Kismet

by Luke Tredget

  There is only one trendyish cafe on Kilburn High Road, and Anna orders poached eggs and asparagus, as a kind of conciliatory gift to herself. It is the same cafe where she and Pete came after being shown their flat by the estate agent over three years ago; she remembers him saying that this place was evidence that Kilburn was about to take off, that the high road would soon be filled with similar purveyors of the organic and free range, locally sourced and ethically procured. Being reminded of this doesn’t bring the threat of more tears, and she is able to concentrate on reading through the Gwyneth questions, and then putting the list face down on the table and reciting them from memory. She does this without hesitation, and decides that the questions are better than the ones for Sahina, with the brand values more subtly placed – this time she will hold her nerve and ask each one, regardless of how Gwyneth responds.

  It will be fine, she decides, and in the wake of this optimistic thought she notices that the coffee she is drinking is unusually delicious. Most of the dozens of coffees she drinks each week pass by without so much as a thought, but every so often one like this stands out and grabs her with how sweet and rich and fragrant it is – it feels like all those other coffees are justified by these rare moments of sensory delight. She raises the mug towards her face and studies the brown dissolving microfoam, as if within the evaporating pattern she might detect the secret of its quality. The remaining foam looks like a series of white and gold islands in a brown sea, as they would appear from a plane passing overhead, and maybe these two things – coffee foam and archipelagos – are indeed subject to the same natural laws, just on a scale several million times removed. This same pattern probably repeats itself at even more extreme scales as well, can probably be detected in entire galaxies and also molecules and atoms too small for even a microscope …

  This thought feels like a miniature revelation, and the fact that it occurred to her at all is a sign that her best self is returning. Her mood lifts further when golden light creeps across her table, and she sees that the sun has burnt through the early morning clouds. She pushes away her half-eaten plate of food and asks for the coffee to be transferred to a paper cup.

  There aren’t any benches on Kilburn High Road, since no one besides weary shoppers would want to dwell there, so Anna sits in a bus shelter opposite the station, sipping her coffee and feeling the sun on her face, thinking that she must be over the worst. The despair of last night and early this morning has now passed, and her deeper instincts are coming to the surface. There are three other people at the bus stop, and she remembers the guy that looked like her dad and sang to her a few weeks ago. She would love it if he approached her again, right now, but something like that never happens in Kilburn, which feels exclusively reserved for the predictable, the drab. Kilburn, she thinks. It’s like the name itself – along with Balham, Clapham, Dulwich – is a protective measure against anything interesting happening there. She imagines vocalising this to Geoff, knowing that he would reply with a ready-made speech on the topic, something about the dull nomenclature being a deliberate means of keeping the residents sedate. She pictures him sitting beside her at the bus stop and is filled with an excitement that makes her feel dizzy. She has barely thought of him since he dropped her off in Hammersmith, and for a second it strikes her as unusual that he hasn’t texted her. But they have been in contact during this time, via some invisible and indefinable channel, and the idea of him is now returning to her stronger than ever. She knows, without the slightest doubt, that she’s made the right decision. And not just for her – for Pete, too. Even if nothing did happen between him and Zahra, he should ultimately be with a successful and sensible middle-class girl, someone who wants the same things as him. On some level he knows this too.

  This thought of Pete threatens to drag down her mood, so she takes a final sip of coffee and thinks of Geoff again. The weekend they spent together, the job he offered her, the fact that they could soon be living and working and planning a shared future, starting with their next meeting, just eight or nine hours away. This feels like a vast span of time that has to be bridged, and she impatiently stands up and throws away her coffee and hurries across the street, as if wanting to rush through the day to get to him quicker.

  *

  At 8.21 a.m. Anna enters her office building, and the fact she is greeted by the security guard rather than the receptionist proves this is the earliest she has ever arrived. And indeed, when the lift bears her upwards to the third floor, she is delighted to be met with an entirely empty office. The only movement and life is from the big board, which has been ticking away and refreshing all night, like traffic lights at a deserted junction. It is surprising to see that her Sahina article has vanished from the rankings entirely, but this just makes her more focused on the task in hand. She settles down with her questions and practises reciting them again, in reverse order, and still has time afterwards to answer some Twitter messages before Ingrid finally appears beside her.

