When I Find You

by Emma Curtis

  Miserable little prick. I refuse to let this ruin my life. Whoever he is, he is going to find out that he is not in control.

  People are looking at me, wondering what I’m doing. I’m not even pretending to be on the phone; just standing on the pavement getting wet, staring at the building. Someone, a woman, hesitates at the door with its sloping, intertwined G & M, then turns and asks me if I’m OK.

  ‘I’m fine,’ I say. ‘I had an idea on the way in and I’m trying to pin it down before I forget it.’

  ‘Like your hair, by the way.’

  ‘Thanks.’ I want to believe her.

  Discouraged, she leaves me to it with an apology for breaking my train of thought.

  I meant to be early, to be at my desk by half seven, so that I could fulfil my promise to Eddie and also to avoid making an entrance with my new look, but even though I fell asleep straight away last night, I woke at three and didn’t drop off again until nearly five, then I overslept.

  Years ago, when I was studying Macbeth in sixth form, I came across a line that stuck with me. The quote is Duncan’s: ‘There’s no art to find the mind’s construction in the face; He was a gentleman on whom I built an absolute trust.’

  I read the quote so often that I learned it by heart. It struck me that I had never experienced what he described, I never truly felt that I understood or trusted anyone. How could I, when I found it so hard to recognize my friends? A face is a catalyst to action; it launches a thousand ships, it affects behaviour and outcomes. We are judged and judge by its symmetry, the pleasure or dislike it engenders. It is life’s greatest lottery.

  Without that, how am I supposed to know?

  Finn didn’t have a girlfriend waiting for him at home that night. So, what did he do when the evening ended? Did he seize his opportunity and get into the taxi with me? I’ve rechecked the lists several times over. There is no one else except David. I need to find out where he was, as a matter of urgency, but, so far, I haven’t been able to access his diary.

  The stairwell is so quiet I can hear the internal workings of the building, the heating system, the hum of the server. My senses are overactive, the cold touch of the brass banister stinging my fingers, the lingering smell of pine cleaning fluid sickening me. I open the doors to the first floor and the buzz of conversation dies as people take in what I’ve done. I cross to my office and close the door behind me and the noise starts up again. I glance through the window, but everyone is studiously gazing at their monitors. Everyone except one man. He is standing, his head slightly tilted, watching. I turn away.

  When I look again he’s gone, and I could kick myself. If that was him, I should have watched to see where he went. Even so, I remember the essentials, his figure is burnt on my retinas; dark jeans, white shirt with the sleeves rolled up.

  I dump the now-defunct umbrella in the bin, hang my coat on the hook and boot up my computer. I follow my normal routines. My hands are trembling, as they have been since Christmas. There’s a click and my stomach does a somersault. I turn around and release my breath on a sigh. It’s Agnes. The only grey-haired, middle-aged woman in the building.

  ‘You look gorgeous, Laura. Like a 1920s starlet.’

  ‘Thank you.’ I should be smiling, but my lips won’t move. ‘It feels unnatural.’

  ‘Well, it suits you.’

  Her kindness is soothing, like Phoebe’s was last night. But it’s not enough. The anticipation of what this day will bring is so great that I can barely focus.

  ‘I wanted to let you know that I’ve bought a book of condolences for everyone to sign. It’s on my desk. Can I make you a coffee? Tea?’ She smiles. ‘Eddie’s just come in.’

  ‘Oh good.’ I wince inwardly. I’m in trouble.

  Eddie’s reaction is classic delayed shock. He doesn’t mention the glaringly obvious for several minutes. Then he asks me why I did it.

  ‘I felt like a change,’ I say.

  ‘Bit drastic, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Do you hate it?’

  ‘No, of course I don’t hate it. It’ll take some getting used to, that’s all. At least I won’t find any more long hairs in my tea.’

  I poke out my tongue and touch my hair for the millionth time.

  I open my emails and scroll through them, deleting the junk, thinking things through. It takes someone particularly small to make a victim of a vulnerable woman. The man who did it, did it for two reasons: malice and the need to feel powerful. Finn is on his way up in an industry that values his gregarious nature and charm. David Gunner is already there. This company is successful, and he has respect throughout the industry. If it was him, then he has a weakness, something he’s ashamed of.

