In Real Life (23 page)

‘Fuck,' I say.

‘This morning. We've spent the whole rest of the day talking about it and then he drove me home just now.'

The display on the DVD player says it's just gone five in the morning.

Carol has the voice of someone who's about to start crying at any moment. I'm already pre-empting it, moving my hand to stroke her back, just as she begins to curl forward and put her face in her hands. And then she's sobbing loudly into her palms as I stroke the bony knobbles of her spine, feeling each sob juddering up through her skin and muscle and bone.

‘Shhh, shhh,' I whisper, pretending to be Mum, or Dad, or someone.

A little later, I go out to the kitchen and make us instant coffees. I pour rum in them, too, and we sit on the sofa, our feet resting against the coffee table, and I let her talk more about what happened. I don't really say anything
though because there's nothing much to say except, ‘I'm sorry.'

She tells me how in the morning she opened Martin's present – a shiny purple Agent Provocateur bra and knicker set that she just didn't like – and looked at it and realised that Martin didn't really know anything at all about her and never truly would and that the only reason she was even with him, if she was completely honest with herself, was out of an overwhelming terror of being left on her own.

‘I'm sorry,' I say, once she's finished.

‘I'm thirty-one years old,' she says.

Me, too, I think.

‘What the fuck am I doing with my life?' she says.

I don't know, I think.

‘You'll be fine,' I say, and pour us out the rest of the rum.

I get off the bus and walk the short walk to work. It's a dull, grey, spidery Monday morning and I'm hungover and wishing I'd not chosen today to finally, finally,
actually
give up smoking. As I go in through the front door and up the main stairs, I grit my teeth and stick my hands deep in my trouser pockets.

I wonder if Martin will say anything.

My plan is just to keep my head down and hit my target number of surveys and in between calls I'm going to start searching for another job.

I sit down. Turn on my computer. Plug in my headset. Log into the automatic dialler. Slowly the room fills
up. Just before nine, Dalisay comes in. I pretend to be reading an article about global warming that someone shared on Facebook and wait for her to say hi, but she doesn't. She just walks past me and takes her seat behind the partition.

At nine, Martin appears in the doorway. He's dressed as smartly as usual but there's a small razor nick on his cheek, and his eyes seem smaller and darker, and just for a moment I actually feel sorry for him.

He doesn't know what he's doing, either, I think.

‘Alright, everyone,' he says in a slightly quieter voice than normal, clapping his hands limply. ‘Let's get started, yeah?'

He catches my eye and I wince on his behalf as he turns and heads off down the corridor.

I complete the happiness survey with two old women and one old man, and no one seems particularly happy today.

The highest score anyone gives me is an overall five out of ten.

I never normally pay that much attention to the caller information on the dialler, but about halfway through the morning I notice I'm dialling the flat directly below Carol's: Ms R. Langley, it says, Flat 7, Bridport House. No way, I think. I pass the door to Flat 7 twice a day at least, on my way up and down the communal staircase.

The phone to Flat 7 rings for a long time and then finally someone picks up.

‘Hello?' a woman's voice says.

I go through the usual spiel; I tell her my name and why I'm calling and promise her the possibility of entry to a competition where she
may
be in with a chance of winning a luxury holiday if only she has the time to take part in a short questionnaire.

‘Oh, go on then,' she says.

So I start the questionnaire.

I ask her all the usual questions.

Towards the end, in the ‘general overall happiness' section, I ask how happy she'd consider herself overall, on a scale of one to ten.

‘I don't know . . . four?'

I ask her why that is.

‘Well, it's not been the same since my husband passed away.'

‘I'm very sorry to hear that,' I say, and type
husbnd dead
in the little box on my screen. ‘Anyway, moving briskly along,' I say, ‘when you picture yourself in one year's time, do you see yourself as: a) less happy than you are today, b) the same level of happiness, or c) happier?'

‘Well, c, I hope,' she says with a small, sad laugh.

At the end of the call, I thank her for her time and wish her all the best and tell her that we'll be in touch if she wins the holiday.

