The Wish List (9 page)

I pause for breath, suddenly stuck for ideas on how to end this rant.

I hit Send and am about to block him, when I’m compelled to snoop around his page. The man’s given me a venereal disease – I’ve at least got a right to appraise the old
school pictures he’s tagged in.

There are photos of him with a woman – an attractive woman – and three little boys ranging from about three to seven, who, it appears from the captions, are his sons.

Aside from that, he’s tagged in pictures of his university days, and a holiday in Mexico with the same woman. He’s an intermittent Facebooker, and the last thing he posted was a
photo of his littlest son in 3D glasses.

It’s just as I’m blocking him that I spot the killer line in his personal info. He’s
married
. It’s there in black and white. I suddenly feel very queasy.

‘It’s not a sexually transmitted disease,’ the doctor tells me as I sit before him the following week in the seventh circle of hell (aka the GUM clinic).

‘What? But it must be . . . I’m in agony . . . that’s why I’ve come back. I’m not making this up . . . I want a second opin—’

‘It’s an allergy.’

I frown. ‘I don’t get allergies.’

He throws me a look that I imagine he thinks is sympathetic. ‘You do now.’

‘But I thought the results all took at least two weeks to come back.’

‘They take two weeks for us to
send
them to you – at the outside. I’ve got them on my computer here. They’re all negative. Of course, you’ll need to return
in a couple of months to repeat some of them, as we’ve discussed. But the only actual symptoms you have are those of a skin allergy. Have you experienced itching anywhere else? Or changed
your washing powder?’

‘No, I . . . Oh . . .’ My voice trails off as I remember how much Supasoapa I’ve lavished upon my laundry recently. I glance at my arms and realise I’ve been scratching
at my wrists too. I’d barely noticed.

‘So I didn’t get this from my . . .’ I lean in and whisper, ‘
liaison
?’

‘I would say not. This kind of sensitivity is very common.’

I traipse to the office recalling every word of that Facebook message. If it were possible to die from cringing I’d be midway through the embalming process right now.

I’m turning down Rodney Street when a text arrives that instantly makes my heart twist. It’s from Rob.

I still can’t get over the fact that he sends me these texts intermittently, despite what I did to him. Cally thinks it’s because he wants to get back with me, but I genuinely
don’t think that’s the case – he is simply an incredibly nice person. Oh God, if only I was still with him!

I text him back immediately.

Which I know is technically not the case, but the particular details of what’s been vexing me are not for sharing.

His response arrives as I’m pushing open the door to the office.

I hesitate over the handset, reading those words, as a thought occurs to me. But I’m ambushed before I can process it fully.

‘Emma! Into my office!’ instructs Perry with a manic spring in his step that indicates that what follows isn’t going to be good.

‘I was talking to one of the bods over at Kidsplay TV last night,’ he says, wide-eyed. ‘Nice chap. Lovely shoes.’

I fail to come up with a response to this.

‘He was telling me that there’s a grant knocking about from some European disability rights doodah. He reckons there’re pots of cash to be made if you come up with a storyline
that fits their agenda.’

‘Right.’ My head starts spinning with dreadful possibilities about where this is going.

He sits on the sofa and crosses his legs exuberantly. ‘So I thought,
we’re
a right-on company!
We
should be the guys taking advantage of this!’ He leaps up
again and starts pacing the room.

‘What did you have in mind?’

‘What do you think of this idea . . .’ He holds up his arms like Spielberg pitching this to his very first producer. ‘We have a cat. And a mouse. By golly, they can’t
stand the sight of each other. The cat is forever trying to catch the mouse in a variety of outlandish and totally wacky ways. Except the mouse . . . well, he’s a clever little chap. He
manages to get away, time and time again – by doing things like . . . ooh, I don’t know, smashing a frying pan over the cat’s head . . . or snapping his tail in a
mousetrap!’

‘This is sounding very like Tom and Jerry, Perry.’

