A Midwinter Match

by Jane Lovering

  Do I do it? Do I tell him about Zac’s breakdown this morning? It might give me the edge – and I need this job…

  ‘No,’ I said, and I sounded more breathless that opening a door and a misstep should have made me. ‘He’s squeaky clean at the moment.’

  Zac’s unhappiness was not a weapon.

  ‘Ah.’ Michael sounded disappointed. ‘Oh well. You keep trying, Ruby.’ Then he peeled off to go up the main stairs, back to the safety and warmth of his office, where Rachel would baby him through the rest of the day with good biscuits and careful management. Despite my envy over the proper chocolate coatings and the working heating, I wouldn’t have had his job for anything right now.

  I heard the familiar, strident tones as I approached the office. ‘Hello, Miriam. I didn’t think you were due in today.’

  ‘I weren’t. But I got this letter and my Angel told me to bring it to you.’

  I had a brief moment of picturing Miriam communing with heaven, before I remembered that Angel was the name of her eldest daughter. ‘So you came all this way to bring me this? You could have phoned and read it to me.’

  ‘Nah.’ Miriam fidgeted outside the interview room door. ‘You goin’ to let me in, or what? I needs a coffee, it’s bloody cold enough out there to freeze your tits off.’

  I unlocked the door, remembering our last conversation, where Miriam had spilled her life story to me, and I looked, with a new respect, at this thin, edgy woman. She’d had the kind of life I had only ever read about in those awful books that Gareth had left piled in the garage when he went. Misery Lit, they called it. Gareth had called them ‘Daddy, No!’ books, but then he’d had all the sensitivity of a walrus. Miriam was a survivor.

  ‘Plus, I had to come in to York to change this top I got for our Lewis. It’s too small, apparently, well, not surprisin’ now he’s a fat bastard. He wants to knock off them computer games and do some exercise, I told him.’

  I held my hand out for the letter, while Miriam poured herself a cup of coffee and took a handful of the biscuits.

  ‘It’s all right.’ I scanned the paper quickly. ‘It’s just a follow-up letter to remind you that you’re expected to be applying for jobs in the New Year.’

  ‘But you’re counsellin’ me! I thought I didn’t have to apply for nothin’ while you was counsellin’ me!’ Miriam raised her head from her mug to wail.

  ‘Yes, but you only get so many sessions before you have to show willing and get back out there. Counselling doesn’t put a stop on applications, it’s to help you have the confidence to accept jobs you may be offered and to apply for the most suitable positions.’ I sounded exactly like I had when I’d given my talk to the management. It felt like months ago now.

  ‘That’s what he used to say.’ A jerk of the head towards our office. ‘The tosspot.’

  ‘You’ve worked before.’

  ‘Yeah. Some cash-in-hand stuff. And I used to clean, up to Woolworths. That was great. Used to nick the Pick-n-Mix of an evenin’.’

  ‘They won’t keep paying you indefinitely, if you don’t show that you’re looking for work.’ This was what it boiled down to.

  Miriam stared around the room for a moment. ‘D’you like doin’ this?’ she asked sharply. ‘Makin’ people do stuff?’

  ‘I like helping people, yes.’

  She sniffed. ‘Thought so. You’re a bossy little cow, ain’t you? There’s more than one way to skin a cat, my mum used to say.’

  ‘Your mum was probably technically correct, but cat skinning isn’t one of the courses on offer,’ I said, straight-faced. Calling me ‘bossy’ had stung. My sister was bossy, I was – what was it Gareth used to say? Persistent. Not bossy. ‘You need to read through that prospectus again.’

  Miriam tipped her head on one side. ‘You’re very keen. Why’re you so bothered about me workin’? I thought this was one of those “soft option” things – I keeps comin’ in, you keeps talkin’ to me, you tick your boxes and I tick mine.’ Her blue eyes were sharp. ‘Why are you suddenly so up and airy about wantin’ me to get a job? Even the tosspot basically gave up after a bit.’

  There must have been a touch of Christmas hypnotism going on. Maybe it was the swinging prisms of the foil star that someone had stuck with tape to the light fitting, doing a Derren Brown on me. Before I knew what I was doing, I had told Miriam about the merger, about needing to keep my job, about Gareth leaving me to pay the house debts, about being in competition with Zac to keep this position.

