“You seeeee?” Keith said, spreading his arms wide to make his point and revealing the sweat patches under his arms. “That’s what I’ve always said.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Meredith said. “If my Graham didn’t wear one I know he’d have all sorts of slappers crawling all over him.”
She strained her neck to try to see over Andrew’s screen.
“Do you wear one, Andrew?”
Stupidly, he actually checked his finger before saying no.
“Is that for any particular reason, or . . . ?”
Shit.
“No, no,” he said. “I just . . . didn’t think I’d like how it felt.”
Nobody questioned this, but he could still feel his neck starting to burn with embarrassment. He realized then that it wasn’t good enough just knowing the simple facts, having the general overview. He was going to have to accentuate the broad brushstrokes with finer ones. And so, later that evening, with Ella on in the background, he opened up a blank spreadsheet and began to fill in his family’s story. He started by establishing as many “factual” things as possible: middle names, ages, hair colors, heights. Then, over the following weeks, he began to add subtler details—remembering snippets of strangers’ conversations from which he’d take some minor detail, or asking himself how someone else’s news might have been dealt with by his own family. Before too long you could have asked him almost anything and he’d have had a response prepared. To look at the spreadsheet at random you might have found that David enjoyed touch rugby but had recently sprained his ankle. He was shy and preferred playing on his own rather than with friends. He’d begged for months for a pair of trainers that had heels that lit up when you walked, until Andrew had finally relented.
Steph had terrible colic when she was a baby, but apart from the odd case of conjunctivitis now and then they rarely had to see a doctor with her these days. She asked scarily intelligent questions in public, which often left them embarrassingly stumped. She had once played a shepherd at the nativity to mixed reviews from her costars, though of course they’d never been prouder.
It was the “they” part—him and Diane—that he found more difficult. It had felt okay when he’d allowed himself to fantasize during the interview, but this was another level altogether. Nevertheless, the details were all there: Diane had recently been made partner in the law firm (her field was human rights), and though she worked long hours she’d now stopped checking the dreaded BlackBerry on weekends. Their wedding anniversary was September 4, but they also had a mini-celebration on November 15—the anniversary of their first kiss (standing outside in the snow after an impromptu party in a friend’s halls of residence room). Their first proper date had been to see Pulp Fiction at the cinema. They went to her parents’ for Christmas and tended to holiday with the kids in France in the summer and Center Parcs in the autumn half term. They’d gone to Rome for their tenth wedding anniversary. When they could get a babysitter they’d go to the theater—but nothing too avant-garde, because they’d decided their time and money were too precious to fritter away on something without at least one of the leads having been in a Sunday night costume drama. Diane played tennis every Sunday morning with her friend Sue and was on the PTA at Steph’s school. She used to wear bright orange-rimmed glasses before taking the plunge with laser surgery. She had a little scar above her eyebrow from where a boy at school called James Bond had thrown a crabapple at her.
All of this had been such a full-on job that Andrew had barely found time to think about how his actual new role was going. He’d already been to two funerals and made difficult phone calls to several relatives (one of which involved having to explain to a man that if he wanted the council to pay for his uncle’s funeral then he’d have to return the laptop he’d taken from the house so that they could sell it to pay for the service). He’d even come along with Keith to his first property inspection and seen the room where a woman had taken her final breath. But all that felt like a walk in the park compared to keeping his deceit undiscovered. He was constantly on edge, waiting for the moment he got himself tangled up in knots or completely contradicted himself. But then a month passed, and another, and slowly he started to relax. All his hard work was paying off.
The moment that nearly changed everything came on a Friday at lunchtime, Andrew having spent a fruitless morning searching for next-of-kin clues in a shoebox full of papers recovered from a property search. He was absentmindedly watching some shop-bought macaroni and cheese rotate in the microwave and engaging in some idle chitchat with Cameron when the subject of allergies came up.
