by Shari Low
The barrier in the office car park rose as I pulled up and I drove into my usual space.
OK, one more call. My daily fix. The same one I made every single morning when I arrived here. This one, I expected to go to voicemail; it always did.
‘Hi this is Dee at Sun, Sea, Ski. Sorry I’m probably up a mountain, or below the sea, or lying in the sun, or avoiding work in some other way, but if you leave me a message, I’ll call you back, I promise!’
You could hear the happiness and the gorgeous craziness in her voice and I knew that even if I hadn’t been married to her, I’d have loved the way she sounded. And as I listened, I liked to tell myself that she was lying on a beach somewhere, or skiing down a black run, and she’d get back to me, as she always would, just as soon as she was able. It took me a few moments to shake the melancholy.
I switched the engine off and headed inside. There would usually be a couple of directors in on a Saturday, and I could see the lights on in their offices as I walked down the corridor on the way to the open-plan section I worked in. ‘All the creative divisions gathered together in one large think tank’ was how they pitched it. The truth was they’d probably read somewhere that the open-plan environment increased productivity because the endless stream of passers-by left no room for sitting all day playing Pacman or scanning Facebook on your laptop.
Callie saw me before I saw her. ‘Hello there, didn’t expect to see you today.’
‘And I thought I was the only sad git who wanted to come in and check Monday’s presentation,’ I said, laughing.
‘Guess not. And I was here before you so I think that makes me officially sadder than you.’
‘Fair point,’ I agreed.
‘Great. Glad we had this chat. I feel so much better about myself now,’ she said, joking. At least I think she was joking. Dee always said I was about as perceptive as mud when it came to other people’s feelings. Maybe that’s why I’d never sensed any annoyance from Callie after I ran out on her that evening in the bar. Since then, she’d been completely normal and we’d kept it all completely surface-level. Yep, I knew it was a cop out and I felt a bit crap about that. She’d opened up to me about losing her sister and I’d never mentioned it since. When she asked me how I was, I said ‘fine’. It was all I could do for now. If we got into a situation where we were sharing our losses, I knew I couldn’t be trusted not to fall apart and start wailing on her shoulder. Not a prospect I relished. Much better to keep this business. Cordial.
I switched on my Mac and waited for it to boot up. ‘So how come you’re in here on a Saturday afternoon? Is Justin The Wonderman Accountant off training for his next triathlon?’ Safer ground. I’d been making fun of her boyfriend’s reported perfection for years and she always entered into the spirit of it.
‘Don’t know,’ she shrugged. ‘We’re not seeing each other anymore.’
Christ, I couldn’t say anything right.
‘Sorry, I didn’t know. I wouldn’t have mentioned it if… Oh, shite. Sorry.’
Only then did I notice she was laughing. ‘My choice,’ she said. ‘I’m bearing up. Haven’t ram-raided the ice cream freezer at Waitrose yet.’
‘Good to know.’
My computer was up and running now and I opened my presentation and started working on it. I was engrossed in it for a few moments when I noticed she was smiling at me.
‘What have I done now?’
Giggling, she shook her head. ‘Nothing. That’s the point. You are such a bloke. I’m the last one to play the gender card, but if you were a female colleague, there’s a pretty good chance you’d be grilling me right now on every detail of the break-up and we’d be comparing notes on all our previous relationships. Not “Oh, you’ve chucked him. Fair enough then.” Women aren’t wired to stop that conversation at that point.’
‘I prefer plausible deniability. Or maybe I just think that it’s none of my business.’
She rolled her eyes like that was a bad thing. ‘I’ll never understand men,’ she muttered.
‘OK then, so why did you split up?’
There was a definite flicker of mischief in her eyes. ‘Not telling you now.’
‘And that’s why I’ll never understand women,’ I countered, enjoying the banter. I didn’t have enough of it in my life anymore.
We spent the next couple of hours sorting out the presentation until it was pretty much perfect, then another hour or so chatting about office politics. Or rather, Callie chatted, I listened, jaw dropping ever wider every time a new nugget of scandal was introduced. It seemed like half the agency was sleeping with a co-worker and the other half were conspiring to launch a managerial coup. It was like the employment equivalent of a reality TV show.
