EIGHT DAYS LATER. Sunday the thirteenth of August. Sainsbury’s.
Here I come across the car park now. I hate doing the shopping on Sundays. There’s something really depressing about the supermarket on a Sunday. Here are all the loners buying their two chicken breasts, three apples and seven tins of cat food. All the families, all the happy people with loved ones, are at home on Sundays playing Monopoly while the chicken roasts.
I’m only here because I was too tired and depressed to come out yesterday. I’m still tired, tired like I haven’t slept in a week, but I’m out of cat food so this trip couldn’t be put off any longer. This fatigue is bone-deep and I drag my feet as I trudge across the empty disabled bays, muttering under my breath. I feel like I’ve had to walk two miles from my car to the entrance, yet here are five, six, seven empty spaces.
The trolley that I select doesn’t come out of its stack when I pull it. I’ve already put my pound in the slot so I’m not giving up on it. I give it several more hard tugs, my fury increasing in direct proportion to the violence of my tugs. There is nothing visible holding this trolley there, which means either it has been welded to the next one as a kind of sick joke or some ghostly hand is refusing to let go. I put my other hand on the trolley behind, the one my trolley was inserted into the last time it was used, and push with that hand while pulling violently with the other hand. I’m grimacing now, my teeth gritted, leaning into the pull, digging in my heels, eyes narrowed, grunting.
‘Here you go, have mine,’ says a voice just behind me. Abruptly I stop pulling, drop my hunched shoulders and turn. A tall man in a dark T-shirt is standing there holding a trolley, which he pushes towards me with a smile. Then he walks over to one of the other rows of trolleys, inserts a coin, slides the trolley out easily and strolls off towards the store.
‘B-but your pound?’ I call out to his retreating back.
‘Don’t leave the country,’ he calls back with a smile, and disappears into the store. I scowl at the unrelenting trolley, then let it go. I am beaten.
Things are no better inside the shop. Sundays are also popular for the very old, have you ever noticed that? It’s a kind of social occasion for them. Sometimes they’re not even buying anything, they just get a trolley, wheel it into the middle of an aisle and then stand and chat for three-quarters of an hour.
‘. . . my daughter, Ruth, she lives in Australia, she’s bringing the kids . . .’
‘. . . doctor was one of those Pakistani types with really lovely eyes . . .’
‘. . . Countdown’s just not the same, now that Richard Whiteley’s gone . . .’
Can you see me? I’m still at the top of the first aisle, wondering if I stand any kind of chance at all. All the way down to the milk at the end are trolleys arranged in a loose zigzag across the aisle so that a straight pathway is not visible. I need some pasta too, but it’s on the bottom shelf, tucked in behind yet another trolley. I’m exhausted, miserable, queasy and stressed. The perfect temperament.
‘’Scuse me,’ I call out loudly, and walk in a straight line down the aisle, ramming willy-nilly into trolleys, legs, feet and handbags. Magically, a path appears through the four-wheeled forest. The people scatter, some swearing, others bleeding, all moving more swiftly than even they thought possible. One trolley remains stubbornly in my way, its owner holding a conversation on his mobile phone.
‘Yes, yes, I won’t forget. It’s on the list . . . I will . . . Yes . . . Now, do you fancy pasta?’
‘Just what I was thinking,’ I say harshly, barging into his trolley, which rolls obligingly away.
Unfortunately, I haven’t noticed that that’s the man who’s just given me his trolley outside. It’s a bit embarrassing. As I walk away, I do hear him say, ‘No, no, I’m still here. Sorry. Just got a bit distracted for a moment.’ The expression on my face says it all, doesn’t it? Men who can’t do the shopping without their wives on the other end of the phone telling them what to buy are nothing more than performing dolphins. She’s probably saying, ‘Now reach up and touch the white bleach bottle with the end of your nose. There’s a clever boy! Have a fish.’
I’m off round the corner by now, getting bread and eggs. The way my appetite’s been going the last couple of days, I could probably manage for a week on nothing more than that, but I do need some cat food and should get some fruit and veg. I don’t need much else so we can go forward to the point where I’m at the till, queuing up to pay.