“That’s the hard part,” Cameron was saying. “You have to be totally prepared. It just means you’re on edge rather a lot. Especially when it comes to nuts. With Chris we just have to be extra vigilant, you know?”
“Mmm,” Andrew said, distractedly peeling back the plastic film and jabbing the pasta around with his fork. “Steph’s allergic to bee stings, so I know what you mean.”
It was only when he got back to his desk and was halfway through his lunch that he considered this little exchange. He hadn’t needed to mentally refer to his spreadsheet or desperately improvise something; instead he had quite calmly volunteered this information about Steph without even thinking about it, as if it had come from his subconscious. The fact that the detail had appeared so easily left him deeply unsettled. It may have helped his cause overall, another little piece of information to put meat on the bones, but it was the first time he’d really lost sight of why he was having to make things up in the first place. Allowing the fantasy to take over like that felt scary. So much so, in fact, that when he got home that evening, rather than updating his spreadsheet he spent the time looking for another job.
A week later, he had just come out of the church, having attended the funeral of a seventy-five-year-old former driving instructor who’d drowned in the bath, when he turned on his phone to find a voicemail from an HR person asking him to interview for one of the jobs he’d applied for. Ordinarily this would have thrown him into a panic, but he always felt curiously numb after the funerals, so when he heard the message he felt calm enough to call back immediately to arrange the interview. This was his chance to escape and finally stop the lies.
Another week later, he was climbing the stairs at the council office and feeling horribly out of breath, trying to convince himself that this was because he was suffering from a disease—possibly fatal—and nothing to do with the fact he hadn’t exercised for two decades, when his phone rang again. A few seconds later, he was wheezing that yes he’d be very happy to come in for a second interview. He spent the rest of the afternoon sitting at his desk and imagining how it would feel to tell Cameron he was handing in his notice already.
“You and the family up to anything nice this weekend, Andrew?” Bethany asked.
“Barbecue on Saturday if the weather’s nice,” Andrew said. “Steph’s decided she’s vegetarian, so not quite sure what’s going to be on the menu for her.”
“Oh, I am too! It’s fine—just do some halloumi cheese and some Linda McCartney sausages. She’ll love it.”
They were still discussing weekend plans some minutes later when Andrew got an e-mail from Adrian, the recruitment person who’d called him, asking him to confirm what dates he was free for the second interview. Andrew excused himself and escaped to a toilet cubicle. He didn’t want to admit to himself quite how warm and comforted he felt after little moments like this with Bethany and the others when discussing family stuff. The thought returned to him again: Where was the harm in what he was doing? He wasn’t upsetting anyone. People had actual families that they did actual diabolical things to, harming loved ones in all sorts of awful ways, and what he was doing wasn’t comparable to that in any way.
By the time he’d gotten back to his desk he’d made up his mind. He would make peace with what he was doing. He wasn’t going to turn back now.
Hi Adrian,
I’m really glad for the opportunity to have met with Jackie, but after a bit of soul-searching I’ve decided to keep on in my current role. Thank you for your time.
From then on, things started to get easier. He could happily join in with family chat feeling guilt-free, and, for the first time in a very long while, he felt happy more often than he felt lonely.
— CHAPTER 6 —
Andrew emerged from the station and—soddiest of sod’s laws—found himself walking just behind Cameron. He hung back and pretended to check his phone. To his surprise, he actually had a new text. To his disappointment, it was from Cameron. He read it and swore under his breath. He wanted to like Cameron, he really did, because he knew that his heart was in the right place. But it was hard to warm to a person who a) commuted on one of those mini-scooters that had suddenly been deemed acceptable for people above the age of five, and b) was unwittingly trying to ruin his life, having waited barely twelve hours before texting him to ask whether he’d had a chance to reconsider the dinner party plan.
The idea of losing his family didn’t bear thinking about. Yes, there was still the occasional tricky moment in conversation that sent him briefly off balance, but it was worth it. Diane, Steph and David were his family now. They were his happiness and his strength and the thing that kept him going. Didn’t that make them just as real as everyone else’s family?