What I really want to say, though, is, ‘I live directly above you!'

I want to ask if there's anything I can do.

I want to tell her that I'm sorry her husband died and
that the world has become such a miserable place for her that she would rate it an overall four out of ten with one being not at all happy and ten being very happy indeed.

‘Just one final question,' I say, making sure to speak in the same measured tone as before, as if this is a thing that we ask everyone who takes part. ‘Can you confirm your first name for me, please?'

‘Rosemary,' she says.

At the start of lunch break, Martin walks up to my desk. ‘Can I have a quick word, mate?'

I follow him down the corridor. Today there's none of the usual swagger in his step. Today he's just sort of hobbling.

The light isn't on in his office and the room smells damp and old, like he's possibly slept in it.

He's going to ask me about Carol and I'm going to have to tell him a lie.

‘Have a seat,' he says, sliding himself into his big leather swivel chair.

I take the seat opposite, and when we do finally look each other in the eye, Martin's are sore and bloodshot.

‘I think we both know what this is about,' he says quietly.

I nod.

‘I've had another listen to your calls,' he says, ‘and I can't see any improvement whatsoever. In fact, if anything,
mate
, they've gotten a bit worse actually.'

‘Oh,' I say.

‘Yeah. Seems like you've got a completely different set of priorities to the rest of us here.'

I don't speak.

I can't think of anything to say.

‘
Non job
priorities,' he says.

‘Like what?'

‘Like trying it on with that Chinese bird.'

‘Come on,' I say. ‘That's not fair.'

He folds his arms and leans back in his swivel chair and looks at me for a long, tense moment. He doesn't look like a person who is making a decision about my future at Quiztime Solutions, though. He looks like a person who's already made one.

‘Is this it, then?' I ask. ‘Have you just fired me?'

‘Work it out,' he says. ‘It's not rocket science.'

As I leave the building I automatically reach into the pockets of my coat for my tobacco and papers before remembering that I threw them away, first thing this morning. I can feel the dry dust of old tobacco in the corners of my coat pockets, but it's not quite enough to make a roll-up out of. That sweet, stinging, need-a-cigarette feeling grows in my stomach as I start to walk down Deansgate, my head spinning.

I turn the corner.

At the gate to the park, I stop. There's Dalisay again, sat on one of the benches, eating her sandwich.

Deep down, I knew she'd be here.

She pretends not to notice me until I'm right up close.

‘You okay?' she says, once I've sat down next to her. ‘You look . . . funny.'

‘I'm fine,' I say. And then, after a pause: ‘I think Martin just fired me.'

‘
What?
' she says, genuinely surprised. ‘What for?'

‘Don't worry about it.'

I feel dizzy and out-of-synch, like the sound of me is running about a half-second behind the picture.

I reach out and try to hold her hand.

My fingers grope for – and briefly manage to touch – her red woollen mitten before she yanks it away.

‘What're you doing?' she snaps.

‘I don't know,' I say.

‘I have a boyfriend, you know. Back home.'

‘I know,' I say. ‘Marcos.'

‘Yeah,' she says. ‘Marcos.'

‘I saw him on Facebook,' I say.

I watch the pigeons pecking around in the grass for a while.

‘I'm sorry,' I say. ‘I don't know what I'm doing.'

‘As in right now?' she says. ‘Or generally?'

‘Both,' I say. Then, ‘I think I might leave Manchester.'

I'm not sure if I mean it, though.

‘Me, too,' she says. ‘My mom's been sick, and I'd been saving some money to fly home for Christmas anyway. But I feel like I might end up going early.'

‘How early?'

‘Couple of weeks?'

Just then her red plastic wristwatch begins beeping and she fumbles in her mittens to stop it, in the end offering her wrist to me to do it for her.

I press the little button.

‘Thanks,' she says. ‘Well, end of lunch.'

She stands up and I stay sitting on the bench.

‘You staying here?' she says.

I shrug.

