Come Again

by Emlyn Rees

  ‘So am I,’ he replied, ripping off the ticket with a flourish and slapping it on my windscreen.

  Cheeky beggar.

  ‘But I can’t pay this. I haven’t got a job,’ I wailed, panic gripping me as I read the fine.

  ‘You should get down the parking services. They’ve got plenty. Become a warden,’ he commented, strolling on like an old-fashioned bobby. ‘Or a damper. Opportunities are unlimited,’ he added as he passed me.

  ‘I may be desperate, but I’m not that desperate,’ I yelled after him, yanking the car door open and growling with frustration.

  Things didn’t improve. With a sense of bad karma hanging round me, like cheap body spray, I bit the bullet and went to the bank. I cast a little good-luck spell on my cashpoint card, but deep down I knew, even before I inserted it into the evil jaws of the machine, it was going to be devoured. It still hurt when it did it, though. It’s the final indignity, having your card reclaimed by the bank. It’s so humiliating being this age and this skint. To be honest, I think I was better off as a student and I thought I was on the breadline then.

  I sat in the car like a stake-out cop, smouldering with indignation and sipping a take-away cup of tea which tasted suspiciously like cat pee, munching a Burgerama burger – definitely akin to dog poo – and flicking through the free papers I’d picked up from the tube station. Two minutes later, I felt vaguely poisoned and horribly depressed. The only jobs in the paper were for media sales and I’m hopeless on the phone.

  Miserably, I fished in the bottom of my bag for some chewing gum, finding a broken bag of tobacco, some furry tampons and my old Simpsons diary. I pulled it out and looked at the scrawled addresses in the back, wondering whether any of the people on my faded list would give me a job, or at the very least consider a loan. But I doubted it, since I’d slept with most of them. I was about to throw the diary back in the bag and continue my gum search, when I spotted the address of Top Temps, an agency Amy recommended ages ago. And I don’t know why, but it seemed worth a go.

  The Top Temps office near Oxford Street was jam-packed with girls, all younger and smarter (and no doubt more qualified) than me. I waited for ages before I was shown in to this pokey office, furnished by a desk and a rubber plant with lipstick-stained cigarette butts poking out of the soil. I scanned through the form I’d been given. Amy said that reception work would be a doddle, but I had to fib on most of the questions. When I finally got to see a consultant, she looked me up and down and, barely scanning my form, told me it was highly unlikely that she would be able to place me. She suggested that I’d be better off trying my local job shop. There’s attitude for you.

  Then there was Quikshop to finish me off. All day my body has been saying gimme fruit, gimme vegetables, gimme vitamin pills, gimme Evian, gimme anything to make me feel healthy again, but the only place dodgy enough to: accept my even dodgier credit card, is Quikshop on the corner. I hate it in there. Most of the locals assume it’s a front for a drugs cartel and I think there’s some truth in the rumour. The man in there certainly looks like he’s capable of slitting your throat. The smell is vile – a cross between spilt beer and a rotten pork pie and the fresh produce section has wrinkled, decomposing objects in it, including the lemons, which have certainly been there since I moved in. Perusing the barely stocked shelves, feeling eyes on the back of my neck, the best I could come up with was tinned tomato soup, stale sliced bread, Semtex cheese (plastic and potentially lethal), and a giant bottle of Coke. Why is it that you can’t eat healthily in this city unless you’ve got loads of money? If it’s not enough that I’m going to be begging on the streets soon, I’ll be poisoned too.

  I wedge up the window and tip the soup into a saucepan. My antique gas cooker has a will of its own, so I stand guard, yawning. The last thing I need to finish off today is to turn this place into a towering inferno.

  My flat opens on to a closed-off fire escape stairwell at the back, with snaking rubbish shoots from all the flats spilling down to the pungent bins below. From across the way, the Eastenders theme music is accompanied by a bawling child, whilst two floors down, Evander and Tyson, the scary bull mastiff puppies, are chewing each other’s ears as usual. The old woman on the ground floor has her back door open and is coughing again, the debris of fifty years of non-stop Rothmans rattling around her lungs. Poor thing. She makes me want to give her a good thump on the back.

