by Jane Fallon
I shake Dan awake.
‘Dan,’ I say in a stage whisper. ‘Wake up.’
He groans. There’s nothing Dan hates more than being disturbed when he’s sleeping, but this is an emergency.
‘What? What’s wrong?’
‘We have to cancel Sorrento. I think we only have a couple of days left. Can you do it tomorrow?’
Dan booked it on his computer. He has the reference number, the details of the travel company, all that essential stuff. It makes sense for him to be the one to cancel it. He sits up. Once he’s awake, he’s awake.
‘You woke me up for that?’
‘I was scared I’d forget. We can’t afford to lose the deposit.’
‘It’s OK,’ he says. ‘I think Alex still wants to go. I guess he’ll bring Lorna.’
I snap my bedside light on so he can see exactly how serious I am.
‘No,’ I say in a tone I’d ordinarily reserve for a naughty dog. Down boy. ‘No, Dan, no. Are you f… reaking mad?’
‘Did you just say freaking?’
‘I’m being serious.’
‘But freaking?’ He looks at me, realizes I am not in the mood to laugh. ‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ he says. ‘She’s OK.’
I can’t believe this is happening.
‘What about the kids? They haven’t even met her yet. It could damage them for life watching their father frolicking on the beach in his swimming trunks with some bikini-clad woman who’s not their mum.’
‘I don’t think anyone’s going to be frolicking on the beach in their swim wear in October,’ he says in that pedantic way he has sometimes.
‘That’s not the point,’ I say, getting desperate. ‘The point is that this holiday is for the kids. If anything, it should be Isabel who comes with them, not Alex.’
‘You want me to tell Alex that we’d rather go on holiday with Isabel than him?’
‘Why not? He’s the one who’s ruined everything. Look, just cancel the holiday, OK?’ I say, turning over so my back is towards him. ‘We can go somewhere else, just us and Zoe and William. Maybe take the girls along too. But no Alex. And no Lorna.’
‘Fine,’ he says in a way that makes it clear that it’s anything but fine.
‘Whatever,’ I retaliate, channelling Zoe.
The next morning we get ready in huffy silence. We still walk to the tube station together as we do every day and I wait until I’m about to disappear underground, leaving him to catch his bus, before I say, ‘Don’t forget to cancel the holiday,’ and then I practically run off before he can respond.
The upshot is this. Dan calls Alex to let him know the holiday is about to be cancelled. Alex says, hold on a minute, I still want to go and, by the way, I’m taking Lorna. Dan, being Dan, says fine. He calls the travel company and tells them it’s going to be two adults only. No children, no Dan and Rebecca Morrison.
‘So,’ he says to me as I’m cooking dinner that evening. ‘It’s all sorted out. Where do you want to go instead?’
He comes up behind me and snakes his arms round my waist, his way of trying to end our dispute. I’m not playing, though.
‘We can’t go anywhere,’ I say. ‘I can’t have the same week off work as Lorna. So now the childless couple gets to go away in half term and we get to do precisely nothing because we can’t take the kids out of school.’
‘Shit,’ he says, ‘I didn’t think of that.’
‘No,’ I say. ‘You didn’t, did you?’
Actually, Lorna being out of the office for a week turns out to be as good for me as having a holiday. I don’t edge along from Piccadilly tube station every morning, my shoulders hunched up around my ears. I can relax knowing that for a whole week there’s no question of dinner or a trip to the pub or a cosy night at home with the four of us.
Dan and I suddenly remember why we like each other so much and cuddle up on the sofa in front of the TV contentedly. Just the two of us. Neither of us mentions Alex or Lorna for fear we’ll break the spell.
At work, I have no doubt, I am less defensive, less inclined to sulk. Without question more productive because without Lorna there to play Phone Wars with I answer each call happily, on the first or second ring. I can’t be helpful enough.
Isabel has taken the girls to Cornwall for the week. She calls me to tell me that I would love their hotel because it’s run by someone who used to be a children’s TV presenter in the 80s and that he still wears his trademark red glasses and uses his catch phrase – fabbo! – at every opportunity. She is amusing herself by refusing to acknowledge that she knows who he is, which, she says, he is clearly waiting for. As the days go by, he is becoming more and more frustrated and saying ‘fabbo!’ way more often than necessary. Soon, she says, he will no doubt produce the battered old kangaroo puppet who used to be his sidekick and then probably break down and say, ‘Don’t you remember me?’ and start crying. I laugh and ask her to take a photo if he does.
Otherwise, she says, to be honest, it’s depressing. It’s great watching the girls having a good time but some adult company in the evenings wouldn’t go amiss. Once the twins are in bed there is nothing to do but sit in the adjoining room and watch TV.
‘I may become an alcoholic,’ she says, and she laughs, but I know she’s miserable.
‘I might join you,’ I say.
We promise to meet up as soon as she gets back.
‘Say hi to Dan from me,’ she says as she rings off.
‘OK,’ I say. ‘Bye.’