LAUREN

2014

‘
H
ave you seen
The Motorcycle Diaries
?'

Carl's speech was slurry even though he'd only had two pints. I suspected that he'd been drinking somewhere else, too, since much earlier in the evening.

I shook my head, my eyes drifting once more to my phone, which I surreptitiously slid off the table, letting it drop into my lap then touching its button and glancing at it, wondering why I was even being covert; it wasn't as if Carl was paying attention. He was just enjoying talking now, slurring wetly in my direction. I'd heard about his camera collection, his gym membership, his current job, the job he was retraining for, and his year-and-a-half motorcycle odyssey across South America.

21:37, my phone's display said, which meant I'd been
here for thirty-six minutes. It felt like much longer. Days, perhaps. I'd had one and a half small white wines, and spoken somewhere in the region of fourteen sentences.

‘Oh shit,' I said, looking up from the blank screen of my phone, forcing my eyes to widen as far as they'd go. ‘I just got a message from my flatmate. I think I need to go, actually.'

‘Everything okay?' Carl slurred, confused.

‘My cat's fallen ill,' I said, grimacing apologetically, standing, pulling on my coat, all in one quick motion.

I don't know what Carl thought when I just left like that, really quickly, without even kissing him on the cheek or giving him a hug or saying any of the things you're probably supposed to say, even if you don't really mean them: ‘We should do this again,' ‘It was great to meet you,' etc.

It felt good to be back outside and I began the walk home slowly, enjoying the cold air on my face. I only lived six streets away and I tried my hardest to maintain a steady, even pace. I'd been reading about various mindfulness and meditation techniques recently, and one of them was a walking meditation, where you just focused on your steps, letting your head clear, thinking only of your feet, rhythmically touching against the ground, plodding along at a simple pace, one-two, one-two, one-two . . .

But as I walked, I found myself thinking again about my lie to Carl, about Ginny being unwell, and instead of keeping my footsteps steady I picked up pace, with each new step convincing myself that perhaps something
was
wrong with her, that by talking about it, by saying it out loud, I'd kind of willed it into existence and that I'd get home and find her dead.

I sat down on the edge of my bed, still breathless from my almost-run. Ginny was asleep, curled tightly, nothing at all the matter with her. I stroked her the wrong way on purpose, uncovering a newish patch of grey-white hairs amongst the black. She opened one eye a little, then closed it, curling herself even tighter.

When I turned on my laptop, its fan whirred and buzzed and rattled. Something was going wrong with it. It was on its last legs.

It took an age to log into Hotmail. I sat on the bed and stroked Ginny the wrong way and watched the little circle on the screen revolve, chasing its own tail, as I waited for my inbox to load.

Finally I typed ‘voicemail' into the search bit at the top, opening the email from Michael that simply said ‘Here you go', and then clicked on the link to the almost completely blank page that, he'd assured me, would always be there, no matter what.

I pressed the play button, and there was another long pause while the file buffered. Then a crackle, then a whistling tone, and then, ‘Welcome to answerphone. You currently have no new messages and three saved messages. To hear your messages press . . .

‘First saved message: Hello, love, it's me. Just phoning to say happy birthday. What time is it there? Give me a ring when you get this.

‘Second saved message: Hello, love, only me again. Thought it might be a bit later by now. Or is it still early? I can never work it out. Anyway, whatever time it is, I just wanted to say that I love you very much and hope you're having a nice day, and I've posted a little thing, even though you said you didn't want anything, but I don't hold out much hope of it getting there in time anyway. Okay, I'll call again in a little while. Bye!

‘Third saved message: We're not having much luck at this, are we? Oh sod it . . . Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday to
you-hoo
, happy birthday to you.'

part three

be right back

LAUREN

2005

O
n the flight home, Lauren waited for Michael to offer her the window seat. He shuffled his way towards it, then, once he'd sat in it, looked over his shoulder and grinned at her. There were slivers of airport bagel caught between his teeth. You didn't actually tell him you wanted the window seat, Lauren reminded herself. He isn't psychic.