Chasing Charlie

by Linda McLaughlan

  Good, she was dropping the lamp. But I could hear her ‘poor me’ tone loud and clear. I was in the area because I wasn’t with my boyfriend. If I was, I’d have no reason to come to this dump but as it is I’m terribly lonely. Yes, I could imagine exactly what was going through my sister’s mind.

  ‘Right.’ My hand was freezing cold and starting to cramp up. I had a headache. Rebecca wasn’t going anywhere fast. I turned the tap off and dried my hand. That would have to do.

  ‘Shall we have a cuppa then?’ I sighed and motioned Rebecca out of the room ahead of me. If I was sure of one thing it was that I wasn’t entertaining Rebecca on my own. Mara and Ed could damn well help water her down. It was the least they could do, having lucked out so ridiculously in the sibling lottery.

  The windows in the kitchen were fogged up. A cauldron of soup was simmering away on the hob, and Mara was at the kitchen bench surrounded by mounds of vegetables and dirty dishes. She withdrew her hand from inside the carcass of a chicken and waved fingers smeared in stuffing at Rebecca, who gave her a strained smile.

  ‘She rises,’ Ed said cheerfully.

  I grunted at him.

  ‘What happened to your face?’

  ‘Don’t talk to me.’

  Ed shrugged and turned his attention to Rebecca.

  ‘So what are you doing with yourself these days?’ he asked her, pulling out a seat for her. I saw Rebecca relax instantly. Not a lot of course, because she never does relax like normal human beings, but Ed was definitely making her feel at home. My memory of him being a bit awkward at times really was way off. I glanced at Mara but she had her back to everyone, quite obviously trying to ignore the polite murmuring at the table while doing something complicated with the chicken.

  ‘I’ve applied for a new job, for the firm Claudia works for,’ Rebecca said a little louder, glancing at me briefly to make sure I was paying attention, and added, ‘as PA to the head of marketing.’

  I was lining cups along the bench with my left hand and concentrating on counting them to keep my mouth shut.

  ‘Sounds exciting,’ Ed said, actually sounding interested.

  ‘Yes, he seems like a really nice man.’

  ‘What’s his name?’ I asked.

  ‘John Morgan.’

  A snort escaped. John Morgan! I couldn’t believe it.

  ‘What’s so funny?’ She honed in on me then – she would love nothing better than some juicy gossip.

  ‘Oh nothing.’ I wasn’t about to give away Claudia’s connection to him. Especially not to Rebecca, who would surely manage to make it work to her advantage. She stared at me as I set her tea down in front of her.

  ‘Is that skimmed milk in there?’ she asked.

  I didn’t answer her. There was an uncomfortable silence as I picked my own cup up and joined them at the table.

  ‘Are you staying for supper?’ Ed asked her then.

  I froze, my cup hovering between the table and my lips.

  ‘Well, I only popped by for a cup of tea really . . .’ Rebecca smiled sweetly at him, more than a little expectantly.

  I tried to think of something to say to put her off.

  ‘Well, I’m sure there’s enough. Mara?’ Ed bowled on. Scrap that assessment of him being Mr Social. The guy was a lunatic.

  Mara paused. Please be in a straight-talking mood, I thought.

  ‘That’s fine, there’s plenty to eat,’ she said curtly.

  Damn.

  Ed helped pass the time before supper by showing Rebecca photos from India on his laptop, which helped make up for his brash invitation earlier. Any time I tried to talk to her I ended up feeling run over. But Ed was managing her beautifully and Rebecca – who, incidentally, had never shown any interest in life outside London before, let alone in what she would call a dirty third-world country – appeared to be deeply interested. In fact, if I hadn’t known her better, I may even have said she was flirting with him, leaning in close to look at the screen, her dainty ankles crossed beneath her chair. ‘Oh, she’s pretty, isn’t she? Those Indian girls have such lovely skin!’ she cooed.

  There was no way she would like him. He was too nice for her, for a start, and the guy didn’t even have a job. He’d certainly never worked in the City. I watched him closely for signs of reciprocation. He was being very warm towards her, lots of smiles and charming, clever comments. I felt uneasy, remembering him remarking on Rebecca’s looks the day before. But he was joking then, wasn’t he? He couldn’t possibly be attracted to her, could he? Not that I cared. Of course I didn’t. As I sat with them, I thought about how satisfying it was going to be to wipe that pretty little smile off Rebecca’s face when I told her about Charlie.

