How To Throw Your Life Away

by Laurie Ellingham

  ‘Here,’ Claire shoved her drink at Katy. ‘Hold this. I’ll be back in a tick. God only knows what Nicholas is doing.’

  ‘I’ll come with-’

  ‘No you won’t,’ Claire cut her off, already dashing back towards the house. ‘I’ll be ten minutes,’ she called back to her.

  Katy looked down at the two cups in her hand. She gulped down the contents of both and turned in search of somewhere to put the empty cups.

  She didn’t like parties, especially when she only knew two people. The first, her very best friend who had just deserted her. The second, her anger management counsellor, who also happened to be a total wanker, and who also happened to be, according to Claire and Diane anyway, a bit on the dishy side.

  ‘Let me take that for you,’ Tom’s voice said from behind her.

  She spun around, taking an unsteady step back as their eyes locked.

  ‘I’ve been told to keep you company, and not under any circumstances to allow you to leave,’ he said.

  ‘Oh.’ A flush crept up Katy’s face.

  ‘And I don’t want you to go,’ Tom smiled.

  ‘You heard?’

  ‘Heard what?’ Tom replied with a wink.

  They stood in silence for a moment.

  ‘Good party,’ Katy said.

  ‘Don’t sound so shocked, Katy,’ Tom laughed. ‘It may surprise you to know this, but there are people in the world, in this garden in fact, who think I’m a decent guy. A funny guy even. Definitely not a wanker, or was it a total wanker?’

  Her eyes fell to the grass, willing it to suck her away. At least the sun had sunk to little more than a slither, hiding the red blotches growing by the second on her face.

  ‘I will say it again – it was not my intention to embarrass you in front of the class on Monday, and I’m sorry if you felt it was. I realise this must be awkward for you,’ he smiled, causing two dimples to appear on his cheeks, ‘but you don’t need to avoid me or to leave.’

  Katy nodded, casting her eyes around the groups of people around her.

  ‘I don’t think anyone here even knows I run an anger management class,’ he added, as if reading Katy’s thoughts.

  ‘What do they think you do then?’

  ‘Most of them think I’m a double agent selling MI5 secrets to the KGB.’

  ‘What?’

  Tom laughed. ‘Lighten up a bit, Katy. This is a party you know.’

  ‘Sorry. I guess I’ve never been that keen on parties.’

  ‘Me neither,’ Tom said.

  ‘But this is your party?’

  ‘I know. My brother, wherever he’s got to, convinced me to throw a house warming party. Apparently it’s bad luck if you don’t.’

  ‘I didn’t know that.’

  ‘That’s probably because he made it up so he could invite all of his friends over, now that he’s married and his wife won’t let him have his own parties every week.’

  ‘Do you want me to introduce you to people?’ Tom glanced around the garden.

  Katy scrunched up her face and shook her head.

  ‘Do you want to help me mix some more mojitos?’

  She nodded and followed him towards the kitchen as her phone gave a buzz from her back pocket. It was Claire.

  Nick has the sick bug :-/ I tried to tell him that I managed with the kids when I was sick last week but typical man thinks he’s got it worse. Don’t hate me but I’m going to be a bit longer getting the kids to sleep. Don’t leave!!! x

  Katy tapped a reply. I don’t know whether to hate you or feel sorry for you. Just hurry up! X

  ***

  ‘How did you learn how to make these?’ Katy asked, taking a sip from her third cup and leaning against the kitchen counter so that she could watch Tom mix another jug.

  ‘I picked it up from a barman I used to know. A few years ago, I worked in the City for an investment bank. It meant a lot of socialising with clients at the office. I hated it. But then I learnt a few cocktail making techniques and it gave me something to do at parties.’

  ‘Anger management seems a long way from a life in the banking world,’ Katy said.

  ‘Tell me about it,’ Tom smiled. ‘I got to a point just before I turned forty when I couldn’t see an end to it. The competiveness. The drinking. The money. Every day the same thing. So I quit my job, moved out of London and got myself a spot on a counselling course.

  ‘The aggression management is just a small part of what I do for my training, but I really enjoy it.’

