by Tracy Bloom
‘Maybe.’ She shrugged. ‘Hard to tell. Do you mind if I go and have a bath?’
‘Be my guest.’ Ben waved towards the stairs. ‘I’ve still got the second half to watch.’
She climbed the stairs slowly, her legs heavy, then locked herself in the bathroom. She needed peace. She needed escape. She needed to be alone with the secret she now held because the one thing she was sure about was that she wasn’t ready to let Ben in on it. She was still in a state of shock at the evening’s turn of events. It was the last thing she’d expected, and she had no idea what she felt about it. Partly thrilled at the idea of taking what would undoubtedly be an exciting job in an exciting city and partly horrified at what they might have to sacrifice if they took up the opportunity. Friends, family, Leeds United… and most importantly trying for another baby. She wouldn’t mention it to Ben just yet, she decided. She’d check Cooper was serious the next day before she threw this possible hand grenade into their marriage.
The following morning Ben had waved her off to work as though that day was exactly the same as the one before. Only she knew it wasn’t. There were life-changing decisions on the cards.
She got to lunchtime and felt like she might be about to go mad. Cooper had texted her to say he was looking forward to discussing the role in more detail whenever she was ready. Ready? She had no idea how she would ever be ready to have a sensible conversation about such a life-changing opportunity. She couldn’t concentrate on anything. At every turn she fell into a trap reminding her of the consequences of her future actions. A request for a strategy-planning meeting in February. Would she be here? Budget-setting demand from Finance for the following year. She was tempted to submit something ludicrous. Tell them she needed to double her expenditure and see what they said. If they didn’t like it, well then she could always leave.
She decided there was only one thing for it. She had to talk to someone, and so she was waiting patiently in a greasy spoon, fifteen minutes’ walk from the office, for her confidante.
Eventually she saw Daniel peer through the steamed-up windows in his impeccable camel coat with its collar up around a cashmere scarf. She waved and he looked at her as though she’d lost her marbles. Pushing the door open, he walked across the chipped tiled floor, throwing disdainful looks like confetti.
‘This had better be good, Ms Chapman,’ he hissed, sitting himself down on the orange plastic chair and keeping his hands firmly in his pockets. ‘What exactly are we doing here? Buying drugs?’
‘No,’ hissed Katy, looking around to check no-one was listening. But the old man slumped in the corner and the two men in neon worker’s vests and steel-toe-capped boots didn’t seem to have heard. ‘I just wanted to make sure we didn’t run into anyone from work.’
‘I think you would normally have to administer the drugs first to get any of our lot in here. Unless they were going out to purposefully catch salmonella, of course.’ He delivered this last line as a middle-aged woman in a dirty tabard approached.
‘What can I get you, son?’ she asked.
Daniel did not conceal his look of amazement.
‘He’ll have a bottle of water,’ Katy said when Daniel didn’t reply to the request. ‘Ignore him. He’s socially awkward,’ she added, giving him a kick under the table.
‘No worries, love,’ she replied. ‘We’re used to that here.’ She turned and walked away, appearing to completely forget about their order by continuing to read the magazine that lay on the counter.
‘So what have you dragged me out to this… this… grease pit for?’
‘I needed to tell you something.’
‘I knew it,’ said Daniel, taking his hand out of his pocket and slamming his fist on the table. The stickiness that it was met with caused another epic look of disgust. He took a thin paper napkin out of the holder and attempted to wipe it down.
‘What do you know?’ asked Katy.
‘You slept with Cooper White, didn’t you?’
‘No!’ exclaimed Katy. ‘Of course I didn’t.’
‘You fancy him though, I can tell.’
Katy sighed. ‘Cooper White is like Gwyneth Paltrow or Ryan Gosling or Brad Pitt. So perfect looking…’
‘I assume you mean Brad Pitt without the beard?’ interrupted Daniel.
‘OK, yes, probably,’ said Katy. ‘What I’m saying is that they’re so perfect looking that you’d have to be… well, weird not to fancy them, wouldn’t you? It’s like appreciating a work of art. Good to look at but in no way could you ever connect with them.’
