by Lisa Jewell
‘Then why are all the lights off?’
George shrugged and stared at his book. ‘I like it like this.’
‘Are you all right?’ She sat down next to him and grasped his knee.
‘Yes. I’m fine.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes,’ he hissed, ‘I’m fine.’
Are you pissed… annoyed with me?’
‘No. I’m not annoyed with you. I’m just reading, that’s all.’
‘Do you want me to leave you alone?’
He shrugged again. ‘I don’t really care.’
‘Fine,’ said Joy, now certain that George was angry with her for some unknown reason and torn between wanting to give him the cold shoulder and demanding to know what the hell his problem was.
She spent a few minutes clattering around the flat, pretending to be fine before she could no longer control herself.
‘George,’ she said, marching into the living room, ‘you are obviously not happy about something and, if it’s something I’ve done, I want you to tell me.’
George sighed and closed his book, as if Joy were the most tiresome person it had ever been his displeasure to encounter. ‘I just think,’ he began, ‘that it’s really very rude to tell someone you’re going to be home at one time, then just waltz in an hour late with no explanation.’
Joy glanced at the clock over the mantelpiece and frowned with confusion. ‘I didn’t say I’d be home at any particular time,’ she said.
George just sighed again and picked up his book.
‘George, I did not say I’d be home early. ‘I said I was going to Bella’s – ’
‘Bella– huh!’
‘What?’
‘Well, it’s ridiculous – a man called Bella.’
Joy huffed and ignored him. ‘I said I was going to Bella’s for my dress fitting and that I’d be home after that.’
‘Which would lead one to assume you’d be home at a reasonable hour.’
Joy looked at the clock again in amazement. ‘It’s not even ten o’clock!’
‘Did it occur to you I might have had plans for tonight?’
‘Er… no. Why would you make plans if you knew I was going to be out?’
‘Oh, I really have no wish to pursue this risible line of conversation for another moment. I’m going to bed.’ He slammed his paperback down.
‘No,’ said Joy, grabbing his arm, ‘this is ridiculous. We need to talk about this.’
‘No,’ he peeled her hand from his arm, ‘we do not.’ He stalked from the room and slammed the door behind him.
Joy stood statue still for a while, unable to comprehend what had just happened. And then she let herself flop on to the sofa and stare in dismay at George’s horrible sitting room as the first of the nameless fears she’d felt hovering at the edges of her consciousness for the past two months finally came home to roost.
At ten-thirty the following morning a vast arrangement of delicate flowers in autumnal shades of burgundy, gold and henna was delivered to ColourPro Reprographics, addressed to Miss Joy Downer.
The card, attached to the cellophane wrapper by a pin, read:
I am so blessed to have found you. I never want to lose you. I love you. I adore you. I worship you.
And despite the glaring absence of the word ‘sorry’, Joy decided to take this as a full and heartfelt apology, and to carry on as if the previous night had never happened.
Thirty-One
The words just wouldn’t flow today. It didn’t matter how hard Vince stared at little Katy-Clare, with her soulful blue eyes and shiny auburn hair, he couldn’t think of a single original thing to say about her. Every description he brought to mind had been used before. And even though he knew that Coalford Swann collectors and readers of the Sunday Mirror colour supplement had no recollection of the exact turn of phrase he’d used two years ago to describe Millicent Amanda’s mischievous smile or Tabitha Jane’s adorable dimpled cheeks, that wasn’t the point. It was a matter of personal pride.
Something was blocking the flow of his creative juices this morning, something in the atmosphere, something strange. Melanie’s secretary, Polly, had been in a weird mood all day, trotting around officiously, refusing to join in with the usual Friday japery. Melanie herself had been locked in her office for most of the day with the Personnel Director, wearing a sharp black suit and looking very grim. The effect of all this on the marketing team was a sort of low-level hysteria, like an electric undercurrent of unspoken panic, and nobody seemed to be doing any work at all.
Vince decided to remove himself momentarily from the unsettling vibrations of his office and phone Magda.
