One Winter's Night (Kelsey Anderson)

by Kiley Dunbar

  She couldn’t stop her mind flitting to the now indelible image of Jonathan, hot from the evening’s spotlights and curtain calls, reclining on his hotel bed in his black Hamlet garb, his phone held aloft, his shirt strings loosened, as he unbuckled his belt, smiling slyly, biting his lower lip, his kohl-lined eyes narrowed with wicked intent.

  ‘Gawd, Kelsey. If he’s responsible for making you blush like that, I can tell things are going well.’

  ‘Yeah, things are definitely good.’

  Kelsey suppressed a self-conscious grin and set to work on the cream tea again, enjoying the unexpected reminder that Stratford was still the wonderful place she’d fallen in love with and that, even though some of her favourite residents had left along with the summer crowds, there were still precious friends in town. All she had to do was make more effort to see them.

  ‘I’m happy you’re happy,’ Myrtle was saying, holding her glass out. ‘We’ve got this. We’re entrepreneurs. We got the knowhow, we got the guts. Let’s show these Stratfordians how it’s done! Cheers.’

  By four thirty, as Myrtle kissed Kelsey goodbye, making her promise again to come to the costume shop’s grand opening, the sky had darkened with heavy-looking clouds. Her mobile hadn’t rung all afternoon, so Kelsey forced herself to sit at her desk for another still and silent half hour repeatedly checking the empty email inbox for signs of life before locking up the studio and making her way home to St. Ninian’s Close before the rain came on and soaked her bundle of newspapers.

  Chapter Ten

  ‘Is this the generation of love? Hot blood, hot thoughts and hot deeds?

  Why, they are vipers. Is love a generation of vipers?’

  (Troilus & Cressida)

  ‘You’re looking fancy,’ Jamesey said, oiling over to Mirren now it was past five on Friday afternoon. The newsroom had cleared for the day and Mirren was alone by the photocopier. She pulled the papers in her hand close to her chest – her copy for her theatre feature. She’d worked on it in stolen moments between courts reporting all week and was almost ready to send it to Mr Angus.

  It was at times like these that Jamesey liked to strike, always timing his chats for the moments the bosses were out of earshot and no one who mattered was looking. Yet he didn’t seem to mind the cleaning staff hearing him as he performed his chummy familiarity with Mirren, they probably weren’t important enough for him to worry about. In fact, she thought, he enjoyed it most when he had an audience of subordinates.

  ‘I look fancy?’ echoed Mirren, looking down at her knee-length black dress and long leather boots. She’d put on her silver pendant and hoop earrings that morning too. ‘Hardly.’ What does ‘fancy’ even mean? she worried. It’s unlikely to be a compliment and is nowhere near the same as saying I look nice. ‘Fancy’, coming from his lips means overdressed, try-hard, and ridiculous. The little flicker of rage Jamesey always managed to ignite within her started to burn in her chest.

  ‘Got a date, have you?’ he leered.

  Mirren flinched, shuffling the sheets, warm from the photocopier and hers to keep until the real article appeared in the November women’s pages. She’d wanted to end her working week quietly re-reading her carefully researched piece at her desk but here was Jamesey bothering her once more. And she did have a date, as it happened, someone she’d met online, but she wasn’t telling Jamesey anything about it. She wasn’t just going to hand over ammo like that so he could smile and smack his lips at her as he enjoyed speculating on what kind of loser would use dating apps.

  ‘No, I’m meeting friends for cocktails, actually.’ A small lie won’t matter.

  He often asked her to join him and his laddish mates for a drink after work but she always declined, and she knew he wouldn’t offer to join her out on the town tonight if he thought she was meeting up with friends and not workmates.

  He was always uncomfortable – and markedly silent – in new company until he had figured out the hierarchies and power dynamics, fearful of making a gaffe in front of someone who might be useful to his career or his ego – or he’d fall back on making jolly, amiable remarks, the kind that had new acquaintances wondering at the charming young man and his lovely manners and witty talk.

  He saved his worst behaviour only for Mirren, so nobody would ever believe he was this way, not that she’d ever tried to tell anyone about it. Mr Angus prided himself on running a tight ship with a loyal staff and Mirren couldn’t be sure how he and the other bosses would react to complaints about Jamesey talking down to her all the time.

