by J. A. Baker
‘I’ll need it in a day or two. I’ve been fairly lenient, more so than many landlords, but I still have bills to pay. This is a big house and the gas and electricity bills are huge, not to mention the mortgage. And then there is the maintenance of it. I had to get the boiler repaired last week and I don’t know if you noticed but this is a new front door as the other one had been leaking for quite a while.’ She is short of breath after her diatribe. Poison drips from every word as Leah turns and heads to her room, hoping to blot it all out. ‘Two days at the most, Leah, and then I’ll have to find a new tenant. This is on you, not me. I’ve tried with you, I really have…’
Grainne’s voice fades into the distance, a disturbing stream of disjointed syllables behind her as Leah shuts the door and perches on the edge of the bed, her knees trembling. How has her life come to this? Everything seems to be on a downward spiral and it’s getting harder and harder to drag it back upwards, to put everything back in its rightful place.
She drops the pile of letters at her feet, keenly aware of their presence. It’s as if they’re glowing white hot, a stern reminder of her current predicament. She should open them, but then what good would it do? She would see that she is overdrawn at the bank, that she doesn’t have enough money for this month’s rent, let alone the month before, and seeing it all in black and white would make her even more depressed.
Her head feels heavy as she scrutinises the room, seeing it through clear eyes after a severe telling off from Grainne. It’s an even bigger mess than she first thought. She has got to tackle it, to rid herself of all the unnecessary items that are cluttering up her space and her life, but everything feels like such an effort, such a gargantuan struggle, and she is beyond exhausted.
She lies back on the bed. All she needs is a few minutes. Just a short rest to gather her strength and then she’ll set to and tidy it all up. She will. Then after that she will open the letters and get her life back on track.
Closing her eyes, she lets out a shuddering breath and imagines Jacob lying next to her, the heat from his skin merging with hers, the golden hue of his naked flesh as he leans over her and places his hand on her breast. She curls into a foetal position, a reassuring warmth flooding through her. This is better. Good thoughts, positive happy thoughts. If anyone can help her find her way through this tough time, it’s Jacob. It’s always been him. Soon he’ll realise what he’s lost. Soon he will see the error of his ways, realise the impact of what he has done and come around to her way of thinking.
All she needs is a little more time…
12
‘Leah, open up right now! Open this fucking door or I’m calling the police!’
Leah sits up, her clothes askew, her hair sticking out at unnatural angles. She tries to fight her way out of the stranglehold of sleep that presses down on her thoughts, muffling her senses.
‘I need that key back right now! I know you got a spare one cut. Open this bloody door or I’ll break it down!’ Grainne’s voice is piercing, almost a shriek.
Leah slumps back onto the pillow, closes her eyes, covers her ears. Wills it all to go away. Something stirs deep within her at what is happening, at the noise right outside her door – Grainne’s shouting, talk of a key – it’s a fleeting memory, a rogue thought, an unwanted recollection. The walls close in on her, the roof lowers, a pain slices across her abdomen, her windpipe snaps shut. She gags, splutters, struggles to breathe.
Then silence. All is quiet again. The pain has subsided, her throat is clear. Grainne is no longer screaming at her, hollering for her to open up. Leah looks around wildly, her eyes darting around the room. She jumps up out of bed, paces over to the door and pulls it ajar. There’s nobody there. No Grainne, no Innes even. The hallway outside her room is empty. Her heart bangs around her chest, fluttering and flapping like a caged bird, pressing against her ribcage as she scans every corner for hidden figures. There is nobody.
At that, the front door opens and Grainne appears, holding an umbrella. She gives it a firm shake and drops it in the corner of the vestibule where it falls to one side, dripping water all over the tiled floor. She stamps her feet on the mat and turns to face Leah. ‘The bus was late. Been stood waiting for the past twenty minutes in the rain. Sorry, need to get in and get dry.’ She pushes past, leaving a trail of wet footsteps on the parquet flooring. Leah listens as Grainne bustles about, pulling off her coat, dropping it on the bottom of the stairs and cursing under her breath about stupid British weather and its unpredictable twists and turns. ‘Hot as Hades one minutes and pissing down the next. Bloody sick of it. How are we supposed to dress for God’s sake? For winter or fucking summer?’ Her voice echoes down the hall, rattling in Leah’s head. Grainne has been outside, not here in the house. She has been at work all day. So what in God’s name has just happened and who was it that was banging on the door, demanding she open up and hand over her keys?
Nausea rises up from her belly, a swirling ball of acid that threatens to explode out of her if she doesn’t sit down and dip her head into her lap. She feels herself being propelled forwards on legs that don’t belong to her. She moves rapidly, reaching the toilet just in time. With a sudden desperate roar, Leah brings up the contents of her stomach over and over again. A trail of brown sludge fills the porcelain bowl, the stench causing her to retch until her sides ache and there is nothing left to bring up. She squats next to the toilet, holding her hair back away from her face, her innards growling and roiling. Breathing is a huge effort. She sucks oxygen in like a dying man desperate for his last breath, expelling it again in ragged chunks. In through her nose, out through her mouth. In, out. In, out. Her lungs are on fire, her head a jumble of insane thoughts. Once again, a sense of enervation pulls at her, threatening to swallow her whole.
