Virtual Strangers

by Lynne Barrett-Lee

I read out the addresses I have. Only two match with hers. So there are two still worth trying.

  ‘That Singapore one,’ she says, ‘sounds quite hopeful, actually. I remember Minnie showing me a card from Singapore quite recently. No address on that one, though, as I recall.’

  Mine certainly has one. ‘Right,’ I say. ‘I’m on the case. I’ll let you know if I hear anything.’

  I feel like Phillip Marlowe. Feel I am going to open a fat can of selfish bastard absentee son worms. Eat third and fourth Bendincks Bittermints and practice a dour and sleuthy expression. Find doing dour easier than it used to be, somehow. Practice smiling instead.

  Await Davina.

  Eleven fifteen.

  Draft a short letter to the absentee Edward, and print out four copies. Address as per postcards. Still feel dour, so frank same.

  Await Davina.

  Twelve twenty. Right.

  ‘Good morning’ she says. ‘Good week? Good weekend? How’s Rose? Bearing up? Everything as it should be?’

  In spite of the fact that I know she’s not remotely interested in the answers, I tell her in some detail (where appropriate) how things went. Or perhaps because of. My mind is no more on this than hers.

  ‘Right,’ she says, jauntily, pinging her PC to life. ‘Busy, busy, busy! Partners meeting at one thirty, Ianthe and her swatches at three, plus the dear old BM at four. So I’ll need you on the case here, Charlie. Oh, and Hugh’s at Brian’s branch for the rest of the day now, so you’ll have to hold the fort and get the ad copy done. Any viewings?’ I nod. ‘Then call Brian’s PA, will you? You’ll need to put the phone on divert.’

  She’s so jolly I half expect her to add tra-la, tra-lee and dance a little reel or something.

  Davina,’ I say. ‘I need a word, if I may.’

  Her head swivels.

  ‘A word?’

  I nod again.

  ‘If I may.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘About this.’

  She is suddenly listening.

  ‘My resignation,’ I tell her. ‘I’m handing it in.’

  ‘You’re what?’

  ‘I’m leaving.’

  I give her the letter. Which she takes, with a nod, and then, in a spooky re-run of Rose the week earlier, she screws up her face and promptly bursts into tears.

  So much crying!

  The telephone rang almost immediately after, so I turned around, walked back to my desk and took the call. It was Hugh, for Davina, but I told him she was busy and that she’d call him back just as soon as she could. Then I turned back, expecting the moment to have passed, but to my dismay, consternation and utter astonishment, not only had Davina not recovered her composure, but she was sinking ever more noisily into huge gulping sobs.

  This? Over me? Over me leaving Willie J J? Bloody hell. What a turn up. Unless...Oh dear.

  Of course, I did the only thing humans can reasonably do in such situations. I walked back to her, said ‘come here’, bent down and put my arms around her. She sobbed against my shoulder for a good five minutes, then sighed heavily, released me and transferred her head to her hands.

  ‘Ohh,’ she said. ‘Ohhhhhh. Oh, God. Oh, Charlie!’

  I found my Handy Andies and gave her the whole pack.

  I didn’t know what to say, so I said, ‘Davina, I don’t know what to say. I never thought in a million years that

  you’d -’

  ‘Ohhh,’ she said again, dabbing at the tramlines in her foundation. ‘It’s just, ohh. Oh, Charlie..’

  And started crying again.

  I pulled a chair up. ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘Nothing. No, fuck it! Everything!’

  ‘I mean, you know, if this is a bad time, then -’

  ‘Charlie, please. You can’t leave.’

  ‘But it’s not as if -’

  ‘It is. Please, not right now. I just don’t think I could cope. Seriously -’. She gripped my hands in her own. She was very strong and it hurt. ‘Seriously. Please.’

  She gave me my hands back.

  ‘Well -’

  ‘Thank God. Thank God.’

  The face went back into the hands now and I could hear her sobbing again behind them. I picked up the notion of Charlie Simpson, utterly indispensable Estate Agent. Then tried it on for size and found it simply didn’t fit. I twiddled the pen pot. I patted her arm. All my instincts were beginning to scream at me. Ask her what’s the matter! Ask her, Simpson! Ask her what the matter is! That’s what you do!

