Ten Steps to Happiness

by Daisy Waugh

  But the first person he saw when he got to the house was Charlie.

  ‘Charlie! Goodness!’

  Charlie was at his desk in the library, writing a letter for Messy to take with her to Jo.

  ‘Hello, Maurice,’ he said, looking up but not smiling. ‘I suppose that was you, was it, making that bloody awful racket outside? You’ll have terrified the animals.’

  ‘Ha!’ said Maurice nervously. ‘I just – when I heard the news I had to get down here as quickly as possible.’

  ‘Very kind of you,’ said Charlie. ‘I don’t suppose, with your connections and so on, there’s anyone you might be able to talk to? Get this bloody thing reversed, somehow. Messy’s distraught. Distraught. And you probably don’t care much about Grey, but he’s—’

  ‘As a matter of fact I had rather a bad day myself. Perhaps you heard? We lost Gjykata this morning. I was with him. I was holding his hand…Terrible. Heart attack. Out of nowhere. One minute he was with us, the next he was gone.’

  ‘I’m so sorry.’

  Maurice raised his hand. ‘Don’t let’s talk about it, Charlie. It’s too ghastly. Too ghastly. I just thought you might have heard. But tell me, how is poor Messy? Is she bearing up?’

  ‘Not really, no. She’s pretty bad.’

  ‘Ah! Was she there, then, when they came to take the children away? What happened? They were just – what – reacting to the newspaper stories, I suppose?’

  Charlie nodded. ‘And I can’t stop wondering – whoever sold that story must have been here. They must have known how happy the children were. They must have seen how happy Grey and Messy were…’

  Maurice blinked. ‘The er—Charlie, I hate to state the obvious but haven’t you guessed—By the way where’s Jo?’

  ‘Guessed what? Who?’

  ‘I don’t know. Well, I mean—’ he laughed, ‘of course I do know. I mean I assume I know. It’s so obvious.’

  ‘Nothing’s obvious, Maurice. I’ve been away for two days and I’ve come back to total fucking mayhem. Fucking devastation. Who do you think sold the story? Because I have no idea.’

  ‘Come on, Charlie!’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Well, come on! Wake up! Who knows all the ins-and-outs here? Who’s already sold one story to the newspapers? And who, Charlie – I can’t believe I’m having to say this – who have you just fired recently?’

  Charlie laughed uncertainly. ‘No. You don’t realise, Maurice. You don’t realise how stupid he is. Poor man. I mean there’s one thing spotting a couple of celebrities and taking a snap. But really it’s quite another, understanding that because of something Grey did – actually didn’t – do, nearly fourteen years ago…’ His voice trailed away.

  ‘…There are times, Charlie, when your naïveté astounds me. However,’ Maurice shrugged, ‘what does it matter? The damage is done. Anyway—’ He broke off, bent his head slightly to the side and ran a rough hand through his hair, just like Charlie did. It was a mannerism Maurice had only recently added to his collection. ‘The real reason I’m here, deafening you all with my ghastly flying machine – the real reason I’m back here again…’ He looked at Charlie who was frowning, not in the least interested in Maurice’s excuses. What wonderful thick eyelashes he had, Maurice thought. What a delightfully strong, well-defined jaw…‘Tell me, do you find time to play football anymore?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I was – I’m looking for Messy.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I wanted to tell Messy about Drejtohet. Gjykata. I thought she might be interested.’

  ‘She might be. But she’s got quite a lot on her plate at the moment.’

  ‘Ah! Yes, of course…’

  ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘My dear chap, I’ve never been finer. By the way where’s Grey? Now that Messy needs him so much? Where is Grey?’

  ‘Grey’s gone.’

  ‘Ah!’

  ‘He had to go.’ Charlie turned pointedly back to his letter. ‘Messy’s upstairs if you want her. Packing. She’s leaving for London tonight.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Maurice, backing out of the room. ‘Thank you for everything, Charlie. And once again I’m so sorry to have disturbed you.’

  Derek met Sue-Marie in the District Council lift on his way out to the pub that evening. They were alone together, so Derek said—

  ‘Well – we slapped that repairs order on. As specified.’

  ‘Good, good.’

  He glanced across at her. ‘You put one on the kitchen, did you?’

  ‘Sort of thing.’ She smiled at him, a conspiratorial smile, from one hard-working law enforcer to another.

