by RJ Bailey
I sat down once more. ‘I might not want to get match fit. Honestly, it doesn’t seem all that important now. You know, what happens to an Ultra or two.’
‘I understand,’ said Ben. ‘We all burn out on that. I had some Ukrainian in here whingeing about his wife’s handbag collection and how she had asked Hermès to line the shelves of her handbag closet in leather. And just for a second I heard a voice in my head going: handbag closet? But you’ve got to ignore that voice. They are not like us, the rich, that’s all you need to know.’
I thought of that old joke: The rich are different from us. They have a shitload of money. But I know that wasn’t what Ben meant. They live in a different country, an archipelago scattered across the globe: London, New York, Monaco, Moscow, Singapore, a yacht on the Med, a villa in Morocco . . . And all the money that fuels this fragmented country of the rich acts like a huge gravitational field, distorting reality. And when you’re very close to huge piles of it – as happens when you are a PPO to billionaires – you can’t see how life is bending out of shape.
‘But a hundred grand plus expenses. Who knows . . .?’ He let that dangle.
‘One day I, too, could have leather-lined shelves?’ I suggested.
‘Or Jess could,’ he said.
My mouth did its twisty over-my-dead-body thing of its own accord. Leave my daughter out of this, I thought. But I couldn’t help thinking what the money would do for her.
‘What else are you going to do with your life? Go back into the army? Too old. What else are you good for? And think on this – in a couple of years you’ll be waving Jess off to university. Then that’s it. Empty house. But unless you want her to come out with a small nation’s debt like every other kid, you’ve got to fund her. Look, you’re a top PPO. Well, you were a top PPO. It’s a waste you just sitting in Dalston—’
‘Islington.’
A wave of the hand dismissed everything outside an SW postcode as unimportant. He suddenly looked serious. ‘There are colleges all over the city offering security courses. Some good, most average, some fraudulent. The quality of candidates I’m getting is pretty low. I have families asking for a female PPO and I’m having to send them along to my rivals. Someone like you, who could brush up nicely in a couple of weeks.’
‘Thanks.’
‘You’re welcome. As I said, I’m not a charity. I wouldn’t ask if I wasn’t . . .’
‘Desperate?’
‘. . . certain you could pick up where you left off.’
A silence thickened over the desk between us.
‘I don’t know.’
‘Yes, you do. You do know. But right now, you’re just afraid to admit it to me or to yourself. It would mean stepping up. And you aren’t sure if you have the wherewithal. Fine. Go away. Think about it. Call me when a hundred K sounds good.’
I muttered something that might have been thank you – although I wasn’t sure what I had to thank him for, apart from a fistful of insults – and was on my way out when he called my name. I turned back, still gripping the door handle.
‘And don’t forget. Next time I see you . . .’ Ben ran his hand up and down, a few inches from his face and then down over his body. The message was clear: do something about this.
NINE
Back home, I started running another bath, my second of the day, sprinkling in the salts that Jess had given me for Christmas. The year she claimed I had been too drunk to carve the turkey properly. Mind you, it had ended up looking like I had used a fragmentation grenade rather than a knife. I’d hit the sherry a mite too soon.
While the bath ran I walked through to the bedroom and stripped off my clothes. I wasn’t looking forward to this, so I kept my bra and knickers on while I stood in front of the mirror. Mismatched underwear, I noted. Black top, almost-white-with-lace bottoms. Time was I would never have done that. I closed my eyes for a second and felt the room sway. Already I could taste that first drink of the evening. Something gentle, just to take the edge off. A beer, perhaps. I never drank beer until recently. All those empty carbs, a voice would say. But the voice never explained about the visceral pleasures of the first mouthfuls of a cold beer on a warm day. Or vice versa.
OK, let’s go. I opened my eyes. I’d gone up a bra size a while back, but hadn’t actually bothered buying new underwear. How else could I explain those little crescents of fat poking over the side, looking like a pair of uncooked gyoza dumplings trying to escape from my B-cups. Chances were my ProTex bras wouldn’t fit either – they were unforgiving at the best of times. And they were more than a hundred quid a pop.
