by Mark Edwards
‘Please don’t start that one again.’
Charlie narrowed her eyes and for a moment I thought she was going to launch into another tirade. But she merely said, again, ‘It’s a shame.’
The next day, I had a meeting with Karen to show her the work I’d done on her site, after which I was due to see Victor to talk about the Wowcom project.
Karen was less than enthusiastic when I showed her the mock-ups I’d been working on – that were overdue, in fact.
‘I think it needs some work,’ she said, casting her eye over the simple white and purple design I’d created. ‘It’s a bit . . .’ She pulled a face.
I was taken aback. I thought it looked elegant and professional. ‘But this is what you said you wanted.’
We were in the same coffee shop as before but her mood was completely different. Gone was the playfulness and ironic conversation of our last meeting. I had seen her like this before, when she was overtired or had had a run-in with her ex or a difficult client. Maybe that’s what had happened. She’d been given a hard time and was paying it forward.
‘I’m sorry Andrew, but I imagined it completely different to this. I thought it would have some more “wow.” My friend Cassie has just set up her own site. It looks better than this and she used a template she found online.’
I wondered who she’d been talking to. Had someone told her she was being ripped off?
I headed to Victor’s office in a bad mood, having agreed to re-do the work, which would mean at least another couple of days on it without any extra money. En route, I felt the need for friendly human contact, so I fired off a text to Charlie.
Fucking Karen doesn’t like the work I did – I have to do it all again. SO annoying. Xx
Charlie replied immediately. What a bitch! I’m sure the work was brilliant. You should refuse to do it. xxx
No, I need the money. This is what it’s like being a freelancer but I’m sure she’s taking advantage of me. xxx
I think she’s always taken advantage of you. x
I wasn’t sure what to say to that, so decided to change the subject. Do you want to go out for dinner tonight? New Thai place just opened in H Hill. xxx
She replied. I’m knackered. Quiet night in OK? Love you xxx PS, have you called Tilly lately, checked she’s OK? You should.
Good thinking. Quiet night in sounds good. Love you too. xxx
I called Tilly. Her mobile rang out so I tried the landline.
Rachel answered.
‘You haven’t been fired then,’ I said, without thinking.
‘No thanks to you.’
Oh dear. ‘I’m sorry. She kind of forced it out of me. She knows you were just trying to help though. Anyway, I’m glad you answered. How does she seem at the moment?’
Her voice dropped a few decibels. ‘She’s all right, yes. She seems brighter. I found her crying the other day—’
‘Oh God.’
‘—but she told me I shouldn’t worry about it. She said it’s just that she misses your mum and dad sometimes. And I think she misses you too.’
Rachel had a habit of stabbing me right where I was most vulnerable. Right in the guilt glands.
‘I’ll try to come down more,’ I said.
I remembered a conversation I’d had with Tilly after I’d bought my flat. ‘So,’ she had said. ‘Did you buy a flat on the fourth floor with no lift so I wouldn’t be able to visit you? Or are you planning on setting up some kind of winch and pulley system so you can haul me up the front of the building?’
I had been mortified. It genuinely hadn’t crossed my mind, when I had bought that flat, that Tilly would never be able to visit it. I was gripped by self-loathing and vowed to visit her frequently. Of course, she had been nice about it and told me not to worry, that she knew it was a bargain and that I wouldn’t be there forever. ‘Next time, though, get a ground floor flat, eh?’
‘I’ll come down soon,’ I said to Rachel now. ‘I’m sure Charlie would like to come and see Tilly too.’
‘Hang on, she’s coming,’ Rachel hissed, and then I was exchanging pleasantries with my sister. She didn’t have much time to talk but told me, quite impatiently, that she was fine, that I didn’t need to worry about her, but that she couldn’t wait to see me and Charlie again.
‘You’ve got a good one there,’ she said. ‘Try not to fuck it up.’
In contrast to Karen’s reaction to my work, Victor was full of enthusiasm about what I’d done for Wowcom.
