Best of 2017

by Alexa Riley

  Takes cigarette breaks, and nobody will ever be allowed a cigarette break around Mr Henley’s property.

  Broke a company branded paperweight in meeting suite five last summer.

  Four individual sick days this last quarter.

  That leaves us, she says. It’s bound to be one of us. Both of us. Who knows?

  That’s when she decides to run us through the ropes. Just in case.

  I listen in awe at the end of our Friday shift, soaking in every single word as she tells us all about the inside of Alexander Henley’s home, the inside of Alexander Henley’s world.

  Alexander Henley collects gemstones. Rare ones that she has to polish with a special cloth. He keeps them in a dedicated room on the top floor of his Kensington town house, in special cabinets with combination locks. She knows the codes by heart, even though he changes them every month like clockwork.

  Alexander Henley has more suits than she’s managed to count, but they’re all black, and so are his ties. Every. Single. One.

  Alexander Henley finishes every evening with a single shot of whisky from an expensive crystal tumbler. He smokes one cigarette, by an open window in his entrance hallway and leaves the ash in an antique inkwell she has to polish to gleaming every afternoon.

  Alexander Henley only ever uses the same one set of cutlery, and would rather take it from the dishwasher than choose a fresh set from the cutlery drawer.

  He listens to dreary melancholic blues to wake up in the morning. Sometimes it’s still playing when she gets there. She hates it, but I know I’ll just love it, like I love everything else about him.

  My heart tickled when she told us about the framed photographs of his children, and how they have to be facing just so on his mantelpiece. She told us that they’re gone, to Hampshire with his ex-wife and her new boyfriend, some football coach named Terry.

  Maybe the biggest surprise of all came when she told us he has a dog. Brutus.

  I can’t imagine Alexander having a dog, and I don’t know why, it just seems so… human. Not much seems human about Alexander Henley.

  She shook her head when she gave us the warning, beckoned us in close, as though she was spilling state secrets.

  “Brutus is a beast,” she said. “You’ll have to win his trust or he’ll take your hand off, and you don’t want that. The last thing you want to be doing is bleeding over Mr Henley’s cream carpets.”

  We’d oohed and aahed as she told us about his favourite treats, these weird dried fish sticks she has to pick up from the vets in the middle of Kensington.

  “Never run short,” she told us. “Friendship is unsteady with that dog, and you’ll never get him out for his afternoon walk if you don’t have those to bribe him with.”

  It turns out that’s another of Cindy’s duties. The afternoon walk, and apparently she’s gone through three different aprons after Brutus has tried to tug them off her halfway around the block.

  “Why is he so mean?” I asked, and she’d sighed and shrugged.

  “Rescue, I think, after his wife left. Guess he was lonely.”

  I can’t imagine that, either. He always seems so… composed.

  “Just remember,” she told us, “Mr Henley notices everything. Every. Thing. Make sure you get it right, or you’ll be out of there before your feet hit the floor.”

  We nodded. Nodded some more. Made little notes for later. Made notes to give us the edge.

  And so we make a pact, Sonnie and me, at the end of another long week as we hobble down the bazillion steps to the ground floor.

  No hard feelings, that’s what we promise.

  “May the best scrubber win,” she says, and holds out her hand before we part ways on the street.

  And I shake it, I shake it and smile, and wish her good luck, even though I know it won’t be going her way.

  Because there’s no way on earth I’m going to let her win this one.

  Alexander Henley’s dirty boxers will be all mine.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  ALEXANDER

  MOST ADDICTS WON’T ACCEPT they’re addicted. That’s a fact. Not a fact I read in some shitty self-help book, either. It’s something I see every day, every time I have to pluck the same old assholes from the jaws of a custodial sentence.

  That’s the other thing about money – it grants the privilege of eternal self-delusion.

  My clients aren’t addicts, they’re professionals with hobbies. No client has ever looked me dead in the eye and admitted they’ve got a problem, not even in the cold light of day with their back against the wall and their freedom well and truly in my hands.

