While Diane droned on through her second slide show of the day, one that I’d already seen in management meetings, I discreetly brought my phone out under the table. I wanted to figure out what Meg had been trying to say. There were no new messages from her. There was just one message from Alex, my TV friend. I’d look at it later, probably some daft joke or image, I wasn’t in the mood for it.
My eyes darted from my phone to Diane. It wouldn’t do for her to spot a member of the management team scanning their phone through her keynote presentation.
Live your! Got a specially surprised for your northeast. Seems you’re laterally! xxx
I kept inputting my guesses into a new message, taking a look at the predictive options that were offered to me. We were on our afternoon tea break by the time I finally figured it out.
Love you! Got a special surprise for your birthday. See you later! xxx
What had Meg meant by that – see you later? She’d sent that message the previous night, Friday night, several hours after I’d left home for Newcastle. What was she saying?
I was distracted. Jem had just walked into the bar area where we were all helping ourselves to refreshments. He looked flustered, seeking out Diane straight away, obviously making his apologies to her. He did his duty, acknowledged some of the other people that he knew, then made his way directly to me.
‘What happened to your neck?’ I asked. He had a deep scratch running from under his right ear down to the collar of his shirt. ‘Fall out with Sally again?’
‘Something like that,’ he replied, clearly not wanting to dwell on it. Then he thought better of it, everybody was going to ask him. ‘I caught myself with a broken nail, looks like someone tried to murder me!’
He laughed. It was forced though. I thought that a fight with Sally was the more likely explanation. I decided to change the subject.
‘Are you going to grace us with your presence now?’
‘Yeah, sure, I’m here until Sunday afternoon. Sorry about the delay. Personal business – you know how it is at the moment. What were the cops doing in the lobby when I checked in? Something’s going on out there.’
‘We had a bit of a commotion with somebody’s boyfriend kicking off, a couple of coppers came in to sort it out.’
‘It’s more than that. Looks like they’ve had a break-in or something. Too many out there to be anything else. Something’s up. I couldn’t get it out of them. I tried!’
‘I don’t know, I assumed they were here for Dave ... the guy who was kicking up all the fuss.’
People were beginning to make their way back to the conference room. I finished off making my tea and nodded to Jem.
‘We’re in this room, I’m over on the far side.’
As Jem started to move away, I caught sight of Jenny entering the bar area. She was looking for somebody. It was late afternoon, I assumed she’d just clocked on for her shift.
She continued to scan the bar area, then saw me as the crowd of people filtered into the conference room. She held her hand up to get my attention and walked over to me. She looked concerned.
‘What’s going on with the police out there?’ I asked.
‘I don’t know. Something to do with the fire last night. Bob won’t tell me. He’s fed up that he has to be here on a Saturday. I hope they get finished soon, it’s going to be a long shift if he’s here all night!’
‘I’m so sorry, I completely forgot to tell you this last night,’ she resumed. ‘It was the fire alarm – and Bob – it completely slipped my mind. There was a woman here, it was really late, she said she was looking for you. She had a surprise for you or something. Said it was your birthday. Did she find you? I sent her down to your room. I shouldn’t have really, but she seemed so nice. Only, I didn’t see her again after the fire alarm. I got a dressing down from Bob because she wasn’t on the fire register. I had to tell him about her, I couldn’t just keep quiet about it.’
She must have seen my face drop. Now Meg’s text message made perfect sense. She must have travelled down to the hotel to surprise me so that we could be together when I woke up for my birthday. She’d arrived, she’d spoken to Jenny and asked for me by name. Jenny had directed her to my room. We’d been in the same hotel at the same time.
So why hadn’t she found me? Why hadn’t she sent me any more text messages? Where had she gone? And what had she seen or heard if she’d been in the hotel the night before? Possibly at the same time that I’d been sleeping with Ellie.
Alex Kennedy was an old flame of mine. In fact, she was the closest anybody ever got to becoming Mrs Bailey before Meg swept away all my reservations about getting married.
Alex and I were old friends from university. Actually, it was a polytechnic when we went there, but nobody knows what you mean by that nowadays. It was the last year that it was a polytechnic, we were the last generation. It feels as if everything is a university now, even kindergartens will be giving out degrees before you know it.
Alex and I met on the first day of our course. We were going to be radio and TV journalism students. We’d done our degrees, I’d figured out that my English BA had no currency whatsoever in the world of job seeking and Alex had done the same with her ethics and philosophy degree. We were both there to avoid becoming teachers.
I fancied Alex from the minute I met her, but it took us a while to get it together. I’m not so sure that she felt the same about me. I like to think I’ve matured with age, I was a bit of a twit back then. Nevertheless, as friends, we hit it off straight away. Alex was tall, slim, funny and good looking. She could drink like a fish. She was an excellent journalist: sharp, incisive, observant and tenacious. We enjoyed working together in our student newsroom and loved socialising together. The romance came later, it was slow to build.