‘Can I add Jimmy who works in Finance to that list?’
‘Yes,’ said Katy. ‘Exactly. He’s all cheekbones and flat stomach and muscly arms, but all you want to do is look at him. You wouldn’t want to spend any time with him.’
‘So are you telling me that Cooper was as dull as dishwater then?’
‘I’m telling you that I can appreciate his good looks but that’s it, and anyway I love Ben and I’m married. Why are we even talking about this?’
‘You dragged me here. The least you could do is confess to an affair to make it worthwhile. So what dull revelation do you have for me then?’
‘Cooper offered me a job… in Australia.’
Daniel’s eyes flew open. ‘Could you repeat that please?’
‘Cooper White wants me to go and be brand director for Boomerang Airlines in Sydney.’
Daniel continued to stare and said nothing. Katy waited for his response. After a moment he got up from his seat and walked out.
‘Is he coming back?’ asked the lady, who had finally arrived with his water.
‘Not sure,’ replied Katy, peering past her to see that Daniel was standing just outside the door with his back to her. ‘Leave the water. I think he just needed some space.’
Katy stared at Daniel’s back for a couple more minutes. She toyed with getting up to see if he was all right. Maybe he couldn’t bear the sight of her right now. She watched as he raised his shoulders as though taking a deep breath. He turned around abruptly then came back into the café and sat down in front of Katy.
‘That’s utterly brilliant, Katy,’ he said with a huge smile painted on his face. ‘I’m really pleased for you.’
‘You are such a liar,’ said Katy. ‘You don’t mean that, do you?’
‘No, I fucking don’t,’ screeched Daniel in a high voice and put his head in his hands.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, laying a hand on his shoulder. She felt him breathe two or three more times then slowly raise his head.
‘It’s not that I’m not pleased for you,’ he said. ‘It’s just that I would be even more pleased if it was me.’
‘You’re jealous?’
‘Of course I’m jealous. You’re going to work for the fine specimen that is Cooper White… in Sydney. Imagine how much fun I could have. It would make Luca leaving make sense. It would make my Christmas.’ He paused, looking straight at her. ‘It’s just so wasted on you.’
‘I haven’t said I’ll take it yet.’
‘What! Are you insane? You mean you didn’t snap his hand off and get him to sign something in blood there and then. Are you crazy, girl?’
‘It’s not as simple as that for me.’
‘Tell me what isn’t simple about moving to a climate where you don’t need two coats?’
‘I told you. Ben wants a baby.’
‘Oh,’ said Daniel. ‘Oh,’ he said again, his brain starting to whirr. ‘So talk me through that one.’
‘I just don’t know how we can do both. How can I accept a job – a massive job – knowing I might get pregnant any day?’
‘You’re having sex, are you?’
‘No, but that isn’t the point. I can’t tell Cooper I want the job and then in three months’ time tell him I’m having a baby. That’s not fair.’
‘Why are you not having sex?’
Katy sighed. ‘Can we discuss that another time? It really isn’t the main issue just now.’
/> ‘If you say so.’ He shrugged. ‘But you will have to have sex to have a baby.’
‘I know! And we will. It just isn’t a priority at the moment.’
Daniel looked at her as though she’d grown two heads. ‘In my experience, sex…’
‘Enough with the sex talk!’ said Katy a little too loudly. The two workmen turned their heads and smirked. ‘We are not here to discuss my sex life,’ she hissed.
‘OK,’ said Daniel, holding up his hands to indicate she should calm down. ‘OK. So why don’t you just wait then. Have a baby later, after you’ve bedded yourself in?’
‘I’m just not sure Ben will go for that. And besides, I’m getting old. The longer I leave it, the riskier it gets. If we’re going to have another one we really need to start trying now.’
Daniel said nothing. She prayed he might find some pearls of wisdom in that warped brain of his, but it wasn’t looking hopeful.
‘Tell him.’ He shrugged. ‘Tell Cooper your dilemma. You never know, he might say that’s fine. Have the baby; go back to work straightaway. You might be gone what, three weeks?’