‘How could I not know all this?’ I asked, taking the coffee she handed over.
‘Because you come in, do you job, leave, and don’t gossip. It’s very admirable but it means you miss all the best stuff.’ She took a sip of her coffee. ‘So, where you off to when you’ve finished here?’ she asked.
‘Just going to pick up my brother-in-law, then heading to the gym. I’m so rock and roll.’ My brother-in-law. As I said it I realised it was the first time I’d referred to him as that – and technically the title no longer applied.
‘And after?’
‘Don’t know. Probably a couple of pints at Oscars,’ I said, naming the semi-trendy sports bar we occasionally popped into after a workout. ‘He’s over here from Australia, came back for the…’ The word got stuck. It was the first awkward moment of the day. I cleared my throat and went on. ‘…funeral. He doesn’t know many people so he’s always happy to be dragged to a pub by my saddo self.’
‘Is he single?’
‘Erm, yeah.’ Actually I had no idea. I knew he wasn’t seeing anyone here, but I’d never asked if he had someone back in Australia.
‘Good-looking?’
‘Erm… Yeah, I guess. If you like fit surfer guys who look like they’ve just left the set of Point Break.’
She thought about that for a moment. ‘My pal Lizzy and I are going out in the West End tonight, so we might just drop by and check out fit surfer guy. She’s single. Got a thing for six-packs. Actually so have I.’
I didn’t quite know what to say to that. And I had no idea if this would be cool with Mark or not.
She must have sensed my hesitation, because she seemed highly amused. ‘Luke, I don’t want to marry them off. We’ll just stop by and have a drink.’
Something inside me sank. What the hell was wrong with me? It was just a co-worker, meeting up in a social situation, yet I couldn’t seem to get my head round the idea that it was OK. Sort yourself out, Harper. ‘No worries. Just didn’t want him to think I was setting him up. I’ve a tendency to overthink things these days.’
‘Well you should definitely stop that,’ she said, picking up a grey bag and throwing it over her shoulder.
‘Sometimes thinking is definitely overrated. See you later.’ Huge smile, a wink, and then she was off down the corridor.
See, if I was overthinking things, I might conclude that she was flirting with me. And flattering as it was because she was pretty gorgeous, smart and funny, that might scare the crap out of me.
I got to Sun, Sea, Ski just as it was closing. There was a welcome party waiting for me.
‘Luke, ma love, how are you doing?’ Josie greeted me, crushing me in a bear hug. ‘Dear God, are you wearing those magic pants or are you fading away?’ she asked, pinching the area of my sides where my love handles used to hang proud. The irony didn’t escape me that Dee would love the shape I was in now.
‘Magic pants. Definitely. Mark wears them too.’
‘Yup,’ Mark agreed, pulling the door shut and listening until the alarm stopped beating.
‘Good grief! That mental image will keep me amused for a long time,’ she cackled, as she jumped into her purple Volkswagen Beetle and roared off.
‘She’s crazy, but I think I love her,’ Mark sa
id. ‘Don’t tell me all the ways that’s wrong.’
‘Nah, she’s some woman.’
Mark held up a phone. ‘By the way, I gave in and bought a mobile. My Oz one doesn’t work here and I needed it in case my head office was looking for me. I’ll text you my number. What’s yours?’
I gave it to him and he stored it, then my phone dinged to show it had received a text.
Congratulations, you are now the fifth person to be granted my phone number. Use it wisely
‘Who are the other four?’ I asked, laughing.
‘Work, my mum, my dad and Jen. I really need to get out more.’
‘You and me both. Shop busy today?’
‘Yeah, not too bad. Mum came in for a while to help out, but she was knackered so I said to her to go home. She reckons she’s coming down with something but she still tried to hang around. Think she’s worried about us being short staffed.’
Irritation crept up the back of my spine. ‘Yet another way he’s a dick.’
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Mark turn to stare at me, and I realised I’d said that out loud. ‘Who’s a dick?’