  There’s always a million excuses. A set-up, burning the candle at both ends, living life to the max, and, of course, the best one – they went a little overboard.

  That’s what they call snorting drugs all weekend and setting fire to your five-star hotel suite – going a little overboard.

  Addicts. I’m surrounded by them.

  I am one.

  Porn, webcam girls, escorts… a constant itch I can’t scratch. A tick behind my eyes. A nausea… a need.

  But there’s no self-delusion where I’m concerned. I know exactly what I am. I know exactly where I’ve come from, too.

  It was neither selflessness nor an amiable disposition that saw me agreeing with every single one of Claire’s custody demands when she loaded up our boys and a couple of token houseplants and took off to Hampshire in her – my – new plate Range Rover.

  I could have fought her, and I could have won. Hired myself a nanny, or checked the boys into full-boarding at their private school and fought her every step of the way until she was too tired to fight me anymore.

  She’d run out of both money and stamina long before I ever would.

  But I didn’t fight her. Not because I didn’t give a shit about losing my boys – believe me, I gave plenty of fucking shits – but because of the final seething line Claire delivered as she slammed the door on our life and me along with it.

  You’re just like your father, Alex. Just like your filthy fucking father!

  I’d poured myself a whisky as the Range’s tyres screeched down our driveway. Thought about it as I smoked a cigarette, and thought about it some more as I smoked my way through another, and another after that, until the whisky bottle was all but empty and my tie was loose around my neck, and no matter how hard I thought about it there was only one verdict.

  Every piece of evidence stacked up against me.

  Guilty as charged.

  My sentence was the realisation that I love my boys even more than I despise my father. And that’s exactly the reason I only see them once a week on a Sunday.

  It’s better that way.

  For them, not me. Definitely not for me.

  It’s a shitty day today, the kind of light drizzle that makes the world look miserable as sin. I head away from London, with the headlights on low-beam in the dull afternoon, listening to nothing but the rhythmic thump of the wipers and Brutus panting in the passenger seat.

  Claire hates it when I bring the dog. She trusts him less than she trusts me.

  Under normal circumstances, I’d say she was right. The animal has a foul temper and his social skills skirt closer to nil even than mine. But Brutus loves our boys, just as I love them. Maybe because I love them. And they love him back, in spite of his mean eyes, and his truly monstrous overbite and the fact that his breath stinks worse than Bill Catterson’s diseased little prick. They see right through all of it, and love him all the same.

  I hope that’s how they feel about me, too.

  Adults rarely give kids credit for all that much. My parents certainly didn’t when I was growing up. They thought I’d buy into the paper-thin smiles, and the hushed voices, and the bristling niceties they put on for appearance’s sake, as though I was too young, too naive, too fucking ignorant to pick up on the hatred simmering under the surface in our household. As though I couldn’t possibly see through their bullshit veneer enough to know t
hey couldn’t stand the sight of one another.

  I’ve never wanted to patronise my own boys like that, so I don’t.

  When Thomas and Matthew asked me why their mother didn’t love me anymore I told them the truth.

  Because I’m an asshole.

  Because I’m incapable of plastering a fake smile on my face for the sake of keeping the peace.

  Because I can’t leave my work at the office.

  Because I don’t love her and she knows it, she’s always known it.

  And they’d listened, and shrugged and nodded, and Matthew – being a couple of years younger than his brother – had shed a a few quiet tears, and that was that. They’d settled in Hampshire, with Claire’s parents up the road, and every Sunday afternoon they’d be waiting for our allotted time together.

  Despite the crappy weather I’m excited today. Rugby tickets, England vs Wales, the best seats in the house for the game next month.

  I can’t wait to see their faces. They love rugby, Thomas especially. His games tutor tells me he’s good for ten years old. Broad and strong and resilient, fast too.

  He doesn’t quit, that’s what I’m told, no matter how tough it gets, Thomas will always dive headfirst into the scrum and come up trumps.