  The sound of other human lives is comforting, I suppose, but I can’t help thinking that it’s so isolating, everyone living alone in these huge blocks on top of each other like this. I don’t even know the names of the people who are probably cooking their tea on the other side of this wall, not two foot away. Somebody might be dead in there for all I know and judging from the smell, it’s a distinct possibility.

  There’s no point in getting a bowl, since it’s just me on my own. Less washing up. I slump down at the table with the saucepan and pull my old portable radio towards me, but there’s nothing on. It’s all patronizing adverts or discussion programmes about third-world agricultural systems. I twiddle with the dials until I find some dance music and nod my head in time to the beat, but I can’t get into it.

  Dipping my bread in the soup, I stare at it soaking up the orange liquid and realize that I want to cry. It’s partly the alcohol comedown, which I guess is inevitable. I must have singed all my happy receptors, overdosing on such a good time. But then there’s the other, childish part of me that always wonders at times like these whether it’s better in life not to experience something and therefore not feel the loss of it? For example, would my tinned tomato soup taste better to me if I’d never had a lovely bowl of Mum’s vegetable cawl before? It’s a pointless question really, because I love tinned tomato soup. It’s just that I’m missing home comforts. Just like I’m missing the weekend.

  I don’t want it to have ended. It went so fast and having spent all that time with Amy and finally pulling Stringer, being here alone in my flat, catapulted back in to my dismal life, it feels more lonely and depressing than it did before. I know I’m being daft, because Amy’s hen weekend can’t be counted as ‘normal’, but I like having a big group of people to hang out with. It makes me feel like I’m a character in a Friends episode. Except with soft drugs and scruffier hair.

  Even with H being such a bitch, it was still good fun. And it won’t ever happen again. Everyone will be together at the wedding, but after that, Amy will be off with Jack and where will I be?

  I wipe out the pan with another slice of bread and dunk it in the sink. Usually when I’m in this sort of mood, I go out. But I’m too tired and I’m also too skint. Just breathing in this parasitic city makes you haemorrhage cash. There’s nothing for it but to go to bed. It’s the only place I can afford.

  I put on my oldest nightie and lie on the duvet, feeling like a ten year old. The curtains are drawn, but there’s no doubt that it’s still daylight outside and I can hear the pigeons scratching on the roof. I roll on to my front and grab my book from the table. Maybe I’ll make some headway with it, since I’ve been reading it for weeks and keep falling asleep on the same page. I sigh, wriggling the pillow underneath me, wishing it was Stringer’s warm body. Not that I feel sexual in any way, I just want a cuddle. Maybe I’ll get one when I see him tomorrow. At least I’ve got that to look forward to.

  I obviously pass out completely because it’s after midnight when I’m woken by the phone. I stumble out of bed and pick up the receiver in the hall.

  It’s Maude.

  ‘You sound half-asleep!’ she chirps.

  ‘I was fully asleep,’ I yawn, taking off my glasses. I fell asleep with them on and I’ve got big dents in my nose which I rub.

  ‘Well, wake up, silly.’

  ‘OK, OK, I’m awake.’

  ‘Now listen. I’ve been doing some serious scouting around for you and I think you’d be crazy not to come over here.’

  She goes on to explain the reasons why. How I can get a temporary job quit
e quickly. How if we all get a car together, we could road-ride across the whole of the States and it’d be the adventure of a lifetime. And all the time I listen to her, I can feel her speaking straight to my heart. Because I have always wanted this kind of adventure and because I’m not ready to settle down here.

  ‘Do you remember that list we made of things we’d do before we were thirty?’ asks Maude.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, what was number one on your list?’

  ‘To see the world,’ I admit, remembering my youthful exuberance.

  ‘Now’s your chance. Whatever it takes, get yourself over here. Come on, Sooze, you’re always an opportunity grabber. You’ve even taken some bad ones, but I promise you – this one’s the best one you’re going to get.’

  Once she hangs up, I rest my hand on the receiver. I can hear the buzz of the fridge and the corridor is illuminated briefly by the orange light of a passing car. Everything is normal, except that everything has changed, because I know Maude has said the magic words to make up my mind.

