After You (25 page)

‘Did you send the address?’ I asked him.

‘Yup.’

‘Show me.’

The phone message was simply the address of my flat and signed
L
.

He had responded:
I have a meeting in town and I’ll be there shortly after eight.

‘You okay?’ he said.

My stomach tightened. I felt as if I could hardly breathe. ‘I don’t want to get you into trouble. I mean – what if you get found out? You’ll lose your job.’

Sam shook his head. ‘Won’t happen.’

‘I shouldn’t have pulled you into this mess. You’ve been so brilliant and I feel like I’m repaying you by putting you at risk.’

‘We’ll all be fine. Keep breathing.’ He smiled reassuringly at me, but I thought I could detect a faint strain around his eyes.

He glanced over my shoulder and I turned. Lily was wearing a black T-shirt, denim shorts and black tights, and she had done her make-up so that she looked simultaneously very beautiful and very young. ‘You all right, sweetheart?’

She nodded. Her skin, normally the slightly olive colour Will’s had been, was unusually pale. Her eyes were huge in her face.

‘It’s all going to be fine, I’d be surprised if it takes longer than five minutes. Lou’s been through it all with you, yes?’ Sam’s voice was calm, reassuring.

We had rehearsed it a dozen times. I wanted her to reach a point where she wouldn’t freeze, where she could repeat her lines without thinking.

‘I know what I’m doing.’

‘Right,’ he said, and clapped his hands together. ‘Quarter to eight. Let’s get ready.’

He was punctual, I had to give him that. At one minute past eight my buzzer rang. Lily took an audible breath, I squeezed her hand, and then she answered the entry-phone.
Yes. Yes, she’s gone. Come up.
It didn’t seem to occur to him that she might not be what he thought.

Lily let him in. Only I, watching through the crack in my bedroom door, could see the way her hand trembled as she reached for the lock. Garside ran his hand over his hair, glanced briefly around the hallway. He was wearing a good grey suit, and tucked his car keys into his inside breast pocket. I couldn’t stop staring at him, at his expensive shirt, his beady, acquisitive eyes as they scanned the flat. My jaw tightened. What kind of man felt entitled to press himself on a girl forty years younger than he was? To blackmail the child of his own colleague?

He looked uncomfortable, far from relaxed. ‘I’ve parked my car out the back. Will it be safe?’

‘I think so.’ Lily swallowed.

‘You
think
so?’ He took a step back towards the door. The kind of man who sees his car as an extension of some minuscule part of himself. ‘And what about your friend? Whoever owns this place. They’re not coming back?’

I held my breath. Behind me I felt Sam’s steadying hand on the small of my back.

‘Oh. No. It will be fine.’ She smiled, suddenly reassuring. ‘She won’t be back for ages. Do come in. Would you like a drink, Mr Garside?’

He looked at her as if he were seeing her for the first time. ‘So formal.’ He took a step forward and finally closed the door behind him. ‘Do you have Scotch?’

‘I’ll check. Come through.’

She began to walk to the kitchen, him following, removing his suit jacket. As they entered the living room, Sam walked past me out of the bedroom, strode across the hallway in his heavy boots and locked the inside door to the flat, placing the keys, jangling, in his pocket.

Garside, startled, turned and saw him, joined now by Donna. They stood there in uniform, against the door. He looked at them, then back at Lily, and faltered, trying to work out what was going on.

‘Hello, Mr Garside,’ I said, stepping out from behind the door. ‘I believe you have something to return to my friend here.’

He actually broke out in a spontaneous sweat. Until then, I hadn’t known it was physically possible. His eyes darted about for Lily, but as I had stepped out into the hall she had moved so that she was half behind me.

Sam stepped forward. Mr Garside’s head reached just above his shoulder. ‘The phone, please.’

‘You can’t threaten me.’

‘We’re not threatening you,’ I said, my heart thumping. ‘We would just like the phone.’

‘You’re threatening me just by blocking my exit.’

‘Oh, no, sir,’ said Sam. ‘Actually
threatening
you would involve mentioning the fact that, if my colleague and I chose, we could pin you down right here and now and inject you with dihypranol, which would slow and ultimately stop your heart. Now
that
would be a threat, especially as nobody would question the word of the paramedic crew who had apparently tried to save you. And as dihypranol is one of the few drugs that leaves no trace in the bloodstream.’

Donna, her arms crossed across her chest, shook her head sadly. ‘It’s a shame, the way these middle-aged businessmen just drop like flies.’

‘All sorts of health issues. They drink too much, eat too well, don’t take enough exercise.’

‘I’m sure this gentleman here isn’t like that.’