  A sense of grave foreboding found its way into the office. Then singled me out and did what such senses do best. Thus, like the young girl in the nightie with the tiny stub of candle, I pulled the creaking door open and stepped out to find the ghost.

  ‘What is it?’ I said. ‘What’s really the matter, Davina?’

  She sobbed some more into her hands.

  ‘Efefeng,’ she mumbled. ‘sifly efefeng urg.’

  I waited. Did some more patting and there-there-ing. Then said,

  ‘Do you want to talk about it?’ in that way that you do.

  She spread her hands out and laid them palms down on the desk top. Then looked up and sighed heavily, which I took to mean yes.

  ‘Is it work?’ I said hopefully.

  She dashed that. ‘I wish it were that simple! No. It’s not work. I mean, yes, in a way it is, I suppose. What’s going on here is pretty much all I need right now, I can tell you. It certainly isn’t helping matters. But no. If I’m honest. Not really, no. Except in so far as I’ve been so fucking obsessed with it. Jesus! Don’t do it, Charlie. Don’t think for a moment that all this,’ she threw her arms wide, by which I assumed she mean’t the whole Willie Jones Jackson empire, ‘will make you happy. Oh, no. Don’t think that. Okay?’

  As if! I’d just handed my notice in, hadn’t I? I waited while she took another tissue.

  ‘Something else, then,’ I said.

  Deep breath. She nodded. ‘It’s me, Charlie. Me and Adam. Adam. No. Bollocks. It’s me!’

  While she gulped back the next bout of tears, I spent ten seconds trying to think how I’d respond to this situation were this situation entirely unfamiliar to me. But the time was wasted because in reality, you can’t do that stuff.

  ‘You?’ I said, trying to keep the warble out of my voice.

  ‘Me. God, it’s hopeless, all of it. Hopeless!’

  ‘What is?’

  ‘My life.’

  What a mess. You said that. No. I mean my life. What a fuck up. I don’t need to hear this.

  Here we were again.

  ‘Your life? In what way?’

  Davina leaned forward and cradled her forehead in her fingers. As if she was studying a chess problem in the paper. Which she could have been. It must have felt like one. Intractable, frustrating, utterly perplexing. Then she looked at me.

  ‘How old were you when you had Daniel, Charlie?’

  Oh, God. The baby thing. I took a deep breath. ‘Twenty one..’

  ‘God, young. And Ben?’

  ‘A bit older. Almost twenty seven.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘And then nothing.’

  ‘Then your marriage broke up.’

  ‘Not quite then. A bit after.’

  ‘Why?’

  I didn’t know where this came from or where it was going; only that I rather wished it wasn’t going there with me lashed to the bumper.‘We just fell out of love,’ I said.

  Her face crumpled again. And this time I fancied mine might start having a go at it too.

  I took her arm.‘What, Davina? Tell me. What is it?’

  ‘I’m thirty seven,’ she sobbed. ‘And it’s too late! And it’s just all so, so..... Oh, God. What’s the use?’

  ‘In what?’

  ‘In talking about it. It’s like it’s the biggest thing in a woman’s life, isn’t it? It’s such a big thing to have to let go of. It’s so hard to have to come to terms with the fact that you’ve missed the boat. G
ot it wrong. Fucked up. That I’ve fucked up, and that it’s all too late now!’

  ‘But it isn’t! It needn’t be! Women even have children in their fifties, these days! You know that!’

  I was trembling with the agony of forcing those words out, but she didn’t notice. She was shaking her head again. And though she didn’t realise it, we both knew why.

  ‘Not me,’ she said softly. ‘Not me.’ Then her voice began to rise again. ‘And Adam! What about him? He’s nearly forty, for God’s sake! He’s got -’

  But she didn’t tell me just what it was that he had. Though I did have a bit of an inkling, of course. Instead she said,

  ‘What about you? How did it happen? How could you just fall out of love like that? How?’

  Oh, Christ.

  I exhaled. ‘We just did, Davina. It happens. Felix was in the Navy - is in the Navy. I suppose we just didn’t spend enough time together. It was a gradual thing. You know, you start off wishing the time away when you’re apart and counting the days till you’re together again and then one day you wake up and you suddenly realise that you’re doing the opposite. I was wishing him away again, so I could get on with my life.’ I shrugged. ‘And he was doing the same. It wasn’t acrimonious or anything. Just horrible for the kids and, well, sad.’