This is the biggest test of all. In front of me in the queue is a tiny old lady in a beige felt hat who practically has to climb into the trolley to reach the items at the bottom, which is everything because she’s got such a small number of things. I wonder idly why she didn’t use one of those shallow trolleys designed for people just like her. Anyway, it takes her three weeks to retrieve each item from the trolley, and then she has to put both hands on everything as she puts them on the conveyor, arranging them beautifully and patting them affectionately once she’s happy with their placement.
God, if looks could kill, I’d be stepping over her lifeless body and loading my stuff on to the belt. You can see how fed up I am by the foot-tapping, hand on hip sighing I’m doing. Trouble is, I think Yoda in the hat there is a bit deaf, so all my impatient noises are lost on her. Either that or she’s intentionally winding me up for some reason. Quickly I check her lower legs to see if any tell-tale traces of trolley injury could explain this torture. Unfortunately her legs are so close to the ground they are completely obscured by the trolley.
Finally her single layer of food and lavender-scented toiletries glides slowly away, exposing three inches of empty belt at my end. I grab handfuls of stuff, piling it all up two, three, even four items deep, cramming it all into that tiny space, cat food tins on top of tomatoes, bread squashed under bleach. This does me no good at all as I am no nearer getting out of there. Yoda is packing her stuff away into her trolley bag at the other end like a game of Tetris. This is taking an agonizingly long time and I am edging closer to aggravated assault. For relief from the torturous activity going on in front of me, I look up and away to the customers at the other tills.
The man with the mobile phone is two tills away, chatting easily with the little checkout girl, who is giggling like a teenager. She is a teenager. Her bright eyes are fixed on him earnestly. He’s leaning slightly towards her, gesticulating with his hands, obviously recounting some story that is making the girl smile as he talks and laugh enthusiastically when he stops. As I’m watching, somehow my ears tune in to their conversation and I hear the words, ‘How about pasta?’ and then, ‘Just what I was thinking,’ and I realize in one sickening moment that he is talking about me. His hands are doing a trolley-ramming gesture as he says those last words and they both laugh together, united in the enjoyment of ridicule. My face has gone red, look. It’s not clear whether that’s from anger, humiliation or a combination of both.
Just at that moment he looks round for some reason, almost as if he could feel me staring at him. Suddenly he finds my horrified eyes and we gaze at each other for a few seconds, accuser and accused. He has the decency to look a little abashed before I look away and focus on getting me and the shopping out of there and back in my flat as soon as I can. Inexplicably, tears are threatening and my throat starts to ache. Not again, I tell myself. I am not going to cry again.
Ten minutes later I’m back in the car park, packing my shopping into the boot of my car. I have my back to the rest of the car park, so don’t notice the mobile phone man walk past with an empty trolley, obviously returning it to the trolley park. He spots me and slows down, almost stopping by my car, apparently about to say something, but then thinks better of it at the last moment and walks off.
What I do notice, though, is that chap over by the cashpoint machines, the one in the red vest. It’s the red that attracts my attention and I smile briefly at it. Well, it’s not good on him, is it really? I start to turn back to the shopping, but something about this man has rung a bell with me. There’s something intensely familiar about his gait, the style of his hair, the shape of his face, even though I can’t make out the features from this distance. I stare harder, narrowing my eyes, racking my brains. I know him, but where from?
I continue to watch him as he jogs back across the car park towards a dark grey car. He reaches it, opens the driver’s door, and then suddenly it hits me. The man in the red vest, now getting into the car, leaning over to the silhouette of his passenger, and giving her a deep, passionate kiss as I continue to gawp is Glenn McCarthy, husband to Sarah, father to Jake. But that’s not his car he’s smooching in and that woman is most definitely not Sarah.
