One Step Too Far (17 page)

Andrew had grown more depressed the longer he was on his own, especially as Frances seemed to thrive, come out of herself, and according to Caroline had had her hair cut trendily short and was off doing charity mountain climbs in Kenya. He’d even tracked down Victoria – after all it was her he’d loved all along, wasn’t it? – but his once-smitten mistress had ignored his increasingly desperate approaches online, and in the end had emailed to say she’d call the police if he didn’t stop stalking her.

Even sex had lost its appeal to Andrew. The irony was that when it had been forbidden, clandestine, it had been worth the risk, even worth paying for. But now he could do it whenever he liked he'd stopped wanting to, and he began to realise just what he’d done to his wife for so many years. He took to doing little more than working and coming back to his small rented flat, eating takeaways and watching movies, loads of them, on Sky Plus. He developed a recurring pain in his arm and eventually went to the doctor and during the consultation he broke down and it all came out – his failed marriage, his depressing new home, his loneliness, his stress at work. The doctor prescribed both antidepressants and talking therapy, she was that concerned, and although Andrew had to wait three months he went along reluctantly, and the therapist was dark and gorgeous and Andrew perked up a bit, decided it might do him good after all.

After a year or so Andrew had finally got his life back on track, eating more healthily, taking up badminton, regaining his appreciation of a nice smile or a fine pair of breasts. The years ticked by. Both his daughters seemed settled at last, and he even became a grandad, which was lovely. But then he received the call that sent him to a place in his mind that he’d never visited before, not even when he’d missed the birth of his twins, or realised his uselessness as a husband and father early one morning on a Telford estate, not even when Frances had left him. The spreadsheet swam as his eyes filled – an almost daily occurrence now – and he bent lower over the useless, indecipherable figures, and his scalp shone lurid under the office lights, through the remains of his hair.

28

I see out my clients and sit down in reception, flicking through Campaign, relieved that my status meeting went well after all. Jessica and Luke, my two main clients on Frank deodorant (tagline “Be fabulous, be Frank”), had already been emailed about my promotion and they’d been delighted for me, very well deserved, great news etcetera, so that was nice. The new creative concepts had been well-received (they were for Frank, thank God, although I never had had clarification from Tiger), the photography brief was spot on and the planners had had a breakthrough on how to position Frank’s new multi-particle formula that stops sweat at even higher temperatures. I think I could have got through it without the coke after all, and in a rare moment of self-awareness I wonder where my heart has gone. The effect has worn off now and I feel a bit lethargic after the stress of the day, so I lean my head momentarily against the alien lump that is the sofa’s back rest and think yet again how ridiculously uncomfortable the reception furniture is. I’ll get up in a sec, but I do feel sleepy and the late afternoon sun shines through the plate glass and warms my face. It feels nice. I shut my eyes.

I hear the doors go but I don’t register, I’m feeling too warm, too snoozy, in this 60 seconds of respite from the day. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” a voice growls, and before I open my eyes I know it’s Tiger and that I’ve really had it now. How have I managed to get off to such a bad start with my new boss?
Because you were foisted on her, because she thinks you’re sleeping with Simon
, a voice dimly tells me. I remember the email from this morning (“You’re fired”) and I sit up abruptly and there's fear in my eyes.

Tiger is standing tall in her heels, Amazonian-like, looking down on me sprawled helpless on the kidney shaped couch. She has a beaming smile on her face, and it doesn’t look right.

“Well, well,” she says. “I just bumped into Jessica and Luke and they were singing your praises after the status meeting. Perhaps there’s more to you than being just a little arse-licker after all.” And with that she turns on her heel and stomps off to the lift.

I’m woozy now so I catch a cab home. Tiger had been so pleased with the glowing comments from my Frank clients that when I slunk back to my desk she didn’t even let me sit down, just ushered me straight downstairs and across the road to the champagne bar where we had two tall shimmering glasses each, served on pure white coasters next to bowls of fluorescent-looking wasabi peas. I don’t get Tiger at all – one minute she’s bitch personified, the next she’s making jokes that don’t quite cut it (“You’re fired” emails for example – she told me she watched some TV show on catch-up last night and is hooked), the next she loves me but it’s only because the clients love me. And that last point sums up Tiger – if I’m useful to her, if I’m making her money, then I could have two heads for all she cares, I could be shagging anyone. I could probably even have killed someone.