* * *
—
He made a cup of tea, hung his coat on its usual peg and turned to see there was a woman sitting in his seat.
He couldn’t see her face because it was obscured behind his computer, but he could see her legs, clad in dark green tights, under his desk. She was dangling one of her black pumps on her toes. Something about the way she was flicking it back and forth reminded Andrew of a cat toying with a mouse. He stood there, mug in hand, not quite knowing what to do. The woman was swiveling in his chair and tapping a pen—one of his pens—on her teeth.
“Hello,” he said, realizing that even for him this was a record, to feel his cheeks reddening as the woman smiled and offered him a cheery hello in response.
“Sorry, but you’re, um, sitting in . . . that’s sort of technically my seat.”
“Oh god, I’m so sorry,” the woman said, jumping to her feet.
“It’s okay,” Andrew said, adding, rather needlessly, another “sorry” himself.
The woman had dark, rusty red hair that was piled high on top of her head with what looked like a pencil poking through it, as if to pull it out would make her hair cascade down like some sort of Kerplunk Rapunzel. Andrew guessed she was a few years younger than him, late thirties perhaps.
“What a great first impression to make,” she said, getting to her feet. Then, seeing Andrew’s confusion, “I’m Peggy—it’s my first day.”
Just then Cameron appeared and bounded over like a quiz-show presenter on a now-defunct digital channel.
“Excellent, excellent—you two’ve met!”
“And I’ve already stolen his chair,” Peggy said.
“Ha, stolen his chair,” Cameron laughed. “So anyway. Pegs—do you mind if I call you Pegs?”
“Um . . . No?”
“Well, Pegs, Peggy—the Pegster!—you’re going to be shadowing Andrew for a while just to get you up to speed. I’m afraid you’re rather in at the deep end this morning as I believe Andrew has a property inspection. But, well, no time like the present to get stuck in, I suppose.”
He proffered a violent double thumbs-up and Andrew watched Peggy recoil involuntarily, as if Cameron had just pulled out a knife. “Righto,” Cameron said, oblivious to this, “I shall leave you in Andrew’s capable hands.”
* * *
—
Andrew had forgotten they had a new person starting, and he felt uneasy at the prospect of being shadowed. Entering a dead person’s house was still strange and unsettling, and the last thing he wanted was someone else to worry about. He had his own methods, his own way of doing things. He didn’t really want to have to keep stopping to explain everything along the way. At the start, Keith had been the one to show Andrew the ropes. He had seemed to take it relatively seriously at first, but before long he started to just sit in the corner and play games on his phone, pausing only to make crude jokes at the deceased’s expense. Andrew might have welcomed a bit of gallows humor, though it wasn’t really his style, but Keith didn’t seem to possess a shred of empathy. Eventually, Andrew had approached him in the office kitchen and suggested he carry out inspections on his own. Keith had mumbled his agreement, barely seeming to notice what Andrew had said (though this may have been due in part to him struggling to extract his finger from the can of energy drink it was stuck in).
From then on, Keith stayed with Meredith in the office, registering deaths and arranging funerals. Andrew much preferred doing the inspections alone. The only problem with being unaccompanied was that news traveled fast when someone died, and suddenly a person who’d expired in complete solitude now had posthumous well-wishers and dear, dear friends who arrived during his inspections—caps in hand, beady eyes darting about the place—to pay their respects, and, just on the off chance, check if that watch the deceased had promised them in the event of their death, or fiver they owed them, happened to be on the premises. It was always the worst part, having to shoo these people away, the threat of violence hanging in the room long after they’d gone. So at least with the newbie alongside him he’d have a bit of backup.
“I meant to say,” Peggy said. “Before we left, Cameron cornered me and told me to try and persuade you that us all having ‘dinner party bonding sessions’ together was a good idea. He said be subtle about it, but, well, that’s not really my area of expertise . . .”
