by Tina Seskis
15
I wake up crying, it seems my dreams have followed me. I stay in bed for now, it’s too early to get up. I find my old newspaper, the one from Crewe, under the bed and I lose myself in Sudoku, the hard one this time, and I manage to finish it and I’m vaguely pleased with myself, as if I’ve achieved something. I force myself down to the kitchen to have breakfast and then I shower and dress in my jazzed up outfit, still feeling self-conscious, it doesn’t look quite right – not Cat-like enough maybe, whatever that is. It’s drizzling when I eventually leave the house, but as always I feel better for being out. It’s such a relief to be anonymous here, not having to worry I’m being pointed at, whispered about. Angel has told me to take the tube to Covent Garden, that from there it’s an easy walk to Shaftesbury Avenue and it saves me having to change lines. She’s lent me a pocket sized A to Z so I feel more confident today, I’ll know where I’m going.
Under ground it is gross. The tube stinks of sweat – fresh sweat from over-heating office boys, stale sweat from people who probably have to put up with bathrooms like mine so haven’t washed for a while, and deep ever-present sweat that has drained down into the seats for days and months and years and is now rising up again in this extraordinary heatwave. It's the latter type that repulses me the most so I stay on my feet although there are places to sit down, and I grip the vertical yellow pole, my hand just above a well-groomed black one with butterflies on its fingertips. The owner of the hand seems agitated – maybe she’s late for work – and she taps and flutters her butterflies, and checks the watch on her other wrist, and makes little stamps with her beautifully-shod right foot, willing the train to go faster through the deep black hole.
I look for an internet cafe so I can update my CV. I have to add in my new address, my new mobile number, shorten my new name. I’m finding it frustrating that I don’t have access to the internet, and I regret my insistence at the mobile store that I take the cheapest phone, I should have listened to that lovely assistant instead of being the customer from hell. My lack of access to Google feels like another loss, another absence, and I decide that if I do manage to get a job quickly, I’ll just have to splash out on a laptop or some kind of fancy internet phone. If only I could ask Ben, he’d know what would be best for me. I stop myself. I have to keep it up, the forgetting.
I can’t find an internet cafe, I thought it would be easy, and so I try stopping a few people to ask but no-one knows, most people don’t need them, they have their own wired up homes and offices to connect them to the world. I give up asking and wander up and down random streets, searching lamely, aimlessly, tears threatening yet again, until I see some girls with dirty looking tangled hair and rings in their noses, in short ra-ra skirts over leggings and Converse trainers, and I don’t feel up to it but I ask them anyway, and they don’t speak very good English but they know where one is, and they send me back towards Leicester Square.
I sit at one of the screens at the back of the functional room full of computer terminals and robotic people, and I wonder what lives they’re living in cyber space, how different they are from their flesh and blood reality. How has history moved so fast to create this in the last ten years, what has happened to human interaction, what impact will it have on the future? Why do I even wonder? I've always disliked internet cafes – the name is a misnomer for a start, there’s no attempt to make the surroundings pleasant, there’s no-one to serve me coffee – and in this one in particular I feel like I’m in some kind of doom-ridden sci-fi movie. A loud clunk sounds over the low whirring of hard drives and the tap tap tap of keyboards, and I startle, but the noise is just someone buying a Coke Zero from the vending machine in the corner.
My CV is contained in the only email – apart from all the junk ones – that I’ve received at my new Hotmail address, the one I'd set up for Catherine Brown while I was Emily still. I’d stayed up late one night to type it out, telling Ben I wanted to write some thank you letters, one of the many lies I’d told him in those final weeks before I left. (And to think that before we had always been so open, so able to tell each other anything.) I’d sent the CV as an attachment in a mail from my old self to my new one, and then I’d deleted the word file and the sent mail, and emptied the wastebasket and deleted the history. A couple of clicks of the mouse, it was that easy to cover my tracks. I’d hated myself.
