by Daniel Hurst
I have to give my answer.
While it is a lot of money, Imogen is right. She could earn the same, if not more at a rival bank based on the role she occupies here. At least in theory. In reality, she could not command that wage from another bank because I could ‘discover’ and release the evidence I have on her and ruin her career before she could even leave the car park. But I can’t say that in front of Katherine, nor can I think of any other valid reason why I can refuse this seemingly hard-earned request.
I take a couple of seconds to deliberate before forcing a fake smile onto my face and reaching across the table to shake Imogen’s hand.
‘I know you deserve the raise. Fifteen it is.’
She puts her dainty hand in mine, and we shake on it, though I make sure to squeeze just a little too hard to remind her that I am not at all happy about this little game she has played on me. But not even that is enough to take the smile off her face. She seems very pleased with herself, and why shouldn’t she be? She has just got one over on me.
I’ll just have to make sure it isn’t long until I settle the score in my favour again.
9
I can’t believe it. That worked. I got the pay rise. Michael gave me what I wanted. For the first time ever, I got the upper hand on him, and he had to bow to my superiority instead of the other way around. It feels good, although it’s not quite a big enough victory to erase all the suffering at Michael’s hand. There’s only one thing that would do that, and that would be getting rid of Michael completely, but that isn’t on the cards, so I will take the small wins where I can get them.
The meeting with Michael and HR concluded with me being told that the pay increase would be reflected in my next payslip, so I only have a couple of weeks to wait to see that. In the meantime, I can forge ahead with the plan to move my father into the home now that I will have some of the extra finances required to do such a thing. But before I can sign any paperwork and transfer any money, I need to tell my father what is happening.
I need to tell him that he will have a new home going forward.
The euphoria of getting what I wanted with Michael is still not enough to counteract the fear I feel about having to tell my dad that he needs to leave the house he has spent most of his adult life in and instead swap it for a place where he can receive twenty-four-seven medical attention. I know he isn’t going to be happy about it because he was never happy about the idea of a nursing home in the past.
‘I don’t want to end up in places like that with people looking after me all day,’ he would say when he was younger and much healthier, whenever the topic of old age was brought up. ‘If I ever get that bad then just shoot me,’ he would also jest, although he wasn’t actually laughing when he said it, so I’m not certain he was joking about it. In fact, I think he actually meant it. He would rather die than go into care. But of course I’m not going to shoot my father, and he is going to go into care. It has to be done for his own safety, and I just have to make him see that. I’m hoping that a visit to the home will make him more accepting of the idea once he sees how lovely the surroundings are and how friendly everybody is who stays there. But I have to tell him what is happening.
I take a deep breath before sliding my key into the lock on my father’s front door and stepping inside.
‘Hi, Dad. Only me!’ I call out as I bend down and pick up the letters lying on the doormat, all of which must have come since Evan last called around. My father still remembers to do most things for himself, but collecting the post after it has been pushed through the letterbox is not one of them. Part of me wonders if he hasn’t forgotten at all and just can’t be bothered to do it anymore now that he knows someone else will pick it up for him. He always did have a cheeky streak like that.
Walking into the lounge, I expect to find him sitting in his armchair with the snooker on the TV, which is his usual way of passing the time. But the armchair is empty, and the TV is off.
‘Dad?’ I call out into the quiet home, but there’s no reply, and now I’m starting to get concerned.
I enter the kitchen, but this room is empty too, as is the dining room, the study and the bedrooms and bathroom upstairs.
‘Dad!’
Where the hell is he? Has he gone out on his own? Is he in trouble somewhere? Should I have moved him into the nursing home sooner? I’m overwhelmed with worry and guilt about not acting fast enough when I suddenly hear the back door opening and rush into the kitchen to see Dad entering the house.
‘Oh, hi, love. I didn’t know you were here.’
He is wearing his scruffy clothes, which he always puts on when he does a spot of gardening, and he is carrying a small set of hedge clippers too. He is very house-proud and has always made sure to keep both the inside and outside of his home looking neat for visitors even as his health has deteriorated and even after Evan’s offer to take over the gardening duties from him while I kept on top of the cleaning inside. I could have sworn we had removed the hedge clippers from the house for fear of Dad harming himself with them, but I guess I was wrong because there they are in his hand. Fortunately, he seems okay, or at least I think he does until I see him turn to close the door and notice what looks like blood coming from the back of his head.
‘Dad, what have you done?’ I cry as I rush towards him to check the wound for myself.
‘What?’ he asks me as if there is no big deal, but as I check his scalp, I think that there is. The blood is almost dry, but there is a cut on the back of his head, and my father winces as I try to check it further.
‘What happened?’
‘Oh, that? It was nothing. I just fell over. I’m fine.’
‘You’re bleeding! What did you fall on?’
‘The path.’
‘The garden path?’
‘Yes, why?’
‘Dad, that’s a stone path! You banged your head on that?’