  ‘I did it!’ she says, spinning her chair around to face Ingrid and holding her arms aloft. ‘I’ve beaten you. I’d like to thank my family, my friends and most of all God.’

  Ingrid smiles at this but doesn’t say anything, and then puts both her hands on the back of her chair. She isn’t wearing her coat or carrying her bag, and the screen of her computer has the little green standby light on.

  ‘Wait, you have been here?’

  Ingrid glances at Anna, her smile now gone, and then looks over her shoulder towards the meeting rooms at the end of the floor.

  ‘You need to speak to Stuart,’ she says.

  ‘You’ve been with him this whole time? What’s going on?’

  Ingrid is still gripping the backrest of her chair with both hands, and her frown deepens and her lips purse tightly; it looks like she might cry.

  ‘Oh, Anna!’ she says.

  It is clear that something is seriously wrong, and without thinking about it Anna is up and on her feet and walking towards whatever it is. As she strides across the clearing she can see Stuart sitting in the Quiet Room, his back to the glass, and then she is pushing into the room, her heart everywhere at once.

  ‘Hey, Stu,’ she says, taking a seat opposite him. ‘Ingrid says you want to speak to me.’

  He is sitting in front of his laptop, and for a second he holds the frozen pose of someone interrupted in the middle of a task. Beside him on the table is a black attaché case that she has never seen before. Then, still without looking at her, he bites his bottom lip and closes the laptop.

  ‘Anna, Anna, Anna, Anna,’ he says. ‘Yes, I’m afraid that I do.’

  His eyes meet hers for a second, then he taps his finger ponderously against his closed lips. Slanting sunlight is entering the window behind her and cleaving the room along a diagonal into two distinct halves: the light and the dark.

  ‘Can we get on with it?’ she says, checking her watch. ‘I’m going to be late for my interview.’

  ‘No, you’re not. For once you’re not going to be late for anything.’

  ‘Oh?’ says Anna, a tight feeling spreading across her chest. ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘Because Ingrid will be going instead. Anna, we’ve had some issues over the weekend.’

  He flips open the black attaché case and tosses a ream of paper across the table to her. She turns it the right way round and sees it is a printed email from Paula to the guys at Romont and to Clem, saying they will be taking immediate disciplinary action against the journalist in question.

  ‘What the …’

  The next page in the ream is a much longer email, consisting of one huge paragraph in which many words and phrases have been capitalised and emboldened. Anna’s eyes jump around the text, impatient to grasp the gist, and she has to turn the page again before seeing it is an email from Sahina Bhutto, addressed to Clem. It says that a major project she is planning in China is under threat because of offensive quotes about government officials that were EXPLICITLY OFF RECORD and that the w
riter HAD NO RIGHT WHATSOEVER TO REPEAT.

  Anna’s face is burning, her forehead especially.

  ‘But it’s not true,’ she says. ‘She never said—’

  ‘Keep reading, Anna.’

  Sahina explains that the quoted statement was made while the interview was interrupted by one of her employees, to whom the comments were addressed. The matter discussed was not initiated by the journalist and could IN NO WAY be considered part of the interview. It also says that the journalist appeared disorganised and distracted, and she suspects that this might be the reason for the mistake. She rounds off with a threat of possible legal action if the China project does indeed collapse, and a general reflection on the decline of journalistic standards.

  ‘Is it true, that she said them to someone else?’

  ‘Um,’ says Anna. The pages are quivering in her hand. ‘She kind of said them to both of us.’

  He chews on this and folds his arms.

  ‘She’s not serious about suing, is she?’

  ‘The legal team have been over it and they don’t think she has grounds. The bigger problem is that she sent this to Romont, and now they are threatening to pull the whole series unless we take swift action.’ He glances at her as he says this.

  ‘You’re going to fire me?’

  ‘I’m sorry, Anna. My hands are tied. We have to suspend you, with immediate effect.’