Melanie and Joshua are being very secretive. They keep closeting themselves away in one or other of their offices for ‘talks’. If I didn’t know better, I’d think that they had a thing going on. Actually, that’s not such a ludicrous idea. I suspect that he would in a heartbeat if she was up for it, but she has a handsome, attentive, successful husband and a very professional attitude towards her work, which means, I think, that she would never mix business with carnal pleasure. He, on the other hand, is a bit of a randy old dog who would probably never say no. I like him, though, don’t get me wrong. There’s a certain old-fashioned, gentleman-cad quality about him that I find quite endearing. He’s very theatrical, very luvvy and utterly harmless.
Anyway, clearly something is afoot because no one ever really shuts their doors at Mortimer and Sheedy, unless they’re with a client. In fact, the last time I can remember was when the Gary McPherson scandal broke and that didn’t last for long because Lorna and I were having to fend off calls from the Sun and the Mirror within minutes so there was no point anyone trying to pretend it was a big secret.
I’m running through the client list in my head, trying to imagine who might have done what and with whom when they emerge, all smiles and everything goes back to normal.
‘Everything OK?’ I say to Melanie later. She’s never very good at keeping secrets.
‘Of course,’ she says. ‘Why wouldn’t it be?’
The week passes way too quickly and before I know it I’m dawdling along Jermyn Street from the tube station, shoulders up, braced for the inevitable.
‘Oh, Rebecca, we had such a great time!’ she says, the minute I walk through the door, and then proceeds to tell me every minute detail of that great time, starting with the second they set foot in Gatwick Airport and ending, well, I don’t really know, because I’ve long since switched off. Nearly an hour has gone by when I look at my watch, and that and the fact that she seems to have stopped talking tells me that she’s probably reached the end of the journey home.
There’s a pause.
‘Good,’ I say. ‘I’m glad you had a good break.’
Luckily that seems to be all that was required and she sets off again about what has she missed and has anything happened and what’s the goss?
‘Nothing,’ I say. ‘Nothing has happened, you’ve missed nothing and there’s no gossip. Sorry.’
That shuts her up for a moment and then thankfully Joshua arrives and she follows him into his office and rehashes the whole thing again.
While she’s been away I have been steeling myself. The third time the phone rings and she pretends to be fascinated by some speck of dust on her desk, I answer but then, once I have put the person on the other end through to Melanie, I take a deep breath.
‘Lorna,’ I say, and she looks up, eager as a puppy for some interaction. I almost bottle out.
‘This thing with the phones…’ I start, and then realize that I’m not quite sure where I’m going even after rehearsing this moment in my head for a week.
‘The phones?’ she says, like she hasn’t quite understood me right.
‘Yes, you know, the way you never answer them.’
‘I do,’ she says. ‘What are you talking about? I’m always answering the phones.’
‘No,’ I say. ‘You don’t. At least, you only do when you have to, when I don’t give in first.’ Now I say it out loud it does sound a little paranoid.
‘I’ve been away for a week. I have to catch up with what I’ve missed. I’ve just been concentrating, that’s all. I haven’t even noticed the phones have been ringing. How many times have they rung?’
She’s getting louder now. Loud enough so that Joshua and Melanie will be able to hear every word. I want to tell her to keep her voice down, but that’d be like a red rag to a bull. I’m beginning to wish I’d never started this.
‘I’m not talking about today,’ I say, and then, as if by magic, the phone bursts into life. Lorna leaps at it, answering before it has even managed to get one full ring out, looking at me triumphantly as if to say, ‘See how wrong you are?’
I wait for her to finish. I’m not sure how to get back on the subject without tipping her over the edge, but in the end I don’t have to. I never really understood what passive aggressive meant until I met Lorna. She’s the living embodiment of it, all innocent little baby face but she will never let things go. Underneath all that pitiful feyness she’s like a pit bull.
‘So, what were you accusing me of before I answered the phone?’ she says, putting a great deal of emphasis on the last four words. I can see the water gathering in pools in the corners of her eyes. I know that once it’s released, once it finds its way down her cheeks, it will be impossible to stop. At least, not before Joshua notices, she’ll make sure of that.
Still, I knew it would be like this. Now I’ve started I have to finish because I don’t know when I’ll have the courage to bring it up again.
‘I wasn’t accusing you of anything,’ I say evenly. One of us has to remain calm. ‘I was just saying that you have a habit of waiting for me to answer the phone rather than picking it up yourself and I’d be grateful if we could share the load a bit more, that’s all.’
I can see it, one tear struggling to force its way out, clearing the way for its hundreds of brothers and sisters to follow.
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ she says, ramping up the volume another notch. ‘I’ve been on holiday. Why are you attacking me the minute I walk back through the door?’
‘I’m not… forget it. There’s no point carrying on this conversation. Let’s just forget it, OK?’ I say.
‘No,’ she says. ‘You can’t just accuse me of something and then try to pretend you haven’t.’
‘I shouldn’t have said anything,’ I say. This is how it always ends if I ever try to say anything even vaguely critical to Lorna. I should have learned my lesson by now.
‘No,’ she says again. ‘You must have meant it. You’ve obviously been festering away about something the whole time I’ve been off…’
‘What’s going on?’
Oh great, now the cavalry has arrived in the form of Joshua on his great white charger.
