SORRY ABOUT THIS – it’s not very interesting to look at, is it? It’s the outside of my bathroom door. I’m still in there, feeling very poorly, but it would only make me feel worse if you could see me. As you know I was born with a gorgeous face and body, perfect, straight teeth, naturally glossy hair and almost no freckles, but there is so much more to me than just those things. I would be a fool if I thought I could get by in life with just the good looks I was born with.
Firstly, I have to go to the hairdresser every six weeks to have my highlights touched up. While I’m under the heat lamp, Shanelle does my eyebrow wax, and every second visit she does my eyelash starch. I have to have some other areas waxed too, and let me tell you, that hurts. I do a facial once a week, I have a manicure once a fortnight and a pedicure once a month. I exercise regularly and only eat carbs every other Tuesday. On top of all this work, you have to consider the hours I put in choosing fabulous clothes, creating gorgeous, sexy ensembles, finding the right shoes – and it’s not just the colour that matters, it’s the style too – accessorizing with a scarf here, a bangle there, co-ordinating bag, earrings, belt, jacket. Then there’s the make-up. I have spent what must amount to years in front of the mirror, dabbing, rubbing, smoothing, practising and perfecting the ‘not wearing any make-up’ look. It hasn’t been easy.
So my clothes, hair and make-up are all perfect. But it’s still worth nothing if I am seen looking hunched and undignified. I have poise, elegance and glamour, carved out of the raw material that God and my parents gave me, and I will not sacrifice it by letting you come in and see me in this state. So outside the door you stay.
This behaviour is quite unlike me. Normally, I love to be watched, whatever I’m doing. Normally, I am in control of whatever I’m doing. This is a bit different.
I can tell you, though, even though you can’t see me at the moment, that I am quite surprised, and pleased, by this violent reaction. My abhorrence of the situation I have found myself in, of being ‘the other woman’, is so profound, due to my deeply held moral conviction, that it has brought on this episode. I feel quite proud.
Those sounds behind the door tell you that I am up, and in the shower. All right, you can come in now. I have already had a shower today, as you know, but I am not going to appear at Jake’s party in the clothes I wore to throw up in.
As I’m rubbing my head vigorously under the hot water, I start thinking about Nick. Well, actually it would be more precise to say I resume thinking about Nick. Nick and his wife, in relation to me. Could Chrissie have known he was married when she was urging me to go out with him? I think back to that moment, when she laid her hand on my arm. Was she giving any clues away, or did she look like she was trying to hide something? I close my eyes as I rinse the shampoo away and try to bring back into my head Chrissie’s face as she was talking about Nick. Aha, got her – big red hair, strong perfume, orange top. Right, but what was the expression on her face? Was it secretive and knowing? Complicit? Deceitful? I’m zooming in on her, looking really close-up, trying to spot those little tiny clues . . . Big red hair, strong perfume, orange top.
OK so I’m not the most observant person in the world. Not of women, anyway. But I do know one thing: Chrissie does not consider anything to be forbidden or out of reach, and that includes married men. In fact, I know that she considers a married or otherwise attached man to be a particular challenge, and a valuable conquest.
‘Single men are easy,’ she always says. ‘They’re not getting any, are they, so do you think they’re gonna turn you down, if you offer it? Has that ever happened? Of course not. They’ll take whatever they can get, no question. There’s no challenge there – they’re practically falling over each other to get to you. It’s all just a bit too simple.’ She adjusts her top, pulling the V down at the front a bit to let her cleavage out. ‘The real challenge lies with someone who’s got a girlfriend or wife at home and who can therefore, in theory, get some whenever he wants. You’ve got to persuade him either that he’s sick of having steak every night and would like to have a nice, big, juicy burger for a change, or that what he thinks is steak at home is actually just a soggy old burger and he can have nice, juicy steak every night if he dines out. Now that’s rewarding.’
‘What if he’s vegetarian?’ Susan asked once, looking sidelong at me and Sarah, before slugging on her Pinot Grigio.
‘Gay, you mean?’ Chrissie said with a confident smile. ‘Oh, Susan, you know they’re the biggest challenge of all.’ And she flicks her hair nonchalantly over her bare shoulder, as if to remind us that she has the power to turn every gay man she’s ever met over to the dark side.