This sight is almost unbelievable. My eyes feel like they’re extending three feet from my body and making that ‘BAROOOOOOOOOGA!’ noise like in a cartoon, and I blink a few times to make sure they haven’t made the whole thing up. But as I stand there, the car reverses out of the space and drives off down the lane adjacent to the one I’m standing in so I can see more clearly now that it definitely is Glenn in the driver’s seat. His passenger, though, is obscured and try as I might I can’t get a good view of her.
Glenn McCarthy having an affair? There’ll be monkeys in space next. I turn back to my car and close the boot distractedly. This is irrefutable proof that there are at least two women on the planet that find him attractive. That’s if you can still count Sarah on that very short list, after something like six or seven years of marriage. Perhaps he’s improved with age. I shake my head. Incredible.
At the trolley park, the trolley won’t go far enough into the trolley in front for the chain on it to reach the coin slot on mine. I ram it several times viciously – look at that ugly snarl on my face: if I could see that expression, I might think again about using it – but still it won’t slot in. It occurs to me then to check if there’s a reason why it won’t fit and I lean forward to look at the trolley in front. Sure enough, someone has left a small black mobile phone hanging from the metal loop at the front under the handle. I unhook it and look at it. It’s a nice little model, obviously expensive, very slim. It’s switched off at the moment and the blank screen reminds me of a sleeping face. Which makes me remember how dog tired I am and a wave of exhaustion breaks over me, almost knocking me over. The trolley slides in the rest of the way now, so I retrieve my pound and go back to the car.
Sitting in the car, I look more closely at the phone. I switch it on. What I probably should have done is hand it in at the Customer Services desk, but that’s all the way back in the shop, which is a two-mile walk from here. At least, it feels like a two-mile walk. Anyway, it doesn’t matter because I have no intention of keeping this phone. I know I’m a lot of things, but dishonest is not one of them. I go into the menu and search through the address book, looking for an entry that says something like, ‘Home’, or ‘Me’. I find ‘Me’, but when I ring it I just get the voicemail for this phone. What kind of idiot would programme their own mobile phone number into their mobile phone, for God’s sake?
I keep searching. There’s nothing for ‘Home’, so I go through the entire list alphabetically, to see if there’s anything promising. Mostly just a lot of different names. Dozens and dozens of them. This person has got more contacts in their mobile than me, and that’s saying something. Admittedly most of mine are one-time acquaintances, but I like having lots of names in there. Anyway, you never know when you might fancy getting back in touch with someone. I’m at the Cs now. We’ve got Castle, Carlos, Chester, Cray. On to the Ds. Design (Design? Is that someone’s name?), Danny, Debs, Darlington. The Es are much the same. In fact, it’s like that through the whole thing, just a lot of names, some of which I suspect are surnames, some are place names and some aren’t even names.
I did have an idea though. Under ‘I’, I noticed an entry called ‘ICE’. I’ve read about this somewhere. After the London bombings it was recommended that everyone programme some In Case of Emergency details into their mobiles, so that if you’re involved in an incident, you can be more easily reunited with your family and friends. I select the ICE name and bring up the number. It’s another mobile number. That’ll do so I press the ‘call’ button. The phone’s switched off too, so the voicemail comes on. I hadn’t even thought of what I was going to say and was totally unprepared when the beep came.
‘Oh, er, hi. Sorry to trouble you. Erm, you don’t know me but I’ve got a mobile phone that belongs to someone you know. I’m calling you from it. I found it today, in Sainsbury’s car park. Hooked on a trolley. So, um, if your friend wants the phone back, they’ll have to call me to arrange a time, or something.’ I pause. This message sounds completely dim. I’m wondering if there’s a facility on this phone of pressing a button that will erase the whole thing so I can start again. Then I realize that of course it doesn’t matter what I sound like because this person doesn’t know me and will probably never see me again. If at all.
It occurs to me at this point that there’s a chance this phone could belong to the man I had encountered on his phone, who had been making fun of me at the checkout. If that was the case, his opinion of me was already very low anyway. I leave my home number and disconnect, then switch it off and drop it into my handbag. That’s that.
