by Alison May
Professor Midsomer closed his eyes. Just for a second Dominic could see the old man, usually obscured by Theo’s vigour and constant activity. Maybe Dominic wasn’t the only one who harboured thoughts of a different life. ‘But teaching and research are the things. That’s what we’re actually here for.’
‘Maybe we could make a final decision when you get back?’ It seemed unfair to make the candidates wait, but they weren’t getting anywhere. ‘Sleep on it?’ Dominic was aiming for a conciliatory tone. The words were right at least.
Theo nodded. ‘As you wish.’
Dominic left without saying anything more. Why was he so angry? Yes. He was friends with Helen. Yes. He wanted her to get this job. Did the accusation of bias hurt because it was true? He tried to run the two interviews through in his head. However, he thought about it, he did genuinely believe Helen was the better candidate. He was angry on her behalf as well. She had been overlooked, and she was a brilliant lecturer. He wanted to see her get a chance.
Emily
‘I’m not in for dinner.’ I’m expecting Tania to have a go at me for not letting her know earlier. Right now I’d love her to have a go at me. I could take all the stuff that’s rushing through my head and channel it all into taking her down.
‘Fine.’ She’s sitting in the conservatory, with Dad, with the laptop on her knee. I stick my head through the kitchen door before I go through to them. There’s nothing even in the oven anyway. I make myself take four deep breaths before I go through. I’m not going to say anything to her today. I’m going to wait until I’ve got all the evidence. I’m not going to give her time to come up with a lie or an excuse. I go into the conservatory and sit on the armchair.
‘I said I won’t be in for dinner. Dom’s taking me out.’
I don’t dwell on that. Dom’s taking me out and I’m going to tell him it’s over. Probably. It has to be over, doesn’t it? Otherwise what happened with Alex was definitely cheating. I’m not a cheater. I know what some people think of me. They think I’m spoilt. They think I’m self-involved. But I don’t cheat. I keep trying not to think about the evening, trying not to picture Dom’s face, or imagine what I’m actually going to say. It’s just a vague distant thing in the future.
‘That’s fine.’ Tania is all smiley. ‘I haven’t even started making anything.’
My dad looks at his watch. ‘We could get takeaway. Or go out?’
Dad never suggests takeaway, or going out on a week night.
‘Chinese? I’d love a Chinese.’ Tania scurries off into the kitchen to find a menu.
I wait for her to get back. ‘Full of MSG. That’s like so bad for you. And you’d better not have fried rice. You’ve still got a wedding dress to get into.’
I hear myself doing this to her all the time. It’s becoming a habit I can’t break. She looks at me. ‘The dress fits fine.’
She turns to my dad. ‘Anyway, do you think we should tell Emily what we’re discussing?’
He nods. My stomach tightens. I knew she was acting weird. Maybe she’s pregnant. She can’t be. She’s too old, isn’t she? I can picture it. Tania lolling around the place all day with a horrendous screaming brat latched to her boob.
My dad’s talking. I try to tune in. ‘... been thinking about it for a while, but I’m wondering if it’s the right time to retire.’
Retire? That means he’ll be lolling around the house all day. Better than a baby at least. It won’t happen though. I laugh. ‘Oh Dad. You’re never going to retire. You’re a workaholic.’
He nods. ‘That has certainly been true, but I’m getting older, Emmy, and it’s all bureaucracy and targets these days. A younger man’s game I think.’
He sounds serious. That means I’ll be working for someone else. I’ve always worked for my dad. Ever since I dropped out of university as a student after one term, and he got me the junior departmental assistant job, I’ve always worked for him. A new boss. I’m not sure I like that.
Dad keeps talking. ‘And, once I’ve retired, we think that it’s time for Tania and I to make a new life for the two of us. He glances at her. ‘So we’re thinking of moving. To Northumbria maybe.’