I look up a major temp agency and find a branch in Holborn, in case I get nowhere with Dolores’s friend – I’m not at all confident about that lead, although I feel I should give it a try, Dolores was so insistent, so keen to help me. I finish updating my CV and press save, and then send the file to myself again, so I’ve got it. I press print, and print out ten copies. It costs me a fortune but at least I won’t have to come to one of these places for a while, hopefully never again. I watch the clean white paper get sucked into the machine and come out covered with beautifully formatted lies, and I pay the boy on the till who stinks of weed, and he doesn’t even look at me as he gives me my change.
My A to Z sends me up Charing Cross Road and then left into a narrow street that smells of air conditioner fug and Chinese food. It's almost midday and I’m hungry, I seem to be always hungry now, but I decide to go and get it over with, while I still feel brave enough. I find the right street number and the door I’m after is a solid metal one, with various buzzers down the right hand side. The middle button says Mendoza Media Recruitment, that must be it, so I press it and wait.
I’m aware that I’m shaking. I’ve run away from my family. My CV is completely made up. I’ve changed my name, my occupation, where I’ve worked. I have no idea how to work a switchboard.
“Come on up,” says a thickly accented voice, and the buzzer goes so I push and the door is heavy. I find myself in a scuffed entrance hall – there’s a door to the left with a sad peeling sign for Smile Telemarketing, and some grey painted stairs in front of me which I take as there's no other option. At the next landing a dark-haired girl is waiting for me.
“You for MMR?” she says, and I think that’s an odd abbreviation and it gives me a tiny stab of pain, but I nod. “Have you got an appointment?”
“No, uh, a friend sent me, she said to ask for Raquel.”
“OK, who can I say is here?” asks the girl. She's a little overweight and her skirt and blouse are too tight, but her face is pretty and I think she’s probably younger than she looks.
“Cat Brown,” I say confidently. “Dolores sent me.”
“Dolores who?” she says, and I don’t know her surname, and the girl raises her eyes, just a little, but I notice and she’s right, I’m an idiot. She ushers me in to a small reception area with a once-trendy grey sofa, and a low level glass table that has a dying fern in the middle of it. It doesn’t feel very media to me, not that I’d really know, but she motions for me to sit down and I do so obediently, and she disappears through a door behind me.
After 20 minutes I’m ready to leave. The girl hasn’t returned and Raquel hasn’t shown up, and I’m sat here, hungry, anxious, feeling that this has been a waste of time after all. Just as I go to get up I hear the downstairs buzzer and heavy clumping on the stairs and eventually I see a very large woman panting on the landing. She’s wearing a kaftan and her skin glows orange, presumably from all the facial peels and sun-beds, and her hair is long and platinum blonde and it doesn’t suit her colouring. She invites me into her office and above her desk is a large framed picture of her much younger self, one of those studio shots, and she looks slim and beautiful and I sit down opposite her and mourn her lost looks, my lost empathy. I try my best not to think any Muppet-related thoughts, and hand her my CV.
“So, you know Dolores, yes?” She speaks with a very faint accent and I think she's Middle Eastern, maybe Israeli.
“I live in a shared house with her boyfriend,” I said. “I’ve just moved to London, I’m looking for reception work.”
She asks me what I like most about being a receptionist, how I deal with difficu
lt clients, how I manage when there are five calls waiting, that sort of thing. I try to forget that I’m lying and answer as best I can. She shuffles some papers on her desk.
“Are you available tomorrow?”
I panic inside. “Yes.”
“I have a temp position, a couple of weeks, an ad agency in Soho.” She looks at me doubtfully in my skeleton scarf. “I suppose you’d be OK. Do you have references?”
I have ready two printed references, both made up, both from big firms in Manchester where I’ve never worked. I assume that Raquel won’t check, and I give her the best smile I can manage.
Raquel makes a phone call. “Hi Miranda, are you still looking for someone for tomorrow? ..... Yes, her name’s Cat Brown ..... 8.45? Super .... She’ll be there. Bye bye, bye.”