  Anna looks down at her knees, also shaking slightly. Official confirmation of disaster makes her feel nauseous. Beyond Stuart’s head, the office is beginning to fill up. Mike and Beatrice are walking across the clearing, sharing a joke as they unbutton their jackets. Ben from sports emerges from the dark recess of the kitchenette with a filled cafetiere. The door to the landing opens and another guy enters, one of the many people she knows well enough to smile at but not to exchange any words. They all look so excessively carefree and cosy, inhabitants of a world that Anna has been ejected from permanently, never to return. In the centre she can see the back of Ingrid’s head, beside her empty desk, and the sight makes her grief and shock harden into bitterness.

  ‘You told me to put those quotes in,’ she says. ‘It wasn’t my idea.’

  ‘I asked if it was off the record.’

  ‘You asked me if she said it.’

  ‘You knew what I meant. Or at least you should have done. But listen: I do accept I am partly to blame. You clearly weren’t ready to take on this kind of responsibility. Paula asked me at the start if you could handle it, and I said that you could. That was my mistake.’ He smiles at her in a consolatory, pitying way. ‘That’s why we’re not firing you. It is a suspension, perhaps for one month or two, until this blows over. Paula says she will try and find you something else, something less senior. Perhaps a team assistant role.’

  ‘An assistant?’

  ‘Most likely in another team, on another floor. But we don’t have to make a decision now.’ He is still smiling, and it occurs to her that he is happy; perhaps this is precisely what he wanted all along, for her to mess up so he could get rid of her.

  ‘You don’t have to find me something else. I’m going to quit.’ This sends his chin backwards into his neck. ‘I’ve been offered another job, anyway. A proper writing job.’

  ‘Anna, I think you should take some time—’

  ‘No thanks. I don’t need any of your suggestions. As far as I’m concerned this is entirely your fault. I never wanted to include those quotes. I didn’t want to even ask those questions. This is all down to you, and you’re just blaming me because you haven’t got the … balls to face up to it.’

  He looks shocked and holds out a calming hand.

  ‘Anna, please don’t use that kind of—’

  ‘No,’ she says, almost shouts, standing up from the desk. ‘I’ll say what I want. Fuck you. And fuck this stupid process you call journalism. It isn’t journalism at all, it’s just prancing around to please corporate clients. You wouldn’t know an interesting piece of writing if it was jammed up your arse.’

  Stuart’s eyes are wide in shock.

  ‘I’m not going to be the assistant to anyone in this place. I’m going to be a real writer. Writing about things that actually matter.’ She taps her finger against her chest as she says this, in the rough vicinity of her heart. ‘See you around. And thanks for the chat.’

  With that she rounds the table and pushes back through the glass door. As she crosses the clearing she sees that Ben and Jessica and Mike are all watching her, are not even trying to hide it; her voice must have carried out of the room. Before she reaches her desk Ingrid turns in her chair, a broken, tragic expression on her face. Anna smiles at her, then at all the watching faces, projecting total serenity. It feels fitting that she is the centre of attention; maybe this is how her life will be from now on. It would be nice to have one of those boxes to carry her belongings, but there is nothing of hers on the desk other than her phone, her accomplice in sin. She slips this into her bag in exchange for her ID card, and then takes her coat and walks across the clearing, perhaps for the last time.

  ‘Don’t look so sad, everyone,’ she says, turning at the door, feeling the need to say something to all the shocked faces watching her, including Ingrid, who is following her out. ‘You’ll be seeing me again.’

  *

  Anna arrives back on Kilburn High Road just before 11 a.m. In one sense it feels strange to be back so soon, and in another rigorously simple: she left to go to work, and now is back again, having been fired. No: having quit, she tells herself. This makes her feel slightly better, though she is still irked by the sight of the shops and businesses and buildings of Kilburn that she had mocked just a few hours ago; they now appear to be laughing at her in revenge, their windows and doorways so many grinning teeth. She hurries along the street with her head down, and it is a relief to turn onto the quiet side street and then be encased in the silence of her flat. But once she has taken off her coat and dropped her bag and sat down, she finds she cannot relax. Her nerves are singing, and the image of Stuart’s face keeps forcing itself into her mind. She paces around the living room and hallway and kitchen, each room as silent and lifeless as a morgue, and feels an almost physical need to speak to someone. Her instinct is to call Zahra, but things are too weird between them at the moment. She obviously can’t call Pete either, and she tells herself she should ring Geoff instead. But she doesn’t want to. It is far too early in their relationship to burden him with such news, especially since they haven’t even switched off. This thought stops her still in the middle of the living room, wondering why this is and what’s holding him back. She can sense panic rising within her, and she grabs her old laptop from the bedroom and leaves the flat again, barely ten minutes after entering.