  She stared at her tissue. Then sniffed.

  ‘And that was that?’

  ‘Pretty much. Looking back. Which I generally try not to. I don’t find it helps.’

  She nodded.

  ‘It was never like that for us, you know? Never passionate. Never urgent. I see that now. But it didn’t mean I didn’t love him. I just - I just wasn’t very good at all that. You know? It wasn’t me. And we weren’t young like you were. So we didn’t expect it to be like that. You know? We’d got beyond all that. Or so I thought. I thought it would all work out fine. I thought we’d get married, have babies, settle down, do all that stuff. But we never quite seemed - I never quite seemed to - oh, you know. There was always work, and developing the business and everything. And I didn’t realise -’ she pushed the tissue into her face as she spoke, ‘I didn’t realise, Charlie. And now look at all these years we’ve wasted - I’ve wasted. Shit, he’s wasted! On me! And now look at us! I can’t blame him for hating me, can I? God, it’s all such a mess!’

  Hating her? Suddenly something that had up to now not occurred to me occurred to me like a right hook in the face. Had Adam said something to her? Done something? Oh, God! What?

  But there weren’t any clues. And I wasn’t about to start asking.

  ‘It isn’t too late to sort it out, Davina,’ I told her. ‘Not if you really want it to work. Not if -’

  She was shaking her head again.

  ‘Yes it is,’ she said slowly.

  Then she stood up, abruptly, checked the time, blew her nose. So that was it. For the moment. I felt wrung out. She looked it.

  ‘Coffee?’ she asked me.

  We exchanged a wan smile.

  ‘Yup. Too late,’ she muttered, heading for the staff room. Then she turned in the doorway, her hand on the jamb.

  ‘Funny, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘When we were first together and Adam was still a junior doctor; you know, exams, ridiculous hours and so on, I used to say how much I’d like a daughter - I always wanted a little girl - and he’d say, “Oh, no. Not yet. There’s only room for one tyrannical woman in this family.” That sort of thing. And now look at us.’ She thrummed her nails against the woodwork. ‘Ironic, isn’t it?’

  Something in me wanted to put a hand up and confess. But then she laughed. Said ‘Huh! Three is a crowd. No doubt about that.’

  So she knew. She knew very well. The fact, if not who the actual female was. I don’t know why, but I answered,

  ‘Like Princess Diana said.’

  She cocked her head to one side, as if considering, and then nodded.

  ‘Yeah,’ she said, the door closing behind her. ‘I suppose.’

  Should I telephone Camilla? Compare notes? See if she’s any handy tips for keeping a profile that’s low enough below the parapet that you don’t get picked off by a sniper? I know there is nothing in my father’s little books to cover this overwhelming sense of guilt and anguish. Know as I have read all father’s books from cover to cover and have reached the conclusion that people who read such books are generally people in need of only a gentle prod to excel at almost every aspect of their saintly personal interactions, and for whom an overwhelming sense of guilt and anguish is not part of life. Or so much a part of life that they think fuck the books and call the Samaritans instead.

  Have become a very drunk person. Have become a very drunk person on a Monday night. Have become a very drunk person on a Monday night that is to be shortly followed by a Tuesday with six viewings (including one in a house where I am sure they eat composted crustacean remains for breakfast) before eleven am. Have become a very drunk person on a Monday night followed by a Tuesday with six smelly viewings and without a cheering, devil-may-care, have-handed-in notice-and-don’t-give-stuff-any-more cushioning. Because I haven’t handed in my notice after all and give a great deal more stuff than an ordinary, perfectly nice person can be reasonably expected to cope with.

  And so much want to see myself as an ordinary, perfectly nice person, but cannot. Have been an irresponsible absentee mother, leaving poor younger son no doubt traumatised permanently, and have been a self-serving, cavalier, absentee daughter, leaving my father to flail helplessly at death’s very jaw. And now have confirmation that I have utterly wrecked a marriage; the marriage, moreover, of a person for whom life is already, clearly, one big crock of shit. That I am totally alone bar the cat seems appropriate (Ben at a sleepover), though it can only be a matter of time before the cat also shuns me, and desists from returning to poo in the porch.