‘Sorry, mate. Talking about Pete.’
It took Mark a minute. ‘Jen’s bloke? The fella who dumped her? Yeah, he sounds like a walking douche. But what’s he got to do with the fact that my mum is crook?’
I’d learned enough Oz-speak on my trip there to know that meant sick.
‘At weekends, or if Dee was away, or if Jen had accounts to file, then me or Pete would come in to help out. Can’t get over the fact that he’s just walked away and left her, dropped her right in it.’ I turned to him said, deadpan, ‘Thus, this is another way in which he is, in actual terms, a dick.’
‘No argument from me, mate,’ he said, grinning.
Jen said a few of the customers in the shop had major hots for this guy and – not that I’m an expert on these things – but I could see why. He was like one of those blokes off billboards. He didn’t have the appearance of someone who had a fondness for a pie. In fact, his six-pack showed through his T-shirt. It had been bad enough hanging out with super-fit Pete the dick, but Mark was in a whole other league. I might have lost a few pounds with this running lark, but I wasn’t going to win any Action Man lookalike competitions any time soon. Not that I minded. My ego could take it.
We talked about football on the way to the gym, a conversation that then continued through the workout, and on the drive to the pub. I pulled into the car park, a secure area that I could leave the car in if I decided to have more than one pint. I’d be happy to just have a couple and head home.
It was only when we got into the pub that I remembered what Callie had said earlier; I’d yet to fill Mark in that we’d be having company.
I carried our pints across the packed bar, and over to the high table we’d managed to snag in the corner. Bruce Springsteen was playing on the sound system, but not so loud that you couldn’t have a normal conversation. There were a dozen huge screens suspended from the ceiling around the U-shaped bar, each one of them showing a different sports channel. From where we were sitting we had basketball on the screen. NBA. Local derby, Clippers versus Lakers. I watched J.J. Redick take a shot from just outside the three point line. It swished straight in.
‘Listen, I hope it’s OK with you but I mentioned to one of the girls I worked with that we were coming here tonight and she said she might drop by.’
Mark’s pint paused on the way to his mouth and he looked at me.
I immediately went on the defensive. ‘Nothing like that. Look, mate, I know we’ve never really discussed it but your sister was pretty much irreplaceable and I can’t see that ever changing.’
Mark finally got the beer the rest of the way and took a drink, before answering. ‘I know it’s a pretty weird thing to say, but I didn’t know Dee that well. I left when she was twelve and, after that, only saw her for short times, but I think I knew her well enough to have a fair idea that she wouldn’t want you to mope around forever.’
I didn’t know how to answer that and, to my total embarrassment, I felt my face begin to flush and my throat begin to close. This is why I didn’t have conversations like this with my mates, let alone my dead wife’s brother. Too uncomfortable. Too near that place that felt like someone was holding a hot poker to my chest.
Until a few months ago, I’d never cried, never had a panic attack, never felt anxious, rarely got angry. Now it happened when I was least expecting it, ambushing me when I really could do with just feeling fucking normal for one fucking day.
Jesus, I missed her. Missed our lives. Missed holding her at night. Missed her brilliant cooking. Her laugh. Her constant drive to enjoy herself. Her wild side. Her soft side. I missed everything.
It took me a while to trust myself to answer, without dissolving and embarrassing us both. ‘Maybe, but not yet. I couldn’t even imagine how that would happen.’ Change the subject. ‘What about you? Seeing anyone back in Australia?’
‘That story might take a few pints,’ he said, taking another sip of his beer.
Even I could detect that his answer sat somewhere between pissed off and bitter.
‘Hit a nerve?’ I asked, pointing out the obvious.
‘Something like that. My job doesn’t make it easy – I’m away for a month or two at a time. Makes it hard to keep a relationship going. I’d been seeing someone for a year or so. Tara.’ He pulled out his wallet and showed me a picture of a blonde woman, maybe about thirty-five, tanned, walking towards the camera with a surfboard under her arm, her smile wide as she stuck her tongue out at the camera.
‘She’s a cracker. What happened?’