  But he misinterpreted it. He thought it was from one crook to another, so he said tentatively, ‘So, er. Thanks for that, Sue. Certainly comes in handy.’

  She smiled brightly, another of her eye-flapping blinders, because that was what Sue-Marie did when members of the opposite sex addressed her, and she didn’t understand what they were saying. ‘Super,’ she said.

  ‘Yes. My wife’s been nagging for years to go on one of those African safari things. In Africa. And Keith and James are ever so keen.’

  Sue-Marie inhaled through her teeth, just imagining…Savannah grassland, rhinos, little families of warthog, men with spears…‘Mmm!’ she said. ‘Lovely. A dream come true! But I’ve heard it’s very dear.’

  ‘Certainly is!’ said Derek with a grin. ‘The wife’s only booked it this morning!’

  Sue-Marie didn’t say anything. She frowned. Just then the lift bell sounded and the doors opened onto the ground floor. ‘Ooh, bother,’ she said unconvincingly (not that Derek noticed), ‘I think I’ve forgotten something. I’ll have to go back. See you tomorrow then, Derek. Have a good night!’

  Upstairs again, Sue-Marie waited patiently for the office to empty, then she made her way over to his desk. It was a mess, of course, with dirty coffee cups and pieces of paper strewn all over it. Carefully, without disturbing them, she started up his computer and when it asked for a password she typed in the name of his wife. Then the names of his two children. And then DEREK. Which worked. But when she scrolled through his files she didn’t really know what to look for. So she found nothing.

  The cleaner came in. But the cleaner didn’t know where she usually sat. The cleaner didn’t even know her name.

  ‘Hello!’ Sue-Marie said brightly. ‘Working late tonight, I’m afraid!’

  ‘Ye-es,’ said the cleaner.

  Sue-Marie opened the top drawer of his desk. There were half-eaten chocolate bars in there, and wedges of unopened envelopes. The second drawer was so crammed she couldn’t open it more than a couple of inches, and the third was no better. She tutted disapprovingly. It was people like Derek, she thought, who gave public servants a bad name.

  And then suddenly she lost heart. She didn’t even know where to begin. And she was being absurd anyway. She felt ashamed for suspecting either of them. Derek was lazy but that didn’t mean he was a villain. And Maurice Morrison was a dreamboat. She shut the computer down, forced closed the three drawers again and was about to leave when she finally noticed the sheet of paper. It was covered in food splodges and doodles and lying directly in front of her, face up, half tucked beneath the keyboard.

  He’d drawn a lot of hearts on it, a single giraffe, several pound signs, an outline of Africa and some diamond shapes, partially shaded. And between them, in loopy, adolescent handwriting:

  moneyson moneyson mauricon morrison moneyson mauricon

  I ♥ U

  She wanted to be wrong. She hoped she was wrong. But it aroused suspicions she’d been repressing for days. She picked up the piece of paper, gave a cheery goodbye to the cleaner, who didn’t seem to hear, and headed for the councillors’ car park. Sue-Marie needed time to think.

  Meanwhile Moneyson himself was sitting on the edge of Messy’s bed, watching her pack. He wanted her to stop for a moment, to look at him, to concentrate, but she was bustling about f
rom one cupboard to another, sobbing all the time, and looking, frankly, appalling.

  ‘Messy, sweetheart,’ he said. ‘Listen to me. Calm down. Calm down.’

  But she didn’t want to listen. He stood up, stood in front of her, took one of her fleshy upper arms in each hand. ‘Stop!’ he said.

  Irritably she shook him off.

  ‘Messy!…Messy!’ He sounded hurt.

  ‘I’m sorry, Maurice. But you can see I’m in a fucking state. I can’t—there’s no point in all this talking. I’ve got to get to London. I’ve got to get this—’

  ‘Ah-ha! Then I can help you. Let me give you a lift in my ’copter. Let me do that at least.’

  But it only reminded her of Colin. Colin and Chloe, who should have been riding in his helicopter at that very moment. She started crying again.

  He said, ‘Messy, please. Come outside with me. Just for a few minutes. The cold air will do you good. Give you a chance to think clearly. I can give you a lift back to London. Tonight. And I can help you get your daughter back. Of course I can! I’m a Government Minister, for Christ’s sake! Ha! Do you think I can’t pull a few strings with the local council?’