‘You’d hope not. But who knows?’

Mr Garside seemed to have shrunk by several inches.

‘And don’t even think of threatening Lily. We know where you live, Mr Garside. All paramedics have that information to hand if and when they need it. It’s amazing what can happen if you piss off a paramedic.’

‘This is outrageous.’ He was blustering now, his face drained of colour.

‘Yup. It really is.’ I held out my hand. ‘The phone, please.’

Garside glanced around him again, then finally reached into his pocket and handed it, to me.

I tossed it to Lily. ‘Check it, Lily.’

I looked away, in deference to her feelings, while she did so. ‘Delete it,’ I said. ‘Just delete it.’ When I looked back, she had the phone, screen blank, in her hand. She gave a faint nod. Sam motioned to her to throw it to him. He dropped it to the
floor and stamped down on it with his right foot, so that the plastic splintered. He crushed it with such violence that the floor shook. I found myself flinching, along with Mr Garside, every time Sam’s heavy boot came down.

Finally, Sam stooped and gingerly picked up the tiny SIM card, which had skidded under the radiator. He examined it, and held it up in front of the older man. ‘Was that the only copy?’

Garside nodded. Moisture was darkening his collar.

‘Of course it’s the only copy,’ said Donna. ‘A responsible member of the community wouldn’t want to take the risk of something like that turning up anywhere, would he? Imagine what Mr Garside’s family would say if his nasty little secret got out?’

Garside’s mouth had compressed into a thin line. ‘You’ve got what you wanted. Now let me leave.’

‘No. I would like to say something.’ My voice, I noted distantly, shook slightly with the effort of containing my fury. ‘You are a sleazy, pathetic little man, and if I –’

Mr Garside’s mouth hooked upwards in a sneer. The kind of man who had never once felt threatened by a woman. ‘Oh, do be quiet, you ridiculous little –’

Something hard glittered in Sam’s eyes and he sprang forward. My arm shot out to restrain him. I don’t remember my other fist pulling back. I do remember the pain that shot through my knuckles as it made contact with the side of Garside’s face. He reeled backwards, his upper body hitting the door, and I stumbled, not expecting the force of the impact. When he righted himself, I was shocked to see blood trickling from his nose.

‘Let me out,’ he hissed, through his fingers. ‘
This minute
.’

Sam blinked at me, then unlocked the door. Donna stepped away, just about allowing him through. She leaned towards
him. ‘Are you sure you don’t want a dressing for that before you go?’

Garside kept his pace measured as he left, but as the door clicked shut behind him, we heard the sound of his expensive shoes picking up into a run down the corridor. We stood in silence until we couldn’t hear them any more. And then, the sound of several people exhaling at once.

‘Nice punch, Cassius,’ said Sam, after a minute. ‘Want me to take a look at that hand?’

I couldn’t speak. I was bent double, swearing silently into my chest.

‘Always hurts more than you think it will, doesn’t it?’ said Donna, patting my back. ‘Don’t stress, sweetheart,’ she told Lily. ‘Whatever he said to you, that old man is nothing. Gone.’

‘He won’t be back,’ said Sam.

Donna laughed. ‘He pretty much crapped himself. I think he’ll be running a mile from you from now on. Forget it, darling.’ She hugged Lily briskly, as you might someone who had toppled off a bike, then handed me the pieces of the broken phone to throw away. ‘Right. I promised to pop round my dad’s before our shift. See you later.’ And then, with a wave, she was gone, her boots clumping cheerfully down the corridor.

Sam began to rummage through his medical pack to find a dressing for my hand. Lily and I walked into the living room where she sank down on the sofa. ‘You did brilliantly,’ I told her.

‘You were pretty badass yourself.’

I examined my bloodied knuckles. When I looked up, the smallest grin was playing around her lips. ‘He totally wasn’t expecting that.’

‘Neither was I. I’d never hit anyone before.’ I straightened my face. ‘Not that, you know, you should consider me any kind of moral example.’

‘I’ve never considered you any kind of example, Lou.’ She
grinned, almost reluctantly, as Sam came in, bearing some sterile bandage and a pair of scissors.

‘You okay, Lily?’ He raised his eyebrows.

She nodded.

‘Good. Let’s move on to something more interesting. Who fancies spaghetti carbonara?’

When she left the room, he let out a long breath, then stared at the ceiling for a moment, as if composing himself.

‘What?’ I said.

‘Thank God you hit him first. I was afraid I was going to kill him.’