  I scuttle to the bathroom and sit on the 100, feeling overwhelmingly perplexed and excited at the same time. The phone starts almost immediately. Cursing, I run back to answer, thinking it must be Maude again, but it’s Stringer.

  I’m so shocked by Maude’s call, and so close to wetting myself, that I probably sound odd, because Stringer goes all stilted and formal.

  ‘Is it a bad time?’ he asks. ‘I’ll call back. It’s late . . .’

  ‘No, no. Sorry, it’s fine.’ I rub my forehead. I’ve been looking forward to speaking to him so much, but now I feel caught off-guard. I want to blurt it all out, to tell him all about California, but something stops me.

  ‘How are you?’ I enquire instead, sounding like a curt secretary and not like me at all.

  ‘Oh, you know . . .’ The way he says it makes me see his face again. The way his eyebrows crumple together and he gets a crease between them. ‘Work has been mad. I guess I’m just knackered.’

  ‘Knackered in the literal sense of the word, eh?’ I guffaw clumsily. I grit my teeth as soon as I’ve said it, feeling like an idiot. There’s a pause as Stringer clears his throat.

  ‘Susie, about tomorrow . . .’

  ‘Tomorrow?’ I say, trying to sound breezy, as if I haven’t remembered we have a date. ‘Tomorrow? Oh yes. Is there a problem?’

  ‘It’s . . . um . . . a bit tricky. I’m run off my feet with this job and I don’t think I’ll be able to make it.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘But I’ll sort something out for the weekend, I promise,’ he rushes on.

  ‘Not to worry,’ I say, sounding magnanimous, but thinking how far away the weekend sounds.

  ‘Sorry,’ he apologizes again. ‘I do want to see you.’

  ‘I want to see you, too,’ I blurt, but I know I sound odd.

  Stringer ignores it. ‘So we’ll speak later in the week, then,’ he says.

  And then he’s gone. Just like that. As if we’d exchanged business cards rather than bodily fluids the last time we met.

  ‘Shit,’ I curse. ‘Shit, shit, shit.’

  H

  Tuesday, 09.30

  Flipping open my compact mirror, I check my face and dab more powder on my nose. I’ve done this twice already this morning, but one final touch-up won’t hurt. I dig in my make-up bag and pull out my best Lancôme lip liner, take off the lid and start re-outlining my lips.

  ‘He’s here,’ says Brat, suddenly opening the door of my office and leaning in on the door handle.

  ‘Don’t do that!’ I snap, as the lip liner shoots towards my nostril.

  ‘Touchy,’ he chides, before slamming the door and I jump again.

  I scowl after him, plucking a tissue from the box on my desk and looking back in the mirror to correct my mistake. I don’t look so bad, considering I’ve hardly slept and I’ve got a monster spot underneath a ton of concealer between my eyebrows. I touch the spot with my little finger and wince.

  Come on. Stop putting it off.

  I squirt some perfume on my neck, then dab my wrists in the moisture and rub them together, before taking some deep breaths as I smooth my clammy palms on my skirt, but it doesn’t help.

  Laurent is here.

  Here in London.

  In this office.

  Right now.

  I pick up the pile of papers on my desk and put them in order. Outside, Brat is whispering into the phone, his hand cupped around the mouthpiece of his receiver. I stand impatiently waiting for him to finish and he glares at me when he finally puts down the phone.

  ‘I need these copied,’ I tell him, ignoring his pinched look as I place the papers on his desk. ‘And the script revisions?’ I ask.

  ‘Well, if you’d give me a minute, I’d do them,’ he grumbles.

  I exhale impatiently. Since I came back in yesterday morning, Brat’s had a real attitude problem. He’s probably moody because he was dossing about all week when I was in Paris.

  ‘Perhaps if you made fewer personal phone calls, you’d have time,’ I say pointedly. ‘I want them on my desk this afternoon. No excuses.’

  I turn and, clutching my folder against my chest, make my way to the lift, wondering if anyone can tell that my knees are shaking.

  This is so unfair. I wanted to see Laurent on my own when I saw him again. I imagined us meeting at the train station in Paris, or running into each other’s arms at an airport. I didn’t imagine he’d be here, in London. I hadn’t pictured him in my world. In my office. With Eddie, for Christ’s sake.

