by Paula Daly
‘You have no evidence. No evidence at all, Wayne, that this has anything to do with me.’
And he then proceeded to show me the ‘evidence’ he’d been collecting over the last week or so.
The series of thefts from the clinic, and my part in them, was irrefutable, he explained. He’d gone so far as to contact the patients I’d marked down as absent, asking if they could confirm or deny their presence at the clinic at the allotted times. Most were only too happy to oblige, flicking back through their diaries, their wall calendars, as he didn’t inform them why he wanted to know, just that there had been a problem with the computerized diary system and he needed to re-enter the information.
‘What if I refuse what you’re proposing?’ I said to Wayne.
‘Then I go to the police.’
‘You would do that?’
‘Tell me why I shouldn’t? You’ve been ripping the company off. And not only that, you now have this sideline going, that for all we know could be going on behind the closed door of the treatment room—’
‘That has never happened.’
‘We don’t know that, though, do we? Think how it would look, Roz. Think how it would look if it came out that you were charging people for sex, as well as purloining the takings? Patients wouldn’t come here any more. It would be an unviable business. And with a purpose-designed clinic such as this, the owners sinking in hundreds of thousands in investment, you can be sure they would pursue you with everything they’ve got. Their reputation as a healthcare provider is on the line.’
‘Please don’t go to the police.’
‘I won’t,’ he said. ‘Do as I ask, and I give you my word I won’t go to the police. I’ll tell no one. You know I’ve always been fond of you, Roz. I’ll keep it to myself, I promise.’
I exhaled, closed my eyes. Tried to think.
He had me, and I couldn’t come up with a way out. I’d pocketed that cash when I was desperate. Truly desperate. It wasn’t much. Thirty-five pounds here and there. But it was theft, nonetheless.
There were no good options; just one bad option slightly worse than the other. And you know what you should do. Your gut is screaming at you to back up. Reverse. Come clean now and take the hit before things get really out of control. But you don’t, because you are weak. And your habit of taking the less bad option is what got you here in the first place.
‘How will you explain the loss of takings?’ I asked eventually. ‘I assume the Accounts department will still want to know where that money has gone.’
Wayne made a dismissive gesture. ‘I’ll blame the cleaner who left a fortnight ago. I’ll tell them I have no direct evidence, but I trust the staff I’ve got implicitly, and can’t see who else it could have been. Of course, now that the thieving has stopped, that will all make sense.’
He waited for my reaction. Wetted his lips.
‘Please,’ I said, appealing to him with one last-ditch attempt, ‘don’t do this. It’s ludicrous.’
‘Is it?’
‘You know it is. Please, Wayne, don’t make me beg.’
And he laid both palms flat on the desk before letting out a long, exasperated breath.
‘Am I that repulsive?’ he asked.
‘No.’ (Yes.)
‘Is it so absurd that I should ask this of you?’
I didn’t answer. My eyes pricked with tears as the scene of what he was advocating played out in my mind.
There was no way.
There was absolutely no way I could go through with this.
‘You appreciate it’s game over for you now,’ he whispered as a patient exited Magdalena’s room. ‘You will never work again. You’ll never be allowed near patients again.’
He handed me a tissue.
‘I’d think long and hard about this before rejecting my offer, Roz.’
17
I HAD JUST stepped out of the shower, wrapped my head in a towel and slipped on my bathrobe, when I heard knocking on the front door.
Opening it, I saw my visitor had a bottle of champagne in one hand and a large punnet of ripe strawberries in the other.
‘You’d better come in, Celia,’ I told her.
She stepped inside and began casting around the naked room.
Taking in the bare walls, the bare floor, she said, ‘I don’t know how you live like this,’ her Liverpool accent sounding more pronounced than usual. ‘I really don’t.’ Then she asked, ‘Is George with his dad?’ And I told her he was, told her he was staying with Winston until Sunday evening, and she trotted off to find a couple of glasses.