  Miriam seemed happy to listen, but then she was indoors with free coffee and biscuits and the faint background sound of Christmas carols being piped through the music system, presumably to keep us all in seasonal spirits and to stop us killing one another. It was like being in a particularly liberal church.

  ‘So you both wants the job but management thinks he’s the best,’ she précised, when I stopped talking to drink my now lukewarm coffee.

  ‘Maybe he is, though.’ In the interests of fairness, I felt I had to put this view forward. ‘He’s quite forthright with clients.’

  ‘Forthright! That’s one word for it,’ Miriam snorted, inhaled biscuit crumbs and then coughed her smoker’s cough for a few minutes. ‘He’s a dictator, is what he is. Makes that Hitler look like, well, like you.’

  That was the second time she’d insulted me. And now she’d compared me to Hitler?

  ‘But I see now why you’re so keen to get me off the books,’ Miriam said, thoughtfully. ‘It’d give you one-up on tosspot.’

  ‘He’s not really a tosspot.’ I thought of Zac’s cheerful attitude, even his hair was upward-looking. And then, almost reluctantly, of that vulnerability that had shown through this morning, like the earth showing through a wind-scoured patch of snow. ‘It’s just that his way of doing things doesn’t chime with everyone. His success levels are pretty good.’

  Miriam nudged me. ‘But us girls have to stick together though, eh? Can’t let them blokes get the upper hand on us. You’ve been through it too, with that prick Gareth.’ She frowned for a second and pursed her lips, as though an invisible cigarette had made its way between them. ‘Yeah,’ she said, slowly and thoughtfully. ‘Okay. Look. I’ll give you this one. Check my applications.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  She was collecting up her bags and coat now, tutting at the damp hems of her jeans and trying to put on her scarf without getting encrusted snow in her hair. ‘That’s all I’m givin’ you. If you’re smart enough to work it out, then you deserve it. If not – well.’ She wound the bright red wool around her head. ‘Then maybe Tosspot should get to keep the job.’

  I stayed sitting after she’d bustled her way out. I had that slight sense of relief that I often felt when I’d confessed something to someone, but underneath it bubbled an annoyance. Miriam thought I was bossy? But I had to be assertive, it was part of the job, even though Zac seemed to think all I did was listen and reassure, I still had to encourage people to look for work and not take feeble excuses as an answer. That wasn’t bullying, was it?

  Was it?

  I liked helping people reach their own conclusions. I didn’t tell them the answers to all their problems, but instead I laid things out in a way that helped them see for themselves. That was definitely not bullying, it was doing my job.

  But then I had a flashback. I’d got used to them now. At first they’d been part of the anxiety and depression, reliving past events as clearly as if they’d been happening in front of me. I’d relived that finding of the earrings so often now that it had taken on the quality of a repeated TV episode, harsh but part of the overall story. The pain wasn’t so sharp any more. But this flashback was different, it was something I’d nearly forgotten.

  We’d been sitting, Gareth and I, in the packed-up remains of the rented flat. I was doing a last clean through, Gareth was – well, Gareth was doing what Gareth usually did, sitting down in front of the TV.

  ‘Come on, we’ve got our moving out inspection this afternoon!�
� I waved a cloth in front of his face.

  ‘Yeah, yeah. Plenty of time.’ He looked up at the ceiling. ‘I like this place. Wish we could stay here.’

  ‘But we’ve bought the cottage now. And buying is much better than renting! We can decorate and do our own thing, and we’ll have a garden and all that.’ I noticed a spot on the carpet and set about it with the damp cloth.

  ‘But this is right close to town and all that. I can walk home from the pub, no taxis or anything.’ He’d caught at me as I’d got up from the carpet and pulled me onto his lap. ‘One last shag in the old place?’

  I wriggled free. ‘We get the keys tomorrow, we’ve got to get this place ready to leave today!’

  He’d let me go, and gone into the kitchen to pour himself a beer that was warm because we’d already turned off the fridge. ‘I dunno about this moving thing,’ he said again. ‘I like it here.’