‘Mags, it’s me.’
‘Hello, me. How’s it going?’
‘Weird. Everyone’s in a strange mood.’
‘Business as usual, then,’ Magda joked.
‘No. It’s even weirder than usual.’
‘Not possible, surely’ Magda had never been to Vince’s office, but found the whole notion of a bunch of twenty-something graduates sitting around discussing ways of selling spooky china dolls utterly bizarre.
‘What do you fancy doing tomorrow?’ she said. ‘Shall we go Christmas shopping?’
Vince groaned inwardly. Vince didn’t mind shopping per se. He quite enjoyed a gentle wander around Covent Garden or Kensington High Street, casually trying on shoes and coats, flipping through CDs and exploring bookshops. But Christmas shopping was something completely different. Christmas shopping was the pentathlon of shopping events, involving, as it did, five different disciplines: memory, stamina, strength, patience and prioritizing. Carrying all those different people around in your head, their tastes, their preferences. Finding just the right gift for someone, but realizing it was too heavy or cumbersome to carry around for the rest of the day. Deciding at one end of Oxford Street that the gift you wanted to get for your mum was at the other end of Oxford Street. No, no, no. It was hell. And the thought of carrying out such a gruesome task with Magda, the Shopping Queen, made his skull ache.
‘You know something,’ he said, ‘I kind of promised Mum I’d see Kyle tomorrow’
‘Oh, well, then that’s perfect! He can come with us!’
‘What!’
‘Yes – we can take him to see the Christmas lights and take him to Hamleys to see Father Christmas. Oh, it’ll be brilliant.’
And actually, when he thought about it, Vince found the idea strangely thrilling, too. He’d never taken Kyle out anywhere without Chris or his mum being there, too. And he’d probably be too nervous to take a small child into the West End on his own, but if Magda was there… and Kyle did like Magda, and frankly, any excuse to visit Hamleys was good enough for him.
‘That’s an excellent idea,’ he said. ‘I’ll phone Mum first thing and see if it’s all right.’ For a moment, Vince felt full of optimism and enthusiasm. Until Magda went and spoiled it.
‘Won’t it be funny,’ she said, ‘being out with you and Kyle. Like a proper family.’ Which was fine in itself, but it was the accompanying tone of maternal longing and wistfulness that made Vince’s stomach churn. It wasn’t the tone of a woman enjoying a no-strings, casual-fun relationship. It wasn’t the tone of a woman who just wanted sex and laughs. It was the tone of a woman who wanted diamond rings and a future.
And it was just another reminder that he was still trundling along dejectedly down the wrong path and that at some point he was going to have to turn round and walk all the way back.
The reason for the strange atmosphere in Vince’s office made itself known after lunch.
Melanie announced a departmental meeting at three o’clock, which was unheard of on a Friday afternoon.
The team filed into her office exchanging questioning looks and shrugged shoulders. Gill Pearson, the scary Personnel Director, was stationed at the head of the table, smiling benignly in a navy polka-dot blouse.
‘Hello, everyone,’ she said. ‘Thank you all for coming at such short notice.�
�� Her smile was so forced it looked as if it had been stapled on to her face.
Vince fiddled with the pointy bit at the bottom of his tie and glanced around the table. Everyone was engaged in some kind of displacement activity – nibbling at fingernails, twiddling hair, drumming Biros, shuffling papers. Everyone knew something bad was about to happen. That’s what personnel directors were for.
‘As you might be aware, Coalford Swann Collectibles has experienced something of a downturn in profits over the course of the past eighteen months. This is in no way attributable to the quality of the product or the dedication and hard work of our staff, all of which are beyond reproach. The economy simply isn’t healthy enough to support our customers’ luxury spending, and collectibles are always hardest hit in tough times like these. So, inevitably, we have had to look to the bottom line.’
Vince felt his gut clench.
