving, but that she was leaving me. I was rejected in favour of a needless holiday and it didn’t make any sense.
‘So,’ said Emma, carrying on as though my girlfriend of nearly eight years, the girl I loved, lived with and hoped to one day marry, hadn’t just hopped on a plane to Thailand. ‘I have this meeting tonight, Ed, with the director for this new film – the next Four Weddings type of thing. Rhys Connelly’s already signed on. The script’s amazing.’ She looked at me in the mirror and then crunched a gear into place. The Mini suddenly lurched forward as the engine roared and then we wobbled momentarily into the next lane. I hung on for dear life.
‘Ed probably doesn’t want to hear about the film, love,’ interjected Jack, as always the thoughtful one, the mediator. Emma and Jack, the thespian and the wordsmith, our bohemian mates from west London and my support system in Kate’s absence.
‘Oh, shit, sorry, I . . .’
‘No, no its fine, Em, really,’ I said, smiling back. ‘Honestly.’
It wasn’t fine though, was it? My life felt like it had been torn into little pieces and then put back together with some crappy Sellotape in all the wrong places.
We were soon outside my house in Wandsworth. The rain had briefly let up and I was leaning on the open window next to Jack.
‘Seriously, Ed, are you going to be OK? We can come in for a bit if you want,’ said Emma. ‘Have a cup of tea?’
‘Of course he’s going to be all right,’ said Jack, with a brisk, manly grin. ‘Aren’t you, mate?’
‘Yeah, course,’ I said and smiled. ‘Now you two bugger off. I’ll see you soon.’ I tapped the door and they drove off, the Union Jack on the roof disappearing through the leafy streets of my salubrious pocket of London.
I stood outside my house and sighed. The two-bedroom Victorian terrace with sash windows and a little blue door had cost us a fortune. It was minutes from the Thames and had stripped hardwood floors, original iron fireplaces and a little garden – it was the house we’d made our perfect little home. The final piece of the jigsaw, or so I’d thought.
I took out my front door key and let myself in, popped the keys in the little tray on the sideboard and stood for a moment. It was terrifyingly quiet. The noise I was going to have to get used to for the next six months. I looked along the hallway and saw the flowers Kate bought last week. They hung down, limply grazing the top of the vase, pathetically drooping as if in a yoga pose. But they weren’t, they were slowly dying and in a couple of days would be tossed in the bin and forgotten.
Waking up alone was strange. The bed had never felt so big and in a moment of fitful sleep, just before I properly woke up, I forgot she was gone. It came back to me in a horrifying flash when I reached across to cuddle her, but all I felt was a cold sheet. I looked across and there was her pillow, puffed up and untouched like something straight out of the Habitat catalogue. Kate was an active sleeper and usually by morning most of the sheet and duvet was pulled and stretched to her side of the bed and her pillow was often on the floor. Now, in its current state, it looked out of place. A sad reminder she was gone, and even though it annoyed me how she routinely turned our bed into a jumble sale pile, without it I felt empty.
Despite it being only six o’clock, I decided to head into work early. The tube was quieter than usual. I even got a seat to read my copy of the Metro, instead of having to try and grasp the headlines while being jostled and pushed against the rubbery rolls of a fellow commuter. By the time I got off at Bank station, I actually felt quite relaxed and a bit Zen. I grabbed a large cappuccino and a bacon roll – the breakfast of champions – and headed into work. Even my office floor was bereft of workers; a tired-looking cleaner was emptying the last few bins and then my immediate manager and the Director of Investments, Hugh Whitman, a balding man in his late fifties, strode past me towards his corner office.
‘Early today, Hornsby, eh. Trouble with the missus?’
‘Something like that, sir.’
He chortled and kept on walking, leather briefcase in hand and stomach jutting out like a Swiss mountain face. Hugh ran the office with the cut-throat ruthlessness of an army general. If you did well you were rewarded, but one mistake, one black mark against you and you were gone. Despite being a working-class speck in a sky of upper-middle-class employees, I’d stuck around for seven years, slowly easing my way up the banking ladder towards safety.
I turned on my PC and checked my email. As I drank my cappuccino and ate my bacon roll, I began working on the building blocks of an idea. In six months I could get a promotion. Without Kate and all the distractions of a relationship, I could work harder, longer and better. Maybe Kate pissing off across the globe could be a good thing after all. Kate had her dreams and I had mine. She wanted to ponce about in South East Asia with a bunch of drop-outs, hippies and graduates trying to find themselves, while I would stay behind and make sure everything she needed, we needed, was still in place and working better when she got back. It would also help keep my mind off what she was doing and with whom.