‘You’re on fire,’ he said. ‘Now you’ve toned down the naughtiness a bit. I’ve gotta say, I never saw you as the controversial type. Must be the influence of your new bird.’ He looked me up and down. ‘You’ve lost weight too. Banging you ragged, is she? You lucky bastard.’
I didn’t know what to say.
Victor sat down on the adjacent sofa in his office.
‘Take my advice. Don’t marry her. Don’t have kids. Don’t even let her move in.’
I gestured at the large, happy family portrait on his desk: his cool-looking wife, Amanda, with her bleached blonde hair, and his tweenage son and daughter, big grins showing gappy teeth.
‘You’re telling me you’d rather have a casual girlfriend than your lovely family?’
He looked at the picture too, beaming with pride. ‘Nah, of course not. My family are everything to me. But those early days of a relationship – all that passion, the constant shagging, the lack of bickering about money and housework. Sometimes I’d like to go back to those days. Just for a week.’ He winked at me. ‘Maybe a month.’
‘Maybe you and Amanda should go away on holiday for a week, leave the kids with a babysitter.’
‘Maybe. Anyway, Andrew, there’s something I want to talk to you about.’
‘Right?’
He fixed me with his most sincere look. ‘The work you’ve done on Wowcom has been first class. Just like your work always is. I’m impressed. And I was wondering if you’d be interested in coming and working for me. Here.’
‘You mean . . . as part of the company?’
‘Yeah. We’ve got a position available: senior designer. Darren, one of our seniors, is going off travelling or something ridiculous like that. As soon as he told me, I thought of you.’
I must have looked dumbstruck as he went on, ‘You don’t have to say yes or no now. I know you like working from home – lounging about in your pyjamas all day, not having to put up with office politics or share a bog with anyone else. But, I dunno, if I were you I’d get a bit lonely.’
‘I’m not lonely,’ I said, without much conviction. I looked out through the glass wall of his office at all the cool young people – a girl in a tight T-shirt stopping to chat to a guy with a beard; a pair of blokes heading outside for a cigarette break. There was lots of serious work going on, but Victor’s staff also appeared to like it here. It was a small business that punched above its weight.
‘Don’t make a decision now,’ he said. ‘I’ll email you the job spec and details of salary and all that boring stuff.’ He cleared his throat. ‘I know you’ve only been with this bird a month or whatever, but if you are thinking it might get serious, down the road, maybe you’d be better off with something more secure than freelancing.’ Perhaps sensing he was pushing it, he added, ‘But don’t let me twist your arm. All I’m saying is, there’s a job going, I’d love you to have it, and if you’d rather stay working at home in your jim-jams then I’ll probably be able to keep chucking work your way.’
Perhaps if I wasn’t feeling so pissed off about Karen rejecting my work or if Victor hadn’t slipped that ‘probably’ into his final sentence, I might have made a different decision.
I had always worked freelance, since leaving university. Because of the money I’d had from my parents’ insurance, I hadn’t needed a student loan and I hadn’t felt pressured to fin
d a job immediately. I’d fallen into freelance work when a friend of a friend asked me to do some work for him and it had grown from there.
By the time Charlie came round, I had made up my mind. I was going to accept the offer Victor had emailed to me.
‘The money’s excellent,’ I said to Charlie. ‘And it’s secure. I won’t have to take on shitty little jobs like the one for Karen where I end up doing twice as much work as I’d originally estimated.’
Charlie sat down at the table, bottle of wine already open. Her cheeks were pink from her walk from the train station through the bitter cold. Snow was forecast for tomorrow and England was bracing itself, unprepared as usual.
‘I understand about that bit,’ she said. ‘But otherwise I think you’re mad.’
I was disappointed. I wanted her to be enthused. ‘Really? Why?’
‘You don’t know what it’s really like, working in an office. You’re so lucky being able to work here, and for yourself.’