‘Coalford Swann is renowned throughout the world for the quality of its marketing and publicity. And rightly so. Melanie has worked incredibly hard over the course of the past three years putting together the finest team of marketeers in the industry. Which is why the decision we’ve reached has been so painful.’
Oh, for God’s sake, thought Vince, just get on with it.
‘As of Monday morning, the marketing and publicity departments will cease to function. Therefore, I am sincerely sorry to announce, your jobs are effectively redundant as of today. I’ll be speaking to you all individually over the course of the afternoon, so if you’d like to return to your desks and stick around until I’ve had a chance to have a chat, that would be very much appreciated. In the meantime, please keep this to yourselves. An official announcement will be made on Monday morning. And can I just take this opportunity to say how much I and the rest of the directors appreciate all your hard work and commitment over the years.’ And with that she smiled tightly, gathered her files and left the room.
The whole team collapsed like a snapped elastic as the door closed behind her and exhaled as one.
‘Fucking hell,’ said Demetrius.
‘Shit,’ said Sian.
‘Fantastic!’ said Billy.
Vince didn’t know what to think. He’d fantasized about something like this happening so many times, dreamed of the rush of adrenalin that sudden freedom would unleash, the things he could do, the places he could go, but now it had actually happened he just felt vaguely hurt. They didn’t want him. They hadn’t made an exception for him. They were happy just to let him disappear into the sunset and for some nameless, faceless person at an agency somewhere to write their advertisements for them instead. He’d been dumped. By someone he wasn’t even in love with. And he felt crushed.
*
His meeting with scary Gill later that afternoon helped to heal the wound a little. They were giving him three months’ tax-free salary and a glowing reference. He wouldn’t have to work out his notice and would get all his untaken holiday leave backdated and paid in full. He would, in other words, be getting a tidy sum and an unplanned holiday. And looking at it like that, Vince couldn’t help but feel slightly celebratory.
Magda, he thought, you’d better hold on to your hat, girl, for tonight we shall be drinking champagne.
Thirty-Two
Joy and George were having dinner at a Chinese restaurant in Norbiton. Norbiton wasn’t a place that Joy had ever thought she’d find herself doing anything other than driving through en route to somewhere else, but life, as she was rapidly coming to understand, was strange and unpredictable.
She was eating gigantic prawns, with chopsticks. She’d never managed to master the art of chopsticks before and had decided it was a skill she could easily get through life without, but George had been so appalled the first time they’d gone to a Chinese restaurant together and she’d asked for cutlery that she’d felt shamed into learning.
He’d taught her how to hold the top one like a pen and rest the bottom one in the crook of her thumb and forefinger; how to keep the bottom one still and use the top one as the pincer. George had taught her lots of other things, too, over the weeks.
He’d taught her how to open champagne (Twist the bottle, not the cork. Let the cork pop into your fist, not towards the ceiling.) and how to drink champagne (Hold the glass by the stem, not the bowl. Otherwise the champagne gets warm.).
He’d taught her how to order in posh restaurants (Just ask for the main ingredient of the dish – i.e. ‘I’ll have the lamb’ not ‘I’ll have the lamb fillet with couscous and spiced aubergine.’) and how to taste the wine (If it’s not corked just say ‘fine’ and put your glass down – no need to comment any further.).
He’d taught her to say ‘sitting room’ not ‘lounge’, to say ‘napkin’ not ‘serviette’ and to ask for the ‘loo’ not the ‘toilet’. He’d taught her none of these things explicitly of course – that would have been far too rude – rather she’d picked them up by osmosis, by reading between the lines. George, she was coming to realize, though he saw himself as liberal and free-spirited, was a stickler for etiquette and tradition. He winced when someone swore loudly in his vicinity; he expected impeccable service wherever he went and complained heartily if he didn’t get it; he found the whole notion of EastEnders repellent, hated regional accents and got very angry about misprints in newspapers.
