It's Not Me, It's You

by Mhairi McFarlane

Kurt smirked. He got the drive from his pocket again, kissed it, replaced it. Gave them the finger on each hand as he backed away, turned and sauntered off.

  ‘I don’t know about you, but I’m going to miss him,’ Adam said.

  They all burst out laughing in a release of tension.

  ‘How did he find us?’ Delia said.

  ‘Must’ve recognised me and followed. Sorry,’ Adam rubbed his neck.

  ‘It doesn’t matter. He doesn’t realise what happened.’

  Steph checked the time and said she had to be off to band practice. She shook hands with Adam and hugged Delia: ‘Keep in touch.’

  ‘You’ve got what you need?’ Delia said to Adam.

  ‘From the merest scan of the contents, I suspect I’ll need counselling once I’ve delved around in Kurt’s Top Secret files.’

  Adam stuck a spirits-sticky hand out for Delia to shake.

  ‘Amazing work this evening. You were brilliant.’

  Delia shook it.

  ‘Finally, I have his respect!’

  ‘You always had my respect,’ he said. ‘Just my disapproval as well.’

  He smiled and Delia launched herself at him for a victory hug, a strange hug where they were separated an inch by her chest fur. Adam held it for longer than Delia expected, and gave her a concerted, valedictory squeeze.

  As they stepped back, she saw a look on his face she couldn’t immediately decipher, and she knew she’d replay later.

  ‘Your whiskers,’ he said, grinning. He leaned round: ‘And that tail …’

  ‘Shaddap!’ Delia said, colouring.

  Adam was looking at her with a challenge in his eyes that Delia couldn’t quite identify. She felt shakier still, also kind of hot and queasily excited and off-kilter.

  ‘I’d suggest a celebratory drink, but,’ Adam gestured at himself. ‘Perhaps go for one when we won’t look like cosplayers and furries and I don’t reek of spirits?’

  ‘Deal,’ Delia said, shaking her tail.

  She was on her way home when Adam texted.

  Hah, forgot to tell you what the password was! I Fucking Hate My Ex Wife. Stay classy, your ex-boss. Ax

  ‘Here’s a quiz. What Did Kurt Spicer Do Next, then, Daria?’ Adam said.

  Delia smiled at the sound of his voice and balanced her mobile between ear and shoulder while she clamped the sketchpad under her arm more tightly. She was walking along The Serpentine in the sunshine. Being – hopefully short-term – unemployed was so far pretty great.

  ‘That’s a broad canvas.’

  The USB stick had yielded everything Adam had needed, and then some. His site had published a piece about the politician, the magician and the very dodgy PR man who bound them together. The rest of the media picked up on it, Lionel Blunt faced questions in the house and a police investigation, and Lively Later Life withdrew from the care homes bid. Exactly how the ‘documents seen’ by Adam came into his possession was left vague to ‘protect his source’.

  Adam reported to Delia that when he’d called Kurt on the eve of publication and asked him for a quote, Kurt at first went ballistic and fulminated, threatened and blustered. Then he quietened down as it dawned on Kurt that if Adam had seen what was on the stick, he was truly shagged and best off not antagonising Adam further.

  One of the many revolting findings in Kurt’s Pandora’s Box wasn’t just that he promoted his clients’ interests, but actively discredited and smeared those who he identified as their enemies. Or engaged in ‘throwing shade’ at them, as Kurt kept calling it in his communications.

  Surveillance was second nature – he was busy tapping phones and hacking emails to find compromising material, so no wonder he was spying on his own employees. Any guilt Delia had felt about what they did had entirely dissipated and Kurt’s ability to complain about breach of privacy was void.

  ‘The depth of his depravity no longer surprises me,’ Delia said.

  ‘It’s the girth of his depravity I find surprising,’ Adam said, and Delia burst out laughing, feeling a flush of unguarded affection. Somehow, they’d become honest-to-goodness friends. How had that happened?

  ‘Kurt’s legged it,’ Adam said.

  ‘Has he? Where?’

  ‘Fled back to Australia.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Yes, poor old Down Under. At least they’re used to felons.’

  ‘I can’t believe he’s simply gone.’

