Past Present Future

by Alexander, N J.

  Bitterness hit me: if only the other director hadn’t blocked me from moving his machinery and staff into ours as soon as we’d bought his company, and if only Richard had backed me instead of trusting a man to know better. After the director left I did move to one factory – I spent New Year’s Day dismantling machinery with my dad so it could all be transported here. But it was too late by then.

  As I looked around me I could hear the ghostly memory of laugher, shouting, swearing and the constant buzz of sewing machines and saws. Of course, everyone had been gone for over six weeks now. It should have been the tears of their last day that I could hear – but I couldn’t. I wanted to blank them out, but every now and then those images would feverishly strike like the bolt of lightning that leaves you running for cover.

  If I looked closely at the far wall I could still see the outline of stone fighting its way through the paint. It must have been a magnificent stained glass window when the building had been a chapel years before, but other than the high arched ceiling, that was the only trace of its past.

  Perhaps that was the problem – we’d tried to gain profit from a sacred place.

  There was a loud knocking and tugging on the main door.

  I’d locked it because customers were still coming to the building, not realising we’d closed down. They’d obviously missed the tiny piece in the local gazette called “The Mystery of Ilex Drapes” – I had refused to speak to anyone at the paper after they discovered we’d gone. But I knew this knock would be the administrators – they had come to take the boxes away. I opened the door and let two young men in.

  ‘They’re over there, you can’t miss them,’ I said. ‘And I think you need these keys to lock up when you’ve finished. You can let me have them back later.’

  ‘What happened,’ asked the taller of the two.

  ‘Happened?’

  ‘I mean, what went wrong…with the company?’

  I laughed at this directness. ‘Bad luck,’ I said. I couldn’t really be bothered to tell him everything. ‘Doesn’t your company fill you in on the small details?’

  ‘No…we’re trainees – the dogsbodies.’

  There was a pause. He had a searching expression on his face. His colleague was already busy going through the boxes.

  ‘Okay, I’ll tell you. The bank wanted us to put another forty thousand into the business to remove a director from his portion of the bank guarantee. They’d given us two weeks to do it; otherwise they were calling the whole overdraft in. We’d already chucked too much at it…as in four hundred thousand.’

  His eyebrows raised and he did a faint whistle.

  ‘Well – we didn’t put it in – which is why you’re here now. As I said…it’s all due to bad luck. That freak rain last summer – it killed off the conservatory market, which was big for us. Then Northern Rock went and bloody well crashed in November didn’t it? Just as people were coming off their fixed rates. People suddenly stopped spending and our sales practically halved overnight. It was scary how quickly it happened and I had a feeling that things weren’t going to get any better.’

  ‘That certainly was unlucky,’

  ‘Yep, as things stood we were never going to make the big profits like the accountants and so-called business experts said we would – they’d become an impossible dream.

  ‘So…what are you going to do now?’

  ‘Dunno. But not waste my time working stupid hours for nothing – that’s for sure.

  ‘At least it’s all over for you.’

  ‘Over? Are you kidding? There’s still a load of shit flying around. It’s far from over for us.’

  ‘I’m sorry I didn’t…’

  ‘No it’s fine…but I’m off now. I’ll leave you boys to it. Have fun – or at least try to.’

  I took one last walk through the showroom. It looked drab without the lights on, but still elegant.

  I ran my hands down the curtains and blinds that sat in their separate compartments. They were the only remaining evidence of all the hours of work and creativity I’d put in. I pulled the cord on one of the Venetian blinds, closing the slats. It was like lowering the eyelids on the dead.

  Moments later, I threw the completed Statement of Affairs on the passenger seat of my car. Another gentle reminder that I’d lost one million – give or take a few pence.

  Why hadn’t they just rounded it up?

  I took one last look at the sign writing – Ilex Drapes – the first two letters were made to look like a pair of curtains with a slight wave. Ilex is Latin pronounced Eilex. Soon, no one would again ask me why I had chosen that name. With a shake of the head, I switched thoughts and cursed myself that it wasn’t Richard I was thinking about.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Three months later

  ‘You should sign up to Facebook – you’d love it! Honest.’