Some time later, after Lily had gone to bed, I joined Sam in the kitchen. For the first time in weeks some sort of peace had descended over my home. ‘She’s happier already. I mean, she bitched about the new toothpaste and left her towels on the floor, but in Lily terms she’s definitely better.’

He nodded at this, and emptied the sink. It felt good having him in my kitchen. I watched him for a minute, wondering how it would feel to walk up and place my arms around his waist. ‘Thank you,’ I said instead. ‘For everything.’

He turned, wiping his hands on the tea towel. ‘You were pretty smart yourself, Punchy.’ He reached out a hand and pulled me to him. We kissed. There was something so delicious about his kisses; the softness of them compared to the brute strength of the rest of him. I lost myself in him for a moment. But –

‘What?’ he said, pulling back. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘You’re going to think it’s weird.’

‘Uh, more weird than this evening?’

‘I keep thinking about that dihypranol stuff. How much would it take to actually kill a person? Is this something you all carry routinely? It just … sounds … really dodgy.’

‘You don’t need to worry,’ he said.

‘You say that. But what if someone really hated you? Could they put it in your food? Could terrorists get hold of it? I mean, how much would they actually need?’

‘Lou. There’s no such drug.’

‘What?’

‘I made it up. There’s no such thing as dihypranol. Totally invented.’ He grinned at my shocked face. ‘Funnily enough, I don’t think I’ve ever had a drug that worked better.’

I was the last one to arrive at the Moving On meeting. My car wouldn’t start again and I’d had to wait for the bus. When I got there the biscuit tin was just closing, a signal that the real business of the evening was about to begin.

‘Today we’re going to talk about faith in the future,’ Marc said. I muttered my apology and sat down. ‘Oh, and we only have an hour today because of an emergency Scouts meeting. Sorry about that, guys.’

Marc fixed each of us with his Special Empathetic Gaze. He was very keen on his Special Empathetic Gaze. Sometimes he would stare at me for so long I wondered if something was poking out of my nostril. He looked down, as if gathering his thoughts – or perhaps he liked to read his opening lines from a pre-prepared script.

‘When someone we love is snatched from us, it often feels very hard to make plans. Sometimes people feel like they have lost faith in the future, or they become superstitious.’

‘I thought I was going to die,’ said Natasha.

‘You are,’ said William.

‘Not helpful, William,’ said Marc.

‘No – honestly, for the first eighteen months after Olaf died, I thought I had cancer. I think I went to the doctor about a dozen times convinced I was getting cancer. Brain tumours, pancreatic cancer, womb cancer, even little-finger cancer.’

‘There’s no such thing as little-finger cancer,’ said William.

‘Oh, how would you know?’ snapped Natasha. ‘You have a smart answer for everything, William, but sometimes you
should just keep your mouth shut, okay? It gets very tedious having you make a snarky comment about everything that someone says in this group. I thought I had little-finger cancer. My GP sent me for tests and it turned out I didn’t. It might have been an irrational fear, yes, but you don’t have to put down everything I say because, whatever you think, you don’t know everything, okay?’

There was a brief silence.

‘Actually,’ said William, ‘I work on an oncology ward.’

‘It still stands,’ she said, after a microsecond. ‘You are insufferable. A deliberate agitator. A pain in the backside.’

‘That’s true,’ said William.

Natasha stared at the floor. Or perhaps we all did. It was hard to tell, given I was studying the floor. She put her face into her hands for a moment, then looked up at him. ‘You’re not really, William. I’m sorry. I think I’m just having one of those days. I didn’t mean to snap at you like that.’

‘Still can’t get little-finger cancer, though,’ said William.

‘So …’ said Marc, as we tried to ignore Natasha cursing repeatedly under her breath ‘… I’m wondering whether any of you have reached a point where you can consider the prospect of life five years on. Where do you see yourself? What do you see yourself doing? Do you feel okay to imagine the future now?’

‘I’ll be happy if my old ticker’s still ticking,’ said Fred.

‘All that internet sex putting it under strain?’ said Sunil.

‘That!’ Fred exclaimed. ‘That was a total waste of money. The first site, I spent two weeks emailing this woman from Lisbon – total cracker – and when I finally suggested we meet up for a bit of the old how’s-your-father, she tried to sell me a condo in Florida. And then a man called Buffed Adonis private-messaged me to warn me off and tell me she was actually a one-legged Puerto Rican fella called Ramirez.’

‘What about the other sites, Fred?’

‘The only woman who said she’d meet me looked like my great-aunt Elsie, who kept her keys in her knickers. I mean, she was very sweet and all, but the old girl was so ancient I was almost tempted to check.’

‘Don’t give up, Fred,’ said Marc. ‘It might be that you’re looking in the wrong places.’

