But by Degrees

by Kit Eyre

‘Of course I . . .’ I exhaled and swept the nearest takeaway cartons from the sofa. ‘Gem, come on, sit down. I’m sorry.’

  As she perched on the edge of the cushion, she rubbed her eyes. ‘We were worried, that’s all. Your phone’s off, you haven’t been answering the door.’

  ‘I’ve been a bit nocturnal,’ I said truthfully.

  ‘You left that voicemail for your mum so she thinks you’re okay. At least you did that. But, you know, we didn’t deserve this. Harriet thought she was doing the right thing; it was all she could think of to do with Knight rattled like that. Jude was the only link unless we wanted to go grovelling to Caroline.’

  I twisted a knot of hair around my index finger. ‘Have you spoken to my dad?’

  ‘I did, Harriet as well. You know what he’s like with her, she talked him round. We’re fine to look because no one else seems bothered, but it’s not likely we’re going to bump into Conrad so . . . As long as we pass anything concrete onto the police and don’t do anything stupid, he’ll support us and keep it back from your mum. He’s tried to tell you that himself, only you’ve unplugged the phone.’

  ‘Did you tell him about Jude?’

  ‘Course not. We were trying to calm him down, not wind him up even more.’

  ‘Pity you didn’t apply that philosophy to me.’

  ‘I’m sorry for that,’ Gemma answered, nudging a greenish plate around with her foot. ‘But you haven’t even asked if she’s come up with anything.’

  I searched her face. ‘Has she?’

  ‘Maybe, much as I hate to say it. How about I make a cuppa and tell you all about it?’

  I nodded and she stumbled over the mess towards the kitchen, catching her heel in the shell of a KFC bucket. A minute later, I heard the glug of water as she washed a couple of cups while the kettle grumbled in the background.

  To keep myself busy, I condensed plates and dishes into one unsanitary pile that tottered against the wall with forks poking out of the top like a putrefied fountain. Then I cracked open the window and sprayed a bit of deodorant around in lieu of air freshener. By the time Gemma returned with the tea, the stench of festering chicken bones was dissipating a bit. She threw me a smile as we settled down on the sofa.

  ‘It’s not much,’ she began. ‘She went on the dates Conrad gave you, went through the computerised records that were left. You know how much was destroyed that day, but the actual transactions are still available on the system, just without the extra detail.’

  ‘Mmm, go on.’

  ‘Well, there was a large redundancy payment in the September of 2004. Jude would’ve missed it if she hadn’t branched out a bit with the dates.’

  ‘Clever her,’ I muttered.

  ‘Just listen. It was high, abnormally high, with no accompanying note on the system to explain it. Although it was debited from the Yorkshire and Humber region, it was repaid immediately by central office. From what Jude said, that was unusual at the time, and Harriet backed her up on it. She said that payments were made by regional offices then repaid at the end of the year to balance the books. Things changed when they took on more sites, but that’s how it was then.’

  ‘So what though? It could’ve been for anything.’

  ‘I know, that’s what Harriet said. But it’s the only bit of something she found and it’s a lead. Anyway, Jude did some more digging and found an address for this woman, somewhere in Scotland.’

  ‘Right, and Harriet reckons we should pay her a visit.’

  ‘In a nutshell.’

  I tapped my thumb against my cup. ‘Maybe we can tie it in with a visit to my parents’. I’ve been threatening to take Harriet up . . . What?’

  ‘That’s probably not a good idea. If it was up to Harriet, you’d come along blindly, but I’m not doing that to you.’

  ‘Let me guess, Jude’s invited herself along.’

  Gemma crossed her legs. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘It’s not your fault. She always knows how to get what she wants.’

  ‘Harriet said she won’t give us the address or even a name if she doesn’t get to come with us. And if you don’t come then . . .’

  I snorted and dumped my cup on the coffee table, splattering tea over a crumpled newspaper. My instinct was to get right out of the room, but I reined it in and hobbled to the window instead. The ginger tom from downstairs was sunbathing on the bins, laconically eyeing up a collared dove. Just as he raised a paw to move, it soared across the flats opposite and out of sight.