We cut our teeth together as students, learning the ins and outs of libel law, public administration and reporting skills. We even helped each other get through the shorthand exams, though we both knew that we’d probably never use it again the minute we left the polytechnic. In fact, we colluded. We cheated. Neither of us was bad at shorthand, but you needed something like a 97 percent accuracy rate to pass. I’d only achieved 96 percent in my primary school cycling proficiency test, and that had been a once-in-a-lifetime result for me – and the school. Alex and I agreed to let each other copy during the test, it wasn’t particularly strict exam conditions. We weren’t so much cheating as checking. We both passed the exam – Alex got 99 percent and I got 97, achieving those scores by looking at each other’s work. We were partners in crime. We were the Bonnie and Clyde of the shorthand world. We shared a dark secret about our journalistic careers.
It was only when we’d completed our coursework, and our postgraduate diplomas were in the bag, that Alex and I realised that we were about to be parted. We’d gone a whole nine months of the course without any romance, then it suddenly dawned on us that we weren’t going to see each other anymore. And we were pissed off at the idea.
The truth about our feelings for each other came out when we were on our final night out with our fellow trainee journalists. We were all seated at a long table in one of those upstairs rooms in a restaurant where they shove the loud and boisterous groups. There must have been twenty-five of us, it was noisy, raucous and fun.
The chatter and laughter suddenly subsided as our ears picked up voices that were hostile, in conflict. It was Rosie and Mike, one of the many couples that had formed within our group. We’d all thought they were inseparable. We were wrong. Mike had slept with a male friend, and Rosie had just found out. As we all tuned into what was going on, I caught the tail end of a sentence which ended ‘... it matters to me where you stick your dick!’
Mike stormed out and there was an uncomfortable silence around the table. A couple of Rosie’s female friends came to the rescue; they started to comfort her, and cautiously at first, the conversations around the table began to resume.
‘You know, I didn’t get together with you, because that’s how I t
hought we’d end up,’ Alex said, completely left of field.
‘What, sticking my dick up some guy’s butt, even though I’m strictly hetero?’
‘No, nitwit. I figured that if you and I ever got together, we’d end up having to go our separate ways at the end of the year anyway. I didn’t want to mess up our friendship with that.’
Shit. I hadn’t expected that one. I’d been in the middle of a story about my nan being rescued from her block of high-rise flats when Rosie and Mike had so rudely interrupted my flow. She’d been removed from her third floor flat via a turntable ladder. That would have been totally unexciting if she hadn’t had to be given a fireman’s lift to get her out of the flat. Only my nan never wore any knickers and the poor old firefighter had got the shock of his life when he placed his hand on her arse to make sure she was secure. It always got a laugh that story, and Rosie and Mike had messed up the punchline.
Was Alex telling me she wanted a relationship with me? Or was she telling me that she didn’t want a relationship with me? I didn’t know, it had taken me completely off my guard. She was being brave, she pushed at the door once again. Only there was an imbecile standing in front of it so it wouldn’t open properly.
‘You must feel it too, Pete. We’re more than friends. I’ve always felt that we were meant to be together. We’re much more than just mates, but I don’t want to mess it all up.’
I looked at her. I could hear the chatter around us, but I felt as if I was in a cocoon, all I could focus on was our conversation.
‘Wow! I hadn’t expected that. I don’t know what to say ...’
She was right. I’d never have dared to think it. I’d never made a move because I’d have been devastated to rock the boat and lose the friendship. I didn’t know she felt like that. I certainly felt that way about her, but she’d been consigned to the this-will-never-happen-even-though-I-love-this-person-deeply-and-I-value-the-friendship-above-all-else pile.
I’ve had a few amazing relationship moments in my life. Magical moments when something wonderful happens that shapes your future. Meeting Meg was one of those moments. It was as if fate had suddenly intervened in my life and announced ‘You must meet this woman’.
It was the same with Alex all those years ago when we were cub reporters, still uninitiated in the world of radio journalism. It was a realisation, a sudden flowing of water after being held back by a huge dam. I just got it, sitting next to her in that restaurant. Of course we were meant to be together, we were more than just friends, there was a strong bond between us.
‘Have I made a fool of myself?’ Alex asked. ‘Please tell me I didn’t read this completely wrong.’
‘No, no, it’s fine … you’re right,’ I replied. ‘I never thought you felt that way.’
‘This is the last time we’re all going to be together. I don’t want this to end, Pete. I don’t want us to end.’
I touched her hand, which she’d placed on her lap. I was charged with excitement, I hadn’t expected this. I’d thought the evening would end with me throwing up into the toilet of my student digs. We looked at each other, and we understood. She was right, we were in love and we hadn’t even realised it.
I’m not proud of my romantic back catalogue. Many people have love stories which involve falling in love with people across crowded rooms or meeting on holidays while in glamorous locations abroad. I have no such tale to tell with Meg. And my romance story about Alex is just as dismal.
Reading each other’s mind, we stood up and left the room. A couple of people commented about it, I heard them but barely acknowledged it. Holding hands, we walked towards the corridor that led to the toilets. There was a spiral staircase winding its way up to a third floor. It was an overspill area, the lights were off, I hadn’t seen anybody going up there all evening.
Making sure that nobody had seen us, we rushed up the narrow staircase and surveyed the top floor. A long table filled the middle of the room, a pile of folded tablecloths at one end. There was just enough light from the corridor below to see what we were doing.