As I’m driving along the bypass on my way home, my phone back at the flat starts ringing. There it is, on the coffee table in the empty flat, which, you may notice, is not looking as tidy and well cared for as it has in the past. It’s not what I would call dirty exactly, just a little unclean. A few coffee cups are standing on the table next to the ringing phone, and some of them have obviously been there a day or two. There are also a couple of dirty plates that look like they might have held toast. The magazines are no longer piled up neatly on the table, but are now spread on the floor and sofa in a clutter. There are a few things on the floor that weren’t there before – my kitten heels that I usually wear to work, a light lilac cardigan, a pair of socks. Like I said, it’s not total devastation, but it’s not great.
The phone’s rung three times now, and it sounds like I’m outside, trying to get my key in the lock. Of course, I’m also carrying a bag of shopping in each hand, and rushing to get indoors and answer the phone. Bear in mind it is now eight days since I have last seen or heard from Nick, and the only person that has rung me up in that time is my mum.
Obviously I’ve heard the phone ringing, and have got my door keys in my mouth as I’m elbowing my way through the external door, arms full of shopping. ‘Huck, huck, huck.’ I drop the bags of shopping in the corridor outside and frantically try to get the internal door open before the phone stops. Oh, there I am, and how different I look from the exhausted woman in the car park. Look, there’s a flush on my cheek, a sparkle of hope in my eyes, eyebrows raised in an expectant smile. Clearly I am convinced this is going to be Nick calling me at last with a fantastic but totally credible explanation for why I’ve heard nothing for over a week.
I’m in, I’m running, tripping, stumbling to the phone, reaching out my hand, and it stops ringing just at the moment my fingertips brush plastic. I snatch it up anyway and put it to my ear.
‘Hello? Hello?’ I shout insistently, angrily, demanding that the person damn well comes back here and talks to me. ‘Nick?!’
You’ve got to feel sorry for me really. This whole waiting for him to phone was bad enough when I was only waiting for a day, but now it’s been a week, and it’s all new to me. I am so used to being in control of this kind of thing. I can be cool, even cold, standoffish, when I know exactly what’s happening. But I’m in the dark here, fumbling around helplessly waiting for him to come and turn the light on. And still I am fighting back the encroaching feeling that he’s not going to.
Please look away. This is me at my lowest, collapsed on the floor, sobbing on to the carpet, pathetically saying his name over and over. I am not proud of this moment, and thankfully it doesn’t go on long.
Three things occur to me as I’m lying there on the floor, each one contributing equally to my rising from that position. One: the front door is wide open; two: the frozen chicken is defrosting on the carpet; and three: although I didn’t get to the phone in time, just the fact that he’s called me is an enormous, tremendous relief and source of sudden joy. I practically leap up on to my knees and seize the phone again, keying in 1471, just to check that it was definitely him. I know his home and mobile numbers off by heart now, so when the number I’m starting to hear does not match either one of those, I frown and snatch the phone away from my ear, switching it off quickly and throwing it down on to the floor as if it could do me harm. I stare at it for a moment, fighting against the growing wretchedness threatening to knock me down again, then I switch it back on and dial 1471 again, sure I have made a mistake, or the phone has.
Neither of us had. Except me, of course, for thinking, hoping, it was Nick in the first place. Just in case he’s rung me from someone else’s house and will need to prove this later, I jot the number down in my notebook, underneath his home number, as the electronic woman is saying it. I kneel there for a few long seconds, hands flat on the floor, head hanging low, trying to get the energy, or enthusiasm, or whatever, together to go and retrieve the shopping and start putting it all away. Then wearily I get to my feet.
Another working week goes by, and now it is Friday. I don’t see Nick at work all that time, although I deliberately go down to the vending machine and get my own coffee every day. He’s never there. He knows I usually have coffee at two so obviously he’s getting his at one thirty, or three o’clock or whatever, just any time other than two.
If I had one single gram of sense this week, I’d have realized that of course Nick will be getting his coffee or light snack from the selection available in the identical vending machine that is located on the sixth floor, where he works. But I haven’t. This is where I met him two weeks ago, so this is where I think I am most likely to meet him again.