  ‘Has it occurred to you she’s making it all up? That she doesn’t have a name, that she just wants to manipulate us.’

  ‘Course it has.’ The sofa creaked as Gemma rose and edged towards me. ‘It comes down to whether you want to keep going. Harriet does, I know, but she’ll take her lead from you.’

  I turned to face her, ‘Bit late for that after calling Jude, isn’t it?’

  ‘Well, I did point that out, but you know Harriet – not one for trivial distinctions. Her attitude is that she did what was best because you wouldn’t.’

  ‘Wouldn’t call Jude? Damn right, I wouldn’t.’

  Gemma sighed and hooked her arms around her neck. Instead of mounting a defence, she twisted away and looked around the room. I recognised the photographer emerging, cataloguing everything from the shade of the carpet to the cobweb fluttering in the far corner above the bookcase. Once she’d finished in the living room, she walked straight out into the hallway. I grabbed my stick to follow her, surprised to find she’d turned right instead of left and was hovering in the bedroom doorway.

  ‘Gem?’

  She glanced sideways, nibbling on her lip. ‘Please don’t bite my head off. I just need to know, okay? Are you – are you still in love with her?’

  The questioned floored me. I stepped away and rested my shoulder against the wall, mainly to suppress the shake that had started up in my leg. Meanwhile, Gemma’s eyes flicked between me and the bedroom.

  ‘I remember how you were back then,’ she said finally. ‘You know, we split up because I wasn’t ready to settle down. Grass is always greener and all that. I was wrong –’

  ‘It’s ancient –’

  ‘Hang on, let me finish. You wanted to settle down, you wanted the normal life. Fair enough. But then you go and have an affair with a married woman. When you told me, I didn’t understand how you’d made the leap. I still don’t.’

  I toyed with the handle of my stick. ‘It wasn’t a leap. It wasn’t like that.’

  ‘What bit am I getting wrong? You claimed you couldn’t handle being second best then you decide to take a degree in it. I remember the conversation, Dan. All or nothing, that’s what you said. So how the hell does that add up?’

  ‘I didn’t plan it with her, did I?’

  ‘Well, I don’t know. You don’t talk about it. I never thought you could –’

  ‘What’s your point?’ I snapped.

  The anger drained from her face then she mumbled, ‘Just that you must have loved her a lot to put yourself through that.’

  My stomach liquefied at her tone. I couldn’t believe I’d missed it. Before I could work out a response, she’d darted past me into the living room. I found her staring out of the window, palms planted on the windowsill.

  ‘Gemma –’

  ‘No. There’s no need to go into it. Forget I said anything.’

  I watched the tremor of her shoulders. ‘I didn’t know.’

  ‘You’ve been preoccupied,’ she muttered.

  ‘I’ve been a bitch. I thought I was taking it out on my best mate, that’s all.’

  She spun around, forehead creased. ‘You were. You are. It was just . . . If we’re spending time with her, I wanted to understand. I want to protect you if we’re going to be stuck in a car with her for hours.’

  ‘If I agree to it,’ I answered.

  ‘If you agree to it,’ Gemma echoed.

  Chapter 14

  February 2010

  Michael’s face
was swollen with tears.

  My hand was still fastened to Jude’s. I tried to tug it loose, but she tightened her grip until my fingertips tingled, and Michael let out a snicker. He sank down onto the bottom step, dangling his arms over his knees. For a long time, none of us spoke, just avoided each other’s gaze. My eyes had fixed on a scar on Michael’s cheek, a birthmark maybe. I’d never noticed it before, I’d never really looked at him.

  ‘You said the summer,’ he muttered eventually.

  Jude flinched then cleared her throat. ‘That’s right.’

  ‘All that time . . . I thought it was the promotion. I tried to support you, encourage you to get out and . . . You were going to her, weren’t you?’

  ‘It didn’t start in the summer,’ she replied, shifting her weight closer to me. ‘That was when I realised –’

  ‘Realised what? That you wanted a little more excitement?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Something different. Just to say you weren’t boring, is that it?’

  ‘No,’ Jude repeated.

