‘Absolutely.’ Alison smiled nervously. ‘The place you picked is very, erm, cool, shall we say, and they have their own standardised events management team. I told you about this already,’ she said quickly, ‘a few times during the week. I also left some options of food and music on your desk for you to decide on, and when you didn’t do that, I had to decide it myse—’
‘Okay, Alison, a note for the future: when I ask if it’s all under control, I only want a yes or a no,’ he said, firmly but politely. ‘I don’t have time for questions and memos, really, all I need to know is if you can do it or not. If you can’t, then that’s fine, we just look at doing something else. Okay?’
She nodded quickly.
‘Great.’ He clapped his hands and hopped off the desk. ‘I’d better get to this meeting.’
‘Here,’ she handed him his files. ‘And congratulations on those two deals yesterday, everyone is talking about it.’
‘They are?’
‘Yes,’ she said, wide-eyed. ‘Some people are saying you’ll get Cliff’s job.’
That was like music to Lou’s ears, but he played it down. ‘Now, Alison, let’s not jump the gun. We’re all wishing a speedy recovery for Cliff.’
‘Of course we are, but … anyway,’ she smiled, ‘see you at the party tomorrow?’
‘Of course I will,’ he smiled back, and it was only as he was marching away and heading towards the meeting room that he really understood what she had meant.
When Lou entered the boardroom, all twelve around the table stood to applaud him, their big, white-toothed smiles beaming from ear to ear, not quite meeting their tired morning eyes, and with tiny chips evident on their stressed and in-dire-need-of-a-massage shoulders. This was what everybody he knew was faced with. Not enough hours of sleep; the inability to get away from work or work-related devices like laptops, PDAs and mobiles; distractions that each of their family members wanted to flush down the toilet. Of course they were happy for him, in a frazzled, too-much-access–to-electro-magneticenergy kind of way. They were all functioning to stay alive, to pay the mortgages, to do the presentations, to meet the quotas, to please the boss, to get in early enough to beat the traffic, hang around long enough in the evenings until it had gone. Everyone in that room was putting in all the hours under the sun trying to unload their work before Christmas, and, as they all did that, the pile of personal problems in their inboxes grew higher. That would all be dealt with over the Christmas break. Finally, time for festive family issues that had been sidelined all year.’ Twas the season for family folly.
The applause was led by a beaming Mr Patterson, and all joined in but Alfred, who was exceptionally slow to stand. While the others were on their feet, he was slowly pushing his chair back. When the others were clapping, he was adjusting his tie and fastening his gold buttons. He succeeded in clapping once before the applause died down, one single clap that sounded more like a balloon had burst.
Lou worked his way around the table, shaking hands, slapping backs, kissing cheeks. By the time he reached Alfred, his friend had already seated himself but offered Lou a limp clammy hand.
‘Ah, the man of the moment,’ Mr Patterson said happily, taking Lou’s hand warmly and placing his left hand firmly on Lou’s upper arm. He stood back and looked at Lou proudly, as a grandfather would his grandson on Communion Day, beaming with pride and admiration.
‘You and I will have a conversation after this,’ he said quietly as the others were still continuing their talk. ‘You know there’ll be changes after Christmas, that’s no secret around here,’ he said solemnly, maintaining respect for Cliff.
‘Yes,’ Lou nodded sagely, secretly loving being personally let in on the secret, despite the fact that everybody knew about it.
‘Well, we’ll talk, okay?’ Mr Patterson said firmly, and as the other conversations died down, he took his seat and the chat was ended.
Feeling like he was floating, Lou sat down and found it hard to keep up with the rest of the morning’s discussion. From the corner of his eye, Lou could see that Alfred had caught the end of Mr Patterson’s comment.
‘You look tired, Lou, were you out celebrating last night?’ a colleague asked.
‘I was up all night with my little girl. Vomiting bug. My wife had it too, so it was a busy night.’ He smiled, thinking of Lucy tucked in bed, her thick fringe hiding half her face.
Alfred laughed and his wheeze was loud in the room.
‘My son had that last week,’ Mr Patterson said, ignoring Alfred’s outburst. ‘It’s going around.’