He doesn’t call me either. If you watch the whole week, you would see me rushing to the phone to dial 1471 every time I come in, to see if his number is on there. The same number from the Sunday has rung me three more times, so the possibility still exists that Nick has gone away for a few days and is trying to get hold of me from a different phone, but I’m not really clinging to that with much hope. We haven’t had any contact now for two weeks, and if he was going away, surely he would have told me beforehand? And I’ve had no texts or calls from his mobile.
No, I know exactly what is going on here, and I’m trying to accept it. I have been on the other end of this kind of behaviour enough times to recognize a silent dump when I see one, and I know from my own experience that the most important thing is to keep your dignity.
I have had people calling me three, four times a day, sobbing, trying to understand what they did wrong; I have received flowers, chocolates, perfume, death threats, all in the name of ‘Why?’ I have watched so many people dissolving into sub-human blobs of helpless incapacity, it turns my stomach. I am determined that won’t happen to me. That is why I have not gone up to Personnel, I have not tried going for coffee at a different time, and I have not called or texted him. Not that I haven’t wanted to, but of course the entire office knowing everything about what’s going on does have its plus side. I have maintained an impressive dignity in front of everyone. They’re not even sure who’s the dumper and who’s the dumpee.
Also, I’ve got this illness that I’m fighting. This past week, I’ve been making a concerted effort to get back up the league tables at work. My two-week fling with Nick (yes, I know technically it was only one week, but I’m counting the second week because it might not necessarily have been over by then, he might just have gone a bit quiet) has had a bad effect on my sales figures, and I’m now ninth in the league. Still not too bad out of forty-five sales staff, but there is the fact I didn’t mention earlier that fifteen of those forty-five are part-time and only work evenings, so they don’t really count.
I’ve managed to scrape back one place from tenth, but it’s not been as easy as it used to be. This profound, bone-aching exhaustion I’ve been feeling has not improved. I haven’t been sleeping well, what with all the sobbing, and I know that I am depressed, which Mum says makes you feel sleepy. Still, it’s affecting my mind, too, so I’m finding it really hard to concentrate for long. I find myself flicking rapidly through the brochure towards something, and then I slow down, suddenly realizing that I’ve got no idea at all what I was going to suggest. I can’t even remember what the client requested in the first place.
‘I’m sorry, did you say Isle of Wight or Isle of Man?’
‘I just want to speak to someone about travel insurance, you dozy cow.’
And that sort of thing is making me feel awfully close to tears, which is very unlike me.
By the Friday, I’ve decided I need to see the doctor, urgently. A couple of weeks ago, a day or so before I met Nick, Jean asked me to go and meet some clients in reception who’d just come back from their holiday in Nairobi and wanted to lodge a complaint. I get picked for this kind of thing all the time because of my appearance. I don’t mean just my physical looks, I’m talking about my style, my dress-sense, my personal grooming. We don’t usually have to see clients face to face, but I always dress smartly in a skirt and blouse and do my hair every day. Val always wears jeans and an old T-shirt, I’ve noticed, and ties her hair up with a rubber band, which is why she never gets picked for anything.
Anyway, I’ve been feeling peculiar pretty much since then, give or take a day or two, so it must be some revolting African bug I’ve picked up from that pair of whingers. And the thing about these tropical bugs is that they spread really quickly, particularly in confined air-conditioned offices, so for all I know, I am infecting the entire working population of Horizon Holidays. If I’m honest, I am also pretty scared. I’ve never had symptoms like these before.
So I did what I have done only twice before during my time at Horizon: I made an outgoing call. I’m not one of those people that think this kind of thing is OK. I know that Val’s always doing it, but as we now know, she does have a legitimate reason. And on this occasion, I feel that I, too, have a good reason. I need to make an urgent appointment with the doctor. I’ll even go during the day and leave work for the appointment if necessary.
‘Next Thursday afternoon, love?’ the receptionist says.
I pause. That’s nearly a week away. ‘But it’s urgent. Did you hear me say it was urgent?’