  Katy’s pulse quickened at the mention of anger management as she waited for him to ask the question she couldn’t answer in front of the class.

  Tom opened his mouth, but closed it again as a group wandered in from the garden.

  ‘Tom. There you are, mate. Mind if I put some tunes on in the lounge? It’s about time you lot learnt what an awesome DJ I am.’

  ‘Malcolm, it’s all yours.’ Tom smiled, handing the freshly made jug of mojito to a woman, as a few other people reached around them for cups and other bottles.

  Two minutes later, they stood alone in the kitchen again as the first beats of an unfamiliar pop song reached their ears.

  ‘Do you like this music?’ Katy asked.

  ‘I don’t even know this music,’ Tom laughed.

  He turned his back to her and fiddled with a music system on the counter. ‘Can you shut that door?’ Tom pointed to the door between the kitchen and the hall.

  Katy pushed the door shut, muffling the noise from the living room.

  ‘Now this is more my kind of thing,’ he said, turning to Katy and watching her face.

  A fast paced drumming filled the room. Followed by a catchy guitar rhythm. Katy found her foot tapping on the floor and a smile cross her face. She missed the first line sung by the scratchy voiced male singer, but not the second - I fought the law and the law won.

  The smile disappeared from her face. ‘Is this a joke?’

  Tom threw back his head and laughed. ‘Sorry I couldn’t resist. Here,’ he said, skipping the song along to another rhythmic guitar tune. ‘It is my kind of music though.’

  ‘Who’s the singer?’

  Tom rolled his eyes. ‘Only the biggest guitar hero of all time - Mr Jonny Cash.’

  ‘Never heard of him, but then I’m a different generation.’ Katy grinned watching the smile drop from Tom’s face this time.

  ‘Katy, can I ask you something?’

  ‘Sure,’ she nodded, taking another sip from her cup. Here it comes, she thought. The inevitable question she’d been waiting for him to ask.

  ‘Why are you in my class?’

  ‘I...’ Katy looked around her, her eyes searching for anyone who might be in ear shot, but it seemed everyone had followed the DJ into the living room.

  ‘It’s like you said last week. I’ve got a problem controlling my anger.’

  ‘Lots of people have trouble controlling their anger, but they don’t all end up in anger management.’

  Katy sighed before she spoke: ‘I hit someone over the head with a TV remote.’

  ‘Someone?’

  ‘My boyfriend. Or ex-boyfriend now, or something like that. A neighbour saw it and called the police. I was arrested and given a conditional caution.’ Her voice sounded so matter-of-fact, masking the torrent of horror still swimming just under the surface.

  Three people opened the door and stumbled into the kitchen. Katy took an unavoidable step closer to Tom to let them through.

  ‘Tom, we are in dire need of refreshments. Are you still making mojitos?’

  ‘Sorry guys, we’ve just run out of white rum, but help yourself to this lot,’ he replied, taking a sidestep away from the counter, and a step closer to Katy.

  The bare skin of their arms brushed against each other, sending a shot of electricity through her. She shifted back, startled from the shock his touch had caused. What was that? This was not someone she fancied, or even liked. This was Tom Pearce, her anger management counsellor, th
e man who’d made fun of her in front of the class. So what if he’d apologised. Did that make up for it?

  She looked at his face. His eyes stared back at hers.

  Had she been wrong about him?

  ‘Come on then lads,’ one of the group in the kitchen said. ‘Let the concocting commence.’

  ‘Let’s get some air,’ Tom whispered, grabbing a bottle of white wine from the side and two wine glasses from a cupboard, before nudging Katy towards the back door.

  Katy followed Tom to a wooden bench half way down the empty garden.

  ‘I got made redundant last week,’ she blurted out as they sat down.

  Katy sucked in her lips, unable to believe what she’d just said. The wine from dinner and the mojitos she’d drunk must have affected her more than she’d realised.

  Tom handed her a glass. ‘I’m sorry to hear that.’

  ‘I...I lost it. I threw a box in the reception area and smashed a vase.’

  ‘I bet that felt good.’

  Katy eyes shot up. She’d expected him to disapprove. ‘I guess it did, but...’