  The arch of Jamesey’s eyebrow suggested he didn’t believe her lie. ‘What happened to that one you lived with? Peter something-or-other? Did you give him the elbow, then?’

  This was said with a smile that didn’t reach his eyes which, Mirren noticed, not for the first time, were glassy and small like a pig’s. It’s funny how the more you disliked someone, the more their face, their very being, took on the shape and resonance of grotesque things, Mirren reflected. Right now, she hated the way his flesh clung to his jaw, pale and mottled pink at the same time, somehow speaking of the gristly sinew beneath.

  ‘His name’s Preston, and we’re separated, yes. Amicably.’ This too was a lie, bigger than the first. Much bigger. Jamesey Wallace didn’t deserve even to hear Preston’s name spoken aloud, let alone to mock and jeer about their fractured, dismantled, never-to-recover love.

  ‘What happened there, then? Were you giving him the run around? Poor bastard.’

  ‘It’s nothing to do with you, is it?’ She tried not to snap but couldn’t help the terseness. ‘Right, I’m going, it’s gone five.’

  As Mirren grabbed her bag from under her desk and carefully shoved her papers inside it, she knew he wasn’t done yet. His footsteps were behind her.

  ‘Walk you out.’ He wasn’t asking. He already had his coat and stalked behind her at a too-close fixed distance like a car being towed. Mirren increased her pace as she headed for the stairs.

  ‘Not using the lift?’ Jamesey had stopped in front of its doors and was calling her back. How did she say, no thanks, I’d rather be carried across the Sahara in a metal coffin than ride in a lift with you? That would be crazy, wouldn’t it? And rude.

  Like many women, she’d been trained from her earliest childhood not to be rude to men, to appease them always, to bear the burden of any social discomfort herself, especially when it was the bloke causing the discomfort in the first place.

  She’d look irrational if she kept walking towards the six flights of lethally slippery stairs that led down in a spiral to the far side of the building – out of her way if she wanted to head for the Edinburgh bars. Of course she had to relent and get in the lift. He knew it, and she knew it.

  A thin-lipped smile spread on his face as he saw her give up and turn back to stand by the lift door.

  Please let there be someone in there when it comes, she prayed, but of course there wasn’t.

  ‘Going down?’ Jamesey said in an oil-slick faux-American accent as he pressed the button, making the doors close upon them.

  Mirren felt the air in her lungs constrict as they were sealed in the box together. Why was her heart thumping so erratically? Her cheeks were suddenly hot. Were they red? Could he see the effect he had on her? Of course he can, she thought. He loves it.

  Jamesey took a step closer towards her so he occupied the very centre of their descending cage, and she retreated an inch further into the back corner, hitting her elbow on the hand rail.

  ‘If I were Preston I’d be gutted, letting go of a stunner like you. He must be kicking himself. What was it? Roving eye, eh? You fancied a bit on the side over the summer? Can’t blame you.’ This fired out his mouth along with a too-loud laugh.

  Mercifully, the door pinged open and Mirren inhaled the cool autumn air tainted with petrol fumes. The lift opened directly onto the little carpark behind the newspaper offices. She could just glimpse the trams gliding by on Princes Street through the gaps between buildings. The
re was no one else there but them. She stepped out briskly, tightening her grip on the bag over her shoulder. How could he talk to her like that? How could he still be talking?

  Jamesey fixed her with a steady stare as he delivered his parting words, quick and sneaky. ‘You know, you women are all the same. You pretend like you want the nice guy who cooks for you and picks you up when it’s raining and all that, but deep down…’ he leaned in closer, making her draw her neck back avoiding his breath on her face ‘… all you really want is a good fucking.’ With that, he turned sharply and walked away.

  Angry white heat seared within her as she heard him laughing, amused with himself. Her voice had activated before her brain had time to catch up and her feet carried her in his wake. ‘That is it!’ she yelled. ‘You cannot speak to me like that. What is wrong with you? I’m your colleague.’