  ‘You can?’ she said, stopping suddenly, looking at him angrily and clearly for the first time. ‘But you can’t even get anyone to open the fucking kitchen again! Or stop all that crap about the stables that’s obviously going to bankrupt them. How can you get me my daughter when you can’t even stop some stupid bitch from closing a kitchen?’

  ‘Oh, Messy. Ha-ha. Messy! I’m not God!

  ‘But you’re a fucking Minister. It’s the next best thing, isn’t it?’

  ‘No! Well, yes and no. Look, Messy. You’re not listening…Come outside with me. Please. I need to talk to you. I can get your daughter back. I promise. We’ll get your daughter back. But, first, come outside with me. Talk to me. I have a proposition to make. Proposal. Approach. Suggestion. Whatever [nothing sounded quite right]. Come outside with me, Messy. And we’ll talk.’

  In his jacket pocket (where the mobiles had been) there rested a small square box from Tiffany. It was something, he calculated feverishly, as they made their way down the stairs, which he might produce at any minute. Or might not. Might. Might not. Might. Might not. Of course it depended on how the conversation developed.

  Outside at last, by the light of the moon, Messy and Maurice walked across the park, over the cobbles past the old stables, towards Messy’s walled garden. Maurice, pacing beside her through the cold air, fingering the Tiffany box in his pocket, found himself besieged suddenly by images of the dead boy…his fingers, his chest, his feeble adolescent shoulders…It was Messy who finally broke their silence.

  ‘I shall miss it here,’ she said. ‘It’s the most beautiful place I’ve ever been.’

  ‘Yes…It casts a sort of spell on one, doesn’t it?’ he said. ‘But never fear! We shall be back!’

  She shook her head. ‘Not me.’ She thought of Grey and the cottage, and Chloe, and of how happy they all might have been. She started crying again. ‘Maurice, tell me, please. I can’t stand her having to spend a night in that place. Can you get her back tonight? Please…’

  ‘Messy…Messy,’ he sing-songed, stroking her hair in the moonlight. ‘Messy, angel. I can’t get her back tonight. You know that. But if we work together—’

  ‘Then what can you do?’

  ‘I can talk to people—’

  ‘So why aren’t you talking to them. Now?’

  Maurice recoiled slightly, but chose to continue stroking. Her voice could be unattractively shrill sometimes, he noticed. It was something else they would need to work on. Something they could work on together…That and the continued weight loss, of course. He smiled. At his little rough diamond. They would have such fun, working together…

  ‘For fuck’s sake, Maurice, why are you smiling?’ She pushed his hand away. ‘You keep talking about helping us. You zoom around in your fucking helicopter, promising the world. But so far as I can see nothing ever happens. Nothing.’

  ‘Ha! Nothing Ever Happens…Do you know it?’ Suddenly he started humming. ‘Del Amitri, if I’m not mistaken. Wonderful song.’ Again, with a tender smile, he replaced his hand on her hair.

  Again, she flicked it off. ‘What the hell is the matter with you?’

  ‘Messy, darling – I’ll tell you what’s the matter with me. Can I tell you what’s the matter with me? Can you not guess?’

  Her heart sank. ‘What?’ she said, with all the discouragement she could muster. ‘Maurice, seriously. This isn’t the time. Can you help Chloe or can’t you?’

  But he wasn’t listening. ‘Messy, I’m in love with you.’

  She sighed, a thundering, heaving, intensely impatient sigh. ‘What’s that got to do with anything? We were talking about Chloe.’

  This was going badly wrong, Maurice noted. He worried if he was rushing things a bit. He laughed, a tittery, jittery laugh, and then, out of the corner of his eye, he noticed the Albanian’s hand was moving. Was that possible? He spun round. ‘What was that?’

  ‘What was what?’

  ‘Did you see it?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Did it move?’

  ‘What the fuck are you talking about?’

  Concentrate. He had to concentrate. ‘Messy, darling.’ Without warning, he plopped down onto his knees. He fumbled inside his pocket. ‘You make me feel whole. I am besotted. You make me feel alive again. Like I want to live again. Like life is lovable again. Messy, I want to marry you.’

  ‘Christ!’ She wanted to shake him. ‘Maurice, get up! Stand up! Belt up, for God’s sake.’