Oddly, the champagne flutes were one of the few things the bailiffs hadn’t seized. I leaned against the doorframe, watching as Celia bustled about the kitchen, unable to suppress a smile when she put the tea towel to her nose to check that it was clean, before using it to gain some purchase on the lodged cork.
‘What’s the occasion?’ I said as she poured first into one glass and then the other.
‘Occasion?’ she asked. ‘Do we need one?’ She handed me a glass. ‘Cheers,’ she said. Then she admitted that she had watched me from her bedroom window earlier on my way in from the car, and it seemed as though I could do with some cheering up. ‘You look like you’ve got the weight of the world on your shoulders.’
‘Just a few problems at work.’
‘Ooh, that reminds me,’ she said, slipping off one of her sandals, ‘Dennis has developed a pain, right here.’ She pointed to the fleshy part on the underside of her heel.
‘Does it hurt him in the morning when he gets out of bed?’ I asked.
‘Like a knife!’ she exclaimed. ‘He can hardly walk.’
‘Plantar fasciitis.’ I scribbled the name of the orthopaedic insoles I recommend on a scrap of paper. ‘Pick him up a pair of those from Boots,’ I said. ‘I’ll take a look at it over the weekend.’
Celia frowned as she read the note. She thought the insoles would be a waste of time.
‘They work,’ I told her firmly.
She folded the note, put it in her pocket and reached for her glass. ‘Why don’t you come for dinner?’ she said. ‘I’ve got some lovely halibut and I’ve done what I always do and bought enough for six. You can do Dennis’s foot, and I’ll—’
‘I can’t.’
She put her drink down. ‘Why can’t you?’
‘I’m meeting someone.’
‘Who?’ she said, her eyes suddenly bright with interest.
Since we’d become neighbours, Celia had tried, on numerous occasions and without success, to set me up with a selection of eligible men. A couple of them were the sons of her reading-group friends. Another was the brother of her picture framer. Another, the nephew of the guy that came to clean her oven once a month. They all looked good on paper. But as I tried to impress on Celia, when someone said they couldn’t understand why their son/brother/nephew had been single for as long as they had, there was still usually a good reason.
‘The good ones are snapped up quickly,’ I told her.
‘Then why have you not been snapped up?’
‘I make bad choices.’
‘Maybe you’re too picky.’
‘Maybe,’ I said. And I left it at that.
But, honestly, you should have seen these men. I don’t want to be cruel, but you had to wonder how they managed to tie their own shoelaces and get out of the house each morning.
‘Don’t get excited,’ I told Celia now as she waited for me to elaborate. ‘This is just somebody I know through work. It’s not serious.’
Celia made a face. ‘Your generation.’ She spat contemptuously. ‘How can romance not be serious? And what does that even mean? You see these silly men on the television saying they don’t want to settle down, saying they want no-strings relationships, and I say to Dennis, “What fool of a woman would put up with something like that?” Good Lord, for all they get out of it, they may as well go on the game.’ She paused, musing on this fact as she finished her drink.
&nbs
p; Shaking her head, she added, ‘Oldest job in the world.’
‘That so,’ I replied.
An hour later I was in the car, heading north.
During the trip, all I could think of was Wayne. I was so bloody angry. Angry with him. Angry with myself. If I’d swallowed my pride and asked Petra for a little cash when I needed it, I wouldn’t find myself in this position. I negotiated the slippery curves along Rydal Water and my stomach began to cramp at the thought of him. Wayne had cornered me at the end of the day when the clinic was emptied of patients and there was only Gary left, catching up on notes, as he did each day. Wayne asked if I’d reached a decision.
As he waited for me to speak he held his mouth open slightly, something he often did when concentrating, and I became transfixed by his large tongue. It was swollen and covered in a thick, furred white coating – indicative of a chronic yeast infection, I suspected.
‘Since you’re giving me no way out of this, I’ll do it tomorrow evening,’ I snapped at him. By then I was livid that he’d put me in the situation, and I didn’t try to hide it.
