‘What happened to you, Alec?’ Ann asks, touching my arm.
‘I had a tough one with the shrink. Grilled me.’
‘You look exhausted. Did it go badly?’
‘Difficult to say. Sorry to keep you waiting.’
‘You didn’t,’ Ogilvy says warmly. ‘Matt only finished ten minutes ago.’
I look across at the Hobbit, whose nod confirms this.
‘Pub, then?’ Ogilvy asks.
‘You know what? I may just go home,’ I tell them, hoping they’ll just let me leave. ‘I have to have dinner with a friend later on. I’d like to have a shower, get my head together.’
Elaine appears offended.
‘Don’t be stupid,’ she says. ‘Just have a couple of drinks with us.’
‘I’d love to. Really. But I have so much I have to do before–‘
‘What? Like having a shower? Like getting your head together?’
Her mimicry irritates me, and only hardens my resolve.
‘No. You guys go ahead. I’m done for. I’ll see you all in the autumn.’
I smile here, and it works. The joke relaxes them.
‘Well, if you’re sure,’ Ogilvy says. He’s probably relieved. Centre stage will be his.
‘I’m sure.’
‘Either way,’ says Ann, and this seals it, ‘we should go now, ’cos I’ve got a flight to Belfast at half past nine.’
So we say our good-byes, and Sisby is over.
EIGHT
Pursuit of Happiness
In the early hours of the following Sunday morning, I wake with a specific dream image of Kate being fucked by another man.
She is in a strange, lightless room, almost suffocating with the pleasure of it. Her body is arched in a seizure of lust, but the lovemaking is so intense that she makes no sound. To desire and to be desired this much is inspiring in her a kind of awe. She has discovered a sexual pleasure far greater than the one that we shared in our innocence. She is relishing it because it has nothing to do with compromise or responsibility, nothing to do with the stagey romance of first love. She feared that she would never again experience the passion and tenderness that she knew in those first years with me. But now I look into her face and see that all of that has been consigned to the past.
My room is in absolute darkness as these thoughts peck away at my heart. The shock of them has quickened my breathing to something approaching the panic of an asthma attack, and I have to sit up in bed and then walk slowly around the room, gathering myself together.
I open the curtains and look outside. The colour of the sky is caught between the city’s reflected glow and the first light of dawn. She is out there with him somewhere, lying against pale sheets.
I take out Kate’s T-shirt from the bottom of my chest of drawers and bury my face in its soft cotton folds. Her perfume has disappeared from it entirely. From a bottle of scent that I keep in the bathroom, I replenish the smell, tipping droplets of Chanel No. 19 onto the material before scrunching it up in a tight ball. It is the fourth time that I have had to do this since we separated. Time is passing by.
I cannot get back to sleep, so I sit in the kitchen drinking coffee, my mind shuttling between memories of Kate and apprehension over the results of Sisby.
Whatever happens now, win or lose, I can’t go back to CEBDO. Not after all this. I couldn’t shrink myself. So tomorrow, first thing, there’s something I must do.
‘Look, Nik, here’s the thing. I want to move on.’
This has been coming for months. It feels good to tell him.
‘You want to move on.’
This isn’t said as a question. More as a statement. Nik swallowing the news whole.
‘I feel I’ve achieved everything that I can working for you. And things have got very bad between me and Anna. We can’t work together anymore. It’s better that one of us should go.’
I have brought him to a small greasy spoon café on Edgware Road. It is 10 A.M. Traffic and people clapping by outside. There’s a red plastic bottle containing ketchup–probably not Heinz–sitting on the table between us. Nik stares at it.
‘Okay,’ he says.
I had expected more of a reaction, a trace of hurt.
‘I’ve been offered a chance to do something…larger. Something more meaningful. You know?’
Nik shakes his head, still looking at the ketchup.
‘No, I don’t know. You tell me what that is, Alec. I’m not a mind reader.’
‘I’m sorry. I’ve hurt your feelings. You’ve invested a lot of time in me and I’ve let you down.’
Now he lifts his head and looks me straight in the eye. There may be pity in his leering, condescending grin.
‘Oh, Alec. That’s what I always hated about you. You always think you’re the most important person in the room. Let me tell you something. The world is bigger than you. You understand? You don’t hurt my feelings. You think something like you handing in your notice could hurt my feelings? You think I can’t go out onto that street right now and find someone to replace you? You think I can’t do that?’
This is more like it. This is what I was expecting.
‘I’m sure you can, Nik. I’m sure you can. You’re amazing like that.’
‘Don’t make fun of me, all right? I gave you a job of work. You come into my offices and all you’re interested in doing is fucking my staff, fucking Anna. And now you say you cannot speak with her. This is your problem. I gave you a job of work. That is a precious thing…’
‘Oh, please.’
I really draw out the please here, and it deflects him. I often wonder when he is angry like this how much gets lost in translation, how much of what he wants to say is denied to him by his mediocre English.
‘This operation I have,’ he says, gesturing freely with his right hand. He’s about to embark on one of his delusional monologues. ‘You’re just a tiny fragment of something much larger. Something that you can’t even comprehend. I plan expansion, more offices, more people and workers. And do you know why you can’t comprehend that?’
‘Is it just too complicated for me, Nik? Is it just too global and secret and amazing?’
‘I tell you why. It’s not because I don’t allow you to comprehend it. No. It’s because you won’t allow yourself to see it. You see only what’s in front of your nose. You never see the bigger picture, the possibilities your work can offer. You and me, we could go places, make some money. The world is bigger than you, Alec. The world is bigger than you.’
‘What does that fucking mean, Nik? What exact brand of shit are you talking?’
‘You’re a clever boy. I thought this when I first met you. I still think it. But you need to take your head out of your arse. You’re soft.’
It’s time to draw things to a close.
‘Nik, I’m not about to take life lessons from you. These plans, these ambitions you talk about. I can’t tell you how little I care about them. You’re not