By ten o’clock the office was a tornado of energy: people were working hard, making and losing millions. It was like a beautiful symphony, every aspect working together to produce a capitalist masterpiece. Our floor was an open-plan football field of computers, telephones, fax machines and men in expensive suits shouting at each other for twelve hours a day. However, on that Monday morning at ten o’clock an office of fifty bankers all stopped working as a girl walked across the floor. She was beautiful: every man’s dream in a grey business suit and high heels. All eyes, including mine, stopped scrolli
ng through emails and watched her walk, slowly, gracefully, with Harriet from HR, until they stopped quite suddenly at my desk.
‘Ed, this is Georgina Hays. She’s new and going to be shadowing you for a few days. Make her feel at home and keep the vultures off her back, will you?’ said Harriet with a motherly smile. Harriet was the office matriarch, head of human resources and feared and loved in equal measure by every employee. I suddenly felt like every pair of eyes in the office were on me and when I looked up I realised they were.
‘Hi,’ said Georgina, shaking my hand briskly and then sitting down next to me. ‘Call me Georgie, please.’ She had the poshest voice I’d ever heard, which was no mean feat considering I worked in an office packed to the rafters with Oxbridge alumni. She was stunning. She had long blonde hair – but not just regular blonde, it was pure, clean, almost ethereal – the biggest, bluest eyes and a small, perfectly formed nose with a spattering of freckles. Her face was symmetrical, balanced, refined and she had a flawless body to match.
‘Ed, before we start, I just want to say thank you.’
‘I haven’t done anything yet. I could be awful.’
‘I doubt you’re awful,’ said Georgie with a gorgeous little giggle. ‘Uncle Hugh wouldn’t have put me with someone awful.’
‘Uncle Hugh?’
‘Oh, yes, Hugh Whitman is my uncle, but that doesn’t change anything. I want you to treat me like you would any other employee.’
‘Right, will do,’ I said, suddenly terrified of what this training session might lead to. ‘Then you’d better get us both a big cup of coffee before we start,’ I said with a smile, and she smiled back, probably the most perfect smile I’d ever seen.
The next hour was something of a blur. I learnt that Georgina Elizabeth Hays was twenty-two and grew up in Bath. She attended boarding school in some Hogwartian mansion in the home counties, took a gap year and helped underprivileged children in Peru, went to the University of Cambridge, represented England at youth-level netball, was currently single and trying her hand at the world of banking. When Harriet eventually came to rescue her for some mandatory paperwork, she thanked me with a warm smile and told me she would see me after lunch.
On my way out for a quick bite, I shared the lift with Hugh.
‘If you don’t mind me asking, sir, why did you put Georgina with me?’
‘Because you’re the only one I can trust not to bang her senseless, Hornsby. My niece, you see, but mum’s the word, eh. Promised I wouldn’t let anything happen to her. Take good care of her. No funny business.’
‘Of course not, sir, no problem,’ I said as we stepped out of the lift.
During the short walk to Pret thoughts of a BLT and images of Georgie in her netball kit clouded my mind. I didn’t know if Hugh trusting me was a good thing or not. Was it a slap on the back? A hearty gesture of goodwill that would garner a mutual respect and eventual promotion, or did he just consider me an unattractive, spineless eunuch?
The afternoon wore on much like the morning had, with Georgie and me in close proximity, knees occasionally knocking together under the desk, while I tried to give her a rundown of what I did on a daily basis. It was a little after six when we started to pack away for the night.
‘Thanks so much for today, Ed, you’ve been brill.’
‘Oh, no worries, my pleasure.’ A few co-workers walked by, loitered for a moment, pretending to fiddle with scarves, and then smiled at Georgie and gave me a cursory, ‘Night, Ed’ before they waltzed away. ‘Does that annoy you?’
‘What?’
‘Men ogling you all day. Making lame excuses so they can try and peek down your top.’
‘Oh that. You get used to it.’
‘It must get a bit annoying though,’ I said, grabbing my bag and scarf.
‘Sometimes, but mostly they’re harmless and it’s flattering when people find me attractive.’
‘As if they wouldn’t,’ I said without thinking. Georgie flashed me a smile. ‘I . . . umm . . . didn’t mean anything by that, sorry.’
‘Of course, and bravo, I didn’t see you peek down my top all day,’ said Georgie with a cheeky smile. I suddenly and without warning went a deep shade of red, my face sweltering in embarrassment. ‘Oh, Ed, I was only joking.’