  Eventually there was food on the table. Rebecca put a ridiculously small portion of everything on her plate.

  ‘Hmmm, delish, sis,’ Ed said through a mouth stuffed with roast chicken.

  Mara raised her eyebrows. She wasn’t into being called ‘sis’.

  Ed just grinned back, his lips oily with gravy.

  Mara met my eye with a stony ‘oh my god, they’re both annoying’ look.

  ‘What did you get up to last night, Samantha?’ Rebecca asked then, in-between one of her mouse-like mouthfuls.

  A snuffly giggle escaped through Ed’s nose.

  ‘Samaaaaantha,’ he drawled, in a bad imitation of Rebecca’s cut-glass accent.

  ‘Hey!’ Rebecca dug him in the side.

  I felt Mara flinch next to me. I couldn’t believe it – they were definitely flirting. It was almost enough to put you off your food.

  ‘So, sis?’ Yuck, now she was imitating him.

  ‘I was just out,’ I said, fervently wishing this meal was over already.

  ‘Very late,’ Ed added.

  ‘Yes, we got a bit carried away.’ I felt myself blushing. Had I really just said that? I caught Ed’s eye. He had gone quite still. I glanced at Mara, who had the same expression, and in that moment my glee at telling Rebecca about Charlie evaporated in front of the twins’ concern. Dammit, I couldn’t gloat in front of my friends, who actually cared about me, when I knew they’d disapprove.

  ‘We?’ Rebecca persisted.

  ‘It was just a workmate I hadn’t seen in a while. We had a lot of catching up to do,’ I said quickly, willing my blush to bugger off.

  ‘Anyone I know?’ Rebecca’s eyes glittered with interest.

  ‘I’m not going to talk about it.’

  ‘Oooooooh!’

  ‘Just drop it, Rebecca.’ I tried to give her a hard look then returned to my plate, forcing myself to eat a large piece of roast potato that took about fifty chews to get down.

  ‘Leave her alone, it’s her business,’ Mara cut across Rebecca’s cackle.

  Rebecca giggled and put her hand over her mouth, and tried to engage Ed in some whispered, witty banter but he just laughed politely and didn’t take the bait.

  I took the gap in the conversation as the perfect time to change topics. It was time to see how upset Rebecca really was.

  ‘So Mum told me you and . . .’

  ‘James,’ she said, her amusement evaporated.

  ‘Ah yes, you and James broke up?’

  ‘Yes.’ Rebecca looked at her hands.

  I waited for her to say more but she’d gone quiet, her eyes not moving from her hands.

  ‘What happened?’ Ed asked her.

  Rebecca opened her mouth to say something but instead her hands flew to her face. Her shoulders were shaking. I leant forward in my chair and tried peering up into her face. Could it be? It was. Real tears. Impressive. I hadn’t seen such a stellar performance from her for some time.

  ‘Amazing,’ Mara muttered.

  Ed glared at us and put an arm around Rebecca when it was clear that I wasn’t going to. I exhaled noisily through my nose. The tears might be wet, Ed, but I’d put money on them not being real.

  ‘What happened, Rebecca?’ Ed asked her again.

  ‘He . . . he . . . he says he’s
. . . not ready for a commitment!’ she gasped in-between jagged, teary gulps. She was really laying it on nice and thick now.

  ‘Surely you didn’t take him home to meet Mum and Dad?’ I had to ask. If it ever got serious enough to meet the ’rentals, Rebecca would usually ask them up to London for lunch. She was too embarrassed to take them back to the red-brick semi we grew up in. With its small garden and lack of antique furniture, it was way off the image Rebecca had been carefully cultivating for herself since childhood.

  Rebecca shot her a poisonous look. ‘Don’t be a bitch!’

  Bingo.

  ‘All right, Sam, can’t you be nicer than that?’ Ed gave me a stern look. I sighed.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said. And I was. I didn’t like how uncomfortable I felt when Ed looked at me like that. Like he was disappointed in me. It didn’t sit right. So I tried again.

  ‘How long have you been with this guy anyway?’

  Rebecca blew her nose. ‘Four months. I’ve told you about him!’

  ‘You did?’

  Rebecca scoffed. ‘Typical. What do you care anyway?’

  ‘I do!’