My upper arms weren’t quite into bingo wings, but they could be bingo winglets. Anyway, the taut dome of muscle that stretched the skin when I bent my arm had disappeared and my stomach . . . the only word I could think of was slack. I didn’t like the way the knickers cut into the flesh either. On the plus side, my ankles still looked great.
My finger hovered over the scar, about the size of a ten-pence piece, just above my hip bone. It was fleshier now than when the bullet went in. Even just touching it gave me an electric tingle and a flash of heat, dust, shit and blood. So I pulled my finger away without making contact.
I stepped away from the mirror, pulled off and discarded the underwear and went back to the bathroom, grabbing a phone on the way.
I slid into the water, so hot it reddened my skin, and looked down at a body mostly hidden by a protecting veil of foam. Although he hadn’t actually voiced the thought, I imagined I could hear Ben’s cold, hard tones telling me to do something about that. I scooped the phone off the edge of the bath and hesitated. Nina or Freddie? In the end, Nina got the gig. After all, she owed me.
TEN
We met at the outside tables of the café at Kings Place, the shiny tower on the canal that housed the Guardian newspaper and several concert halls. It was convenient for her, because it was where she worked, but as I had no such constraints as a job, it was fine by me, too. I didn’t like the place much, though. It always felt soulless and ersatz to me, especially with a knifing wind blowing over the canal and swirling around the pillars. But we were outside because Nina wanted to smoke. I didn’t. It made me feel good to refuse her offer, even though part of me was in turmoil as I shook my head.
I hadn’t seen Nina for a few months and expected to be blasted for my lack of contact, but she was late and flustered.
‘Everything OK?’ I asked. ‘We can do this some other time if you want.’
‘Everything’s fine. Or it would be if you could kill my editor. Or, better, maim. Didn’t you used to be able to castrate a man with a pair of nail clippers?’
‘I think that was in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,’ I said. ‘We never learned to do that. Or if we did, I was away that day.’
‘Pity.’
Nina was Scottish, a smidgen past forty, with, if you were being reductive, a hooked nose, beady eyes and narrow lips, which made her look, in certain lights, like a bird of prey. It was more attractive than it sounded. Nina had been a reporter for years, starting on what she called the ‘soft’ side, mainly in the arts pages, before moving over to hard news. It suited her. She had the raptor-look of someone perpetually on the trail of a cheating politician or tax-dodging oligarch.
She took out a cigarette and lit up, blowing smoke from the corner of her mouth that the wind caught and swirled in my face. I moved my chair slightly.
‘What’s up, then, stranger?’ she asked, with a slight emphasis on the last word.
‘I’m sorry I haven’t called.’
‘I know, things to do, empires to build, people to see. Oh, no, that’s me . . .’
‘I’ve been distracted.’
‘Sitting by Jacob’s Creek, so I hear.’
I stared at her questioningly. How did she know about the bottle of last resort when only the 24-hour Afghan shop was open? ‘I’ve spoken to Jess once or twice on the phone. I’m her godmother, remember?’
How could I forget the weeks o
f Nina’s existentialist struggle with her conscience about whether it was moral to be a godparent when you doubted the very existence of the deity? It’d be hypocrisy, she’d said. I reminded her that she worked for a national newspaper and had stood in for Polly Toynbee on occasion when her own politics were SNP. That seemed to swing it.
‘I’m thinking of going back to work,’ I said quickly, as if it was something I had to get off my chest.
Nina raised her eyebrows but said nothing for a moment. Just a slight tightening around the mouth that was hard to read. ‘Bastard hours, as you said yourself.’
‘I know.’
She stubbed out her cigarette and lit another. I always felt inferior to Nina. She was Paul’s friend from university originally. Paul had backpacked around Asia for a few years before he finally went to college, which is why he was a little older than her. Although he had subsequently dropped out to join the army, he had kept in contact with a handful of fellow students, including Nina.
