They said that I must have got back before 12pm, as their shift wasn’t over yet, and I was WAY more chatty and happy when I returned. They said I was wearing different clothes I LOVE that they noticed that, I HATE that that means I may have missed getting laid!), and that, in my words ‘I’d sorted everything out’.
They said I’d chatted with them a while about life, society, promptness and conduct (they’d said they were quite taken aback by how traditional someone like me was!), but they said that at no time was I anything other the epitome of sober.
So, dear diary, what the fucking fuck? I’ve booked to see Doctor Barrett again on Monday. I’m sure it’s just a brain burp, but best to get it checked out. Maybe I’ve destroyed too many brain cells. Maybe. I’ll probably kill some more tonight. Brain cell murder! It IS Friday after all.
Chapter 24
Unsure as to whether the man was following her or not, Anoushka did her best to step up the pace. Teetering and tottering on her heels, swearing as she went, she did her best to get to the more populated area of the tube station. It was still some way.
She could hear footsteps behind her, could feel eyes on her back. Although there were houses and shops about, it seemed extremely quiet for a Friday night. It was as if everyone were watching from behind closed curtains and through shop windows. As if they were awaiting the spectacle of a game of cat and mouse.
‘It’s probably nothing, just spooking myself’, she thought.
She didn’t scare easily, her hard exterior wasn’t just a front. She prided herself on being pretty tough inside as well. She’d been brought up that way.
And for that reason, this fucker following her can do one. He WAS following, wasn’t he?
She delved into her reservoir of ‘balls and barbed wire’, as her shit of a Dad had always termed it, mentally pushing down the rising panic that fluttered in her chest. She was sobering up as well. Well, that could be dealt with when she got home, she had wine, she had tequila and she had vodka. She also had some weed stashed away which she was sure would calm her nerves. That, or bring on full scale paranoia.
…This is stupid…
What she didn’t have, was something that was way more precious that the booze and the drugs. She didn’t have someone that she could turn to; she didn’t have friends.
Feeling more alone than she had for many a year, she saw her destination up ahead. The crowds of tourists and late workers thickened as she approached the tube station, and she dared a look back, ready to feel foolish at over reacting.
Her heart sank, as through the crowd, through the people to-ing and fro-ing about their Friday night business; she saw him. Silhouetted against the long garish shop front of a Spar on the other side of the road, he was stood. Watching.
It is him. For fuck’s sake. It is. Is it?
She looked around, no policeman when you needed one; made to reach out to someone, grab someone’s attention; just to get that human element of camaraderie, for someone to understand her plight. She was knife-edge scared now. It was jagged and it pushed any rationality to one side. There seemed little safety in numbers when the numbers were not yours. She squeaked an ‘excuse me’ or two to the masses of people, chaotic and busy. Too busy to notice, or too busy to want to notice.
She felt pathetic, all pretence of strength gone.
‘Help me’ she croaked. Her alcohol and panicky-breathing parched throat allowed no volume. Just tiny bubbles of noise in a dusty tube. She tried to catch the eye of a person. Any human being that may help.
But this was London. Everyone was a ghost.
She gave up on the crowd as she realised the shadowy form of her watcher was walking towards her. Anoushka half walked and half ran down the old steps nearly losing her grip on the hard stone in her heels, to the ticket stiles. She was relieved to see that the stiles were evidently faulty and open for everybody to sail through. As she did, she chanced a look back over her shoulder and saw a man dressed all in dark clothing striding towards her, locked on and eyes looking through her as if she were just a spirit.
She barged her way through the throng to the escalator, what few social graces she had left being cast asunder. There were the inevitable mutters and tuts as she pushed down the moving stairs; but as is always the case in London, no one addressed her directly.
…help me, help me, help me….
Just inner thoughts now.
Her heart was hammering, her throat parched, she sweated and swore her way to the end of the escalator and found herself in a symphony of bad design, where four pedestrian thoroughfares for four platforms all converged. Like a salmon trying to swim up a waterfall she pushed through, oblivious to any insult or pain that she may be causing. A look back behind her afforded her nothing, there were too many people.
Business people with briefcases. Revellers with balloons. Sober people. Drunk people. Party goers. Party leavers. All of them crossing paths in front of her, disorientating her, panic rising. Still she ploughed through.
‘Get…out..of…my FUCKING WAY!!’ she broke through to the less frenetic other side of the stream of four paths of people and headed for the archway that was her platform. Whilst there were still many people, it had thinned somewhat. A tube must have just left.
Shit!
Anoushka, feeling vulnerable, feeling like a fox in a hunt. Anoushka, feeling like a fish out of water. Anoushka, feeling more afraid and exposed than she ever had in her adult life headed down toward the end of the platform, several small clusters of hen do’s or friend groups offering a potential barrier to hide behind, she thought.
