‘I remember,’ he smiled his warm, slow smile at her. ‘I was reading The Great Gatsby and I wanted to be just like Jay.’ But his nana just looked blankly back at him, the reference utterly lost on her, then grinned gummily and told him she really believed he’d do well no matter what. ‘I wouldn’t worry a bit about anything love,’ she’d told him kindly. ‘Sure look at you, you’ve the same hands as me. Intelligent hands. You’ll do well for yourself, you’ll be OK. Just don’t forget us when you land some big fancy job in town for yourself. And no running off with any tarty little gold-diggers when you’re rich and successful either, do you hear me?’
She was gently teasing him and all his notions of getting on in the world, but deep down Jake knew that of all people in his family, Nana probably understood best.
Understood that he’d had enough of the life he’d been born into. That he wanted to kill it as fast as possible and start over. Quickly, before they got to him and dragged him back in, like they always seemed to, just when he’d stumbled on a chance of getting up and on and out. And the invisible noose they had around his neck was already beginning to tighten, he knew only too well. Already, his ma said a few of the old gang had phoned the house, faux-casually asking where he was staying since he got out. He could trust his ma not to give him away though. ‘In town, that’s as much as I know’ she’d told them firmly, and that seemed to suffice.
At least, for the moment.
In his coursework, he was reading about the Sword of Damocles and in his darker moments, that was exactly how he felt these days. Like he was enjoying a rare and spectacular piece of undeserved good fortune right now, but the sky was surely about to fall in on his head.
Like it usually did.
And it was just a matter of time.
Chapter Seven
One night back at the flat in Sandymount, Jake had been studying till very late and suddenly found himself unexpectedly starving. He was just beginning to fry up some noodles with chicken and green vegetables when there was a buzz at the intercom – Eloise, dropping off the latest draft of his re-done, re-worked, proof-read, ready-to-go CV. Come on up, he’d told her, door’s open. It was one of those miserable, filthy wet nights you sometimes get in the middle of springtime, when it feels more like November than May, so he’d lit a fire hours earlier, then stayed up late reading his course books by its flickering warmth.
In she came, dripping wet and looking even paler than he’d seen her in the longest time, which was really saying something. The girl always carried a kind of tense, jumpy energy around with her, but tonight her nerves were practically pinging off the walls. Something was seriously up, he knew by the look of her. No one this side of a correctional facility went around looking that fraught and strung out, and he should know.
‘You OK?’ he asked quietly.
‘Fine,’ she said tersely.
‘You sure?’ he asked gently.
‘Cosy,’ she nodded brusquely, avoiding his question, arms folded and face taut as she took in her surroundings in one of her lightning-quick, up-and-down appraising looks.
‘Thanks,’ he nodded, towering like a colossus over her, even in bare feet, making the room seem smaller just because he was in it. ‘Here, sit down at the fire, dry yourself off a bit.’
‘It’s okay thanks, I’m not staying, I need to go …’ she began edgily, but then seemed to waver a bit as the tantalising smell of garlic and onions hit her.
‘Are you cooking? In the kitchen?’
If she’d asked him if he was in the kitchen shaving his head, she couldn’t have sounded any more stunned.
‘Ehhh … It’s actually what people do in kitchens, wouldn’t be all that uncommon,’ he grinned down at her. ‘You hungry, by any chance? Plenty of grub for both of us.’
‘No,’ she wavered, but unconvincingly. ‘That is, yeah, but I have to get home, I’ve still got a pile of emails I need to answer and I’ve so much else to do tonight, just to stay on schedule …’
‘Oh for feck’s sake Eloise, just for once, do as I’m telling you. Don’t leave just yet. Sit down, stay and have something to eat,’ he told her, in a don’t-mess-with-me tone.
So looking like all the fight had finally drained out of her, she slumped exhaustedly into the armchair by the roaring fire.
‘Atta girl,’ said Jake. ‘Do you good to let someone else mind you for a change. You look wrecked.’