She gives me the details for Carrington Swift Gordon Hughes, top ten advertising agency, Wardour Street, Soho, and I leave her office stunned, amazed at how easy, in practical terms at least, this is turning out to be.
16
Emily had found it hard to concentrate on her job after she'd finally got together with Ben. He'd invade her thoughts at inopportune moments, and she'd find herself smiling inanely, or even drifting off completely, during important meetings where she needed to concentrate. She felt like she'd been punched alive. She felt now that everything that had ever happened in her life before had been experienced through a veil, as if it had all been just a little out of focus. Ben made life dazzling and sharp for her, and it made the day to day business of being a lawyer an inconvenience, a distraction. She'd had to ban him from texting her at work in the end, as her concentration would vanish completely as she typed her wittiest reply and then waited for his response, and then she’d reply again a few minutes later, and then she might have to wait three minutes for his next text and her stomach would be turning back flips with the excitement of it all. Although they rarely met for lunch (Emily didn’t like to be too public about it all) she would usually text him when she was going down to the canteen, and he'd be sure to saunter past to have a chat and smile his shy smile and that would keep her going for the afternoon. Eventually of course, she settled down and regained her focus, but she never quite regained her passion for the job she’d worked so hard for.
A few months later Ben and Emily were sat in the canteen early one Monday morning, drinking revolting coffee, the canteen’s speciality. They were both tired, they’d climbed the two highest mountains in the Peak District at the weekend, and had barely got any sleep in between – it had rained and the tent had leaked, and besides they’d been too ecstatic. They sat comfortably together at a table near the entrance, on show to anyone who might be interested – they'd long since given up pretending they weren’t a couple, and fortunately people had long since stopped teasing them about it, telling them they shouldn’t jump into anything, about how great it was they’d fallen for each other, ha ha, yawn yawn. Now people simply accepted them as a pair, even called them Bemily, and they didn’t really mind, they were too happy to mind about anything much these days.
Emily was embarrassed all over again today though, and despite usually holding her mug in both hands, chin resting above it, elbows planted on the melamine table top, this morning she kept her left hand firmly out of sight.
“Go on, flaunt it,” whispered Ben. “Get it over and done with.”
She looked down into her sparkling lap and she couldn’t help her heart taking another little canter around her insides, down past her lungs, along her kidneys, over her large intestine. And then she remembered that she hadn’t even told her own twin sister yet, maybe they should wait until she’d done that before letting anyone else know. She looked up. Ben was still watching her expectantly, and she didn’t want him to think she was being reluctant – after all, she could always ring Caroline later.
“Why does it have to be me who does it?” she said in the end. “It’s so bloody sexist. I’m not your property or anything. You haven’t won me in a raffle.”
“Woo-ooh, Little Miss Touchy,” said Ben. “Here, give it to me then.” And she took the ring off and mock-threw it at him, and he caught it smartly, just above his coffee, and then he rammed it onto the little finger of his left hand and it was so tight it would probably get stuck, and he stood up and flounced over to the breakfast bar, wafting his hands around, John Inman-like, he was much less reserved these days.
“Sit down, you bloody idiot,” she hissed, only half-joking, but it was too late, a couple of colleagues were there getting breakfast and one of them squealed and went, "Is that what I think it is?” and then Emily’s boss heard, over at the toast machine, and before she knew it there was a whole group of people around her and Ben, oohing at the ring, congratulating them, hugging them, and although Emily usually hated being the centre of attention, in this instance she found she didn’t really mind.
17
On the first day of my new job I re-wear my black dress – I don’t have anything else suitable for an advertising agency – and Angel lets me borrow her accessories again, in fact she says I can keep them but I tell her not to be so daft. I get up early but still have to wait for the bathroom, Erica just beats me to it. When she eventually comes out, the bathroom is steamed up and stinks of sulphur and mouthwash, and I wonder if she’s as poisonous inside as she looks on the outside. Although I try to smile she scowls at me as she scurries past, wrapped in a short faded towel that shows off her perfect little legs.