‘I
knew
you were going to say that!’ He clicks his fingers in front of my face. ‘But I’m a step ahead of you. Several steps, in fact.’

‘Oh?’

‘
My
cat and mouse have a twist.’

I raise an eyebrow.

‘They’re in
wheelchairs
!’ he says triumphantly. ‘Kids’ll love it! The BBC’ll love it! The European disability rights doodah will love it! I
adore
political correctness, don’t you, Emma?’

Perry’s ‘blue sky thinking’ proceeds to turn every shade of the rainbow. I try to pitch an idea to him that I thought of a few weeks ago – about a clothes shop in which
all the garments come to life when it’s shut. But he barely hears me.

‘I don’t know why I bother,’ I tell Giles as I slump in the seat in front of my computer, mentally fatigued.

‘Let me guess: you got his idea about Tom and Jerry on Stannah Stairlifts. Honestly, this place is going to the dogs, Emma,’ he says, leaning over and pinching a Hobnob.

I open my
World of Interiors
magazine and start flicking through it for want of a distraction. ‘To be absolutely fair, you’ve never been a glass-half-full person, have you,
Giles?’

‘I don’t think there
is
a glass at the moment. It’s a polystyrene cup with cracks in the side and penicillin at the bottom.’

I take a deep breath. ‘Do you enjoy this job, Giles? I mean, really? I know you grumble a lot. But what do you think about it, deep down?’

Giles looks slightly scared. He and I don’t do heart to hearts; the only time I’ve ever asked about his feelings was when he got his finger trapped in his desk drawer.

‘A few years ago, you wouldn’t have needed to ask,’ he says, serious all of a sudden. ‘We
all
loved it, didn’t we?’

I pause and think about this. Even in those days, Giles didn’t exactly walk in every morning, throw his arms open to the world and declare himself glad to be alive. But he’s right:
he loved it, I loved it, we all loved it. Which makes the present situation all the more frustrating.

‘Deep down, Emma, I know there aren’t many people who get paid to dream up stuff like this every day. Deep down, I know I’m good at it . . . almost as good as you. I was born
to do this stuff and I’d hate to do anything else. But I’m not sure how long this can go on before the whole place sinks into the shithole that’s Perry’s twisted
mind.’

‘You think he’s messing things up that badly?’

‘You’ve heard the rumours?’

I frown. ‘No.’

‘Perry’s trying to sell the business.’

I put my hand over my mouth. You don’t need to be an expert in industrial relations to work out that this doesn’t sound good. Still, I try to look on the bright side. ‘Maybe
that wouldn’t be
such
a bad thing. Maybe someone great would buy it and start running the company as it should be.’

‘Or they could just take the copyright for
Bingbah
. . . and start making it themselves.’

Giles is not what you’d call one of life’s optimists, but this doesn’t sound unrealistic.

His words eat me up for the rest of the day, interspersed with flashbacks to the loopy concepts dribbling out of Perry’s mouth all morning. I eventually reach an inescapable question, one
that stems from a declaration I made fifteen years ago.

Am I really in the right job?

The fact that I’m rubbish with kids is an irony not lost on me. What on earth is it that compels me to come in every day and start attempting to entertain three-year-olds? There are a
dozen other professions to which I’d be better suited, a dozen others from which I’d gain satisfaction – top of the list being the same job to which I aspired as a teenager:
interior designer.

When did I put my true career aspirations in the ‘too difficult’ drawer and stumble into a job that’s patently wrong for me? When did my dream become something I lived out only
via the pages of
House Beautiful
?

Obviously, it’s difficult to escape the fact that I have no experience in interior design and it’s been nothing but a hobby for ten years. But if I’m ever going to go for this,
it’s got to be now. Because the grim alternative is reaching the
end
of my thirties in exactly the same position.

I open up my latest script and read what I’ve written so far.

Then I take a deep breath.

The problem is, it’s not
only
a lack of courage that’s stopping me.