  ‘It’s his way. He’s done Scarlet Pimpernels before, from what I can glean. He’ll turn up somewhere else, probably with a different name. He’s Interpol’s problem now. Or more likely, the Australian media’s. The main thing is, if you and Steph were worried about any trouble he might make for you, I think you can sleep easy. He’s on the other side of the world and likely to stay there for a good long time. He won’t come after me when he knows I have endless ammunition.’

  Delia was touched Adam was thinking about them. In truth, she had been looking over her shoulder, and knowing Kurt was on the other side of the world was a huge relief. And Steph had already got herself a junior account manager job with a decent firm. Delia had been concerned for her, in case Kurt tried to spoil it.

  ‘We did the right thing, didn’t we?’ Delia said.

  ‘The right thing’s always a matter of opinion,’ Adam said. ‘I reckon when we’re on our deathbeds, we’ll think the day we titted around at the V&A was one of the more productive ones.’

  Delia smiled and shifted the phone to her other ear.

  ‘On our deathbeds? I’ve got an image of camp beds, side by side.’

  ‘If I’d said our deathbed, singular, that’d sound weirder.’

  ‘We’d only die together if we’d drunk from an ice luge that Kurt had got to.’

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe a future adventure takes us to a Venetian palazzo with a historic but highly unsound infrastructure. We get brained by falling masonry.’

  ‘Sorry to say, but I think this is my first and last job with you, Adam. I can’t take the heat.’

  ‘That’s a shame. I thought we made a good team.’

  ‘Hah! See you around,’ Delia said, laughing.

  ‘Depend upon it. Oh, your comic drawings are brilliant by the way.’

  ‘You’ve seen them?’ Delia said, ‘How come?’

  ‘Ahem, I am an investigative journalist. Seriously. I’m impressed. You’re extremely creative. I think you gave Kurt too much of a jawline, mind.’

  Delia laughed.

  She got back to Emma’s flat to find a package waiting for her on the table in the hallway. The Paul parcels continued. She felt apprehensive, discomposed. As she ignored entreaties by voicemail and text to speak to him, it was the only avenue of contact left open.

  In the quiet of the flat, she shook out the contents and untied the green ribbon on the gift inside.

  Inside was a cheese with ash-grey rind in wax paper from Valvona & Crolla, a treasure trove of a delicatessen that Delia had become obsessed with on a trip to Edinburgh. ‘The Salami Cavern’ she called it, until Paul pointed out that sounded like a double entendre.

  There was a note.

  Did I get the right one? Did it survive the journey? I remember I was impressed at all the wild food you ate when we got together. Remember the Swedish herrings you bought, and when you opened the tin, Parsnip hid? Anyway. Please come home, Delia. I love you. Px

  Home. But why was home where he was?

  Delia had organised drinks with Adam and Steph, and this felt a minor miracle to her. She knew people in London! Enough people to fill a two-man tent!

  Three new friends, if you counted Joe, up north. Delia thanked him effusively for the V&A efforts. She wanted to do something in return for him. He’d said there was something, but he was too shy to say on Skype. ‘Nothing pervy!’ he stressed, as Delia boggled slightly.

  Minutes later, he texted:

  Just carry on being a friend and chatting with me. Your company has brightened up my days, Fantastic Miss Delia! One day
we’ll meet in the flesh, promise. I’m working up to it. PN (I’ll always be PN to you, won’t I ) x

  Delia promised Joe. Yet by the time the occasion to drink offline with the rest of the V&A gang arrived, she had a job getting in the way.

  Or, sort of. She was working in a bistro-bar in Soho. It was the kind of place where, if you asked for nuts, you got a Kilner jar of unshelled pistachios instead of packets of KP. It served ‘sliders and sharers’ on chopping boards, the menu written in lipstick on a mirror. The room was full of coconut trees and too-loud music from a DJ, and the walls glistened with moisture when it got two-thirds full.

  Delia knew her way around this environment blindfold thanks to often helping Paul when he was shorthanded. She’d seen a sign in the window the previous week asking for summer staff and popped in, on impulse, thinking they’d say ‘Aren’t you thirty-three?!’ instead of ‘Please God yes, can you start tonight?’

  Delia was enjoying it: the simplicity of hard toil with no mental effort involved, and no moral quandary. They usually needed her from midday to six, after which she got back to Emma’s, had a cool shower and picked up her sketchpad.

