Don’t Trust Me

by Joss Stirling

  What? I know I didn’t sign anything resembling a lease while working for Jacob. I may be many things but utterly braindead is not one of them.

  ‘As Mr Wrath has decided to make himself unreachable, we wish to pursue our claim with her. You might like to tell her that as her name and address are listed, she will not be able to avoid us. I strongly recommend you ask her, Miss Golightly, to get in touch.’ The sarcasm with which he says my fake name makes it clear he believes he’s talking to Jessica Bridges. Which he is.

  I turn off my phone again. My three-month employer has shifted quickly in my mind from hapless to fraudulent. Have I really been set up? For real? And why?

  I sink on to a kitchen chair and beat the table top with a fist, hissing swear words. The very worst thing is that no one will believe me if I tell them. I’ve tried that before and it has never gone well. Despite what Michael thinks, it’s not the ‘Cry Wolf’ situation; there’s always been a wolf in my mess-ups, but I’ve always managed to escape – just. This time it looks like the wolf knows where I live and is coming to eat me.

  The landline starts ringing, making me start. I rub my aching fist. No one ever calls us that way, not unless they are trying to sell us something. I bite a hangnail, looking at the handset as if it will make the decision for me. It’s probably the man again, having traced me via my address on whatever agreement Jacob has forged. Jacob knew where I lived because I’d filled out a form with all my details when applying for the job, as any normal person would do. I’m not speaking to the lawyer; I’m learning Jacob’s lesson and not making myself real. I have to go out before the landlord sends more people round to bang on the front door. Fortunately, the house is in Michael’s name, so the lawyer can’t burst in with bailiffs. As far as the law is concerned I don’t own anything worth seizing. When Mr Khan works that out, he’ll back off, surely?

  I grab my bag, stuffing in keys and phone. Entering the utility room, I step over the drift of laundry waiting to go into the washing machine and pluck down a change of clothes from the dryer. They’ve been hanging there for over a week and need an iron but I’m not an ironing kind of person. That’s Michael’s phrasing about me. ‘You’re not a tidy sort of person’; ‘you’re not a focused kind of person’; ‘you’re not a careful kind of person’. No shit, Sherlock.

  That reminds me to fetch my tablets. I go up to the bathroom on the half landing and pack my wash bag, including my disposable contact lenses and little box of Ritalin capsules. In my hurry, had I remembered to take one this morning? I think not. I quickly pop one from the blister pack and wash it down with a gulp snatched from under the running tap. It’s supposed to help my concentration but, to be honest, I’ve not noticed much improvement since I started the course, not unless I take a couple and I’m not supposed to exceed Charles’ prescribed dose. Tempting though. I find myself staring blankly at the green glass bottles arranged on the windowsill for a drifty moment. What am I doing? Oh yes, packing. Getting the hell out of Dodge, as they say in American novels.

  Pocketing the pills, I enter the bedroom and step over Michael’s holiday clothes. How have we become the couple where he expects me to pick up after him? It’s the not-having-a-proper-job thing that’s done it to us. Or maybe he was always heading that way but I’d just not woken up to my expected role? Next he’ll be leaving me housekeeping money on the table like my dad used to do for Mum and expecting dinner on the table.

  Speaking of money.

  I go through Michael’s bedside drawer, looking for his wallet. He has a travel one – currently with him in Berlin – and the one he carries at home, stuffed with loyalty cards. I find it and borrow forty pounds. As I put it back, I can’t help but notice the framed photo of his wife, dead now just over five years, smiling up at me in her perfect pose of windswept black hair and sultry smile, forever young. He says he doesn’t keep it on display out of consideration for me, despite the fact that I’ve no problem sharing my life with her picture. I never met Emma, she’s dead; so why should I feel bad? It would be healthier to have her out in the open. Instead, I’ve had to put up with the knowledge that she’s snuggled down next to us at night. He usually lies on his side, turned towards her, presenting his back to me.

  The lovely Emma. I’ve begun to call her that in my mind, sometimes chatting to her when I’m on my own. Was Michael such a bully to you too? Were you ‘an ironing sort of person’? You don’t look it. I bet you made him do his own shirts. He might’ve even done yours. Did he nag you about forgetting to put the sharp knives away at night? He has this hang-up about preventing someone breaking in and using them on us. It’s all that reading about psychopaths. Michael has such dark expectations that even a kitchen is first and foremost a potential crime scene.

