Me and You

by Claudia Carroll

  And eventually I crack. In desperation, I call Sarah to remind her re the job at her sandwich bar that she promised she’d look out for. Any kind of job; I’m not above scrubbing toilets at this stage. Anything doing, I ask her, barely succeeding in keeping the pleading tone out of my voice. Because I’m actually going off my head here. Need something to distract me. Badly.

  ‘Angie, this is total telepathy!’ she says briskly. ‘I was just about to call you! As it happens, I’ve a junior in our Baggot Street branch going back to college, so I’ve a vacancy. You free to start next week?’

  Oh, bless Sarah anyway! Total lifesaver. Because, after all, buttering bread and slicing raw onions is infinitely better than worrying myself into early grave.

  11 January

  Finally, finally, finally, some actual hard news from Crown.

  He calls me at about seven in the evening, just as Simon and I are about to order in from the Chinese down the road. Says he’s just heard back from Dutch police at Schiphol airport.

  ‘I just wanted you to know how sorry I am that it took so long,’ he explains patiently, ‘but you see Interpol had to interview staff at all airport departure points, just in case they’d seen or heard anything. I hope you understand, Angie.’

  ‘Of course,’ I say automatically.

  ‘So finally we have news.’

  I slump down onto the sofa beside me.

  ‘And?’ My voice comes out in a hoarse croak.

  ‘It seems the lead came from an Irish aid worker who was transiting through Schiphol on her way out to Nairobi just last week,’ he goes on. ‘She’d read all about Kitty Hope’s disappearance on her flight from Dublin to Amsterdam. She’d even seen her photo. Then when she arrived at Schiphol, she subsequently swore blind she saw a woman who exactly matched Kitty’s description striding through the departures concourse at the airport. Interpol have questioned her and she’s made a full statement. But I think by far the best thing is if you and Simon could get in here right away. I’ve something to show you.’

  Harcourt Street cop shop, 7.44 p.m.

  Police interview room, yet again. By now, I’m starting to spend so much time here that I might just bring a few scented candles with me for next time; may as well dot them round the place to make it that bit more homely. Crown is on the phone as we arrive, with a stuffed file in front of him that he keeps referring down to as he’s talking. The minute he sees us, he brightens, then ushers us inside, awkwardly shoving a thick fistful of fair hair out of his eyes and mouthing at us that he’ll be off the call and with us in just a moment.

  ‘Now you’re to be nice,’ Simon mutters to me as we take our usual seats.

  ‘Aren’t I always?’

  ‘No, not to me, to Crown. Look, Angie, I know you feel he’s not doing enough for us, but trust me, he actually is. Frankly, I don’t see how he could be doing any more.’

  ‘I know, I know,’ I tell him a bit sulkily, like a recalcitrant schoolgirl being hauled over the coals.

  ‘The guy’s all right, Angie. Just give him a chance.’

  And I will. I promise. At least, I’ll certainly try to.

  Crown comes straight back into us, all sandy and chunky and a bit sweaty. He rolls up his sleeves, apologises profusely for having to take that call, then cuts straight to the chase. To their credit, seems Dutch police have been working closely with Interpol over the past two weeks trying to sift through hours of CCTV footage from Schiphol airport, and now finally, they’ve closed in on a shot of exactly who it was the aid worker saw last week.

  ‘You see, it still has to be checked out,’ Crown explains. ‘Even if it does turn out to be just another dead end.’

  Simon glances hopefully across and locks eyes with me, but I’ve been let down once too often to allow hope to get the better of me this early on.

  ‘But the bad news is, though …’ Crown goes on looking at me worriedly and suddenly I find myself thinking, Ha! You see? Always there’s the bad news! And there’s always going to be a ‘but’!

  ‘… that we’ve only been able to narrow it down to this one clear shot of Kitty, if it even is her. It’s not that easy to tell. Here, have a look for yourselves. Tell me what you think.’

  He whips out a large-ish black-and-white photo, grainy and slightly blurred, like it was taken from shaky video surveillance footage. Simon and I leap on it, nearly snatching it out of his hands. Look at it, squint at it, hold it up to the light, study it this way and that.

