A Room Swept White (7 page)

‘Let’s call it a night, then,’ said Proust, who would have called it whatever he wanted to call it, whether it was morning, night or the middle of the afternoon.

3

Wednesday 7 October 2009

‘It’s exactly the kick up the arse I need – that’s the way I’m looking at it,’ says Tamsin, taking a gulp from her sixth gin and tonic of the evening. ‘Control freak like me, any sort of disruption to my routine has to be good for me.’ She’s started to slur her words. Her top lip keeps slipping on her bottom one, like a smooth-soled shoe over snow.

I could sneak off to the loo, phone Joe and tell him to come and pick her up, but if I leave her unattended she’s bound to accost a stranger, and there are at least two men at the bar who look likely to have chloroform-soaked hankies in their pockets. The Grand Old Duke of York is the only pub within walking distance of work that can be guaranteed to have nobody from Binary Star in it, which is why we’ve braved the bad beer and creepy loners. Tonight, anything’s better than bumping into Maya, Raffi or Laurie at the French House.

‘My life’s been too safe for too long,’ says Tamsin decisively. ‘I should take more risks.’ That’s it: no way am I letting her get the tube home. I’ll have to wait until she passes out to phone Joe. Another fifteen minutes, half an hour maximum. ‘There are no surprises – you know what I mean? Up at seven, in the shower, two Weetabix and a fruit smoothie for breakfast, walk to the tube station, in work by half past eight, running round all day after Laurie, wearing myself out trying to . . .
decipher
him, home by eight, eat dinner with Joe, snuggled up on the sofa by half nine to watch an episode of whatever DVD box set we’re on, bed at eleven. Where’s the spark? Where’s the dyna . . . dianne. . . .?’

‘Dynamism?’ I suggest.

‘Whereas now I’ve got a real challenge: no job!’ She tries to sound upbeat about it. ‘No income! I’ll have to find a way of keeping a roof over our heads.’

‘Can Joe cover the mortgage?’ I ask, feeling terrible for her. ‘Temporarily, until you find something else?’

‘No, but we could rent out Joe’s study to someone chilled-out who wouldn’t mind having to walk through our bedroom every time he needed a wee in the middle of the night,’ says Tamsin brightly. ‘He might become our friend. When was the last time I made a new friend?’

‘When you met me.’ I try to prise the gin and tonic from her grasp. ‘Give me that. I’ll go and get you an orange juice.’

Her hands tighten around her glass. ‘You’re a control freak too,’ she says accusingly. ‘We both are. We need to learn to go with the flow.’

‘I’m worried the flow might be of vomit. Why don’t I ring Joe and he can—’

‘
Nooo
.’ Tamsin pats my hand. ‘I’m
fine
. I whole-heartedly embrace this opportunity for change. Maybe I’ll start wearing blue or red instead of black and white all the time. Hey – know what I’m gonna do tomorrow?’

‘Die of alcohol poisoning?’

‘Go to an exhibition. There must be something good on at the National Portrait Gallery, or the Hayward. And while I’m doing that, you know what you’re gonna do?’ She burps loudly. ‘You’re going to be in Maya’s office saying, “Yes,
please, I’ll take that extremely well-paid job.” If you feel guilty about earning too much money, you can give some to me. Just a little bit. Or maybe half.’

‘Hey – did you just suggest something that makes sense?’

‘I believe I did.’ Tamsin giggles. ‘Socialism in miniature. There’d only be two of us involved, but the principle’s the same: everything you have is mine, and everything I have is yours, except I haven’t got anything.’

‘You need an income. I’ve just been offered more than three times what I’m on now . . . No, that’d be mad. Wouldn’t it?’ I haven’t drunk as much as she has, but I’ve had a fair bit.

‘What’s the prollem?’ she slurs, wide-eyed. ‘No one needs to find out apart from you and me. Laurie’s right: if you blow this chance, everyone’ll think you’re a dick. And if you hoard your wealth like a Scroogey miser . . .’

‘So this is the great challenge that was missing from your life? Forcing me to take a job I don’t want so that you can nick half my salary?’ I’m not even sure she means what she’s saying. I wait for her to tell me she’s only kidding.

‘You wouldn’t have to fund me for ever,’ she says instead. ‘Just until I sort myself out with a new career. I’d quite like to work for the UN, as an interpreter.’

I sigh. ‘Do you speak anything, apart from English and Pissed?’

‘I could learn. Russian and French is a good combination, apparently. I did some Googling before I left the office. For the last time
ever
,’ she adds pointedly, reminding me of her hard-done-by status. ‘If you’ve got those two languages . . .’