  I rarely delve beyond the photo as Michael has snapped at me several times for prying but I decide to have a proper root through the bedside shrine. You know how it works, while the cat’s away…

  A little blue box with a wedding ring. I’ve opened that up before. You clearly had something I don’t, Emma, if you brought him to the point where he got down on one knee. Only way I’d get him there would be if I set a trip wire for him to fall over and that wouldn’t end in a proposal.

  There’s a bundle of cards tied with a ribbon. Variations on ‘Happy Anniversary, darling’ followed by a row of big kisses. Her writing is a surprise – large loopy words in turquoise ink. A risk taker on the pen front. I conclude that she felt confident about covering more space than most of us do. Some photos. Emma at work. A couple of nice studio ones in the little album from their wedding in the US. I approve of her dress. She looks so glamorous. Very very sexy. No wonder I don’t measure up.

  Right at the bottom there’s a new addition to the shrine: a Moleskine notebook. I wonder where that’s come from? I have a soft spot for that brand myself, a hangover from the teenage diary days, and I usually have several on the go at the same time, one for work, one for my random thoughts. I flick open the cover and find that it is filled with Emma’s, rather than Michael’s, handwriting. Unlike my notebooks, hers is meticulously kept – dates, neat little anecdotes, not my jottings, highlighting and underlinings. I read a couple of sentences. ‘Michael took me to Venice for a surprise weekend to make up for the bad news. I love that man more and more each day.’

  Romantic Venice? I should be so lucky.

  Before I have time to quash my own impulse, I’ve pulled out my phone and begun capturing any page that takes my fancy, just snapping, not taking time to read. I can’t remove something so personal to Michael, even for a day, but I have to know more about this woman – this wife – who haunts our relationship. If I understand her, then maybe I’d get a better handle on what she was to him and I’d know where I’ve been going wrong?

  At least that’s what I tell myself. Maybe I’m just plain nosy and what I’m doing is way out of line? It’s a bit like grave-robbing, isn’t it? My jury is out and decided to go for a long lunch break while I carry on taking photos.

  I make myself stop at twenty images. More would be obsessive, wouldn’t it? I bite my lip, seeing another entry that appeals. OK, now that really is the last. No more. Step away from the diary, Jessica.

  The last page, handwriting no longer so exuberant, some of the words illegible, I see that she mentions getting a cat to cheer Michael up. It was a nice thought, to give him something to live for afterwards. My mind takes another swallow dive off the top board. The cat. I’ve forgotten the cat. Lizzy had fed her while we were away, but Michael will not be pleased if I abandon his beloved Colette to fish her dinner out of food recycle bins. Pocketing my phone after a last photo, I hurriedly put the Emma shrine back exactly as I think I found it. I then make sure I walk on Michael’s dirty boxers on my way out of the bedroom.

  I fill up the kibble bowl and change the water. Radar ears alert for the rattle of food, the cat flap slaps and Colette winds round my ankles, a black-and-white silk scarf of a creature. I stroke her. I am a cat kind of per
son, one of my few remaining plus points as far as Michael is concerned. I wonder if that’s the only reason he’s not evicted me. Who could he get to feed Colette at such short notice? He can’t keep asking Lizzy. She has her own life to lead and we can’t expect her always to pick up the loose threads of ours. The old lady next door, Mrs Jessop, is grounded with a bad hip, waiting for the op. The rest of the street are nodding acquaintances only.

  ‘I’ll be back, Colly. Don’t eat it all at once. And don’t answer the door to strangers.’ I grab my bag and head out, leaving her in regal charge of the house. She does it so much better than me.

