by Syd Moore
Of course I bloody am, I thought. But I simply wrote, ‘Yes.’ Then I waited, curious to see who it was.
Nothing happened for a few seconds then the words ‘Where are you?’ appeared.
What did that mean? Most of my Facebook friends knew I had moved out of the Smoke eighteen months ago.
A little irritated by the stupidity of the question, I chucked it back at the unknown messenger. ‘Where are you?’ and sat back to see the response.
There was a bit of a time delay. I glanced at my watch. I couldn’t spend long on this joker as I should be getting my stuff together to leave fairly soon.
Then the words popped up on the screen, ‘I can hear you but I can’t see you.’
Mmm. Weird. I regarded the screen for a moment then retyped: ‘Where are you?’
A breeze outside nudged the oak leaves against the window. They sounded like little metallic fingertips on the panes.
The reply came up: ‘I do not know. Everything is dark here.’
Okay, this was getting creepy. What to do? Coming up with no good reply, I sat still and contemplated the screen.
My correspondent was typing. ‘There is only blackness,’ they wrote.
Then underneath that, ‘I am scared.’
That stopped me.
Was this a joke? An inappropriate friend trying to freak me out? Some random viral marketing ploy? I tried to think of a way to respond without looking stupid if it was a prank. Though, at the back of my mind, I was wondering about what to do if it wasn’t.
‘Who are you?’ I tapped out on the keys and hit enter.
‘I’m sorry,’ they replied.
I stopped and looked at it. Then I swallowed. The words had been on my lips just an hour ago.
Then another line of text: ‘Hush.’
Hush? That was an odd choice of word.
Quickly, more text appeared. ‘He may come back.’
Now cynicism was overruled by a more concerning impulse.
‘Who might?’ I wrote. ‘Who might be coming back?’
The screen was still for a moment, then the words ‘Oh God’ tapped out on the screen.
Without letting my head intervene in my now more emotional response, I wrote ‘Where are you? Are you okay?’ But when I hit enter this time my screen died and turned to black.
I cursed and looked down at the on button. My battery had run out.
I hastily reached for the power cable and plugged it in. The computer took several frustrating seconds to reboot and when I returned to the site there was nothing there. No box. No evidence of our conversation. I scrolled down my list of online friends. There was no one I didn’t recognise.
I could have left it alone, but a part of me felt responsible. After all, this hadn’t been a chat room – it had been a dialogue with one other person. A private communication sent only to me. I was troubled but not yet scared. Just worried that I hadn’t stepped up to my civic duty if indeed, this was a genuine message. Crap. This had to be the last thing I needed right now – more guilt.
I bit my lip then made a decision, pulled out my mobile and dialled the one person who I could possibly pass this on to. I was in no fit state to get involved with anyone else’s business right now.
He answered pretty quickly. ‘Hello, Sadie. How are you feeling?’
So thoughtful, always concerned about others. You could see why he’d entered the police force. He was a nice bloke. And he’d been a good friend. In fact, before I met Christopher, he’d been more than just a friend. I’d met Joe six years ago, whilst covering some high-ranking officer’s retirement. It was lucky I had taken the job. I’d hooked it on impulse as Mum was on a bit of a low and I wanted to spend more time with her. As soon as I met him, there was an instant connection: we ended up drunkenly eating chips on the seafront and watching the moon set over Canvey Island. He had a really lovely smile (those dimples were just gorgeous) and a kooky sense of humour that chimed with mine. One thing had led to another and another. We were both due some time off so I didn’t leave his flat for two days and nights. We followed it up with the usual sort of thing – trips to the cinema, dinner, a fabulous weekend break in the country. It was great. But I knew I had to go back to London, and somehow, despite the fact it wasn’t that far away, I think I had it in my mind that it was only a holiday romance, something casual. Not that we ever discussed it, but he was four years younger than me. It doesn’t seem much now, but at the time I was twenty-seven, and twenty-three seemed way too young to be serious. When he went off to Carlisle for training and Mum felt better I returned to my life in the metropolis. We texted each other a few times, but he backed off completely when I started seeing Christopher. Yet he still had a physical effect on me. I’d bumped into him a couple of times since I’d moved back and could never stop myself stealing furtive glances at his sinewy frame. Even now I had to do my best to sound together and competent, instead of breathy and slightly chaotic.
