by K. L. Slater
‘Oh! But you checked the proof I sent through, didn’t you?’
‘Yes, but Mr Visser’s name was spelled correctly on the proof, I’m certain of it. The invites say Vasser. There’s no way they can go out with such a glaring error. How soon can you reprint?’
‘I’ll have to check, hang on.’ She put me on hold and I pulled the phone away from my ear as a barrage of awful electronic music started up. A minute later, she was back. ‘OK, so the earliest we could get that done would be next Wednesday. I could have them with you again by next Friday lunchtime. How does that sound?’
I closed my eyes.
‘That sounds like my worst nightmare come true.’ I kept my voice low in the echoey space. ‘They’re supposed to be going out tomorrow night.’
Louise seemed completely unfazed.
‘Well then, you’ll just have to explain to your boss that you made a mistake and—’
‘I didn’t make a mistake! There’s no way I’m going to be the fall guy for this,’ I hissed through bared teeth, leaning against the cool wall near the front windows. ‘You need to get that proof invite out and check it. I changed a phone number on the back and that’s been amended correctly. I would’ve definitely noticed if the gallery director’s name had been spelled wrong too!’
‘Calm down. I can put the mistake right, but it’s going to take time. I can’t be any fairer than that, can I?’
Her nonchalant tone set my nerves jangling.
‘I trusted you, Louise. We were all set to use a local company whose work Jim knows well, but I persuaded him to go with you. How is that going to make me look?’
‘Look, I’ve really got to go.’ Louise adopted a suddenly formal tone, as if someone had just walked in the room. ‘I’ll call you later and we can discuss the project in more detail.’
She ended the call and I stamped my foot in temper. The bloody project didn’t need discussing; she just needed to correct her glaring error.
I paced around the showroom in a big circle, biting my nails and racking my brains about how I could put things right without losing the confidence of Jim, and more importantly, Mr Visser himself.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
Back home, after taking my coat off, I immediately set the Nokia charging.
I’m fully expecting that James will be back on the tram tomorrow, but just in case he tries to call the phone himself today, I think it’s imperative I get it fully charged. I calculate it’ll be at least an hour before it’s ready for me to look through it, and so I shrug my coat on again, pick up my keys and head out again.
I’m seized by a compulsion to change things, and, as they say, there’s no time like the present.
I leave the apartment building and turn left, walking about two hundred yards before turning left again and entering the small hairdresser’s about halfway up the street.
I’ve never been here before, and that reassures me. I’ve no wish to return to the one I used when Mum and I first moved here, because, true to form, Charlotte, the owner, would want to know everything that’s happened over the past two years in great detail.
‘Can I help you?’ A girl of about eighteen with cropped pink and blue hair smiles as I enter the shop.
‘Yes, I’d like to make an appointment for a restyle.’ I pull at a rope of my hair. ‘As you can tell, it’s been a while since I last visited a hairdresser.’
‘We’ve just had a cancellation, actually, three o’clock this afternoon with Jeanie?’
My heart blips. I didn’t expect an appointment so soon.
‘I’ll take it,’ I hear myself say.
Next, I call at the small Tesco back on the main road. I consult my hastily scribbled list and put the items in the pull-along basket. Salad, fruit, tofu… I can’t remember the last time I actually planned what I’ll have to eat. My method is usually governed by what meagre supplies are in the cupboard or freezer, and that’s generally something ready-made.
Growing up, Mum was a stickler for making sure we got our five portions of fruit and veg a day, right up until we were adults. You’d think all those years of having something drilled into you, it would stick, but sadly, it’s the last thing I consider these days.
Sometimes you know what’s good for you but you go and do just the opposite anyway. Louise has always been good at doing that too.
Like when she met Martyn Hardy and fell pregnant within three months.
Ten years earlier
They’d already got their own place by that stage, but she spent more and more time back at home. She told us Martyn was always working at his gym – towards their future, their dream, he was fond of telling her.
He liked to portray himself as the big businessman, but Mum and I had our suspicions from the start. It didn’t take long to realise he lived permanently on the cusp of the next elusive big deal or opportunity.
I’d met Martyn on several occasions. He was a man who liked talking about himself and his achievements. He owned a spit-and-sawdust-type gym on the outskirts of the city, in an old garage unit in a run-down area, but to hear him talk, people came from miles around to benefit from his unique style of training.
Yet Louise herself had let slip that he never seemed to have any money. There was always some excuse why she’d have to pay the bill at a restaurant or get the tickets for the cinema.
He told Mum he lived in a brand-new duplex apartment in an expensive part of town, but when I went to the trouble of seeking out his address, which I found on Companies House online, it was an old concrete tower block at least a twenty-minute walk from the embankment.
And so it went on… an unlikeable habit of boasting that was very rarely backed up with any solid evidence of achievements.
In a very short time I had the measure of Martyn Hardy, but my sister seemed smitten.
At this stage I didn’t tell her I’d been making tentative enquiries into her fiancé. She had an involuntary blindness when it came to seeing the truth about Martyn.