  Men like them think they are untouchable.

  She enjoyed it. Where’s the harm?

  Deep inside I shrivel a little bit more.

  ‘Show me what you’ve done?’ Eddie says.

  I grimace. ‘Give me half an hour.’

  He stares at me. ‘I don’t believe it. Christ, Laura. This is important.’

  ‘I know, I know. And I’m sorry I’ve let you down. Something happened last night, and I was upset.’

  ‘Well, now I’m upset. I thought we were a team.’

  ‘I said I was sorry.’ I drag my sketchbook over and flip it open on a clean page. My movements are sharp.

  His tone softens. ‘Is it the haircut? Because it’s fine, you know. It’s cool.’

  ‘Yes,’ I say, not looking at him. ‘But it wasn’t what I wanted.’

  ‘It’s not the end of the world. It’ll grow out.’

  He’s trying to be sensitive, but I know what he’s thinking. I’m turning out to be the sort of girl who lets a bad haircut get in the way of her job. He’s disappointed and so am I.

  I look at him and try to smile.

  He sighs and puts his hands on my shoulders. ‘Guy’s death has affected us all.’

  I haven’t thought about Guy, not for hours. Eddie’s hands begin to feel like weights on my shoulders. I move, so that he does too, and turn away.

  15

  Laura

  BETTINA IS ARRANGING bottles of GN on the glass shelves either side of the giant GM badge. With the lights trained on them, they glow neon against the deep blue wall. They are the first thing your eye is drawn to when you walk in. Bettina is grappling with David’s instructions that there should be exactly four centimetres between each bottle. Since, according to Bettina at least, she is numerically dyslexic, the task is proving a good deal more challenging than it ought to be. Her struggle doesn’t go unnoticed, and she has the odd facetious comment thrown her way.

  I’m standing, hands on hips, resisting the urge to help, when someone moves into my personal space. My nerves jangle.

  ‘It looks great, Bettina,’ I say, glancing round to see who isn’t at their desk. I release a breath. It’s only Graham. ‘I think you can stop fiddling now.’ The labels are all perfectly aligned, the bottles running along the centre of the shelf; nothing out of place by so much as a millimetre. I look at my watch. ‘The cab should be picking them up from the airport round about now.’

  ‘What?’ She sounds surprised. ‘No. Not for half an hour.’

  My stomach does a sickening flop. ‘The pick-up was at ten fifteen.’

  ‘Shit.’ The colour drains from her face. ‘I told them ten forty-five. Oh my God, Laura. What am I going to do? They’ll kill me.’

  I press my fingertips against my forehead with a grimace. ‘Get on the phone, get hold of the cab company. And don’t panic,’ I add, because her mouth is hanging open, her eyes brimming with tears. ‘Just deal with it.’

  ‘Idiot,’ Graham says, shrugging as he turns away.

  Bettina races back to her desk and grabs the phone. I hope she can resolve this quickly. If there’s a car in the area, it won’t be more than five minutes late and with any luck Paige Adler will be none the wiser.

  That hope dwindles when David throws open the door to his office and strides over
to Bettina’s desk. As she finishes the call, he says something to her and she looks up. Instinctively, I move towards them. She looks terrified. And then he lets rip, in full view of the rest of us. I watch in dismay as she dissolves.

  ‘You fucking cretin,’ he explodes. ‘Do you know how important this woman is? Do you even appreciate the lengths I’ve been to, to get her business? Do you have a single fucking brain cell under that mop of yours? There are people who would kill to be in your shoes. Where did you come from anyway? I assume you’re somebody’s daughter. Christ! Why do I get lumbered with the morons?’

  Tears roll down Bettina’s cheeks. Around the room, her colleagues have paused, hands hovering over keyboards, conversations cut off.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she sobs. ‘I’m really sorry.’

  ‘Fucking fix it and then pack up your belongings and get lost.’

  ‘You … you mean I’ve got to go?’

  ‘What do you think?’ he snarls. ‘You’re a liability.’