‘I heard.’ I get the sudden and inexplicable feeling that she’s looking into a compact mirror as she’s talking.
‘The thing is, I’ve had contact with people who have just come back from Africa, and now I’m feeling dizzy, nauseous . . .’
‘When was this?’ I’m gratified to hear her interest suddenly increase.
‘Um, about three weeks ago.’
I hear as she exhales loudly and slumps back in her seat again. ‘Well, if it was an African strain you’d probably be dead by now. Got any sores?’
‘Sores? Well, no.’
‘Mucus? Any pus at all?’
‘Um, well, no, not as such.’
‘Well then, I can do three fifteen or five thirty.’
I perk up. ‘What, today?’
‘No, love, next Thursday, I told you. Three fifteen or five thirty. Which?’
I book the five-thirty appointment and hang up.
Two hours later it’s five p.m., the end of the day, and the end of the week. Tomorrow is Jake’s birthday party and I have got him no gift. I can pop into a newsagent on my way over there tomorrow afternoon and get a card and then stick a tenner in it. That’ll do. Christine is approaching me but I’m so tired and listless, I just want to go home. I hide behind Graham’s desk as Chrissie passes and she stops to ask Val if I’ve left. Val shrugs – she clearly doesn’t give a flying rat’s backside where I am – so after one look at my deserted desk, Chrissie totters off.
I walk so slowly back to my car that most of the other cars have already gone. There is no sign of Chrissie. Wearily, I drive home. I’m holding the steering wheel with only one hand because I’m too tired to lift the other one. I change gear as infrequently as possible. My eyes are so hot and heavy I let them unfocus on the so-familiar journey. I’m sure my Clio can find its own way home. My head lolls back on to the headrest and my hand drops to the lowest part of the wheel. A large red object rushes up suddenly in front of me and I stomp on the brakes, stopping inches away from the stationary Post Office van.
Now I do close my eyes, my heart thumping painfully, blood rushing noisily in my ears, tears coming. That was so stupid, I’m thinking to myself, so stupid and so close. The P.O. van moves off, but I stay where I am for a few moments, breathing deeply to calm down. Come on, concentrate.
I drive the rest of the journey exaggeratedly carefully, indicating early, braking often. ‘Better late than the late,’ Mum always says. ‘Better to die quickly in a crash than to run out of oxygen,’ Dad always replies.
The first thing I do when I get home is not check 1471 straight away. I manage to last five minutes before checking it, which is a thirty-second improvement on yesterday. The voice tells me I was called today at thirteen fifty-two but the caller withheld their number. I’m not sure how to react to this news. I do feel a sudden surge of hopeful joy, thinking that Nick had called at last, but at the same time the two weeks since I last spoke to him keep getting in the way.
I decide not to make a decision but to keep an open mind. Or perhaps I could ring him, just to check whether it was him or not?
I sit down on the sofa and put my bag on my lap, hunting for the little notebook I jotted his number down in, and my hand falls on to the slim black mobile phone I found at Sainsbury’s. I take it out and balance it in the palm of my hand. Whoops. I had forgotten all about it, and now the owner has been without it for six days. Anyone watching me would assume that I was intending to keep it, but I swear I’m not. I really did just forget about it.
I switch it on. I bet the owner has been ringing it frantically, and has now assumed that I’ve decided to keep it, particularly since it’s been switched off all week. They probably think I’ve taken their Sim card out and put mine in. When it’s on properly, I am very surprised that no signal comes through from the network to say there are loads of messages. How odd.
As all my remaining energy ebbs from me, the phone slips from my fingers and my head falls back. I close my eyes, just for a few minutes.
I am woken up by an unfamiliar trilling sound. At first I think it’s my alarm clock, but it can’t be, surely today is Saturday? No, wait, it’s not Saturday yet, it’s still Friday afternoon and I’m on the sofa. I fell asleep when I got in. So what’s that noise? It’s not my mobile, or the land line ringing. I struggle to sit up and open my bleary eyes, looking around me, patting the sofa as if somehow that is going to help me locate a sound.