‘Tell me something I don’t know,’ she said wryly, rolling her eyes up to heaven. ‘After the day I’ve had, my spine feels like a ladder of lead pipes.’
‘Just sit back and relax. Grub’s on its way.’
He went back to the stir-fry in the tiny galley kitchen, while Eloise looked all around her, taking everything in, and as usual, missing absolutely nothing.
‘You’ve been doing some work on the place,’ she commented, nodding towards a load of pictures left strewn around the floor by the last tenant, now neatly framed and dotted tastefully around the walls.
‘Ahh yeah, I’ve just been fixing a few things round here up a bit,’ he shrugged from where he stood at the cooker, making modest light of the fact that since he’d moved in, he’d done everything he could to repair anything broken around the flat, jazz it up a bit and generally leave it in turnkey condition for Eloise’s sister. Already he’d revarnished the wooden floor, fixed the leak in the sink and shower, repaired the kitchen cupboard door that was hanging off its hinges; the works. Least he could do, he felt.
‘Looks far better than it ever did,’ she said approvingly, stretching her legs out in front of the fire and finally starting to relax a bit. ‘Have to hand it to you Jake, I never would have had you down as a metrosexual that would be good at knocking things into shape around the house.’
He laughed, unscrewing the lid off a bottle of wine and pouring her out a glass.
‘You mean, by the size of me, you’d swear I was the type better suited to smashing up things, rather than putting them back together again?’ he teased lightly.
‘No, I didn’t mean that. The place is just so spotless, that’s all. Usually in an apartment with a single guy living in it, you’d nearly expect to see a kitchen sink fit for mice to throw a party in …’
‘Don’t tell me, with the stench of a three-day-old microwaved dinner for one from Tesco hanging in the air …’ He grinned.
‘Gakky underpants strewn across the back of the sofa …’
‘… All while an FA Premiership match blares away on TV. Yeah, I’ve lived in plenty of places that fit that description in my time alright. Here, have a glass of wine.’
‘Can’t. Driving.’
‘You can have a mouthful, can’t you? Go on, put a bit of colour back in your cheeks. I’ve seen healthier-looking ghosts.’
And even though she protested she was too tired and strung out to eat, five minutes later she was heartily tucking into a big bowl of chicken noodles with a glass of white wine at her elbow. A decent hot meal brought a flush to her face, as did the wine, Jake thought, studying her. Made her look that bit less pale, he was pleased to see, as he eased his giant frame into the tiny armchair opposite her.
There was a tense lull in the chat, and for no other reason than to fill the dead air, she politely asked him how his studying was coming on, but he interrupted.
‘So, are you going to tell me what the hell is wrong with you tonight or not?’ he asked her straight out, cloud-blue eyes unflinching.
She looked blankly back at him, he guessed – correctly as it happened – unused to directness. In her line of work, Jake figured, everyone freely talked about you behind your back, but few people probably had the guts to say things straight to your face.
‘I don’t know what you’re taking about …’
‘Oh for feck’s sake, do I have to drag it out of you?’
‘There’s absolutely nothing wrong with me, I’m just a bit tired that’s all,’ she went on to protest, rubbing her black eyes exhaustedly.
‘Eloise,
are you familiar with the phrase “don’t kid a kidder?” You walk in here like the whole world around you is about to collapse on your shoulders. All I’m saying is if you need a friendly ear, then I’m here and I’ve all night to listen. The floor is yours.’
Then he shrugged as if to say, if you want to talk, talk. If you need quiet, that’s fine too. No pressure, up to you.
And so, slowly, hesitatingly, she began to tell him. Really open up to him, in a way he guessed she hadn’t done in the longest time and for some reason, didn’t seem able to do with anyone else. Out it all came tumbling, uncut and uncensored.