‘It’s going around, all right,’ Alfred repeated, looking at Lou.
The aggression was emanating from Alfred in waves, almost like the heat visibly rising from a desert highway. It seeped from his soul, distorting the air around him, and Lou wondered if everybody could see it. Lou felt for him; he could see how lost and fearful he was.
‘It’s not just me you should be congratulating,’ Lou announced to the table, ‘Alfred was in on the New York deal too. And a fine job he did of it.’
‘Absolutely.’ Alfred brightened up, coming back to the room and fidgeting with his tie, which made Lou nervous. ‘It was nice of Lou to finally join me at the end, in time to see me wrap it all up.’
Everyone around the table laughed, but it hit Lou elsewhere; in a place that rather hurt. In that moment he was Aloysius again, eight years old on the local football team, taken off the field minutes before the final whistle of the football final because his own team-mate, jealous of Lou scoring more points than him, had landed a kick between his legs and sent him on his knees, gasping, red-faced, close to dizziness and vomit. Like Alfred’s comment, it wasn’t so much the kick to the groin that hurt as much as the person who’d delivered the blow and the reasoning behind it. He’d lain on the field, hands covering his groin, his face hot and sweaty, frustration seeping from his pores, while being crowded around by the rest of the team, who looked at him and wondered if he was faking it.
‘Yes, we have already commended Alfred,’ Mr Patterson said, not looking his way, ‘but two deals at once, Lou, how on earth did you manage it? We all know you’re a multi-tasker at the best of times, but what an extraordinary use of time management, and, of course, your negotiating skills.’
‘Yes, extraordinary,’ Alfred agreed, his tone playful, but underneath it there was venom. ‘Almost unbelievable. Perhaps unnatural. What was it Lou, speed?’
There were a few nervous laughs, a cough and then a silence. Mr Patterson broke the tension by getting the meeting started but the damage had already been done. Alfred had left something hanging in the air. A question replaced what had previously been admiration, a seed had been planted in each mind and, whether it was believed or not, each time Lou achieved anything or his name was mentioned in future, Alfred’s comment would be momentarily, perhaps subconsciously, entertained and that seed would grow, peep up from the dirty soil and then rear its ugly head.
After all his hard work, missing out on family occasions, running out of his home to reach the office, quick pecks on Ruth’s cheek for the sake of long handshakes with strangers at the office, he had finally had his moment. Two minutes of handshakes and applause. Followed by a seed of doubt.
‘You look happy,’ Gabe commented, placing a package on a desk nearby.
‘Gabe, my friend, I owe you big-time,’ Lou beamed as he left the meeting, just short of reaching out to hug him. He lowered his voice. ‘Can I have those … the container back, please? I was very tired and emotional this morning and I don’t know what got into me, of course I believe in the herbal remedy thingies.’
Gabe didn’t respond. He continued laying out envelopes and packages on the surrounding desks while Lou looked on after him with hope on his face, like a dog awaiting his walkies.
‘It’s just that I think I’m going to need a lot more from where they came from,’ Lou winked. ‘You know?’
Gabe looked confused.
‘Cliff’s not coming
back.’ Lou kept his voice down and tried to hide the excitement. ‘He’s totally fried.’
‘Ah, the poor man who had the breakdown,’ Gabe said, still placing items on desks.
‘Yes,’ Lou almost squealed with excitement. ‘Don’t tell anyone I told you.’
‘That Cliff’s not coming back?’
‘Yes, that and … you know,’ he looked around, ‘other things. Maybe a new job, more than likely a promotion. Nice big pay rise.’ He grinned. ‘He’s going to talk to me about it soon.’ Lou cleared his throat. ‘So whatever it is that he has in store for me, I’m going to need those little herbal beauties because I can’t possibly sustain my previous work-rate without ending up either divorced or six feet under.’
‘Ah, yes. Them. Well, you can’t have them.’
Gabe continued pushing the trolley down the hall. Lou quickly followed, yapping at his heels like a Jack Russell after a postman.
‘Ah, come on, I’ll pay you whatever you want for them. How much do you want?’
