For another two or three weeks, he made it home earlier and only once or twice carried the stink of a pub back with him. But his absence from work didn’t go without notice.
In The Fox one night, Asswipe had taken him aside. The other guys obviously already knew a quiet word was on the way. They’d scarpered outside with their pints, leaving the two of them alone at the end of the bar.
“Look, mate,” said Andy. “We’re all in this together. We’ve all got WAGS and they all get uppity every now and again. Buy them things and pay them a bit of attention, keep them sweet. You should bring her out here one night. It would be good to see her. But I do need you to get back on the team.”
Giles felt like punching him. He’d never been pressured like this at his old job. And Lisa didn’t need to be kept sweet. She was his wife, and he didn’t want that lot leering over her if she came for a drink.
“This,” Andy continued, swinging his glass around to encompass the pub. “This is what the job is really all about. You have to be able to relax. It’s bonding time, it’s why we work all together so well. Otherwise, how are you going to perform for me during the day?”
Perform. Giles stayed silent.
“See, you know I’m right. Listen, I’ve got good things planned for you. Very good things. So let’s have another pint, shall we? We can talk about those big things in the morning.”
That night Giles missed the last Tube home. It was the first time he’d taken a late night taxi in a month.
But he got the impression Lisa was trying to be understanding too, to be more patient. She’d go out a little more often with her own friends, and say she didn’t mind that he couldn’t make Sunday dinner at her folks. Even when he had a free weekend and they went for a picnic or to see her friends, she only looked a little annoyed that Giles took calls on his mobile.
One Friday, Lisa had even suggested she pop into The Fox after a drink with her own friends. She said she wanted to get to know his work mates better, to see what all the fuss was about.
She was getting it now. Work now, life later.
Satpal and Simon and Tim remembered her from the boat race. They were welcoming, even charming. Giles saw her giggling in the corner as the boys sat around her, trying to outdo each other by cracking jokes. They bought her drinks, and no one said a word when she said she’d drunk enough booze and switched from white wine to lime and soda.
The boys kept on drinking, and Giles tried to keep up with them without showing Lisa how pissed he was getting. But at least she’d now understand what fun an after work drink could be; and how important it was for his career and their future for him to play the game.
It happened just before 11 p.m. when Giles was returning from the bar with a tray laden with another round: a few bottles for the lads, a soda and lime for Lisa and a pint - the last one he promised - for himself.
At first it looked like the boys were still cracking their jokes, sitting in the corner with Lisa in the middle. But as he approached, he could tell the atmosphere had changed. The boys were getting seriously close, and Lisa looked uncomfortable. When he reached them all, Lisa had already stood up. She gave him a wicked stare, and she had tears in her eyes. She pushed past Giles almost knocking the drinks tray out of his hands.
“Ooooh,” the boys all laughed as she ran for the door.
Giles slammed the tray down and followed her out of the door. Her soda spilled all over the table, but the boys were too pissed to care. They just reached for their own bottles and chinked them together.
“Lisa, what’s going on?” Giles said gently, a little too pissed. He grabbed her arm to prevent her from heading up the road. She swung around with a look of venom in her eyes. Yanked her arm out of his grasp. Giles thought she was going to throw a punch.
“Oh, you fucker,” she said. There were no tears now, just pure anger.
“What, what?”
“You fucker. How dare you talk about our private life with your filthy mates?”
“What, what do you mean private life?” he put on a sympathetic voice, tried to hold her hand.
“Our fucking sex life, Giles,” she threw his hand away.
“What? I didn’t, I haven’t. What are you talking about?”
“Yes, you have Giles, you bastard. They’re probably in there laughing about it now.”
“I don’t know what you mean. I’ve never…”
She held up her finger to his face. “Don’t you fucking lie to me Giles, just don’t even try. I’ve just spent ten minutes being told by your mates about us having sex.”
“Lisa, they’re just fucking around. We’re all pissed, you know…”
“No, Giles. I’m not pissed. And I’ve just been told by one of your greasy scum-bag pals he wishes his girlfriend would let him tie her up.”
“Lisa…”
“God, Giles, one of them practically said he wanked over us doing it.”
“They’re just joking, Lisa. Anyone could have plucked that out of the air. Lots of people...”
“They didn’t pluck it out of the fucking air Giles. They didn’t pluck our wedding night out of the fucking air, did they? I can’t imagine where they heard that from, Giles? You got any ideas?”
“Lisa, I love you,” said Giles, reaching for her hand again. “I’m sorry. It’s just talk. It’s just what we do.”
“Well, it’s not what I do. This isn’t me,” she was crying now. A sickened cry of humiliation. “This isn’t what I want. I can’t do it anymore.”
Lisa turned and headed quickly towards the Tube stop. Giles swore at himself as she walked away.
Yes, Giles was married.
But he hadn’t seen Lisa for two months. There wasn’t any paperwork yet, no legal letters, not even any deep and meaningfuls about how they might split the house they shared.
Lisa’s dad phoned him a few days after she’d gone. He said she was feeling raw and could Giles step away for a little while? Let her get her head straight?