  This time she confronts the high road head on and, to prove that she’s fine, goes back to the trendy cafe and takes the exact same window seat as she did that morning. Keeping busy is the key to blocking out thoughts of Stuart and Sahina, and first of all she writes an email to the Guardian journalist, suggesting that they meet for coffee sometime this week. Then she checks Twitter, sees she has no new messages, and logs on to her online banking instead. She looks at the various numbers for a long time. Standing orders. Direct debits. Overdraft limits. ISA savings accounts. She does some rough calculations on the laptop’s calculator and realises she will have to ring Pete soon to discuss mortgage repayments, and what they’re going to do with the flat. Then her phone buzzes with a message from Ingrid, saying she is so shocked and sad she can’t think straight. It is just a shorter version of what Ingrid said on the street two hours ago, as they hugged goodbye, and Anna replies with a shorter version of what she said then: that she really was planning to quit anyway, that she already has another job lined up, and a meeting with a Guardian journalist about the suitcase project. The message sends and she tells herself that these things really are true, that Geoff has offered her another job and that she will probably meet the journalist, but for some reason these f
acts don’t diffuse calmness or satisfaction – there is something slippery about them, as if they lack foundations. Once again her thoughts are directed to the fact that Geoff and her haven’t switched off, and she decides that this is what she needs to feel grounded. Never mind that it should come from him, and take place in a romantic setting – she wants it to happen right now, as soon as possible. Her phone is still in her hand, and she opens Kismet and calls Geoff.

  ‘How are you?’ he says, answering almost immediately. ‘I was worried yesterday afternoon.’

  ‘I’m okay, thanks. I’m … good.’

  ‘Really? You don’t sound fantastic. How did you get on with Ms Paltrow?’

  Anna is silent for a moment, then says: ‘Geoff, are you busy right now?’

  ‘Unfortunately so. I’m in dratted Vauxhall.’

  ‘I was hoping I could see you.’

  ‘Is everything alright?’

  ‘Yes, everything is fine. I just need to talk to you about something. Can you finish early?’

  He still sounds concerned, but she assures him again that she is fine, and through a quick negotiation they agree to meet at his flat at 4 p.m. Without even dropping her laptop at the flat she heads to the station and takes the Bakerloo and Northern lines to London Bridge. Her plan is to first of all kill time at Borough Market, but this is a bad idea. Every single item on every single stall – the hanging legs of ham, the piles of dead fish, the stacks of organic vegetables – reminds her of Pete, and she instead buys a coffee and walks south towards Elephant and Castle. She wanders around the shopping centre by the station, past the brands – Clarks, Thomas Cook, W. H. Smith, McDonald’s, Argos – that are as familiar and deep-seated as family members, as her earliest memories. This is the kind of place she belongs, she thinks, rather than Borough Market. This is an unfortunate idea, since it reminds her that she is a provincial nobody who has been pretending to be a smart London professional, and has finally been uncovered as a fraud. She leaves the shopping centre, as if chased out by this unpleasant notion, and browses instead the market stalls that spread around and below the station. She walks past scarves and saris and piri-piri chicken and mobile phone covers and cheap trainers and jogging pants, feeling totally invisible, vaporous. She tells herself that this is what Geoff said freedom feels like, and that in order to escape the confines of her old life she had to destroy it. She tries to project her thoughts forwards to some future idyll, Geoff and her in the villa on a Greek or Italian island, but these brave thoughts skim the surface of her anxiety and do not dislodge the sickly, nervous feeling. At one point she catches herself gawping at a stall of luminous sweets, and to justify her weird behaviour she buys a foot-long red liquorice lace, which she sits down on a bench to eat. When she finishes she resumes walking around, and can’t stop grinding her teeth.