‘Oh,’ he replied brightly. ‘As soon as that?’ The stupid bastard was flattered.
Staring at his tongue, I refrained from saying that I had no choice but to get it over and done with. That if I allowed myself time to stew on the idea I was sure to back out and, well, the repercussions of not doing it at all, he’d made very clear earlier.
‘George is with his dad for the weekend,’ I told him. ‘So it’s either tomorrow or in a fortnight’s time.’
‘Tomorrow,’ he replied quickly. ‘Yes, tomorrow would suit me perfectly, actually, because I have a couple of busy weekends planned later in the month, in fact …’
He then proceeded to give me a list of activities that constituted his tedious little life.
When he had finished I’d stared at him for a moment, still totally shocked that he was capable of this blackmail. Wayne and I had always got along pretty well. Sure, he had his annoying traits: his jokes were mostly crap, and he could take his role in the clinic a little too seriously. But he’d been consistently kind to me. We’d been kind to each other. I couldn’t believe this volte-face. I felt betrayed.
I tried to put Wayne out of my head for now, as I didn’t want to arrive for Scott in a state of fractious agitation. For someone who had known me for such a brief time, Scott had an uncanny ability to intuit what I was feeling, and I knew it would be a disastrous error to inform him of Wayne’s demands.
To Scott, Wayne was a pointless individual who didn’t even warrant a courteous nod. That much was evident from his behaviour that afternoon, so I didn’t need to ruminate for long over whether to tell Scott about Wayne’s intention.
Firstly, even though Scott had not aired this view, I knew that, while he was paying me, I was his. And his alone. The way he’d described the ugliness of the conveyor-belt sex was less to do with the girls themselves and more to do with his imagining the series of revolting lowlifes that had been there before him.
So there was that.
But also, in neglecting to inform Scott, I was considering that vainglorious state you find yourself in after the person you have slept with sleeps with someone else. A person you deem to be below you. And although you may have liked the person you first had sex with perfectly well, you couldn’t now repeat it, on account of feeling insulted by them putting you in the same category as the subsequent partner. It was humiliating. Anyway, all this to say it would not be wise to inform Scott of tomorrow’s agenda with Wayne. I couldn’t risk him ending our arrangement.
And of course I still needed the money to pay off the credit cards.
I would deal with the Wayne issue tomorrow. For now, I had to prepare myself for the night ahead. So I switched on the radio, fiddled about until I found a station playing a mindless track with a heavy bass, and when it came time I overtook a pair of cyclists on a blind corner, which gave me a jolt of adrenalin, the kick that comes from a moment of recklessness, something I needed to summon Roz the Sexy Plaything and banish Roz the Total Shambles.
Scott was waiting for me on the hotel balcony. He’d instructed Housekeeping to dry off the floor and furniture, now that the rain had cleared, so we could dine alone outside, overlooking Grasmere. I had gone directly to the room upon arrival. Scott had texted the number earlier and gave me directions so I wouldn’t have to stop by reception. He had taken pre-dinner drinks with his accountant and the firm’s solicitor, explaining to Nadine that he would be away for the night, as the meeting would run on into the early hours. Then he’d left the two men in the bar with a twelve hundred pound bottle of cognac, telling them he was sorry, but he would be bowing out early on account of a full session’s drinking scheduled for Carlisle Races the following day.
‘Sorry I’m a bit late,’ I said. ‘Traffic.’
Scott brushed it off and said not to worry. He held the door wide and I walked in, dropping my bag by the armchair. This room was traditional. The type of room an older couple might find pleasing should they spend Christmas in Grasmere. The decor was busy: gold wallpaper covered with lilies and heavy crimson curtains. The fixtures were either brass or gold and the furniture was solid oak.
Scott and I regarded each other, not speaking.
He gave a faint half-smile and, though I knew he wanted to be here – knew he probably needed to be here – it was plain by his expression he had other things on his mind.