But it does. My hand touches the strange mobile and it’s vibrating as it rings. I snatch my hand away in surprise, then quickly grab it and press the ‘Answer’ key.
‘Hello?’ Too late I realize that this call is almost definitely not for me.
‘Aha!’ says a man’s voice. ‘There you are, at last!’
I clear my throat, still trying to shake off the last threads of sleep. ‘Oh, no, sorry, look, whoever you think you’ve got hold of, you haven’t. I mean, this is not me. No, no, it is me. I mean, I’m not the person that should be me. I’m not the person who should be answering this phone.’ I sigh. Why can’t I seem to make any sense?
‘I beg to differ. You are exactly the person who should be answering it because you are the one who is holding it.’
Well, that seems logical. ‘Um, I suppose so. But you really—’
‘Ah, no buts, please. Let’s get to the business of the day, and that is, what are your demands?’
Look at my face now! It’s a kind of comical puzzlement. I’m even standing up, to help me to understand what’s going on. ‘I’m sorry?’
‘As well you should be. Thanks to you, I have lost a massive contract worth nearly ten million pounds. What have you got to say for yourself?’
It’s totally clear that he thinks he’s talking to the owner of the phone, but he won’t let me explain. And now apparently the phone’s owner has caused him to lose a lot of money.
‘I’m afraid it’s really not me you should be talking to about that. You see, I found—’
‘Yes, I know, you found the phone. It’s my phone. I want it back, as soon as we can manage it. So, I want to know what your demands are?’ He sounds like he’s smiling.
With a sickening jolt, I realize the significance of what he’s just said. I completely forgot about the phone and it has lain dormant in my handbag for almost a week, resulting in this man losing a contract worth . . . My hand goes to my mouth. Oh my God. I am responsible. I was too lazy to take the phone into the store and hand it in to Customer Services, and because of that . . .
‘Oh my God. I’m so terribly sorry. It’s completely my fault. You see, I’ve not been all that well lately, and when I found your phone, I was too tired, too ill, to take it inside, so I just rang the ICE number but then I forgot all about it and it’s just been sitting in my bag since Sunday.’
‘Hey, hey, it’s all right, think nothing of it. It happens all the time. Honestly.’
‘Does it?’
‘Absolutely. I lost the car keys once and the whole middle-eastern arm of our company collapsed. I’m sorry to hear you’ve not been well.’
See that comical puzzlement again? Is this man having a laugh, or what? Do you think he’s winding me up? Because I really am not sure at this point. His voice is nice, really friendly and warm. Plus he sounds like he’s smiling the whole time, which makes me think he is just trying to get a rise out of me.
‘Um, well, thanks.’ What else can I say?
‘Not at all. Now, please tell me, what do you want to do about this phone situation? Because I am prepared to go to any lengths to get it back. Truly. I will ford rivers, climb mountains, cross deserts, you name it.’
I’m smiling now. It’s a wind-up, got to be. Ten million pounds my arse. I think for a moment. ‘That’s really commendable. But are you prepared to . . . drive to the Ashton Business Park?’
He pauses before saying, ‘Are you suggesting . . . the Blooding?’
I’m grinning now. ‘I am.’
He sucks a long breath in over his teeth. ‘Very well, but you ask a lot. What time, and when?’
When you come off the motorway at our town, there’s a business park there, with lots of shops, restaurants, leisure parks and businesses. Furniture shops, computer suppliers, shoe outlets, that type of thing. In the centre is a kind of square, with a huge fountain in the middle. This fountain has caused a lot of problems for our council because apparently it cost them nearly two million quid. It was the main topic of discussion everywhere you went for a couple of months last year, but not because of the atrocious waste of money it was. This fountain is now a famous landmark around the country because it is the most hideous and offensive thing you have ever seen. It was made by a local artist, and this person was obviously a fan of fox-hunting, because she chose for her subject a twenty-foot-high cast-iron tableau depicting a fox being torn in three pieces by a pack of slavering hounds. You have to look quite carefully to see the fox, or what’s left of it, but the really horrible bit is the dogs. They’re very stylized so they’ve got huge bulbous eyes and elongated noses and these enormous fangs that are just dripping with saliva, or blood, or both. It’s a fountain, so there’s water running constantly out of their mouths. It’s called ‘The Blooding’.
