by Unknown
‘I’ll wait.’
He walked past me, obviously at home in Frances’s office.
‘Do you work with Frances?’ I asked.
‘I sort out most of the food for her.’
‘You don’t look like a chef,’ I said. It came out sounding rather rude.
He looked down at his suit. ‘You think I’m pretending? I’ve been kicked upstairs into management, in line with which I’ve brought her a menu for next week. Do you want to see it?’
‘I’m not really the person to –’
‘You’re here, aren’t you?’
We sat together on the sofa and he showed me the menu. He told me how to make soufflés in advance; he said he sourced his ingredients locally; he put his hand on my arm; he told me his restaurant was called Zest, his signature dish was stuffed pig’s trotter and I had to pay him a visit there soon; he listened attentively when I spoke; he laughed and looked me in the eye; he called me Gwen with each sentence – ‘… don’t you think, Gwen?’ and ‘I’ll tell you what, Gwen…’ And Gwen flushed with self-consciousness and awkward, complicated pleasure.
When Frances came back, damp with the rain that had started to fall, she looked at the two of us on the sofa with affectionate amusement. ‘I see you haven’t missed me.’ She took off her beautiful coat and threw it on the back of the chair, then kissed him on both cheeks.
‘I always miss you,’ he said, ‘but I’ve been well looked after.’ He put his hands on her shoulders and held her away from him, gazing at her seriously. ‘You seem worn out, Frances. Are you taking proper care of yourself?’
‘No, but Gwen is,’ she replied, and they smiled at me, warming me with their approval.
Johnny dropped me at the Underground station. He took my hand in both of his and said it had been a real pleasure to meet me and we would certainly see each other again soon. I muttered something in reply, and avoided his bright gaze. Why should I feel guilty because a nice man was flirting with me – or, at least, with me pretending not to be me? After all, I was a free woman, and it had been a long time since anyone had looked at me without pity and embarrassment. But I didn’t feel free: I felt that I was still in a relationship with Greg, and that to respond would be, in some perverse sense, a betrayal.
It was dark and drizzly as I walked home from the tube. Puddles glistened under the street-lamps. In a few weeks, it would be the longest night of the year; the days were closing in and Christmas was coming. There were decorations in the shop windows and lights strung between the lamp-posts. I wondered drearily what I would do for Christmas. For a moment, the thought of waking up in my wide bed on Christmas Day, alone, made me gasp with pain. I stopped and put a hand against my heart. I turned into my road and saw my little house ahead of me, with its unlit windows and its soggy, uncared-for front garden.
As I went in I heard my mobile ringing. I saw it was Gwen calling and, for a moment, was confused.
‘I’ve been trying to get hold of you all day.’
‘Sorry, I’ve been busy.’
‘That’s good. Have you forgotten it’s your birthday in a few days’ time?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I just haven’t really thought about it.’
‘It would be nice to have a little drinks party for you.’
‘I’m not sure about that.’
‘At your house. You don’t have to do anything but be there. I’ll do everything else. I’ll even clear up for you.’
‘You’re making it sound as though you’ve already organized it.’
‘Not exactly. But I’ve made sure that people like Mary can come.’
‘What do you mean, “people like Mary”? Who else?’
‘Just a few. Me, Mary and Eric, Fergus and Jemma, of course, Joe and Alison, Josh and Di. That’s about it. And anyone you want to ask.’
‘I don’t know, Gwen.’
‘I’ll do little eats and Joe said he’d provide the wine.’
‘When’s this supposed to be happening?’
‘Day after tomorrow.’
I gave up protesting. ‘I’ll check my diary,’ I said ironically, ‘but I’m pretty sure I’m not busy then.’
‘Good. That’s settled. I’ll come round at five, straight from school, and we’ll get everything ready.’
Chapter Fourteen
When I arrived at the office, Frances was on the phone. She waved me in frantically. It sounded as if she was on the receiving end of a lecture. ‘Oh, yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, I can see that… Is that really true?… Didn’t we?… Is it serious?… So what do we do?’