She tried to convince us all when we were sixteen that she had done it. Had sex with a gay guy. I was very sceptical, even then, and she was much more attractive eight years ago.
‘Brian McManus,’ she announced proudly, a few days after the alleged event. Well, it was easy to see from his purple trousers that Brian was gay, but I wasn’t convinced she had really turned his head. If you get my meaning. Back then, getting a gay guy to have sex with you was the ultimate accolade and confirmed in the eyes of the whole school that you were the sexiest, most powerful and feminine girl there.
Susan gave me a quick nudge and produced a confused frown. ‘But surely, Chrissie, if a guy fancies you who normally only fancies other blokes,’ she said, apparently puzzling it out, ‘doesn’t that make you the one who is least—?’
‘You gonna have a go, then, Sue?’ Chrissie had cut in quickly.
Susan declined, giving her standard excuse that she had just started seeing some bloke from Iceland (‘The shop, not the country’), but I did find out myself a few weeks later that Brian McManus wasn’t remotely gay, and never had been. He just looked gay. George Clooney would look gay in those trousers. Trouble was, I couldn’t denounce Chrissie without giving myself away too. Brian was not attractive – he had huge yellow teeth and smelled of pastry – but he found that quite a lot of high-calibre girls like me were very keen to sleep with him, as long as he kept quiet about it afterwards.
So we know Chrissie has never slept with any gay men, whatever she might like to think we think. But I do know for a fact she is not averse to having a go at married men, and has dipped more than a toe into that pool. ‘Your dad’s a bit of all right,’ she once famously said to my horrified reflection in our bathroom at a birthday party. But Chrissie wasn’t the only one who was encouraging me to go out with Nick. Do Jean and Val and M and M all think it’s OK to shag someone who’s married too?
No, surely not. Not Val, anyway. The story about Val is that she split from her husband because of the affair he had a few years ago. Apparently, she thought he was doing the accounts in the spare bedroom, when he was actually doing the accountant on the upstairs landing. I’ve never spoken to her about it first hand, though. It’s just one of those really private and personal things that absolutely everyone in the office knows. So I think she would definitely not have encouraged me, if she had known Nick was a married man.
So, what does that tell me? No one knows Nick very well? Yes, and I don’t know Val very well but I still know about her cheating husband. If Nick was openly married, the office would know. Which can mean only one thing – he is masquerading as a single, available man in order to ensnare innocent, gorgeous young girls into his web of sex. And lies. But mostly sex.
I pause while stepping out of the shower as this realization hits me. Can you look away a minute, please? Give me some dignity. I’ll snap back into action in a moment.
OK, I’m safely wrapped in a towel now. You can look.
Are you surprised to see me just throwing on any old thing today? Yes, you’re right, it is unusual. Normally, it would take me at least an hour to get ready, if not an hour and a half. Choosing my outfit alone has been known to take me almost the whole hour, but today I am throwing on a pair of shorts and a T-shirt that says in really small writing across my boobs, ‘If you can read this, you’re too close.’ I’ve towel-dried my hair, but am leaving it to relax today, as you know, so that’s done. And finally, I’m not even bothering to put on any make-up – not a crumb. What’s the point? The only bloke there will be Glenn.
That is most unlike me. Normally I put on my make-up and do my hair even if I’m going for a swim.
Outside the air feels intensely cool and fresh on my skin. It’s invigorating and makes my face tingle. I realize that this is because I haven’t been outside without foundation on since I was fifteen.
When I arrive at Sarah’s twenty minutes later – after getting Jake a birthday card from the garage on the way – Sarah squints at me in the doorway, as if she can see there’s something different about me but she can’t tell what it is. Eventually, she hits on it.
‘You look ill.’
In spite of my apparently obvious fragility, Sarah has asked me to pull the bouncy castle down the garden to the shed, where there is a power supply. I agreed. Did you spot my mistake there? Well, I’m thinking bouncy castle, full of air, will be light and easy to move, like a giant beach ball. I can bounce it down the garden, no problem.
So here we are in the garden. See that enormous mound of thick, heavy-duty vinyl that looks like a sleeping orange-and-white dinosaur? That’s the un-bouncy castle. It doesn’t become bouncy, apparently, until you put air in it, and that doesn’t happen until you plug it into the mains, which is in the shed.
