He’s right but I’m not backing down. ‘Cheers. My funeral and all that.’
He shakes his head. He’s already finished stowing his conference gear. The Grand Prix pit teams could take lessons from him on efficient changeovers. ‘You know how to reach me.’
I really don’t, not anymore. ‘So we’re not going to talk about it?’
‘What good would that do? Don’t do anything stupid while I’m away.’ He walks past me without a goodbye kiss. I hear the front door slam.
I check the level in the bottle. Perhaps it will taste better with ice and lemon?
It doesn’t. I’m still lying awake at two in the morning, tossing and turning, getting up to go to the loo a million times. I check the time.
02:36.
The house clicks and settles in that odd way it does when it thinks no one is listening, like it’s really some living, breathing beast just pretending to be bricks and mortar. A horrible feeling comes over me of there being something wrong, someone out there, with me alone in the house. It’s happened before, usually when I’m in a car after dark on my own, waiting. Be honest, you’ve thought that too, haven’t you? Put your mind to it and it could happen right now where you are. In my nightmare, a man in a Scream-face mask is going to tap on the window. I can see him lurching from the bushes to stare, blank-faced, black circle of a mouth, hands pressed to his cheeks in terror, eyes fixed on me. I know it’s foolish but once the image is there, he’s there in the dark, the Scream guy, real as anything. And now he’s outside my back door as I lie upstairs in bed in a cold sweat.
Stop it, Jessica. You know how this works. It’s the late-night drinking that has summoned your personal horror. Yet my body hums with tension, telling me this time it’s different. This time he’s real. Paralysed, I lie wide awake, listening. There are footsteps in the side alley, I am sure of it, but no way am I going to look. I’m afraid I’ll see him – or not see him, which would be almost as bad, as I’ll know my brain is tricking me again. I take my phone under the blankets with me, thumb close to the emergency-call option on the home screen, but whoever it is doesn’t make another move.
It was probably just a normal intruder raiding the shed, I tell myself, and then laugh grimly at my idea of a small mercy.
Eventually, as it grows light and thoughts of the masked intruder recede, I drift off and sleep through my first alarm. On the second round, I leap up out of the twisted sheets and rush from the house, still buttoning my jacket. On the street, I bump into our neighbour, Lizzy, walking her spaniel. The dog lets off a staccato bark of hysterical joy at seeing me.
‘Had a good holiday?’ asks Lizzy, tugging on Flossie’s lead.
I have no time for the truth. When do I ever? ‘Great. Thanks for feeding the cat. I got you a present but I’m afraid I drank it. Believe me – I saved you from the hangover from hell.’
She laughs, as I hoped. ‘I don’t expect anything, you know that. I like Colette. It’s no trouble.’
‘Thanks. You’re a star. Must dash!’ Giving a cheery wave, I run for the station. Why have I let myself get in such a flap? I scold myself in my mind using Lizzy’s-voice-of-sense, for letting an overactive imagination cause such paralysis last night. The Scream guy never seems real at eight in the morning. Maybe things will improve today? I’ll have a good few hours at work and a decent conversation with Michael later to clear the air. Yes, that’s what I’ll do.
Then the train from Clapham is on time. Usually that would be cause for a marching band and trumpet fanfare, except I’m not. On time, I mean. I stumble up the station steps to see the 8:04 slide away to Vauxhall. My phone goes flying, screen hitting the concrete with that crack. I pick it up. Sure enough, the screen has gone all modern art – my life through shattered glass, still just about functioning.
Injured mobile in hand, I wonder if maybe I should take it as a sign? I should stop here, turn around and go home – repack the suitcase and max out the credit card on the first standby ticket to anywhere that isn’t this life of mine. Would Michael count that impulse as ‘stupid’?
The moment passes. Instead, I squeeze myself onto the next service, like a good little rat in the rat race. Suffering the indignities of the short-in-stature at rush hour, I travel with my face pressed against the back of a German student in a Bayern top. That’s no hardship. He smells good, all kind of musk and bath soap with a hint of alpine yodelling, and looks, well, far too young for me. Funny that that constitutes my most sensual experience of the month. Maybe of my year.
Change on to the Underground, another change and finally I make it to Dean Street, Soho, having hoofed it down Oxford Street as if someone gave a damn about what time I clocked in.
And then the key won’t turn in the lock.
‘Brilliant, just bloody brilliant.’ I ease the key out, wipe it on my skirt and try again. Jiggle. Plead. Swear under my breath. ‘You will not defeat me, you stupid bit of useless metal.’
I’m coming apart at this last hitch. My head is pounding, hands trembling, tears close. Don’t do this to me, world.
I then notice that the Yale lock looks new – a shiny brass face, unscratched, innocent. Right. OK. Reason this through. I’ve been on holiday for a week so it’s possible my boss has had cause to change the locks in my absence – a mugging, a drunken oh-shit-key-went-down-the-drain incident, or maybe he’s finally listened to my doubts about the cleaner? I indulge in a grunt of vindication. I’ve been complaining that she barely wipes the surfaces and seems to think a squirt of air freshener into the scummy bathroom will convince me she’s doing the job. But if he has given her the boot, and changed the locks to pre-empt revenge attacks, why didn’t he at least text me to let me know?
I thump on the door. ‘Jacob, are you in there? It’s me, Jessica?’ I shout my name with a rising inflexion. Remember me? You know, the research assistant who’s been working alongside you for three months.
No response.
Defeated, I sit down on the top step and review my options. This comes as a particularly fat fly buzzing on top of the pile of crap that is my morning so far. This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a whimper.
OK, some would say I’m being overdramatic. So what do I do now?
I try ringing Jacob but the number is unobtainable. No surprise there, as he usually keeps it switched off, claiming he doesn’t like the idea that his position can be triangulated from every phone mast. I’d once made a lame joke about drone strikes but he just looked at me in that way of his. Some men, actually most men, seem to find me the equivalent of the tissue left in a pocket during the wash. My jokes and ill-thought-through comments are fluff to be brushed away with a show of mild irritation. I then try ringing the office phone, just in case. It’s only a few metres from me on the other side of blue door and if he is in he’ll have to pick it up. I should be able to hear it ringing, but there’s only silence. I lift my mobile to my ear and hear the distressed beep of another unobtainable line.
OK, think this through. I don’t wait for a solution to come to me; I always act. This is my place of work, right? Starting to doubt myself – and that’s very easy to do as doubt is my factory setting – I go back down the stairs and stare at the number 5a on the front door.
Yes, it is the right one, with the busted entrance that yields to a firm push. Our narrow door is sandwiched between the empty shop that was briefly a nail bar and the ex-tapas restaurant that rapidly went bankrupt in the way of overambitious eateries. Both premises are gathering post and circulars on the doormats like letters from an obsessed lover who really just won’t give up. They’re gone. Get over it.
I go back upstairs and carry on an extra flight.