She stands up, angles her face under the tap and rinses her mouth, spitting out trails of coffee-coloured slime that cling to the side of the sink.
Dizziness claws at her as she makes her way back to her room. Her legs ache and her muscles are as tight as knotted rope as she drops onto the mattress, her body feeling two stone lighter than it did five minutes ago. Despite feeling dog-tired, sleep is no longer an option. She is wide awake now with no idea of what time it is, what day it is. She knows where she is, however, and that’s what worries her. As far as she can tell, she is travelling through hell with no means of escape and it’s got to stop. She needs order in her life. She needs to know what is going on, not spend her days stumbling from one catastrophe to another. She needs stability.
Leah curls up on her side. A minute. She will count to sixty and then get up feeling better. She will tidy this room, open her stack of mail and then work out what to do about her unpaid rent. She needs to settle it. She has to live somewhere and until Jacob realises his mistake and lets her back into his life, she needs a roof over her head and here is as good as anywhere. It’s close to his home and not so far from where she works. It’s also affordable. With dwindling resources, money is suddenly very important. Her dip in salary has dictated she become thriftier and lower her expectations.
The thought of her job makes her head ache. It’s imperative she call into the office, speak to her boss and explain her predicament, tell him about her medical issues. She’s already lost one position. To lose this one would plunge her into an untenable situation. She wonders if she is actually in arrears at all. Did she imagine the confrontation with Grainne earlier or did it really happen? Time has no meaning anymore with events happening one after another, all piling up in her head. She visualises them as a mountain of rocks; impossible to climb. Completely impassable. Ready to topple down on her, flattening her body, grinding her bones into dust.
Reaching down to her feet, Leah snatches up the pile of letters and glances through them. She discards the junk mail and opens a bank statement, gulping down large breaths that feel solid and compacted, pockets of air sticking in her throat like gravel as she fights to swallow and control her breathing. She widens her eyes, blink
ing repeatedly as she reads the statement, sees the list of minus signs that scream at her. She’s overdrawn. Badly overdrawn. Where is her money? Where are her wages? A stream of direct debits has been taken out but there hasn’t been any money going in. She is entitled to sick pay. She has spent months paying into a scheme that should cover her for periods of protracted illnesses. So where is it?
The room swims; she is light-headed with fear and shock. The figure at the bottom of the page tells her all she needs to know. It reads -£482.76. And she still owes rent to Grainne. Or does she? Did that encounter actually happen or did she dream it? Her overdraft limit is £500 from the days when she had a decent job, money coming in on a regular basis. Back when she had a proper life and the bank trusted her.
Looking again at the letters, she sees one from her employer. Her stomach contracts. She’s on the sick. She should be getting paid, shouldn’t she? Her empty belly heaves as she opens it, ripping it apart with her long nails and holding it between damp shaking fingers.
The words at the top jump out at her – NOTICE OF TERMINATION
She shrieks, her hand flying to her mouth, then scans the writing, checking for dates. This cannot be right. It just can’t. This letter is from over a month ago. Or at least she thinks it is. Everything is too confusing. Time seems to have lost all meaning. She is living in a vacuum where nothing makes sense.
Tears blur her vision. She rubs at her eyes and reads the letter:
Dear Ms Browne,
We are writing to inform you of your termination at Timms & Co. with immediate effect for just cause due to poor attendance and gross misconduct that involved violence towards another employee.
Here at Timms & Co. we operate a zero-tolerance policy and put the safety of our employees above all else. Everyone, without exception, has the right to work in a safe environment and your conduct breached that policy and broke our company rules.
After much discussion, the employee in question and company directors have decided not to press charges but we feel that it would be irresponsible for you to enter the building, and remiss of us as courteous employers to allow it. Therefore, we have arranged for your belongings to be delivered to a PO box, the address of which is listed below. Please collect them as soon as possible.
Yours sincerely,
Marcus Frackett
Managing Director
A howl scrapes its way out of her throat, loud and feral. This can’t be happening. It simply cannot be. She balls up her fists, pushes them into her eyes, pressing down hard, trying to suppress the river of tears that is bursting to be free. Her face throbs, her jaw aches. Everywhere hurts. She can suddenly recall what happened. It has come back to her like a punch to the gut, the memory of that day slinking into her brain, forcing her to see. Forcing her to remember.
That day. That awful fucking day.
Her dismissal.
She had arrived back late from lunch one afternoon. She would like to be able to use the excuse that there had been a queue at the sandwich shop or that the heavens had opened and she had had to shelter in a shop doorway until it stopped, but that wasn’t the case at all. What she had actually been doing was standing outside Jacob’s college hoping to catch sight of him, hoping to speak to him and talk him round, make him realise what a terrible mistake he was making. She had been standing there for what felt like an age and lost track of time. Before she knew it, over an hour had passed as she stood there staring, watching. Waiting. And that meant she was late. It was a good twenty-minute walk from her office to Jacob’s place of work. When she finally arrived back at her desk, Gilly, the office manager was waiting for her, wearing an old-fashioned tweed suit and a deep frown.