My father doesn’t seem too fussed about the situation, but I am doing enough worrying for the pair of us, which incidentally is how things have generally been for the last few years.
‘I told you I’m fine, honestly,’ he says as he moves away from me and puts the hedge clippers down on the table before easing himself into one of the chairs.
‘You’ve been bleeding. You could have a concussion!’
‘Don’t be silly.’
‘I’m not! When did you fall?’
‘I don’t know. An hour ago. Maybe longer.’
‘Dad! You should have called me!’
‘And why would I do that? I can look after myself.’
The fact that I am having a normal conversation with my father would usually make me feel happy because our conversations are not always as straightforward as this. There have been times when he hasn’t been able to make any sense and refers to things that have never happened at all or happened years ago and have nothing to do with the present day. I’m dreading the day when he fails to recognise me, and even though I know it is coming in the future, so far, we have avoided that terrible time. But there have been a couple of occasions where he has gotten Evan confused with guys he used to work with in the past, which has been awkward and just one more sign that even if he looks okay on the outside, my father is definitely not the same on the inside anymore.
But now he doesn’t look okay on the outside. He has cut his head, and despite what he is telling me, I can’t believe that he isn’t in pain. That makes me even more determined to go ahead with what I came here to tell him.
‘Dad, we need to talk about something,’ I say as I lower myself into the empty chair beside him and take his hand.
‘You’d best be quick. Your mother will be home soon with the shopping,’ he replies, and I smile weakly, knowing full well that Mum will not be home with the shopping soon.
‘Dad, I’ve been looking around, and I’ve found a lovely retirement home that I think would be a good fit for you,’ I say, carefully using the word ‘retirement’ instead of ‘nursing’.
/> ‘Thank you, but I like it here.’
‘I know you do, but we talked about this, remember. How you’re going to need better care and how I can’t always be here to make sure you’re okay?’
‘I don’t need you to be here. I’m perfectly fine to look after myself. And your mum keeps an eye on me too, you know she does.’
He rolls his eyes as if he is some whipped husband whose wife rules him with an iron fist, and I laugh because while that is no longer the case anymore, it certainly was when Mum was alive.
‘I know you think you are okay, Dad, but you’re not well, and accidents can happen. Like today, for instance. You could have been really hurt in the garden, and nobody would have been around to help you.’
‘What happened today?’
I let out a sigh and give my father’s hand a squeeze as I prepare to keep going over this subject with him until he understands what I am telling him, and make no mistake, I am telling him now. I’ve wasted too much time beating around the bush with this subject, and that has only put my father at risk of serious harm. I’d never forgive myself if I didn’t get him the care he needed before it was too late, and now that I have found the perfect place and have the pay rise to be better able to afford it, it’s time to move forward with the plan.
My dear father, a man who ascended from being a lowly teller to being the general manager of the UK branch of a worldwide bank, who married and had a daughter and did everything his own way, now has to depend on the help of other people. I understand why that will be hard for him to take. But it is the truth, and things will be better once he is in full-time care. It will give me one less thing to worry about, and heaven knows I need that with everything that is going on with Michael.
But sorting my father’s future out – as well as securing the pay rise at work that makes it possible – means that things don’t have to be so bleak in the short term anymore. Maybe things can be okay for a while now.
But I should have known that was never going to be the case with Michael around.
10
MICHAEL
The champagne is flowing, the music is pumping, and the girls on the stage are keeping me entertained in between the moments of conversation I am having with my friends. It’s been a long week in the office, and I deserve to blow off some steam, which is exactly what I am doing.
‘Another bottle,’ I say to the pretty waitress when she leans over so she can hear what I have to say above the loud music in this club.
‘Certainly, sir,’ comes the polite response before I watch her shimmy away back towards the bar to begin servicing my table with another healthy dose of bubbles.
The tab my pals and I are running up this evening won’t be cheap to settle, but money is no object for men like us. We work hard, and we play hard, and this is nothing less than we deserve, having all ascended to great heights within our respective organisations. Because we have good jobs, it means we earn great wages, and that makes us entitled to spend it on whatever we want. This is what I want to spend my money on, and this is what I intend to keep spending it on until I am no longer around to do it.
I’m sitting at a booth with Tim, Duncan, and Ronnie, three pals from the banking industry who, like me, have a penchant for expensive champagne and even more expensive women. We all have our trophy wives at home, whom we make sure to keep satisfied with a steady diet of handbags, shoes, and spa weekends, but this evening is not about them.
It’s about the other women in the world.
The ones we like to get to know better when our wives aren’t around.
‘Check her out,’ I say to Tim, giving him a nudge before pointing to the redhead on the stage right now.
‘Outstanding,’ Tim tells me, and I agree as if we are some qualified surveyors of the female form and have the right to objectify the opposite sex this way.