  Turns out to be … well, not all that much, really. All you can see is the hazy outline of a tall woman, Kitty’s height and build all right, with hair scraped under a woolly winter hat, patiently queuing up in a duty-free shop, one of those ones that are more like supermarkets, where you can buy anything from magazines to litre bottles of Jack Daniel’s to Touche Éclat concealer. The CCTV camera must have been a good bit away from her too, as this girl’s figure is tiny in the photo, v. distant.

  Simon and I pass it backwards and forwards between us, scrutinising it from every conceivable angle. But it’s nigh on impossible to tell whether it’s Kitty or not, the picture quality is just too poor. Plus, the clothes this girl is wearing look wrong, all wrong for Kitty. For starters, they actually match. In all the years I’ve known her, don’t think I’ve ever seen Kitty wearing what any reasonable person might consider co-ordinated clothing.

  Most frustrating of all, though, is that you can’t get a clear look at this girl’s face, whoever she is. Would at least be able to make out her profile, only a v. overweight guy is leaning right in front of her to grab what looks like an oversized Toblerone bar from a stand right beside her. Totally blocking a clear shot of her; deeply frustrating.

  8.15 p.m.

  Back in the car with Simon.

  ‘Dunno about you, but I definitely don’t think it’s her,’ he says, jaw set firmly as he slams the door shut with an expensive clunk.

  ‘No,’ I snort back in agreement.

  Sure how could it be? Kitty? Skiting off to Amsterdam? Which she’s never expressed so much as the remotest interest in seeing?

  Without telling anyone, and travelling under a false passport? As if!

  She’d had some horrendous jobs in her time, but this had been by far the worst yet. Smiley’s Burger Bar, to give it its full title, was loosely modelled on Hooters in the States: loud and noisy, the kind of place where raucous teenagers went to celebrate being legally able to buy beer, or else finally getting the hell out of school. Menus were basic and geared towards keeping customers thirsty and therefore drinking yet more; pizza, chicken wings, guacamole dips all featured heavily, and fries came by the bucket load with just about everything. If you were dying of a hangover, you’d nearly be afraid to ask for a strong coffee, in case a vat of greasy chips was plonked down in front of you, to really make you heave.

  All the staff unfortunate enough to work at Smiley’s were united by several things. Being broke, needing the work, but mostly by a deep hatred of the job, which no one in their sane mind could possibly enjoy. For starters, there was the gakky uniform they were obliged to wear, electric blue shorts with a low-cut blue and white T-shirt that said ‘Have a SMILEY day, now!’. The guys as well as the women, which meant that the whole lot of them pretty much went around looking like a bunch of tarts and rent boys for hire.

  Then there was the ‘Smiley culture’, as the boss called it, which involved many, many regular humiliations that you just couldn’t make up. All table staff were required to dance a conga line around the table of anyone who came in to celebrate their birthday, for instance, carrying balloons, streamers and hooters that all read ‘Have a Smiley Birthday!’. Even the words to ‘Happy Birthday’ were changed, so the lyrics went, ‘Smiley birthday to you … Smiley birthday to you-hoooooo …’

  In other words, they were all obliged to make gobshites out of themselves on a nightly basis. And of course this invariably meant that you’d get regular piss-takers coming in and pretending it was their birthday, pu
rely to humiliate the staff. Jean had caught several students trying this on and even confronted one of them, collared him up against the bar and said, ‘Oh so you’re twenty-one today, are you? Ahh, so you must be a little bit like the Queen, then, and you celebrate two birthdays a year. Because a few weeks ago you came in here claiming it was your eighteenth. Now feck off and stop wasting our time, you dick!’

  Course she was reported and got a right ticking off from the boss for pulling that one off. She even had the threat of being fired dangled over her, but the rest of the staff applauded her in the staff locker room and even clubbed in to buy her drinks at the end of the night. Stunts like that somehow kept everyone sane, and Jean’s antics in there had fast become the stuff of legend among the rest of the staff.

  Her name had even become a byword in there for ‘don’t lose your cool’. ‘Don’t go pulling a Jean, now!’ had fast become shorthand for ‘Don’t, at all costs, lose your head. Remember we all need this gig, so just grin, put up with it and think of the tips at the end of your shift.’