Confrontational was the best way to describe her social style. Even from the start, she would always throw out challenges – favourite Dostoevsky short story? Bruce Springsteen or Bob Dylan? Spit or swallow? Best Ridley Scott movie? (I can still hear Paul’s groan when I said Aliens . . . how was I to know he didn’t do the sequel?). Nina was far more cultured than me – she worshipped theatre whereas I only saw adults being paid to raid the dressing-up box – and I couldn’t tell which Pieter Bruegel was which.
Yet I knew from all the calls and cards after Paul’s death that she was a loyal friend with a far softer side than the brittle carapace she showed the world. And she knew from the way I sorted out her last boyfriend-but-one that I’d step up for her if need be.
‘How would Jess feel about that?’ she asked eventually. ‘You’d need help with her. There’d be another stranger looking after her, I suppose?’
‘As it’s all to fund her trip to Indonesia, I don’t think she’d mind. Besides, she doesn’t need much looking after.’
‘Indonesia?’
I was pleased someone else sounded surprised. ‘I know, some mums have kids with special needs. I have one with special wants. It’s what passes for a field trip these days. It’s going to cost money.’
Nina blew some more smoke. ‘Is that the only reason for going back?’
It was a good question. I looked out over the canal. The mobile scrapyard was gliding by once more, heading back away from the centre of town, the engine making a soft putt-putt. The old silver-bearded man at the rear raised a hand, as if he recognised me. I waved back.
‘Maybe not.’ Like when you are emerging from an illness that has put you in bed and have those bright flashes of normality, the indication that you might, after all, live, I had been getting these echoes of the old job. The tightening in the stomach. The ramping up of the senses. I hadn’t really appreciated then what they were. Or maybe I had. Maybe that’s why I picked up the call from Ben. ‘Thing is, I don’t know where to start.’
‘With what?’
‘With me.’ I pushed my chair back and prodded my stomach. ‘Look at me.’
She pulled a very unsisterly face. ‘What do you expect me to do?’ She pulled on the cigarette, burning it to the filter, and softened her voice. ‘Sorry, I mean, what can I do to help?’
‘I need someone to take me in hand. Someone to play sergeant major. You’re good at that.’
She looked at me through the curtain of smoke she had generated, as if seeing me for the first time that day. ‘And you do look a fright.’ She thought for a minute. ‘It’ll cost you, though. Trainer three times a week. Spas. Exfoliants. Your skin is shit, I hope you don’t mind me saying. And waxing.’ Her eyes rolled down, just in case there was any doubt about where she wanted me waxed.
‘Waxing? Why waxing?’
‘I bet you’ve let yourself go down there, too.’
‘What’s that got to do with anything?’ I asked.
‘Tidy muff, tidy mind,’ she said with a straight face. ‘How long have we got?’
‘Don’t know. Two, three weeks,’ I said. Ben’s offer wouldn’t be on the table forever. ‘A month at the outside.’
She pulled out her phone and began to tap on the screen.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Making appointments for you. I’ll send you the diet I use.’
‘You have a diet?’
‘I have a dietician, luvvie. How do you think I stay so svelte?’ she asked.
‘I thought it was the cigarettes.’
‘Fuck off.’ But she smiled when she said it.
My phone rang and I saw it was Jess. Probably calling to apologise for being so snitty. ‘Hello, darling.’
‘Mum.’ That one word told me she wasn’t calling to say she was sorry. It was tremulous and worried.
‘What is it, sweetie?’
‘Dad’s back.’
ELEVEN
The darkness in the garage is total. I’d had a few minutes for my eyes to adjust but all I can see is patterns generated by retinas struggling to cope with the lack of stimulation. Dark whorls on a darker background. Little random flashes of light. I try to recall the layout of the boxy room, but the picture is incomplete. There are cars, stacked in a cartridge-style rotating storage system. Designed for those people who have . . . well, too many cars. Motorbikes. Carbon-fibre racing bicycles, gathering dust. Workbenches . . .
