by Liam Livings
I looked to the window and realised it was ajar. The wind blustering through lifted the feathers into the air and scattered them again.
Fuck it.
Chapter 11
The next day I had a call from Amy. “I’ve got something to tell you,” she said. “Are you somewhere private you can take the call?”
I looked around the open-plan office: people sipped drinks, ate crisps at their desks, while others stared at spreadsheets on their screens. I caught the laughter of a couple of the secretaries talking about TV last night with one of the director’s executive assistants—a woman who was rumoured to assist with an awful lot more than his work.
I walked to the lift lobby and entered the stairwell, explaining to Amy what I was doing, then sat on the stairs, looking out at the City of London below, the Thames snaking its way into the distance. “Right, go on.”
“I’ve handed my notice in at work. A week, it turns out. So I finish Friday.”
“Did you get a science job over the weekend, then?”
“No, none of the agencies were open. They don’t work weekends. I spoke to my manager and told him, and he said could I take that as my notice. I thought, if I don’t do this now, I won’t do it. I didn’t know until after I’d said yes that I was only on a week’s notice, but once I found that out, it was too late, so… so I said yes. It means I’ve got to get something else, something that isn’t comfortable and easy like this job is. I have to, or I’ll have to move back to Wales, with my parents. And you know how much I don’t want that.”
I said nothing, thinking how ridiculously reckless she’d been, but didn’t say so. “What about your flat, how will you pay for that?”
“I’ve got some money put by. A bit of mad money just in case.”
“Well, this is certainly your mad period, I’d say, so that’s about right.” I bit my lip.
“Come on, I thought you’d be excited for me, happy that I’ve done it.”
“I am. What do you need me to do?”
“Can I come round this week and work on my CV and some letters with you? Whatever you did for yours seems to have worked, so I want a bit of that to rub off on me. Okay?”
“Of course.”
Later that week, Amy arrived at my place. She’d emailed me her CV—which hadn’t been updated since before uni and only contained her current job and one more Saturday job before that, working in Boots the chemist. She’d also sent the start of an application and a note to get her deep crust pizza this time: I need the extra carbs for thinking.
She unlocked the door with the spare key I’d given her years ago. Her eyes were wide and she’d lost some weight. She hugged me, held me tight, and started to talk into my hair. “I’m totally freaking out, actually. Like, completely shitting myself. I think I’ll go and ask for my old job back. That’s what I need to do, isn’t it? I was thinking about it all on the way over, and I do think, I now realise, I’ve been a totally reckless idiot. I’m literally flinging myself off the cliff of chance and hoping someone with a fated lifeboat will catch me. I’ve never done anything like this before, so really I can’t do it now, because it’s all bound to end in tears. I’m definitely going to ask for my job back.” She pulled back and stopped talking into my hair.
“Are you done?” I asked, gripping her shoulders hard.
“Ouch, you’re hurting me.”
I loosened my grip. “You can’t live half a life. You can’t play it safe all the time. You’ve got to fling yourself off the cliff and see if someone catches you.” I thought about what Sky had said about using what we had. “But first we’ve got to do you a shit-hot CV and an amazing letter. And then we’ll see what the universe throws back at you.”
“I don’t want to have anything thrown back at me. I want to be caught, I want to land in a lifeboat of luck, or I’m going to fall and end up on the pointy rocks of chance, down below.” Her eyes started to tear up. “Shit, I said I wouldn’t cry. I shouted at myself that I would not cry, all the way over here. And now I’m here, with you, and this is what happens.”
“What about your tarot cards? Did you do them after this big decision? And do you want me to do your crystals or something?”
“You can’t just do my crystals. You need to know what you’re doing.” She paused. “I did do my tarot cards, as it goes. Just a little peep just to see.”
Even I knew you couldn’t do a “little peep” at tarot cards. You either read them or you didn’t, there were no in-betweens. But I let that slide, given the circumstances. “And?”
“Something about something purple being the key—which is my birth colour anyway, so that’s no news—and that was it.” She sighed.
We had been working on Amy’s CV and letter for a couple of hours, only stopping for mouthfuls of deep-pan pizza. I knew if she was to have any chance of being caught by her guardian angel, we needed to make the most of what she had. I knew the rules, and I wanted to stick to them.
“You know I went away last week for the team-building thing in that big castle in Berkshire, with the bank?”
“How could I not? All you did was send me pictures of your four-poster bed, the crunchy gravel drive, the impressive towers, everything. What do you think about this paragraph here: is it bold enough or a bit arrogant?” She pointed to part of her CV on my laptop screen.
“It’s fine.” I coughed. “Look, something happened that weekend that I didn’t tell you about it. And truthfully, I’m not really sure why I didn’t tell you. It’s not like I haven’t done similar before—many times before, actually. Only this time, I just….”
“Did you go paintballing? And were you shit? Like, completely shit, last-person-to-be-picked, dead-within-five-minutes shit?”
“I wasn’t too bad, actually. I was second from last to be picked and lasted a full thirty minutes.”
“Only ’cause you hid in the woods for most of the time, I bet!”
How did she know? Must be those bloody tarot cards, or her crystal ball, or something else she’d attribute it to, no matter what I asked.
