‘Yes. As I say, I wouldn’t be here now if it wasn’t for my new friend. Good comes out of bad, you know, I think that’s always true. I’m so glad that I got the chance to meet her.’ Fay looked right into the camera, practically caressing the lens with those melting eyes. ‘Maggie, I’d like to thank you – not only for saving me on that coach, but for showing me the way. Here’s to you.’ She raised an imaginary glass to the screen.
The phone on my desk rang as I almost choked on my coffee, but by the time I’d mopped up and answered it, the caller had rung off. On the show, Renee moved swiftly away from Fay’s pseudo-psychology; if she had any idea it was me that Fay was celebrating, the bitter old bag sure as hell wouldn’t dwell on it. And neither would I.
I had an odd feeling somewhere deep inside. I felt guilty about Fay, about the fact that she made my skin crawl. I hoped this would be the last I saw of her. But I soon forgot her. There were more serious things on my mind by then.
Chapter Nine
Since I’d split up with Alex, Sundays haunted me. They were long and lonely; they reminded me of far happier times. However much I tried to celebrate my freedom, I just felt sad and empty as I dragged myself around the hills of Greenwich Park with Digby, or played gooseberry at Bel’s.
This Sunday, as my father dropped me at the nursing home on his way to Jenny’s, I was suffused not just with self-pity but with guilt too. I hadn’t visited much since the accident, since I’d utterly lost myself in the summer. I’d kept away while I tried to recover. Now, though, I wanted to be with my grandmother, searching for some calm and serenity. I needed to step out of time for a moment.
The staff were as welcoming as ever when I arrived; relieved to see young blood in these corridors of doom, I always guessed.
‘How’s the wicked Renee?’ joked Susan, her broad face still jolly despite the smell of decay and urine that pervaded the air; the perpetual smell that Susan lived and worked in. They thought I was so glamorous because I worked in the TV industry, and I played along with the lie because it was a nice job when you compared it to what they did: shovelling food and drink into slack old mouths, listening to the same feeble moans, to the hysteria of the senile and the ramblings of the lonely, the interminable wiping and dressing and wiping again. How could I possibly complain? They didn’t know that I hated myself a little more each day.
Angelic in her green dressing-gown, Gar looked as fragile as a powder-puff about to float away. Her soft hair was tied in a bun, silky under the dim light of her room. Someone had tuned her stereo into Radio 3 and she was nodding off to the strains of Strauss, her last cup of tea cold and cloudy before her on the table. I didn’t want to wake her – there was little point. Gar was going gaga, that was the awful truth. She was clamped in Alzheimer’s relentless jaws, and there was no snatching her back.
I held her hand as she slept, her wrinkly old hand that was so light these days, and gazed almost unseeing at the familiar photos on the wall: me as a toothy baby; me as a fat and naked toddler in a pink sunhat on the beach in Cornwall; me aged about five in my mother’s strong, freckled arms – skinny now, just a little curving belly of baby-fat left, our hair as brilliantly red as one another’s, my mother beaming with love and my dad just off to the side looking on proudly, very tall and thin, before his stoop began. Before the sadness started.
Susan popped her head round the door.
‘Fancy a cuppa, lovie?’
‘I’d rather have a whisky,’ I joked.
‘Vera’s got some sherry in her cupboard, I think.’ Susan did a double-take. ‘Ooh, you’ve had all your hair cut off. I didn’t notice with that beret on before. Very nice. You look a bit like Twiggy used to. All eyes.’ She wiped her red nose on a cotton handkerchief. ‘Only she was blonde, of course.’
‘Thank you.’ I rubbed my bare neck self-consciously. ‘I’m still not used to it. I just thought it was time for a change.’
‘A change is as good as a rest, that’s what they say.’ Susan nodded her approval. ‘I’ll get you that tea.’
While I waited, I had a hunt for the sherry.
Gar woke just before I left. ‘Did you have some porridge?’ she asked politely, and I knew she wasn’t sure who I was today, her blue eyes watery and confused – but she let me keep holding her hand, which was something. I stroked it gently and waffled on about this and that.