Anyway, this is the place I am thinking about, and the Mobile Man has obviously realized. So almost without intending to, I am arranging to meet him. But I have to give him his phone back somehow, and I’m certainly not inviting him to my home.
‘Tomorrow, three o’clock, call this number. No funny business.’ This is definitely fun, even though I don’t know this bloke. I like him, though.
He laughs out some air through his nose. ‘Very well. Tomorrow, at three, I will call this number. And all business, should there be any, will be extremely dull.’
‘Excellent. Till tomorrow then.’
‘Till tomorrow.’
Now this is Hector McCarthy, sitting on his sofa, in his study, chatting to me on his mobile phone. I was right, he is smiling, and has been throughout the whole conversation. He is clearly delighted with how that went – look at him, he can’t stop grinning. This little bit of unexpected fun has brought a fledgling ray of sun into the dark misery that has been engulfing him lately, and it feels good.
He stands up and stretches, still enjoying the memory of the phone conversation. The way that the Mobile Girl responded to his joke about ransom was really refreshing. Miranda, his ex-girlfriend, would never have done that. She wouldn’t even have understood the point of it.
‘But she didn’t kidnap the phone,’ she would have said, ‘she found it. This is just silly.’ Well, yes, she would have been right, it was silly. But it was fun and that is what Miranda wasn’t.
He realizes suddenly that thinking about Miranda has not cost him a single moment of pain. Surely that can’t have just happened in the past half hour? He wonders how long he has been free of it without noticing. It hurt so much, for so long, he had just got used to the pain being there. But now, apparently, it was gone.
He is just enjoying the giddying feeling of freedom when he hears a crash from the other room, followed by muted but terrified whimpers.
He starts, and runs quickly into the dining room. The sight that greets him sends his newly joyous heart plunging once more into despair.
There is a pool of water spreading out across the floor from the remains of a vase of flowers. The table the vase was standing on is tipped over, as are three of the four chairs. There is a jumble of broken china and glass scattered around the floor, and Hector recognizes the dismembered limbs of his mother’s cherished ornament collection amongst the debris, now no more than a grisly china holocaust.
Hector’s face is no longer smiling. He looks around the room quickly and locates the cause of all this devastation. She is sitting on the fourth dining chair, her feet tucked up on the seat, her arms wrapped tightly around her legs. Her face is slick and white, her damp hair clinging to her head in clumps. Her wild eyes are darting around the room until eventually they settle on Hector and she begins to gesticulate.
‘Get them out of here, Charlie, please, they’re on the floor, look. Please, please, Charlie, get them out.’ Tears stream silently down her face in terror as Hector moves across the floor in two strides and wraps his arms around her.
‘Shhhh, love, come on, it’s all right now, shhh.’
Still she trembles. ‘Please, Charlie, get rid of them. They’re everywhere.’
‘OK, I’ll do it now. Don’t worry.’ Swiftly he fetches a dustpan and brush and sweeps up all the china pieces, every last fragment, and tips them away into the bin in the kitchen. Only then can he coax her up from the chair and persuade her to go upstairs with him.
He sits down on the bed next to her and holds her hand.
‘Are they all gone now, Hector?’ Her dark eyes are looking at him, and this time she sees him, not his father.
‘Yes, love, they’re all gone. For ever.’
Her face is visibly relaxing. ‘You’re a good boy, Hector,’ she says as her eyelids droop. ‘Such a good boy. I’ll ask your father to take you out fishing at the weekend. You’ll like that.’
He smiles sadly, feeling the dampness in his eyes. ‘Yes, I will. Now you go to sleep, OK?’
Her eyes are closed now. ‘OK. Night night, Hec.’
He walks back to the door, then turns, smiling. ‘Night, Mum.’