by Pip Drysdale
‘And there’s something else. Another reason the client is cross.’
‘What’s that?’ she asked, taking her wine.
‘He’s the one I slept with.’
Charlotte looked at me with wide eyes: ‘What a fucking nightmare.’ And then she started to laugh.
‘It’s not funny,’ I said. ‘He thinks I did it out of spite, because he didn’t tell me he was married. He’s out for blood now. I really can’t afford to lose my job over this.’
‘Oh please, like you’d bother.’ She took a gulp. ‘Why don’t you call him?’
I cringed. What would she think if she knew everything I had done?
‘I tried. He wouldn’t listen.’
‘Let him calm down, then try again,’ she suggested.
‘I will.’ I sighed.
It was around then that Angus came home. I swivelled my head just in time to see him walk through the door and take off his shoes.
‘Hi,’ I said.
‘How’s the patient?’ he called to us, dropping his briefcase by the door.
‘She’s okay,’ called back Charlotte, ‘all things considered.’
‘Smells like she’s well medicated,’ he said.
‘Yes,’ she replied politely. But her tone said: fuck you.
‘Shit, sorry honey,’ I offered. ‘We smoked outside …’
He appeared at the door with a smile. ‘Do you have any you can leave here?’ he asked Charlotte, ‘just to get her through the next few days?’
Charlotte looked at me as if to say: What? He hates you smoking.
And I looked back as if to say: See, I told you he’d changed.
Then I stood up, wandered over to him, put my fingers through his hair and watched his eyes close.
‘Of course,’ said Charlotte, ‘here you go. Keep it in the fridge if you aren’t going to smoke it straightaway.’ She tossed a little bag of weed at Angus. It hit him in the chest but he caught it.
‘Thanks, Charlotte,’ he said, his voice clipped.
‘Anyway, I’d better get going,’ she said, standing up and leaving her wine glass on the floor.
‘Thanks so much, honey,’ I said as I walked her to the front door.
‘Love you,’ she said as she hugged me. ‘Bye Angus,’ she said and waved at him.
And Angus put the weed in the fridge.
thursday
Master Sun said: ‘When a general misjudges his enemy and sends a lesser force against a larger one the outcome is rout.’
16 FEBRUARY
Please pick up dry-cleaning. A xx
That was the note Angus left me, scrawled on the back of a wrinkled petrol receipt. I smiled; petrol-station bathrooms had always been our thing. Next to it was a cold cup of tea and twenty pounds, presumably for the dry-cleaning. I was squinting at it through hazy eyes: I hadn’t woken up naturally.
It was the phone that roused me. A tune I didn’t recognise: high pitched and cheery. And muffled, possibly by walls. At first I thought it was part of a dream. But it wasn’t. It was very real. And as I edged my way back into consciousness, out of the ashtray of my psyche, I could still hear it.
It must be a neighbour’s phone.
But I didn’t move. I just lay there, my heavy head nestled into the pillow and my eyes focusing on the darkening sky outside. It would rain later. I could feel it. And then I’d go outside and smell the rain. There’s nothing like the smell of rain.
A constant stream of images flashed before my eyes: Prostitutes. Felicia. Mrs Clifton. Lucky socks. His coke. David. Nicolai Stepanovich …
I rolled over and squeezed my eyes shut.
At least he’d taken the sex tape down. Deleted every copy. It was almost like it had never happened. Almost.
But it was time to get up. My mouth was too dry, so I reached for the glass on the side table and took a sip. Cold. Wet. I glanced down at my phone: 10.40am. There was a missed call from my mother, two Facebook notifications and a text message from Never-call-he-just-wants-sex Anderson: Therapy? xx
Shit.
It had come in two hours before: had Angus seen it when he left his note? I flicked the phone off silent, put it back down beside me and lay staring at the ceiling, the knot in my stomach tightening as the cheery ring tone started up again.
I stood up and moved into the living room. The sound got louder. My eyes shifted from object to object, table to sofa, booze cabinet to kitchen, but I couldn’t see it, so I moved towards the sound as if I was playing a game of Marco Polo.