‘I’ll fetch that porridge, but don’t let it burn,’ my grandmother mumbled, and then nodded off again. I gave her a long hug, feeling her frame so frail beneath my arms, and headed back to Dad’s.
There was a half-hour wait at the cab office so I attempted a bus, but they were rare at the best of times and it was late on Sunday, so in the end I decided to walk across Blackheath. The physio had said I needed to keep moving as much as possible – but God, I was deathly slow at the moment.
In the middle of the deserted heath it suddenly seemed horribly dark. A breeze sniggered through the trees; there was no sight of the moon, no stars, just clouds scudding across a dark sky. Although I fought it, a knot of apprehension tightened as I walked.
However hard I tried not to, I found myself constantly glancing behind me, disturbed by the notion that someone might be following me. But I was alone each time I turned; of course I was alone. I hummed something jolly, something made up, and wished fervently that Digby was here to bark at my imaginings. I tried to walk a little quicker, but my foot was really hampering me now.
A fox barked in the thicket by the pond, a terrible sound like a baby crying, and I jumped. The leaves rustled and shivered in the wind. Then a car drove by very fast, blinding me with its lights, and I stumbled on the uneven grass. Righting myself, I thought I heard voices but I couldn’t work out from where. I picked up my pace as best I could.
Eventually a couple of kids dragging a fat Pekinese came into sight under the lamppost on the corner by the pond. My sigh of relief was audible. I shuffled along, keeping them in my sights until I finally hit the main road.
* * *
The next day I raced home from work to collect the car I could finally drive again, and was about to head out when my dad called me into the sitting room. He was immersed in The Times’ crossword.
‘Beautiful flowers, love,’ he said, waving his pen vaguely in the direction of the sideboard. ‘I stuck them in a vase. You might need to do something with them.’
‘Lilies,’ I said stupidly, gazing at them. The exact same bunch as last time. ‘Bloody lilies again.’ I crossed the room to see if there was a card with them, but I couldn’t find one. I gazed at the top of my father’s bent and balding head. ‘Do you know who brought them?’
‘Fourteen across. Eight letters. Unwelcome pale beast.’
‘Dad!’
‘Sorry. No. They were on the doorstep when we got back.’
I pushed the vase back, morbidly transfixed. ‘Flowers of death, you know,’ I muttered. ‘That’s what they say.’
For the first time since I’d walked in, my father looked up at me sharply. ‘Don’t be silly, Maggie.’ He frowned. ‘Do you mean because –’
Jenny trundled in, wearing a vivid orange kaftan creation. She looked like a small plump carrot. ‘Hello, lovie.’ She came over to kiss me. She was very tanned.
‘You look well,’ I said, as brightly as I could. ‘Good holiday?’
‘Wonderful, thanks, Maggie. Amazing place. I’m going to try to drag your father there.’
I smiled. ‘You should.’ Somehow I couldn’t see him on the beaches of Goa. But that was why they worked well together, my solemn, slightly pained father and the gregarious Jenny. When he’d introduced me to her a few months ago – ‘their eyes had met across the crowded staffroom’ – I hadn’t taken much notice. Well, I hadn’t been taking notice of anything, to be honest, and anyway, my father’s relationships usually lasted less time than the seasons in his precious garden, as his heart never really engaged. But he and Jenny reflected something in one another, and she was still here.
She’d seen him through the recent dark days, and she made him smile. That was the important thing.
‘I’ve made a curry in India’s honour. You’ll join us, won’t you?’
The carriage clock on the mantelpiece chimed the hour. ‘I’m sure India will be very honoured, but I’m afraid I’m late already.’ Thank God. Jenny’s cooking was atrocious at the best of times.
‘I’ll save you some.’ She noticed the flowers. ‘New beau, darling? I do love lilies.’
‘Just what you need,’ my father mumbled. We both looked at him. ‘A new beau.’
I blushed. ‘I don’t know who they’re from, that’s the problem.’
‘Perhaps you’ve got a fan since your debut on TV.’ Despite my best efforts, I’d been rumbled when my dad’s head of maths, off sick, had caught the show. ‘How exciting.’ Jenny beamed. ‘You could have a fan club and everything.’
‘I’m going to chuck them out,’ I replied. ‘I don’t want them anyway.’