She used words like aspiring, driven and committed to describe him, while to Mum and me he was clearly a fantasist.
The wedding arrangements that Louise had excitedly said she wanted Mum heavily involved in never materialised either. I watched my sister grow increasingly sad.
‘I’d go so far as to call him a liar,’ Mum told me once when, on one of his rare visits to our house, Martyn spent fifteen minutes telling us he might have one of the major fitness chains interested in buying his crappy little gym.
Incredibly, Louise had never been to see his premises; at Martyn’s request, she was waiting for refurbishments to be finished. From what I saw the day I went to look, they hadn’t even been started.
It was pretty obvious it was always going to end badly.
But Louise never lost faith in him, so desperate was she to believe his unsubstantiated promises.
I remember the day I found her crying upstairs, clutching her stomach in the bathroom while Mum watched television downstairs, oblivious.
‘What’s wrong?’ I’d dashed to her side, convinced she’d collapsed in pain through some kind of illness.
‘Leave me alone,’ she’d snapped in true Louise style. Usually I’d have taken the hint and left her to it as she asked, but this particular day I could tell she seemed really distressed.
I sat quietly on the edge of the bath and it didn’t take long for her to open up.
‘I’m four weeks pregnant,’ she whispered.
I caught the unhelpful gasp that jumped up into my throat and reached for her hand instead.
‘Does Martyn know?’ I asked.
She’d cried harder then and I started filling in the blanks. It looked to me like Martyn did indeed know about the pregnancy and was probably none too happy about it.
‘He wants me to get rid of it,’ she sobbed, confirming my suspicions.
My skin felt cold when I imagined that tiny scrap of life growing inside her. The baby was my flesh and blood too.
‘And wh
at do you think about it?’ I gently asked her.
‘I don’t know,’ she whimpered. ‘I just don’t know what to think. Martyn says it’s not the right time, that in a couple of years we’ll be ready. But he says it can’t happen right now.’
I recalled thinking it was a really stupid thing for her to do, getting pregnant so soon and by such an obvious loser, too.
Still, that was the day I decided to do a bit more digging on Martyn Hardy… a little deeper this time.
Present day
I put the last item in my basket and head for the checkout. I split the load between two bags, but it’s still a slog back to the apartment.
As I enter the foyer, I say a silent prayer of thanks when I see the engineer just packing up his tools and the notice gone. The lift is operational again.
Back in the apartment, I empty the bags and put the food away. It feels so satisfying to see the fridge shelves stocked again and the salad drawer pleasantly full of fresh green stuff.
I fill the wire fruit basket on the worktop with satsumas and apples and place the fresh bread in the cupboard.
Then I turn my attention to James’s phone.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
Three years earlier
The afternoon I discovered the error on the gallery launch invitations, I knew it would do me no good to postpone the awful truth. When Jim and Visser’s meeting broke up, I was waiting with a hangdog face, ready to confess.
Mr Visser turned the invitation in his hands and then looked at me over the bright red spectacles he wore perched at the end of his nose.
I glanced at Jim, who winked at me and nodded.
I’d gone cap in hand to him while Mr Visser visited the bathroom and told him what had happened. Including the bad news that the company couldn’t reprint and redeliver until the end of next week. He’d gone back to his office and made a quick call.
‘And this spelling mistake of my name, you missed it on the proof invite?’ Mr Visser asked calmly.
‘No!’ I said vehemently. ‘It wasn’t wrong on there, I’m certain of it. But the PR company has destroyed the proof so we can’t check.’
‘What’s done is done, I suppose,’ Jim chipped in. ‘The good news is, Finn, my contact at the company we were going to use can redo them by Monday afternoon.’
‘Hmm. It is not ideal as we lose a weekend, but under the circumstances, let’s go for that.’
I let out the breath I’d been holding for what seemed like ages.
‘However, I’ll be writing to your sister’s company stating that we will not be paying for the invitations unless they can produce the original proof,’ Mr Visser said firmly. ‘In this business, nobody destroys a proof until the job is completed.’
I nodded, chastised. ‘I’m sorry, Mr Visser. I feel… responsible.’
‘No matter on this occasion,’ he smiled. ‘Although perhaps mixing business and family should be avoided, yes?’
I nodded again, giddy with relief. That was definitely a lesson I’d learned the hard way.
* * *
The invitations were printed and posted out as planned and our event got a ninety per cent RSVP acceptance, which Mr Visser seemed delighted with.
The launch event went swimmingly.
I was standing with the glass of fizz I was making last all night so I stayed fresh and on my toes when someone tapped me on my shoulder. I turned to see Mr Visser himself and someone I was not expecting. I sprang back in delight.
‘Mum!’
She’d said earlier that she felt a bit under the weather and wouldn’t be coming to the event now that Louise had had a major strop about being blamed for the faulty invitations and wouldn’t come with her.
‘I couldn’t not come in the end, so I got a cab,’ she said now, her face brighter than I’d seen it in a while. ‘I’m so glad I did; it looks magnificent in here.’