Alex was wearing a short summer dress, her legs were bare. They were long, smooth and sexy. I’d seen that, of course, I’d registered how great she looked, but I’d always considered that there was an out-of-bounds sign on her. There was no sign, there never had been, it had all been in my imagination.
She sat on the edge of the table and I pulled down her underwear. It was purple, skimpy, lots of lace. It was damp, she was as eager as I was.
I unbuckled my belt, pushed down my trousers and boxers to my knees and entered her as she drew her legs up higher from her position on the table. The forbidden fruit was ours for the tasting. It was over in seconds.
We were together for just over five years. Five happy years. We didn’t even end badly when our time was up. Media careers are challenging. Alex simply got a job offer that was too good to resist. She had to take it. I knew that, she knew that.
We fizzled out. There was still a lot of love there, but as Alex had so wisely predicted at that fateful meal, we were always going to go our separate ways. We were media luvvies, we loved our careers, TV had beckoned for Alex and she’d gone running to answer the call.
Alex had always been a bone of contention with Meg. I didn’t blame her for that one. It was obvious that Alex and I were still very close. We were mates above everything else. With Meg, the relationship had been born from passion and lust. With Alex, it started with friendship. We liked each other and we couldn’t get enough of each other’s company.
It had caused friction in the early days of my relationship with Meg. Alex and I spoke all the time, and that only got worse as social media began to dominate our lives and we could be chatting wherever we were. But here’s the stupid thing. I hadn’t seen Alex in years. We hadn’t met up. I don’t think we trusted ourselves after Meg and I got together. I loved Meg deeply, crazily, passionately, but you don’t just switch off what I had with Alex. It doesn’t become meaningless. Particularly because it never really ended, it just stopped happening. There hadn’t been a big row like Rosie and Mike. There was no cuckolding like Meg and I had done to Daniel. There was no hate there. It just couldn’t happen there and then, we both had other things to do.
So, it wasn’t unusual or out of the ordinary when I’d seen Alex’s text on my phone during the afternoon meeting. It was unlikely to be anything important, just a bit of chitchat between friends. Former lovers.
But Alex’s message contained the information that was about to rock my life. And it was to be the thing that brought us back together again, after so many years of not seeing each other. Ironically, we’d be trying to save the person whose arrival had precipitated that distance in the first place. We’d be trying to save Meg’s life and salvage our marriage.
It seemed to take an age for that final session of the day to finish. My mind was racing, and after what Jenny had told me about Meg a new social media strategy for the radio station was the last thing I wanted to hear about.
If there had been an exam after that final presentation, I would have failed miserably. It would have been A-level general studies all over again, a complete washout. I spent that final two-hour session texting and emailing Meg. I needed to speak to her, but she wasn’t picking up anything. I was becoming frantic.
What could I do? I needed to know what Meg had witnessed, if anything. I shuddered at what she might have seen or heard. What a dimwit I’d been! I’d messed up everything. I had to speak to Meg.
I placed my phone on silent, then rang the home phone number. I wouldn’t be able to talk to Meg, but if she answered at least I’d know where she was. I watched the screen on my phone as it dialled out. The ringing indicator kept flashing at me, finally dismissing the call with a bright red ‘No answer’ message.
The minute the session was over, I would go to reception. I needed to be certain it was Meg – could Jenny have been mistaken? Perhaps it was a colleague from work. I thought through the brunettes in the
office. There were two who’d come to Newcastle for the strategy meeting, Amy was younger than Meg, Helen a bit older. Either could pass for Meg via a general description. Brunette, thirty-something, average height.
Jenny had definitely referred to her as my wife, though. She must see hundreds of people over the course of a week, perhaps she’d got confused. I was clutching at straws, I knew that jumping in the car and surprising me on my birthday was exactly the sort of thing that the old Meg would have done.
The session ended. I didn’t hang around for pleasantries afterwards, I made my way through the bar area and headed over to reception. Jenny was there. There were police officers in the area too.
‘What’s going on, Jenny?’ I asked. ‘This looks like it’s more than a smoker setting off the fire alarms.’
‘They’re not telling me anything,’ Jenny whispered. ‘I know what it’s to do with anyway. Bob was ranting at me last night, but it wasn’t my fault.’
‘What is it? I saw he’d upset you? What’s going on?’
‘Our night porter disappeared last night ...’
‘Not Derek?’ I asked, concerned now.
‘No, there are three of us on duty overnight at the weekend. They always put an extra person on in case we get football fans in, it can get a bit boisterous if they do. He’s called Jackson. When Derek did the roll call last night there was no sign of him.’
‘Did he go home or something daft like that?’
‘He’s a bit flaky, he’s studying at the college and doesn’t really have much idea about how to behave at work. He might have decided to knock off early and go home when the fire alarm went off. I wouldn’t put it past him.’
‘So why are the police involved? Has he actually gone missing?’
‘I’m not really sure, they seem very interested in your corridor. You might get asked some questions when you go back to your room. In fact, they’ve probably been in your room already. Bob knows what’s going on, nobody is telling me any details yet.’
Don't Tell Meg Trilogy Box Set Page 9