‘I don’t want anything.’
‘Okay, you probably want to keep them for yourself, I get it. At least tell me where I can get them?’
‘You can’t get them anywhere. I threw them away. You were right about them, they’re not right. Psychologically. And who knows the physical side-effects? They’d probably just end up hurting people in the long run. I mean, I don’t think they were made to be used continuously, Lou. Maybe they were a scientific experiment that found their way out of a lab.’
‘You did what to them?’ Lou panicked, ignoring all that Gabe had said. ‘Where did you put them?’
‘In the skips.’
‘Well, get them for me. Climb in and get them back,’ Lou said angrily. ‘If you just put them there this morning, they will still be there now. Come on, hurry, Gabe.’ He prodded Gabe in the back.
‘They’re gone, Lou. I opened the container and emptied them into the skip, and considering what you deposited inside it last night, I’d steer clear.’
Lou grabbed him by the arm and led him to the staff elevator. ‘Show me.’
Once outside, Gabe pointed the skip out to Lou, large and filthy yellow. Lou charged over. Looking inside, he could see the container sitting on top, so close he could touch it, and then, beside it, the pile of pills lay among a greenish-brown ooze of some sort. The smell was dire and so he held his nose and tried not to retch. The pills were soaked in whatever the substance was and his heart sank. He took off his suit jacket and threw it at Gabe to catch. He rolled up his shirt-sleeves and prepared to shove his hands in the foul-smelling ooze. He paused before going in.
‘If I can’t get these pills, where can I get more?’
‘Nowhere,’ Gabe responded, standing by the back door and watching him, arms folded and sounding bored. ‘They don’t make them any more.’
‘What?’ Lou spun around. ‘Who made them? I’ll pay them to make more.’
This panic went on for a while, Lou interrogating Gabe as to how he could get his hands on more pills, until he realised the only way he could get his hands on them was by dealing with what was right in front of him. Once again distracted, he decided what needed to be dealt with was the skip, not his life.
‘Shit. Maybe I can wash them.’ He stepped closer and leaned in. The smell made him retch. ‘What the hell is that?’ He gagged again and had to step away from the skip. ‘Damn it.’ Lou kicked the skip and then regretted it when the pain hit.
‘Oh look,’ Gabe said in a bored tone. ‘It looks like I dropped one on the ground.’
‘What? Where?’ He instantly forgot the pain in his toe and raced back to the skip like a child racing for the last seat in musical chairs. He examined the ground around the bins. Between the cracks of the cobbles he saw something white peering up at him. Leaning closer, he noticed it was a pill.
‘A-ha! Found one!’
‘Yeah, I had to throw them from a distance, the smell was so bad,’ Gabe explained. ‘A few fell on the ground.’
‘A few? How many?’
Lou got down on his hands and knees and started searching.
‘Lou, you really should just go back inside. You’ve had a good day. Why don’t you just leave it at that? Learn from it and move on?’
‘I have learned from it,’ he said, nose close to the cobbles. ‘I’ve learned that I’m the hero around here with these things. Ah-ha – there’s another one.’ Satisfied that those two were all he could salvage from the skip, he put them in his handkerchief, back into his pocket, and he stood up and wiped his knees.
‘Two will do for now,’ he said, wiping his forehead with his handkerchief. ‘I can see two more under the skip but I’ll leave them for the time being.’
When Lou climbed up from his knees, which were by then black and dirty and his hair dishevelled, he turned around and found he had more company. Alfred was standing beside Gabe, his arms folded, a smug look on his face.
‘Drop something, Lou? Well, look at that. The man of the moment, indeed.’
22.
’Tis the Season …
‘You’ll be there, won’t you, Lou?’ Ruth asked, trying her best to hide the panic from her voice. She moved around their bedroom in her bare feet, the sound of her skin against the wooden floors like little feet splashing in water. Her long brown hair was up in rollers, her body was draped in a towel with beads of shower water glistening on her shoulders as they caught the light.