I tiptoed across the room, made two mugs of coffee and handed one to Frances. She pulled faces at me like a silent-movie actress, signalling thanks for the coffee and, at the same time, frustration and exasperation. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘But things have been a bit difficult, you know, with what’s happened… Yes, but couldn’t you explain it to them? Would that make things better?… Oh, I see… Yes, all right.’
Finally she put the phone down. I thought she was going to cry.
‘I never wanted to be a businesswoman,’ she said, her voice almost a wail. ‘Did I tell you I went to art school?’
‘No, you didn’t.’
‘I was going to be a painter. That was the plan. I was good at it, but in the end there’s only room for about four painters in England at any one time and it was clear I wasn’t going to be one of them.’
‘Who was it on the phone?’ I said.
‘That was our horrible accountant,’ she said. ‘He’s meant to be working for us – we certainly pay him enough – but all he does is shout at me. He’s like a disappointed parent. Apparently we’re late with our VAT and apparently that’s bad. I thought the point of accountants was that they were meant to deal with that sort of thing. Oh, God, Gwen, I hate this – I’m out of my depth.’
I remembered an early conversation with Greg, when we were getting to know each other and obsessed with every detail about each other’s life. I’d teased him about being an accountant. Wasn’t it just about adding up columns of numbers and filling in forms? He’d laughed. It wasn’t like that at all, not with the clients he had. It was a mixture of being a psychiatrist and a magician, a hostage negotiator and a bomb-disposal expert, with a bit of form filling at the end.
‘Beth’s not handling this very well,’ said Frances. ‘The thing about Beth, who, incidentally, has not arrived yet, is that she’s very young, very decorative and very confident. You can take her anywhere and she seems very busy all the time but at the end of a day it’s never particularly easy to work out exactly what she’s done. She’s good at events. The clients are very keen on her. The male ones, I mean. It’s to do with her being twenty-two. And her breasts.’
‘They’re very nice.’
‘Well, breasts don’t get the VAT done. And Christmas is coming at us like a train. Gwen, are you sure I can’t give you a job? Or a three-month contract to get us through this?’
I shook my head and tried to think of what Greg used to say about situations like this. ‘What you really need,’ I said, ‘is to know exactly where you are just now. What you owe, what you’re owed, what you’ve got, and what your plans are. We can sort that out in a couple of days and then you’ll be fine again.’
‘I wanted to be an artist,’ said Frances, ‘and when I met Milena, it was all going to be fun. We liked going to parties, we liked having parties, so why not do it as a living? And I could be an artist on the side. It didn’t turn out like that. You know how you never properly enjoy your own party? You always worry that the drink’s going to run out or that someone’s not happy? It’s like that all the time.’
‘Was it like that for Milena?’ I asked.
‘No,’ said Frances, with a sad smile. ‘Milena didn’t let the details get her down.’
‘The details are my job now,’ I said. ‘At least for the next few days.’
Somehow, when it isn’t your own life, it isn’t so hard. For two hours, I behaved like Frances
’s view of an accountant. There was nothing magical involved, no smoke and mirrors, no cleverness. I just piled up pieces of paper that looked alike. I made lists of dates, which I also, surreptitiously, transferred to my own notebook, I checked receipts against bank statements. At eleven o’clock Beth arrived. I gave her a list of phone calls to make to check delivery dates. She was as shocked as if I had asked her to clean the drains. She pulled a face and glanced resentfully at Frances, but she did what I said.
Twenty minutes later, Johnny arrived; he nodded at me, then sat next to Frances and talked menus. I barely looked up. I was holding a lot of information in my head temporarily. If I spoke or thought about something else, even for a moment, most of it would dissipate and I would have to start again.
My sense of time was imprecise, but a short while later I felt a presence beside me. It was Johnny.
‘I’m a bit worried walking around here,’ he said, gesturing at the piles of paper circling my chair.
‘Then don’t,’ I said, frowning at the distraction.
‘This isn’t –’
‘Stop,’ I said, holding up my hand. I wrote down a date followed by an amount of money and then the VAT. Then I looked at him. ‘Yes?’ I said.