“This paragraph, what do you think?” She pointed to the screen.
“It’s fine, I’ve just tidied it up and made it a bit stronger, more clear. Look, there was this butler, or waiter, or something, I dunno. I’m not good with servant roles. It’s not like many places have them, is it?”
She saved the document, took a mouthful of pizza, and turned to look at me.
I sat to her left, so I didn’t look to my right as I couldn’t meet her eyes. I looked down. “So he showed me to my room, carried my bags. Is that a butler, or a porter? I don’t know. And I tipped him. It only seemed right. As I gave him the money, our hands touched briefly, and he made it last longer than it needed to.”
“And then you jumped him and threw him onto the four-poster bed and fucked his brains out?”
“Please, I’m not a complete animal. Although I was tempted. No, that was it. We had the afternoon’s lectures, team-building exercises—like I said, I was pretty good at paintballing. Then I was in the bath, having a long soak—my feet killed. In fact, my whole body killed after all those paint bullets. I had bruises for days.”
“You are so gay, Richard.” Amy smiled.
I looked to my right and met her eyes. “That’s not the gayest bit. So I was lying in the bath, and I really fancied a cup of tea, so I rang the button.”
“What button?”
“There’s a call button in every room. The hotel receptionist had explained that if I wanted anything, I was to ring, and someone would bring it for me. It’s five-star. They pride themselves in getting their guests whatever they want, as long as it’s legal, the receptionist said, and then she gave me a knowing smile.”
“And they just charge it to your room? The bank pays?”
“That’s what she said. Darling, it’s a FTSE 100 company. The board’s Christmas party is at the Ritz, completely booked out for the bank only. Some colleagues were telling me all sorts about w
hat they used to get up to at Christmas parties before the banking crash. But that’s not for here.”
“No, that’s not. So, you rang from the bath, and then what happened?”
“Oh… so this waiter-porter-butler arrives. He had a pair of tight black trousers, a white shirt, and little bow tie, with a red waistcoat that exactly matched the curtains in the entrance hall.”
“Now that’s the gayest thing I’ve ever heard you say.”
“He put the tray next to the bath and asked if there would be anything else Sir would like.”
“Sir?”
‘Yes, Sir. I said that was it for now. He said he needed to check a form of ID for the room service charging, a credit card, whatever. I asked him to get my wallet.”
“And he said you could pay him another way?” Amy suggested, licking her lips.
“No. This isn’t a porn film. People in real life don’t actually say things like that. No, I asked him to get my wallet from my bedside table. He said staff weren’t allowed to handle guests’ wallets or purses, for security reasons. He brought me a towel, and I went to step out of the bath, while he handed it to me. And I slipped backwards, and he fell forwards into the bath with me.”
“And then you shagged him?”
“Not quite. We got out of the bath—me wrapped in the towel, him in his wet clothes—and we started to laugh.”
“Because he saw how small and unimpressive your manhood is?”
“No, because the whole situation was a bit like something from a porn film, and it seemed funny. He told me he knew I was gay as soon as I arrived. And I told him I knew he was when our hands touched as I tipped him.”
“What gave you away when you arrived?”
“My luggage: the wheeled suitcase and manbag matched. Straight men don’t do that, apparently! I was a bit pissed off, actually. I thought I wasn’t too obvious. I was going for a touch of James Bond metrosexual with a good dose of smouldering sexuality—of indeterminate direction, of course. Turns out he knew I was as gay as bunting as soon as I got out of the taxi.”
“And then you shagged?”
“And then we shagged, yes. One minute he was in wet clothes and me a towel, and the next we were naked, rolling about on my four-poster bed.”
“Did he come back for more, later that week, or just the once?”
“Just the once. He said it was too much of a risk. He already had quite a bit of explaining to get round his wet uniform and the long delay in my room with the tea. Once, he could get away with. Twice, it would raise suspicions.”
“Well done, you.” Amy lifted her hand for a high five.
I shrugged. “It was all right, I suppose.”
She lowered her hand. “All right, you suppose? You shag one of the hired help in a stately home in the countryside, and it was all right. Now I know something’s wrong with you.”
“We finished, and he just went. Disappeared, gone. He didn’t really want to talk, before or after, or even during, now I remember it.”
“During? Who talks during sex?”
I raised my eyebrow. “You know that feeling you get after you’ve had a takeaway and you know you should feel full, but actually you feel a bit let down, a bit dirty, because you’ve succumbed to the lures of crap takeaway food. Because it’s left you unsatisfied?”
Amy nodded. “I’m aware of this, yes. Not that I eat takeaway too often, but yes.”
“Lies. Anyway, that’s how I felt. As he left. Just like that.”
“Then why did you do it?”
“I had an itch that needed scratching. And he was there,” I said, looking at the table, away from Amy’s eyes.
“Like why people climb Everest, or something. Because it’s there. No harm done, eh? A diverting story to distract us from this CV doctor work. That much is at least true.” She started typing again.
“At the time, I thought it would properly scratch the itch I had. But afterwards, nothing. Just like the takeaway. What does that mean?”