  ‘Strange way of showing it,’ she muttered, looking down at her hands again.

  And finally one of my heartstrings was genuinely pulled, and against my better judgement, I softened. I felt the familiar, sinking feeling that always occurred when spending time with Rebecca and I knew there was no point resisting it. There was no way but Rebecca’s way. I sighed.

  ‘Would you like to stay tonight?’ I asked her.

  11

  CLAUDIA

  I didn’t have my usual get-up-and-go today. My fingers were struggling to achieve anything near their usual pitter-patter speed, and had been petering out into far too frequent pauses. I kept finding myself just staring into the middle of the office. It wasn’t like I hadn’t made an attempt at cheering myself up this morning either. I’d poured myself into my current fave suit – a charcoal pinstripe pencil skirt, teamed with that gorgeous peplum (I loved that word) jacket that cinched in my waist and then flared out in pleats. It was a sort of modern Edwardian number I liked to think. All the accent on the rounded buttocks. But it wasn’t working today. I still felt rubbish and I kept shuffling in my seat trying to get comfortable. I was itchy down there. Yuck.

  I refused to be ill. Other people may get colds and flu and whatever else and retreat to bed, buried in sodden tissues. But not me. If a tickle dared to form in my throat, I just slugged back some Jägermeister and got on with it. I was sure that self-pity simply made things worse, and good health simply relied on having the right attitude and the appropriate liquor. But this was different. This was all wrong. Whatever this was, it was giving the old Jägermeister the fingers and burying in further. A dull ache that had been niggling inside since before Ed got back hadn’t subsided either, and I couldn’t bear to think about what was happening to my thirty-quid underwear. Whatever it was wasn’t shifting with Persil alone.

  Anyway back to the office. At some point I had kind of given up on trying to concentrate and was standing at my window, gazing over Canary Wharf, when a voice at the door startled me.

  ‘Claudia?’ It was John Tightpants, or John Morgan, Head of Marketing, as he was known to everyone who wasn’t me (and Sam, and Mara, and Kate – oh and of course that time I was at the pub when I told almost every person I met that night about him).

  ‘Sorry, is this a good time?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, it’s fine, John, have a seat.’ I crossed the room to join him. I wanted to say no, John, it isn’t all right at all. But I didn’t. I can’t say that to the head of marketing, can I?

  He sat down and patted the vacant spot on the sofa. I pretended not to notice and sat down in a seat adjacent to him. I asked him what I could do for him.

  He sat there, knees apart, his groin straining for attention in those irresistibly tight pants beneath his trousers. Behind his back, people around the office (mostly women) call him Daniel Craig. But, just quietly, I think he’s actually more handsome than Mr Bond: his face kinder, his lips more generous. He is, in fact, the best-looking man in the building with a panting following from women and men of all ages, and as he bulged in front of me this morning, I tried very hard to push away the memories of the incredible sex I’d had with him. Because we can’t be together – I will never let that happen.

  ‘I’ve had a look at your shortlist for the assistant-marketing-director role.’ John smiled confidently at me, his eyes twinkling. He, of course, being so confident, had been ignoring the fact that I’d been avoiding him for a month, and at every meeting he still managed to talk shop and scream sex with his eyes.

  I took the offered sheaves of A4, the five excellent CVs of two men and three women who’d applied for the role, and flicked through them briefly.

  ‘So these are the ones you’d like to have back in for a second interview?’ I said, risking a quick glance at his face.

  ‘I think so, the very top five you had on your preference list. You have great judgement, Claudia.’

  No, I haven’t, I’d thought then. It wasn’t good judgement to get over-excited at Hadyn’s leaving do and go home with him. It wasn’t good judgement at all. The sex was amazing, incandescent, but so stupid. Worse than the sex, I haven’t been able to get him out of my mind, which makes me feel exposed somehow. And it was against my rules to screw men on the same or higher management level as me. That was an absolute no-go. I was happy to turn on the charm to help me get up the ladder, but no one was going to say I slept my way to the top!

  I wished he’d stop looking at me like that. Like he was sure there would be a repeat performance some day.

  ‘Well then, I’ll get Susie to get them back in,’ I’d said brightly, standing up as if I was in a huge hurry.

  John stood too.

  ‘Right. Good,’ he said.

  He paused, and honestly it felt like he was trying to twinkle his way inside me.

  ‘By the way, Susie’s found me a very good PA too. Very professional,’ he said.

