by A. M. Castle
I had a long way to go, and it was faster travelling alone.
I missed Pete. I ached for what had been lost. And the humiliation of that family lunch still felt like bitter ashes in my mouth. But I had to tell myself that I could do better. Once again, I dared to lift my eyes to the prize. Patrick. In many ways, I couldn’t believe for a second that he’d ever look at me seriously. He hadn’t minded having a quick flirt, when he’d had time on his hands, but I was pretty sure he never seriously thought there was any mileage in me. Now he’d let me down so badly. Who could blame him? I wasn’t sure I could. Despite my best efforts, I’d made it too obvious that I adored him, and where was the fun in that? We both knew he could do so much better.
I knew that even Jen and Tricia were distractions. Yes, I loved meeting up with Jen, now getting edgier all the time, tripping on her asymmetric hems, trailing arty scarves, and clutching Brides magazine as though it were the Holy Bible. We’d still carve the weeks into laughs, play out scenes for each other. She was nostalgic about ‘the Desk’, as she called it reverently, remembered the foibles of everyone in the firm, always thirsty for the gossip. And she loved telling me about her place, was always trying to get me to jump ship, ‘improve myself’ as she put it.
She was only a few years older, but she knew the ways of the world that I so badly wanted to be a part of. She was generous in encouraging me to believe I could reach out and touch my dreams, however ridiculous they might be. I hadn’t known her all that long, but in many ways, I felt Jen was the one who’d finally brought me up. She’d showed me the way to go about things. She’d been so much more interested in my development than anyone else, from my actual mother to every social worker on the team.
My relationship with Tricia was more tenuous – but she was useful to me. She worked more closely with Patrick than I did, she had that window on his world, being in the same open-plan space. She wasn’t under any illusions about why I sought her out. She could probably sense that we weren’t so much chalk and cheese as a thoroughbred and a sewer rat. But though she had the background, she was busily damaging her looks with her alternating Mars bar/cabbage soup diet, while I was morphing more and more towards her style. As far as outward appearances went, that was. I still had ‘damaged goods’ written all the way up and down inside, like Brighton rock.
I think she found me interesting, too. For her, it was a safe way to peer into corners she’d never dare look at in the dark. All right, my accent was less full of sudden jags and lopped-off edges than it had once been, thanks to my tireless efforts. And I almost never wore manmade fibres anymore. But Pete had shown me forcibly that I still wouldn’t pass in her home counties universe – nor would I really want to. My drive wasn’t all about snobbery.
I just wanted a good life. Still do. That doesn’t have to be about being posh, though the two often go hand in hand. The things I want – need – are stability, the ground solid under my feet, a clear view of all the exits and no one bad coming through them anyway, no surprises lurking, no one owed money or a favour that you have to grit your teeth, or some other part of your body, to pull off. Autonomy. Self-respect. Safety. If you’ve never known what it is not to have those things, then you probably don’t realise how hard you’d work to achieve it.
Odd, I suppose, that I’d fixated on gaining all this through someone else – through Patrick. Someone I still hardly even knew. I could have made it on my own, been my own little island, secure in myself and not risking the cruel brush of someone else’s disparagement, disrespect, or much, much worse. But I was braver than that. Or stupider. My hormones led me onwards, where my brain told me to stay back. And perhaps I was always looking for someone, someone who’d look after me, someone to care.
Perhaps there was more of my mother in me than I’ve ever dared to admit.
I can’t help looking back on those years as a golden time. Many would look at where I was a few months ago and envy me. But, despite it all, it was those early years that were the most fun. Fun, because of Patrick, but also because of the sense of boundless possibilities open to me.
I’m not sure anyone else would see it that way. I was on quicksand, after all. One false step and I’d plunge down, down. But I was so careful. And people only see what they want to see. They don’t look too carefully, unless you give them cause. We all love watching the meringue-white swan glide across the pond. No one stays to watch it heft itself out of the water and waddle like any old lardy goose over the grass.