  ‘From the moment I first set eyes on you—’

  ‘I’m not interested. I do not want to hear this.’ She tried to cover her ears but Maurice grasped her hands and held them.

  ‘You must hear this. Messy – I love you.’

  ‘Maurice, I don’t—I do not love you.’

  ‘No!’ he cried triumphantly. ‘But you love this house. Don’t you! Tell me you don’t love this house!’

  ‘So what?’

  ‘Well! And wouldn’t you love to live here for the rest of your life? Not in a poxy little cottage at the bottom of the drive, but here. Here! In the Great House. Tell me you wouldn’t love that! Tell me—’ He stopped suddenly. A rustle in the rhododendrons. ‘What was that? Did you hear that?’

  His face looked so terrified, Messy felt a flash of pity. ‘Maurice,’ she said quietly, ‘let me go. You’re not yourself. I think maybe you need to – have a little rest or something. I don’t know. Anyway I’ve got to go…’

  ‘Nonsense, I’m – there it was again! What was that noise?…Did you hear it?’

  ‘No, I didn’t. Of course I bloody didn’t. Let me go!’

  ‘Hello?’ he shouted, peering out at the bushes. She snatched her arms away and ran. ‘No! Messy, wait!’ He scrambled to his feet, frantic not to be left alone out there with the rhododendrons and the ghost of Gjykata Drejtohet. ‘…Messy!’

  Another rustling sound, very close, very loud, and out from the shadows stepped—

  ‘Only me.’ She grinned at him.

  He screamed.

  ‘You are a dark horse, aren’t you, Maurice? First this…’ She waved her stolen piece of paper. ‘Now Messy Monroe…And that really upsets me, Maurice. Because I believed in you. I really believed in you. You were my hero. You were! My champion, my idol, my shining light…’

  ‘How the fuck did you get in?’

  ‘I was actually on my way to see Mr Maxwell McDonald.’

  ‘But he despises you!’

  ‘I hinted,’ she said heavily, ‘that I was in possession of some very relevant information. I was just parking my car when I heard you. Chatting away. So I thought – wait there, Sue-Marie. Less haste, more speed!’

  ‘What do you want?’ he snapped feverishly. ‘Can’t you see I’m busy?’

  ‘Mmm. Let me think about that,’ she said slowly. ‘I suppose yo
u know Derek Stainsewell’s taking his wife and kids off on holiday to Kenya?’

  Maurice Morrison’s shoulders hunched. Slowly, meticulously, his fingers, hands and arms began to knot together. He looked down, allowing his neck to flop forward. He cleared his throat, shook himself all over, breathed in, breathed out, pulled his head up. ‘My dear, dear Sue-Marie…’ She could see his teeth glistening in the moonlight. ‘The very lady I was looking for! What a wonderful, wonderful surprise!’

  She was torn. She could still hear Messy’s footsteps sprinting over gravel back towards the house. And yet here was Morrison. Her fallen hero. Her vanquished champion. Her broken idol. But her idol nonetheless. The breathtakingly handsome, adorable, gorgeously irresistible Money Morrison. Maurice Moneyson. Whatever. At her mercy.

  ‘Then kiss me!’ she said.

  And he did.

  Messy could have run to the cottage, where she knew Nigel, Anatollatia and the General were munching joylessly on the General’s ineptly made sandwiches. But the house was closer. And she was frightened. When she ran into the library, half crying, half laughing, there was no sign of Charlie. Only his letter to Jo, which lay half written on the desk.

  She barricaded herself in, for fear of encountering Morrison ever again, and ordered a cab to take her on the long drive to the train station. But by the time it arrived, and she had buzzed it through the gate, there was still no Charlie, and the others hadn’t yet returned from the cottage. She left Fiddleford without saying goodbye to anyone.

  She didn’t notice Charlie, running cross-country through the park as she swept up the drive that last time, and nor did he notice her. He noticed very little, in fact. Maurice’s words had blocked everything else out. Sometimes, Charlie, your naïveté astounds me…He’d forgotten everything: the letter, Messy, Sue-Marie. Sometimes, Charlie, your naïveté astounds me. Was he really such a fool? Sometimes, Charlie, your naïveté astounds me…Was that why everything was crumbling? He needed to know, and cross-country, and running, was the quickest route to finding out. He was heading to the Fiddleford Arms, where Les, as Charlie well knew, could always be found at this time in the evening.