This is the exact moment that a headache starts. I don’t know if the headache is made worse because of the awful task I’ve been given, or if the awful task is worse because of the headache. It feels like someone’s put a bouncy castle inside my skull and they won’t stop inflating it. Apparently their power supply was easily accessible.
Let’s move forward ten minutes. I have had a really shit day so far, and the sight of me straining and sweating on one end of a rope is not going to improve things. Here I am, ten minutes later, and the shed is in sight. You can see that my face has gone two or three shades paler than before I started this, and the truth is I really do feel quite poorly. Iron girders are clanging backwards and forwards inside my head, pounding into both sides alternately making me feel really sick and dizzy. I stand for a moment in the shade of some random tree, rubbing my temples.
‘You all right, Rachel?’
I open my eyes to find Glenn standing there in a yellow shirt and beige shorts, grinning. He looks all right, really, doesn’t he? I don’t mean my type, obviously – an image of dark, seductive Nick Maxwell in a crisp white T-shirt and black jeans drops down on to the lawn beside the smiley, banana-shirted Glenn and makes Glenn look, frankly, a little ridiculous – but he’s normal, what a husband and father ought to look like. Yeah, smile while you still can, you lying piece of worm shit. I hope your knob falls off.
‘Shall I take over?’ he says pleasantly, so I walk away as an answer. Technically, this should have been done by him this morning anyway, but he was apparently ‘doing overtime’. Uh-huh, and I was drinking tequila slammers with the Queen in a hot air balloon over Sandringham.
The first child arrives at ten to three, like a scout ant doing a recce for the rest of the group, who arrive en masse ten minutes later. Luckily for me, I get a nasty spasm in my belly at that moment and have to rush to the loo.
It’s quite good timing, actually, because after being violently and painfully sick, Sarah said I could lie on her and Glenn’s bed for the entire duration of the party. Well, actually she said ‘a while’, but I’m taking that to mean, ‘until the party is over’. As I’m lying here trying to relax, I am assaulted by two things: one, the sudden, violent realization that this is the bed that Glenn and Sarah have sex in; and two, a lot of shouting, terrible loud music and forced adult laughter from downstairs.
Eventually, the first of those two thoughts overrides the second and I haul myself up, glancing at the bedside clock – it’s just gone four – then looking away quickly. Suddenly, I find I don’t want my eyes to land on anything in this room, just in case they see something they shouldn’t.
Downstairs, an eerie silence has descended. No, actually it’s not silent, is it? There are some noises, strange, sucking, squelching sounds, but they’re difficult to identify. I hesitate by the front door and stare longingly through the patterned glass at the distorted shape of my car out on the road. Could I slip out and drive away without Sarah noticing? I take one step towards freedom, then realize that my handbag is in the kitchen, which is at the moment swarming with offspring, so I am stuck.
Tentatively, I enter the living room, and through the double glass doors at the other end I can see the dining room and the reason for the unnatural quiet: it’s feeding time. Twenty or maybe thirty kids are sitting around Sarah’s big dining table – which has got the extra middle bit in – using both hands to move food from the serving dishes to their mouths. Little of it is actually chewed and consumed, it’s just moved, handled. The movement is ceaseless, a blur of chubby reaching arms like tentacles waving across the table, as if all the arms belong to one being. Sarah is scuttling worriedly around the table, trying to prevent food and drink from landing on the carpet. I say, let it. It will probably be an improvement.
Over there on the patio, just outside the glass doors, I can see Chrissie and Susan having a cigarette together. They are facing back into the house and we wave and smile to each other in greeting, but further communication is unwise. We don’t want to attract the attention of this feeding massive. Instead, we stand and stare at the spectacle before us until suddenly the children rise as one, as if they have communicated telepathically with each other, and go outside to play on the now-bouncy castle until their parents arrive. It is such a swift and immediate exodus, you can see a cup of lemonade still wobbling dangerously on the deserted table.
That was the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen.
Little by little the children disappear from the garden as their parents arrive, until eventually there is just one left, bouncing away relentlessly, almost as if he’s set himself the target of bringing up his tea. It’s at least quarter past five and the party ended officially at five, so this is extremely rude of the parents, imposing on Sarah for a bit of free babysitting. The more I look at that little brat down there in the garden, bouncing away, the angrier I’m getting. If I wasn’t feeling so weak and headachy, I’d go and speak to someone about it.
