The McCabe Girls Complete Collection

by Freya North

  ‘It’s not about playing-hard-to-get crap,’ Pip had tried so hard to impress on them, ‘it’s not about games at all. It’s about you presenting yourself in the best possible light, from all angles. Phoning to say nothing in particular, or something irrelevant, simply won’t reflect well on you at this stage. You mustn’t give him any reason to be put off before he knows the real you.’

  ‘But I could just phone to say—’

  ‘No!’ Pip would declare. ‘Don’t! You’ll gain nothing and you’ll jeopardize the lot.’

  And yet, here she is, sitting on her hands, glowering at her phone with a mixture of fear and desire. She desperately wants to phone Zac. She’s not sure what she’d say – perhaps just ‘hullo’ without the ‘cupcake’? Or ask how work is? Or Tom?

  I know! I could ask if I left my gloves when I popped round on Sunday.

  You didn’t have gloves with you.

  He doesn’t know that!

  Don’t phone, Pip. Not right now. Not if you’re not sure what to say. Not to ask about non-existent gloves. Not if you’re not sure what’s been going on in his life. Anyway, you’re running late and you’ve got ward rounds at St Bea’s. It’s Thursday, after all.

  With enormous self-restraint, Pip didn’t phone Zac. But I wish she’d phoned someone because leaving St Bea’s late tea-time, she suddenly had a brainwave that to anyone else, whether they knew her or not, would seem utter lunacy. Even if she had phoned a sister or friend, she was so convinced that what she was about to do was inspiration of staggering genius, that no threat or plea or scream from anyone else was going to stop her.

  It wasn’t stalking! Far from it! It was simply a brilliant idea and a prudent gesture. Far better than a phone call. And it wasn’t really going to involve Zac at all, yet she was going to do him a huge favour. It was going to work wonders – for him on a personal level and, hopefully, for the possibilities that might still be salvageable between them.

  You see, he’ll ask himself why and the only conclusion he’ll come to is that I did it because I wanted to prove how deeply I feel for him.

  Did what? What are you off to do? You’re leaving St Bea’s and yet you are still dressed as Dr Pippity. And you’re not heading for the tube at all. You’re stomping through the City, chuckling and winking at passers-by. You don’t mind whether they’re laughing with you or at you – they have smiles on their faces and you deem that to be the important thing. Last time you strode this route, you were sobbing your eyes out, remember?

  I found that bench. Look! That one right there. And suddenly Zac was beside me, comforting me and looking after me.

  And he got you drunk.

  And that was our first night together.

  What are you going to do in the middle of Finsbury Circus? Cartwheel across the bowling green? Perform on the bandstand? Wave? Wait? Change your mind?

  Oh, I’m not staying here! I’m off over there.

  Where Zac works? Now? At five o’clock? Without warning, let alone an appointment? Dressed like that? Change your mind!

  What a day. Zac Holmes glanced at the clock and knew he had at least another five hours in the office. He swivelled in his chair and gazed down from the window to the green grin of Finsbury Circus. Pigeons mainly. A tramp. A couple of high-heeled power dressers marching with conviction to some meeting or back to their office for a last conference call of the day. A few young flash City bucks already drinking at the bar. In the waning daylight, a businessman was sitting on a bench eating a sandwich – wolfing it down. Zac reckoned it was probably a late breakfast rather than a late lunch or tea. He wondered how long that man would work tonight, what time he started this morning.

  Zac recalled that he last ate mid-morning. A smoked salmon bagel. A kingsize Twix. Two cans of Red Bull. Nothing since. No time, no appetite. He sighed. What time would he be home tonight? No point even guessing. He didn’t have time for so much as a gasp of fresh air, which he suddenly felt he desperately needed. The circus opposite looked strangely uninviting today. The autumn livery of the trees, so stunning last week, now looked a little drab, the branches rather moth-eaten. The tramp and the pigeons, pecking around. The clocks had gone back. It would be dark when Zac looked out of his window again. He wouldn’t even know if the tramp was still there.

  There was a sharp rap on Zac’s door. A rap like that required no permission to enter. His superiors huffed in. Zac caught sight of his team out on the floor, in Pod-land, all eyes on his office. They looked worried for the most part, some untrusting, others downright livid.