‘Nothing,’ I say. ‘Everything’s fine.’
‘Rebecca thinks that I deliberately don’t answer the phones,’ Lorna says, and right on cue the watery army starts its way down her face. ‘She thinks that I wait so that she has to do it. That I pretend to be busy when I’m not or something.’
She gives way to big noisy sobs. Once again I am the school bully. I wonder if anyone cries like that when they’re on their own, wailing and moaning, when they don’t have an audience. I doubt it. Joshua puts a paternal hand on Lorna’s shoulder.
‘Rebecca?’ he says.
I take a breath.
‘I think,’ I say, ‘that sometimes Lorna holds back from answering the phones in the hope that I’ll do it, yes. Even when I’m clearly in the middle of something and she isn’t,’ I add for good measure.
Surely he can see the sense in what I’m saying. From his and Melanie’s point of view they just want the phones to be answered promptly and by someone who sounds like they’re happy to be there.
Lorna gives another well-timed sob and Joshua turns back to her to be confronted by the full force of Niagara Falls. He looks at me again, disappointment in his avuncular eyes.
‘Honestly, this has got to stop.’
Once he’s gone back into his office she looks at me and smiles nervously.
‘Sorry,’ she says. ‘I didn’t mean to get you into trouble.’
I turn back to my work without answering. When the phone rings a few minutes later she answers it on the second ring.
When I get back from lunch Lorna, Melanie and Joshua are all standing there with their coats on. I feel pathetically left out when they all trip off to a restaurant together. Not that I want to have lunch with the bosses – in fact, they’ve offered many times but I always make an excuse – it’s just that my worst and most paranoid instincts take over when I am not invited but Lorna is. And guess what? This time it’s actually not paranoia. This time I’m right to worry because when they come back Lorna looks like the offspring of the Cheshire cat and the one that got the cream. Smiling cat squared.
‘Oh, Rebecca,’ she says before she even takes her coat off. ‘You’ll never guess what’s happened!’
As it goes, I don’t even need to try because she barely pauses for breath before she carries on.
‘I probably shouldn’t tell you. I think Joshua and Melanie want to tell you themselves, but if I don’t share it with someone I’ll burst and I can’t raise Alex on the phone.’
OK, it’s going to be bad. My mind leaps to the obvious – she’s pregnant. She’s having Alex’s baby and all of our lives are going to be inextricably linked forever. The twins are going to have a little brother or sister who is the product of Alex’s ill-judged relationship with the devil. Although exactly why Joshua and Melanie would want to be the ones to break that to me I can’t quite work out.
‘I’m going to be the new agent,’ she’s saying, but I’m having trouble processing the words. There has been a lot of talk lately about how there are now too many clients for Joshua and Melanie to handle between them, and how, perhaps, at some point in the future, they might begin to think about getting another pair of hands, expanding the agency. It always sounded very vague and very far off and I had always assumed that they meant bringing someone in from the outside. Someone with experience and a few loyal clients of their own to bring to the table. Someone who wasn’t Lorna.
I tune back in.
‘I’ll start off just helping out with the people we’ve got. And maybe I might take some of them over completely, the less successful ones, probably. I can even bring in clients of my own. In fact, they want me to start looking for promising new people right away. They said they’d been thinking about offering it to me for ages but they just had to make sure they had it all worked out properly, you know, because, of course I’ll get a raise…’
It’s not that I’m jealous. I’m not. I’ve never been ambitious. I don’t want any more responsibility. I don’t want some discontented actor calling me on a Sunday morning to complain about how hard he’s being worked. My dressing room is six inches smaller than hers or so and so got given six weeks off last year to do panto but they won’t even let me book a holiday. Oh no, what is eating away at me is far worse than mere envy. It’s the fact that
suddenly my working life has changed forever. Lorna is going to be my boss.
10
‘I’m going to have to look for a new job,’ I say to Dan as he’s opening a bottle of wine in the kitchen. The second honeymoon period is most definitely over. One day spent with Lorna and I’m back to my old irritable glass-half-empty self.
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ he says. ‘You love your job.’
‘I used to.’
‘Where else are you going to find something as flexible? Where they’ll let you take a day off just because it’s one of the kids’ sports days and not count it as part of your holiday allowance? Where they’ll buy you champagne on your birthday and get you free tickets to the theatre?’
‘I know, I know,’ I say, and when I’m being rational I do know that I’m on to a good thing but I’m just not sure it’s possible that it can feel like that ever again.
‘I mean, it’s up to you,’ Dan says, ever reasonable. ‘I’m just saying.’
‘Can’t you have a word with Alex?’ I know I’m talking rubbish but I feel like I’m in a bad film. Why is this happening to me?
‘And say what? Could you dump your girlfriend because she’s ruining Rebecca’s life?’
Despite my misery I laugh. ‘It’d be a start,’ I say.
*
As luck would have it Alex and Lorna want to celebrate Lorna’s new found success and, who do they want to celebrate with? Their best friends of course. So at seven thirty all four of us are sitting in the bar of the York and Albany waiting for our table. Alex is raising his glass, proposing a toast.