Tania spins the laptop around so I can see. It’s an estate agency site. Houses in the country. Cottages by the coast. Outbuildings. Secluded gardens. Sea views. All that crap. Northumbria. It’s where we used to go on holidays when I was little, after Mum... went away. ‘You can’t move to Northumbria.’
Tania responds. ‘Why not?’
‘Well, where will I live? I live here.’
My dad smiles. ‘Well I don’t think you’ll be living here much longer anyway.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Come on. I know things are getting serious with Professor Collins. You’re not going to want to live with your dad once you’re married, are you?’
‘Well ...’ And I can’t finish the sentence, because that is the plan, isn’t it? Marry Dom. Live with him. He can take care of me, and provide for me and for our children, and maybe I won’t even have to worry about the new boss. Probably I could stop work altogether to look after our perfect babies and do yoga, like Tania, and meet people for lunch. Somewhere in the back of my head there’s a voice, Alex’s voice, telling me something different, but I decide to ignore it. I’m not like him or Helen. I’m not strong. I need looking after. Dom can do that. There’s nothing wrong with letting him.
Helen
Helen leant on the door frame at the entrance to Dominic’s office. It was almost seven. Most of the offices were empty already. ‘Still here?’
He jumped in his chair, and scooped something off the desk into his pocket. ‘What are you doing back here? I thought you were with Em.’
She could lie. Pretend to have forgotten her keys or something. In truth she gravitated back here. Everything she loved was in this building. Her work, for one thing. She shrugged. ‘Just finishing up. What’ve you got there?’
‘Nothing.’
She wasn’t sure what to say now. She couldn’t ask him about the interview, and she didn’t have a reason for coming to talk to him. She didn’t really have a reason for being on this corridor. It wasn’t on the way from her office to the way out. It was just that she walked this way every day, and usually Dominic had already gone or his door was shut because he was out teaching or in a tutorial, but she walked this way every day, because that was what she did.
‘You interviewed well.’
‘Thanks.’ She forced herself not to ask.
‘We’ve not made a final decision yet.’
‘That’s okay.’ It was always the same. She didn’t know what she thought would happen; that he’d ask her for a drink, that a drink would turn into dinner and that all of a sudden they’d be dating. Sometimes they did go for a drink, but a drink was simply a drink. His hand never accidentally on purpose brushed her leg. He didn’t insist on buying her ‘just one more’ when it was time they ought to be going. They didn’t have moments. They’d had one moment, and it was so long ago that Helen had started to wonder whether it was a moment at all, or whether she’d simply thought about it so hard that she’d imagined it into being something that it never was. ‘I’d better get going.’
‘Wait. Actually, have you got a minute?’
‘Course.’
‘Come in then.’ He stood and shut the office door behind her. ‘There was something I’d like to ask you.’
She sat on the chair next to his desk. ‘Anything.’
Dominic rummaged in his pocket and pulled out a box. You know the sort of box. Small. Expensive looking.
‘Oh.’
He flicked it open. ‘What do you think of this? I ... I don’t know ... I don’t buy a lot of jewellery.’
‘No.’ It was beautiful. Helen had never dreamed of getting married. It wasn’t one of her fantasies, but if she was ever going to get engaged, this would be the ring. A super slim band of gold, proper gold, not white gold or platinum like was trendy now, and a s
ingle large round opal. It was exquisitely restrained. ‘It’s perfect.’
‘Do you think so? I’m terrified she won’t like it.’
She? Right. Of course. Emily. ‘I’m sure she’ll love it.’
Helen stood up. ‘I really do have to get going I’m afraid.’ She pulled the door open and half-ran through it. She kept running along the corridor and into the ladies’ toilet. It was empty. She locked herself in a cubicle and sat down on the lid. She knew this was coming. If it hadn’t been Emily it would have been someone else. Helen sat very still. She remembered fainting once. She was fifteen and it was hot and she hadn’t eaten enough, and she’d simply passed out. Right before it happened, everything around her went dark. The blackness had appeared in a ring all around the edges of her vision and then rushed inwards, until there was no light visible at all. That was what this was like, only this darkness had always been there at the edge of everything. She’d kept it at bay by keeping busy, making jokes, pretending it wasn’t there at all, but now the blackness was all she could see. It was filling everything and she couldn’t imagine it ever going away.