‘Hi Joe, I’m okay.’
‘Glad to hear it,’ he said. ‘You must have had a bad hangover after the other night.’ I could tell he was smiling as he spoke. Voices sound more distinct when mouths are pulled wide. Then, remembering the specific occasion of my last major bender, he took his voice down a note and hastily added, ‘Understandable of course.’
I took it in my stride. ‘I’m okay, honestly. Thanks for, er, helping out. I’m sorry if I, er, embarrassed you …’ Oh God, there was that image – me catching his lapel, pulling him down, slobbering all over him. I pushed the mortifying grope from my mind and concentrated on the present issue.
Joe was generous. ‘Think nothing of it.’ It was a full stop on the matter.
Gallant too. You absolute gem, I thought.
‘Listen,’ I said, changing the subject super quick. ‘I’ve just had a weird thing happen.’ And I explained about the messaging.
I hadn’t expected him to laugh, but that’s what he did. It left me feeling stupid and gauche.
‘Someone’s having you on, Sadie,’ was his conclusion. ‘You wouldn’t believe the number of calls we get about this sort of stuff. Texts, emails. It’s all part of new generation cyber-crime.’
Now I was cross, bordering on outraged. Not at him. At the unknown idiot who had virtually freaked me. ‘Well, who would do that to me? Especially now. When, you know, I’m a little more fragile than …’
Joe’s voice piped up, the perfect example of good victim support training, ‘Don’t take it personally. You’re probably a random selection. There’s some bored teenager chuckling away in his bedroom right now. In future, don’t respond. If you don’t engage them, they’ll get bored and move on to something else.’
It seemed like sensible advice, so I agreed not to.
‘Is there anything else I can do you for, Ms Asquith?’ Was it me or was there a teensy bit of hope in his voice?
The question was open-ended, leaving it up to me to pick up the ball and run. I told him, ‘Right this minute, no, just the dodgy internet business. But I’ll call you soon. For a drink maybe?’ He said that would be nice and I thanked him for his advice.
‘Glad to be of service to the public, madam.’ He was very jovial. ‘Now take care of yourself and feel free to phone me if this sort of thing happens again.’
I told him I definitely would and hung up, a little thrill rippling through me.
Now I was fifteen minutes behind schedule.
I had stuff to get on with so slammed the laptop shut, got my things together then whizzed out the door.
The gloomy October morning had bled into a gloomy October afternoon. The light breeze had notched up into a strong south-easterly wind and was whipping rubbish into tiny twisters, screeching through the bare branches of the sycamores that bordered the wide Georgian avenues of Southend’s conservation area. Everybody on the street was buttoned up, faces down, slanting diagonally into its oncoming draughts.
The offices of Mercurial, a quarterly arts magazine, were nestled between an an
cient accountancy firm and a design agency. I liked working for them. They were cool: as a freelance writer who specialised in Essex affairs, kudos was rather thin on the ground, and the mag’s cachet rubbed off on me.
It was now eighteen months that I’d been living in the borough of Southend. Initially, my move had been born out of an urge to be closer to Mum. Her health was going downhill and although Dan was around, I wanted to be there for her too. Then after I split up with Christopher, London quickly lost some of its shine and I accelerated the relocation.
It had been good for me. Though I kept my hand in with my old bosses in London, I had enjoyed rediscovering my old patch. Southend had grown and changed. Lots of things were going on and Mercurial reflected that. They were good to know – always had an ear to the ground – and I had actually grown very fond of the staff at the office. For a bunch of artistic individuals they were all pretty down to earth.
I’d known Maggie for nigh on twenty-five years, as we’d attended the same high school. Though you’d never believe it to look at her now, she was actually far more rebellious than I in our youth: we shared clothes; a couple of boyfriends and several cigarettes down the bottom of the sports field, promptly losing touch when we left school and went on to different universities. When our paths crossed again, a couple of years ago, she invited me for lunch and we soon ping-ponged into regular friends again.