  ‘But,’ Tom prompted.

  ‘But I don’t know what’s happening to me.’ Hot tears spilled from Katy’s eyes. ‘I never used to just snap when things went wrong.’

  Tom’s hand touched hers. He lifted her wrist and unpeeled her fingers from the fist she hadn’t realised she’d made. He laid her hand flat on his.

  Neither of them spoke.

  Katy looked up into the nothingness. The night had closed in, surrounding them in an inky darkness. At the far end of the garden, lanterns glowed red and orange across the branches of an apple tree. To the right, the light from the house illuminated the patio and the first few metres of lawn, but its reach stopped there. She could no longer see Tom’s body next to hers, but she could feel his warmth and smell the scent of his aftershave.

  All of a sudden she realised they were holding hands. An awkwardness slinked over her, like two teenagers at the end of a first date.

  Alcohol channeled through her body. She didn’t want to think about her life anymore.

  ‘You’re going to be fine,’ Tom said. ‘It’s all going to be-’ Katy moved her face towards the sound of his voice. Tom sensed the movement and stopped midsentence just as her lips found his.

  Katy’s stomach flipped and somersaulted as they started to kiss, as if she’d taken a hill too quickly in her car and had that split second feeling of dropping through the air. Except she was not in her car, and it was not a split second. Her body just kept falling and falling as their kiss intensified.

  Tom let go of her hand and wrapped his arms around her, pulling her closer.

  She could feel his muscles and the warmth of his body. It stirred a fierce desperation, like a fiery heat burning inside her. In that moment she wanted him more than she’d known it was possible to want anyone. It didn’t matter that they were in a garden less than 10metres from a party full of people. She wanted to be naked, to wriggle free of their clothes and lie down on the cool grass. To feel the weight of his body over her. To feel him.

  Tom’s hand stroked her hair as she inched closer, craving more.

  Then she felt it. The change in his movements. He pulled his hands away, almost pushing her backwards as he leapt up, leaving a cold emptiness in his place.

  ‘We shouldn’t have done that,’ Tom said. ‘I’m sorry.’

  Katy opened her mouth to reply but no words came out. Her mind too focused on making sense of the feelings their kissed had stirred, and the void it now left behind, to form a response.

  Was it just the alcohol or something more?

  Moments later she caught sight of a movement by the house. It was Tom. She hadn’t heard him walk away, leaving her in the darkness and disappearing into the house without turning back.

  ‘Happy Birthday,’ she mumbled. Thirty-three years old and she’d got drunk and thrown herself at the first boy she’d come across. Thirty-three and acting twenty, she sighed, her head spinning with renewed intensity.

  Katy pulled out her phone from her pocket and scrolled to Claire’s name on her contacts. It rang seven times and then clicked onto voicemail. She tapped out a message. Heading home. Call me tomorrow x

  Using the light from her phone like a torch, Katy moved towards the side of the house, relieved to find a gate with bolts but no padlock. She wrestled the rusty bolts open and slipped away.

  CHAPTER 10

  Sunday

  Katy stomped her foot onto the brake pedal and swung the steering wheel to the right, bouncing her car onto the grass verge but missing the shut iron gates of the garden centre.

  Her car engine stalled and died as she bumped to a stop.

  Katy looked at the clock on her dashboard. 09.02am. She bit down hard on her bottom lip. She needed to get in there. She needed to breathe in the muggy wet greenhouses and the musty smell of herbs mingled together with the sweetness of the flowers. She needed to be the first car to pull into the crunchy gravel car park and be the only person to wander through the rows and tables of plants still glistening from Mary’s morning watering.

  Everything fresh, everything tranquil. The polar opposite of her life and her mental state.

  Katy peered through her side door window at the gates. They didn’t appear to be locked. Should she wait for Mary to open them?

  09.03am

  ‘Come on, come on,’ Katy said to the empty car.

  She fidgeted in her seat. Images from the night before flooded her thoughts. The same images that had shaken her awake far too early. The same thoughts that had sent a shiver through her body, penetrating the fuzziness of her head better than any cup of coffee.