  Jamesey turned his head back briefly, still smiling wolfishly. Mirren had thought she’d be able to go on, that she’d give him a piece of her mind fed by the outrage burning in her chest, but instead, she was horrified to realise, she was going to cry, and that, she knew, would be fatal. He’d have made a silly woman cry at work. He’d have won. And he wasn’t done yet.

  He shouted over his shoulder, ‘Oh, don’t be like that, you daft prude. It’s only banter, isn’t it?’ He was almost at his car now. ‘I’ll see you Monday. Hope you get lucky tonight, might cheer you up a bit. Maybe give your Preston a booty call?’ He punctuated this with a double press of the key fob in his trouser pocket and she heard the cheeping sound of a door unlocking.

  ‘Why don’t you fuck off, Jamesey.’

  He laughed once more as he lowered himself into his car seat. He’d made her swear. He’d seen her angry tears welling. He’d won.

  She watched him go, still frozen to the spot in the shadow of the building, her eyes burning into the side of his face as he started the ignition and pulled away.

  When the carpark barrier lowered again and she had lost sight of him she clutched her hands to her eyes and let angry tears fall, still aware of the fading sounds of Jamesey over-revving his souped-up engine as he sped home to terrorise his poor wife.

  She wished her lie had been true and that she really was meeting friends, but Preston was gone and Kelsey was in England, and instead she had a date. After fixing her mascara she wandered out onto Princes Street and joined the after-work crowds.

  * * *

  The first glass of wine was very welcome, the second harder to swallow, it was so bitter and Mirren’s stomach was empty. She’d allotted her date half an hour to make an impression, telling him in advance that she had to catch a train home at six, but it was ten past now, and she was still at the bar.

  Andrew seemed nice enough at first. He was some business type or other, she couldn’t quite recall what he’d said he did, even though he’d only just told her, something to do with security in South Africa. He looked reasonably OK, predictably greyer of face and thinner of hair than in the grinning, suntanned profile picture she’d swiped right on. He hadn’t yet smiled on this date, and she was having a hard time remembering why she’d picked him out.

  He was talking about his team of workers and their reverence for him – in fact he’d been talking solidly about himself for the past fifteen minutes, only stopping to throw back his wine, a quarter of a glass with each glug. He was on his second too. Mirren didn’t mind. She wasn’t listening. She was thinking about Jamesey and how he’d spoken to her in the carpark.

  Why had he singled her out from their very first meeting to treat her like that and not any of the other women in the office? She wasn’t the youngest woman in the newsroom, or the greenest, so she wasn’t obviously an easy target. She was competent and capable, so it wasn’t that she was weaker or less skilled. Maybe he didn’t like her smart mouth and the fact she was popular with the team in ways he just wasn’t. But he had the bosses for that. He had his weekends at the golf club with Mr Angus to feel included and valued. Mirren wouldn’t swap her water cooler whispered gossip and her catch-ups over coffee and homemade cakes with the interns for that. Could that be why he bristled whenever she spoke, or pitched an idea at meetings, or got praise of any kind? She supposed he could be nursing some residual jealousy over the New Journalist of the Year nomination which she’d got after the interns, her junior colleagues and all the guys in the print shop and tech department put her name forward for a freelance piece on Brexit she’d submitted to the Scottish Student Magazine, but that was almost a year and a half ago now and she hadn’t won.

  Even so, the article was still doing well online, and it had been shared tens of thousands of times before the nomination. After she was shortlisted, her words had briefly gone viral too. It had gotten her a round of applause at the Friday meeting from everyone except Jamesey, who’d sat smirking, arms folded, beady pig-eyes glancing round the room, incredulous. Mr Angus had clapped along but had seemed confused about the significance of a piece of writing only shared online – he was a man utterly convinced of the pre-eminence of print journalism over all other forms of writing. The Broadsheet didn’t have to worry about innovating since it still had a huge, loyal readership who would pick it up from newsagents’ every morning or have it delivered to their doorsteps all across Scotland. So Mirren’s greatest writing success had failed to make much of an impact on her standing in the newsroom.

  Jamesey, meanwhile, had his promotions, two so far, and now he was a press agency liaison and often got cushy investigative trips and freebies where Mirren got none, so he obviously didn’t envy her position, but perhaps his deep-seated, stewing anger came from a resentment of her way of simply being herself and the popularity it won her among the junior staff. For all the good it’s done me with Mr Angus, she thought bitterly. God, how can this Andrew bloke still be talking?