  Chapter 4

  There’s really only one place I want to go. The undertaker’s. It’s not as desperate as it sounds. My best friend works there, responsible for fulfilling the weirdest contract in the world. Payne and Bullock, a family concern, is paid to deal with the dead who fly into Heathrow. There are more of them than you might think. Some are already dead and are being repatriated – one sangria too many and lights out in the Costa Brava. Others join the exclusive mile-high-die club, less popular than its sexual equivalent. If it’s a busy long haul over the Atlantic, they are strapped in as discretely as possible and covered by a blanket. Mr So-and-so is not feeling well. Please respect his privacy. Why have you put the blanket over his face then? Madam, can I offer you any duty-free? A stiff drink next to the stiff?

  My mind runs through what it would be like to be the passenger in the seat next to the body. I suspect I’d be tempted to behave badly and would want to touch it. I’ve never felt what death is like and this would be the perfect opportunity. I would only do it if no one was watching, of course. We are all interested in death; some of us are just more ready to admit to it.

  That’s what kicked off my friendship with Drew Payne. We met at a local bar when Lizzy and I were out on a girls’ night with colleagues from her school – her attempt to cheer me up and my first venture into public after my breakdown. At the start, it felt like an awkward evening with her staffroom friends all trying so hard not to talk about the fact that I’d recently been given the push from my teaching position at Eastfields. I suspect Lizzy had banned the topic but it was the equivalent of the instruction ‘don’t think of a blue elephant’ – these nice primary-school teachers, unsullied by the experience of tutoring hormonal teenagers, couldn’t help but feel the holes in the conversation were forming the big-elephant shape of my disgrace.

  ‘Let me get the next round,’ I announced, in part so I could flee the niceness. Lizzy followed me to the bar as I attempted to order. As usual, I failed to attract the attention of the server.

  ‘I’m sorry. I can feel I’m making the whole evening a disaster,’ I said. ‘Do you want me to go so you and your friends can enjoy yourselves?’

  Pretty, confident, blessed with a swatch of honey-blonde hair that I had seen make straight guys weak at the knees, Lizzy merely rolled her eyes and took the crumpled twenty from my fingers. She elbowed her way past the shirt-sleeved businessmen blocking the counter.

  ‘You really don’t want me to leave?’

  ‘Don’t be silly, Jessica. Just give it time – and a few more drinks. They’ll all loosen up after that.’

  ‘Hey, it’s Lizzy, isn’t it?’ The man next to her at the bar, who had been nursing a pint, turned on hearing her voice.

  Lizzy frowned, ready to deter all boarders, but then her expression cleared. ‘I know you, don’t I? Let me guess: guerrilla gardening club?’

  ‘Guerrilla what?’ I laughed.

  The guy grinned. ‘There’s a group of us in West London. We descend in the dead of night on public spaces like verges and roundabouts and plant stuff – bulbs, vegetables, even trees.’ He thumped his chest. ‘Reclaim the streets for nature, yo!’

  ‘Lizzy, I did not know that about you!’ I accused my friend. ‘You rebel.’ I’d known she was into the Green Party but hadn’t realised she’d taken things further.

  ‘I like to keep my secrets secret. It’s Drew, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yeah. Can I buy you a drink?’

  ‘We’re getting drinks in for our whole table, but thanks.’ Lizzy saw her chance. ‘Hey, can I order, please?’

  Her attention now on the bartender, I was left to make conversation with the guerrilla gardener. I gave him a quick study. Medium height, edgy looks, he might look a bit too alternative for most of the women in this posh bar. I couldn’t see him coming here as his first choice.

  ‘So, um, what brings you here? A couple of neglected hanging baskets that need filling on the sly?’

  He laughed. ‘No. I was abandoned by a disappointed date.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry.’

  ‘Don’t be. It happens a lot. Once they reach the “what do you do?” part of the conversation, my profession puts a lot of people off.’

  Lizzy picked up the first three drinks. ‘Can you bring the rest over when they’re ready, Jessica?’

  I didn’t want to leave the conversation with Drew at this intriguing juncture. ‘Of course. No problem.’

  ‘Nice to see you again, Drew. Catch up another time, hey? I’d better get back to my friends,’ said Lizzy.

  His eyes followed her, another in the disappointed Lizzy fan club.

  ‘She doesn’t date much,’ I told him.

  ‘Oh.’ He turned his attention back to me. ‘How do you know her?’