‘Hasn’t Jake grown?’ Susan says, coming over to the sofa where I’m slumped, and I realize immediately that the child outside on the bouncy castle is Jake, of course, and is still here because this is where he lives. They all look the same to me.
‘Mmm.’ I’ve closed my eyes and don’t bother to open them. Apart from the headache, it adds to the illusion that I knew it was Jake out there all the time.
‘Are you all right?’ Susan asks me and I feel her sit down.
‘Wha’s the mapper?’ Chrissie’s voice enters the room. She’s eating something as she speaks – it sounds like a sausage roll. I imagine a snowstorm of pastry leaving her lips as she talks.
‘Rachel’s got an awful headache,’ Susan says, rubbing the back of my hand. Yeah, that’s gonna help my headache. ‘One too many screaming kids, I reckon,’ she adds quietly, as if I’ve been recklessly over-indulging.
‘I’ll get her a tablet,’ Chrissie says, heading out of the room again, back to the kitchen where the food is.
‘See if Sarah’s got any migraine tablets,’ Susan says loudly. ‘I don’t expect Hedex is going to do any good now. You need a bit of peace and quiet, don’t you, Rach? Sarah,’ she shouts out over my head, ‘can you please bring Rachel a glass of water?’
Oh, God, I’m going to puke again. Oh Christ, here it comes. Oh, no, wait a minute, no it doesn’t.
‘God, Rach, you’ve gone ever so white. Do you feel sick too? It’s probably a migraine, then.’
‘I had a migraine once,’ Chrissie says, coming near again. I keep my eyes tightly closed – I know she is wearing turquoise today. ‘I passed out in Woolies and threw up for two days.’
‘God,’ Susan says, and I imagine the expression on her face saying so much more, ‘you get everything really badly, don’t you?’
‘Well once,’ says Sarah’s voice, entering the room, ‘I woke up in the night with stomach pain that felt like I was being ripped in half. Glenn drove me straight to the hospital.’
‘Jesus,’ Susan says and from her voice I can tell her eyes are really wide, ‘what happened?’
‘When we got there, they cut my tummy open and pulled out a real, live human being.’ She rams a cold glass into my hand and marches away.
Have you ever longed for something really hard for ages, and then when it finally comes, you can’t face it? No, me neither. If I long for something, it’s usually mine a few minutes later, and then I get sick of it quite quickly. Except for today, strangely enough. I have been desperate to get home from this party for three weeks, since I agreed to come, and now that I’m going, I find I can’t face it. At least, I can’t face the actual driving. The thought of going home is like waking up after a really disturbing nightmare full of evil little flesh-eating trolls with sharp teeth, to find immediately that it was all a dream and the sun’s out. And you’ve got the day off and have lost four pounds overnight. And you’ve won the Lotto jackpot. Which was a rollover.
Here comes Glenn. He’s a piece of work, isn’t he? I can’t seem to get out of my head the image of him in the car park with that woman, sucked in together like two pieces of vacuum-packed ham, which is not good given how rough I’m feeling already.
‘Chrissie’s said she’ll drive you home, Rachel,’ he says to my eyelids, all fake caring friend’s husband. I nod in silence, already wondering how I’m going to avoid that turquoise caftan all the way home.
Here we are in the car, five minutes later. See what I mean about that colour? It’s eye-splitting, especially in close proximity like this. When I look at Chrissie she’s almost ablaze, her head just a shadowy silhouette. But surprisingly, I am starting to feel better, leaning my head against the cool glass. Of course, the fact that those thirty odd kids are miles and another year away could be helping.
‘Christ, I couldn’t be a mum, could you?’ Chrissie says suddenly, as if she’s read my mind. ‘I mean, sweet as they are, those bloody kids make me want to slit my wrists. Or theirs.’
‘Yeah, they were noisy – I’m sure that’s why I’ve got this headache. Sarah’s brave, inviting that many.’
‘Oh, do you think so? I don’t think eleven is all that many.’
‘Eleven? Don’t be ridiculous, there must have been about thirty of them round that table.’
Chrissie glances at me. ‘Nope. Only twelve, including Jake.’