  He’s a winner. Just like me.

  Matthew, well, he’s much more like his mother.

  I pull onto the driveway, parking up right in front of the door to make an entrance, and the curtain in the main living room twitches just like always. Claire never comes outside to greet me.

  I’ll occasionally catch a flash of tight blonde curls, or a hint of a scowl as she shoots me daggers from behind the window, but she never graces me with the courtesy of a sneer to my face.

  Today, it appears, is different.

  I see her as the door opens, easing aside for the boys as they come charging out. I register the difference in a heartbeat, the change in her willowy curves, the Empire line dress. The way she’s standing, one hand idly on her belly, rocking back on her heels as though she’s a few months further along than she really is.

  I’d say three months tops.

  I get out of the car just in time for the boys to slam right into me, warm arms squeezing me tight as Brutus barks his greeting at them from the passenger seat.

  Dad! Dad! I came top in the History test, Dad! Terry took us bowling, Dad, and I won a trophy, Dad! We both did!

  Their happy voices are one of my most favourite sounds on earth.

  My other favourite sounds aren’t suitable for polite conversation.

  Terry wraps an arm around my ex-wife’s shoulders, making a right old fucking show of it. It all seems a bit primitive to me – his male-ego need to paw at something in order to demonstrate ownership.

  I don’t need to drape myself over a woman to show she belongs to me. It’s all in the eyes. In hers, in mine. If a woman truly belongs to you it’s written all over her. She smells of it. It’s in her smile. In the flutter of her lashes. In the way her body pulls towards yours, like a magnet. A charge.

  Claire was like that with me once upon a time.

  Now she’s gripped awkwardly under Terry’s arm while he shows off like a cockerel in a coop.

  The boys stay attached to me as I head towards the woman who used to wear my ring on her finger. My hand is already extended, and Terry takes it, squeezes overly hard, and I wonder again just what he’s lacking down below to require such a macho shake.

  Claire doesn’t take my hand.

  “We need to talk,” she tells me. “Later.”

  I don’t hide the glance at her belly. “News, I gather. I don’t need it spelling out.”

  She shifts her weight onto her hip. “Not that, Alexander. About the boys. It’s important.”

  I ruffle their hair and resist the urge to flip her the finger. Her prickly tone infuriates me, trying to stab little holes in the few measly hours I get with them every weekend.

  “Fine,” I tell her. “Later.” I smile my fake professional smile. “Terry.”

  He nods. “Alexander.”

  I step away before they take up any more of my precious fucking time.

  I TAKE the boys for dinner at a tasteless burger joint just off the A3 they’ve insisted on frequenting every Sunday these past few months. The coffee is bitter and thoroughly disgusting, and the burgers taste too cheap to be edible, but the boys love it here.

  Terry takes them, apparently.

  Good for fucking Terry.

  I wrap my godawful excuse for a meal in a napkin when they aren’t looking. Brutus will get considerably more enjoyment from it than I will.

  I wait until the boys have wolfed down their fries and shakes before I pull the tickets from my jacket pocket.

  I’ve been waiting all week for this, for the sweet wash of happiness I’ll feel when their eyes light up in recognition. I have the seats marked out on a map of the stadium on my phone, a 360 degree view of the ground so they’ll know exactly what we’re heading for.

  I slap the tickets down in front of them with a flourish, and my heart is thumping.

  Joy.

  It feels quite alien these days.

  “I’ve booked us the very best seats,” I tell them. “Right at the front. We’ll see everything, and after the game I’ve got us backstage passes. We’ll meet the players, get you some photos.” I’m smiling, and they’re staring, and I’m waiting for the moment, the moment when their faces light up.

  But it doesn’t come.

  Their smiles are weak and fucking awkward, and it stabs at me, right in the fucking gut.

  “What?” I ask, and there’s a brutality to my tone that I didn’t intend. I take a breath.

  It’s Thomas who spits it out. “It’s the twenty-second…”

  “Yes. Four weeks today.”