  ‘It really isn’t my thing. I’m not that sociable,’ I disputed.

  I didn’t really know much about Facebook at that point in my life, other than that it was a social networking site. Back then I could easily have mistaken MySpace for a storage company and Twitter hadn’t even made a tweet on my radar in 2008. I’d only signed up to Friends Reunited because I’d lost a friend’s telephone number and, once I’d got it, I never returned to the site.

  ‘But that’s why you’d love Facebook,’ Maddy said. ‘You can be nosey and look at what people are up to, but you don’t have to be sociable. It’s so funny seeing how people have turned out; it’s amazing how many of the boys from my schooldays have gone downhill.’ She clipped her hair out of the way. I noticed the cool April sunshine was bringing out the red tones of her otherwise brown hair.

  ‘Social networking sites are full of psychopathic weirdos,’ I said, remembering the article I read in the Administrator’s offices.

  ‘Are you calling me a weirdo?’ she mocked, deliberately ignoring the psychopathic part.

  We laughed, all three of us sitting round the table.

  ‘Okay, I might join – I’ll see.’

  I was saved by the waitress who came to take our order. She took mine first and while she spoke to Maddy and Lorna I became aware of the goose bumps on my arms. I glanced enviably at the fellow diners who’d opted to eat inside the trendy restaurant on soft, cushioned chairs. That’s where I wanted to be; surrounded by sleek decor and photos of beautiful actresses and models – not looking at passing overweight shoppers with their heavy bags smashing against their thighs.

  Maddy and Lorna’s bloody cigarettes, I silently cursed, wafting away the smoke that was heading in my direction, as they attempted to keep it away from the waitress. I scraped my metal chair across the cobbled stone, sending further shivers down my spine. This was my futile attempt to get closer to the patio heater; which would surely have failed to melt clingfilm if it had been lobbed in its direction.

  Smoking wasn’t the only thing that made me the odd one out. Maddy and Lorna preferred not to work; they were happy to be stay-at-home mothers. Which, actually, I was thankful for, because, without my business, at least I had some friends to socialise with during the week. And there was a part of me – despite being reluctant to admit it – that was quite enjoying the time I spent with Maddy and Lorna, without having the pressure of work hanging over me, or our kids under our feet, which was how it usually was.

  ‘God, I love Steve. Who else would put up with me?’ Maddy said as she switched her phone off and dropped it into her Prada bag. I hadn’t bothered listening to her call, so I didn’t know what had provoked her comment.

  Probably got him to leave a job and drive back from Glasgow or somewhere equally ridiculous for the school run.

  I watched her slide her cigarettes out of the way as the waitress placed the food on the table. I wasted no time digging my fork into the buttered potatoes, surprised by how hungry I actually was.

  ‘You’re both really lucky. You’ve both got it much easier than me,’ Lorna managed, after elegantly guiding a piece of salmon
down her throat.

  Neither Maddy nor I would even attempt to argue this one with Lorna; we would fail miserably: Lorna’s millionaire lifestyle had been whipped from under her feet after her husband’s company collapsed and the house repossessed.

  Still not knowing what to say, I turned my attention back to Maddy. ‘Well…Steve’s not going to go off with someone younger is he?’ This was my pretend bitchy tone because I knew what her comeback would be. It’s something Maddy and I had always done to entertain each other and Lorna sometimes looked horrified by the mock offensive remarks we made.

  ‘No, because I am the younger model,’ Maddy fired back, even though she was adamant that aging didn’t bother her.

  This confirmed yet again my long-held suspicion that she was bothered, but it would be literally over her dead wrinkled body before she’d ever admit it. Eighteen years younger than Steve, she was officially the younger model, like I with Richard, who was twenty-four years my senior.