I’m staggered. All that noise and mess, and only twelve of them. Mum would probably say it’s because the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. It means that when people work together they can achieve more than if they all work on their own. Those twelve kids prove it.
‘Did you know you had a call on your mobile?’ Chrissie asks. ‘While you were on the sofa feeling bad. I heard a phone ringing in the kitchen and tracked it down to a bag that Sarah said was yours.’
‘Oh. Thanks.’
She glances at me sideways. ‘Do you think it might have been Nick?’
And at that moment, I get one of those sudden revelation things that show you the way things are, and the way to go, all at once in a blinding flash of light. Except for me it was more a blinding flash of turquoise.
Chrissie is the one who told me about Val’s husband and the accountant; Chrissie is the one who told me about M and M being seen playing badminton with two women once; she told me about Siân’s depression, Marion’s huge debt, Keith from Marketing’s gay wife. She even told me about Jean’s cancer scare a couple of years ago. Chrissie is the one who knows all the gossip. And, more importantly, Chrissie is the one who passes it on. Nick has been pretending all this time to be single, and he must be stopped. I raise my head and, squinting a little, turn to look at her. See that expression on my face? That’s determination.
Or is it revenge? It’s difficult to tell, they’re both new.
‘Not a chance,’ I say in answer to her question about the phone call.
‘Really? You sound very sure – have you checked?’
‘I’m telling you, Chrissie, it’s not him.’ Time to plant the seeds. ‘And anyway, even if it was, I’m having nothing more to do with him.’
She frowns a bit. ‘Look, I know he’s been a bit uncommunicative the last few days . . .’
‘Thirteen.’
‘All right, thirteen days. But he might have an explanation. Maybe he’s been in hospital, or poorly or something. You can’t be sure he hasn’t been in an accident and was just ringing then to explain . . .’
‘He’s married, Chris.’ Light blue touchpaper . . .
She freezes, mouth still open, and stares at me.
I jerk my head towards the windscreen. ‘Watch the road, will you?’
Here we are, arriving home. Chrissie installs me on the sofa then heads for the door. She is halfway through when she turns and says, ‘Do you want me to do anything before I go?’
She’s got one turquoise foot outside on the communal carpet. I am so tempted to ask her to make me a drink before she goes, but in the end I’m glad to let her go straight away, and I shake my head. ‘I’m going to have a long bawl in a hot bath, maybe sob over a bit of telly, then cry myself to sleep.’
‘OK then,’ she says distractedly. ‘Well, take care of yourself. Night night.’ And she’s out of there, a woman with a mission.
We could watch her and see where she goes, but at this precise moment, the phone in my handbag rings again. It must have been the mobile man that rang in my handbag earlier on, so this is bound to be him again. I smile as I pull it out but then wish I had prepared something to say. It’s good fun, joking around, but this is probably going to be the end of it. I know I have got to stop playing and arrange the handover.
I click the ‘Answer’ button and say smoothly, ‘You’re late.’
‘So’re you,’ he says without missing a beat. ‘I called at the allotted time, or just after, but you didn’t . . .’
‘Just after? Just after sounds like late to me. That is not acceptable.’
‘Dammit. How could you possibly have known?’
‘Fourteen thousand microscopic cameras. They record your every move, and then my fourteen thousand staff report back to me.’
‘Blimey, you don’t mess around, do you? Obviously you’re a very skilled and well-equipped phone-napper.’
‘It’s a living.’
‘In that case, can I please have one more chance? It’s my first time.’
I pause to give the impression of serious thought. This is a trick I have learned for genuine conversations. ‘Do you think you deserve another chance?’
‘Yes.’
‘Oh. Well, all right then, one more chance.’
‘That’s kind. Thanks.’
‘You’re welcome.’
‘So? What are the demands, then?’
‘Oh yes, you wanted some demands, didn’t you?’ I rack my brain, desperately trying to think of something funny. ‘Tell me your name.’ Yeah, I know, not very inventive but as you know I have had a terrible day so far.
There’s a long pause from the other end. ‘My name? Hmmm. I’ve never been asked for that before. People usually ask me for jewels or cash, you know, in ransom notes.’
‘Well, I need to know what to put on the envelope that the ransom note asking for jewels and cash is in.’