‘But they’re gorgeous,’ Jenny protested.
‘Take them home, then,’ I said. ‘Honestly. You have them.’
‘Of course!’ My father hit the paper triumphantly. ‘Elephant.’
I patted his head affectionately. ‘I’ll see you later.’
On the way out of the room I managed not to look at the lilies again, and I had such a nice time at Bel’s – making spaghetti bolognese with Hannah while Bel rang round making last-minute arrangements for Friday night, drinking red wine and listening to Johnno playing the guitar badly, serenading us with silly Rolf Harris songs in his broadest Australian accent – that I forgot all about the bloody flowers.
But on the way home to my father’s, the feeling of disquiet began to balloon again. It wasn’t just the fact that some freak had taken to sending me horrible bouquets; it was my sense of utter displacement – knowing it was time to leave my father’s house, time to leave Greenwich. He and Jenny were beginning to get close, and they deserved a proper chance after everything he’d been through. And I needed my own space again. I needed to finally extricate my life from Alex’s. We were going to have to sell the flat in Borough Market, and that would inevitably mean seeing him.
My mobile rang. ‘Hello?’ I swerved dangerously near the parked car on my left. ‘Hello?’ I repeated irritably. ‘Who’s there?’
No one spoke, but this time I swore I could hear someone breathing. With a howl of frustration, I threw the phone onto the floor, where its fluorescent face winked up at me mercilessly all the way home.
Chapter Ten
The morning of Bel’s great party, I found Joseph Blake sulking on the office fire-escape. It was a cold sunny day, the sky as clear and bright as a Hockney print, the air fifteen storeys above the Waterloo streets far fresher than the fumes below. I’d sneaked out to have a cigarette, savouring every guilty drag as I contemplated how desperately I didn’t want to go tonight, when I heard a stifled noise.
‘Hello?’ I called quietly up the stairs. No response. ‘Who’s that? Are you okay?’
A minute later, Joseph’s blotchy red face peered down. ‘Oh,’ he said ungraciously. ‘It’s you.’
‘It certainly was the last time I looked,’ I agreed mildly. ‘Cigarette?’ I offered.
He stood and slunk down the stairs towards me, shaking his head at the packet, his blond hair flopping across his eyes. ‘No. I don’t.’
‘No, well, I shouldn’t. But we’ve all got to have a vice or two. Otherwise life’d be awfully dull, don’t you think?’
He shrugged uncommunicatively, bashing a suede brothel-creeper against the metal step.
‘So, d’you want to talk about it?’
He shrugged and bashed again. I felt my skin prickle with irritation. I took another drag of my cigarette. ‘If you don’t tell me what’s wrong, Joseph, I can’t help.’
He hesitated for a moment, looking out across the rooftops. Two young men smoked out of a window in the building opposite; one waving cheekily when he saw me glancing over. I waved back. Finally, Joseph muttered, ‘It’s them.’
He flopped his hair toward the office behind us, towards the girls scattered round the open-plan room. I glanced back at them. From outside they looked like an advert for a young fashion house, miniskirted, skinny-jeaned, Ugg boots and stilettos thrust up on desks, expensive messy hair skewered with biros, scribbling furiously and tapping fruity-coloured nails impatiently as they waited for answers from the prey pinioned on the other end of the phone lines. Sometimes the noise inside was so intense, so deafening as they pleaded and persuaded and hammered their keyboards frantically, that you’d have to step out for a moment to literally hear yourself think.
‘They don’t like me.’
‘I’m sure that’s not true.’ But inwardly I sighed. Actually I was sure it was.
‘They never ask me to have lunch.’
‘They just need to get used to you. You should invite yourself along.’
‘They don’t talk to me if I do.’
‘Well, talk to them.’
His bottom lip trembled, just like Hannah’s did when she was going to cry. Poor kid.
‘Look, I know it’s really hard, being the new boy. And it’s a very female office, I know that. Let me have a word with them.’
He shrugged again. How much of this was his fault? I wondered. He wasn’t the most prepossessing figure; there was something inherently arrogant about his stance, despite the tears. The trouble was, he lacked the charm you needed to make it in TV-land.