‘But the people at Victor’s office are cool.’
She furrowed her brow.
‘Not as cool as you, obviously.’
I was trying to make her smile but her expression remained grim.
‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I’m in a bad mood. Shitty day at work.’ She sank half a glass of wine. ‘Go on, tell me all about it.’
I did, recounting the entire conversation with Victor, explaining my reasoning, telling her that I was sick of being on my own all the time.
‘Maybe I should quit my job and then we could spend the days together,’ she said.
I laughed. ‘Yeah, right.’ I was fired up with excitement. ‘It will also be great for me professionally. I’ll learn so much working for Victor, and just being around other designers.’
She looked at me over her wine glass. ‘Sounds like you’ve made your mind up already.’
My gaze slipped away from hers. It was awkward, what I was going to say. It made me uncomfortable. ‘Charlie, before I met you, I lived in a kind of self-imposed solitary confinement. I found going out into the world . . . difficult.’
I was speaking so quietly that she leaned closer, straining to hear. ‘I’ve been like that since my parents died. It’s hard . . . it’s hard to explain, but I shut down after that. Like a flower closing up.’ I illustrated this by clenching my fist. ‘Even at uni I kept to myself, studied hard, didn’t make many friends apart from Sasha. I say I fell into freelancing, but I also allowed it to happen because it suited me.’
Charlie stretched out her hand to take mine.
‘But since meeting you – and I know it hasn’t been long – I feel . . . stronger. More, um, equipped to go out into the world. Like I’m finally unfurling.’ I opened my fist, fingers curling outwards. ‘It’s all thanks to you, Charlie.’
She nodded, slowly, squeezed my fingers. ‘I was the same,’ she said, ‘after I lost my parents. Like, if I’m an orphan, I’m really going to be an orphan, you know?’ I thought she was about to tell me more, open up about her past. But she said, ‘It’s great . . . it’s really great that you feel better, or different or whatever, because of me.’
There was an extended silence.
‘So you’ve made your mind up?’ Charlie said, startling me out of my thoughts.
‘I have. I’m going to accept. I’ll text Victor now.’
I sent the text then held up my drink. ‘A toast? To orphans, making it in the big bad world.’
She arched an eyebrow. ‘How about just a toast to us?’
After dinner, we watched TV for a while then went to bed and made love. I suggested to Charlie that we watch our DVD, which she had edited at home and presented to me as a gift, but she said she was too tired. I drifted off.
An hour later, I woke up. Charlie wasn’t in bed.
I went into the living room, where she was sitting at the computer. This was starting to become a habit: me getting up in the night to find my girlfriend doing something in the dark in the front room.
‘Charlie?’
She didn’t respond. Getting closer, I saw that she was on Victor’s company website. Old Street Design. Specifically, she was on the ‘Meet the Team’ page, an area of the site that profiled the staff. Each person who worked there had a photo along with their name, job title and a couple of factoids: favourite cartoon character, what they wanted to be when they grew up, that kind of thing.
‘So this is who you’ll be working with,’ she said.
She scrolled up and down the page.
‘Does Victor only employ attractive young people?’
‘Not only,’ I said, feeling groggy. ‘But yeah, I guess mostly.’
She glared at the screen. ‘He should be taken to a tribunal. I bet if he interviewed two equally qualified women he’d give the job to the prettier one. Actually, he’d probably give the job to the prettier one even if she was less qualified.’
‘I don’t think that’s true,’ I said. ‘Why don’t you come back to bed?’
‘I wish you weren’t going to work there,’ she said.
‘You’re being stupid,’ I said. I was tired, fed up. This was the harshest thing I’d ever said to her. ‘And it’s too late now. I’ve already told Victor I’m going to accept the job.’
I went back to bed, leaving her clicking around the screen, zooming in on the images of one young, attractive woman after another.