‘For my keys? Oh, no. I hang those by the door.’

Daphne decided she’d like to retire abroad in the next few years – ‘It’s the cold here. Gets into my joints.’

Leanne said she hoped to finish her philosophy master’s. We gave each other the kind of deliberately blank looks you do when nobody wants to admit they had actually assumed she worked in a supermarket. Or maybe a slaughterhouse. William said, ‘Well, you Kant.’

Nobody laughed, and when he realized nobody was going to, he sat back in his chair, and it might have been only me who heard Natasha muttering, ‘Hah hah,’ like Nelson in
The Simpsons
.

At first, Sunil didn’t want to speak. Then he said he’d thought about it and he’d decided that in five years’ time he’d like to be married. ‘I feel like I’ve turned myself off for the past two years. Like I wouldn’t let anyone get close to me because of what happened. I mean, what’s the point of getting close to someone if you’re only going to lose them? But the other day I started thinking about what I actually want out of life and I realized it was someone to love. Because you got to move on, right? You got to see some kind of future.’

It was the most I had heard Sunil speak in any meeting since I had started coming.

‘That’s very positive, Sunil,’ said Marc. ‘Thank you for sharing.’

I listened to Jake talk about going to college, and how he
wanted to train as an animator, and wondered absently where his father would be. Still weeping over his dead wife? Or happily ensconced with some newer version? I suspected the latter. Then I thought about Sam and wondered whether my offhand reference to a relationship had been wise. Then I wondered what we were in if it wasn’t a relationship. Because there were relationships and relationships. And even as I mulled this over I realized that, if he asked, I wasn’t sure which category we even fitted into. I couldn’t help wondering whether the intensity of our search for Lily had acted as a kind of cheap glue, binding us together too quickly. What did we even have in common, other than a fall from a building?

Two days previously I had gone to the Ambulance Station to wait for Sam, and Donna had stood by her car chatting to me for a few minutes while he gathered his belongings. ‘Don’t mess him around.’

I turned, not sure if I had heard her correctly.

She had watched as an ambulance was unloaded by the shutters, and then rubbed her nose. ‘He’s all right. For a great lunk. And he really likes you.’

I hadn’t known what to say.

‘He does. He’s been talking about you. And he doesn’t talk about anyone. Don’t tell him I said anything. I just … he’s all right. I just want you to know.’ She had raised her eyebrows at me then, and nodded, as if confirming something to herself.

‘I’ve just realized. You’re not in your dancing-girl outfit,’ said Daphne.

There was a murmur of recognition.

‘Did you get promoted?’

I was dragged from my thoughts. ‘Oh. No. I got fired.’

‘Where are you working now?’

‘Nowhere. Yet.’

‘But your outfit …’

I was wearing my little black dress with the white collar. ‘Oh. This. It’s just a dress.’

‘I thought you were working at a themed bar for secretaries. Or maybe French maids.’

‘Don’t you ever stop, Fred?’

‘You don’t understand. At my age, the phrase “Use it or lose it” takes on a certain urgency. I might only have twenty or so stiffies left in me.’

‘Some of us have never had twenty stiffies in us in the first place.’

We paused to give Fred and Daphne time to stop giggling.

‘And your future? It sounds like it’s all change for you,’ said Marc.

‘Well … I actually got offered another job.’

‘You did?’ There was a little ripple of applause, which made me blush.

‘Oh, I’m not going to take it, but it’s fine. I feel I’ve sort of moved on, just for being offered a job.’

William said: ‘So what was the job?’

‘Just something in New York.’

They all stared at me.

‘You got a job offer in New York?’

‘Yes.’

‘A paid job?’

‘With accommodation,’ I said quietly.

‘And you wouldn’t have to wear that godawful shiny green dress?’

‘I hardly think my outfit was a good enough reason to emigrate.’ I laughed. Nobody else did. ‘Oh, come on,’ I said.

They were all still staring at me. Leanne’s mouth might actually have been hanging open a little.

‘
New York
New York?’

‘You don’t know the whole story. I can’t go now. I have Lily to sort out.’

‘The daughter of your ex-employer.’ Jake was frowning at me.

‘Well, he was more than my employer. But yes.’

‘Does she have no family of her own, Louisa?’ Daphne leaned forward.

‘It’s complicated.’

They all looked at each other.

Marc put his pad on his lap. ‘How much do you feel you’ve really learned from these sessions, Louisa?’

I had received the package from New York: a bundle of documents, with immigration and health-insurance forms, clipped together with a thick piece of cream notepaper on which Mr Leonard M. Gopnik forwarded me a formal offer to work for his family. I had locked myself into the bathroom to read it, then read it a second time, converted the salary to pounds, sighed for a bit, and promised myself I would not Google the address.