Despite not wanting to know the answer, she looked behind her and down the platform that she was now halfway down. There he was, just at the start of the platform, but he was walking fast and heading her way.
This is ridiculous, she thought, I’m in public and I’m being chased down.
A scream. Then laughter. The group of middle aged women with balloons and one with an L Plate attached to her were towards the end of the platform. Anoushka headed for them just as she felt the air around the platform begin to move, signalling the approach of the next tube.
She reached the group and stood, hiding the best she could behind them, panting. They paid her no heed, as they too were watching the dark clad man move towards her, he was nearly level with them.
A strange noise rose in Anoushka’s throat, as she tried to cry for help but just a wail came out. Every hair on her body was stood on end and she felt an animalistic fear she had never felt before. She was in a crowd and she was alone and the man had said something.
‘You left this’
It was hard for Anoushka to hear as now the noise of the oncoming tube was getting louder and louder, the air being pushed through, gusting warm air ahead of it on to her, the hen group and the man in dark clothes.
‘Your purse, you left this back in the pub’ he said, smiling and handing the small leather purse to the woman wearing the L plate in the group. They erupted in a volley of squeals, ‘thank yous’ and ‘aren’t you lovely’ as the tube entered into view the far end of the platform, and Anoushka broke out in floods of tears.
He hadn’t been after her, he had been trying to catch up with them. She laughed through the tears.
That’s why he had looked so much on a mission and was looking through her. He hadn’t been looking at her at all!
It had been a long time since she had sobbed, but she did it now. She wept with relief. She wept with embarrassment at acting like such a wimp. She wept with how alone she had felt and the cold stark realisation that she had alienated herself in this world.
As the tube noisily rushed towards her she wept, openly and loudly; and she laughed and vowed to stop being such a bitch all of the time. This had been a sign. She had over reacted and it was a chance, and chance to change.
In the way that the human brain can process a huge stream of thoughts in nanoseconds she began to picture being a better person, getting some friends, drinking her wine
when she got home, building bridges at work with people. She imagined laughing, being happy. She imagined having chats on the phone with friends.
She visualised a better Anoushka, one who had learned a lesson tonight.
As these thoughts ran swiftly through her mind’s eye, and her smile grew as her panic waned; she sensed a darker presence enter her personal space behind her, the edge of the platform at her feet. The tube was almost level.
Too pushy, Anoushka.
The words, growled in her ear.
The hand, pushing her.
The world slowed down.
Her peripheral vision picked up the dark form deftly striding away, leaving just the group of women laughing in the huge noise of the train’s hissing and squealing brakes.
She had nothing to reach out and hold on to. She wind milled her arms, trying to redress the shift in her balance, and her weight’s fight against gravity. She fell.
The scream she uttered merged with the sound of the brakes, and was cut short before it could start as the train first smashed into her body, and knocked it partially aside to be crushed between the wall of the platform and it’s wheels; parts of her already dead body entering under the unforgiving metal circles and being pulped and sliced against the rails.
It wasn’t until the tube had fully pulled out and was gaining speed in the next tunnel that the first scream of many started.
Chapter 25
I slowly place the recently purchased Bang & Olufsen phone back in its cradle and stare into the middle distance out of the window. Numb. I am numb. I did NOT expect that call from Alan. I stare at the new phone, sleek and overly flash. Stare until everything blurs.
I really don’t know how I’m meant to be feeling right now. I don’t think Alan knew, but had to be the consummate professional as always. He was the boss after all, and had to maintain that hierarchical nobility.
Apparently no-one realised anything was amiss yesterday as it was always Anoushka’s admin day. She worked from home and stayed off the radar. Many of us joked that it was just a day she bolted on to the weekend, rather than there be any admin actually attended to. It’s always the poor ones she looks down on at work that she bullies to do her admin.
Bullied. Past tense.
‘Shit. Anoushka. Christ, Anoushka is..is..
..the wicked witch…
..is dead’. I say to the empty room.
I feel a burst of embarrassment that my inner voice said that, that it made that reference.
Then: fuck it, she was horrible.
Then: a wave of shock.
Then: guilt.
Then: remind myself she really was horrible.
I was one of the last to speak with her before she threw herself under the tube. Was it something I said? What the hell did I say? Was it really bad? Had I pushed her over the edge? Surely I couldn’t have done that just with my drunken words?
‘Come on, man! She killed herself. Fucking idiot killed herself!’
I had always and will always have a lack of sympathy for people who take their own life. It’s the ultimate in selfishness, the utter arrogance of having the last word. And when people choose to fuck up other people’s days by doing it under a train and making them stop and notice, well that took it to new levels!
I do, however, feel bad for the people they leave behind, the unanswered question they must have to live with for the rest of their days.