OK, I’ll admit, I was angry with Patrick, after the damp squib of our date-that-wasn’t. It had been so degrading, and although I was used to knockbacks, this one really stung.
He wasn’t to know about all the hours I’d put in to ready myself during the day, thank goodness. That would have made things even more mortifying. But he’d seen my consternation as he’d breezed past. Worse, he’d seen my attempt to cover it up, gather some tatters of dignity over my naked disappointment. I was well and truly on the back foot, and it was horrible.
I should have been angry with him, his faithlessness, his lack of consideration, the emptiness of his gallant gesture, which he’d probably forgotten all about before he’d even left the lift that morning. But I was good at not laying blame at the right door. It had taken me years to see my mother for what she was. She’d brought me up to believe that everything that happened to me was my own fault, that I somehow invited it and definitely deserved it. She’d told me that a thousand times, and I’d also deduced it for myself. Children are logical, and there had to be a reason why she punished me the way she did, why the bad stuff kept on happening to me. It was clear. I was evil and was getting my just desserts.
I’d made excuses for her for years, but eventually the worm had turned. I didn’t know it, I can only see it now, but the same pattern was starting up all over again in my head with Patrick. I should have been angry with him then. I should have felt let down. I was right to feel slighted.
But instead, I swerved round him, and I re-routed my juggernaut of hatred. I directed it straight at the girl he’d kissed that night instead.
When I saw Patrick in that clinch, with that girl, outside my marble foyer, going on my date, I felt my anger lap across my marble counter towards her, a bile-green tide of corrosion. If I could have slapped her round her pink-and-white cheeks, I would have done. How dare she be standing there, kissing him, when it should have been me? There are times when we all feel perilously close to the edge, but I felt my grip on sanity slide.
There was nothing I could do, though. Nothing, except take home a bottle of cheap Chardonnay with my Tesco ready meal and tuck into both with the deep hunger born of misery. I even ate the dollop of stodgy rice that clung to my chilli, for once. I could just about have stood it, seeing the girl he really liked, if he hadn’t dangled the prospect of our own date in front of me. But he’d shown me the path to heaven, then slammed the door in my face. Although he couldn’t have known the true extent of my obsession, he did know I had a soft spot for him as wide and deep as the ocean. What he’d done was cruel.
But the red-hot current of my hatred stuck its thorns deep into the girl, not into him. Why do we do this to our own side? It’s unfathomable. We should have solidarity against the common enemy. Maybe you do. I’m coming round to it myself. Back then, I admit, I blamed her, even though it was all Patrick’s fault. He’d made a promise he wasn’t interested in keeping, like so many men before him, and sauntered away from the devastation he’d wreaked. But instead of wanting to get my own back on him, it was her I focused on. She became the nexus of a perfect storm of rage. Oh, my mind’s eye. It was hardly the ‘bliss of solitude’, as advertised by poets.
I blame my mother for this. As you’ll have gathered, she is responsible for much of the crap that it was my life’s work to crawl away from. An unreasoning faith in men, despite all the evidence that they would fuck her, and then fuck her over, had taught her nothing when she brought me into the world, and continued to teach her
nothing over the years of my childhood. She always believed everything a man said to her, but questioned every word that came out of my mouth. From puberty onwards, she treated me like her deadliest rival. It was exhausting. It was unfair. It was the blueprint I learned and, until I had my own daughter, I carried it on.
It was not good and I apologise for it.
So, instead of deciding he was a waste of time, I decided to find out everything I could about Patrick’s girl. Today, that would take less time than it did to type this sentence. An idle click at my laptop, and I’d have her laid bare, like a pathologist at a post-mortem. In those days, it wasn’t so easy.
My first port of call was Tricia, font of all knowledge about Patrick’s floor. Trouble was, I was angry with her as well. Why hadn’t she given me the heads-up? Told me he had a love interest? I refused to call this … creature a girlfriend. Surely it hadn’t got to that stage. And he had better taste than that. Or he should have.