This didn’t fall into the category of Second Date in a traditional way, but it did bear some of the hallmarks. While Scott was freshly showered and clean-shaven, while he had that jittery tension that came from being alone with a new woman, the bright glint of inquisitiveness was missing from his eyes. We’d already had sex. The mystique was gone. Work, real life, would now crowd his thoughts. And I guessed that, should we engage in polite conversation over dinner, his mind would be elsewhere.
I glanced through the open door of the balcony. The table was set, complete with candles, a bottle of something on ice. ‘Would you prefer we went straight to bed?’ I asked him.
A little taken aback, he gave a small cough and widened his eyes. Then he said, ‘Would you mind?’
‘Not at all. We can dine later.’
So we did. This time, he stayed fully dressed and took me from behind in the bathroom. I saw by his expression that he wanted fast, slutty sex, so I remained in my heels, facing the mirror, while he pulled my knickers to one side and fucked me like I imagined he used to fuck Nadine – back when she was still into it.
Afterwards, we sat outside beneath the gas heater, as the air had chilled (it was now after nine), and he thanked me with what seemed to be a sense of wonder for anticipating his needs.
‘It’s not rocket science,’ I replied, but to be honest I’d done it for myself as much as Scott. Wayne was still looming heavily at the forefront of my thoughts, and it was as good a way as any to get rid of him.
Scott remained dressed in his navy suit but he’d asked that I wear just my underwear, with a hotel robe around me, while we ate.
‘You look beautiful,’ he told me. ‘How’s the crab?’
‘Good.’
‘I wish I’d ordered it now.’
‘Have some,’ I said, and he told me to help myself to a razor clam. ‘Thanks,’ I replied, ‘but I’m not keen.’ The truth was, I’d never tried one. But on first viewing I couldn’t shake the image of a tapeworm, pickled in formaldehyde, which had rested on a dusty shelf in the biology lab at school year upon year. Petra had been raving about razor clams recently, and I realized she’d more than likely tried them when out with Scott.
The last of the daylight dwindled as we heard a succession of car doors slam. Non-residents perhaps, who had dined at the hotel and were on their way home, or else were on the lookout for a little more excitement from their Friday evening than this sedate hotel had to offer. Tomorrow the place would play host to another wedding. Come to the Lakes, stay in a country hotel like this and find
yourself outnumbered by noisy wedding guests each Saturday night, along with brides who are worse for wear, false eyelashes falling off, watching the prerequisite firework display, their children pulling at their dresses, each sporting their brand-new double-barrelled name.
‘What are you thinking about?’ Scott asked.
‘This and that. Mostly that.’
‘Does it ever bother you to be alone?’
‘Yes,’ I said truthfully.
‘You don’t relish the solitude? I always fancied my own private—’
‘Idaho?’
‘Campervan,’ he said.
‘Oh, like a shed on wheels to hide in. I can see how that could be nice. I have George, remember, so there isn’t a lot of solitude to be had. But I do miss a man.’ I finished eating and laid my knife and fork neatly on the side of my plate. ‘I miss someone to share in the responsibility – not the romantic stuff so much, I can live without that. Or maybe I learned to live without that, so I don’t notice it. But I miss the presence of a man. Someone to say, “I’ll check your oil and water for you,” someone to get the pilot light going. Saying all this, I sound like I just miss my dad. Winston was crap at looking after me.’
‘Is that what you want, someone to lean on, someone to take care of you?’
‘I think so, yes.’
‘You can always ask me.’
‘No, I can’t, Scott,’ I said. ‘I wouldn’t ask you because it’s not part of the arrangement. Isn’t that exactly what you wanted to avoid?’
He frowned. Threw me a look to say, I don’t follow.
‘You wanted it this way precisely because you don’t want to take care of another woman. Paying for sex frees you of that. Your words, Scott. I have no problem with it. It works well for me, too.’
He reached for his glass and looked at me seriously. ‘I really hate the thought of you struggling by on your own,’ he said.
And it was as though his words caught on the hairs of my inner ear. I shivered in response.
