“It was two and a half days. And I was ill...”
With a wave of her French-manicured hand, I was dismissed. A prophetic gesture, I thought. So what, I also thought, sack me. The idea of leaving PR O’Create, of leaving PR in general, had germinated and was now growing at the rate of bamboo. Maggie was right. I had not only been diminished by my choice of men. Working in this office for six years had wizened me too. If I could chuck George, I could chuck my job, couldn’t I? I’d supported him for two years and now it was time to support myself.
On returning to my desk, I found an A4 brown envelope. “Who left this?” I asked Mimi.
“Technical bloke. One who mends our e-mails.”
“He was here? He came in person?”
“Yeah. When you were in with her maj. He’s all right, isn’t he?”
I had missed him by only moments. I ripped the envelope open and out fell a sheet of paper. I stared at it and realized that it was the blurry mess of an enhanced photograph. I held it upside down at first and then turned it round and began to make it out. It was indistinct and over-pixelated; the false colors of the printer threatened to overwhelm its content. I put my head to one side and made out the bright flash in the center of the page, and then down from that a body, legs and a pair of feet.
There was a note, from Ivan. “This is a blowup of the photo on the site of you and a man coming out the pub. I’ve enlarged one corner of it.” He had nice loopy handwriting. “The photographer was reflected in the window and this is the detail I’ve cropped.” But the face is obscured. “Yes, I know, there’s a flash obscuring the head,” his note continued. I stared again. How amazing, it was a photo of site perp; this shadowy silhouette actually provided evidence that a physical presence had stood near me and taken a photo; it was not a phantom. Ivan’s note concluded: “Can’t you remember anything about that day? Didn’t you see anyone close enough to take a photo?”
I didn’t recognize the figure. Nor could I recall anything suspicious about that evening, though I would have been drunk at this point. “I’m sorry, Ivan, I don’t remember,” I muttered out loud. You’d have thought if it had been someone I knew, I’d have recognized them. How stupid, stupid, stupid. Think. Nothing. It could have been Ivan; I hadn’t really known him at the time the photo was taken, or had I? Was it after I had enlisted him? I didn’t know. I stared at the figure, which looked as amorphous as the Loch Ness monster in one of those faked-up images that purport to show her.
There was a Post-it note with an arrow pointing to the photographer’s head, with the strange halo effect created by the flash, and Ivan’s writing continued. “They’re wearing a hoodie. I don’t own any hooded tops, honest.”
I didn’t like hooded tops. If men knew how much shuffling down dark streets wearing hoodies unnerved women, I wondered whether they’d do it. Or maybe that was the point of them. It seemed appropriate for the stalker to be wearing one, given that it was the garb favored by murderous joggers in made-for-TV movies. At that moment, the phone rang.
“Oh, it’s you,” I said to Ivan. My heart was beating so hard that I felt my head was pulsating too, as if I’d just climbed a very steep mountain.
“Please don’t hang up. I’ve been feeling so awful.”
“So you should.” Tracy walked past and raised her eyebrows at me.
“Knowing that you must have been feeling bad about those dates. Why would anybody write such a thing?”
“You tell me.”
“Come on, Izobel. I know you doubt that it’s me. I can hear it. You can tell it’s not me in the photo. That’s why I sent it to you. Look at it again, surely you must remember something about that night, seeing someone close to you. It’s a very bright flash, after
all. And you’d know if it had been me.”
“Everything else says it’s you.”
“Nothing says it’s me.”
I was wavering. “Why did you write the death dates?”
“I didn’t. And, anyway, they’re not there anymore.”
“What?” I opened the site on my computer and to hell with Tracy thinking that I was working on my “home page.”
He was right, the death dates were gone, with no explanation or acknowledgment. The phone handset shook against my ear. “So what?” I asked. “You put them there in the first place. How should I know what it means that you’ve taken them down?”
“You are infuriating.”
“And you’re a creep.”