  ‘Not gardening club. Same street. Known her a few years now. We live really close, in and out of each other’s houses, you know the kind of thing: watering plants when we go away, feeding each other’s pets.’ Hauling the broken fragments of a friend to the bar to cheer her up. ‘But you can’t leave me guessing. What profession is it that sends your dates running for the hills? Paid assassin? No? Uh-oh, not a…’ I whispered as if it was a shameful secret, ‘… a tax collector?’

  ‘Undertaker.’ He wiped condensation off his Corona and lime. ‘Someone’s got to do it.’

  He wasn’t my idea of an undertaker, too young and wild for that with a range of piercings. I suspected tattoos up his sleeve. To find him doing something so unexpected ticked my boxes. ‘You don’t need to apologise. What are you called? Dead Guys R Us?’

  He snorted at my stupid joke, which was lovely.

  ‘No, Payne and Bullock, almost as bad. I’ll suggest yours to Dad as the new company motto.’

  ‘Frankly, Drew, your date was an idiot. You’re doing a necessary job. Interesting. All walks of life and so on.’ The bartender put the last of the drinks in front of me. ‘Not walking obviously – at least I hope not. I mean, corpses rising off the slab: cool in a horror flick, not cool in real life.’ Enough, Jessica. Don’t say any more. I glanced over my shoulder but Lizzy’s friends were happily chatting now I wasn’t there. ‘Um, so how did your family get into it?’

  His eyes sparkle. ‘There were all these dead bodies, see? And no one to bury them.’

  I was wondering now if I’d got him wrong about his gaze following Lizzy. Was his vibe a bit on the gay side? He certainly seemed at ease with me. ‘Ah, one of civilisation’s oldest problems.’

  My table waited a long while for their drinks. I only returned once I’d persuaded Drew to come with me. I’d assured him that the girls’ night rule only existed to be broken. And if later Lizzy happened to mention to Michael how well I’d got on with her guerrilla gardening friend, then that would be all to the good. I was hoping that Michael would be a tiny bit jealous as I feared we’d already entered the ‘I couldn’t care less what you do as long as you stop dragging me down’ phase in our relationship.

  So it’s to Drew’s house I am fleeing now. Watching for pursuit by Khan’s men on the mean streets of Clapham, I take the train to Feltham.

  Chapter 5

  Emma, 21st February 2011

  Michael took me to Venice for a surprise weekend to make up for the bad news. I love that man more and more each day. I don’t know what I’ve done to deserve him in my life just when I need him most. The doctor was expec
ting more progress. She thinks we should try a different treatment but I shudder at the prospect of yet more chemo. But there’s no choice really. It’s either that or give up now. The months ahead look grim, but I’ve got to keep believing I can beat this.

  Yet sometimes you can get one over on life, lick up a dollop of happiness before it slides from the cone. That was our little weekend break. I don’t know how Michael managed it during carnival – I’m imagining he offered all sorts of interesting and illegal sexual favours to the travel agent – but he booked us into a quiet hotel near the La Fenice opera house, which is the Italian for ‘phoenix’. The theatre, I was pleased to see, has risen again after burning to the ground some years back. Did they foresee its future when they named it, I wonder? I’m not a high-culture fan but I can appreciate history as long as you don’t make me sit through a performance. Me, I’m more likely to go to a Lady Gaga gig than Madam Butterfly.

  The hotel is on its own little canal which is not wide enough for much boat traffic. The water there is a strange slate blue, unexpectedly teeming with black fish right up to the front doorsteps. I wonder if people cast lines from their windows? I forgot to ask the hotelier. The walls have a weathered look, like stippled old-lady skin. I imagine that if anyone does repaint they are immediately instructed by the city authorities to mess up the finish so nothing stands out too strongly. The place is so crowded you get important buildings stuck down what in any other city would be back alleys. I loved the limp flags hanging from the official buildings, washed-out colours and little or no wind to make them flap. You get the sense that the whole of Venice is like that, just hanging and hoping nothing blows her away. The cruise ships have a good go, ugly white blocks dwarfing the city as they churn along the lagoon, the backwash doing plenty of damage. It’s like Manhattan trying to invade a medieval city – or one of those alien invasion films where a huge flying saucer drops out of space, reminding Earthlings how insignificant we are.