‘I was going to say that you’re doing all the boring bits of the job and none of the fun bits.’
I waved at the office. ‘That’s what seems to be needed,’ I said.
‘Whereas,’ said Johnny, ‘my own strategy is to do the fun bits and leave the boring bits to sort themselves out.’
‘That sounds like a recipe for going bankrupt.’
‘All restaurants go bankrupt in the end.’
‘That doesn’t sound much fun.’
‘It’s great,’ said Johnny, and added thoughtfully, ‘until the end. And then you start again. It’s got a sort of rhythm to it. But what I really wanted to say, really wanted to ask, in fact – you remember I mentioned my restaurant – was whether you might want to come over and I could show you the sort of food I do. Some time. Today or tomorrow or whenever.’
He was handsome in a louche sort of way, well dressed, a man who went bankrupt and didn’t let it get him down. He was perfect, in a certain fashion. Perfect if I wasn’t me – although, of course, the person he was talking to wasn’t actually me. ‘I can’t,’ I said. ‘Not at the moment. I’m not in the right place for that. In my life.’
‘Oh, no,’ he said, unruffled. ‘I wasn’t suggesting a date. I’m not harassing you. I just thought, as one professional to another, it would be interesting and useful for you to see the kind of food we do.’
‘I’ll think about it,’ I said. ‘My life’s a bit confusing right now, but I will think about it.’
In my own job, I had got used to scraping away at a chair, varnishing a chest, with no company but the radio, which drifted in and out of my consciousness. The Party Animals office was almost a public space, with people coming and going, packages being delivered, clients or potential clients dropping in. Sometimes the potential of the client seemed very vague indeed. I came to feel that Frances had exaggerated the degree to which she was burdened by the bureaucracy of the business. Much of the morning and the early afternoon disappeared in a series of long, loud conversations, on the phone or in person.
Some clients seemed to know Beth as well, and I saw a different side of her, a glow about her, confidence, as she flirted with the men or gossiped with the women. As I listened to her – and it was impossible not to – I came to realize I had entered a different world, a richer one than mine, with its own rules and standards and culture.
Of the visitors, several were smartly dressed women who seemed to have a lot of time on their hands. I might have felt a jab of resentment at this if I hadn’t forced myself into this situation. Anyway, the less Frances and Beth did, the more chance I had to learn something. I sat on the far side of the room, with my back to them, my head in my hands, covering my ears so that I could concentrate.
Shortly after three I heard a visitor come in. I was faintly surprised to hear a man’s voice and looked round, and was jolted.
It was Hugo Livingstone. A man I had seen just once, at the inquest. For a moment I was pointlessly and ridiculously angry: what on earth was he doing there? Then I cursed my stupidity. He was Milena’s husband. Wasn’t it natural for him to visit his dead wife’s office? Hadn’t I done the same thing myself? I tried to think of a way, any way, of getting out of the room without him seeing my face. I could crawl; I could climb out of the window. But I knew it wasn’t possible. All it would take was a glance. The idea of being seen, recognized and forced to attempt an explanation was so terrible that I felt feverish anticipating the nuclear explosion of exposure and embarrassment.
I tried to continue working or, rather, to make it look as if I was working. I bent over some papers as if I was scrutinizing them with particular attention. Other people had come and gone without paying me any heed. If I could just sit tight, maybe he’d go away. I tried to make out what he was after, but he was speaking in a mumble from which I could only hear the occasional word. There was no such problem with Frances. I heard murmurs of sympathy and talk about the chaos she was in, and then I knew what was coming.
‘Oh, that’s Gwen,’ she said. ‘She’s been an absolute treasure. She came from nowhere and she’s sorting things out. Gwen?’
Frozen in panic, I grasped for something, anything, that could prevent me having to turn round. There was no trap-door, no rope to climb, but my mobile phone was on the desk. Switched off, so nobody could ring me. I picked it up.
‘That’s right,’ I said into it. ‘Could you check it? Yes, it is urgent. Yes.’