I’d miss this job, there’s no doubt about that. I’d miss writing
Bingbah
. I’d miss the energy and creativity. And I’d miss the people – even on
Giles’s darkest days he’s never anything other than entertaining.

As I look up at my colleague’s furrowed brow and think about his words, though, it strikes me that I might not get a choice. The way Perry’s going, the place could be sold to an
American consortium by the end of the year.

Not for the first time this week, I surreptitiously log onto a website I shouldn’t be on, although this one isn’t about venereal diseases. There’s no escaping it. It’s
time to start exploring my employment options.

Job hunting, it turns out, can be a dispiriting affair.

I never expected my dream career as an interior designer to leap out from the pages of the
Liverpool Echo
and tap me on the shoulder, but I also wasn’t prepared for opportunities
to be
this
threadbare. It becomes apparent after hours of flicking through websites that my experience and qualifications in this field have equipped me for little more than painting the
windowsill in McDonald’s.

My only option would be to start at the bottom, a prospect that could be exhilarating if it wasn’t for one thing: I really would be
broke
. I’ve been in full-time employment
for eight years and have steadily and unapologetically accrued a half-decent salary. One I’ve got used to.

I don’t want my sole retail experience of Ted Baker to return to that of a miserable window-shopper. I don’t want to retune my taste buds to the gastronomic delights of Batchelors
Super Noodles and HP Sauce, like when I was a student. And I don’t want to relinquish my gym membership in favour of a Davina DVD, particularly since kick-boxing moves in my living room would
shatter the window. Yet, the alternative is looking increasingly grim.

I can’t be bothered making anything more exciting than pasta with pesto tonight, and while I wait for it to cook, I pause and review the list.

Even the ones that are technically easy – such as growing my hair long – are proving a ball ache. I’m normally meticulous about visiting the hairdresser; if I leave it longer
than eight weeks, I look like Frank Gallagher after a sheep dip. I was due for a cut last month and, while I’d love to say my locks are delightfully thick and lustrous, the reality is that my
new hobby is counting split ends.

Still,
if
I can pull off this list, there will be some undeniable pleasure involved. I’m hopeful of achieving ‘sleep under the stars’ and ‘see the Northern
Lights’ – even if how and when isn’t entirely clear.

I don’t really want to head off to Norway or Iceland or wherever by myself, which leaves the question of who to go with. The longest Cally’s spent away from Zachary was the two
nights in Edinburgh and she vowed not to repeat it until he’s eighteen because she missed him so much. Asha has already got this year’s holiday planned, and Marianne will
obviously
be away with Brian. Even more pressing is the money issue. My savings won’t go far if I blow it on a break to that part of the world, which is far from cheap.

Despite that, I’m keeping a blindly optimistic eye on Groupon, in case the stories about people scooping a five-star luxury holiday for £16 are true. So far, the only things that
have caught my attention are a desktop yoghurt maker, a one-night stay in the Outer Hebrides and hot-stone massages in forty-three separate beauty establishments.

I also make a mental note to look again into skydiving – and not shut down the website the second my palpitations start.

It’s when I read the bit that says ‘Learn to play the guitar’ that I remember I haven’t texted Rob back. I pull out my phone and the thought that occurred to me earlier
returns. And makes me squirm, again.

The thought is this: I
really
want Rob to teach me to play the guitar . . . even though I know I shouldn’t. Splitting up with someone should involve a clean break. The problem is,
this break already isn’t clean. Not for him and not for me.

So, before I can stop myself, I’m composing a text that says:

The thought of seeing him again gives me a small surge of happiness. I stick the list back on the fridge and glance out of the window as a silver car pulls up onto Rita’s drive. The rain I
got caught in earlier has eased off and a milky sun is pushing through the clouds as the car door opens and a man steps out.

Facing away from me, he walks to the back to open a door, out of which a small boy leaps onto the gravel and begins collecting twigs. He’s sweet-looking, blond, with curly hair, a gap in
his teeth . . . and is strangely familiar.