He hadn’t, of course. He’d sent texts, most often in the middle of the night. Texts after returning home with a belly full of booze to an empty home.
- Why don’t you come back, we can talk?
- Thinking of you. Looking forward to holding you in my arms again.
- Miss you. I know you miss me. X
- You do miss me don’t you? Call me. xxx
He’d duck outside of pubs in the City to get her on the phone, but it always rang a few times then went to answer phone.
“Lisa, hi love. I miss you. Call me back, eh? We can sort this out.”
“Hey, it’s me again. Just calling to find out how long you need. No pressure, I just miss you. Tell me what I can do.”
“Hi, Lisa. I just want to hear your voice. Just as friends, okay? Please, call me back.”
“Lisa, fucking hell - guys, will you just shut the fuck up for a minute - come on darling. Give me a call.”
“Lisa, at least have the manners to return one of my calls. You are my wife, for God’s sake. You owe me that.”
Giles had parked outside her parents’ house a couple of times. Okay, maybe three or four. There had been twitching curtains, but he didn’t have the guts to go up and knock.
Lisa’s dad Phil played flank occasionally, at one of the vets’ squads at Basildon rugby club. His tone of voice on his third call to ask - ‘I’m demanding this time’ - that Giles give his daughter some space had carried a little more menace than Giles had cared for.
Eventually, Lisa’s phone never rang at all. It just went to a dull tone. Line disconnected.
That’s when Giles had stopped taking his prescription medication regularly. And started back on the recreational drugs with determination.
27
Megan lay on the dozen steps between Benny above and Giles below. She could hear the light breathing of Giles, his occasional twitching and light cries out as if harangued by terrible dreams. And who wouldn’t have nightmares in a place like this?
I
t was a nightmare during the day, a nightmare during the night. Just living had become one terrifying ordeal. Everyone wants some separation from the world, even though we don’t know what it’s like. Now Megan knew, and she wanted more than anything else to get out of this isolation and darkness. And she never wanted to come back here again.
She heard Benny’s deep breathing above her. She heard no restlessness or twitching. Megan couldn’t put her finger on it. It was almost as if Benny hadn’t been freaked out about this at all. The enforced darkness, the tough, cold, immovable walls. The silence, the nothingness. His reaction had been consistently calm and almost - what was it -welcoming? Familiar?
Whatever it was, it was the opposite of herself. Benny was comfortable with his surroundings. Despite the hunger. Despite his injured foot. Despite the total blackness of night that continued to make Megan feel sick every time she gave it too much thought. Sick even though it had been a long time since she’d eaten anything to throw up. Her stomach growled.
But it wasn’t her empty stomach or even being on the edge of total panic from the dark that was keeping Megan awake. It was her physical closeness to Giles. It was as if she couldn’t escape him. She instinctively raised her bent legs a little further from the sound of his punctuated breathing below her.
The guy had acted like an idiot since they’d found themselves down here three days before.
But she’d seen his type before. Just trussed up peacocks really, full of themselves and their bonuses and their great jobs, but underneath - beneath those flashy feathers - there was little else. Lonely pointless lives. Take away the drink and the drugs, the matey bravado, and what were they really?
And this guy, down here, had revealed that loneliness behind the big talk, a deep sadness and vulnerability, when he had told them about Lisa.
The guy was hot and cold. One moment sweet and vulnerable. Almost charming, looking for affirmation. He could be funny. Megan remembered them laughing yesterday, but then look what had happened straight afterwards. Giles could become sarcastic and mean. Volatile, on the edge of being pushed too far. He was nasty and jittering. On the edge.
God, he’d been ready to snap since the moment they found themselves down here. Exactly the opposite of Benny. Even the slightest provocation, and who knows what Giles could do.
Could he be dangerous? He certainly couldn’t be trusted. Especially not in the dark.
Megan’s eyelids were heavy and each part of her body, her aching bones and her painfully twisted, empty stomach, cried out for sleep. But confusion about Giles and fear of him kept her awake. Sitting up, she decided sleep would not come. She listened again to the two men breathing as they slept in the total darkness. Benny’s regular rhythm was like a soothing seashore.
It was a risk, but could she?
Megan edged up a few steps, trying to move her body as quietly as possible. She felt her arm brush against the man’s legs above, and then his belt. Silently, her body came to rest against Benny’s ribs. He was still sleeping. She felt the slow rise and fall of his side against her body, a warm and welcoming feeling making Megan feel safer.
Gently, ever so slowly, Megan brought her head to rest on Benny’s chest, trying not to wake him. Listening for a change in his breathing as her ear pressed closer to his body. As she lay her head down, she felt the rough arm which Benny had drawn across his chest. A self-comforting sleeping position.
As she enjoyed the warmth of Benny’s arm muscles as they pressed against her cheek, she detected a change in the man’s breathing. It stopped for a moment. Megan felt Benny’s arm lift, pushing her face away from him, her head suddenly disconnected from his body. She had got it wrong. Was he pushing her away?