Did Anoushka even have a family? Or did she just surface from under a rock?
I snigger inappropriately at the thought. Bad taste, Manners! Ooh, you bad man. I’ll be sweetness and light in the office tomorrow, full respect mode. Black suit. Black tie. A suitably sympathetic demeanour. Despite being alone, I try to put on a suitably sad face.
But it doesn’t fit, it doesn’t feel sad at all.
And of course it was sad. Sad that she was obviously so very troubled. Obviously her bitch-from-hell exterior was there to hide her inner torment. The saddest thing was that she carried on the way she did, because that’s probably all she knew how to do.
Again, I try to make myself feel something, but at the end of the day, I fucking hated her. Everyone did. If it wasn’t suicide and was something dodgy, they’d have a hard job trying to round up everyone with a motive for killing her off. She managed to piss most off. Caustic cow.
Again, I remind myself that I need to be morose.
I look around at my flat, most of which is now in boxes. Yes, I’ve been happy here, it’s done me proud and it’s seen some good times. Anoushka probably would’ve done anything to get a fraction of my good times and smiles, my friends and family. I’m lucky and I know it.
That, and I’m better at my job than Anoushka is. Was. Damn.
With that, I press play on the Gorillaz CD I’d paused when Alan had rung. The Beolab had yet to be packed up, I need music. Especially now.
So despite the news, and despite the fact that I am telling myself I needed to be a bit down, I turn it up. The heavy rich bass echoes around my flat, as Rock The House starts up where it was paused. I dance over to the boxes I was packing and sorting, half rapping with the song but not yet well versed enough with it..
‘Tap your toes, and clap your haaaands’
The phone rings again.
Bloody hell!
I turn it down with the remote control to just audible and pick up the phone.
‘Hello Robbie Manners speaking.’
‘Robbie, it’s Paul.’
‘Mate. Holy shit!’
‘I know, mate. Didn’t see that coming, did you?’
‘Nope, I feel a bit bad about Friday now. Not that I can remember what I said to her.’
‘Don’t, Robbie. You know what she was like. I dunno, it’s weird. I felt a bit bad at first when Al told me, but now…well…I know you know how it is, mate. She was just a horrible person and, well, I don’t really care.’
We laugh, a little bit too hard; both obviously relieved with the solace now found in the camaraderie of not caring about Anoushka’s suicide. We move onto other topics. That’s how humans can be at times, and sometimes we’re comfortable with that, as long as we can verify we’re not actually being psychos.
Paul is my closest work friend. We think very similarly on most things, which is unusual with people you work with. Normally you buddy up with the best of a bad bunch, tolerating the least irritating bloke or sniffing round the hottest female work colleague. It was different with Paul. He was actually a decent bloke. He also loved to party as well, which was convenient as we had both found ourselves with quite a lot more cash in the last year, having both made a killing around the millennium bug rumours, as that’s what they had pretty much turned out to be.
We had similar backgrounds too, neither coming from families that had a huge amount of money, and neither of us were overly academic. Neither of us went to University, although had both admitted we felt like we’d missed out. He was born in Bedfordshire and I was born a few miles away in Hertfordshire, so we both had some old haunts in common with each other. Parks, Towns and then pubs and clubs.
We both ended up in sales when there were fewer and fewer options that befitted our ability to deal with people so well. That and the fact that we had put more emphasis on the fun parts of life than the more sensible.
In fact, we were so alike that we would be constantly with each other if our two huge circles of friends didn’t exist. However, sometimes, you just don’t have room for another close friend and you keep them slightly at bay. Fortunately, we both knew and understood this.
Tonight was different, though.
‘Beer?’ Paul interrupts me as I’ve begun to wax lyrically about the album I was playing.
‘Fuck yeah. It’d be rude not to. For poor Anoushka!’ I shout down the phone.
We break into inappropriate laughter and begin arrangements for where we are going to toast tonight’s excuse to drink, as I crank up ‘Clint Eastwood’ by Gorillaz to a volume way too high considering the c
ircumstances and the fact that it’s only Tuesday night.
Chapter 26
I can see Paul through the window as I walk up to the entrance of the pub we arranged to meet at. He’s having an animated conversation with whoever is serving him, and I can see a cluster of glasses of varying sizes on a tray in front of him as he befriends yet another worker, server or passer-by. That is his wont.
I look back at the entrance and see a couple of women also approaching the same door, both very much engrossed in their conversation. Their speed of approach, I realise, means that we will all be reaching the entrance to the pub at about the same time. Both look to be in their mid to late twenties, one red head and one with a mane of dark curly locks. Both are dressed in cropped halter tops showing their summer sun kissed stomachs, both with faded jeans and heels. Both appeal to my evidently constant need of female attention.
Manners Cost Everything (Manners Trilogy Book 1) Page 6