  ‘I do know what you mean though, Lorna,’ I softened my voice. ‘I’m a disorganised pain in the ass and drive Richard mad, but he would do anything for me,’ and I said it as though it was the first time I’d ever stated this fact.

  ‘Anyway, how did you two get together? You’ve never told me, not properly,’ Lorna asked, in a more serious manner.

  Lorna, out of the three of us, acted like a grown-up woman. She was a stunning-looking woman with chiselled bone structure, but she once said that having hit forty she was too old to pull off the girly thing.

  That meant I had three years left to nail the maturity issue.

  I slowly chewed on a piece of bread in an attempt to buy some time, while I thought through the best way to explain Richard to Lorna. What she really wanted to know was how I had made the transition from working for him, to shagging him, to living with him.

  ‘He approached me at the work’s Christmas party,’ I started off nice and easy. ‘I did know he was married.’ There was no point in denying that bit; I think she already knew that much from the way Maddy had always sounded off about it. ‘But he said he wanted me, and that he had wanted me since he saw me training in the gym. That’s why he’d given me a job.’ I was fully aware that it was no excuse, and I felt Maddy’s disapproving blue eyes on me but I ignored her and carried on. ‘I was really attracted to him, it was the ex-RAF pilot thing, plus his brain – he finished the FCII in half the required seven years and still came top in the country, and the fact that he’d built up a business off his own back. Oh…and he did have a very nice red two-seater sports car at the time with cream leather seats, it was gorgeous.’ It would have been daft to deny the lure of a Mercedes SL that was probably worth more than my parents’ house at the time, and there was a playful part of me that wanted to throw it in for Maddy’s benefit.

  ‘Gold digger…’ Maddy delivered on cue. It was a term we’d thrown at each other many times before, so there was no malice behind her words. She carried on eating – she heard it all before anyway.

  ‘I suppose that, as an employee, I was slightly in awe of him. It’s that power thing, isn’t it?’ I offered this as both an attempt to defend my weakness and because the things that attracted me to him are the very same things that now make me proud of him. I shifted uncomfortably; I could feel myself shrinking into my chair as though trying to disappear leaving only my voice behind. I hated telling the story because it always made me feel like the scheming bitch from hell. ‘The worse thing is, having a relationship with him, with no commitment, suited me at the time. I was planning to give up my job, return to full-time study, and was sick of relationships getting in the way of plans.’

  Although I said ‘relationships’ that was a slight exaggeration – there had been a few men before Richard, but was only really referring to one previously screwed-up relationship that I’d been in when I’d started working for him.

  ‘I suppose at twenty-two I was naive enough to think that we would have a bit of sexual fun, I’d go off to university and he would stay with his wife. Everyone knows that married men never leave their wives - so no harm done…right? Wroooong! Five per cent do leave their wives.’ I said it as though I was acting as my own prosecution and defence. ‘Anyway, he told me he wanted to leave her – to be with me – so I chose a university where I could commute and still be with him. He did go back to her a couple of times. But anyway the rest is, well just is…’

  I had cut my story short – conscious that I was the one doing all the talking, which was unusual for me. I was usually quiet, which was sometimes misconstrued as my being aloof rather than shy – according to Lorna.

  Before they could criticise me, I started again; talking about my affair with Richard had reminded me of my recent secret crush on someone. It wasn’t that I’d been thinking much about the man in question anymore, but controlling my feelings over the crush had made me start to think a lot about the only other time in mine and Richard’s history where I had secretly been attracted to someone else and spent several years hiding how I felt. It was life’s events, which helped him simply drift further into my past. He was like the unopened box of chocolates that sits at the back of the cupboard fleetingly popping up on occasions when you’re not even looking for them and, somehow, this box of chocolates had managed to make its way to the front of my cupboard again.

  ‘Do you know when I worked for Opus on that year placement,’ I said, as a statement, not a question.

  ‘Opus? Ahhh…the job with the wanker boss – the nightclub owner, the band man – that job?’ Maddy asked with her fork held in the air like a child’s hand raised in a classroom.