  He turns on his heel and slams back into his office. There’s a moment’s silence before the normal clatter of the room starts again. I follow him, but Rebecca is there before me, standing in front of his door as if she’s guarding it. I’m not on my own. Someone else, a man, has joined us.

  ‘He can’t speak to her like that,’ he says.

  ‘I know, Finn,’ she soothes. ‘I know, and I’ll talk to him.’

  ‘He humiliated her in front of everyone,’ I say. ‘We can’t …’ I hesitate, thrown off track; David is wearing black jeans and a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up. It was him watching me earlier. I realize Finn and Rebecca are waiting. ‘We can’t let him get away with it. It was horrible.’

  ‘Laura … Finn, please. You both need to stay out of this. David has been under a lot of pressure recently. We need to give him a chance to calm down. I guarantee he already knows he was wrong. I promise you. I know David. The best way to take the heat out of his anger is to ignore him.’

  She’s like a bird protecting its chicks from predators. I’m sure that’s the way my sister used to deal with Dominic and Milo’s tantrums. I have a memory of her stepping over one of them, blithely getting on with whatever it was she was doing, while he pounded the floor with his fists and howled. Now my boss has just thrown a paddy and is being treated like a toddler by his business partner.

  ‘Ignore him?’ I say.

  ‘Try and see it his way. He doesn’t like being made to look bad, or the company coming across as inefficient or unprofessional. He is quite literally rolling out the red carpet for Paige Adler, and if anything goes wrong it reflects badly on him.’

  ‘Unbelievable,’ Finn says.

  I stare at him, not realizing I’m frowning until he raises his eyebrows at me.

  Bettina has run out of the room and up to the Ladies. I go after her and knock on the door, then knock harder because she’s sobbing so loudly that she can’t hear me. I give her a minute to pull herself together before I speak. Finally, she blows her nose.

  ‘Rebecca’s going to talk to him,’ I say. ‘Don’t leave yet.’

  I worry that the moment she steps outside the building, that will be it. Even if David relents, she won’t return. Better to keep her here on the off chance. God, what a dick.

  ‘But he’s right. I am stupid. And everyone heard me make a fool of myself.’

  ‘No one’s going to remember it was you. What’s going to stick in their minds is David Gunner kicking off like a spoilt brat. So, don’t worry. You have their sympathy. Finn stuck up for you.’ It physically hurts to say that.

  ‘Did he?’

  ‘Yes, he did. You made a mistake, that’s all. Fortunately, you work for an advertising agency, not a hospital. You haven’t killed anyone.’

  She laughs. ‘You’re so funny.’

  ‘Did you have a chance to book a new car?’

  ‘Yes. There was one dropping a passenger off. They said it’d be two minutes.’

  ‘There you go then. It’s going to be fine.’

  She comes out and splashes her face with cold water. I stand beside her, looking at our reflection in the mirror. That’s Bettina, and that’s me, Laura Maguire. We are different in so many ways. And yet. Cover our hair, take away this building, show me again. I would not know. I feel a wave of frustration and despair. I almost tell her, I so badly want to take the burden off my shoulders, but this is Bettina, I remind myself, so I can’t risk it.

  She blows her nose again, sighs deeply and smiles at me. ‘You’re a good friend, Laura.’

  On impulse I give her a hug; something I only ever do with my family. She’s surprisingly strong as she hugs me back.

  ‘I’ve never heard him yell like that before,’ she says as she pulls away. She combs her fingers through her hair and pushes it behind her shoulders. ‘That was so not OK.’

  Fifteen minutes later, while I’m running some colour photocopies of my drawings, David saunters out of his office and over to Bettina, who, at mine and Rebecca’s urging, has valiantly stayed put.

  ‘I apologize,’ he says. ‘I was out of order. I’ve spoken to Paige Adler and she wasn’t kept waiting long.’

  ‘I really am sorry.’

  ‘I know you are, sweetheart. And so am I. My life is mad crazy right now. I need to know I can rely on my staff one hundred per cent. So, no more fuck-ups.’

  ‘No more fuck-ups.’

  He smiles warmly at her. ‘I’ll have a latte if you’ve nothing better to do.’