I drag myself back to safer territory. The biggest secret Simon’s ever told me is that Tiger’s real name is Sandra Balls and no wonder she changed her name. Simon made me promise, swear on my mother’s life that I would never let on, but tonight the champagne had been tingling and fizzing and so when she told me I needed to come up with the goods again on Wednesday, in our major presentation to the car client, I leaned in tipsily and so nearly answered, “No sweat, Sandy,” that instead I said I really needed to get home, we were having visitors, and I almost ran out the door before I disgraced myself.

I sit in the cab giggling at poor Sandy Balls – Simon told me it’s a holiday park in the New Forest – and I’m sure the driver thinks, here we go, another drunk slapper, what’s the world coming to, why can’t laydees be laydees? He doesn’t try to talk to me, thank goodness, and I look out the window at people who are in that in-between time, too late to be leaving work, too early to be going home drunk. We pass a cyclist with an enormous bottom, buttocks pumping like a squirrel’s cheeks, and I turn around to see what her face is like, and she has such an expression of concerted effort, conviction,
destination,
that it somehow makes me feel inadequate sat here, a passenger just along for the ride, and a bitch of a one at that. I lean back now and stare at the ceiling, willing the sudden dizziness to go away.

I get home about eight, it’s quite early still. Angel is sprawled on the lounge floor in her soft white dressing gown, spotless and virginal, playing chess with Rafael, her Spanish hooker friend. He’s absolutely brilliant at it, and Angel can never beat him although she’s pretty good herself. She's drinking vodka, but she has it with cranberry these days, so her glass is thinly red, like watered-down blood. I decide to have tea and Rafael says he fancies a cup too, so I make it in a proper pot, and even put the milk in a jug, we're that civilised these days.

Rafael is a lovely boy. He’s only 18 but looks younger, and he's told me he’s been working for over three years already. He says he doesn’t feel exploited, he figures that once he developed a voracious appetite for being buggered he thought he might as well get paid for it. I admire his entrepreneurial spirit in a way. Most of the punters are OK, he says, they don’t give him any bother, and 90% are married so they need to be discreet. I thought about my father when he told me this. After Mum left and it all came out about Dad, his endless affairs, his penchant for prostitutes, I was disgusted. I wonder now whether they were always female – why would he pay for sex when he’d found it so easy to get women? I think to myself that I’ll never know, that I’ll never see my father again and I miss him suddenly, and think maybe I should have a vodka after all.

“Check,” says Angel, triumphantly.

Rafael looks at the board for maybe four seconds. He swoops his bishop across to take Angel’s knight.

“Checkmate,” he counters and Angel stares wide-mouthed for an instant, and then she mock-screams and tips up the board.

I really am going to make an effort from now on, getting high before meetings is not how I want my life to pan out. It’s time I grew up, got back some morals – I’ve become far too like my twin for my liking. I‘m glad I’ve resisted vodka after all and made a pot of tea, for me and Rafael, who despite his occupation is really quite a homebody. We settle down to watch a TV show about a couple who are turning a rotting old power station into a high tech vision of steel and glass, and it strikes me how smug they are, with their dream house-to-be, their Boden-clad children, how convinced they are that their lives are blessed and can be meticulously planned, and I wonder what future tragedies behold them and wish they would hurry up and happen. I don’t like this side to myself, I didn’t used to be like this, but I find I can’t help it tonight.

Maybe it’s because May the 6
^th
is just four days away now.

As the programme finishes Rafael’s phone buzzes and he checks his messages and gets up cheerfully and says, “Regular – I’m out of here, hasta luego,” and he blows us a kiss and disappears off to some rendezvous I’d rather not think about. Angel goes to run a bath, she’s working tonight too, and I flick to the news and a woman has killed her children in a hotel in Greece and I can’t believe that someone could do something like that. The story depresses me further and I feel worn out from the day, worn out from my ruminatory journey to work, from the cocaine and the client meeting and the champagne with Tiger. I think I need a bath too, I'll have one after Angel: I feel grubby on the outside as well as the inside. And then I’ll go to bed early and try to get some sleep, try to not think about Friday.

