Something Only We Know (23 page)

And I remembered Nia Hughes and her Year 9 ‘Term of Dares’, where every day a group of us had to do something mad and usually boy-related. Note-planting was high on the agenda, and
the sending out of inflammatory texts or gossip. Because those were the days when, if someone fancied you, they’d drop a message to you via their mate and you’d just say yes or no and
then it was sorted. The news would get around, you might be an item for a while, and then later, you wouldn’t. After the break-up, a couple of days of smarting or embarrassment and
you’d be on track again, ready for the next event. You were high, you were low, but it was never deadly serious either way, and in between there was so much larking about you couldn’t
stay miserable for long. How I missed the simplicity of that time, the giddiness and fun. It was a shame for people who’d been bullied at school or who couldn’t keep up with the work or
make friends, but for me, right now, I’d have gone back in a heartbeat.

‘Hey up. Bandits at six o’ clock,’ said Gerry, bringing me back to the present with a jolt.

Thankfully you could always hear Rosa before she appeared because she wore these clicky heels and they made a racket on the wooden stairs. One second later the office door burst open and in she
swept, her fur-collared coat flapping. There was still no sign of Alan.

Gerry nodded significantly towards the wall planner, and after a moment I picked up my pen and went to stand near it. He was right. From this position you could see right into her annexe and
make out clearly what was on her desk. Today, planted among the piles of papers and gadgetry, was a shiny red parcel, about the size of a slim book and done up with gold ribbon. ‘To
Rosa’, said the label in thick black pen, ‘Merry Christmas’. Nothing else. What was Alan up to? Was it from Alan? Or was this gift courtesy of Mr Top Flight Dating? According to
our man on the sports desk, that romance was still going strong. New Boyfriend had taken her to a hunt ball and they’d had their picture snapped for a county mag. She’d shown Alan some
photos from her own camera, and he reported that she’d been a vision in fuchsia silk. ‘I expect there was tweed underneath,’ had been Gerry’s comment.

Rosa hung up her coat and drew off her black leather gloves, scanning the room as she did so. Her eyes gleamed when she saw what was waiting for her by her monitor. Immediately she strode over
and snatched up the parcel, weighed it in her hand, then shook it. I put my pen to one of the planner’s squares and pretended to make notes there.

At first her touch was delicate – a tweak of a ribbon, a dainty lifting of the red foil edges. Then she abandoned any restraint and in one greedy movement tore off the wrapping whole. Two
items fell out, the first a long, flat packet that looked as if it might be sexy stockings. She reached for her reading glasses and held the packet up to the light to peer at the description. But I
could make out the picture on the back and they weren’t sexy stockings at all, they were those dodgy crotchless ‘hygiene’ tights you wear to keep your nether bits cool. Puzzled,
she put them down and switched her attention to the other part of the present. This was a rigid box, narrow and about the length of a pencil. Because it had been wrapped separately, Rosa had to use
her fingernails to pick away the piece of Sellotape at the end before she could get into it. And then it came loose and she was able to draw out the box, leaving the paper like an empty shell. Her
brows came down as she took in what she’d uncovered. It was a box of Boots’ own-brand thrush cream that lay across her palm.

The next second she looked up and her eyes caught mine. I saw hurt in there as well as humiliation and anger; it felt like a pin stabbed in my chest. I turned away fast but it was too late.
She’d seen me watching. She understood beyond doubt that I’d stationed myself there to be a witness. And I heard her thoughts as plainly as if she’d bawled them across the office:
YOU set this up? This is your idea of a joke? How dare you! You’re NOTHING, NO ONE. I’m your BOSS. You’re going to be sorry for this, Jennifer Crossley.

The envelope was waiting on my desk when I returned from lunch. Not that I’d had much of an appetite after Rosa’s evil stare had burnt its mark on my brain.

‘This’ll be her firing me,’ I said to Gerry, holding up the envelope. ‘My marching orders.’

He had the grace to look ashamed. ‘Look, I’m sorry, Jen. I thought he’d set up a harmless prank. I’d no idea of the detail. I assumed it would be a fake spider or
something.’

‘Why did you even tell Alan about the thrush joke?’

‘Dunno. We were chatting, it was just something I said. I didn’t know he was going to act on it. You were unlucky the way it worked out.’