  ‘That’s the one,’ I said.

  I’d often told her about Alf; a big fat lump of lard and the most arrogant bloody pig on the planet that I had to work for as part of my degree. I’d been placed in the marketing department, which was situated at the back of one of his clubs, and I still felt claustrophobic when I thought of that drab, windowless office. But, strangely, I had loved the job and the people. It also had the buzz of occasionally meeting a new star, old star or fading star at the bigger events. But there was someone I liked in particular…

  ‘There was a guy there who I was really attracted to. He was the lead singer of one of the bands that Alf managed. He was from New York.’

  My tone was resigned and Lorna’s eyes flashed, while Maddy perched herself in her chair in anticipation of what was about to fall from my mouth next. This was a story that she hadn’t heard before.

  The man in question was Anthony Hope, and I’d never uttered his name to either of them or to anyone in recent years for that matter. I was attracted to him from the very first moment I saw him, which had been when I was sitting in the back of one of the company “people carriers” with two other colleagues. We were on our way to a promotional event and he just happened to be walking down the road. The driver pulled over to introduce us all to the new band member. Boyz2Blues, as they were called, were not big time pop stars – they were cover artists and played at various venues up and down the country.

  The blacked-out window came down and there he was, standing there like he’d been framed. He probably couldn’t even see me squashed in the middle seat. He was tall, very slim, with good square shoulders and edgy-looking; dressed head-to-toe in black with skinny jeans. I think he had an earring, or male jewellery of some sort. His dark eyes were piercing and his shoulder-length, bobbed hair was tied back in a ponytail. Up until that point I would have always said that I hated men with longer hair; but it looked good on him. He was the opposite of Richard, who had been silver-haired since his twenties and looked distinguished, and he wasn’t like the clean-cut pretty boys – as my mum always called them – that I had always gone for before Richard either.

  There was just something about Anthony Hope – he looked like the ultimate bad boy.

  ‘Go on then,’ Lorna urged.

  ‘He had plenty of girlfriends – though he did stick with one for a while. But he once had a conve
rsation about me with Richard at one of Alf’s mansion-based parties. I was leaning on one of the French doors in Alf’s kitchen and Richard and Anthony were side-by-side on the terrace; just outside my earshot. But then Richard shouted over to me that Anthony had said he was a lucky man.’ I felt silly even saying that to Maddy and Lorna. ‘Anthony was grinning at me,’ I added.

  I remembered grinning back at him, feeling myself falling into one of those prolonged eye-locks, staring into unfulfilled expectation. Even now, all these years on, I recall having to reluctantly pull myself out of it, hoping that Richard didn’t suspect I was attracted to Anthony. I didn’t say it to Maddy and Lorna, but I did remember Richard saying to me: ‘He fancies you. You don’t fancy him do you? He is an attractive guy, I could understand it if you did.’ Richard went on to ask me the same trick question several times that night.

  The waitress placed the tray of extra tea we’d ordered onto the table and briefly broke my confession. Lorna started sorting out the milk and sugar and her blonde hair fell forward, hiding her facial expression from my view, which was probably just as well. Then the waitress left.

  ‘He was grinning at you…so what?’ Maddy asked.

  ‘I am trying to explain. Anthony used to have to come in and rehearse with the rest of the band a couple of times a week and it was my job to take refreshments to them. I was forever trying to be dismissive of him; trying to kid myself that I didn’t find him attractive…I always ended up tongue-tied when I spoke to him.’

  ‘You mean you wanted to be tongue-tied with him,’ Maddy said and then laughed with Lorna.

  ‘Ha, ha…but there was just something about his voice, his smile and the way that he spoke to me that made me melt.’

  Maddy nearly choked on her tea.

  ‘It was like I knew him, yet I didn’t really know anything about him.’ I was conscious that I was sounding really dreamy which was why Maddy was struggling to take me seriously.