I lie in the bath and reflect on today, on the past nine months. I feel in some ways proud of myself, in other ways disgusted. I’m not like Angel, Angel has spent half her life mothering her own mother, no wonder she does some of the things she does. Angel has never been shown right from wrong.
I have
. Now that I’m established, successful even, I don’t need to take drugs or steal any more. I don’t need to differentiate myself so starkly from the girl I once was – I’ve done it, I’ve made it to the other side. I push up my knees and slide my back down the angled end of the bath and my skin creaks against the enamel. I keep on going until my head meets the water and I continue down and down and I can feel the suds popping above me and my skull resting on the bath’s hard flat bottom. I stay like that until my head feels hot and bursting, and then for a while longer still. When it finally all feels too much I push forcefully with my feet against the tap end of the bath and shoot up out of the foam, and a wave cascades over the back of the tub, behind me, and water goes all over the floor. I grapple for a towel and bury my face in it. When I finally remove it it is wet and hot, from bathwater and tears, tears of renewal and absolution.

29

Dominic turned up at Caroline’s dead on 7.30, she always had been impressed with his timekeeping. He was wearing a tight V-necked T-shirt and new-looking denim jeans, and although he was a carpenter he looked more like a male model. He’d been in charge of doing the sets for the students’ end of year fashion shows, and all the girls had fancied him. But Dominic had gone for her, Caroline – they’d bonded over her epic spiders’ webs – and he still seemed to be smitten, almost five months later: for some reason her poisonous comments and wearisome put-downs had either been ignored or passed completely over his head, and so she’d mostly given them up. It wasn’t that he was stupid, he was just one of those people who seemed to have so much self-esteem he didn’t take anything too personally. Caroline found her respect for her boyfriend growing as time went on, and it was a welcome change from the usual diminishment she felt, after the initial excitement, after she’d ground other men down, stamping out their confidence like a cigarette butt under her foot.

Dominic seemed in a good mood tonight, and although Caroline would have been happy to stay in, break the news to him at home, he was keen to go out. “I thought we’d try this new Italian place in Soho,” he said. “I heard it’s meant to be good. That OK?”

“Sure,” said Caroline. She loved how Dominic took charge, didn’t wait to see what she suggested, and she was glad of a strong man in her life for a change. As they walked towards the tube a black cab came past and Dominic hailed it, which surprised her – neither of them had that much money, it seemed extravagant.

“Don’t worry, Caz,” said Dominic and he put his arm around her and she could smell his cleanness and she thought, yes, maybe she could do this – be normal, have a proper relationship, be like other people. She may still be young but she’d seen a lot, she’d done her living already. No, it wasn’t too soon. She leaned into him and felt surer about what she needed to tell him as the cab grumbled through the day-fading streets, towards the West End.

Caroline sat opposite Dominic in the blue-tiled restaurant and she sensed he was nervous, although she didn’t know why – unless of course he’d guessed about the baby, was picking up on her agitation. Caroline normally would have played this situation quite differently: she’d have slammed down the test stick, picked up her mobile without even washing her hands, and said something along the lines of, “I’m pregnant. I presume you want me to get an abortion?”

This time she was thinking maybe she didn’t want an abortion, maybe she was with a man who might actually love her, be pleased at her news. She fiddled with her napkin as the menus arrived. Dominic ordered champagne – he
must
have guessed somehow, she thought, and he was pleased, thank fuck.

The waiter set down two glasses and one of them looked dirty to Caroline, as if it had something in the bottom of it. She said nothing for a change, not wanting to make a scene, spoil the moment. As the bubbles rose skywards Dominic raised his glass and said, “Here’s to us, Caroline,” and he moved out of his seat, as though he’d dropped something, and as Caroline looked at him kneeling beside her there was a blast, a gust, and then both of them were on the floor. Pain flooded through her stomach. There was a long still pause until someone broke it with a prolonged agonised shriek, and then everyone was screaming, panicking, everyone except Dominic.