I slapped the letter down on the table.

‘Unlucky? You’re kidding. I was set up there.’

‘You reckon?’

‘Totally. He can be a nasty piece of work, can Alan. Always trying to score points off someone. Do you not remember last week him asking Tam why she’d put in a claim for mileage when
she was getting a lift in every day off her boyfriend? He dropped her right in it.’

‘I know he can be sly.’

‘I’ve been wondering for a while now if it wasn’t him who planted The Diary in my bag. I bet it was. The way he happened to “discover” it.’

‘Have you crossed him lately?’

‘Oh, I don’t think it’s personal. I think he just loves to get other people into trouble because it makes him look better. He knew what conclusion Rosa would jump to when she
spotted me gawping through her window. Anyway,’ I went on, picking up the letter again, ‘if this
is
my notice to quit, there’s not a lot I can do about it.’

‘If it is, she posted it yesterday.’

Gerry pointed at the envelope and it was indeed franked and dated. That calmed me slightly. Rosa wouldn’t have drawn a smiley biro face in the top corner either.

I flipped it over, slid my finger under the paper flap and prised it open. A Christmas card – of course it was. Not your conventional sort, but a sheet of folded paper with a photoshopped
image of Ebenezer Scrooge protesting against cuts to the welfare budget. ‘To Jen, have a groovy Christmas’, Keisha had written, and underneath, ‘(We didn’t know your home
address!) Pop into the shop soon – we miss you. XXX’.

At the bottom of the page Vikki had added her signature plus the message, ‘PS Owen says hello’. At once my anxiety levels shot up again.

‘Listen,’ continued Gerry, ‘I tell you what. This is partly my fault, so I’ll go to Rosa and say it was me.’

‘What?’

‘I’m not having you take the rap. It’s not on. I’ll go and see her.’

‘But then it’s not fair on you either.’

He let out a short laugh. ‘I don’t care. I’m coasting towards retirement, me. Don’t give a stuff what she thinks of me either way. But you, you’re just starting
out, you might need a reference soon.’

Owen says hello.
I struggled to focus. ‘You mean tell her it was Alan who planted the parcel?’

‘Nah. She wouldn’t believe that. She thinks the sun shines out of him. She’s had a soft spot for him since the day he came for his interview. I’ll just say it was me, a
moment of madness. I’ll say it’s my new blood pressure tablets affecting my brain.’

‘She’ll be furious with you.’

‘Yeah, well. The world’ll keep on turning.’ He ran his finger round the inside his collar as if it was too tight for him.

I put the card down. ‘I don’t know what to say.’

‘Don’t say anything. Leave it to me. Gerry’ll sort it out.’

And with that he straightened his tie, patted down his shirt and began to make his way towards Rosa’s room. I knew I should probably follow him, but my legs felt weak and my heart was
racing and I couldn’t imagine how my presence would help his story. All I would do was make things worse. Meanwhile, the torn envelope lay across my keyboard.
Pop into the shop soon
—
we miss you. XXX
Who exactly was missing me? Whose were those kisses at the end? Did Owen volunteer that hello himself? Did he specifically ask Vikki to write in the
card? What did ‘hello’ mean anyway?

The door to Rosa’s room shut with a clunk. On the stairs I could hear Alan’s voice growing louder as he shouted cheerfully into his mobile.

If anywhere does Christmas with aplomb, it’s Chester. When I left work at nearly six it was dark and the fairy lights strung along the Rows were twinkling. We’d had
a covering of snow and it was still coming down, those very small flakes that you can barely feel on your skin but which stick to your clothes and hair. Shop windows glowed warmly. I could smell
cinnamon from the French bakery, and scented soap as I walked past Crabtree & Evelyn. When I raised my head, the snow was swirling round the street lamps in a way that made me think of Narnia.
I knew I should get home before the roads got bad, knew my mum would be getting the tea ready, knew there was no way I ought to be bending my steps towards the Revolution bookshop.
For
goodness’ sake,
went my commonsense,
one second-hand casual greeting is what you’ve had off Owen. It’s nothing on which to build any hope. He hasn’t even sent you a
card himself.
But I somehow couldn’t help being caught up by the sparkly magic of the night. I mean, I could go along and just see how things were. Just see the girls. Catch up on news,
let them know I missed them too. Buy a book or two and casually return his hello. How could that hurt? How could it be wrong to meet old friends, to wish someone well on this Advent eve?