I followed her eyes, looking up and around the walls of our pristine gallery.
‘It does look really wonderful, and a good part of that is down to Alice’s brilliant work, Mrs Fisher. She’s a gem and I’m so glad we found her. You must be very proud.’
‘I am, thank you, Mr Visser. It’s all she’s ever wanted to do, you know, art and… suchlike.’
Mr Visser smiled at me knowingly and made his excuses, leaving me with Mum. When he had gone, I beckoned someone else over.
‘Mum, I’d like you to meet Jack. I told you about him: he’s an artist, and his work is over there in the local artists’ corner.’
‘Hello, Mrs Fisher. It’s so nice to meet you.’ Jack held out his hand.
He looked amazing, so tall and dark and sort of brooding, although he had a really sunny personality when you got to know him.
‘Pleased to meet you, Jack,’ Mum said, taking his hand. ‘Alice talks about you a lot.’ I blushed and Jack grinned.
‘I know Alice is busy tonight, so would you like me to show you some of the paintings?’
‘How nice.’ Mum beamed, and I knew Jack had won her over already.
* * *
Over the next few months, The Art Box became a tour de force in the city and further afield.
One quiet day in the office, Jim made us a coffee and we sat down together for a rare ten minutes’ peace.
‘Finn is looking at new premises, Alice,’ he said, wasting no time in getting to the point. ‘Three times the size of this place and this time based in north Nottinghamshire, where there’s a shortage of galleries like ours.’
‘Wow, that sounds amazing!’ I exclaimed, feeling excited. And then something awful occurred to me. ‘What about… will I still have a job here?’
‘That’s what I wanted to talk to you about,’ Jim said, sipping his drink. ‘There’s an assistant manager opportunity coming up as it’ll be difficult for me to coordinate the two galleries on my own. Visser is impressed with you, Alice. I think you should go for it.’
‘What?’ I swallowed down a lump in my throat. ‘But I’ve only got a few months’ experience and—’
‘You’re a natural,’ Jim interrupted. ‘Is that something you’d want, more responsibility?’
‘Yes! I mean, I love working in the gallery and I’d like to progress. Most definitely.’
‘Well then, it’s yours for the taking. There’d be an interview at The Steel Box, Finn’s big gallery in Sheffield.’ Jim hesitated. ‘It’ll be a panel interview, but that’s nothing to worry about. I can take you through the things you need to know.’
I felt a bit sick at the thought of a formal interview, but as Louise often said, you had to claw your way up to get to where you wanted to be. And I’d wanted to visit The Steel Box since I’d started working here.
‘I’m going to go for it,’ I said suddenly, full of excitement about what lay ahead.
‘Cheers!’ Jim grinned and we clinked coffee cups.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
LOUISE
Ten years earlier
Louise lay in bed. She felt as though she was dying.
She didn’t feel angry at Martyn; she felt angry at herself. How could she have been so stupid as to fall pregnant this early in the relationship?
She’d only forgotten to take her pill once. She knew loads of girls who’d done the same and they hadn’t fallen pregnant.
She was certain that one tablet was neither here nor there… she felt sure she’d been on the pill long enough for it to build up in her system.
So she’d put it out of her mind and hadn’t even mentioned it to Martyn.
And she’d ruined everything. Everything.
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
ALICE
‘Auntie Alice, do you ever wish you could be somebody else?’
All the time. That’s my knee-jerk reaction, but instead I say, ‘I think everyone does at some point or another, it’s normal. Why… do you wish you were someone else, Archie?’
‘Yes,’ he says matter-of-factly.
‘And who do you wish you could be?’<
br />
‘Anybody but me. Someone who doesn’t always say the wrong thing, someone who’s strong and good at sport and…’
‘Yes?’
‘Someone my mum could be proud of.’
I blink at him.
‘Archie, have you heard of a man called Oscar Wilde?’
He thinks for a moment. ‘Was he… a poet?’
‘He was. A poet and a writer, and he said some very astute things that people still use today to help them live a better life.’
‘Did he want to be someone else too?’
‘No, I don’t think so. He accepted himself for who he was and he said this: “Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.”’
Archie frowns as he turns the quote over in his mind.
‘Because everyone else is already themselves, so you can’t be them?’
‘That’s right.’ I smile. ‘And more importantly, nobody else can be you.’
‘But nobody else would want to be me,’ he says, looking down at his hands.
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
It’s cool in the apartment, but my chest and face feel warm.
The battery icon on the screen indicates the phone is still charging, but it’s been plugged in long enough now to give me a chance to see if James has called.
I disconnect the charger and cradle the phone in my hand, as if it’s something precious. I’m not sure what to expect, but I’ve decided that if it rings while I have it turned on, I will answer it.
If it’s James, then that will be fantastic. But if it’s someone calling him, I can explain I’m looking after his phone temporarily until I can safely return it to him.
I can also ask them if they have any other contact details for him.
I hold down the on/off button and wait for the screen to come to life. Almost immediately, a notification box pops up.