  When she called Adam to apologise for a Saturday shift clashing with their plans, he suggested they meet at her place to ‘keep her company’ and she could join them when she knocked off.

  Delia agreed, and only realised she might feel silly when she was pouring his lager, her hair coiled in Heidi plaits and sweat pooling in her bra, underneath her apron.

  ‘Don’t you dare laugh at me,’ she said pre-emptively, as Adam rested pale-shirted elbows on the bar, watching her work.

  ‘I’m not laughing at you, Delia Moss. I’m slightly in awe of you.’

  ‘Hah! Awed enough to finally learn my name.’ She took the flat of a palette knife and swiped the head from the lager, as if she was bricklaying. Adam was surveying her fondly. Delia felt shy, yet pleased.

  ‘I’m serious. You never stop surprising me.’

  Delia’s co-workers behind the bar were two lissom twenty-something gap-year travellers, Dutch and Irish, respectively, and both fans of the short-short. Most men’s eyes strayed to their behinds when they bent down to the bottle fridges, or reached up to the optics. Delia had been enjoying relative invisibility next to them. Yet with Adam she felt she had his sole scrutiny; his eyes never flickered in their direction. She turned to get Steph’s rosé from the fridge and made sure she knelt down, rather than leaning over as she did.

  ‘It’s not irritating, us being here?’ Adam said, taking a first sip of his drink as she sploshed the wine out.

  ‘Not at all. It’s nice.’

  Adam gathered the glasses together.

  ‘OK, well. We’ll pace ourselves so we still make sense by the time you clock off.’

  Looking towards the table in the corner, Delia felt pangs at not being able to take proper care of two people she’d brought together – yet they seemed to be coping fine without her.

  Delia watched Adam chatting with Steph. He was speaking animatedly, gesticulating to illustrate the anecdote he was telling. You didn’t often get to simply watch someone. Delia found herself gazing at him, cataloguing his mannerisms: the way he rubbed his hair, how he pressed his palm to his forehead when expressing dismay, the fact he listened properly when others spoke, chin angled downwards.

  This was the funny thing about Adam: the more she got to know him, the less handsome, and more attractive he became. She often forgot he was so perfectly arranged, because he was just Adam. When he laughed, his face contorted into goofy joy. She loved the way he’d shoot her a direct look after deadpanning, and then crumple with delight if she laughed with him.

  He kept glancing over at her, a confidential expression on his face, as if they were sharing a private joke.

  It was then that it happened; something Delia had thought might happen, eventually. It made her reveries ridiculous, left her feelings oddly bruised. A blonde woman with spirally hair and a strong, good-looking face walked in. She had tortoiseshell sunglasses on her head, a sweepy maxi dress and carried herself with regal bearing. Adam threw an arm round her neck, trapping her in the angle of his elbow and kissing the top of her head, introducing her to Steph with evident enthusiasm.

  Delia was very glad she had to stay in whirling motion to serve the throng of customers. For God’s sake, why now? She saw Adam was being proprietorially considerate, leaping up to find her a chair. It wasn’t an occasion for plus ones, it was unofficially their celebration of the V&A caper. Insensitive.

  Once the sexy Amazonian interloper was settled, Adam was straight up to the bar, leaning in to half-shout a request for a slimline G&T over the music.

  ‘Can I introduce you to Alice? I’d love you to meet her,’ he added, as Delia concentrated on trowelling crushed ice into a dishwasher-warm glass to cool it down.

  She didn’t know what to say, other than: ‘Uh, OK,’ throwing away the ice and squirting soda from a siphon aggressively, as if she was firing a gun.

  ‘Don’t worry about her having any attitude with you. She knows what the score is between us.’

  ‘Why would she have attitude with me? Like Freya did? You can really pick them, can’t you?’ Disappointment made Delia lairier-Geordie than usual.

  ‘Alright. Sorry I asked,’ Adam said, eyes widening. ‘Alice is no Freya. Also I didn’t pick her …’

  ‘Whatever.’ She turned and pumped a measure of gin into the glass, asking over her shoulder, ‘Single or double?’

  ‘Make it large, in the circumstances,’ Adam muttered.

  Delia flipped the lid on the tonic bottle and placed the drink on the bar mat. ‘Anything else?’