Hold on: workbenches? I force myself to picture them. Wooden tables. Red metal boxes, Snap-on Tools. Would there be a weapon in there? Something to save us? I couldn’t see me taking on four, five or six men with a gammy arm and a ratchet socket wrench.
I would have laughed but for the sound of sobbing coming from a few yards away.
I stand still for half a second, trying to catch my breath, to calm the thumping in my chest. I think of Paul and the very last time I saw him alive. The day I went to America.
I had pretended to fuss over my packing until I heard Paul leave and then let out a long, slow breath. In truth, part of me didn’t like travelling, didn’t enjoy leaving home. But I knew it was the wrench of closing the door behind me that was the hardest part. Once I was in that car on the way to Heathrow, I began looking only forward, to doing my job and doing it well. You wanted this, I reminded myself.
I pulled out the trouser suit and put it to one side. Paul was right, damn it. They did have shops over there.
Then my mobile rang.
It was Jess.
‘Mum, I want to come home.’
It’s all about timing, I thought. ‘Well, I’m not going to be here. You know that. I have to go away. You’ll be OK at Becca’s.’
‘No, I won’t.’
‘Why, what’s happened?’ Becca was her best friend at school and I knew the parents, vaguely. It had been their idea for Jess to spend half-term over there.
‘I’ve had an accident.’
I tried to keep the surge of panic I felt from my voice. ‘Are you OK? Anyone hurt?’
‘Not that kind of accident. My period started. I didn’t know . . . it was so embarrassing, Mum.’
I could hear tears, a catch in the throat. I decided not to press for details. ‘I’m sure they don’t mind . . .’
‘I feel terrible as well. I just want to lie on the sofa with a hot-water bottle in my own home.’
‘But I won’t be here, darling. And Elena won’t be back until Thursday.’ Although Paul would be home that evening. And he had booked time off, I reminded myself.
‘I know that. I’m nearly thirteen, Mum. I can look after myself. I’ll have cheesy beans on toast till you get back. Please? I’ve got keys and Becca’s mum will drop me off.’
There’s hardly anything in the fridge or the cupboard, was all I could think.
‘Mum?’
‘OK, baby. I’ll get your dad to buy some supplies. That all right?’
‘Thanks, Mum. Have a good trip.’
‘And apologise to Becca’s parents,’ I added hurriedly. Bu
t she had gone.
I clicked off, trying to remember how excruciating life could be at that age. Worse now, of course, because Becca could easily double or treble Jess’s embarrassment with a few entries on social media if she so wished. But I was fairly sure Becca wasn’t that kind of girl.
I looked at the time. Twenty minutes until pick-up. I dialled Paul. And that phone call started the mundane, quotidian, prosaic process that would kill him.
Clunk. Lift stopped. The little bong. The horrible, patronising voice. I am back in the present, back in the garage.
‘Doors opening.’
TWELVE
He looked good for a man I thought was dead. He was deeply tanned, his blond hair streaked by the sun, those blue eyes still sparkling, even though their setting was a little more careworn than I recalled. He was sitting in the armchair in my living room, one of my beers in his hand, a big shit-eating grin on his face as if nothing had happened. Jess had made herself scarce; I could hear music coming from her room. It was getting towards late afternoon, the sun sliding behind the apartment blocks opposite and the sight of that beer made me long for a big glass of red.
He was dressed in a black suit with an open-necked shirt and a loosened tie. It looked as if he had just come from a funeral and was kicking back. Maybe he had. I didn’t much care.
‘Hello, Matt,’ I said, trying to make my tone freezer-cold. ‘Make yourself at home.’
He held up the beer. ‘Jess said you wouldn’t mind.’
‘Jess isn’t always right. How did you find me?’ We’d hardly kept in touch since he went AWOL from our marriage.
A shrug. ‘It’s never hard to find anyone these days. I would’ve come when I read about Paul—’
‘But?’
‘But I didn’t. I was still in Ibiza.’ He gave me that lazy smile of his, which looked good all those years ago and might still look good to some people. It made my flesh crawl.