I turned my head about half a degree and raised my free hand in a gesture much like the one I’d seen from Frances earlier. I hoped it meant, ‘Sorry, I’d love to be introduced, but I’m caught up in this absolutely crucial phone call and can’t possibly be disturbed.’ I decided I was talking to a builder who was doing some emergency work on my bedroom. I tried to picture him at the other end of the line so that I would seem more convincing. I continued to say yes and no, to murmur half-sentences. Even though I was becoming more and more used to living in a fantasy world, and now a fantasy world within a fantasy world, it still sounded pathetic and unconvincing to me.
In the gaps between my fatuous outpourings, I tried to listen to what Frances was saying. My fear was that she would tell him I had been a friend of Milena’s and then he really might stay, however long I remained on the disconnected phone, to find out how I knew her. But then Frances started talking about people I had never heard of, and after a few minutes more I heard footsteps, then the front door opening and closing. I made myself continue the conversation for a bit longer. ‘So we’ll talk about the colours when we meet?’ I said brightly, loudly. ‘That’s great. Maybe I’ll see you when I get back… Oh, you’ll be gone, then? All right, tomorrow. ’Bye.’
‘Everything okay?’ Frances said sympathetically.
‘It’s my so-called builder,’ I said. ‘You know how it is.’
I hoped desperately that Frances did know how it was, because I couldn’t bear to lie any more. There would be too much falsehood to fit into my brain. She just nodded. I don’t think she wanted to find out too much about my life.
I really was organizing the company’s papers. I wasn’t lying about that. But at the same time I was also jotting down every reference to where Milena had been on a particular day. If I compared it to the chart I had constructed for Greg, perhaps I could find somewhere they had been together, or nearly been, or a route that had crossed. It didn’t have to be a night in a hotel, it could be a train, a petrol station. Indeed, as I worked I decided I would stop off at the stationer’s on the way home for more card and coloured pens and that I would make a separate chart for Milena.
I worked with such concentration that when I heard Frances say my name it was as if I had fallen asleep and woken up to find the world dark.
She wasn’t alone
. A man was standing with her, tall, distinguished, rich. He made me feel dishevelled and a little ill-at-ease. He must have been in his mid-fifties, with short dark-grey hair, silvering at the edges. He was wearing an overcoat with a navy blue scarf.
‘This is Gwen, my good fairy,’ said Frances, and once again I had to stop myself looking round to see where Gwen was. ‘This is my husband, David.’ He gave me a slightly wry smile and held out his hand. It was beautifully manicured but, then, everything about him looked beautifully manicured, his hair, his black leather slip-ons. His handshake was dry and limp.
‘David, you’ve got to persuade Gwen to stay.’
He regarded her coldly, then gave a small shrug. ‘Don’t you see how much you’re valued?’ he said, in a voice that managed to combine sarcasm with indifference.
‘It’s just a holiday for me,’ I said.
‘Funny sort of holiday,’ he said.
‘She’s a maths teacher,’ said Frances.
‘Oh,’ said David, as if that explained everything.
‘Time to go,’ said Frances. ‘But wait a second.’ She went to her desk and scribbled on something. Then she came back and handed me a cheque.
‘I can’t take this,’ I said.
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ she said.
‘No,’ I said. ‘I really can’t take it.’
‘Oh, I see,’ she said. ‘You mean the tax? David, could you give me your wallet, darling?’
He sighed and handed it over. She riffled through it, pulled out some notes and offered them to me. I wanted to say no but I thought that a person who comes and works for you, sorting out your office, then refuses any payment, stops looking like a saint and starts looking a bit creepy, maybe even suspicious. I took the money. ‘Thank you,’ I said.
‘Tomorrow?’ she said.
‘Tomorrow, at least,’ I said.
We left the house together.
‘You know how we all love you,’ said Frances.
‘Don’t be silly,’ I said.
‘I mean, Johnny completely adores her,’ she said to her husband, who smiled distantly and moved away from the hand she laid on his arm. I saw her wince as she registered the slight. She was too eager with him, I thought, and too anxious, while he treated her with something close to contempt. I felt a spasm of pity for Frances – a beautiful woman in her privileged life, yet she was clearly unhappy.