Alex
Helen was sitting on the floor in the middle of the living room. Alex stood in the doorway. ‘What’s the matter?’
She held up her empty bottle for him to inspect.
‘The vodka’s broken.’
‘What do you mean broken?’
She tipped the bottle upside down to show that no more would come out. ‘See. Broken.’
‘That was three quarters full. You didn’t drink all that?’
Helen put the bottle down on the floor and clapped her hands together. ‘Vodka all gone.’ Her brow furrowed for a second. ‘Need to get more.’
Alex watched her tip herself from sitting to all fours and then stop as she tried to work out what to do with her limbs next to get to vertical. Sympathy eventually overtook curiosity as to how she might manage it, and he put one arm around her back and helped her up and then over to the sofa.
‘I think you might have had enough vodka.’ He picked the bottle from the floor. ‘Seriously you drank all that? I’ve never seen you have more than two glasses of wine before.’
Helen shrugged. ‘Vodka doesn’t count. Is like water. Just goes straight through.’
He sat next to her. ‘Why did you drink all the vodka? What happened?’
‘Nothing.’
It clearly wasn’t nothing. His never-out-of-control, never-irresponsible landlady was hammered. Properly hammered. Truly gloriously hammered. She had achieved a level of inebriation of which even Alex himself would have felt rightfully proud. ‘Did you not get the job?’
‘Don’t know yet.’
‘Then what?’
A silent shrug.
‘Tell me. We’re mates. I want to help.’
‘Dominic.’
‘What about him?’
‘He’s going to marry her.’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘He is. I saw the ring. S’lovely.’
Alex shook his head. ‘That just means he’s going to ask her. She might say no.’
‘She won’t say no. I don’t want her to say no.’
‘Why not?’
Helen took the vodka bottle off him and had a fruitless attempt to get another slug from it. ‘It’d break his heart. Broken heart’s all shitty.’
‘But you could help him pick up the pieces.’
Helen shook her head. ‘He loves Emily. No point.’
Alex paused. ‘She won’t say yes.’ He was absolutely sure of that. No matter what she was thinking about him. No matter that she was ignoring his calls. Emily Midsomer was not a woman ready for marriage.
‘How do you know?’
Alex paused again. ‘I know.’
‘How?’
‘Because she’s seeing someone else.’
‘She’s not. She’d have told me.’
Alex shook his head. ‘No. She wouldn’t. You’d have told Dominic.’
Helen frowned. ‘So who’s she seeing?’
‘Me.’
Alex watched Helen’s face. The wonder of alcohol meant that her usually closed-book exterior was showing all of her mental working. She was puzzled and then momentarily amused, before she frowned again. ‘But Emily’s with Dominic. That’s really ...’ She tailed off.
‘Really what?’
‘Really ... bad.’
‘But not if she’s not supposed to be with him. I sort of did it for you.’
‘Did what for me?’
‘Shagged Emily.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous.’
Alex stopped. It was ridiculous. It was a perfectly decent rationalisation. Helen loved Dominic, so it was the act of caring friend to break up Emily and Dominic. He reviewed the thought. Actually it was a completely terrible justification, and it was also a lie. That had never been why he’d gone after her, had it?
Even if Emily wasn’t actually engaged yet, she was in a serious relationship. A serious relationship with a senior work colleague. Thinking about it now, it did seem like the whole situation could be construed as breaking the age old good advice about not defecating in one’s own dining area.
‘I think I need a drink.’ Alex got up and moved towards the kitchen.
‘You can’t. I drunked all the drink. All the drink.’
He laughed. ‘I’ve got a secret stash I nicked from the minibar at the last wedding I went to.’