  Very much want to send a rambling, self pitying email to Rose, but dare not enter the study as will be sucked in by log-on tractor beam like Starship Enterprise. Could call Rose, of course, but cannot in all conscience bring myself to as is very late on Monday night and normal people do not wish to be telephoned late on Monday night by drunk women with intractable personal problems. Except the Samaritans. And cannot in all conscience call the Samaritans as will clog the line with my own piffling (in scheme of things so fucking important I don’t think) problems and will perhaps as a consequence cause a suicide off the Second Severn Crossing by a person with real problems who couldn’t get through. Like Davina. Oh God.

  Strange to be feeling so awful about Davina. Strange and humbling. I have worked for Willie Jones Jackson for almost five years and in all that time I have never really got to know her at all. Have never looked beyond her brusqueness and temper; never wondered why she relates to the world as she does. And even though I know it’s as much her fault as mine, I can’t help thinking the onus was on me. As if everything bad in my small sphere of influence is suddenly my responsibility to put right, to make better. Ergo, Tuesday;

  ‘Yes, Rhys. I’d love to. Thank you so much for inviting me.’

  ‘Well, that’s splendid!’

  He sounded so pleased I suddenly wished I’d flipped heads and said no. But he, was, I reflected, a fully grown man with more opportunity that most for a shag (not patients, obviously, but given proximity to female environment generally...). And a fully grown man with control of his feelings. I wasn’t leading him on. Just attending a dinner dance. That was all. No strings. Zippo.

  ‘By the way,’ he added. ‘Just read an absolutely unputdownable book about an Everest summit attempt. It’s called The Death Zone. You will love it. So I’ve given it to Adam to pass on to you for me. He said he’d drop it round to you. See you Saturday week.’

  Cross, cross, cross. Was tempted to ring back and cancel the dinner dance date altogether, as the Adam/Rhys/Death Zone juxtaposition plunged my mood into such an abyss of jangly monsters, buzzy stingy things, ghoulies etc., that I doubted I would conjure sufficient composure to even open the front d
oor. But I didn’t, as it was utterly not Rhys’s fault. I resolved, instead, that when the book delivery happened, I would be mature, be calm, answer the door, say hello, accept the book, say thank you, shut the door. Done.

  Oh, but what hard work life could be.

  Davina arrived in the office at midday.

  ‘Hello!’ she chirped, as if absolutely nothing had happened (though I was now deeply suspicious of her new, jaunty tone).

  ‘Hello!’ I chirped back, with equivalent trill. She picked up the phone and called Austin Metro. I knew it was him because she said ‘Austin, por favor!’ to the telephonist, but regrettably, was unable to establish the details, as was called myself then, by Mr Habib. But it was, I could tell, an acrimonious exchange.

  She slammed the phone down and went straight out again. Thirty seconds later, she was back for her briefcase. Which she wordlessly grabbed, then stalked back to the door. She yanked it open, then turned.

  ‘Tell me,’ she said, eyes flashing, hair like a golden windsock, ‘Tell me absolutely honestly. Do you like your uniform, Charlie?’

  Uuurgh. ‘Well, I -’

  ‘Stop! No procrastination! Just a simple yes or no.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Not at all?’

  ‘No. Not really. It’s-’

  ‘Uh-huh,’ she said. ‘Right. See you.’

  And was gone.

  Spookily reminiscent of my time down in Canterbury, Rose rang just as I was shovelling the last of my brussels con lardons into the swing bin.

  ‘Where the bloody hell have you been?’ she demanded.

  ‘Out.’

  ‘Out where?’

  ‘Um, let me see. The RSPCA, the hospital, the dry cleaners and the twenty-four hour Tesco store.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Um, let me see. Cat, Dad, Minnie, dress, trainers. Not necessarily in that order. Oh, yes, and Burger King. For dinner.’

  ‘Busy.’

  ‘I should say! Actually, no. Just pathetic.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘In going out.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I’ve been out because of Adam’

  ‘Why because of Adam?’

  ‘Because of the book.’

  ‘What book?’

  ‘The book that Rhys is lending to me and that he’s given Adam to drop round to me. I can’t face him, Rose.’