Katy bit her lip. ‘I don’t want to be that kind of mother,’ she said. ‘And I don’t think that’s fair on Ben.’
‘So what does Ben think?’
‘I’ve not told him yet,’ she confessed. ‘I wanted to get my head round it first. Let it sink in. I was struggling with the baby or career thing before this came along, and now this just makes it a whole lot worse. We could have a great life in Australia – I know we could. It could be amazing for all of us. But at what price? The price could be our next child. We could be risking that.’
Daniel stared back at her in disbelief.
‘How do you do this?’ he asked eventually.
‘Do what?’
‘How do amazing things happen to you, and yet I’m the one who ends up feeling sorry for you?’
‘I don’t mean to do that.’
‘You must. It’s just cruel, Katy. Here’s me facing Christmas alone, and then you come and flash a job offer from Australia in my face. How very Christmas-spirited of you.’
‘I told you – you could spend Christmas with us. You don’t need to be alone.’
‘Oh, how very decent of you. No doubt you will add insult to injury and rope me into packing your house up to be shipped off to the other side of the world. Merry Christmas, Daniel. You just lost your boyfriend and your best friend. The only person you work with who you can go and bitch to about everyone else on a regular basis.’
‘I know you go and bitch to Rachel in HR. Don’t try and tell me you don’t.’
Daniel gasped. The woman in the dirty tabard looked up from her magazine.
‘That is not bitching. I’m doing my duty and informing her of the inner workings of the staff at the agency. She calls me her internal barometer of the current satisfaction levels in the workplace. She reckons I save her a fortune on surveys.’
‘She likes a gossip as much as you do.’
‘Maybe, but I can assure you that I never, never reach the heights of bitchiness that I so enjoy when we get together. How can I survive the tedium of having to earn a living without you as my partner in crime?’ Daniel finished his speech by taking another gasp. The woman looked up again and frowned. ‘Does Andrew know?’ he asked her.
‘Of course not. Cooper’s convinced that Andrew will be only too happy to let me go if it means they definitely secure the Boomerang account.’
Daniel gasped yet again. He was beginning to behave as if Katy was divulging the culprits of a chain of murders, right there in a greasy spoon. ‘So he’s blackmailing you! You let him kidnap you and we get the business. Oh my God, this is… this is corporate espionage.’
‘Not quite sure what that is,’ admitted Katy.
‘Neither am I, but it sounds dramatic enough to describe this situation.’
‘He didn’t actually say that we wouldn’t get the business if I said no…’
‘But he didn’t say we would either, did he?’
‘No, he didn’t. But I can’t think about that. I have to decide if this is right for me, Ben and Millie, not what’s right for the business.’
Daniel leaned back in his chair, his eyes fixed on Katy. He was weighing it all up. Katy hoped he was getting past his dramatic reaction and would actually offer her some sound advice, which he was surprisingly good at. She waited patiently as she watched him turn the dilemma over in his mind. Eventually he picked up the salt cellar and pretended to study it carefully. He tipped it over and they both watched the salt silently pour out of the top hole and form a small mound on the table.
Slowly, Daniel dragged his eyes up to meet hers. She thought she may have detected a minute tear in one corner of his eye, but it could just be the greasy fumes that he was reacting badly to.
‘I only have the words of the greatest Christmas single of all time to say to you,’ he said solemnly.
Katy wracked her brains to try and think of the festive tune that Daniel would pick. She could only think of the cheesy ones, and they didn’t seem likely. ‘Go on, put me out of my misery,’ she finally said.
‘You mean you don’t know what the greatest Christmas single of all time is?’
‘Cliff Richard, “Mistletoe and Wine”?’ she said feebly.
‘That answer is enough to make me want to send you packing straight to the other side of the world,’ snapped Daniel. ‘Of course it isn’t “Mistletoe and Bloody Wine”. That does nothing to embody the true sentiment behind Christmas.’
‘Then what?’ snapped back Katy, losing patience now. ‘Stop talking in bloody riddles! What song does it for you at Christmas?’
‘“Stay Another Day”. That’s what does it for me. Undoubtedly the greatest Christmas single of all time.’