‘Which you haven’t.’

‘. . . then all you need’s a translation qualification, which you can get at Westminster Uni, and the UN’ll snap you up.’

‘When? In four years’ time?’

‘More like six.’

‘How about I support you while you look for a job
in your field
?’ I stress the last three words. ‘With your track record, you could get one tomorrow.’

‘No, thanks,’ says Tamsin. ‘No more TV for me. TV’s the rut I was stuck in until today. I’m serious, Fliss. Ever since I left university, I’ve been a wage-slave. I don’t want to rush out and find new shackles, now that I’m free. I want to do some living – walk in the park, go ice-skating . . .’

‘What happened to learning French and Russian?’ I ask.

She waves away my concern. ‘There’s plenty of time for that. Maybe I’ll see if there’s a local evening class or something, but mainly I want to . . . take stock, walk around, soak up the atmosphere . . .’

‘You live in Wood Green.’

‘Could you stretch to a flat in Knightsbridge if I’m willing to settle for one bedroom?’

‘Stop,’ I tell her, deciding the joke has gone on long enough. ‘This is exactly why I don’t want to be rich. I don’t want to turn into the sort of person who thinks it’s my God-given right to have more cash than I know what to do with and keep it all for myself. Here I am listening to you witter on, thinking, “Why should I give half my hard-earned fortune to an idle waster?” I’m already turning into that Scroogey miser you mentioned earlier and I haven’t even said I’ll take the job!’

Tamsin blinks at me, her powers of comprehension impaired by alcohol. Eventually she says, ‘You’d resent me.’

‘Probably, yes. The ice-skating might just tip me over the edge.’

She nods. ‘That’s okay. I wouldn’t hold it against you. You can call me a feckless scrounger to my face, if you like, as long as I get my share of the money. I’d rather be insulted by you than have to tout myself round prospective employers feeling the way I do now – unwanted and worthless. What am I talking about?’ She slaps herself on the wrist, then hits my leg, hard. ‘Look what you’ve done – your negativity’s totally dragged me down!’

‘I’m turning down the job, Tam.’

She groans.

‘Which means I’ll probably get my marching orders too by the end of the week. We can go to the National Portrait Gallery together.’
Tell her the truth. Tell her why you can’t make Laurie’s film. You have nothing to be ashamed of
.

‘Bollocks to that!’ Tamsin bangs her fist on the table. ‘If you’re going there, I’m going to the Science Museum instead as a protest at your . . . dickery. Fliss, people dream of things happening to them like what’s happened to you today. You’ve
got
to take it. Even if you decide to leave me to rot in the gutter while you stock up on diamonds.’

‘I’m being serious.’

‘So am I! Think of all the time you’ll get to spend with Laurie, him helping you unofficially – hah!’ She gurgles with laughter. ‘It’s so obvious you’re in love with him.’

‘It can’t be, because I’m not,’ I say firmly. Maybe it’s not such a huge lie. If I’m aware of all the reasons why I shouldn’t love Laurie, which I am, then that has to mean I don’t, not wholly. At the very least, I’m halfway in and halfway out. If I’m in love with him, how come I can so perfectly inhabit the mindset of thinking he’s a git and the bane of my life?

‘You spend
hours
staring out of your window at his office, even when he’s not in it.’ Tamsin chuckles. ‘I’m not going to
waste my breath saying no good can come of it. Some good’s already come of it – a hundred and forty grand a year for us to split between us.’ She gives me a narrow-eyed grin to let me know she’s been winding me up about the money. ‘You’ve been rewarded for your good taste. Laurie might be a freak, but he’s a shrewd freak. He’s seen the way you babble like an idiot in front of him, crazed with lust. You’re his perfect pawn: he gets to distance himself from the film in public while retaining control in private.’

‘Why would he want to distance himself?’ I say, determinedly ignoring everything else Tamsin’s just said because if I allowed myself to take it in and believe it, I would have to devote the rest of my life to muffled sobbing. ‘He’s obsessed with it.’

‘In case it goes tits up, which it might very well, now that Sarah’s pulled out.’

‘Sarah?’

‘Jaggard. Oh, my God! Laurie hasn’t told you, has he?’

My phone starts to ring. I snap it open. ‘Hello?’

‘Is that Fliss Benson?’ a woman asks.

I tell her it is.

‘This is Ray Hines.’

My heart leaps, like a horse over a fence.
Rachel Hines
. I have the oddest sensation: as if this moment was always going to come, and there was nothing I could have done to avert it.