“What can I do to change your mind?”
“Bring me proof that it’s not you.”
“What about the photo?”
“Not enough.” On my part, this conversation was bordering on banter, on flirtation.
“Please, Izobel.”
“Find out who else it could be. Get me some conclusive proof.” I put the phone down. I was being the hard-hearted harridan that I’ve always failed to be on meeting a new man. Those horrible dating manuals were right—it worked a treat.
I stared at the site. It was good, wasn’t it, that the death dates were down, though I realized then that I would never get the police interested in the site without them. I felt relief and a small smidgen of disappointment.
*
Frank wanted to have lunch with me and I wanted to have lunch with someone unconnected to the office. We met at a sandwich bar, where our choice of sustenance lay in congealing piles of shiny egg salad and coronation chicken that had just celebrated its golden jubilee. I looked around before we sat down and he looked at me doing so.
“What’s your problem, Izobel?”
“What? Nothing.” The death dates had gone, I reminded myself, the threat had gone.
“I’m sorry to hear about you and George,” he said as we bit into our overstuffed granary rolls.
“No, you’re not.”
“No, you’re right, I’m not.”
“You thought he was a tosser. You all did.”
“He was.”
“You’re talking about my boyfriend of two years. Anyway, I feel fine about it, I really do. I’m over him already. Though slightly surprised that you and your girlfriend know about it when it only happened on Friday afternoon.”
“Maggie.”
“I guessed.”
He did head-cocked-on-side sympathetic look, so exaggerated that I thought he must have cricked his neck. “I’m sure you’ll find someone.”
“Maybe, whatever, maybe I won’t. Doesn’t matter. I’d rather be on my own than with someone who all my friends thought was unworthy and might drive a wedge between us.”
“Have you thought about Internet dating?”
“Piss off.”
“What’s so wrong with the idea? Do you think it’s beneath you?”
“No, of course not, I’m just not interested in meeting anyone new. Least not yet. Nor am I particularly interested in your girl-friend’s site.”
“Internet dating is going to lead to a massive sociological shift in our perception of meeting life partners. History will look back at the second half of the twentieth century and the first decade of the twenty-first as an anomalous epoch when people thought they could meet their mates by random means. In previous generations we had matchmakers and small communities, now we will have people like Camilla and global networks.”
“Yeah, yeah.” I raised an eyebrow at him. “I’m sorry Frank, not to have got Camilla’s venture any publicity and I’m sorry she thinks I’ve been remiss and I’m sorry that she told my boss how crap I’d been. Now she’s coming in at half one, that’s why we had to have lunch early.”
“With the others I suppose.”
“Tweedledum and Tweedledee, yes, I should expect so.” We smiled at one another. “I’ve drawn up a detailed publicity plan for them.” I had dug out an old plan for a new moisturizer we’d PR-ed a couple of months before and had just done Find/Replace on any keywords, exchanging “skin care” for “love online” and “wrinkles” for “loneliness.” Fortunately all the stuff a
bout “advanced technology helping people to become the best that they can be” fitted both products.
“I wouldn’t worry about it,” he said. “She can be quite a bully sometimes.”
“Assertive, I’d say. Which is a good thing.”
He made patterns in the cocoa powder of his cappuccino. “Do you ever wonder what our lives would be like if we’d stayed together?”
I remembered what I had liked about Frank. He asked girly questions. “Yes, lots. But it never would have happened. We were never the sort of people who were going to last with the person we met in first term. Worse, we might have stayed together throughout our twenties and then split up, leaving ourselves completely unprepared for dating in the age of e-mail and the mobile telephone. Why, do you think about what it would be like to be with your college sweetheart?”
“Yes, I do.” He sighed. “It wouldn’t have been disastrous. A woman at work, professor of anthropological history, told me that the best thing you can do career-wise is settle young. That way you don’t use up valuable energy in chasing and getting together and then getting over it.”
