‘Are we finished?’
‘I’m afraid so. I hadn’t realized how late it is.’
‘I thought the interview would last longer.’
‘It can do,’ she replies, uncrossing her legs and allowing her right foot to drop gently to the floor. ‘It depends on the candidate.’
Abruptly I am concerned. The implication of this last remark is troubling. I should have been less candid, made her work harder for information. Stevenson looks too satisfied with what I have given her. She closes my file with knuckles that are swollen with arthritis.
‘So you’re happy with what I’ve told you? Everything’s okay?’
That was a dumb thing to ask. I am letting my concern show.
‘Oh, yes,’ she says, very calmly. ‘Do you have anything else you might want to ask?’
‘No,’ I say immediately. ‘Not that I can think of.’
‘Good.’
She moves forward, beginning to stand. Things have shut down too quickly. She sets my file on a small table beside her chair.
‘I should have thought you were keen to be off. You must be tired after all your exertions.’
‘It’s been hard work. But I’ve enjoyed it.’
Stevenson is on her feet, barely taller than the back of the chair. I stand up.
‘I’ve enjoyed talking to you,’ she says, moving towards the door. There is a distance about her now, a sudden coldness. ‘Good luck.’
What does she mean by that? Good luck with what? With SIS? With CEBDO?
She is holding the door open, a pale tweed suit.
What did she mean?
Brightness in the corridor. I look back into the office to check that I have left nothing behind. But there is only low light and Stevenson’s papers in a neat pile beside her chair. I want to go back in and start again. Without shaking her hand, I move out into the corridor.
‘Good-bye, Mr Milius.’
I turn around.
‘Yes. Good-bye.’
I walk back down the corridor feeling light and stunned. Ogilvy, Elaine, the Hobbit, and Ann are waiting for me in the common room. They stand up and approach me as I come in, a surge of kinship and relief, smiling broadly. This is the thrill of finishing, but I feel little of it. We have all done what we came here to do, but I experience no sense of solidarity.
‘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.’