She can’t know how significant she is to me, how it makes me feel to hear her voice.

‘Why is Laurie Nattrass leaving Binary Star?’ She doesn’t sound angry, or even put out. ‘Does it have anything to do with Helen Yardley dying? I’m assuming she was murdered. I heard on the news that her death was “suspicious”.’

‘I don’t know,’ I say brusquely. ‘You’ll have to ask the police about that, and you’ll have to ask Laurie why he’s leaving. I’m nothing to do with anything.’

‘Really? I got an email from Laurie saying you’ve taken over the documentary.’

‘No. That’s . . . a misunderstanding.’

Tamsin has found a pen in my bag and written ‘Who?’ on a beer mat. She shoves it towards me. I write ‘Rachel Hines’ beneath her question. She opens her mouth as wide as it’ll go, flashing her tonsils at me, then scribbles furiously on the beer mat: ‘Keep her talking!!!’

Even if I don’t want to
?

I heard two women on the tube discussing Rachel Hines, the day after she won her appeal. One said, ‘I don’t know about the others, but the Hines woman murdered her children, sure as I’m born. She’s a drug addict and a liar. You know she abandoned her daughter when the poor mite was only days old? Stayed away for the best part of two weeks. What kind of mother does that? I can believe Helen Yardley was innocent all along, but not her.’ I waited for her companion to disagree, but she said, ‘It would have been better for the baby if she’d stayed away for good.’ I remember thinking it was an odd way to put it:
Helen Yardley was innocent all along
. As if one could start out guilty and then become innocent of a crime.

‘I rang to tell you what I’m sure Laurie neglected to mention: that I want nothing to do with the documentary. Evidently you feel the same way.’ She sounds nothing like my idea of what a drug addict ought to sound like.

‘You want nothing to do with it,’ I repeat blankly.

‘I’ve made it clear to Laurie from the start that he’ll have to do without me, so I don’t know why he keeps copying me
in on information I don’t need. Maybe he hopes I’ll change my mind, but I won’t.’ She sounds calm, as if none of what she’s saying matters to her; she’s merely informing me of the facts.

‘I’m in a similar situation,’ I tell her, too angry about the way I’ve been treated to be tactful. How dare Laurie inflict her on me without giving me any choice in the matter? Tamsin’s jiggling in her seat, desperate to know what’s going on. ‘Laurie can’t take no for an answer,’ I say. ‘That’s when he bothers to ask the question. This time he didn’t. I had no idea he was sending out my details to everyone. I don’t know why he assumed I’d take on the film without asking me if I wanted to.’

Tamsin rolls her eyes and shakes her head. ‘What?’ I mouth at her. I refuse to feel bad about any of this; it’s Laurie’s fault, not mine.

‘Why don’t you want to?’ Rachel Hines asks, as if it’s the most natural question in the world.

I imagine myself giving her an honest answer. How would I feel afterwards? Relieved to have it out in the open? It’s irrelevant, since I’ll never have the guts to put it to the test. ‘I don’t mean to be rude, but I don’t have to explain myself to you.’

‘No. No, you don’t,’ she says slowly. ‘This is going to sound pushy, but . . . could we meet?’

Meet. Me and Rachel Hines.

She can’t possibly know. Unless . . . No, there’s no way.

‘Pardon?’ I say, playing for time. I grab the pen from Tamsin’s hand and write, ‘She wants to meet me’. Tamsin nods furiously.

‘Where are you? I could come to you.’

I look at my watch. ‘It’s ten o’clock.’

‘So? Neither of us is asleep. I’m in Twickenham. How about you?’

‘Kilburn,’ I say automatically, then mentally kick myself. There’s no way I’m having Rachel Hines in my home. ‘Actually, I’m . . . I’m out at the moment, in the Grand Old Duke of York pub in . . .’

‘I don’t go to pubs. Give me your address and I’ll be there in an hour to an hour and a half, depending on traffic.’

Pros and cons race through my brain. I don’t want her in my flat. I don’t want anything to do with her apart from to know what she wants from me.

‘You’re worried about having someone who was once a convicted child murderer in your house,’ she says. ‘I understand. All right, I’m sorry I bothered you.’

‘Why do you want to meet me?’

‘I’ll answer that question, and any others you might have, face to face. Does that sound fair?’

I hear myself say, ‘Okay.’ Unable to believe what’s happening, I recite my address.

‘It’ll be just the two of us, won’t it? No Laurie?’

‘No Laurie,’ I agree.