Tricia was shamefaced. She sat opposite me, in the firm’s café, the next day. She’d tried to weasel out of meeting, but I wasn’t having any of it. To say I was on edge was an understatement.
‘The thing is …’ God, how I hated the weakness of those three dribbly, mealy-mouthed words. Excuses, pathetic excuses. But I hid my fury, schooled myself to listen like a good girl. Her vowels had never been so plummy, never had such trouble tumbling out of that prettily lipsticked mouth. I gazed, fascinated, at her small, even white teeth, the product of regular trips to the dentist and Mummy standing over her every night wielding a toothbrush.
My hatred for Patrick’s chosen one almost spilled over. But my anger was just a mask for sorrow. I was bleeding, weeping inside, as Tricia told me all.
It turned out that she had seen the whole relationship developing, right under her nose. The girl was only one of her friends! I admit, I loathed Tricia and all the rich bitches of the world at that point – and their closed club that I would never, ever be a part of. I bit my lip inadvertently, blood flowering in my mouth. It had all been going on while my back was turned. My face twisted, though whether this heralded rage or unstoppable weeping, even I couldn’t tell. I lifted my coffee cup up to disguise it, tried a wobbly smile instead.
The girl, this Jane, had come with Tricia to an office party. Something I hadn’t even known was happening. And there she had met Patrick.
Where had my invite been? In the bin, with me, of course. For a few moments, the dark clouds swirled, then I took a breath, rationalised it. At the time, a couple of weeks ago, I’d been with Pete. I’d been busy, distracted. Tricia explained it was just their team, celebrating some big contract or other with a few best mates. She hadn’t thought to mention it. I did feel this was a total dereliction of her duty, knowing my feelings towards Patrick, but I had to let it go. Had to, though it hurt. Just so I could keep on dragging information from her.
Anyway, it seemed the party had gone the way of all office shindigs. Started off with lame conversation round the desks, crisps and tragic bits of repartee falling over people’s keyboards like dandruff on a middle-manager’s shoulders. Then, thanks to umpteen lukewarm glasses of white wine, served in those plastic cups that crack if you grip them too hard, things had loosened up. To the extent that Patrick, my Patrick, had last been seen snogging this girl Jane round by the photocopiers. At least they hadn’t taken lots of A4s of their bits. But they had been the talk of the office. Obviously.
At this point I couldn’t help giving Tricia one of my looks. It had been designed to stop grown men in their tracks. Tricia wilted. Even while her doting mother’s back was turned, her meanest au pairs had never glared at her as I was doing now. But she blustered.
‘What could I do, Louise? It was too late. The deed was done. In the loos, John from Accounts said,’ she added, leaning forward and even smiling, as though I was just after the prurient gossip. As though my world, or the one I had been very much hoping to construct, hadn’t just shattered.
I sniffed. For one very dodgy second, I thought I might actually cry. But I managed to suck all the hurt back up into myself, and the steel shutters of my rage clanged down hard instead.
Chapter 30
Now
Becca
At first Becca had loved coming to the office. Gliding past the punters reporting their stolen bikes and their grudges against neighbours, flashing her pass at the desk sergeant, being buzzed through into the behind-the-scenes bit of the cop shop. She’d even liked the jauntiness of that name – and being able to shed a layer or two of her cumbersome uniform was definitely good news. But now she could safely say the novelty had worn off. Being out there, on the streets, expecting the unexpected, never knowing what strange kettle of fish you were going to be radioed into, that was the buzz. Hard to explain to a civilian. But it beat filling in forms any day.
Except times like this. She stared at the screen again, just checking she hadn’t imagined the email exchange. It had been so much easier than she’d thought. She’d assumed an insurance company getting a request out of the blue from the police, would demur, want to check, ensure everything was kosher. Question her credentials, at the very least. She knew she would have done.