  His face. His body. The warmth of his touch. The way he’d taken her hand. His kiss. The desire it had unleashed inside her.

  Another feeling pummelled her mind. The cold. The emptiness. The way his hands had pushed her away as if she’d disgusted him.

  Katy closed her eyes as a mortifying shame took hold of her. Why did every day seem to bring some fresh form of hellish embarrassment?

  For some reason, kissing her anger management counsellor felt worse than hitting Adam with the remote or smashing a vase. On par though with being escorted from her home by two policemen.

  She’d thrown herself at him and how had he responded? By pushing her away and running off without a word. How could she go back to his class tomorrow night? How could she not?

  Maybe she should track down Sergeant Mackenzie and beg him to let her move to a different class. Katy imagined the police officer’s stern expression and what he’d say if she tried to explain.

  ‘So let me get this straight, Miss Davenport,’ he’d say. ‘You’ve attended one anger management class, and now you want to move to a different set of classes because you became inebriated and kissed the class counsellor?’

  Katy’s head hurt just thinking about it.

  There was no escape from Tom, or from what she’d done.

  Then there was Adam. She’d hardly seen him since the dinner episode on Tuesday, but he was still her boyfriend, wasn’t he? He still lived with her, didn’t he? Katy had no way to answer the questions spinning in her head.

  Instead, she grabbed the door handle and threw open her car door, scrunching her eyes against the piercing brightness of the sun. When would the suffocating heat-wave end? Katy swished her hair away from her shoulders, wishing for the tenth time that morning that she could scoop it into a ponytail.

  She stepped up to the gates and peered into the car-park and the buildings beyond. She could see the long yellow hose piled up to one side, and puddles of water on the ground that had yet to evaporate in the growing heat.

  Mary must be around somewhere. Maybe she’d just forgotten to open the gates? Katy lifted the heavy latch on the gate, opened it and slipped through.

  Her garden boots crunched on the stones as she walked towards the back of the plot and her favourite space; past the tables of pansies, and other bedding pl
ants, and straight to the bamboos and small trees. The grand mini birches with their white-grey trunks, and the stable conifers in ten different shapes and shades of green.

  She couldn’t remember when the hours she’d spent on a Sunday browsing and buying things in Green Tips had extended to helping Mary with restocking shelves and serving customers, but she wouldn’t change it for the world. Chatting with Mary about the best month of the year to prune roses, or which shrubs grow best in shady areas was the best part of her week, and she didn’t care how boring that made her.

  As Katy passed the main building something made her stop. She heard the voice of a man shouting.

  Had she walked into the middle of a private argument? Should she creep away and come back later?

  Katy stepped away and began turning back in the direction of the gates. Then she stopped again and thought about sweet-natured Mary, five foot five and well into her seventies.

  In long silent strides Katy moved back to the doors of the long brown building. She could not leave until she’d checked on Mary.

  As Katy reached the door the man’s voice grew louder.

  ‘WHY CAN’T YOU DO THIS FOR ME?’ he screamed.

  Another voice spoke, a woman’s this time, the tone desperate and pleading, but Katy wasn’t close enough to hear the words.

  Katy’s hand pushed the door open just enough for her to slide through without a sound. She’d entered through the exit doors and now stood three metres away from a single counter and till.

  Her eyes took in the scene before her. Mary sat on the stool behind the counter. Her body shrinking away from a wiry man with black hair and a patchy black beard.

  ‘IT’S NOT ENOUGH,’ the man shouted. ‘YOU HAVE TO SELL.’

  The man leaned over the counter until his face almost touched Mary’s. ‘SELL THIS SHITHOLE WOMAN.’

  Mary let out a yelp, her body slipping from her stool and landing on the floor out of Katy’s sight.

  ‘NOW LOOK WHAT YOU’VE DONE,’ he shrieked, reaching a hand down towards Mary’s body.

  The look of terror on Mary’s face as she’d fallen burnt into Katy’s conscious. She leapt towards the man. ‘Hey,’ she said.

  The man turned his body towards Katy’s voice, just as she flew into him, knocking him off balance and pushing him to the floor as if he weighed less than a sack of potatoes.