After I’d Googled the address I resisted the brief urge to lie on the floor in a foetal position. Then I got a grip, stood up and flushed the loo (in case Lily wondered what I was doing there), washed my hands (out of habit), and took it all into my bedroom where I stuffed it into the drawer under my bed and told myself I would never look at it again.

That night she had knocked on my bedroom door shortly before midnight.

Can I stay here? I don’t really want to go back to my mum’s.

You can stay as long as you want.

She had lain down on the other side of my bed and curled up in a little ball. I watched her sleep, then pulled the duvet over her.

Will’s daughter needed me. It was as simple as that. And,
whatever my sister said, I owed him. Here was a way to feel I hadn’t been completely useless. I could still do something for him.

And that envelope proved I was someone who could get a decent job offer. That was progress. I had friends, a sort of boyfriend, even. This, too, was progress.

I ignored Nathan’s missed calls and deleted his voicemail messages. I would explain it all to him in a day or two. It felt, if not like a plan, then as close to one as I was going to get right now.

Sam was due shortly after I got back on Tuesday. He texted at seven to say he was going to be late. He sent another at a quarter past eight, saying he wasn’t sure what time he would make it. I’d felt flat all day, struggling with the stasis that comes from not having a job to go to, worries about how I was going to pay my bills, and being trapped in an apartment with someone else who similarly had nowhere to go and I was unwilling to leave by herself. At half nine the buzzer went. Sam was at the front door, still in uniform. I let him in and stepped out into the corridor, closing the front door behind me. He emerged from the stairwell and walked towards me, his head down. He was grey with exhaustion and gave off a strange, disturbed energy.

‘I thought you weren’t coming. What happened? Are you okay?’

‘I’m being hauled up in front of Disciplinary.’

‘What?’

‘Another crew saw my rig outside the night we met Garside. They told Control. I couldn’t give them a good answer as to why we were attending something that wasn’t on the system.’

‘So what happened?’

‘I fudged it, said someone had come running out and asked
us for help. And that it had turned out to be a prank. Donna backed me up, thank God. But they’re not happy.’

‘It’s not that bad, surely?’

‘And one of the A and E nurses asked Lily how she knew me. And she said I’d given her a lift home from a nightclub.’

My hand went to my mouth. ‘What does that mean?’

‘The union’s arguing my case. But if they find against me I’ll be suspended. Or worse.’ A new, deep furrow had etched it’s way between his brows.

‘Because of us. Sam, I’m so sorry.’

He shook his head. ‘She wasn’t to know.’

I was going to step forward and hold him then, to put my arms around him, rest my face against his. But something held me back: a sudden, unbidden image of Will, turning his face away from me, unreachable in his unhappiness. I faltered, then a second too late, reached out a hand instead and touched Sam’s arm. He glanced down at it, frowning slightly, and I had the slightly discomfiting sensation that he knew something of what had just passed through my head.

‘You could always give it up and raise your chickens. Build your house.’ I heard my voice, trying too hard. ‘You’ve got options! A man like you. You could do anything!’

He gave a half-smile that didn’t reach his eyes. He kept staring at my hand.

We stood there for an awkward moment. ‘I’d better go. Oh,’ he said, holding out a parcel. ‘Someone left this by the door. Didn’t think it would last long in your lobby.’

‘Come in, please.’ I took it from him, feeling I had let him down. ‘Let me cook you something badly. Come on.’

‘I’d better get home.’

He walked back down the corridor before I could say anything else.

From the window, I watched him leave, walking stiffly back to his motorbike, and I felt a momentary cloud pass over me again.
Don’t get too close.
And then I remembered Marc’s advice at the end of the last session:
Understand that your grieving, anxious brain is simply responding to cortisol spikes.
It is perfectly natural to be fearful of getting close to anyone
. Some days I felt as if I had two cartoon advisers constantly arguing on each side of my head.

In the living room Lily turned away from the television. ‘Was that Ambulance Sam?’

‘Yup.’

She went back to the television. Then the parcel grabbed her attention. ‘What’s that?’

‘Oh. It was in the lobby. It’s addressed to you.’

She stared suspiciously at it, as if she were still too conscious of the possibility of unpleasant surprises. Then she peeled back the layers of wrapping to reveal a leather-bound photograph album, its cover embossed with ‘For Lily (Traynor)’.

She opened it slowly, and there, on the first page, covered with tissue, was the black and white photograph of a baby. Underneath it was a handwritten note.