  I roll my eyes. We’re all good then? David, it strikes me as I make my way back to my office, is the type of man who gets away with murder. I wonder what his childhood was like. I’d guess he’s the only boy amongst doting sisters. Either that or he’s an only child and his parents think the sun shines out of his arse.

  ‘Fifteen minutes, Laura,’ he calls over. ‘You two ready?’

  ‘Yup,’ I say.

  I think, if you’re the one, David, then you’ll be thinking you’re safe. Things don’t go wrong for men like you. Until they do.

  16

  Laura

  THE MEETING ROOM smells of fresh coffee and pastries bought from a trendy local bakery where they use spelt flour, and price accordingly. The clients, Paige Adler and her assistant Charlie Adams, take their coffee black. David fusses, giving them his ‘five-star treatment’. There is no sign of his earlier outburst. It’s as if it never happened.

  Paige Adler has dark hair and a curvaceous figure, and, like Rebecca, she knows how to make the best of her assets. She doesn’t wear earrings and has a pair of glasses hanging on a chain around her neck that draws attention to her bust. Charlie has a ponytail and a silver hoop in his left ear.

  I pour myself a coffee and when I look round there is someone beside me. White shirt, sleeves rolled up. He is standing too close, so that I can feel the electricity from the hairs on his forearm. I look down at his shoes and recognize David’s pointed brogues.

  ‘You cut your hair,’ he says.

  ‘I fancied a change.’

  David frowns and takes a closer look. And then he touches it, and I recoil.

  ‘Is it a statement?’ he asks.

  I stiffen, and the cup almost slips from my hand, coffee spilling on to the polished cherry-wood cabinet. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Isn’t it the sort of thing women do when they want to send a message to a bloke?’

  ‘It’s not all about men, you know,’ I say. ‘Sometimes we women do things just because we want to.’

  ‘I humbly apologize,’ he says, sounding neither humble nor apologetic. He sounds amused.

  While I’m wiping up the coffee, the door opens, and a woman walks in. From her confidence and, frankly, the shape of her figure, I can tell it’s Rebecca Munro.

  ‘Ah, Rebecca,’ David says. ‘Now we can start.’

  I force away the idea of David in my bed because if I allow myself to think about it now, I’ll fall apart. Instead I do what I always do at these meetings and sp
end a few moments orientating myself and putting names to each figure. The Americans are easy because of their abrasive New York accents and because they are the guests of honour and David, who always takes the same seat at the head of the table, has been laying on the charm. Eddie sits next to me, like he always does. Bettina, who has stayed because she asked to observe, I have no problem with, and our senior account manager, the one who gets the big brands, Paul Digby – grey hair, glasses, short neck – is sitting to the left of the client.

  I can’t help stealing glances at David’s mouth and hands, and Christ, when at one point he stands up, my eyes drop to his crotch. I am so aware of him, so tuned into everything he says, to every movement, every gesture, that I barely listen while he eulogizes the product. I look at his lips and his ears, at his hairline, hoping for a spark of recognition, and take a mental picture of his hand and place it on my skin.

  If it was him and not Finn, has he got the message that I’m not interested in forgiveness or understanding? Or maybe he thinks he’s won. I could have made things worse for myself. There’s nothing I can do about that, though. The damage is done.

  I’m stressed and angry and anxious and it’s not a helpful way to be. I try harder, grounding myself, thinking about where I am, not who I’m with, and the job I am here to do.

  ‘Over to you, Laura and Eddie. Let’s see what you’ve got.’

  Eddie stands up and I follow suit. I prefer to work on a sketchbook than a MacBook, at least in the early stages, so we have a flip chart. I explain, not brilliantly, the core elements of our ideas and then Eddie takes over and, with his boyish enthusiasm, brings my pictures to life. Finally, he hits them with his strapline.

  ‘We are one when we are many.’

  ‘Uh huh,’ Paige says. ‘That’s it?’

  ‘Yes,’ Eddie says, his puppyish enthusiasm still in evidence despite the underwhelming response. ‘It’s supposed to imply embracing our differences and being stronger; connected yet retaining our individuality.’