Then You Were Gone. Claire Moss

All he could think, though, was that Mack was just Mack. He was always just Mack. Mack was the kind of guy where someone would say, ‘Well, that’s Mack for you,’ and everybody would know what they meant. And for the last few weeks – for as long as Jazzy could remember in fact – Mack had been behaving entirely as he always did. He had been in and out of the office a lot, but no more than usual, and had seemed quite excited about a number of new leads that he was confident he could turn into regular clients. He had lent Petra a paperback he had just finished reading, raving about it to Jazzy first, and had asked them if they wanted to accompany him and Simone to a gig next month. When Jazzy’s housemate had lost it, although it was a huge and traumatic shock, it had not been a total surprise to Jazzy. The guy had been acting oddly for a long time, perhaps as long as a year – in fact, if he was honest Jazzy would say he had always been a little odd. But the same could not be said of Mack. Mack never acted oddly, he always knew exactly what to say and how to say it, fine-tuning his patter effortlessly depending on the company he was in. It was what made him such a fantastic salesman.

      And that stuff about Keith? That was the strangest thing. Jazzy had always thought that Mack may not have exactly liked Keith, but that he at least trusted him. Keith scared Jazzy, he would freely confess it, and he had no idea how to talk to him, knowing as he did nothing about cars, golf or how to objectify women. Keith was like an uncle to Mack; that was what Mack had told him when he first introduced him to Jazzy. What could have gone so wrong that Mack could believe he needed to keep it secret from Keith? A slow, solid feeling of foreboding grew in Jazzy’s stomach, his footsteps slowing as he continued his trudge to the office, as he mulled over that question. He had never thought it was a good idea to let themselves fall into Keith’s orbit as much as they already had. Should he have trusted his instincts? Did Mack mean that the reason he had gone away was somehow Keith’s fault?

      They had both been working for Keith for nearly two years now, Mack throwing himself into the enterprise wholeheartedly, Jazzy still insisting to himself, and anyone else, should they ask, that his job there was only a temporary measure until he found something that suited him better.

      On New Year’s Eve nearly three years ago, Mack had been drunk and a little maudlin, depressed about his dull but lucrative job as an anti-static flooring salesman, for which, let’s face it, Jazzy could hardly blame him. When Mack had first landed the job, Jazzy had had to laugh. It sounded so much like a parody of the kind of job people settle for when they have given up on life that Jazzy could scarcely believe someone as dynamic, as zestful and trendy as Mack could really have agreed to spend the majority of his waking hours doing such a thing. That New Year Mack was harping on, as he often did, about his ‘plastic business card moment’. Kind of the opposite of a light bulb moment, that was how he described it. The moment when everything went dark.

      ‘I can’t do it, Jazz,’ Mack was saying for at least the fourth time. ‘I just can’t. I could be looking at thirty-five more years of this shit. Well, I won’t because it’ll kill me long before that. I’ll drink myself into an early grave or deliberately crash my car into the central reservation or something. But I’ve got to get out. And I mean soon.’

      ‘Hmm, bit melodramatic, maybe? Even for you? Even for 11.47 p.m. on New Year’s Eve?’ Jazzy loved Mack like a brother (actually he preferred him to his actual brothers) but, Jesus, sometimes.

      ‘Mate, I’m never melodramatic. My life’s just very, very interesting.’

      ‘Yes, you’re right. You’re the most interesting anti-static flooring salesman I think I’ve ever met.’

      ‘Ha fucking ha. Do you know what, though?’ Mack took a too-large gulp of champagne and winced as he tried to swallow it in one and the bubbles went up his nose. ‘I go to these godawful “networking” things they make me do, and I eat the rancid food and I act like I give a shit, and I come away thinking, yes, I am the most interesting person in this room, and I don’t care if that makes me sound like a dick, because I am a dick, and anyway it’s true.’

      ‘I’m sure it is.’

      ‘No, honestly. Do you know, I was at one the other week in fucking, I don’t know, Kendal or somewhere in the arse end of nowhere, and it was a BREAKFAST one, which are just the WORST because you either have to stay overnight in the sub-Crossroads shithole that’s hosting it or you have to get up at five a.m. and drive there, and either way you feel like Alan Partridge, and the only way not to feel like Alan Partridge is not to talk to anyone, but you’re not allowed to do that because talking to people is the only reason you’re there in the first place.’

      ‘Plus, you never stop talking, even at seven in the morning.’ Jazzy was only half-listening, looking round the kitchen to make sure Petra wasn’t going to be within kissing distance of any of Mack’s handsome hipster beardos when Big Ben struck midnight.

      ‘That as well. But anyway, we’d all finished our flabby bacon and rock-hard eggs and we were taking it in turns to do our spiel, and the last guy up was some poor downtrodden bastard from a plastics company in Barrow in Furness, and when he’d finished talking he whipped his business card out and – ta fucking dah – the guy’s business card is made. Of. PLASTIC. Here, I’ve still got it. Check that out.’

      It was a small one, the size of a credit card with the same rounded edges. Neil Stannah, it said, Head of Sales and Business Development, Northern Region. ‘Hmm, yeah. Wow. That’s… that’s quite something.’ Jazzy handed Mack the card back and stood up, the better to survey the crowded room.

      ‘Isn’t it just? But that’s not the worst bit. That’s nowhere NEAR the worst bit. After he whipped it out, everyone else round the table started pissing themselves laughing.’ Mack himself let out a humourless bark of laughter and shook his head. ‘And not at what a loser this guy was. They genuinely thought it was funny, like, “Hey, this guy works for a plastics company and even his business card is made of plastic! Can you believe this shit? Are we having fun here or what?” I genuinely thought I might pass out, or puke up my hash browns. I saw it then, forty years of this, up and down the M6, in and out of Premier Lodges, talking the talk and eating the swill and it was like someone had flicked a switch in my head. I’ve got to get out, Jazz. I’m drowning.’

      They had had conversations along these lines many times before, even prior to the plastic business card incident, but this time there was something different. The panic in Mack’s eyes was real, there was genuine desperation in his tone. ‘I’m quitting,’ he said. It was something he had said before, and Jazzy half-ignored him. He was drunk, he was tired, it was three minutes to midnight and he had misplaced his fiancée. Plus Jazzy had his own work problems on his mind. The small, private investment bank he had been a software developer for since he returned from Japan, had put him and the whole of the IT department on notice of redundancy three weeks before Christmas. He did not particularly want to listen to someone threatening to put themselves out of work through choice.

      ‘No, really,’ Mack went on. ‘I really am this time. I’ve spoken to Keith about it.’

      Jazzy had instantly become alert. This was something he had always worried about, that Mack would somehow allow himself to fall into Keith’s hands. Jazzy did not know anything for definite about Keith, did not even know that how he made his money was illegal, but he could not believe that anyone could become as wealthy as Keith purely from selling second hand cars and cheap imported electrical goods. And he knew that becoming part of Keith’s world was emphatically not something that Mack wanted. He had hinted as much several times, had told Jazzy that the reason he had gone into sales was so that he could make enough money to never have to go asking his mum or Keith for anything (Jazzy had known that really Mack was only talking about Keith. Mack’s mother had no money to speak of, and nothing other than a bottle of aftershave at Christmas that Mack might need). It had seemed like a point of pride, but also of self-protection. ‘Keith?’ Jazzy said, unable to keep the shock or disapproval out of his tone.

      ‘Don’t worry,’ Mack shook his head, his words smooth and fluid after all the champagne. ‘It’s legit. He’s got a new arm to the business, he thinks I’d be ideal to head up the sales section. Well, I say head up, I think to be