I think it was on our third or fourth lunch date, as we knocked back a few glasses of plonk, that Maggie suggested I wrote a small piece for her mag. I leapt at the chance and once the shrewd editor – rather than the friend – worked out that I was as good as I said I was, she began feeding me more assignments.
Mags was what my dad would call a good egg: helping
a lot over the past few months and especially kind when Mum died.
She was sucking on the end of a biro, squinting at a document several pages in length, in the small box room she called her office. The sash window was a couple of inches open. Still, the air was thick with the stink of cigarettes and Yves St Laurent’s Paris.
‘You’ll have to get an air freshener. You must be getting through bottles of perfume,’ I said as I sauntered in and threw my satchel on the floor. ‘And it’s against the law now, you know.’
Maggie’s tangle of pillar-box red hair jerked up. She dropped the pen on the mound of paper. ‘Shit, Sadie! Can’t you knock before you come in?’
She looked funny like that – all indignant eyes and open mouth. ‘Everyone else has to go outside for a fag,’ I chastised her half-heartedly.
She shrugged, relaxing now and held her hands up in mock surrender. ‘I’m giving up. Seriously. Did you know it’s bad for you?’
I said I hadn’t heard that.
‘Just got really into this submission,’ she was justifying herself. ‘New writer. Very good. All about the internet: Facebook, Twitter, blah blah, Generation Z’s youthful rebellion.’
I sauntered over to a filing cabinet that stood by the window. It was sprayed gold and decorated in what was probably a radical artwork but to my uninformed eye looked like bog-standard graffiti. It was very Mercurial. The gurgles from the coffee maker on top indicated it was ready to pour.
‘Interesting spin,’ I said and took two mugs from the shelf above. ‘I think I just experienced some of that, myself.’ Maggie didn’t answer so I coughed and nodded at the coffee. ‘I’m presuming this is for me? Mags, would you like one too?’
She grunted an affirmation and grudgingly gathered up the sheaf of paper, stapling the top right-hand corner and dumping it on an in-tray already several centimetres high.
‘Might as well close that window too,’ she shivered and pulled a fluffy purple cardigan tight over her shoulders. ‘I thought it’d be warmer this week.’
I placed the mugs on her desk, and brought the window down with more force than I intended resulting in a loud bang. Maggie tutted. I ignored her. ‘They say it might turn nice for the weekend.’
Maggie cast her eyes through the windowpane at the fluttering leaves of the sycamores. A plastic bag whipped up from the street and caught a branch directly outside. ‘If only the wind would drop.’ She grimaced and came back to me. ‘How are you going?’
I plucked out my standard response. ‘Coping with it,’ I told her.
She accepted that without further comment. ‘Have you been to the house yet?’
She was referring to my mum’s. ‘I thought I’d wait until I saw Dan.’
Maggie’s eyes narrowed. ‘He’s not turned up then?’
I shook my head. I was still livid that he hadn’t been at the funeral. That was another reason why I let off so much steam that night at the club. But beyond the anger there was concern. Or perhaps it was the other way round?
Yesterday I’d nipped into Mum’s hospice to fetch the last of her belongings and had seen one of the day shift nurses, Sally. Her husband, Michael, had once worked at Dan’s school and Mum had known Sally socially prior to her last illness. Not well, but enough to pass the time of day. We had wondered if that might make it awkward but her familiar face reassured Mum. We’d had a chat and she, too, asked about Dan, reminding me that Mum had a key to his flat on her keychain and suggesting that I pop into his place to check it out. We’d phoned endlessly and I’d knocked on his door with no joy, trying to find him before Mum … well, before things came to a head.
‘He’ll need your support more than ever now,’ Sally said. She was a homely woman, with an immense bosom, and an extraordinarily generous nature. I guess you have to be when you’re in that job.
‘I know,’ I had said and promised to go there.