  ‘An explanation of what I’ve done wrong would be … wait. You realise Alice is my sister, yes?’

  Whoops.

  ‘Oh,’ Delia said, light dawning. Yes! Relief. But also, oh no.

  She’d forgotten the wedge of lime and was glad of being able to turn her back to get some. Delia wanted to disappear into the cellar and never come back. God, she’d sounded like a jealous girlfriend. Or a spurned one. That was a part she had no intention of playing ever again. Why did she feel so territorial, and so touchy? Had the experience with Paul left her without layers of skin?

  She expected Adam to look fairly offended or angry when she risked catching his eye again as she took his money, he only looked perplexed, and maybe curious.

  ‘Uhm,’ he paused, and did the head rubbing thing, as she handed over the change, ‘I’ve been meaning to say. I feel bad for shutting the door on you at dinner time, that time.’

  ‘Did you?’

  ‘Yes. When you did an As God Is My Witness plea at my door while I was holding a packet of porcini mushrooms.’

  Delia laughed, more heartily out of relief that Adam wasn’t attacking her. ‘It was butter.’

  ‘Ah yeah, butter. If you can bear to trek out to Clapham, I’ll cook for you to make it up. If Dougie joins us, I forewarn you he puts gallons of sriracha on everything. It’s quite stomach-turning.’

  Delia said that sounded lovely and popped a stirrer in Alice’s drink, trying not to wince with shame at what had just passed between them. There had been a heat to her words that she couldn’t explain, to him or to herself.

  She was deeply apprehensive when it came time to unwind the apron and join them; nevertheless, their lengthy head-start on the drinking made for an easy atmosphere.

  Delia made even more of an effort with Alice than she might have, determined to drench her with loveliness after Adam’s tales of Twist & Shout. Though it turned out she didn’t need to be nervous: Alice was warm, intelligent and unaffectedly friendly. Delia imagined they could be friends. When Delia thanked her for putting up with the venue, she said: ‘I couldn’t pass up a chance to meet the famous Delia, who I’ve heard so much about.’ Adam balled up a paper napkin and threw it at Alice. Delia glowed.

  Half an hour later, Emma and Sebastian called by and things got even more raucous. Delia
was fairly exhausted by the time they spilled out into the street at ten o’ clock. She’d never get used to how far you were from your bed in London.

  On the way home, Delia and Emma got into a drunken loop debate about the significance of the evening’s developments.

  ‘A date! You’re going on a date!’ Emma said, when Delia told her about Adam’s offer of dinner. She stopped and grabbed her hand so hard as they walked to the Underground that it felt as if she’d crushed the bones.

  ‘It’s not a date! Dougie’s going to be there!’

  ‘It’s a date!’

  ‘Dougie!’

  ‘DATE!’

  ‘DOUGIE.’

  Emma put her fingers in her ears.

  ‘DATE, IDST!’

  ‘What does IDST mean?’

  ‘If Denied, Still True.’

  ‘Emma, we’re thirty-three years old.’

  Delia stood at the door in Clapham in a summer dress with swallows on it and new cheapo pistachio heels, having peeled the stickers off the soles on the Tube. She was holding a bottle of homemade blackberry vodka in lieu of wine and telling herself it wasn’t a date, because Dougie would be there.

  Adam answered the door in a white t-shirt, smelling of smoke and holding tongs, thanking her for the booze. ‘Dougie’s gone AWOL, I’m afraid.’

  Argh, date then? No – she followed Adam down the narrow hallway to the kitchen, and saw the small round dining room table was laid for three.

  The door to the back garden was open and the odour of firelighter bricks and charred spicy meat was billowing through it.

  ‘I thought barbecue, to be manly. Like all dads through time I’ve fucked it up and cremated everything.’

  Adam wiped his sweaty forehead on his t-shirt sleeve and Delia inspected the ashen, disintegrating turd-like things on the rack and started laughing.

  ‘Luckily I have chops too. Oh shit, you’re not vegetarian, are you?’

  ‘Hahaha no, carnivore all the way,’ Delia said. ‘I say just rip its horns off and wipe its arse.’

  Adam burst out laughing.

  ‘I haven’t had time to do the potato salad. Oh, Delia, this is a disaster.’