Even though Leah knew she had made a grave error of judgement, arriving back at work forty-five minutes late, she felt immensely furious and had asked Gilly what she wanted. There was malice in her voice and she made no attempt to disguise it. Perhaps it was tiredness, perhaps it was the lack of food or perhaps it was spending all that time outside Jacob’s place of work and not even seeing him, but regardless, Leah had rounded on Gilly. ‘Go and pick your battles elsewhere! I’m perfectly entitled to take a longer break. I regularly get back to my desk before anybody else every morning so why don’t you just leave me alone?’
Gilly had reminded her that they didn’t operate a flexitime system and that she had missed a meeting with an important client. She then asked Leah to accompany her to the office.
And that’s when it happened.
Leah had snapped. Fatigue, hunger and frustration overtook her, turning her into a raging monstrous being. ‘You know what, Gilly?’ she had shouted. ‘You’re nothing but an obnoxious odious bitch who lives to control people!’
She remembers the colour draining from the other woman’s face, the greyness that replaced her normally healthy complexion spreading over her flesh as Leah continued with her tirade, shouting that she was frigid and would end up a lonely old spinster if she didn’t start cutting people some slack and being nice to everyone around her.
Gilly had tried to take a step back, but in her confusion had stumbled and inadvertently moved closer to Leah, who in turn perceived it as threat and grabbed her arm before throwing her backwards with more force than was necessary.
She stares down at her hands, remembering the strength behind that shove, how she had actually wished Gilly harm. It wasn’t an accident and yet it was. The older woman had stumbled and fallen backwards, hitting her head on the tiled floor and damaging her arm. It was twisted at a peculiar and painful angle. And there had been blood. Plenty of it too. Enough to cause a ruckus and for an ambulance to be called. People had gathered, shouts were heard. A hand was clasped around Leah’s upper arm and a voice demanded that she go into the office of the managing director.
She had sat, head bowed, her stomach tight with worry. She hadn’t meant for it to happen. It just did. Sometimes that was how life worked out for her. Trouble followed her around like a dark cloud ready to unleash a terrible storm upon her.
The manager had tried to speak with a modicum of reason in his voice and again, this set off a spark of irritation within her. His manner became more and more condescending with every sentence until she could hold her tongue no longer.
Standing up she had told him that he was a misogynistic waste of space who allowed male counterparts to get away with behaviour that was deemed unacceptable for female employees. It was true but possibly ill-timed. Only two weeks prior, two male colleagues had rocked in half an hour late and nobody had said a word to them. Not a damn thing. Yet when she did it, the world practically imploded.
‘I beg your pardon?’ Marcus had said, a tremble evident in his tone, his eyes wide.
‘If I had been a man and had pushed somebody away, it would have been written off as laddish behaviour. Walking me to the office in view of everybody and sitting here speaking to me in that tone is discrimination.’
She knew then that the game was up. She was simply venting her spleen, trying to defend the indefensible. Without waiting for a reply, she turned and left his office, stepped through the crowd of gossip mongers who had gathered outside the door, and stopping only to grab her bag and coat, she left the building making sure she slammed the door on her way out.
Tears bubble up and escape, sliding down her face as she remembers that day, those few desperate hours she has tried hard to forget.
Her chest rises and falls, sobs catching in her throat as she stares at the evidence in her hands, the cold hard facts screaming at her that she is unemployed and broke with no means of keeping a roof over her head.
She stares out of the window, her mind throwing ideas at her randomly. All of this has happened since the break-up with Jacob – having to move house, losing her first job due to lack of concentration. Even the awful scene with Gilly only happened because she had been to see Jacob and lost track of time. This is what heartbreak feels like, she is sure of it. It isn’t some undefinable ethereal condition. It is real
, and she is suffering from it. It is an all-encompassing disorder that affects every aspect of her life, leaving her unable to function at the most basic of levels.
And there is only one person who is to blame for this.
Chloe.
Her last visit to Chloe’s flat was just a warm-up, a prequel to the real thing. It’s now time for Leah to up her game, to really start asserting herself instead of being the proverbial doormat. So far, she has taken the blows and done nothing about it except stand and stare in at the life that should be hers, the life that used to belong to her. She knows now that such action was a waste of her time; she has been passive for too long. More aggression is what is needed. Not too much, just enough to let Chloe know that she is onto her.
Just enough to scare her away and send her running back to wherever it was she came from.
Just enough.
Leah drops the handful of letters onto the floor, watching as they scatter onto the rug in a dishevelled pile. None of it matters anymore; her lack of money, having no job, being in arrears with her rent. None of it worries her anymore. Those things are just a distraction from what is really important, which is getting Jacob back.
And eliminating Chloe from their lives. For good.
13
2005
It didn’t take them long to locate him. By the time he was found, dehydration and mild hypothermia had already set in requiring a short stay in hospital until his body temperature and fluids had returned to normal.