  ‘But you like the cottage too! It’s cosy and it will be ours!’ I playfully flicked him with the cloth as he came back in. ‘On the property ladder at last.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah.’ He sat down again, thwarting my attempts to push a window-cleaning spray into his non-beer-holding hand. ‘You’re a bossy cow, Ruby, you know that?’

  Then he’d laughed and I’d laughed and I’d not really thought of it again. Until now with the scene playing in front of my eyes so powerfully that the cleaning spray smell burned my nose and I could feel the echo of the ache in my muscles from all the scrubbing.

  Had I bullied him into buying the cottage?

  I thought back over my relationship with Gareth. We’d met through friends and drifted into a relationship after seeing one another out and about with our various groups. I’d been living in the tiny flat in Acomb, he’d been sharing with a bunch of rugby friends, and we’d found a place to rent together near the centre of town, ‘cheaper with two’, as he’d said. But, if things were left up to Gareth, when he was home from Europe, days would consist of me phoning in sick to work, all-day sex sessions and then ordering a pizza, sides and beer delivered to the door. We’d never have left the flat. We’d never have gone on holiday, or out for walks, or visited parents. There would never have been any housework done or washing up and the bedsheets would have been unchanged for a year.

  Somebody had to take charge of all that. Somebody had to get us outside in daylight, to actually be a couple and not just two people who lived together and never got out of bed. Was that bossy?

  And surely, buying a house was the next step? I’d haunted Rightmove when Gareth had been working away so much. Evenings had been long and often lonely, unless I went to visit my family or to Priya’s, to eat Nettie’s excellent cooking and to play board games and drink too much wine. I pretty much sorted the mortgage application and the surveys by myself, Gareth had just signed things and moaned about the necessity of having to move furniture.

  Was that bossy?

  With the benefit of that perfect clarity that hindsight lends, I could see that he’d done his best to put the brakes on the house purchase all the way through the process. Complaining about location, about how he’d have to spend his ‘downtime’ doing household maintenance; that the takeaways were too far away. When none of that had worked, he’d taken to working longer hours, not being around much for the actual moving, even though I’d timed everything carefully for his annual holiday.

  I tried to keep my thoughts from veering into what he’d really been doing during those ‘extra working hours’ that he’d told me would help earn enough to pay for things for the house. The new windows I’d ordered and not managed to cancel in time when he’d gone – that I was still paying for. The carpets and the curtains I’d bought and had to leave behind. The reasons I was still in such debt.

  I’d thought there would be two of us to cover the costs. I’d been stupid. And yes, bossy, apparently. But he had tried to stop me. Admittedly, without using the words ‘sorry, babe, but I’m seeing other women when I’m not with you, so it would be stupid to buy a house together. I’m never going to commit to you. In fact, I’d be planning to leave you if I weren’t so lazy and unmotivated, but, hey.’ Which would at least have concentrated my mind and stopped me blithely planning for a life I was never going to have.

  I sighed deeply. This room smelled of defeat. It smelled of people who were, for one reason or another, never going to live the lives they wanted. People so beaten down through circumstance that they were going to bob along under the waters of life, only breaking surface when absolutely necessary. It wasn’t the job I had thought it would be when I’d applied. I had thought I could make a difference, change people’s perceptions, help them overcome fears. Change lives. Help people.

  Really, was this job worth doing? Were we doing any good, or were we just bossing people about who would be better left alone?

  I gave my mental walls a little shove. A mixture of medication and the hope that Miriam had given me was keeping them firm, although the prospect of being without a car for the foreseeable future was putting little cracks in the base.

  The broken-down car and it was snowing. And, if I wasn’t mistaken, Kylie Minogue was launching into the fourth round of ‘Santa, Baby’ over the sound system. But at least I wouldn’t have to wear the leggings or the illuminated jacket to go home, so there were positives in the day.

  It got dark very early, although it was a peculiar form of darkness. Light vanished from the sky, but was trapped on earth in the form of the snow, which reflected every tiny incidence of illumination. Under the huge overhead decorations, which swung slowly in an unfelt breeze, the snow glistened an iridescent blue and red. Outside the shop windows, it gleamed a promising gold. Beyond the office windows, in the shadow of the Minster, it lay heaped and bulked by people shovelling pathways clear, as though the Minster were a huge castle rising from a motte and bailey entirely comprised of blood-dark snow.