  So in a nutshell, Smiley’s was the sort of place where anyone over the age of twenty-five, or anyone still sober after nine in the evening, would stick out like a sore thumb. Sort of place where beer-drinking contests were the norm and the appetisers menu read, ‘Onion rings; great to eat, but don’t try proposing after them!’

  Which was why he’d stood out so much when he first started going there. All the other waitresses had clocked him long before Jean had; this handsome, older guy, sallow-skinned and brown-eyed, slightly greying around the temples and, oddly for a Smiley’s regular, always dressed in an expensive-looking suit. Hugely conspicuous against the rest of their clientele, who seemed to have an average age of about nineteen.

  Another waitress, Suze, had a huge crush on him and would swap stations with whoever was serving where he sat, just so she could get to chat him up. ‘My sexy, silver fox,’ she’d call him dreamily. Joe was his name, she’d discovered, but beyond that all she knew was that he ran an engineering company that were working on a construction site nearby. That was it.

  But not too long afterwards, he started asking Suze all about Jean. Who was she? Who do you mean? Suze had asked him right back, a bit pissed off that he seemed to fancy someone else over her. The tall, gorgeous-looking brunette, he’d told her. How long had she worked here and was she by any chance seeing anyone? And every time Joe dropped in, if Jean wasn’t working that night, then he’d just up and leave. Got so everyone noticed and the rest of the staff started slagging her about her ‘older admirer’ .

  Jean noticed too, couldn’t fail to. Every time he was in, she’d feel his eyes practically burning into her, taking her in from head to toe, in the revolting Smiley’s uniform; the tight electric-blue short shorts and the low-cut top that accentuated her boobs. She knew his eyes followed her everywhere she went; got so she could feel it.

  ‘Surprise, surprise, Silver Fox wants you to serve him,’ Suze told her sulkily one evening. ‘Insisted on you and only you.’

  Jean shrugged, strode over to him and without even looking at him, just said, ‘Your usual, I take it? Organic beefburger with a side of spicy wedges?’

  ‘It’s Jean, isn’t it?’

  She just ignored the question, though, and tried her best to act all disinterested.

  ‘Or would you like to see a menu?’ she said coolly.

  ‘If you’d like me to.’

  ‘Well, personally, I wouldn’t bother my arse.’

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘’Cos everything in here tastes the exact same. Lardy and gloopy with an occasional layer of congealed grease on top. And sometimes you’ll even get our house speciality, which is a film of skin, depending on whether the grub’s been microwaved or not.’

  His eyes just twinkled at that as he pretended to study the menu.

  ‘Tell me this, what does organic mean anyway?’

  ‘Means it tastes the exact same, but costs a fiver more.’

  He threw his head back and laughed.

  ‘Why don’t you call me Joe?’

  ‘Fine, Joe, now if you’re finished arsing around, can I just get you your usual?’

  ‘No, as a matter of fact,’ he said, putting the menu down and looking up at her with the greyest eyes she’d ever seen, ‘what I really want to know is what time you get off work.’

  ‘What’s it to you?’ she asked, glaring back at him defiantly. Not even sure why she was being this pert with him, only that the huge pull of attraction she suddenly felt was knocking her off kilter, confusing her.

  ‘Because … I don’t know. Except that you’re interesting. And funny. And beautiful. And I’d very much like to get to know you better. Outside of here, that is.’

  She looked at him keenly. Really took him in from head to foot. He was huge, this guy, well over six two and built like a rugby player with it. His shirt was slightly opened at the neck so she could make out the beginnings of a hairy chest and for a split second, she wondered what it would feel like to lie naked up against that chest, to feel those giant shovel-y hands touching her all over. She felt him looking intently up at her too, taking in the curve of her body, the length of her legs in the Smiley shorts … and she felt him wanting her, just sensed it. He was sexy, there was no doubt about it, and something about the way he looked at her was starting to intrigue her … but then reason got the better of her. This guy was early thirties, if he was a day, and she was only eighteen, for feck’s sake! And yes, sure, he was attractive in an older-man-type way and, yeah, he obviously had a few quid, but …

  ‘Sorry,’ she shrugged and turned on her heel, ostensibly to get his order, but really just to get away from him. Because there was something about this animal chemistry slowly building up between them that was actually starting to frighten her.