  This is just going to be so humiliating. I haven’t spoken to Laurent since I left Paris and by now he must think I’m a complete bunny-boiler. I left an excruciating, tearful message from Leisure Heaven, three messages on his mobile on Sunday night, then all of yesterday I tried calling his office, but he was ‘in a meeting’.

  By five o’clock yesterday, I was in the doldrums of despair and rang Amy.

  ‘He hates me,’ I announced.

  ‘He doesn’t hate you,’ she said, obviously not taking me seriously. ‘Maybe he really is in a meeting.’

  ‘He’s not. He’s ignoring me. It’s all over.’

  ‘Calm down. It’ll be fine,’ she said, but she didn’t sound convincing. She was more concerned about whether she should take Jack to Accident and Emergency, since he hadn’t moved for twenty-four hours.

  I’d just decided to call it a day and was shutting down my computer when Eddie came in.

  ‘Everything OK?’ he asked, breezily.

  I nodded, knowing that he wanted something. ‘I had a heavy weekend, so I think I’d better be off,’ I said in a warning tone, opening my bag.

  ‘Can you be in early tomorrow?’ he asked.

  ‘I always am,’ I pointed out, shoving a manuscript in my bag, annoyed that he had the audacity to think I was a slacker.

  ‘Only we’ve got a visitor coming,’ he said.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Laurent. He’s over from Paris and apparently he’d like to have a look at our strategy.’

  I couldn’t have been more shocked if he’d told me the President of the United States was coming to visit, but I managed to hold Eddie’s gaze, pretending to be nonplussed as my stomach did a somersault.

  ‘I’ve got a meeting with Laurent and the other powers that be at nine-thirty, but I thought you might like to pop in and say hello beforehand, since you met him last week,’ he said.

  ‘Sure,’ I said. ‘Thanks.’ I packed the rest of my stuff in my bag, my head whirring so much that I didn’t notice Eddie standing there, looking expectant.

  ‘Oh . . . and . . . er . . . would you print out those schedules you did for me again, on headed paper? And bring them with you?’ he added, before waltzing out without giving me a chance to protest.

  I stood, stunned, for a moment, before gathering my jacket and practically running out of the office and back to my flat for an evening of frenzied grooming.

  Of cours
e the vain part of me is secretly thrilled, because there is a chance that maybe, just maybe, Laurent has planned this sudden trip because he wants to see me. Maybe he’s been unable to return any of my calls, but was so desperate to talk to me that he decided to come in person to make up for not being around. Maybe he’s got grand plans afoot to come and stay with me in London. Maybe he wants me to go and work with him in Paris.

  Or maybe I should get a grip.

  I’ve got my best Joseph suit on and a little top which I had to handwash and is still slightly damp, despite my desperate attempts at ironing it dry this morning. It feels uncomfortable on my back as I step out of the lift. I check the papers are in order again.

  Eddie is in the meeting room with Laurent, showing him a clip of the daytime soap on the VCR in the corner. Laurent is standing, one arm across his chest, the other fist on his chin as he frowns at the screen. He looks tanned and slightly uneasy in his dark suit, but then I’ve never seen him dressed up before. I’m used to seeing him in jeans and a T-shirt and with his salt-and-pepper hair touching his collar. Seeing him in a suit makes him look like a football star on show and despite my vows to be professional, I can feel a dull ache starting in the join of my specially purchased sheer tights.

  ‘There you are!’ says Eddie, noticing me and pressing a button on the zapper. ‘Laurent, you know Helen?’

  ‘Hello again,’ I say, smiling and lurching forward to shake his hand. The same hand I last saw reflected in my hotel mirror as it cupped my buttock.

  ‘Hi,’ says Laurent, simply, his dark blue eyes connecting with mine

  ‘Well, then. I’ll just go and get some stuff from my office and collect Will,’ says Eddie, making for the door, but I hardly hear him. ‘You don’t mind looking after Laurent for a moment, do you?’

  ‘Oh, um, not at all,’ I smile.

  We both watch as Eddie closes the door. Then there’s a pause.

  ‘So . . . ?’ I say, half-clasping my hands in front of me.

  As little questions go, it’s loaded, but it’s got to be, because we don’t have much time and I’ve no choice.