The next morning, I woke up to find Charlie sitting on the bed holding a plate loaded with scrambled eggs and toast, a steaming mug of coffee already on the bedside table. As I pushed myself into an upright position, she handed me a folded-over piece of paper. On it she had drawn a caricature of herself, a frowning girl with a tear rolling down her cheek, an arrow pointing to her with the word IDIOT.
Inside, it said SORRY. C xxxx.
‘I love you,’ she said. ‘And I really am sorry. I know it’s a brilliant opportunity for you.’
I kissed her. ‘Why were you so weird about it?’
She shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I guess I don’t like change.’
‘But it’s change for me, not you.’
She took the plate and set it to one side. ‘Let’s leave it, can we?’
She slipped back into bed beside me. ‘I’ve got five minutes,’ she said.
Fourteen
I left the flat not long after Charlie had headed to work, the taste of her still on my lips. The parked cars had thick ice on the windscreens; the woman in the flat downstairs worked on hers, scraper in one gloved hand, a big can of de-icer in the other.
‘It’s going to snow,’ she said, flicking a glance towards the sky.
I looked down at my inappropriate footwear: trainers, more like plimsolls, really. I ought to go back up, change into some boots. But I couldn’t be bothered to go back up four flights, so decided to risk it.
My eyes had been bothering me, feeling dry and scratchy for the last few days, so I went to the optician’s in Brixton to get some drops. Apparently, this was a common after-effect of the kind of operation I’d had. Floaters came and went too, each one making me worry that it was going to happen again. But apart from that, I was in high spirits.
I wanted to buy Charlie a present, so I spent an hour or so browsing around the shops and exploring Brixton Market. Although she’d bought me lots of presents, I’d hardly bought her anything apart from a couple of books – a volume of love poetry and an erotic novel that we read to each other in bed – and a cuddly dog that she called Bones.
I didn’t feel confident about buying her something she’d like. In the end, I found a silver locket in a vintage shop that was probably over-priced but that I thought she’d love. I bought a silk scarf too to wrap it in.
After that, I headed on the Tube to Oxford Circus. I needed some new clothes for work. I didn’t want to turn up on the first day wearing my holey jumper and paint-
splattered jeans. I was going to be working with lots of trendy kids and I wanted to fit in, though I didn’t want anything too self-consciously hip.
I was deep in thought about clothes and work and what it was going to be like on my first day – my mouth went dry when I contemplated it – but when I emerged from the Tube station into the open air I gasped.
Snow was flurrying down, flakes as big as moths spiralling towards the pavement where it attempted to cling on, only to be trampled underfoot by the crowds. It was beautiful, like a scene from a Christmas movie, and I knew that in most other, less-frenetic places across the capital, the snow would by sticking to the ground. Children would be crossing their fingers for a day off school. Trains and buses would be cancelled. The usual chaos that erupted across Britain whenever it snowed heavily would ensue. As a nation, we moaned about it but we loved it really.
I hurried into Top Shop, where Charlie and I had gone that first night. It seemed so long ago but was only, what, four weeks?
Four weeks! My relationship with Charlie had got very serious, very quickly. I was deeply, seriously in love with her, beyond lust or infatuation. Already, I couldn’t imagine a future without her. Her comment that morning – ‘I don’t like change’ – made me believe that she felt exactly the same way. I had no doubt that she liked me as much as I liked her, and that made me feel secure and happy.
Perhaps, by most people’s standards, it had moved too fast. But I really didn’t care. We felt how we felt, and it wasn’t like we were talking about eloping or even moving in together. I was, however, planning to ask her if she wanted to go on holiday at Easter, somewhere warm. I was also thinking about taking her to see my mum and dad’s graves, down in Eastbourne, the closest I could get to introducing her to my parents. Or was that too morbid? I wondered if she’d want to do the same with her own deceased parents. Things like that, the coincidence of us both being orphans – though I hated that word – made me think that our relationship was serendipitous. The same with us having such similar surnames. We were meant to be. Charlie whispered that to me all the time.