But it was a small firm. Not one of the conglomerates around these days. Was that why Patrick Bridges had chosen it in the first place? Or maybe Louise herself had made the selection?
They could be understaffed, they could just be lazy and not want to bother making sure she had a right to know. Whatever the reason, they’d rolled over. Admittedly, she’d had the account details, via that letter she’d filched. That was the in. And the heap of figures they’d sent in return was overwhelming, all-encompassing. All the payouts and premiums for the whole company for years were here, in a jumble. But Becca not only had the time, she had the concentration and, all right, the obsessive attention to detail required to ferret nuggets of gold from this pile of dross.
And here was what she’d wanted, needed, prayed for. What she had been sure of, all along, was hidden there. Right in front of her, in black and white.
Today had to be the day when she’d finally say something to Burke, get him to pass it up to his mate Johno. Because what she’d dug up, well … surely it wasn’t just her? Surely it showed something was seriously amiss in Louise’s world? Like a skew-whiff gold frame in a stately home, it was the tiny detail that revealed the whole picture was a fake.
OK, technically speaking, she didn’t have the authority to have got her mitts on this. Morally speaking, maybe she didn’t have the right. But judicially speaking, in her view, someone had to. And the sooner the better. Every day that passed, Louise Bridges was getting away with it, getting further from her crime, burning through anything that could tie her to the truth. Continuing that sickening pose, her grieving widow act. For Becca, that felt like the real travesty. The woman’s hypocrisy, it was revolting.
Becca had known, still knew, the real pain of losing someone she loved. Her dad. Now here was Louise, aping that heartbreak, pretending she cared, dragging those poor kids around with her to bolster her performance. Well, it wasn’t on. Everyone else might be fooled. But she, Becca, had seen right through it. And she was going to put a stop to it.
Chapter 31
Then
I sat across from Tricia in the staff canteen and let her flannel on. Until she’d produced enough of the stuff to kit out every bathroom in the land. When she’d run dry and took to giving the remnants of her lipstick nervous little licks, I put my head on one side.
‘So what’s this Jane like, then?’ I tried to keep my tone neutral, cool. But I could tell from the way that Tricia scraped her chair back a bit from the table that I hadn’t quite got it right. No matter. I still wanted the answer. The lengthening pause between us made that transparently clear.
‘Jane?’ Tricia faltered. Who do you think I mean? The Virgin Mary? That’s what I nearly said. But I was admirably restrained. I just gave her my long, level look. I tried to keep the flames from flicke
ring, tried to keep the canteen clock from ticking. The silence stretched between us like a prisoner on the rack.
Then Tricia cracked. ‘Well, I know her from school. Hadn’t really seen her for years, then we bumped into each other at a drinks thing the other day … so I thought I’d ask her along to the office do …’
My shoulders sagged. It sounded all too depressingly clear. Girls like Tricia never stopped going to ‘drinks things’, never stopped meeting people they had links with – schools, relatives, neighbours. Maybe it was just that all their lovely crisp fifty-pound notes in the bank were friends with the other person’s equally enormous piles of money. Tricia found connections wherever she went, a gilded parachute designed to keep her from ever touching the filthy pavements where the likes of me slogged along, trying to scrape a living.
It really pissed me off. My life was all about hiding from anyone who’d known me on the way up. My first action, when the glorious day came when I finally felt I’d got to safety, would be to pull the ladder away, keep all those ghosts with their ashy fingers from crawling after me. God alone knew when I’d get there, though. And this news felt like yet another setback.
It was ridiculous. Everything in my head started to protect Patrick from the consequences of his actions, and it was all her, this Jane, this interloper, who was the spanner in the works. I was much more willing to blame her than him, though the truth was I still didn’t know either of them. How was it possible to love someone as completely as I loved Patrick, and yet never to have exchanged more than the most basic of conversations with him? Every fibre of me still yearned towards him, although I now suspected that he was no more to be relied upon than any other man.