Lou watched his wife of ten years from their bed, his head moving back and forth as though a tennis-match spectator. They were going into the city centre in separate cars at separate times; he had his office party to get to before joining the rest of his family at a later stage for his father’s party. He wasn’t long home from work, had showered and dressed in the space of twenty minutes, but instead of his usual pacing downstairs and waiting for his wife impatiently, he had chosen to lie on the bed and watch her. He had just learned tonight that watching was so much more entertaining than pacing with a rising anger. Lucy had joined him on their bed only moments ago and was cuddling her blanket. Fresh out of the bath, she was dressed in her sleeping suit and smelled so freshly of strawberries that he almost wanted to eat her.
‘Of course I’ll be there.’ He smiled at Ruth.
‘It’s just that you should have left the house a half-hour ago and that puts you behind as it is.’ She rushed by him and disappeared into the walk-in wardrobe. The rest of her sentence disappeared along with her, as the muffled sounds drifted out into the bedroom, leaving the words behind in the wardrobe hanging on rails and folded neatly on the shelves. He lay back on the bed, rested his arms behind his head and laughed.
‘She’s talking fast,’ Lucy whispered.
‘She does that.’ Lou smiled, reached out and tucked a loose strand of hair behind his daughter’s ear.
Ruth reappeared dressed in her underwear.
‘You look beautiful,’ he smiled.
‘Daddy!’ Lucy giggled outrageously. ‘She’s in her panties!’
‘Yes, well, she looks beautiful in her panties.’ He kept his eyes on Ruth while Lucy rolled around the bed laughing at this idea.
Ruth turned around and studied him quickly. Lou could see her swallow, her face curious, not used to the sudden attention, perhaps worrying that he was acting this way out of guilt, another part of her afraid to become hopeful, afraid that it was yet another build-up to a later let-down. She disappeared to the bathroom for a few moments, and when she re-entered the room she hopped around in her underwear.
Lucy and Lou started laughing while watching her.
‘What are you doing?’ Lou laughed.
‘I’m drying my moisturiser.’ She ran on the spot, smiling. Lucy hopped up and momentarily joined her, giggling and dancing, before deciding her mother was dry, and joining her father back on the bed again.
‘Why are you still here?’ Ruth asked gently. ‘You don’t want to be late for Mr Patterson.’
‘This is far more fun.�
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‘Lou,’ she laughed, ‘while I appreciate the fact that you are not constantly moving for the first time in ten years, you really have to go. I know you say you’ll be there tonight, but –’
‘I will be there tonight,’ he replied, insulted.
‘Okay, but please don’t be too late,’ she continued, racing around the room. ‘Most people going to your dad’s party are over the age of seventy, they might have fallen asleep or have gone home by the time you consider your night to be just beginning.’ She darted back into the wardrobe.
‘I’ll be there,’ he replied, more to himself.
He heard her rooting around in the drawers, pushing closed presses. She bumped into something, swore, dropped something else, and when she reappeared in the bedroom she was dressed in a black cocktail dress.
Usually he would automatically tell her she was beautiful, hardly even looking at her while saying it. He felt it was his duty, that it was what she wanted to hear, that it would get them out of the house faster, that it would make her stop fidgeting all the way on the car journey, but tonight he found himself unable to speak. She was beautiful. It was as though all his life he had been told the sky was blue and for the first time he had actually looked up and seen it for himself. Why didn’t he look at it every day? He lay on his stomach and leaned his head on his hand. Lucy imitated him. They both watched the wonder that was Ruth. Ten years of this display and he’d been pacing downstairs all this time while barking up at her.
‘And remember,’ she zipped up her dress at the back, while shuffling by them again, ‘you got your father a cruise for his birthday.’
‘I thought we were getting him golf membership.’
‘Lou, he hates golf.’
‘He does?’
‘Granddad hates golf,’ Lucy said.
‘He’s always wanted to go to St Lucia – remember the story about Douglas and Ann and how they won the trip on the back of a cereal pack, blah, blah, blah?’
‘No,’ Lou frowned.
‘The cereal box competition.’ She stopped in her flight back to the wardrobe to stare at him with surprise.
Cecelia Ahern 2-book Bundle Page 17