Helen shook her head and pointed at the plastic wastepaper bin in the corner. Alex peered. Six individual bottles sat amongst what looked like about two thirds of a box of tissues. ‘Bloody hell. When you go for it, you really go for it.’ He sat back down. ‘Are you mad with me?’
‘Too fuzzy-headed to be mad.’ Helen leant forward as if she was going to try to stand up, and then slumped straight backwards again.
‘Do you think you might be mad with me in the morning?’
‘Don’t know.’ She stopped. ‘Can’t talk. Need to concentrate.’
‘On what?’
‘Not sicking.’
Alex jumped off the sofa and grabbed the bin. He held it in front of Helen. ‘You sick all you need.’
‘No.’ Helen shook her head. ‘I’m never sick. However drunk I get, never been sick.’
She closed her eyes. Alex watched her breathing in and out, clearly concentrating hard. Eventually she gave up and sat forward, bending her head over the bin as she retched.
Alex rubbed her back. ‘First time for everything, ay?’
Dominic
Dominic sat at the very pleasant table in the very pleasant restaurant and waited for his very pleasant girlfriend to come back from the, undoubtedly, very pleasant toilets. He ran through what he was going to say one more time in his head. Was this the right approach? It was what he’d planned all along, but now she was half expecting the question was it enough? Should he be doing some all-singing, all-dancing affair and posting it on YouTube? Should he have hidden the ring somewhere, in the wine maybe? It was too late now. He’d picked this restaurant and this night, and he’d asked her father like he was supposed to, and if he didn’t do it soon then questions were going to be asked about what on earth he was playing at.
Emily came back to the table and took her seat opposite him.
‘Emily.’
‘Mmm?’
‘Emily, you know that I’m very fond of you, don’t you?’
‘Very fond?’ She sounded underwhelmed with the sentiment.
‘What? Well ...’ Dominic paused. He was so much his father’s son. Warm words and effusive gestures were not in his repertoire. He was proposing though. Finding the right words mattered tonight. He tried to think of what he ought to be saying. ‘Sorry.’
She shook her head slightly. ‘It just sounds a bit formal.’
‘Sorry.’ This was going badly. Dominic took a breath. Say the right thing, for goodness sake. ‘Of course, I’m more than fond of you. Emily, if you’ll let me you know that I would n
ever let you down, don’t you?’
She nodded.
‘I’ll take care of you. I’ll do whatever I can to look after you and make sure you have everything you need, and maybe one day, if we have children, well you know I would care for them too, don’t you?’
Another silent nod.
He reached into his pocket and found the ring box. He flicked it open and held the open box out across the table.
She took a deep breath in.
‘I was hoping that you would do me the honour of becoming my wife?’
Emily was still staring at the ring. She nodded quietly.
‘Is that a yes?’
She nodded again.
Behind Dominic a small volley of applause broke out. He looked around. He hadn’t realised that the adjacent tables were quite so aware of what was going on. He raised a hand in acknowledgement and tried to look nonchalant.
‘Right.’ Dominic lifted the ring out of the box and moved to slide it onto his new fiancée’s finger. ‘It fits.’
Emily was staring at her finger. ‘It’s not very sparkly.’
‘You don’t like it?’
She nodded and then shook her head and then stopped. ‘It’s very pretty.’
‘I mean we can change it. You can choose something for yourself if you want. I don’t mind.’
Emily stared at the ring. ‘No. It’s lovely. It’ll be just right.’
His lips formed a smile. ‘So that’s a yes?
Emily gave a tiny nod. ‘Yes.’
PART 3
SUMMER
Helen
Midsummer’s Eve
There were noises. There were banging noises. Helen did not like the noises. She screwed her eyes up, pulled the duvet over her head and pretended the noises weren’t happening.
‘Helen. Helen.’ It was Alex. Then the banging noise started again. It wasn’t banging. It was the thing with the door. Knocking. There was knocking. Helen stuck her head out and tried to open her eyes.