  He straightened up. ‘You can’t tell me you suddenly like women. We’ve been married eight years. You don’t wake up one day and –’

  ‘It wasn’t like that,’ she interrupted.

  ‘Well, what was it like, hmm? Tell me.’

  Her bravado was beginning to buckle. A quiver started in her leg and moved up to her arm. To combat it, I decided to prise her hand from mine and wrap my arm around her waist instead. She nestled into the crook of my neck while Michael used the banister to haul himself to his feet.

  ‘Jude, tell me,’ he demanded. ‘Are you saying you’ve done this before?’

  ‘I haven’t cheated on you before, if that’s what you’re asking.’

  ‘I don’t know – was it? Come on, spell it out. What do you mean?’

  After running her tongue over her lips, she said, ‘It’s something I’ve always known about myself. It just didn’t matter before.’

  ‘Didn’t matter?’ He stared at her. ‘You married me!’

  ‘I thought we could be happy. We were – we have been.’

  Michael snorted and dug his boot into the nearest sheaf of papers. ‘She’s brainwashed you, that’s what this is. You’re pregnant, remember? She’s right about one thing – you need to explain that. If you’re so –’

  ‘I love her,’ Jude whispered.

  His voice trickled away and a domino tottered in my head. Since I’d said the words upstairs, I’d been simultaneously desperate and petrified to hear her return them. It meant something had to change, just like her vehemence about wanting to leave Michael had spun around my mind like a whirlwind. Saying the words in front of him – to him – wasn’t a frantic promise she didn’t intend to follow through with, but an action she couldn’t backtrack on. Even given the incriminating conversation he’d overheard, she could’ve defended herself, but she hadn’t even tried. My head was beginning to pound under the dual weight of his glare and my own muddled thoughts.

  ‘You don’t get out of it that easily,’ Michael snapped, then he took a step forwards, peering at me in the dim light. ‘She was all over me at Christmas. Now, I mean all over me. Couldn’t get enough. Does that sound like a lesbian to you?’

  I disentangled myself from Jude, despite her clawing to keep hold of me. Her eyes flashed with panic as she glanced between me and Michael before drawing her shoulders up again.

  ‘Danni, it’s not how it sounds.’

  ‘Explain then,’ I muttered.

  She skidded her foot along the rim of a mouldering box. ‘It was the Christmas party. Do you remember?’

  Oh, yeah, I remembered.

  It’d been a swanky do in Manchester with the marketing lot, including a free bar and subsidised rooms. Michael was meant to be away, so we’d booked two rooms as a precaution with no intention of using both. I’d pictured it all, from the innuendo we could manage in a crowded room of colleagues, prolonging the dance, to the way we’d pilfer a bottle of wine and sneak upstairs to enjoy ourselves at Gerbera’s expense. Then Michael’s trip had been cancelled and I’d ended up drinking myself into oblivion with Matt at the bar while Jude spent the night being fawned over by her husband. It was one of the only times I’d seen them together as a couple and the reality poisoned everything, including my ability to keep my mouth shut.

  ‘Danni?’ Jude pressed with a furtive look towards Michael.

  ‘I remember,’ I murmured.

  ‘What you said –’

  ‘I was pissed, Jude!’

  ‘Well, so was I,’ she said with a limp shrug.

  From across the room, Michael snickered. ‘How do you explain the rest of December?’

  ‘I was trying to forget,’ she answered, eyes drilling into mine. ‘I was trying to make it work because I thought you didn’t . . .’

  ‘Very touching,’ Michael put in, ‘except it doesn’t cover it, does it? You’re pregnant, you’re having my baby. There’s nothing accidental about that. You were on the pill.’

  She looked over, forehead crumpled. ‘Yeah, I was. Till September.’

  The date struck me at the same time as it did Michael. He stumbled back to the stairs to lean against the banister while I gazed into Jude’s sincere face and wondered what would’ve happened if I’d let her finish that conversation on the first morning she’d woken in my bed. Things could’ve been so different.

  Silence stretched between the three of us. Michael seemed numb, looking blankly at the floor, while Jude tentatively took my hand and began massaging my palm with her thumb. When the upstairs door clattered, we all jumped.

  ‘Are you down there still?’ Caroline called.