‘By East 17?’
‘Of course by East 17. Those beautiful boys’ faces encased in white fur hoods, singing to me, pleading with me to stay another day.’
‘It was a surprisingly sentimental and lovely song from a bunch of hard nuts,’ agreed Katy.
‘It’s about the prospect of losing someone,’ added Daniel. ‘How painful that is, and how all you want to do is plead with them to stay.’
‘I’m sorry about Luca, Daniel – I really am,’ said Katy.
‘I’m not talking about Luca, I don’t give a fuck about him. Pasta boy has well and truly gone. I’m talking about you, Katy. I don’t want you to go. In the words of the legend that is Brian Harvey, “stay”. Please.’
Katy stared back at Daniel and his desperate face. This was new. Their friendship mode consisted of healthy insults and banter. A declaration of neediness was unprecedented.
‘Go on with you,’ said Katy, finally killing the moment. ‘You’re just saying that because Luca left. You’ll find a new boyfriend, and before you know it I’ll be relegated to the friends zone and reduced to begging you to share a coffee with me.’
‘No,’ said Daniel, banging the table with his fist. Katy jumped. ‘Is that what you think of this?’ he said, waggling his finger between the two of them. ‘We’re just time-fillers to each other? A way of alleviating the tedium of our day-to-day lives until we can find someone more interesting to be with? And after all we’ve been through?’
Katy looked away in shame. She knew exactly what he was referring to. When she had come close to totally screwing up her life over the one-night stand with Matthew, it was Daniel she’d turned to for help and support. Daniel, and only Daniel, had shared her anxiety over who the father of her unborn child was.
‘I don’t see you as a time-filler,’ said Katy, looking back up at him, her cheeks on fire.
‘I think you do. In fact, I’m sure you do. Cooper comes along and dangles a beach and a barbecue in your face and suddenly our relationship means nothing?’
‘But he’s offering me an amazing job.’
‘You have an amazing job here,’ cried Daniel.
‘But I’d get to develop a brand from
scratch, Daniel. I get to make the decisions on what it looks like and what it stands for. I don’t do any of that in my job now. Sure I can advise, I can cajole, I can even beg, but I don’t get to call the shots. You know that. The client does. I’d be in charge, Daniel. Of the Boomerang Airlines brand. I’d have something to show for all my hard work. Now that’s an amazing job.’
‘But you don’t get to work with me,’ said Daniel.
Katy swallowed. Tabard lady was now openly listening in on their conversation, her head raised up from her magazine and her jaw hanging slightly open.
‘Are you telling me that if Cooper had offered you a job then you would turn it down? I refuse to believe that.’
Daniel opened his mouth and closed it again. She’d got him, she thought. He didn’t actually mean all this sentimental stuff – he was just being selfish. He just wanted her to stay so he would have someone to play with. If a better offer came along, he’d leave her in a heartbeat.
Daniel stood up and pulled his cashmere gloves out of his pockets and put them over his hands, refusing to look at her. When he’d finished he put his hands on his hips and finally looked her in the eye.
‘I don’t know what I’d do,’ he said eventually. ‘But the thought of leaving behind the people that I love would… well, it would break my heart.’ He turned and walked out, slamming the glass door so that the Merry Christmas sign sellotaped across it fell to the floor.
Katy glanced over at tabard lady then got up and went to go and pick up the fallen letters strewn on the floor. She took them back to the counter and handed them over. ‘Sorry about that,’ she said. ‘He was upset.’
‘You just dumped him then?’ the woman asked. ‘Are you sure about that? He wasn’t half smart-looking. He must be a bit of a catch, I reckon. I’m single if you’ve finished with him. You can tell him I’m on Tinder.’
Katy smiled at her. The irony was that she and Daniel would probably get on. Both blunt and to the point.
‘He’s gay actually,’ she stated.
‘Oh,’ said the woman, looking disappointed, then she shrugged her shoulders. ‘Never mind. Thought I’d ask.’
‘But you are right though,’ added Katy as she fished some money out of her wallet. ‘He is a catch.’