She stopped typing and looked at me. “It means you’re not eighteen anymore. It means you’re through your slaggy stage—maybe. It means you’re still missing that bloke who disappeared, what was he called? The one you had the all-night, with no sex with.”
“Him, yeah. I did wonder if it had something to do with him.” I returned my gaze to my laptop screen and waved at Amy to resume work on her CV.
Chapter 12
A month or so later, I stood on the pavement on my way to work one morning and was just about to step into the road, when I paused. A police car whooshed past on the wrong side of the road—from the direction I hadn’t looked.
I looked to the sky, and mouthed, “Thank you, Sky,” before crossing to get to my office. I caught a glimpse of myself in the glass of a building. I looked like a City banker, I walked like a City banker, I was a City banker—an apprentice City banker.
Amy had invited me for drinks with her new workmates that evening. She had got an academic placement for a few months at Imperial College’s South Kensington campus, for the University College London Hospital. She was all about the “campus” element—it made her feel like she’d gone back to uni again, and she loved that. “We’re researching into making a plastic that’s as strong as steel,” she’d explained after taking the tour and being offered a place.
“Isn’t this all a bit fast?” I’d asked.
“You were the one who told me to do something about it. Turns out, once I did, once I started talking to these people, I realised I’d found them. My people. All along I’d thought what I really wanted to do was become a manager at The Music and Video Shop. Because that’s what I was expected to do. Turns out I didn’t want that at all.”
Amy explained she’d met this woman at her interview, when she first came to the campus. Pat was dressed in a swishy purple skirt and suede purple boots with a white lab coat over the top. She asked Amy where she’d got her mini dreamcatcher earrings, and Amy mentioned a shop they both knew. As Pat led her to the interview room, she had said, “You won’t be able to wear them here—lab policy—and don’t mention anything about them to that lot, and you should be fine.” She had waved as the door closed behind Amy, and Amy sat in front of a panel of three white-lab-coated scientists. “I brushed my hair forward to cover the earrings, and thanked God, Allah, crystals, my star sign, and everything else, that I hadn’t worn the amethyst necklace,” she said knowingly with a wink.
Amy explained that on the first day, she and Pat bonded over dreamcatchers while Amy stuck hers against the window next to her desk. “I said, ‘I probably don’t need it, because it’s already here, the dream. But it’s better to be safe than sorry.’”
Pat had led Amy to her desk and pointed to a purple crystal hanging from the mug tree in the corner of the room. “I told the boys it was part of the mug tree, decoration for when you don’t have a mug hanging, like an empty Christmas tree.” Pat smiled.
“And they believed you?” Amy had asked.
“There was no reason why they wouldn’t believe me. I work in science. Why would I be into crystals, purple, or whatever?”
And now Amy and this woman—who sometimes answered to Purple, as it was her colour—were inseparable.
It had been Pat’s suggestion to invite me to the drinks thing. Very casual, no need for me to change after work, just some drinks in a pub round the corner from the campus in South Kensington. The two women and a sea of sciency men. I was prepared for lots of facial hair, the wrong sort of geek-chic glasses, and clothes that were just the wrong side of the invisible “looking like a twat-stroke-being really fashionable” line.
I wasn’t disappointed. I slipped through the sea of NHS specs and facial hair to where Amy and Pat were sharing a bottle of white wine at their own table, with two empty chairs. Amy patted the chair next to her, and I sat.
“So, I finally get to meet the Richard I’ve heard so much about.” Pat shook my hand across the table.
I replied, “What’s
it like being the only women in a department of men?”
“Like that’s the weirdest thing about us working here.” She pointed to a purple crystal hanging round her neck.
“Do they know about your… other interests?”
“When I asked Douglas which star sign he was, he replied about refusing to believe anything as reductive as people being divided into twelve different groups, and that none of that could have anything to do with which particular day we were born and where the sun was at that time. So I asked him again, and he told me he was an Aquarius or Pisces, depending on which horoscope I was reading. I read both, and he said it was pretty accurate.”
“What a bloody hypocrite.”
“They walk amongst us, it seems,” Pat replied.
“So how did you leave it?”
“He wouldn’t make a scene if we didn’t make one. He said he couldn’t be seen to read a horoscope at home either, because his wife would probably leave him. I said that was a bit dramatic, and he just stared at me. So now he comes in most days to talk about how the plastic research is coming on, but really so we can read him his two horoscopes.”
Amy asked, “Hasn’t he at least committed to one of the two star signs?”
“Says he wants to keep things open. It’s all open to interpretation, he said.”
We all rolled our eyes.
At this point, a man came up to Pat, kissed her on both cheeks, and sat down in the final empty seat next to her. Pat introduced him as Bobby before grabbing her wine and leaving us to it. I caught Amy’s eye as she left the table, and scowled.
He wore a blue T-shirt a size too small, revealing the shape of his nipples. “Alright?” he asked, with a cheeky grin and a twinkle in his very piercing very blue eyes. “Fancy going somewhere else?”
“I’m fine here, thanks,” I replied, primly, like some Victorian lady’s maid overly flattered to be asked out.
“I’ll get some shots, loosen things up a bit.”