  ‘Excellent.’ I opened the door for him and stood back to let him out. ‘I’m giving Susie more reign to recruit on her own without me looking over her shoulder, so your PA wasn’t under my radar. I hope she works out,’ I said.

  ‘I’m sure she will,’ John said, and slowly walked past me to the door. ‘See you soon then.’

  He was gone. I leant against the door. I’d held my breath in an effort not to smell him as he walked past me but it was no use. His scent lingered on in my office for the rest of the day, teasing me.

  12

  ED

  I watched Mara set off to work on her bike. She’d just picked up speed when some idiot stepped out onto the road without looking a few yards ahead of her. There was plenty of time for her to brake but in the end she had to swerve to avoid them.

  ‘Whoa!’ I shouted into the silent room. What was up with her? Did she have so much on her mind she didn’t see that guy? Or were her brakes too soft? I waited until she’d completely disappeared from view, imagining she was surrounded by a protective shell. If only she was. The reality was so different. She always seemed so tough but she was just as fragile as everyone else inside and who other than me could really look after her? Mum was off in her new life, Dad was too sad and Kate had the kids to look after.

  After a bit I went and stood in Sam’s doorway again. I had started doing this whenever both the girls were out. I didn’t ever go in – that would feel too pervy. It was sad enough standing and looking into her room. Sam’s bed was unmade and I could just make out the impression her body had left behind, indicating she either got out of bed in a hurry or was a lazy so-and-so. The clothes lying across the end of her bed, all over her floor and disappearing under her desk like children trying to hide, pointed to the latter. On her desk was a framed family photograph, peeking out from behind a tower of magazines. I guessed that Sam must have been about ten when the photo was taken. She was standing with her family
in front of a tent: Richard in shorts, his beard just starting to grey; Alison in a lemon dress, peering out from under a Lady Di fringe; the girls both brown-limbed and grinning. They looked untidy and relaxed, with no sign of the polished Rebecca that existed now. Sam looked as if she was enjoying a good joke.

  I stood at her door and wished I was a less principled person. I wished I was the sort of person who could march right in and start rifling through her stuff. But I just couldn’t. I wandered back to the sitting room and stood there for a moment, lost in one of those all too frequent moments, not knowing what on earth to do with myself. I stared absently at the bookshelves. Novel after novel by extremely clever women: Margaret Atwood, A. S. Byatt, Barbara Kingsolver, Toni Morrison, Joyce Carol Oates. All Mara’s obviously. I tried to picture a time I’ve seen Sam holding a book. Nope. Nothing doing. There was a whole shelf of DVDs. Then there were Mara’s photo albums. I paused. If Mara’s photo albums were there, then maybe . . . I moved closer to the shelves. There, shoved on top of Mara’s photo albums, was a tatty cardboard box with ‘random photos’ written on the side in Sam’s writing. Of course Sam wouldn’t have her photos all neatly displayed in albums like Mara. I couldn’t believe my luck! I took them out, my heart racing. This wasn’t snooping, I told my conscience. The sitting room is communal. No it isn’t. Yes it is! Oh shut up.

  I sat down on the futon and took the lid off. They were Sam’s all right – loads of them. I took a stack out. The first one was of Claudia, Sam and Mara raising their glasses to the camera in front of a eucalyptus. That must be Melbourne, where they met each other originally. Sam and Claudia had obviously drunk enough wine to look all loose around the eyes. Mara was smiling her closed-lipped little smile, her eyes unreadable, not letting herself go. Who took the photo? Mara’s expression would point to Mark – her one-time shit of a boyfriend.

  I kept flicking. There were endearing photos of a badly dressed Sam as a child, photos of her as a teenager with too much hair and awkward posture, all muddled up with photos of her as an adult, her arms flung around this person or that. There were a lot of photos of her travels. Lush rice paddies in Thailand. Long, empty beaches in Australia. That glacier she visited in New Zealand. Then I came across a photo of me and the girls, taken three or four years ago. Sam was in-between Mara and I, with only half of Mara’s face in the frame. She had an arm around both of our necks, pulling us in, squashing our faces against hers. My glasses were askew, making me look goofy, and my smile almost took up the whole of my face. I placed my thumb over Mara so it was just Sam and me. I felt an ache in my chest. I remembered that time well. It was around the time I started admitting to myself I was in love with her.