  My tongue was glued to the roof of my mouth. Although Michael’s eyes drifted upwards, he didn’t seem capable of answering so it was left to Jude to clear her throat and respond.

  ‘Yeah, we are. Why?’

  ‘He’s back on the phone. Get Danni up here now.’

  It took me a few seconds to remember what she was talking about. The madman on the end of the phone had slipped my mind, as though we were in Gerbera’s cellar late at night of our own accord. I checked my watch in the gloom and frowned.

  ‘He’s early,’ I shouted up to Caroline.

  ‘Well, I’m not hallucinating, am I?’ she retorted.

  Michael suddenly found his feet. He rose up slowly, scraping his head on the beam, before turning and climbing the stairs with the precision of a robot. I glanced to Jude and she managed a weak smile.

  ‘We’d better not keep him waiting,’ she said.

  I buried my face briefly in her hair then drew back to kiss her.

  ‘I wonder what the hell he wants,’ I said as we started up the staircase.

  Chapter 15

  July 2011

  The wall outside my building glistened with dew.

  Overnight thunderstorms had cleared into a gorgeous morning that didn’t tally with the day ahead. I leaned against the wall, scraping the brick with my knuckles and waiting for Harriet’s car to appear. I heard it before I saw it; screeching along the access road before swerving into the car park and bumping onto the kerb.

  Gemma threw the rear door open and jumped out. Although a blonde head was visible in the passenger seat, I focused on Gemma steaming towards me with a grimace on her face. She leaned down to collect my rucksack then hesitated, probably in case I told her off for mollycoddling me again. Instead, I smiled and let her take it.

  ‘You okay?’ she murmured.

  ‘Are you?’ I returned.

  She snorted and heaved the bag over her shoulder. ‘I’ve been in the car for twenty minutes and I already want to strangle her.’

  ‘Don’t stop yourself on my account. Come on, let’s get this over with.’

  It took concentration to cross to the car without quivering. A couple of weeks sustained inaction had left my leg aching from the slightest exercise, but I was damned if I was going to show that to Jude. So I walked slowly in a straight l
ine and deposited myself in the back seat behind her. It was better that Gemma had arranged it this way, I realised. I couldn’t see Jude’s face but, more importantly, she couldn’t see mine. All I had to contend with was the familiar whiff of her perfume, but I wound the window down to take the edge off. Harriet blasted out Classic FM as Gemma slotted into the seat behind her then twisted the car around without a word.

  I’d brought one of my dad’s books on World War II aircraft to keep me occupied on the way up. It wasn’t exactly my cup of tea, but I wasn’t exactly reading it anyway. I kept my eyes fixed on the page, turning occasionally to maintain the illusion I was engrossed, until Harriet announced we were pulling into Scotch Corner for a comfort break.

  Her clipped tone reminded me I hadn’t spoken to her direct since she’d dropped me off outside my flat three weeks ago. I’d listened to her nine voicemails, though, which had been pretty enlightening. I’d never heard anyone cycle between angry and apologetic so quickly before, first having a go at me for doing a disappearing act then admitting she shouldn’t have sprung that meeting on me. We needed to talk, maybe have a full-on row, but not with Jude lurking in the passenger seat.

  The service station was full of wailing toddlers and mothers shovelling limp fries into their pudgy hands. As soon as me and Gemma stepped through the automatic doors, we were assaulted by a wave of simmering noise that rattled through my nerves. I snagged a sticky table near to the door and recited the alphabet backwards while Gemma grabbed us something plain and quick to eat.

  ‘You look lousy,’ she pointed out when she returned with baguettes and coffees.

  I stretched for the sugar. ‘Cheers.’

  ‘You’re doing bloody well, though. I would’ve smacked her by now.’

  ‘Yeah, well, I wouldn’t put it past her to get me arrested for it.’

  Gemma shrugged and rested her hand over mine. ‘I guess there’s that.’

  ‘Do you reckon she’s really got something or is she just taking us for a scenic tour north of the border?’ I asked after a moment.

  ‘She says she’s got a postcode for the sat nav when we get closer. We’ll know then if she’s playing us.’