He bursts out laughing. ‘That’s a very good point, Miss Abductor. Seeing as you put it like that, my name is Hector.’
‘Hector.’ I’m smiling at this. I think it’s a fake name. ‘Right.’
‘So can I expect the demands in writing, then? Now that you know who I am.’
‘No need for that. I can tell you them now.’
‘Shoot.’
‘OK. But you should know that is not a good choice of word when you’re negotiating for the release of a hostage.’
He laughs again. I like that sound. ‘You know, you’re absolutely right. That’s probably where I’ve gone wrong in the past.’
‘Oh no. Bad outcomes?’
‘The worst kind.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that.’
‘Thanks.’
‘You’re welcome.’
There’s a pause. I’m waiting for him to speak. Eventually he says, ‘So? The demands?’
It’s ridiculous. He must have asked me for these five or six times.
‘Oh yes. Right. Hmmm. Well, firstly I demand . . . um . . . equality and freedom from, um . . .’
‘Oppression?’
‘Yes, that’s it, oppression. Yes. Secondly, I demand, um, justice for all.’
‘Oh, well said. I couldn’t agree more. Anything else?’
‘My third demand is . . . er . . . world peace.’
‘World peace. OK.’ He says it slowly, as if he’s writing it down.
‘And finally, I demand value for money.’
‘Value for money.’ I can hear that he’s grinning now. ‘So you want all races and peoples in the world to live in harmony together, free to express themselves without fear of retaliation, for all to be treated equally with fairness and justice, and . . .’ he pauses here for effect, ‘. . . and get really good value. Is that it?’
‘Exactly. And if you ever want to see your phone again, you’ll remember that.’
He chuckles. ‘Got it. So where, and when, are we meeting for the exchange? Is it still The Blooding?’
‘Yes, The Blooding. Thursday, six o’clock.’ My doctor’s surgery is in the Ashton Business Park, so I can combine my trip down there with meeting the Mobile Man and giving him his phone back.
‘Thursday, eh? Fair enough.’
‘Right then. Until Thursday—’
‘No, wait. I need to know your name. You can’t leave me in torment like this.’
Ah. I walked straight into that one, didn’t I? I’m a bit panicky now. This is a complete stranger after all, and not only have I just arranged to meet him, he wants my name. A picture pops into my head suddenly of an axe dripping with blood, traces of human hair still clinging to the grisly edge, light glinting and flashing on its silvery surface, the heavy wooden shaft held tightly in a large, blood-spattered hand, which is attached to the arm of a hooded man standing outside the external door of my block, looking at the names by the doorbells, wondering if I am Laura, Leslie or Rachel.
‘It’s Ruth,’ I say quickly, after a very lengthy pause.
‘Ruth. That’s unusual.’
‘Oh come on. You said you were called Hector, for heaven’s sake.’
He pauses. ‘But I am called Hector.’
We need to go back to Sarah’s house for a bit now. Only to look – you won’t see me back at Sarah’s place for ages yet. Back to the lounge, where it is still a scene of mild devastation. Truthfully, it never really looks clean, not to my or Mum’s standards, but this is much worse. Look at all the paper plates everywhere, most of them still with half-eaten sandwiches on them. Sadly, the food remains aren’t just on the plates, but are squashed, flattened and ground into the carpet in various places around the room. This is not immediately obvious, though, because at the moment the carpet and the food on it are covered with dozens of balls and crumpled sheets of brightly coloured paper, cardboard boxes and clothes. Apparently, Jake has torn open all his presents and left them and their wrappings exactly where they are.
Over there, upside down and scattered, is the set of books Sarah’s granddad carried home on the bus last weekend after spending two hours shopping for something that would look as if it had cost more than the ten pounds he could afford to spend. Here’s the screwed up T-shirt Sarah’s aunt and uncle bought because they thought Jake would like the picture of a zebra on the front. Pens, pencils, plasticine and various other craft materials have been discovered and discarded, dropped carelessly on the floor in favour of the next parcel. Jake himself is nowhere to be seen.
He’s an ungrateful little shit, isn’t he?
See that man, just getting up from the sofa, looking very pleased with himself? That’s Hector, the Mobile Man, and he’s just finished talking to me. He looks quite nice, doesn’t he, in an early thirties, stubbly, slightly dishevelled kind of way. There is definitely a chance that this is the guy who gave me his trolley at Sainsbury’s, and whom I was then rude to, but I’m not going to examine that too deeply.