He wasn’t a snob, exactly, but there was certainly a big, fat stratum of society that existed outside of his consciousness. People who read tabloids and went on package holidays. People who washed their own cars and sat down to eat at service stations. And in a strange way, Joy felt that he found a kind of invigorating novelty in the fact that she had come to him from this mysterious stratum. He’d seemed fascinated by her parents’ house when Barbara had insisted on throwing them an engagement party, intrigued by life in an Essex cul-de-sac, by the steady stream of people with names like Rita and Derek who processed through the house in Marks & Spencer’s casual-wear, by the sausage rolls and processed ham sandwiches that had passed for canapés and the shaggy towelling hat that sat atop the toilet seat.
He’d laughed, affectionately, but somewhat patronizingly, when Joy’s mother had suggested placing an announcement in the forthcoming marriages section of the Telegraph. He used words like ‘plebeian’, ‘arriviste’ and ‘gauche’, and swirled his wine around his glass before he drank it.
Joy was learning many things about George as time went by – some of them good, some of them not so good – and she was just about to learn something new.
‘So,’ he said, beaming at her across the table, ‘my beautiful wife-to-be, have you contacted your bank yet about changing your details?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, your new surname. You’ll have to change your passport, too, remember.’
Joy gulped. Along with her teenage vow to herself not to marry before her thirtieth birthday, she’d also decided that, when she did eventually marry, there was no way she would ever consider changing her surname to that of her husband. It was archaic and outmoded. It went against all her principles. Her name was her identity; it was who she was. It was the name that had been called out every morning at school, the name she filled out on forms. It wasn’t a great name and it didn’t fill her with ancestral pride, but it was her name and she wanted to keep it.
‘Erm, George. You do realize I have no intention of changing my name, don’t you?’ Joy wasn’t sure what she was expecting to happen next or how she’d imagined George might react. But laughter wasn’t it.
‘Oh, very funny,’ he guffawed.
‘No, George. I’m serious. Ever since I was a little girl I vowed that I would never change my name.’
The smile dropped from George’s face and was replaced by a sort of blank horror. ‘But we’re getting married. You have to change your name.’
‘No, I don’t. Not in this day and age.’
‘No. You do. It’s hugely important.’
‘But why? Why is it important? I don’t understand.’
&n
bsp; ‘Good God – we’re getting married. You’re going to be my wife. You can’t have a different surname to me. I’d be a laughing stock.’
Joy snorted. ‘With who exactly?’
‘Whom he snapped. ‘With my friends. My colleagues. My family’
‘Oh, George, they’re not going to care whether I’ve got your name or not.’
‘Of course they will. They’ll think you don’t respect me.’
‘Respect you? George – it’s 1993. That sort of thinking went out with pocket handkerchiefs.’
‘Maybe in your world,’ he sniffed, and Joy chose to ignore the oblique reference to their differing social stations, ‘but in my world marriage is defined as an official, legally binding union between two people. We become as one. We become family. With a shared surname.’
‘OΚ, then, why don’t we take my surname. Let’s both be Downers.’
‘Oh, don’t be ridiculous.’
‘Why is that ridiculous? You just said that once we’re married we should share a surname – so let’s share my surname.’
He sneered and pinioned a straggle of spring onions between his chopsticks. ‘Now you’re being juvenile.’
‘Why? What’s wrong with my surname?’
‘There’s nothing wrong with your surname. But it’s your surname. That’s not how it works. And besides, it would be disrespectful to my dead mother.’
‘Your dead mother! What about my living parents?’
‘Oh, come on now – that’s a bit low’
‘Well, you started it.’
‘Oh, now, this is just turning into a rather vulgar slanging match…’
‘Let’s go double-barrelled.’ Joy attempted a compromise.
‘Good God, no.’
‘Why not?’
‘Do you really have to ask? Quite apart from the fact that it is quite gut-churningly nouveau – Downer-Pole? I’ve never heard anything so ghastly’
‘Yes, well, what about Joy Pole? I mean, that just sounds rude.’
‘Ah,’ said George, ‘I see. Now we’re getting to the crux of the matter. This has nothing to do with your highflying feminist ideals. You just don’t like my surname.’