He shrugged. ‘She was from New Zealand, worked at a dive school teaching tourists and kids. We’d hook up whenever I was onshore. I’d been thinking for a while about asking her to move in with me when I got back onshore last time, but her mum got sick and she went back to Christchurch to help her out.’
‘So that was it?’
He nodded. ‘Bit of a free spirit, Tara. Just stick with it as long as it felt good, she always said. I guess it stopped feeling good because I haven’t heard from her since she left. Before I came back here I texted a couple of times but she didn’t reply. Guess it’s one of the reasons I’m still here. Next contract doesn’t start for another few weeks and there was no point going back to nothing. Thought my mum would rather have me here but, to be honest, I’m not so sure now.’
That didn’t make any sense. ‘Val? She’s made up that you’re back. If she’s acting a bit off it’s just… you know. Her and Dee were really close. Must be so hard for her.’
Mark nodded. ‘I get that. And don’t get me wrong, she’s not falling apart or anything. She just seems… empty. Jesus, this is all a bit deep, isn’t it? Can we go back to analysing the defensive strengths and weaknesses of every team in the league?’
‘Absolutely.’
‘Excellent. I’ll get the pints in.’ He picked up his almost-empty glass and headed to the bar, returning ten minutes later with two fresh pints.
This was more like it. No complications. No hassle. Just football, basketball, and a bit of surface level chat with a bloke who was my brother-in-law, but not really.
And then Callie and her mate, Lizzy, arrived.
Chapter 18
Jen
I read the note for the tenth time.
Dee…. Where were you? xx
My dearly departed pal wasn’t giving me any clues.
Two kisses. OK, didn’t exactly confirm that this was a romantic thing. I put two kisses on the end of texts I sent to Val, or Josie.
Actually, there was a thought. Perhaps these notes and flowers were from a female friend, someone Dee had met and clicked with. Yes! That was it! Scandalous affairs and subterfuge happened in the movies, not to shop owners from Weirbridge, so that had to be the innocent explanation.
Or maybe it wasn’t. I’d have thought she’d have mentioned meeting someone like that to me
. And if that was the case, why hadn’t she received any email correspondence from the person? I’d have noticed and replied, given that all Dee’s emails were forwarded to me now. Half were work, almost the same amount were spam, then there was the occasional one from an old friend. Other than that, not much else. Our circle was an unusually tight group. We worked together, socialised together, went on holiday together, and if we needed to contact each other we texted or phoned.
The whole thing was making me homesick. I picked up my phone and texted Val.
Just thinking about you. Wish you were here. Love you xx
Send.
See! I’d done two kisses without even thinking. And bollocks, I’d forgotten the time difference. It was 3 a.m. at home.
To my surprise she replied straight away. Damn. Hope I hadn’t woken her.
Not the same without you here luvly. Hope you’re having a great time. Love you xx
If I could have half the strength of Val Murray, I’d be forever grateful. I knew her heart must be aching every second of every day, but she’d never shown it, never wavered in caring for everyone else. If ever there was a lesson in motherhood, Val Murray was it.
I was about to toss the phone on the bed when I realised there were two more texts that had come in while I was asleep, one from Luke and one from an unknown number. I swiped to open Luke’s first.
Pete is a dick. X
In spite of myself and the huge Pete-sized whole in my life, that made me laugh. I’d no idea what had happened to inspire it, but, immature as I was, I appreciated the moral support.
I opened the next text.
This is Mark. You wore me down so I bought a phone. And I agree with Luke. X
I texted them both back the same message.
Just woke. Hangover. I’m clearly not fit to be a responsible adult. And I applaud your perceptiveness re. ex-boyfriend’s character. x
Bugger! Forgot the time difference again. I just hoped their phones were on silent and I didn’t wake them. Or that they were out somewhere, living it up in a club. Strike that. Neither of them were the type. Mark was heading for forty, and he’d told me his clubbing days were long behind him, and Dee and I always had to drag Luke and Pete to a club if we fancied a dance, and then they only came under protest, much preferring the laid-back vibe of any bar with several large flat-screen TVs showing sport.