I was standing in the middle of the living room looking around me, but I couldn’t sense its direction …
The kitchen. I moved towards the kitchen. My legs were covered in a pair of Angus’s old tracksuit pants and they were dragging along the floor, tripping me up as I moved. No. Not there. I moved back to the middle of the living room …
And then it stopped.
Fuck.
I felt like a failure. I was standing near the dining table: he’d left a copy of the Telegraph out for me. They’d picked up the story too, and Nicolai’s face stared back at me from the front page. My eyes scanned it quickly but it told me nothing new.
Another ring tone started up, but this one I recognised. It was mine. I moved towards my phone, still charging beside the bed. And as I approached I watched its screen flash bright: No Caller ID.
My eyes landed on the note. Dry-cleaning. I could do that. Something I could succeed at. I waited for the call to go to voicemail.
A few moments later a notification popped up: No Caller ID had left a message. So I listened to it: Jenny, from HR.
Stomach. Wet cement.
She wanted me to come in. HR calling could only mean one thing. I swallowed hard as I looked around for a pen to write down her number but I couldn’t find one, so I grabbed my eyeliner from the top of the dresser and flipped over Angus’s note.
I jotted it down in thick, black kohl that smudged on my fingers and was difficult to read.
But as I began to dial her phone number, something caught my attention: the receipt was not just for petrol. It was for condoms too. Durex. Angus never wears condoms with me. He’d insisted I went on the pill because he hated them.
Kim.
The blood drained from my face and her smile on that mountaintop reappeared like a sinister hologram in front of me. Bitch.
The last time I’d discovered that Angus was cheating on me had been in a similar manner – via a note in his pocket. I’d just picked up his dry-cleaning: two coats and a pair of trousers. And as I’d stood by the closet door, peeling away the plastic from the wire coat hangers, I’d slipped my hand into each coat pocket, my fingers tracing the lining – I must have suspected something, why else would I have checked? And in the third pocket I found it: a torn-off scrap of paper. It had light blue lines on it.
And upon those light blue lines was a hand-drawn love heart with, ‘A 4 K 4ever’ scrawled inside.
Frantically, my eyes searched for the date on the receipt. It was faint. I squinted. I could barely make it out; no, I couldn’t make it out at all. The one part of a perfectly printed receipt that I needed had been worn away, probably by Angus’s pocket or wallet.
I closed my eyes and willed the thought to leave as quickly as it had found me, told myself that vulnerability was making me irrational, and placed the call.
Angus had just bought his first vintage Porsche – it was black with chocolate brown seats. It’d taken three months and a small fortune to refurbish, and that was our first road trip. We were on our way to his parents’ place in Wiltshire – Leigh Road – and I had just emerged from the petrol station mini-mart. I held two Cokes, a packet of salt-and-vinegar crisps and a novelty fluffy gearstick cover – a last-minute purchase I’d found by the cash register as I paid. It was a joke. He would hate it. But that was the first time he made love to me in a petrol-station bathroom.
There were no condoms. There was almost no noise. There was no light. It was just him, me, and a wob
bly sink I used to keep my balance.
That was the first time.
It was 3.15pm when Jenny met me by the elevators. She smelled of hairspray and was wearing a herringbone dress. I followed her quietly down the corridor towards the small, windowless meeting room used for interviews and sackings. She opened the door and as I moved inside, my heart pounding, I saw Val – grey hair, grey suit – sitting on one of three chairs, her expression apologetic.
I took a seat. Jenny closed the door behind her and then sat down on the final empty seat.
‘So, we have some news,’ she said with misplaced cheeriness. I looked at her, waiting.
Her eyes moved to Val. ‘We’ve managed to smooth things over with David Turner,’ she said.
‘What?’ I asked, relieved. ‘That’s wonderful.’
‘Yes,’ Jenny continued, but her voice had taken on a sterner timbre and she was shifting her weight in her seat nervously. ‘But, Taylor, as I’m sure you can understand, this is not the sort of thing we can have happen again. You should have taken more care, done more research before you brought an idea like this to a client.’