But she felt the arm move across her face and wrap gently around the back of her neck. There was no force to it, but the arm exerted a gentle pull that encouraged Megan to lay her head fully onto Benny’s chest. Then it pulled her whole body closer. She wrapped herself into the side of the man as she lay her own arm across his stomach, moulding into his torso.
Most of her remained pressed up against the cold concrete of the steps beneath them both, but where their bodies connected, she felt a comfort, warmth and closeness.
She listened as Benny’s breathing slowly became deep again. She allowed the weight of her own eyelids to exert their pressure, trying to forget Giles and the dark and the suffocation of the situation which she knew would still be there when she woke up again.
Within minutes she fell into a deep calm, her breathing matching the deep inhalation of the man in whose arms she had finally allowed herself to fall asleep.
28
Megan was on her class WhatsApp group. She hadn’t added herself to it, but one way or another her number had been added and her phone started ping-ping-pinging with notifications.
She looked at the general gist of the conversation. Rarely were the girls asking for help with the college work. More like organising nights out; sizing up the likelihood that the barista in Starbucks was gay, and if not, which of the girls might get him into bed first; sharing inspirational quotes and inappropriate memes.
Megan didn’t join in the chatter, except to respond if someone needed a copy of a sheet they’d not picked up from class. Or needed help to understand what a ‘growth curve’ was. She was always thanked with smiley faces, pumping hearts, and thumbs up.
She’d rather have not been on the group at all, but she knew that ‘Megan has left this chat’ always said more than, ‘I just don’t want my phone pinging all day’.
She turned off notifications, so the WhatsApp chat just built on her phone into tens, twenties and thirties of messages a day in silence. She rarely looked at it. Nobody seemed to notice that she rarely joined in.
But Megan had to check her other WhatsApp messages frequently, because Dad was always monitoring her.
Woe betide her if she ignored a message from him, even for an hour or two. She’d tried to convince him to use SMS messaging, but he said WhatsApp was free and all of his clients were on it. She shouldn’t get special treatment.
It was a Friday night. Some girls were obviously out drinking, either together or in separate groups, or even at home with booze and a movie.
Normally she’d scroll past the NVQ Chat group without glancing at it. But like the cocktail effect, when you hear your name said in a crowded room, she couldn’t help her eye catching the word ‘Megan’ with a laugh/crying emoji next to it.
Instinctively, she opened up the chat.
The girls were idly bantering about which of the pupils was most likely to succeed in life. A few names had gone around the chat, with the girls poking fun at each other.
‘Jodie, most likely to succeed working in a tanning salon!’ With grinning, brown faced girl emojis.
Jodie had then posted.
‘Taylor: definitely Botox and fake boob clinic.’
‘Hey, I’m proud of these puppies.’ Then some dog face emojis. ‘Nominate Sharon for barmaid.’
‘Hic!’ Sharon had replied. ‘You won’t get me on that side of the bar. Ever! Make mine a double, while you’re at it!! Who’s buying.’
Laugh emoji.
Cry emoji.
Pint glass emoji.
And so the chat went on. Banter, making fun, wasting time. Drunk chat.
And then it happened.
‘Most likely to come top of the class?’ It was a post from Taylor.
‘Megan!’ That was Jodie again.
Megan was embarrassed. She saw the cursor blinking, begging for her to answer before someone else did.
She typed: ‘Surely that’s Rachel. She’s put in SO much work.’ Then added a wink emoji.
It was time Rachel got recognised, she thought. She pressed send without hesitation.
Only someone else’s message had popped up before hers.
‘Who’s most likely to succeed sleeping their way to the top?’
Her own message appeared directly afterwards.
“F
uck,” shouted Megan, as she realised how the WhatsApp thread now read.
“No, no!”
She threw her mobile onto her bed in horror, swung around, grasping her face with both hands. What had she done?
She went back to her phone. The chat had erupted with laughing, winking, and angel emojis.
Seemed like everyone had something to say.
‘It’s the quiet ones you have to watch.’
‘Wondered why she’s always first into class and last out!’
‘Innocent Lady Suck Suck, here’s your Grade A’
It was funny, because Rachel was so incredibly unlikely to be what Megan had just suggested. They were making the most of it.
But as all social media chats do, it wound and warped and swept like a crowd of starlings over a bridge.
Suddenly girls were calling Rachel ‘privileged’, ‘posh’, ‘full of herself’, ‘can’t be bothered with us’, ‘too good for us all’
Drunk talk. A few moments of silence on the chat group before talk moved on to something new.
Then there was a single message.
‘Rachel has left this group’
The chat went into uproar again.
‘Ooops!’
‘Can’t take a joke.’
‘See what I mean?’
‘Fucking snob.’
And on it went. The discussion of the night. The victim of the night.
Only Megan knew how much those messages would have hurt Rachel. She received harsh enough ones from her Dad. She hadn’t even known Rachel was on the chat.
She panicked.
Should she leave the group? All that would do would put her in the firing line.
Should she post in Rachel’s defence? Explain herself? In their drunken state, the girls wouldn’t care. They wouldn’t have even remembered how the conversation started.
The Spiral Page 15