  ‘Right,’ said Mr Big Cheese in his lousy suit and naff Nature Trek shoes, shutting the door on the apprehensive audience.

  ‘Let’s crack on,’ said Mr Slightly Smaller Cheese, in a suit that was shiny in patches from wear, and a pair of scuffed sensible brogues.

  ‘Fire away,’ said Zac, taking off his fleece and running his hands through his hair.

  ‘You’ve hit the nail on the head,’ laughed Mr Big Cheese. ‘You’ll need to cull your team. It’s the only way. Thirty per cent.’

  At first, Zac could say nothing while his brain stormed around for immediate solutions, persuasive objections and convincing obstacles. None sprang to mind. Only panic helped him strike; his loyalty to the company, his pride in his profession, his passion for his team underscoring every word he spoke. He was an accountant shooting from the heart but his long shots ricocheted back from the Cheeses who were retaliating with their heads. Every solution Zac proposed, every objection he put forward, every obstacle he prophesied, was systematically denounced and overruled by the Cheeses.

  ‘If I have to make thirty per cent redundant, I’ll be amongst them,’ Zac declared without histrionics. It was no threat. It was honour. Morality. Karma.

  ‘Nonsense,’ said Nature Trek Cheese, ‘and you know it’s nonsense.’

  ‘And you know the redundancies make sense,’ said Scuffed Brogue Cheese. ‘It’s business. It’s life.’

  ‘If you leave, you leave a sinking ship,’ shrugged Big Cheese. ‘That’s not the behaviour of a captain.’

  ‘You know you’d do better to stay,’ said Smaller Cheese. ‘Use your head. Work it out.’

  Zac wanted to swear at them both and tell them to stuff their jobs. Most of all, he wanted to divine a way that his team could remain complete. Even if it was bad for business.

  The Cheeses left and Zac swivelled in his chair. Maybe it was time for a change. And yet, wouldn’t that be letting his team down more? If he left in protest, would those remaining sink? And wouldn’t those leaving be cosseted by princely redundancy packages and glowing references? What could he do? He could do with a drink. Lucozade – the manufacturer used to say it refreshes a person through the ups and downs of the day. All it did for Zac was quench his thirst. He swigged from the bottle. And then he choked.

  What the fuck is that?

  What the fuck?

  There is an almighty rumpus in Pod-land. A dervish is whirling her way amongst Zac’s staff; singing and joshing and squawking. She’s knocking spectacles off people’s noses, tugging their ties back to front, cartwheeling between desks, sipping their vending machine drinks, helping herself to Extra Strong Mints, trying on jackets slung over chair backs.

  ‘What the fuck?’

  Zac doesn’t know whether to remain in his office, hopefully hidden, or brave the floor and protect his dumbstruck staff.

  ‘What is she doing?’

  She’s ruffling hairdos, hitting herself in the eye with rulers, drawing pictures on notepads, tripping over invisible cables, swirling between the staff, singing atrociously and muttering madly.

  ‘What is she doing here?’

  She’s leaping upon a desk, performing a handstand that looks dreadfully precarious. Now she’s upended herself. Curtsying.

  ‘Oh fuck, not balloons.’

  She reckons, because these are miserable adults, they won’t want balloons in the shape of sausage dogs or tortoises. No. Cocks are the order of the da
y. For the female staff, at least.

  ‘Jesus.’

  Zac watches in horror as his gobsmacked female colleagues are handed balloons in the shape of penises. Suddenly, he dreads what on earth his male staff are in line for.

  ‘Enough.’

  Zac emerges from his office at the very moment Pip trills to all and sundry, ‘Take me to your leader!’ whilst standing on one leg and putting the finishing touches to a final balloon penis.

  All eyes are on Zac. His staff look utterly bewildered. Holding their inflatable penises. Picking hole-punch scraps out of their hair. Retying their ties. The clown, though, looks flushed and triumphant. She’s far too charged with adrenalin and mischief to detect Zac’s expression.

  ‘Mr Holmes!’ the clown declares with glee, leaping from the desk, cartwheeling towards him and showering him with bits of stuff from her pockets while the plastic gerbera on her lapel squirts him squarely between the eyes with a blast of water.