‘Thanks, Sarah,’ he calls out, picking his way through the debris on the floor. The way he does that reminds me of Nick, picking his way through our abandoned clothes.
‘Did you manage to get through all right?’ Sarah comes into the room, dragging a bulky black plastic bag behind her. She looks a lot better now, doesn’t she? Oh, wait a minute, is that a large glass of wine in her free hand? Yes. No wonder she’s chilling.
‘Yes, fine thanks,’ Hector says, taking the bag out of her hand and crouching down on the floor to begin scooping up the rubbish. ‘Why don’t you sit down and put your feet up, Sarah? Glenn and I can do this. Least I can do.’
He sounds as if he feels guilty about something. Let’s go back five minutes and see if we can find out why.
Here he is, five minutes earlier, inserting the corkscrew into a bottle of wine. Sarah is standing by, holding an empty glass. ‘Oh, Sarah,’ he says casually, twisting the corkscrew in, ‘would it be all right if I quickly borrow your phone in a minute?’
‘’Course,’ she says, extending her glass towards the open neck of the bottle.
‘Oh great, thanks. I really need to make this one urgent call and I didn’t have time to do it before I left the office to come here.’
She shrugs. ‘OK.’
‘Obviously, getting here for my nephew’s birthday was more important, and I thought you wouldn’t mind lending me your phone when I got here.’
Do you think he’s laying it on a bit thick? I mean, she agreed straight away, didn’t she? There’s really no need to keep on and on.
Clearly, she hasn’t noticed, anyway. Her eyes are closed and her mouth is clamped on to the rim of the glass, sucking down chardonnay.
Let’s move forward again, back to where we were. So he pretended it was an important business call, but he was actually calling me, a complete stranger, so he could have a bit of a laugh. And, let’s face it, do a bit of flirting. He must have tried to ring earlier from his office, but of course I didn’t answer it then and he had to leave it until he got here this evening. No wonder he’s rushing round clearing up now – apart from stopping every so often to stare off into space and grin a lot.
‘What are you grinning about?’ Here is Glenn, now that most of the work is done. ‘You must really enjoy clearing up after kids.’
Hector looks up at his brother. ‘No, not really. I’ve just managed to set up a meeting on Thursday that promises to be really rewarding.’
Glenn does not look pleased about that, does he? ‘Christ, you never bloody stop, do you? Even on my son’s birthday you’re setting up meetings, making deals. What’s the matter with you?’
Hector stops mid-scoop. ‘I’m sorry, mate. I realize it’s his birthday, but this one was fairly crucial. I couldn’t do it from the office because I wanted to be here with—’
‘Oh whatever.’ Glenn looks at his wife, who is scraping a squashed Fondant Fancy off the sofa, then says casually, ‘Oh, Hector, could you come into the kitchen for a minute, please?’
Hector is tipping a plateful of apparently untouched food into the bin bag. ‘Yeah, in a minute, I’m just—’
‘Please, Hector.’ The tone in Glenn’s voice makes Hector pause. ‘I want to ask you something.’ Glenn glances quickly at Sarah, whose face is blank as she takes a large glug of wine, then he whispers, ‘In private.’
Glenn walks out of the room towards the kitchen. Hector gets up to follow. ‘Fancy a cup of tea, Sarah?’ he asks at the door.
‘No thanks,’ she says, holding out her empty glass. He takes it from her with a smile and heads to the kitchen.
Sarah and Glenn’s kitchen is huge. But it’s a terrible mess here too. On the countertops are yet more paper plates of food, most of it barely touched. There are crisps all over the place, on the floor, the table, the counter. Cups of squash are scattered around, more than one tipped over with its contents forming a purple pool on the floor. In the middle of the table is the birthday cake – a huge fort constructed of chocolate fingers and white marshmallows – looking now more like a pile of kindling. On the wall by the table are some brown smudges that look suspiciously like little fingerprints. Let’s hope they’re chocolate. Glenn is standing by the sink, staring into the garden.
‘What is it, mate?’ Hector asks as he picks up the wine bottle.