  ‘We just sell food in here, not staff,’ she added haughtily, before she was gone.

  He kept it up, though, for weeks on end. Every night she was working, sure enough, Joe would be there, never pestering her, but always asking for her, then telling her that when she changed her mind, he’d be waiting for her. Always polite, always respectful and always charm itself. Making all the guys she’d ever knocked around with up until then look like boys, she sometimes thought. Whereas this was a man.

  ‘Persistent bastard, isn’t he?’ Suze used to snipe at her, a bit cattily. ‘So why don’t you just sleep with him and have done with it?’

  Then one night, he caught her off guard. Jean had just started her shift and been given a message that the boss wanted to see her right away. She’d a good idea why, too, and knew what was coming: the mother of all barneys that had been brewing for a while now.

  Joe was in, and in a blind temper she strode over to serve him first.

  ‘Hey, what’s up with you tonight?’ he asked, sensing the simmering rage that was bubbling just under the surface with her.

  ‘Do me a favour and just don’t ask,’ she groaned.

  ‘But I am asking.’

  Then she looked at him long and hard, as though weighing up whether he could be trusted or not. And decided, yes. So in spite of herself, she told him everything. Just in need of a sympathetic ear, that was all. The boss had been harassing her for a while now, she said, and more or less told her that she was expected to pose in a bikini for the Smiley annual calendar. The gobshite git was forever on at her, she said, coming out with patronising, sexist shite that she’d make a lovely Miss December in a red and white furry, Santa-themed Christmas bikini. Or maybe she could even be Miss March, in a Paddy’s Day theme with shamrocks covering up strategic bits of her. She’d almost wanted to gag at that. As if! And the calendar was being shot next week, so this could be the only reason he wanted to see her tonight, she knew it.

  ‘And I just don’t know what to do,’ she found herself confiding in Joe, really opening up to him. ‘On the one hand, I want to kick the smarmy git’s teeth in for him and on the other … well, crappy and all as this job is
, I still need it.’

  ‘No you don’t,’ he told her firmly, steely eyes locking into hers.

  ‘Ha! Listen to you, Rockefeller! ’Course I need this shagging job, I’ve rent to pay and—’

  ‘Jean, just hear me out. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want. So why not go up there right now, tell this tosser where to shove his job and I’ll be waiting for you outside in my car, so you can get out of here pronto? Trust me, you don’t need any of this.’

  ‘Eh … thanks very much for the offer, but where exactly would you be driving me to then? The nearest dole office?’

  ‘Well, for a start, I’ve got a good pal who owns a hotel in town. He’d get you work there, I know it. So why put up with this crap when you don’t have to? Not,’ he added, the corners of his mouth twitching mischievously, ‘that I wouldn’t pay good money to see you pose in a Miss Smiley bikini, or anything.’

  God, but she was tempted. Just by the lovely, lovely thought of getting out of this shithole and getting a decent job in a swish, upmarket hotel …

  ‘You absolutely certain about this?’ she asked him, sheer desperation getting the better of her.

  ‘Not only am I sure, I’ll meet you outside in the car park in exactly five minutes.’

  And it had been as simple as that

  ‘Ah, Jean, there you are,’ the boss said to her as soon as she barged into his office. Or ‘the captain of the Smiley crew’, as this guy liked to style himself. Like they were some kind of religious cult and he was Joseph Smith. One Robert Procter. Nothing wrong with the name per se, it was just that he couldn’t say his Rs, so went around calling himself ‘Wobert Pwoctor’. A fifty-something portly, sweaty, wine lover and general all-around sleazeball, who seemed to do nothing, only sit on his sweaty, oversized arse up in his lovely, cool, air-conditioned office, watching CCTV footage of whatever was going on downstairs like some kind of bargain basement James Bond baddie. All while dreaming up new and improved ways to make a holy mortifying show of his staff on a daily basis.