‘It’s just … All this pressure I’m under in work,’ she eventually told him, sighing almost painfully. ‘Gargantuan pressure, so intense that most of the time I feel like I’m trying not to drown, but I know one day – and one day soon by the looks of things – I’ll surely get dragged under. The way things are going, it’s inevitable. And it didn’t used to be like this, you know. Time was, I loved my job, adored it, hated being away from it. Couldn’t understand colleagues wanting holidays and time off. I lived to get into work. Whereas now …’
‘Go on,’ he said quietly.
‘Well, now there are days when I honestly think I’m coming to the end of my life expectancy as editor of the Post.’ She patted her chest as she said it, like it was a physical relief just to articulate her greatest fear out loud.
‘I swear I can almost feel it in my bones.’
And he nodded and listened and encouraged her to go on and so she did.
She told him about the next bout of staff culling and redundancies that were only round the corner, which she’d have to deal with because, as she explained, no one else would. All the shitty jobs ultimately fell to her. Which was why everyone in the whole place, to a man, seemed to despise her. Told him about the board of directors she’d nicknamed the T. Rexes and their old-fashioned gentlemen’s club and the way they effortlessly expected her to turn around the online edition of the paper, with absolutely zero encouragement from anyone, just bucketloads of crap that kept getting thrown down on top of her for every financial target she failed to reach.
Then she told him with particular relish about a guy called Seth Coleman, the managing editor and her number two, who’d basically been champing at the bit to get his hands on her job and now seemed to feel that his hour had finally come.
Just hearing this alone made Jake immediately want to go into that shagging office and wallop the living shit out of him.
Then, saving the best for last, she went on to tell him about what was really troubling her.
‘So anyway,’ she said, gulping back a big mouthful of wine, ‘at about five this evening, I’m tied up in a meeting with union reps, safely out of the way in other words. And what does Seth decide to do? In a spectacular ‘et tu, Brute?’ blood rush to his greasy head, the insinuating little git decides to completely override me and goes up to the executive floor to meet with the T. Rexes alone.’
‘Gobshite. I’d sort him out in two seconds if you ever wanted.’
‘You haven’t heard the worst of it. He goes in to tell them that he strongly feels the paper’s slow and steady decline in sales is now in danger of turning it into nothing more than a white elephant that’ll end up facing extinction, just like the Tribune did not so long ago. And on the principle that if you’re sinking fast, you need a new hand at the helm, then the editorial job at the Post should be handed over to someone new and fresh immediately. Him, in other words. He basically said it’s been my hobby horse for way too long now, but I’ve had my shot and now need to graciously accept defeat and bugger off,’ she went on, really getting into her stride now.
‘All of that would be bad enough, but then the duplicitous little snake-arse even went as far as to insinuate – thus verbalising my single greatest fear, by the way – that with my contract up for renewal soon anyway, maybe it’s best not to just sideline me somewhere else, but to actually get rid of me altogether. Which of course would mean my chance of ever getting any kind of decent job in the industry again would be out the window.’
Jake sat back, then whistled.
‘Bloody hell. Makes all the backstabbing that went on in ancient Rome look restrained. How did all of that get back to you, by the way?’
‘I have ways and means,’ she said wryly. ‘The news filtered back to me fast, but then I make it my business to know everything that’s going on at the Post. In my job, you have to.’
‘Sounds a bit like working for the KGB in pre-Gorbachev Russia,’ he teased and for the first time since she got there, she cracked a smile.
‘Anyway, here’s the real question,’ she went on, taking another big, nerve-calming glug of the wine beside her, kicking her shoes off and curling her legs up.
Took every ounce of resolve Jake had to take his eyes off her long, slim legs and focus on her eyes instead.