  ‘We cleared six mil net last quarter, got a sweet ride with the bonus. Do you like the new three series? I got the sport in sapphire black,’ he was braying.

  She nodded, eyebrows raised in patently faked interest. These blokes could never tell when a woman was just not listening. His voice droned on, and in between self-aggrandising tales of his corporate successes he swigged another glass of red wine. His nose and cheeks were turning an unhealthy red. Maybe if he stopped for breath once in a while he’d be less beetrooty.

  Mirren was gathering her things, ready to excuse herself. If she was quick she could get home before the chippy on the high street closed, maybe pick something up for her mum too and they could attempt a civil supper together in front of the telly. Andrew watched her getting ready to leave, at first affronted, but then, after a moment’s boozy deliberation, a delighted smile revealed his wine-stained teeth.

  ‘Leaving, are we?’

  Mirren flicked her long black hair over her shoulder and settled the strap of her bag there. ‘Yep,’ she said, not making eye contact.

  ‘I’ve got a room at the Radisson,’ he said, low and shifty, so at first Mirren wasn’t sure she’d heard correctly.

  ‘Good for you,’ she replied, and as she was about to stand up and say ‘Cheerio, then,’ it happened, too quickly for her to be able to do anything to prevent, but also somehow in slow motion so she knew exactly what was coming.

  His hand slipped from his lap and down onto Mirren’s knee before reed-like, cold fingers slithered along her thigh, under her hem. She caught his wrist and held it fast, pulling his hand away and shifting herself off the barstool in one movement. ‘What the—?’

  ‘I thought we were getting on?’ he said, insulted.

  ‘You always do, your lot, don’t you?’ Mirren said as she threw his wrist back and attempted a dignified walk from the bar.

  Just as she was straightening her jacket and looking around, hoping no one had seen, she heard him say it. The word was thrown towards her, hissed between teeth and fat wet tongue. ‘Slut.’

  She let the door swing closed behind her and walked mechanically towards the station wondering when these encounters would
cease to shock and unsettle her. After all, it had happened so often, and to most of her mates too, in one form or another since she was a young teen, except when she was with Preston. Nothing like that ever happened when she was with him.

  All the way home from her encounters with Jamesey and Andrew, she’d let their behaviour sink in and her indignation rose.

  That night, as she sat up in bed, she drafted a message in the Edinburgh Broadsheet’s staff email app on her phone, leaving it unsent until Saturday morning to be sure it was worded correctly and giving herself time to change her mind. Always best to sleep on these things; nothing worse than sending an off-the-cuff flame-mail and instantly regretting it, she cautioned herself.

  When she opened her eyes the next morning, she reached for her phone and read it all through once again, just to be sure.

  Look James, I don’t know what it is I’ve done to you to become the target of your secret little hate campaign, but I’m telling you this: if you tell me I look like I need a good fucking one more time I’m reporting you to HR and Mr Angus. Stay away from me, you creepy arsehole. We’re not friends.

  She hit the send button before she could crumble and chicken out.

  Moments later her phone flashed into life again. A new email – but she was surprised to see it was from Mr Angus. Why would he be contacting her at – she looked at the time – eight fifteen on a Saturday morning?

  Did you mean to send that to me? Come to my office first thing on Monday.

  Her thoughts raced. Could Mr Angus be talking about the theatre feature she’d sent in yesterday? He’d been expecting that though. She looked again at the email she’d sent and there it was. Mr Angus’s name in the CC line. Somehow, stupidly, she’d copied in her boss to the warning meant for Jamesey.

  She hurriedly re-read her words, checking exactly what it was he had just seen. The wave of nausea nearly knocked her onto her back. Heat was spreading from her stomach up her spine and to her face; red, horrified, zinging heat, making her nerves prickle and scream. It was followed by cold, creeping white despair as the blood drained away again, seemingly sinking down into her legs, making them leaden and leaving her dizzy. Now she’d really rocked the boat in the newsroom, and the horrible, humiliating matter she’d hoped to sort out by herself at long last had, thanks to her blundering, ended up escalated right to the top of her organisation.