I still don’t have flip-flops, but I’m getting used to my bathroom regime now – trying not to touch any of the surfaces, trying to avoid the mouldy shower curtain slithering against my body, then once I'm clean standing on one leg whilst I hold the shower head to rinse the bottom of the other foot, drying it with the towel I’ve hung over the shower rail so it doesn’t make contact with any of the surfaces, easing my dried foot into my waiting slipper, showering my other foot, half in, half out the bath, drying it and sliding it into the other slipper. I’m sure eventually I’ll get used to it, lower my standards, but at the moment this is the way I can cope.
Brad and Erica are in the kitchen and he's friendly but she's not. Why is such a nice guy with such a bitch? I try not to let her bother me, I should be used to it from growing up with Caroline, and I sit quietly at the table with a bowl of muesli and a mug of strong sweet tea like my mum used to make me.
I leave before I need to, I mustn't be late, and it’s just one line to Oxford Circus and it only takes me half an hour. I walk along Oxford Street and then turn left up Wardour Street and find the office a hundred yards up, on the right. It’s 8.25, I’m too early. I look at the shiny plate glass windows, through which I can see furniture shaped like internal organs, and the fancy sign above the double doors, and I look at my dreary dress and boring ballet pumps, and know I don’t look good enough. It’s Day Five, Friday in my first week in London and I stand outside this gleaming tribute to four people’s egos and find myself wanting to turn and run – but to where? Maybe I should have moved to the sea, I used to love it there. Get a grip, Cat. You’ve already run away, you can’t do it again. This is it now. I shove away memories from happier times, smooth my dress and adjust my scarf, and lurk outside for a few more minutes, until it’s time to go in.
18
Caroline adjusted Emily’s veil for the final time and they both looked in the mirror as two very different girls stared back. The bride was open-faced, natural-looking, with dark blond hair piled up high above her long neck. She wore a white satin jacket with fitted sleeves and tiny buttons down the front. Her matching skirt was panelled and kicked out just at the knees, and her shoes were high and forties style. The short veil finished the outfit off, and Caroline thought she'd never seen her twin look so glamorous. Emily had been worried about her sister doing the dress, she really wasn’t sure she could trust her, but Caroline had seemed so eager she thought it would be rude to say no, she was a designer after all – and besides she might react badly, get really upset. But Emily ne
edn’t have worried, she was delighted with the result.
Caroline was wearing hot pink, daringly short, and she had clashing bright auburn hair, cut into a geometric bob with a thick fringe, like when she was three years old. Her make-up was garish. You could hardly tell they were sisters.
Frances came into the room and saw her two girls standing together, and she noticed how happy they both looked, and yes, even close, like twins should be, and she hoped that maybe they could be more of a proper family at last. Even Andrew seemed a bit more available to them these days, slightly less vacant. It was weird to think it, but perhaps Caroline’s stay in that mental hospital had done them all good, one way or another. The staff had done a marvellous job in coaxing Caroline back into sanity, and then Frances’s insistence that her daughter move home for a while had been a surprising success. After the initial shock of the loud angry music and the bathroom-hogging and Caroline’s natural obnoxiousness, it had been cathartic for all of them. For the first time ever it was just Frances, Andrew and Caroline. Emily had already moved out to her tiny flat on the other side of Chester, and Caroline no longer felt in competition with her twin, at least not on a day to day basis, and it had been good for her. She’d been back with her parents for over two years now – none of them expected it to last anywhere near that long – and she'd appeared to soften, Frances thought, to finally gain some lovability. She’d got an admin job at a fashion house in Manchester and seemed to be doing well – Frances was thrilled for her. Caroline even seemed to hate Emily a little bit less these days, and she'd made her look so beautiful today. Frances felt her eyes fill unexpectedly with tears and she pulled herself together, in case she ruined her make-up.