‘Right, well, see you tomorrow?’ I said, wrapping my scarf quickly around my neck with Hugh’s words ringing in my ears, ‘no funny business’.
‘Yes, yes, can’t wait and honestly, thank you so much. I was so nervous this morning.’ I smiled and started to walk away before Georgie stopped me. ‘Actually, do you have any plans for tonight?’
I was caught off guard. I didn’t know what to say. Did I have any plans? The answer was a definite no, unless plans involved getting a curry, a four pack of lager and watching television on my own, which I’m sure is the very definition of a sad twat.
‘No plans.’
‘Then, and just to say thank you, how about a quick drink?’
Had she actually said that? The gorgeous, ultra-posh new girl at work was asking me out for a drink? I stammered like a far less attractive cross between Colin Firth’s King George and Hugh Grant at his upper-class bumbling best.
‘I . . . I . . . err . . . umm . . .’
‘I don’t have many friends in London at the mo. All off doing the travelling thing or their MAs and you seem like a nice bloke and Hugh trusts you, so you can’t be that dodgy.’
‘You’d be surprised,’ I said for no apparent reason and then I laughed like a bloody idiot.
‘Then let’s have a drink and you can show me how dodgy you are,’ she said with a delicious wide-faced smile.
I thought about it for a second. It wasn’t cheating or even technically wrong. I’d gone out for copious work drinks over the years and yes, admittedly, none of them had been only with women, but still, it wasn’t like anything would happen. For a start, I would never cheat on Kate and, secondly, Georgie would never, in a million years, fancy someone like me. It was just a drink. Mates. Co-workers.
‘Sure, why not.’
‘Fab. I have to pop to the toilet, back in a jiff,’ she said and then skipped off.
I watched her for a moment. Her perfectly formed little bottom was squeezed into a tight-fitting grey skirt above long, slender legs that curved towards a pair of black high-heeled shoes. A couple of men stopped to gaze at her on their way out and ran their salacious eyes over her pert, ripe little body. A knot of fear unexpectedly formed in my stomach and began to work its way towards my brain, making me feel nauseous: the terrifying fear that maybe I was just like all of those other men, and all it would take for me to lose everything would be a solitary word from her soft, beautiful lips and the promise of a glimpse at what lay beneath her glossy white blouse.
Jack
‘Ready?’ said Emma, walking into the room, fiddling with a pair of earrings and looking flustered.
Emma always got nervous when she had business dinners. Of course, it wasn’t me who was trying to get a part in a film that could change the course of my whole life. I was nervous too, but trying to keep it together for her. She had spent years treading the boards, getting small parts in small plays, a few lines on television and even a couple of call backs for lead roles, but nothing like this. This was huge. This would make her career and change our lives forever.
‘Just finishing up, love,’ I said, closing down my laptop.
‘Do you think Ed’s going to be all right?’ said Emma, zipping herself into a little black dress she’d treated herself to from Reiss, and looking every inch the film star: cropped blonde hair, a beautiful face with Audrey Hepburn features, big green eyes, full, curvaceous lips and the most perfectly petite body.
‘I hope so. He seemed a bit lost in the car.’
‘He did, didn’t he, poor thing. Although if I lost you for six months,’ she said, looking across at me with a tender smile. ‘I think I’d be depressed too.’
‘You never have to worry about that. I’m not
going anywhere.’
‘You’d better not, or—’ said Emma with a smile, making a scissor action with her fingers and nodding toward my groin.
Emma had been telling me to get ready for the last hour, but I was lost in thought over my book. I needed this novel to be The One because I’d already decided it would be my last attempt before I gave up and got a proper job.
I needed to prove to Emma, and more importantly to myself, that I could do something worthwhile. Ed told me frequently about jobs he could get me in the City, where I could earn four times the amount I made at To Bean or Not to Bean, the shitty Shakespearean-themed café I managed, serving ridiculously named coffees like The Taming of the Brew, the Caramel Macbeth and, my personal favourite, the Antony and Cappuccino.
I didn’t want to work in a dreary, soulless office, but it would give us a life. At that moment we were living off hand-outs from Emma’s parents and in the flat they owned. My life wasn’t mine, or as Ed said in the pub last week: ‘You’re a man, Jack. You need to be a man. To provide. To have something to measure your success against. Instead you’re being emasculated by her in-laws and a job you hate. It’s time to face reality, stop living a pipe dream and get a proper job.’ I was finally coming to the conclusion that perhaps he was right.
‘How do I look?’ said Emma, bouncing across the room, a ball of nervous energy as she gave me a kiss on the cheek.