‘What do I do now?’ she went on. ‘Seth’s playing a dangerous game of brinkmanship here, so I’m going to have to plot my way through it as carefully as in a championship chess game. Oh sure, one fine day I’ll gladly see the two-faced git bastard hang, head on a spike, burnt at the stake, the whole works. But for now at least, I’ve no choice but to bite my tongue, play a long game and choose my next move as cagily as a cat … Mind you, it still doesn’t stop me from wondering what in God’s name I ever did in a past life to deserve Seth bloody Coleman. A managing editor is supposed to be my consigliere, my right hand. Not someone who’s only waiting on their chance to stab me in the back, then dance on my grave singing Hallelujah.’
He just let her talk on and on, quietly listening, correctly sensing that this was a woman who’d never in a million years lie on an psychoanalyst’s sofa Woody Allen-like and spill out her innermost thoughts. So therefore, he instinctively knew she must really be at break point to even consider opening up to him. She left nothing out either; told him the awful things that were said behind her back at work, when all she was trying to do was keep the show on the road and keep everyone in a job. And how she tried not to let it get to her but how much it all hurt her deep down. That in spite of what everyone thought about her and in spite of all the bitching that was done about her, she was actually a human being underneath it all, with normal human emotions.
‘If you prick us, do we not bleed?’ he murmured under his breath.
‘What?’
‘Nothing,’ he said quietly. ‘From The Merchant of Venice. Go on. What other bitching are they doing about you? Say it aloud, we’ll have a laugh at it and then it’ll go away. Trust me, I know what I’m talking about.’
She was on the verge of tears now, he could tell by the tiny wobble in her voice. And by the cut of her, you could tell that this was someone totally unused to crying.
‘Latest is, courtesy of Seth Coleman, that I spread unhappiness wherever I go.’
‘I know I don’t know the guy and have never met him and would never want to, but Jesus, give me five minutes with him down a dark alleyway with a golf club.’
In spite of herself she sniggered, in a laughter-through-tears kind of way.
‘Not as bad as the time he said that I’d had all human emotion surgically removed from me, but, yeah, certainly right up there in his top ten insult hit list.’
‘Where I come from, we have ways of sorting out a git like that very fast, let me tell you. Nothing terminal of course, just a bit of a going over … Say the word, and I can have it taken care of for you. That guy needs teaching a lesson and I know a few lads who’d gladly take care of it in a heartbeat. Seth Coleman would never walk straight again.’
For a split second, she looked up at him horrified, then caught the cheeky glint in his eye.
‘You’re messing,’ she half smiled.
‘Course I’m messing. You think I’m ever going back to you-know-where?’
She grinned even wider his time, as ever he thought, completely softening her whole face.
‘Eloise, will you tell me
something else?’
Feck it, it was bothering him and he might as well ask her now, when she seemed to be opening up a bit.
‘What it is?’
‘No offence, you know I’m happy to talk to you any time, but why are you telling me all this? Isn’t there anyone at home waiting for you who’d want to know all about your day?’
And like that, she immediately clammed up again. Not for the first time either. Whenever he as much as broached the subject of her home life, she turned back to stone. As if the temperature in the room suddenly just dropped down about ten degrees.
‘Jake,’ she said, suddenly tuning out. ‘I’ll make you a deal. I won’t ask you about your past or your personal life and you won’t ask me about mine. Okay?’
He shrugged.
‘If that’s what you want.’
‘You have to trust me. It’s just better that way.’
She got up to leave then, looking shattered and probably aching for sleep.
‘Look, it’s nearly coming up to eleven,’ she said, as he stood to help her pull her coat back on and looking gratefully up at him. ‘And I’ve to be up and back into work for six tomorrow morning, so I better hit the road. But look … I just want to say thank you. Just being able to talk through such a shitty, awful, crappy day was a huge help. You’ve no idea.’
‘Any time,’ he said evenly, arms folded, towering over her by at least a foot. ‘Least I can do. Look at all you’ve done for me.’
‘You’re more than welcome, you know that.’
‘Doesn’t mean I don’t feel bad for accepting all this help from you. But I promise you this Eloise, the day will come when I’ll pay you back. I mean it.’
A Very Accidental Love Story Page 15