As a fresh bottle of champagne is delivered to our table, I think about how this is just what I needed after a week that saw me have to agree to Imogen’s request for a pay rise. It’s not the extra money that bothered me so much, because it’s the bank who will end up paying it, not me, nor is it the fact that she has closed the gap on our pay grades a little because I’m still very much ahead of her there. It’s to do with the fact that she will be spending her evening now most likely celebrating with her partner and feeling smug about having got her own way. That eats me up inside because I hate to give her even the smallest scraps of satisfaction in her life, yet she was definitely feasting during that meeting with HR the other day. She was hungry for more money, and she got it, but now I’m the one who is ravenous again, and it’s revenge that is on the menu. For now, I will have to bide my time and glug my champagne until I get to put that look of anger back on Imogen’s face.
‘Here you go, love,’ I say as I hand the waitress a £50 note, not for the cost of the bottle she has just brought me but as a tip for delivering the goods. It might seem like an extravagant gesture, but it’s just a drop in the ocean compared to what my final spend will be by the time I leave here in the early hours of the morning.
As I put my chunky wallet back into my trouser pocket and recline in my leather seat with my arms outstretched over the back of the booth, I wonder what it could be that Imogen needs the extra money for with her pay rise. Having known her for so long, I know when she is coming to me from a place of want and when she is coming to me from a place of need. This was definitely the latter, and I knew that the second she brought in HR to help her get it. Whatever she needs this money for, she had to get it and couldn’t afford to fail. Katherine’s presence was her way of tipping the odds in her favour, and it worked, but it’s her use of tactics that tells me that extra money she required is for something much more important than being able to afford a nicer holiday or buy a bigger car.
If I had to guess, I would say that she needs the money for her father. William has been ill for a long time, and the nature of his condition means that it will only get worse. An illness like his will eventually require professional care, and that is expensive. I am assuming we have now reached the time when that expensive care is required urgently. Poor William. It’s weird to think of the man who once sat in my seat at work now needing to be looked after twenty-four seven by a team of nurses who have no idea how resourceful their patient used to be. It’s also ironic that a man who gave his daughter her start in life is now dependent on his daughter for her to give him the end to his.
Ronnie pops the cork off the new magnum of champagne and pours the four of us a fresh glass before he drops the bottle into the ice bucket and stands up from his seat.
‘Excuse me, gents. I’m off to Colombia. Would anybody like to join me?’
Tim says he will and gets up, Duncan says he is okay, and I pass as well but not because I’m not in the mood for cocaine at this time. It’s because I have my sights set on another type of drug.
Getting up from the booth and making my way through the plush club where the lighting is so low that it’s almost impossible to navigate this place if you haven’t been here before, I make my way through a velvet curtain and into a corridor with several closed doors leading off from it. The rooms with red lights outside them are occupied, but the ones with green lights are not, and it’s that traffic-light system that allows me to find a vacant room and go inside.
No sooner is the door closed behind me than my clothes are coming off and my wallet is coming out. As I place my shirt on a hanger and wrap my tie around the top of it, I feel the arms of a young woman wrapping themselves around my bare torso. This is when I really let go of all the pressures of the week and relax. In here, I don’t think about office meetings, my money-hungry wife, or Imogen. In here, I just think about how glad I am that there are no cameras. That’s because while my behaviour this evening is not illegal, I am certainly acting immorally for a manager of a bank.
The customers at the bank that employs me would not take kindly to seeing the man who manages their money being so carefree w
ith his own, and scandals like that can make board members and shareholders tetchy. It’s the board members and the shareholders who have the power to hire and fire managers, and as powerful as I am, I am not untouchable.
That’s why I like this place. Everyone who enters has to hand their phone in at the door, meaning no recordings can be made on the premises. That keeps men like me and my friends safe from ending up in a newspaper and then ending up on the chopping block come Monday morning. Powerful men like us have to watch each other’s backs and make sure none of us falls off the gravy train. If one of us gets exposed, we all might be exposed, but so far, we have been able to keep acting with impunity.
Long may that continue.
Long may the champagne keep flowing.
11
Payday always feels like it takes forever to come around, whether you’re waiting on a little money or a lot. But this payday has felt even more glacial in its arrival than all of the others combined. This is the day when I get to see the pay increase that Michael agreed to reflect in my wages, which I need because I have now made the necessary first payment to see my father moved into the very expensive nursing home.
It was as torturous a moral decision as it was a financial one, but it had to be done, and I do feel better about knowing he is going to be looked after at all times now and not just when I can spare the time in my busy work life to visit him. William has been in the home for two days now, and the road has been bumpy, particularly on the day he moved in and got confused, forgetting what I had told him about where he was going and having him accuse me of ‘sending him to prison with the rest of the crooks in this country’. I was glad of the help of the staff at the nursing home as I did my best to calm Dad down and make it clear that he was not in prison, and I was also glad when Dad gave me a hug before I left to let me know that he was more understanding of things then.