As I hurried along, slaloming between late-night shoppers, I saw couples everywhere, holding hands and arm in arm, embracing in a café porch. I caught a glimpse of a youth shyly collaring
a female assistant in a perfume shop, and an older man studying a jeweller’s display of heart-shaped pendants. The world seemed full of lovers looking to please.

There were no lights on in Owen’s flat as I passed.

By the time I’d crossed the river and climbed the hill towards the shop I was feeling faint with nerves. Oh for God’s sake, get a grip, I told myself. All I was going to do was put
my head round the door, say Merry Christmas, and – if I got the chance – ask Vikki whether the note on the card had actually been prompted by Owen or was simply her being kind. That was
it. Nothing to get in a state about. I could hear music drifting down the street, some slow, old-fashioned American jazz.

I drew near and crossed to the opposite side of the road, wanting to approach from an oblique angle rather than stroll straight in. The shop entrance was ajar, in spite of the weather, and a
sandwich board parked on the pavement outside announced ‘Late Opening’. The jazz was coming from a speaker on the front table. I could see several customers, or at least several bodies
moving among the books, plus the café area was almost what you’d call busy, with every one of the four tables occupied. In the window was an artificial Christmas tree laden with the
oddest selection of ornaments. I counted a baby’s bootee, a doll’s head, a CD with a ribbon looped through it, a cocktail umbrella, a plastic dinosaur, a mini box of cereal. Paper
snowflakes had been stuck along the bottom edge of the glass.

And there was Keisha, a tinsel crown resting on her afro and a tray of biscuits balanced on her upturned palm. She offered the biscuits to a guy in a long coat and he took a great handful and
dropped them in his pocket. Luckily she seemed to find this funny. I craned to see if Vikki was about. She wasn’t behind the counter serving drinks. That was Saleem, in a striped apron. She
wasn’t one of the people sitting down having a drink. Perhaps she’d popped out for a while, to top up supplies or drum up more custom. Then I spotted her. She was at the top of a
stepladder, half-hidden by a beam, attempting to hang a paper chain.

I sucked in a breath. OK, what I’d do was scuttle over, make a smiling, happy-Xmas entrance, grab some cheap paperback and do an ‘Oh-by-the-way’ as I was paying. That would
sort it. That would be enough. I checked for traffic through the drifting flakes.

That’s when I saw Owen. I’d missed him because he’d been at the foot of the stepladder, holding it steady. Now he gave his hand to Vikki as she clambered down. ‘Bloody
uneven floors,’ I imagined her saying. My heart did a great thump as he emerged into the light and I saw him properly. He’d had his hair cut shorter since I’d last seen him, so it
no longer hung down over his eyes. It made him look older and harder, less of a dreamer. And he looked sad. No, he really did. For minutes I watched, and he’d smile quickly at some joke or
comment, then the smile would die and it was like a light going out. There, a flash, a fading, his mouth a set, grim line again.

Oh, Owen. Part of me longed to run over to him and fling my arms around his neck. Simultaneously, a surge of anger flooded my chest as I remembered the things he’d said about me, about
himself, about Chelle. It made me want to march in and slap him for being so consummately played. Yet another part of me was just desperate to be inside the bookshop group, eating cookies under a
poster of a butterfly with the CND logo across its wings. Safe inside a world I knew, before everything changed. I stood on the cold pavement dithering, playing out the various scenarios in my
mind.
Jen!
he’d exclaim.
Thank Christ you’re here, I’ve missed you. I wanted you back but haven’t been able to pluck up the courage to say.
Or,
God,
Jen. I wasn’t expecting you. Whatever do you want?
Or,
Shit, look who it is, that’s the cue for me to leave.
No. He wouldn’t be cruel. He might turn me down, but he
wouldn’t be malicious about it. There was that sad mouth again. I ached to touch his lips with my fingertips.

A bus trundled past, blocking him out of my sight for a few seconds. If only I could make my legs work.

Then I heard my phone beep. I pulled it out, fingers fumbling, and checked the screen to find a text from Mum asking what time I’d be home. Typical, that, breaking into my drama with her
irritating concerns. I typed that I was already on my way and sent the message off. Mothers make liars of us all.