“Ah,” Andrew said. “Well, thanks for letting me know. I think I’ll just ignore that for now.” He hoped that was that nipped in the bud.
“Righto,” Peggy said. “Probably for the best as far as I’m concerned.
“Cooking isn’t my bag, really. I managed to get to the age of thirty-eight without realizing I’ve been pronouncing ‘bruschetta’ wrong all my life. Turns out it’s not ‘brusheta,’ according to my neighbor. Then again he does wear a pink sweater tied around his shoulders like he lives on a yacht, so I’m reluctant to take any of his advice.”
“Right,” Andrew said, slightly distracted, having realized they were running low on supplies ahead of the property inspection.
“I suppose it’s a team-building thing, is it?” Peggy said. “To be fair I’d prefer that than clay pigeon shooting or whatever it is these middle managers get up to.”
“Something like that,” Andrew said, pulling his rucksack around and searching it to see if he was missing anything.
“And so we’re, um, actually going to see a house now where a bloke’s just died?”
“Yes, that’s right.” Shit, they did need supplies. They’d have to make a detour. He looked around in time to see Peggy puffing out her cheeks and then realized how unwelcoming he was being. He felt a familiar wave of self-loathing, but the words to rectify the situation wouldn’t come, so they walked on in silence until they got to the supermarket.
“We just need to make a quick stop-off here,” Andrew said.
“Midmorning snack?” Peggy asked.
“Afraid not. Well, not for me. But feel free to get something for yourself. I mean, not that you need my permission. Obviously.”
“No, no, I’m fine. I’m actually on a diet anyway. It’s the one where you eat an entire wheel of brie and then have a bit of a cry. You know the one?”
Andrew remembered to smile this time.
“I’ll just be a minute,” he said, shuffling off. When he returned with everything he needed he found Peggy standing in an aisle by the books and DVDs.
“Just look at this lass,” she said, showing him a book
whose cover displayed a woman smiling to the camera, apparently halfway through preparing a salad. “No one should look that delighted while holding an avocado.” She put the book back on the shelf and looked at the air freshener and aftershave in Andrew’s basket.
“I’ve got a horrible feeling I don’t know what I’m letting myself in for,” she said.
“I’ll explain a bit more when we get there,” Andrew said. He made his way to the tills, watching Peggy as she strolled toward the exit. She had a curious way of walking, her arms flat against her sides but her fists gently clenched and pointing out sideways, so that it looked like she had two treble clefs attached to her sides. As Andrew punched his pin into the card reader the tune of Ella and Louis Armstrong’s version of “Would You Like to Take a Walk?” drifted into his head.
* * *
—
They were standing at a crossroads, Andrew checking they were going the right way on his phone. Peggy filled the silence with a story about a particularly moving TV episode she’d watched the night before. (“Admittedly I can’t remember the name of the show, or the lead character, or when or where it’s set—but if you can track it down it’s brillo.”) Satisfied they were going in the right direction, Andrew was about to lead the way when there was a sudden crash behind him. He spun around to see where the noise had come from and saw a builder leaning over some scaffolding, about to toss an armful of rubble down into a dumpster.
“Everything okay?” Peggy said. But Andrew was rooted to the spot, unable to take his eyes off the builder as he hurled another lot of bricks down with an even harsher clang. He began to clap dust off his hands but saw Andrew looking at him and stopped.
“Problem, mate?” he said, leaning over the scaffolding. Andrew swallowed hard. He could feel pain beginning to grow at his temples, the sound of harsh feedback slowly filtering into his head. Underneath the static came the faint strains of “Blue Moon.” With great effort, he managed to get his legs moving, and, to his relief, by the time he’d crossed the road and walked further on both the pain and noise had subsided. He looked around sheepishly for Peggy, wondering how he was going to explain this, but she was still standing by the dumpster, talking to the builder. From the expressions on their faces, it looked as if Peggy was patiently trying to teach an incredibly stupid dog how to do a trick. Abruptly, Peggy walked off.
Something to Live For Page 5