‘Won’t that just make it worse? It did when my parents complained to the school.’
Aha. ‘Did it? Were you bullied, then?’
‘Yep.’
‘Why?’
‘They said I was posh.’
He was posh. ‘I’ll be subtle, I promise. I’m sure it’s in your head, anyway.’
But it wasn’t in his head, unfortunately. The truth was they despised him.
‘He’s such a bloody drip,’ Donna moaned when I summoned the suspected ring-leaders into my office later that afternoon, having sent Joseph off to get some tapes dubbed. ‘Always complaining we give him the dull jobs.’
‘Well, do you?’
‘Of course we do.’ She was defiant, her dark face sulky. I wouldn’t have wanted to get on the wrong side of someone like Donna when I started out. Driven and determined, she could persuade Blair he hated Bush if she put her mind to it.
‘You know how it works, Maggie. You gotta do your time. You gotta start at the bottom. We all did. Anyway,’ she sniffed, examining her pink palm-tree nails rather than looking at me, ‘he’s weird.’
‘What do you mean, weird?’
‘It’s just, he’s always poking around.’ She flicked her long braids behind her shoulder, her full mouth set firm.
‘He’s just a bit full of himself, I think that’s the problem.’ Sally’s broad pleasant face was thoughtful. ‘He gets people’s backs up because he acts like he’s too good for the jobs we give him.’
‘And have you talked to him about it?’
‘It was like this in the summer.’
The hairs on my arms stood on end. I shook my head as if it would bring memories back.
‘I’ve tried to explain, but he just bangs on about how he’s going to be a great auteur, and how this is just a stop-gap.’
I sighed again. Yet another aspiring Nick-blinking-Broom-field, about to save the world with his art. ‘All right, look, let’s just give him another chance, okay? I’ll have a word.’ I glared at Donna. ‘And be nice, yeah? I know how intimidating you lot can be if you put your minds to it.’
She grinned sheepishly, raising the palm trees in supplication before her tightly T-shirted bosom that read Respect Me. ‘Okay, okay.’
Sally lingered in my office. ‘The truth is, Maggie, I don’t think he’ll ever really fit in. He’s just one of those slightly oddball kids, you know? Like the ones at school who had an imaginary friend they played with at breaktime.’
> ‘Yep, I do know. But that lot can be remorseless, we both know that.’
‘I suppose.’ She brightened. ‘You going to Bel’s tonight then?’
‘Oh my God.’ I clapped a hand to my forehead in distress. ‘I forgot to pick up my dress. She’ll kill me.’ I cast a quick look across to Charlie’s empty office. ‘If I don’t go now, I’ve blown it.’
‘Go,’ Sally urged. ‘I’ll cover for you.’
I dragged my coat on and grabbed my bag. ‘With any luck,’ I switched my computer to sleep mode, ‘Charlie’ll be too pissed to notice anyway.’
In a dim little street on the Covent Garden borders I found the shop with the fancy name that Bel had insisted I visit. The window heralded some of London’s most expensive clothes – a veritable myriad of gorgeous stuff. Minty greens and frilly pinks, gold silks and silver froth, below which crouched lethal-looking shoes with four-inch heels, poised to spring cruelly onto unsuspecting feet. It was so utterly not me – but my fate was sealed. As I hovered by the door, a size-zero girl with scary eyebrows slithered towards me, and, with disdain ill-hidden, relieved me of my polystyrene coffee-cup. ‘Can I help, madam?’ she asked, barely keeping the sneer off her face.
‘I’ve come to collect a dress Bel Whitemore has reserved for me.’ I looked around nervously, taking in the flounces, the backless and frontless, the micro-mini and the slit-to-the-thigh. ‘Lord. I do hope it’s something subtle.’
The girl swished through the chiffon, the beribboned and the barely-there to find what Bel had chosen.
‘So brave to try that colour. Red hair must be so difficult.’
Manfully I ignored the girl as I stepped into the beautiful forest-green floor-length dress, plunging at the front and cut deeply at the back. To complete the outfit she gave me stilettos by someone called Manolo Blahnik, the perfect eyebrows nearly shooting off her face in horror when I said I’d never heard of him.
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