“She’s right. Look at Maggie and Mick.” I stroked the remnants of my pustulant chin and felt the merest quiver between my thighs as I thought of the last time I had come into work after a random caress. “I waste so much of my office time on my crappy relationships. Worrying about George and wondering who his successor might be.”
“Is that why you took three days off last week?”
I paused. “Yes, I was psyching myself up to split up with George. I’d been fretting about doing it for a while.”
“You never said.”
“I can be quite enigmatic, you know.”
“Of course.” His head was now so to one side that his eye almost met his shoulder.
“Honestly, I’m great, I’m fabulous about it now.”
“Did you ever find out who was behind your Web libel thing?”
“No, no. It wasn’t important. It just gave Maggie and me a distraction from my bad job and her good pregnancy.”
He looked thoughtful again.
“Frank, are you OK?”
“Fine, fine.”
“There’s nothing wrong between you and Camilla, is there?”
“No, no. Quite the contrary.”
*
“So good of you to see us at last,” said Camilla. “Kind of lucky coincidence that I should have met Tracy on Thursday.”
“Indeed.”
“She is so lovely. You are lucky to have a female boss. And so young, too.”
I ushered Camilla, Becksy and Alice into a meeting room, papers in hand. I had jazzed up the tired old publicity plan that I had created for OnLove by adding their logo and ours, printing it out in color and binding it in black plastic spirals. That usually proved disproportionately impressive.
I could see why Camilla and Tracy might have liked each other on first meeting. They both had ironed hair, straight backs and rigid good taste. Camilla was brighter than Tracy, Frank wouldn’t go out with a girl with no culture, but they were hewn from the same piece of granite.
“So, how’s the Internet dating going?”
“Great. It’s hard when we’re all working on other jobs, but we’re raising the money to get toward its launch. A little publicity wouldn’t go amiss though.” Camilla laughed.
“And that’s where I come in. Here’s an initial plan, with certain guarantees. And the projected costs and comeback are out-lined on the last sheet. I’ve suggested two models: one with a monthly retainer and then additional costs per campaign based on results, the other a higher fee but all-inclusive and with fixed guarantees.” I handed them their packs, which were thickened by a couple of brightly colored cover sheets with words and phrases like “love,” “communication,” “through the keyboard” and “why online?” floating around in an oversize font.
“Good, very good,” said Camilla, on not having read any of the content. “I like it. I’m impressed, Izobel. So, when do we start? I’m available for interview.”
“Have you looked at the costs? There’s a budget on the last page.”
“Costs? I thought you were doing this as a friend. I don’t think Frank will be very impressed by your attitude, especially since I gather from him that you might need our matchmaking services now that you’re a bit of a lonely heart yourself.”
“I don’t think that will be necessary, thank you, Camilla.”
“And Tracy said—”
“Tracy would not approve of giving our services and resources for free. Look, I’ve done this plan for you and I’m very happy to advise, but any further active work will require you hiring me on a professional basis with the negotiated costs as outlined in the proposal or some sort of revenue share.”
“OK,” she said. “Thank you, Izobel.” There was no sarcasm in her voice, just acknowledgment. I liked the new me. “Izobel takes no nonsense from demanding clients and gives as good as she gets.” That’s what the caption to this meeting would have read.
“See you day after tomorrow, I guess,” I said to Camilla.
“Yes, Maggie’s thing. Where is it again? Frank can’t find the e-mail.”
“Blakeney’s, it’s a new bar near here. Don’t know what it’s like.”
“Should be fun. I think we’ll go straight after work.”
“Me, too.”
Alice spoke next. “Are you coming to the reunion?” Camilla and I both turned to her. “The school one, next month. Didn’t you read about it in the e-mail newsletter?”
“No,” we said with one voice, to which Camilla added, “I so don’t read the school newsletter.”
“Neither do I,” I said.
“Nor me,” said Becksy, “I never do.”
“Alice, you’ve really got to get a life. Get a hobby or something.”