‘I agree,’ I said. There was no amount of research that could have protected me from what had happened. But if taking the blame meant keeping my job, I was willing to do that.
‘Nigel insisted we chat to you,’ Val interjected. There was a softness in her voice that warned me.
‘Yes,’ continued Jenny, ‘it’s important that we make this very clear to you.’
She paused and I waited for the axe to fall. ‘So, Taylor, this meeting will go down on your record as a verbal warning. Do you understand what that means?’
My stomach filled with lead.
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I do.’ I swallowed hard and a loud silence filled the room. A warning was better than losing my job, but I couldn’t bring myself to look at Val.
‘Why don’t you take tomorrow off and come back to work on Monday?’ Val said. Her voice was gentle.
I nodded. ‘Okay.’ Then I tried to smile.
She smiled back but I knew I’d let her down. I’d really let her down. And I wouldn’t be getting a promotion any time soon.
Then Jenny stood up and opened the door. ‘Thanks for coming in. We’ll see you on Monday,’ she said.
I moved through it and she closed it behind me with a click. I could hear the hum of them discussing my fall from grace as I turned and made my way towards the elevators. And as I pressed the button and waited for the doors to slide open, my phone buzzed from my coat pocket. I pulled it into view. My mother: Hi darling, just checking all okay xx
And I replied with a lie: Yes, all okay. xx
I have to fix this.
I was lying in the bathtub, my big toe inserting itself into the tap head. It fit perfectly. A candle flickered in the corner, its gradient light transforming rather ordinary tiles into quite the work of art. My catastrophe appeared to be drawing to a close and so my mind had reverted to Angus, yellow ribbons and seemingly impossible solutions. Because he had taken the sex tape down but I had no idea how to rectify my part.
All I knew was that I couldn’t allow him to lose his job over something I’d done. It wasn’t fair and yet I couldn’t see a way out. The simplest solution, coming clean, wasn’t an option: he’d never forgive me. I needed to find another way.
I turned on the hot tap once more and let it run, burning my feet just a little. They were becoming wrinkly. I drained the bath, wrapped myself in an oversized towel and wandered through to the bedroom just as the front door began to rattle.
I looked at the clock: it was 7.45pm already, Angus was home.
‘Darling?’ came his voice as the door opened.
‘Hey,’ I called back as I wandered through to greet him.
I watched him as he put his briefcase down by the door.
‘So, how’s my favourite reprobate?’ he said, walking over to me and wrapping me in his arms.
‘Okay,’ I said, hugging him back and letting my towel fall to the floor. ‘Hey, I think you left your phone here – it was ringing earlier.’
His eyes shifted, breaking his gaze. He looked to the left, then the right.
‘Oh, no baby,’ he said with a sheepish laugh, ‘that’s just my other phone. My sponsor made me get it. Supposed to keep me committed to my recovery. I’m not supposed to even put it on silent, so he’s going to be super pissed with me that I forgot it.’ He smiled. Then his hands found their way to my bottom and he squeezed it: ‘I love this bum.’
‘Do you just?’ I said as I kissed him, me naked and him fully clothed.
‘Yes,’ he whispered as he carried me, my legs around his waist, through to the bedroom.
His mouth pressed down on mine, his hand frantically working upon his belt. Then I heard his zipper. He swivelled me to the side of the bed, my head hanging off the edge, his mouth between my legs. And just before I came he flipped me over so I was on my belly, facing the mirror.
‘I want you to look yourself in the eyes and make yourself come,’ he said.
And so I did.
Twenty minutes later I was lying with my head on his chest, his pink work shirt open.
‘So, how was your day?’ I asked, gently tugging at his chest hair with my teeth.
‘Shit,’ he said. ‘I’m in the doghouse. Henry can barely meet my eye. Candice looks down on me. I’m sick of trying to convince them that I did nothing wrong. It’s a nightmare.’
His eyes were to the ceiling. My throat was tight.
‘Shall we run away to an island?’ I whispered.