  ‘For fuck’s sake,’ he hisses. His words and his tone turn her to stone. The clown is stuck. She gawps. She can’t actually move. ‘This way, please,’ says Zac, taking a tight hold above her elbow and marching her from the floor.

  Zac is seething. His grip on Pip’s arm is tight and unfriendly. He stomps down two flights of stairs though she stumbles in her daft shoes to keep abreast of him. On a landing far enough from his floor and also from the entrance hall, he stops. He faces her. He drops her arm and puts his hands on his hips. He is frowning and speechless.

  ‘I thought,’ Pip says, rubbing her arm, ‘I could cheer your staff up.’ She shrugs. ‘That’s all. I mean, it’s half five. I thought it would be a wacky end to a wanky day?’ She bites her lip, because she’s distressed and also because she is desperate to appeal to Zac’s soft side.

  Zac laughs but with no heart. It’s sarcastic and he’s angry. ‘They’re not kids, for fuck’s sake,’ he spits, ‘they’re not kids who need cheering up. For fuck’s sake. And the day is hardly at an end – we’ll be working through the night if you must know. Christ.’

  Pip shuffles. ‘Sorry,’ she says.

  ‘A third of them are about to lose their jobs,’ Zac hisses with incredulity. ‘Do you really think some stupid kid’s clown larking about their desks, manhandling them, soaking them, is going to make them feel better?’ Pip wants to remonstrate that clowns aren’t just for kids. But Zac gives her no chance. ‘Do you honestly think that handing out fucking balloons in the shape of cocks is going to make my staff think “Hey, I haven’t got a job, but look! A balloon like a willy!”?’

  For Pip to tell him she did it for him, as a gesture, spontaneous and from the heart, seems to be futile. So she just keeps her eyes trained on his lovely shoes and lets him seethe at her in silence.

  ‘For Christ’s sake,’ he mutters, ‘just go, will you.’ He doesn’t wait for her response. He can’t be bothered with lame apologies. Damage and disruption are done. Zac turns and takes the stairs three at a time. He doesn’t look back or say another word.

  Only when she’s quite sure he’s gone, does Pip creep down the two flights and out of the building. She keeps her gaze downcast at all times. Like a child who thinks that if they cover their eyes and can’t see, then they’re surely invisible. She makes it home. Collapses on to her sofa and sobs. She leaves smudges of her slap all over the calico. She doesn’t care at all. She seems to have a knack for dripping cosmetics over her soft furnishings. She’s had no luck removing the nail varnish.

  THIRTY-NINE

  Something is irking Zac, unnerving him, catching in his throat when he’s eating, waking him at inopportune moments from an otherwise heavy slumber, making him frown mid-smile. It’s burrowing into his conscience like a weevil into a rug. Bugging him. It nips him at indiscriminate times – when waiting for the kettle to boil, or the tube to come, or when he should be concentrating on what the Cheeses are moaning about, or last thing at night when he thought his mind was empty. Actually, Zac knows that he probably understands what the problem is, but he also realizes that once he has acknowledged it, he will then be obliged to face it and rectify it at the earliest opportunity. Opportunity for Zac seems to be in short supply at the moment. So, because he honestly doesn’t know where he’ll find the time, and because he has other worries that are vast by comparison, he tries to justify that this is just a little niggle, after all. And oughtn’t he to prioritize? Or, better still, just accidentally on purpose forget it altogether?

  He can’t. It’s impossible. It may not have millions of pounds and employment law stamped all over it, as his other hassles do, but the niggle is insistent and weighty and has value. It is as if his life is currently plagued by bugs – he’s constantly swatting, but missing. The hassles at work can be divided into two species – great big bloody hornets and dirty lumbering bluebottles. The former are dive-bombing him, the latter seem always just beyond his swipe. But essentially, he can confine them to the office, where they buzz around and goad him. Ultimately, he can shut his office door on them, escape them entirely when he opens the door to his home. However, that’s where the mosquito awaits him. Hidden. He never knows when it is going to pester him next. It’s difficult to see. Suddenly it can hound him, lunging at him during the stillness of sleep, or waking him up a good half-hour before he needs to. It’s far more stealthy than the hornets or bluebottles; insistent and controlling. It doesn’t take long before Zac knows there’s nothing for it but to locate it and rid himself of it.

