I log off from my account, all too aware my balance is in desperate straits. That is two months’ part-time work for which I haven’t been paid and I don’t need a crystal ball to tell me that I’m unlikely to see the money. I’m thirty and on skid row. Again. Why can’t I negotiate my adult life better than this? If I told you what had happened to me recently it would appear to be one crisis after another. I sometimes feel that some cosmic soap scriptwriter has got hold of me and keeps orchestrating season finales. I just want a quiet run of modest happiness with no thrills or spills.
I need to talk to someone about this. I need to vent. But who is there? My half-sister has forbidden me from troubling my mother. She’s delicate, vulnerable, says Miriam, it’s time you relied on yourself. That always brings to mind Mum as a dandelion clock, a perfect sphere, tremulous, seemingly fixed until a puff of wind starts to unravel it. She only ever seemed competent when with me, never with her capable older child, which is probably why Miriam doesn’t understand our relationship. But big sister is right about one thing: I sense Mum is retiring from a world which she finds too much for her, pottering around the edges of Miriam’s life on the farm, looking after grandchildren, getting involved in her village community where what happens on Strictly is about the most distressing topic of conversation. Her whole aim is to try to keep from being underfoot. Her existence is cast as a form of apology, her epitaph ‘I’m sorry I took up so much room’. No, Mum isn’t the right person to help me with this.
Depressingly, I find myself reverting to habit and sending Michael a text. Can we talk? I don’t want to do this by messaging. A minute passes in which I put on the kettle. I can see he’s read it, and he knows I know he’s read it, so I get a response.
Is it important?
It’s important to me.
I mean can it wait until tomorrow? I’m about to go into a presentation.
What would be the point of a conversation, I wonder, dragging him away from his oh-so-vital conference on something or another? Please hold, your call is important to us. Michael doesn’t even pretend to give me the pseudo-sincerity of the automated switchboard. I try one last time. My boss has gone. So has the office.
The elusive Jacob Wrath. Or is that illusive?
Damn you, Michael, with your clever word play. Couldn’t you for once try to care? We had been friends before, even if we’re not now. I close the message thread. His comment reminds me that the couple of times I arranged for a social meet-up after work for the three of us, me, Michael and my employer – ‘come on, guys, it’ll be fun’ – Jacob cried off, claiming new lead, head cold, threatened train strike. It was all the more galling as I had called in a lot of home-life favours to get Michael to agree to traipse up to Soho (his characterisation of a simple tube journey). He began to make barbed jokes that Jacob didn’t exist, that he was a figment of my imagination. Now I think that Michael just didn’t want to discuss me with my boss, or look responsible for my day-to-day welfare, and Jacob was just avoiding making himself real to anyone but me. So much easier to slip away when you’ve few connections to sever.
How far has Jacob taken it? Paranoia is getting a hold. I search for our website, the one I’d helped create and administer. Wrath Investigations, Specialists in Missing Persons Cases. (Yes, I am aware of the irony that the expert has gone AWOL himself.) Instead of the picture I’d posted of a lost girl in profile against the background of a London station, I get a broken link. I do a more general search and find only one relevant record: my cheery announcement on a business networking site that I’d started work as a profiler at Wrath, the implication being that it was far better than teaching Psychology A level. I’d meant it as a ‘look, see: I’m bouncing back’ to old colleagues but now I’m ashamed. It seems like I’m trying far too hard. I delete my profile. I don’t want the landlord to find me that way now I’ve not stayed to meet his man.
My phone starts doing an Irish jig on the table. I check the number. I’d noticed three missed calls in my log from the same phone since I turned it back on, which suggests the landlord isn’t going to let this go. I decline the call but wait for the person to leave a message.
‘Miss Golightly, if that’s your name, this is Max Tudor of the law firm Tudor Associates.’ The lawyer is more of a film buff than his employer and has recognised the borrowed name. ‘I believe we almost met today. My client, Harry Khan, wishes urgently to speak to you. Mr Wrath owes him three months’ rent. The only payment he ever received was the first instalment plus deposit, which has naturally been forfeited. We are eager to find a Miss Jessica Bridges, whose name and signature appears as co-guarantor on the lease.’
What? I know I didn’t sign anything resembling a lease while working for Jacob. I may be many things but utterly braindead is not one of them.
‘As Mr Wrath has decided to make himself unreachable, we wish to pursue our claim with her. You might like to tell her that as her name and address are listed, she will not be able to avoid us. I strongly recommend you ask her, Miss Golightly, to get in touch.’ The sarcasm with which he says my fake name makes it clear he believes he’s talking to Jessica Bridges. Which he is.
I turn off my phone again. My three-month employer has shifted quickly in my mind from hapless to fraudulent. Have I really been set up? For real? And why?
I sink on to a kitchen chair and beat the table top with a fist, hissing swear words. The very worst thing is that no one will believe me if I tell them. I’ve tried that before and it has never gone well. Despite what Michael thinks, it’s not the ‘Cry Wolf’ situation; there’s always been a wolf in my mess-ups, but I’ve always managed to escape – just. This time it looks like the wolf knows where I live and is coming to eat me.
The landline starts ringing, making me start. I rub my aching fist. No one ever calls us that way, not unless they are trying to sell us something. I bite a hangnail, looking at the handset as if it will make the decision for me. It’s probably the man again, having traced me via my address on whatever agreement Jacob has forged. Jacob knew where I lived because I’d filled out a form with all my details when applying for the job, as any normal person would do. I’m not speaking to the lawyer; I’m learning Jacob’s lesson and not making myself real. I have to go out before the landlord sends more people round to bang on the front door. Fortunately, the house is in Michael’s name, so the lawyer can’t burst in with bailiffs. As far as the law is concerned I don’t own anything worth seizing. When Mr Khan works that out, he’ll back off, surely?
I grab my bag, stuffing in keys and phone. Entering the utility room, I step over the drift of laundry waiting to go into the washing machine and pluck down a change of clothes from the dryer. They’ve been hanging there for over a week and need an iron but I’m not an ironing kind of person. That’s Michael’s phrasing about me. ‘You’re not a tidy sort of person’; ‘you’re not a focused kind of person’; ‘you’re not a careful kind of person’. No shit, Sherlock.
That reminds me to fetch my tablets. I go up to the bathroom on the half landing and pack my wash bag, including my disposable contact lenses and little box of Ritalin capsules. In my hurry, had I remembered to take one this morning? I think not. I quickly pop one from the blister pack and wash it down with a gulp snatched from under the running tap. It’s supposed to help my concentration but, to be honest, I’ve not noticed much improvement since I started the course, not unless I take a couple and I’m not supposed to exceed Charles’ prescribed dose. Tempting though. I find myself staring blankly at the green glass bottles arranged on the windowsill for a drifty moment. What am I doing? Oh yes, packing. Getting the hell out of Dodge, as they say in American novels.
Pocketing the pills, I enter the bedroom and step over Michael’s holiday clothes. How have we become the couple where he expects me to pick up after him? It’s the not-having-a-proper-job thing that’s done it to us. Or maybe he was always heading that way but I’d just not woken up to my expected role? Next he’ll be leaving me housekeeping money