‘And,’ she said. ‘Please do me a favour. I was talking to Doctor Jarvis about Dan going off like this. He said it’d be an idea to check his medication. Can you bring back a bottle, if there’s a spare somewhere, and he’ll have a look? Just to be sure.’
I had told her I would and was planning on swinging by his place after I’d finished up here at Mercurial.
‘Oh dear,’ Maggie was saying though her voice kept steady. ‘Do you want to talk about it?’
I could be upfront with Maggie. ‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m going to check his flat later. To be honest I’d rather talk work.’
‘Okay. Well, let me know if you need anything, yeah?’ Maggie straightened herself out and put on her professional head. The set of her jaw was firm and ready for business. ‘Right,’ she said. ‘Fire.’
I tasted the coffee and removed my notebook from my bag. ‘You mentioned another Essex Girls’ piece?’
I’d been fascinated with our regional stereotype for a very long time. Firstly because, as a grey-eyed, raven-haired Essex chick, I adored the leggy, booby, blonde ideal. Surrounded by Barbies and Pippas from an early age I’d cottoned onto the fact that this was the generally accepted notion of beauty. I couldn’t believe it when, as I made more excursions beyond the county’s limits, I discovered it was considered vulgar and stupid and a lot lot worse. The realisation left me feeling cheated and rather annoyed.
Later, as I left the borough I’d lived in all my life to venture North for uni, I found that not only being a joke, mentioning my home county often resulted in humiliation and embarrassment. My surname, Asquith, which I thought sounded a little posh, however did little to temper the constant barrage of wisecracks that I faced, as an Essex Girl called Mercedes, and as a consequence I shortened it to Sadie. Most people called me by that name these days, apart from my dad who stubbornly stuck to my full moniker. Anyway, the whole Essex thing was as exasperating as it was formative and as a consequence of this battle I went on into journalism, ‘to get my voice heard without shouting’, as my mum used to put it.
Although I didn’t relate the writing to my county or my gender I kept an edgy, working-class feel to my tirades. Luckily, people liked them and I was able to make a living from my rants.
Returning to my roots, Maggie indulged me and published a series of articles in which I challenged the neg
ative connotations attached to the stereotype of the Essex Girl.
‘Essex isn’t like other counties. Its daughter isn’t like those of Hertfordshire, Herefordshire or Surrey,’ I had written. ‘She isn’t demure, self-effacing or seeking a husband. She’s audacious, loud, drops her vowels and has fun. Like Essex itself, the Girl is unique. It’s about time we showed some filial pride.’
Got a good reception, that one. Circulation went up. Maggie commissioned another one, and another, then another.
In an attempt to trace the etymology of Essex Girl my last feature harked back to the dark days of the witch hunts and examined whether there was a link between Essex’s reputation as ‘Witch County’ and the genesis of Essex Girl. The two areas collided and, after further consideration, I concluded that there was and readers and commentators alike had not stopped filling up the web forum ever since.
Many comments spilt over into other sites, forums, newspapers and magazines. Positive or intensely outraged, Maggie didn’t care how they reacted, just that they did. ‘This is the kind of thing Mercurial needs. It’s getting our name out there into a broader market. We need more, and I’ll up your rate. Just give me something good and meaty,’ she’d said on the phone a couple of weeks back.
So here I was, with something perhaps a little on the sketchy side, but definitely spicy.
Maggie took a tentative swig of her coffee then blew on it. ‘Go on then – spill it. What you got for Mama?’
‘Okay.’ I flicked open my notepad and traced my notes to the relevant entry.
‘I’m delving deeper into the witch hunts. You know this book deal? Well, I’m churning up a lot of good stuff. I think I can funnel some articles over to you.’ I glanced up to catch a reaction. Maggie was nodding, her tongue licking her top lip, so I ploughed on.
‘Why did Essex lose so many women to the witch hunts?’
Maggie snorted. ‘Did we? It’s a long time ago. Some people might say “so what?”’
I leant in to her. ‘Yes, we did. Significantly more. It’s the sheer volume that warrants attention.’
Maggie picked up the biro and took a drag on the end. ‘You didn’t go into that in your last article did you?’