  ‘Daddy!’

  Tom wasn’t expecting to see Zac on Monday night. After all, he’d had the whole weekend in Hampstead with him and the entire cast of Thunderbirds, so Mum and Rob-Dad could go to some place called Door Zit to do boring grown-up stuff and stay in a hotel with breakable things. However, here was his dad, on his doorstep, on Monday night, and what excellent timing it was, too, because the fish fingers were just about ready and there were plenty of oven chips to share.

  ‘Daddy’s going to have supper later,’ Tom’s mother told him, ‘but he’s going to sit with you while you have yours so Mummy can luxuriate in a bubble bath.’

  ‘Will it be fish fingers you’re having later?’ Tom asked thoughtfully, because if it wasn’t – if it was, say, chicken nuggets or mini burgers – he might change his mind, have his bath now, and eat with Daddy later.

  ‘It’s leftovers,’ his mother informed him, which clinched the deal. She went off for her bath and Tom and his father went to the kitchen. Tom insisted his father had a few oven chips because leftovers were not enough for a growing boy, let alone a grown-up dad.

  Though June was keen to extract all manner of juicy details from Zac concerning Pip turning up last weekend and the demise of Juliana during the week, she took a good sip of wine each time a burning question threatened. It was rare, but not unheard of, for Zac to call her asking if she could spare ‘a couple of minutes’. She had learned that it was his code for needing to confide, to workshop an issue troubling him, something that perhaps his male friends were not quite qualified to do. She knew, therefore, that Zac’s casually requested couple of minutes would run into an entire evening. She didn’t mind; she loved him dearly. Moreover, she was flattered. Fundamentally, she was intrigued.

  Rob was happy to make himself scarce because he could indulge in an entire evening watching the European Cup at the pub near work without having to phone regularly, without having to watch his pint intake, without having to justify or apologize for the evidence of too many Marlboro Lights on his clothes, hair and breath. He liked Zac enormously in his capacity as pub-buddy or co-daddy. However, being party to a possibly convoluted confession was slightly outside the parameters of their friendship. Neither he nor Zac minded at all. They were good-time pals, not soul mates. Theirs was a friendship based on shooting the shit or building cardboard garaging for Tom’s trucks. Their easy affection for each other showed itself in friendly insults, not in the opening of hearts and the splurging of intimate details.

  At first, June
was worried and disappointed that perhaps all Zac actually needed to talk through were his concerns at work. For the first time since he left his last job four years ago, her cursory enquiry about work was met with a full half-hour’s monologue of the hassles therein and the anxiety he was feeling.

  ‘So,’ he said, ‘the redundancies will happen early next week.’ He filled up his wineglass. ‘There’s fuck all I can do about it.’

  ‘Grim,’ June agreed. She went to the kitchen to prepare two plates of food. She knew Zac would mind neither the leftovers, nor the partaking of the meal on his knees.

  They munched in silence. ‘Coffee?’ June asked when the plates were bare, because by definition there cannot be seconds of leftovers.

  ‘Please,’ said Zac, stroking the arms of the armchair rhythmically and burping as politely as he could.

  But he soon followed her into the kitchen.

  June had him stacking the dishwasher to stop him fidgeting. She could sense that the crux of his visit was on the tip of his tongue. To ask him outright what was troubling him so would no doubt see him swallow it down and feign nonchalance instead. To carry on as if he’d just popped round for ‘a couple of minutes’ was a much shrewder tactic. She clattered around noisily, grinding coffee, boiling the kettle, cursing the chipped mugs and asking him if he’d mind soya milk.

  ‘Er, I’ll take it black,’ Zac said, rummaging under the sink for the dishwasher tablets. ‘You’re out of Rinse Aid. Oh, it’s over with Juliana – not that it was ever on.’

  June didn’t falter for a moment. ‘I’m sure there’s a new bottle somewhere – fuck it, one cycle without won’t matter. Just shove it on. That’s a shame.’

  ‘What is?’ Zac asked, just in case she hadn’t heard and was referring to dishwashers.

  ‘Juliana,’ said June, as lightly as possible.

  ‘Not at all,’ Zac assured her, ‘not at all. In fact, Ruth seemed more pissed off!’