‘I’m sorry, Hector, but I need to borrow some money.’ He doesn’t hang around, does he?
Hector stops what he’s doing and turns to face Glenn. ‘What?’
‘Look, I’m desperate. I need some cash and you’ve got loads. You know I wouldn’t ask unless it was really important.’
Hector looks down at the bottle again. ‘Well, of course, Glenn, but what’s it for?’
Glenn clenches his fists. ‘It doesn’t matter what it’s for, does it? I’ve got myself into a little bit of debt and I’d really appreciate some assistance, if it’s not too much to ask.’
Hector continues to focus on refilling Sarah’s glass. ‘So what does Sarah . . .?’
‘Hec, I’d really appreciate it if we don’t tell Sarah about it. It’s quite important.’
‘Why?’
Glenn looks down at the countertop. ‘To tell the truth, I’ve been an idiot. Spent more than I should have, told Sarah we were doing OK. I don’t want to worry her, you know? Plus . . .’
‘Plus?’
He shrugs. ‘Plus, I don’t want her to know that even now that I’m thirty I can’t manage to support my own family without getting help from my big brother.’
Hector puts the bottle down on the table. ‘Why don’t you take this through?’ he says, holding out the now full wine glass. Glenn hesitates, then takes the glass out of Hector’s hand and walks out of the kitchen. Hector puts his hands on the table and hangs his head. From the living room comes the sound of Sarah thanking her husband for the wine he has brought her. Almost imperceptibly, Hector shakes his head.
Glenn reappears in the doorway. ‘Oh come on, Hec, it’s not that bad. I’m a loser civil servant on a crappy wage, that’s all. It’s not like I’ve gambled it all away or something. You don’t need to despair over me.’
‘I’m not despairing, Glenn, not at all. And you’re not a loser. It’s just that other people on crappy wages seem to manage. Why is it so difficult for you?’
Glenn shrugs and reaches a glass down from a shelf. ‘You ought to try being me for a while, then see if you can go round being so bloody nice all the time.’
Hector watches as Glenn pours the last of the bottle into his glass without offering any to his brother. ‘But what’s so awful about being you? You’ve got everything, lovely wife, a healthy, intelligent son, beautiful home . . .’
Glenn snorts. ‘Oh, just listen to yourself. Beautiful home. Hah! This is a hovel compared to your place.’
Hector frowns but it is not anger, it is bewilderment. ‘No it isn’t, you idiot. So my house is bigger, so what? You’re the one with the family. Don’t you realize how lucky you are? To come home from work every day to this, your home, your wife, your child? I come home to . . . Well, you know what I come home to.’
‘Here we go.’
Hector shakes his head. ‘No, no, Glenn, here we do not go. I am not complaining, you know that. I have never, will never, complain about having Mum there. I wouldn’t have it any other way. Of course she must live with me, you’ve got Jake and Sarah to think about. But sometimes, sometimes, I just wish I could come home to something warm, something giving. Don’t you think that I wouldn’t give all the money and possessions in the world, just to have . . .?’ He trails off.
‘I don’t need to hear that, OK,’ Glenn spits. ‘You don’t have to try to make me feel better. You have this massive, successful business worth millions, and I have . . .’ he glances at the door, ‘I have Sarah and Jake. Yeah, well, much as I care about them, big deal.’ He takes a deep drink of the wine. ‘I am just asking you for help, Hector. Do you want me to get down on my knees and beg you? Because I will. I have got no pride left.’
‘No,’ Hector says quietly, ‘I don’t want you to do that. I’ve said I’ll help you and I will. Of course I will. How much?’
Glenn relaxes visibly, his shoulders slumping, and a small smile of relief appears. He claps his brother on the arm. ‘Oh thank you, Hector. I really appreciate this, mate, honestly.’ He looks a bit sheepish for a moment. ‘I’m sorry for being a bit snappy – it’s just the worry.’
Hector nods. ‘So how much . . .?’
‘I think five grand ought to cover it.’
‘Right.’ Hector takes out his chequebook and fills one in, tearing it out and giving it to Glenn.
‘Thanks, bro,’ Glenn says, taking the cheque and pocketing it. ‘Just remember, not one word to Sarah, OK?’
Hector nods but as his brother returns to the living room, he can’t help thinking that he and Sarah are being deceived.