But I knew that was my chance. To tell the truth. To make it right. And I even opened my mouth to say the words. But the sounds just wouldn’t form. And so I lay there, my mouth partially open, physically incapable of telling him what I’d done.
And instead I said: ‘Jenny called this afternoon, the HR woman from work. I can go back to work on Monday.’
He rolled onto his side and stroked my cheek. ‘Well, that’s great,’ he said.
‘But they gave me a warning,’ I added.
‘You naughty girl,’ he smiled. ‘But you see? I told you it would all blow over.’ He reached for my hand. ‘So, what do you have planned for tomorrow, then?’
‘Not sure. Charlotte’s away in Scotland until Sunday, so I can’t even play with her.’
‘Jesus, doesn’t she ever work?’
‘Half-term,’ I said.
And we lay there, our hands interwoven, for what felt like forever. My phone buzzed a couple of times, as did his, but we didn’t care what the world wanted. So we didn’t check. Nothing outside of that room mattered: it was a warm low-lit bubble, and there was nowhere else we wanted to be. It had been fifteen days since the break-up, thirteen since I saw the sex tape, ten since I’d first opened The Art of War and thirty-six hours since the Stepanovich story broke, and that was the first moment in that time when everything felt sane again. Calm.
Like every eye of the storm, I guess.
But then he reached for his phone.
‘Fuck, Dad called,’ he said. And just like that our cocoon had been pierced. So I reached for mine too: a Facebook message had come in. I was lying on my side, facing away from him, goose bumps forming on my arm as I read it:
Hi Taylor, I know you don’t want to talk to me, but you need to. There’s something you need to know. Please can we meet. And don’t tell Angus.
It was from Kim.
My pulse quickened as I thought of the petrol receipt and the picture of them together on that ski slope. What does she want? What could we possibly have to talk about? Should I tell him?
But then the warmth of his hand was on my hip and the choice evaporated. He was looking over my shoulder and I didn’t know how long he’d been there. What he’d seen.
‘I just got a message from Kim!’ I said, turning to look at him.
‘What does she want?’ he asked, his eyes wide and his jaw clenched.
‘I don’t know. She wants t
o meet, to talk.’
‘Shit, baby, she’s crazy,’ he said, shaking his head. His fingers were in his hair. ‘Darling, you need to block her. Immediately.’ He moved towards me.
‘Why?’ I asked. I searched the thoughts behind his eyes for clues, but they were moving too fast.
‘Look, I didn’t want to worry you, but she’s a bit obsessed with me. I’ve tried to be kind, tried to wean her off me … but she can’t accept the fact that I chose you over her. She’s angry. And I’m not sure what she’s capable of. You need to block her.’
‘I don’t even know how to block someone,’ I said, watching his face.
‘Here, give it to me,’ he said as he reached out and took my phone. A few seconds later she was blocked and he handed it back, then leaned forward and kissed me softly.
I reached my hand up and stroked his face: ‘You chose me, did you?’ I teased.
‘Of course I chose you,’ he said. Then he sighed, kissed my forehead and rolled out of bed. ‘I better call Dad back,’ he said as he stood up and walked out of the room with his phone. A moment later I heard his voice.
‘Dad, you called?’ His voice had taken on that plummy quality it always did when he spoke to his father. As if tone alone could make him feel good enough. His father had a presence that made everyone else in the room shrink into the cracks of the furniture. And I could tell the moment he first shook my hand – firm grip, empty eyes set deep in a shiny, balding head – that his was a world in which men didn’t explain, women didn’t question, children played quietly, a cleaner was a ‘daily’ and waiters had better never pour the wine without one hand behind their back. Defy those rules at your peril.
And every time we’d met since it had felt like yet another test I couldn’t study for. I would come away with cheeks that ached from smiling and a mind tense from searching for clever anecdotes while trying not to insert them at the wrong time. I couldn’t imagine growing up with a man like that. He made me feel lucky that my father had left.
The problem was: I knew I needed him to like me. If he didn’t, Angus would never marry me. He wouldn’t risk upsetting his biggest cash stream. Not even with his mother – white hair, blue eyes and skin that smelled of gardenia – on my side.