“I’ve got lots of hobbies, actually, Camilla,” Alice said.
I looked at her and thought of Ivan. He had his art. I could believe Alice had a hobby, something geeky at a guess. Camilla, Becksy and I were the ones without interests, but I’m sure we believed ourselves to be the most interesting. I would get a hobby, I decided.
*
When I next checked the site, a couple of hours later, there was a new pap photo. It hadn’t taken long for it to respond to the fact that my life once again consisted of more than going out to get a pint of milk at the newsagent’s. The photo showed Frank and me at the fuel-polluted outdoor table of the café where we had lunched. I was gesticulating wildly with a piece of chicken clearly visible on the side of my mouth and he was listening intently. We looked happy, it was sunny and we seemed to be interested in what the other had to say. It wasn’t how I remembered the event that had taken place such a short while ago.
I always feel a poignant jealousy when I look at other people’s photo albums. Their lives seem a perpetual round of holidays, parties and weddings. But then, of course, they never take photos of themselves slumped in front of the television or cleaning the oven.
The site was my own photo album and yet I envied the life it portrayed. I wanted to be site Izobel Brannigan, a woman who “grabs an alfresco bite with a handsome friend” before heading back to her glamorous job in PR. Real Izobel Brannigan just had salmonella chicken, an opaque conversation and a job that was deadening.
Chapter Sixteen
Tuesday: get up, check site, avoid Tracy and Ivan, await phone call from George, hear nothing.
Wednesday: much the same, though the site sported an extra photo of me staring into window of fancy boutique with the caption “Izobel loves to mix designer and vintage for a romantic look that’s truly hers.” I’d gone to shop in my Tuesday lunch break because I was looking for something to wear to Maggie’s leaving party. I had a theory, never disproved, that if you wanted to pull you wore a light-colored top. Not necessarily white, just pale blue or green or any pastel. In the pitch-black morass of women decked in darkness, the girl in the light-colored top would always hav
e men around her, as if programmed like thunderflies congregating on a yellow car.
I think pale colors make your breasts look perkier, too.
The boutique was beautiful and expensive, but I had lost the will to shop. This was like losing my lifeblood, it made me feel like a Lothario without his lustfulness or George deciding he didn’t much like the taste of alcohol. Nothing was as it should be anymore. Clothes had always been both my ballast and my millstone. They gave me comfort and confidence and yet were part of the shallowness that meant I was excited by meeting the daughters of famous men and liked the thought of others envying me my glamour.
I had ignored the siren call of the aquamarine, diaphanous fitted shirt in the shop and was wearing a black dress that day. All girls love to wear black dresses, indulging in their communal crush on Audrey Hepburn. That day I was dressing for women, for me, and not for men; I didn’t need a pulling top as that was the last thing I wanted to do. I would remain alone, I vowed, for at least half the length of time I’d been with George. A year of living celibately.
*
“I heard about you and George,” said a well-meaning acquaintance, head to one side.
“No, it’s great. It’s fine, really I’m fine.”
“You’re being so brave. It must be so difficult splitting up with someone in your thirties.”
I suppose Maggie’s party marked the beginning of a new era for it was the first time I’d been out since George and I had split up. I looked around the bar for escape. It was an old men’s boozer that had been stripped and kitsched up, like an octogenarian displaying her crepey embonpoint in a Vivienne Westwood corset. It was the bastard child of a fifties diner and the Palace of Versailles, where swags of brocade curtain did battle with an old Space Invaders game and antique mirrors mottled our reflections. What was I doing there? I knocked back my overpriced drink. I could at least get drunk.
“Excuse me, I need to go to the loo.” There it was cool and deliciously lonely. I came out only when somebody started pounding on the door. I did the panicked walk of someone coming into a party and not knowing to whom I was going to talk, who’d want to talk to me, did I know anyone. Salvation came in the form of Frank and Camilla at the bar.
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