  “But we’re…” He looks down at the table. “We’re going to the football… with Terry… we were going to tell you today… Terry said to wait, until he definitely had tickets, said maybe you could come on Saturday instead, or–”

  “Or what?”

  He doesn’t want to say it, and I feel like an asshole for pushing when I know what’s coming.

  “Or what, Thomas? What did Terry say?”

  It’s Matthew that answers, his eyes so big and innocent. “He said maybe you could miss a week, for the football. He said maybe you wouldn’t mind.”

  Cunt.

  Terry is a fucking cunt.

  “I didn’t realise you boys liked football. Rugby’s your game, no?”

  Thomas doesn’t answer, but Matthew shakes his head. “We like football now, Dad. Thomas says football’s better. Cooler, isn’t it, Thomas?”

  Thomas looks fucking mortified.

  “Well?” I prompt. “Is football cool now? Cooler than rugby?”

  Thomas shrugs. “They’re both good. But we support Portsmouth now, like Terry. It’s his team. He got us shirts.”

  I feel the tick at my temples. The sour taste of rejection.

  “I see,” I say, and pull the tickets back to my side of the table.

  “Sorry, Dad,” Thomas says, and he is sorry. I wish he wasn’t. I wish he’d look me straight in the eye and admit he thinks rugby fucking stinks now and he’d much rather eat shitty burgers with Terry than me.

  “Sorry, Dad,” Matthew says.

  I choke down my disappointment. “Some other time, then. When the games don’t clash.”

  They nod. Matthew slurps the remnants of his shake. Thomas folds his napkin into little triangles.

  It’s really fucking awkward, all of it. This shitty place. This shitty weekend arrangement. This shitty situation with their cool new dad.

  “Are you angry?” Thomas asks, and it makes me smile. Direct. I like that.

  “Disappointed,” I tell him. “Not angry.”

  I have no intention of forcing their priorities into an order I approve of, that’s not in my make-up.

  The boys gather up their burger boxes and put their coats back
on, and I guess we’re done here. Allotted time counting down to zero.

  “Let’s go and give Brutus his burger,” I say.

  ONCE THE NEW football thing is out in the open, the boys can’t get enough of it. I hear all about it on the drive back – the Portsmouth team, their cruddy uniform, their goal-scoring history.

  I try to care, but all I feel is the unholy rage in my stomach. The desire to tell Terry exactly what I think of his ill-considered loyalty test.

  And I do tell him, just as soon as I’ve stepped over their twee little threshold and Claire’s sent the boys to their rooms.

  “Classy move,” I comment, “booking up a football match on my day with the boys.”

  He acts the innocent, all flustered as he tells me he didn’t know I had plans, thought one weekend wouldn’t matter.

  “Every weekend matters,” I assure him.

  “I’ll give you the money,” he blusters, “for the tickets.”

  Like I want his fucking money.

  He’s living in the house I pay for, driving the fucking car I pay for, standing on the fucking carpet my money paid to have fitted, and he has the fucking audacity to offer me a refund on the day he’s stolen from me.

  Cunt!

  Claire clears her throat and puts a hand on his arm. She’s nervous and it’s not about the fucking game.

  “We need to talk,” she tells me. “Terry and I, we, um, have plans…”

  “I can see that.” I raise an eyebrow. “I imagine the new addition was planned too.”

  “The boys wanted a younger brother or sister. Tyler, too.”

  Tyler. Terry’s drop-out teenage son has the perfect name for his flunky personality.

  “I’m glad they’re getting what they want.”

  “They want us to be a proper family,” Claire says, and it pangs. A proper family. One without me in it. “They’re close to Tyler now, and Thomas, well, he wants to be like his cool older stepbrother, wants to go to a regular school like he does, so we thought… next term… we thought we’d move the boys into Grange High. It’s close, and the results are good…”

  I’m shaking my head before she’s even finished, my brows heavy and my jaw gritted.