  ‘Ready to go?’ Zac appeared in the office where I was sitting behind my computer, and he was already wearing his coat. ‘I think everyone else has tunnelled their way out. Or possibly they are all currently holed up in a self-built igloo out the back, playing poker.’

  I tore my eyes away from the window. The room instantly looked too bright. As did Zac, now I knew he wasn’t quite the ‘what you see is what you get’ guy he purported to be. He looked too animated, too cheery, as though his clockwork was wound too tightly.

  ‘Gosh, the afternoon got away from me a bit,’ I said, pulling my eyes away from him because I didn’t want him to think I thought about him at all. ‘I’ll just get my stuff together.’

  ‘Well, you did have to deal with Miriam,’ Zac said, carelessly slouching down on the edge of his desk. It was a very convincing performance, I had to admit. ‘That tends to throw the rest of the day off by about ten light years.’

  ‘She’s not so bad.’ I remembered what she’d said about her file and gathered it up to stuff into my bag. Zac noticed.

  ‘You’re taking work home? But it’s nearly Christmas! Haven’t you got – I don’t know, mince pies to bake and carol concerts to avoid?’

  ‘Avoid?’

  ‘I’ve heard Sophie sing,’ he said, darkly.

  ‘Oh, yes.’ An aural hallucination of Sophie squeaking out the descant to ‘Oh Come, All Ye Faithful’ played in my mind and I shuddered. ‘It’s not too bad if you don’t sit next to her. Or even in the same county.’ I found the fluorescent jacket strobing to itself in the corner where I’d discarded it this morning, and looked at it. ‘I should have brought a proper coat.’

  ‘The car heater works. Come on, I think we’re practically the last to leave.’

  We walked out into the car park. Some people had decided not to risk driving and had left their cars, which now looked like children had been building car-shaped snowmen around the outside of the building.

  ‘Wow,’ I said. ‘It’s deep. No wonder so many people went home early.’

  The snow made squeaky, tortured noises under our feet as we trudged
out towards the Discovery, like a couple of polar explorers. The wind whipped snow from the surface and hurled it into our faces to add to the stuff that was coming down from the sky, breaking our surroundings into barely illuminated fragments.

  ‘Yes. It’s worse than I thought.’

  Zac opened the back of the Discovery while I unlocked the bike, which was now just a series of humps and bumps under its icy covering.

  ‘Thanks for this,’ I said, having to carry it to the car. It was surprisingly light, I expected Cav could tell me exactly what type of carbon fibre the frame was made of and how many miles the tyres could be expected to do, had I been interested enough to ask. ‘I’m just realising it would have been mad to try to cycle home in this weather.’

  Zac unclipped the wheels and put the bike carefully into the boot. ‘I’ve got a feeling that driving in it isn’t going to be much better,’ he said. ‘Let’s hope they’ve cleared and gritted at least the main roads. The Discovery can handle most weather conditions, but I’m not sure she’s got an Arctic setting.’

  He gave me another one of those grins, squeezed between the upturned collar of his coat and the knitted brim of his pulled-down hat. Still bright. Still convincing. But now I knew, I could see the slight brittleness around the edges.

  I hopped into the passenger seat and we made our cautious way out of the car park. The roads beyond were quiet. Snowploughs had been down and swept a single lane clear, piling the left-over snow up around the edges in mini mountainous peaks, so cars ran along the track, making the inner bypass look like a giant Scalextric set. When two cars met heading in opposite directions, one had to pull over onto the virgin snow and there was much slithering and wheel-spinning going on. The drivers seemed all to be wearing enormous grins under stress-tight eyes, so I gathered that everyone was having a whale of a time in these unaccustomed conditions.

  The pavements were almost empty. Only the most determined shopper still struggled on, booted and coated into animated heaps, through the snow. An escaped ball of tinsel blew past, briefly decorating a drainpipe, a car bonnet and a surprised pigeon as the wind hurled it along, a flock of panicked glitter fleeing the storm.