By the Time You Read This (14 page)

“What…what do you think I should wear?” I asked shyly. As if in the presence of a master, desperate for her to share her words of feminine wisdom that would ensure I didn’t make a total mess of my date with Matt.

“I suppose I could wear my nice jeans…”

“Let’s go shopping!”

I hated shopping at the best of times and failed to see the glee that obviously gripped Jamie as she announced her intentions. But I reluctantly agreed, because, as Jamie put it, she’d known Matt for years, and knew what he liked and disliked. She’d be the perfect style adviser, apparently.

That night I gazed into my wardrobe. At the high-necked shirts. The odd pair of trendy jeans, but nothing you could call overly sexy and sophisticated. I was plain old Lois Bates, Kevin’s daughter, trying to make her mark in this world. I sat on the end of my bed (which hadn’t seen any action during its lifetime) and sighed inwardly. The thought of going out with Matt filled me with excitement but also with fear. I reached under my second pillow and picked up
The Manual.

“T
his is going to be great!” sang Jamie as we walked up Oxford Street on Saturday. It felt strange spending time with her outside the office, away from the others. And as we bonded over coffee, she told me about her family, namely her mother.

“Boyfriend after boyfriend that one!” she said with a slurp of coffee.

“It must have been hard.”

“Kind of…yeah!”

“So what about this mystery man of yours then?”

“What about him?” She looked down at her empty cup.

“I’m not asking you to tell me who he is.”

“Good, because I won’t.”

“Is he married?”

“Single.”

“Older?”

“Same age. And that’s it. Come on, let’s hit the shops!” Which I did, though secretly I was longing to be back at home snuggling on the sofa with a steaming cup of tea. Jamie skipped and dragged me along to an endless array of clothes shops and department stores.

“I’m not sure about the dress…”

“But it’s lovely, Lois.” Jamie fingered the tiny backless black dress I suspected would fit Abbi.

“I’m just not sure it’s really me. It’s a little short…”

“Matt will love it,” she teased with a wink.

“You think so?”

Five minutes later Jamie and I stared toward the same mirror.

“You look stunning. I told you!” she said. I stared at my reflection and, surprisingly, didn’t mind what was staring
back at me—a mature, twenty-three-year-old SEXY woman. I had to rub my eyes just to see if this
was
really me, while Jamie released my frizz from its ponytail and piled it on top of my head, allowing various curly strands to tumble toward my cheeks as we both stared at my reflection. The dress clung to my curves very flatteringly, making everything look…rather good?

The two of us stood there staring at the mirror, and suddenly I wished this moment could be caught on camera. And although this would never be one of those ugly duckling to swan stories, I did feel a little sex-kittenish if I do say so myself. Watch out, Matty, I thought. Perhaps it was because I’d never been called “stunning” before, or because I was exhausted, or because a part of me wanted to please Matt, but I ended up paying for that backless dress with only an ounce of trepidation. I also bought (with Jamie’s insistence) a pair of red “take me against the wall” killer heels I couldn’t envisage ever being able to walk straight in.

The last stop was the make-up counter of a department store. I wasn’t sure about the lipstick—bright blood-red and certainly not right with my coloring—even though Jamie assured me it was this season’s shade and the assistant couldn’t have cared less enough to offer an opinion. So I settled on buying my first ever foundation along with the lipstick.

I turned the page, realizing that Dad had written this Miscellaneous entry for my teenage years, because right now it wasn’t making much sense.

I moved on.

Being myself was harder to achieve than I’d imagined, especially when teetering on three-inch heels, my little toes killing me as Matt moved in for a hello kiss on my cheek.

“This is lovely,” I said, shrugging off my coat—to reveal the backless dress. As well as being half naked, it still felt strange being with Matt minus Jamie and Keitho, in an environment oozing with romance—AND in someplace
other than South London or the immediate area around the office. Matt had taken me to a gorgeous little Italian restaurant on Edgware Road.

“They do really nice pizza here. You know, in those huge ovens,” he said, immediately ogling the menu. No compliments. He’d hardly even looked at me.

“You look great,” I said, admiring his crisp white shirt unbuttoned sexily at the neck, a wisp of hair just noticeable in between a button. In contrast, his face was freshly shaven and just so cute.

He looked up. “Thanks.”

The waiter appeared. “Any drinks, sir, madam?”

Admittedly Matt’s lack of compliments was far from thrilling; even I was prepared to stretch to “You look lovely!” whenever Abbi paraded round in her pink tutu.

I felt like an ass as I scanned the menu. For a soon-to-be homeowner and astute(ish) businesswoman, a goldfish had more experience when it came to dating, and it showed. My database of witty tales was now seemingly infected with a virus. Okay, enough with the IT talk.

In between mouthfuls of pizza we did manage to cover an array of interesting subjects—like, whether Bob in Accounts was shagging Dee in Personnel. At first the familiarity was comforting, but I soon began to think this was just another after-work gathering, minus the others.

“I’d really like to go into maintaining networks. That’s where the money is,” said Matt, placing the last of his pizza into his mouth.

“I have heard that.”

“What do you think’s the next big IT explosion? I mean, after the Internet—that will be hard to beat,” he asked.

I sipped at my Coke and wondered what Corey was
doing, thousands of miles away in Paris. Was he, too, out dining with a girl? In some fashionable little café overlooking—

“Lois?”

“Sorry. What did you say?”

“The next big thing?”

“Erm…well…it’s got to be wireless internet…for homes, cafés, even restaurants,” I said.

“No way. It will be free internet calls over the phone. Everyone will be doing it in a couple of years. Sooner, in fact.”

My mind drifted to Corey again. Wondered what it would be like, here, with him. We’d probably be discussing the Top Ten of Lo Bag’s Embarrassing Moments: starting with the time I fell down that ditch, exposing my daisy-print underwear as Carla and her dad stifled guffaws. Like Matt, he would have ordered the meat supreme pizza, but instead of red wine, a beer.

“You’re miles away. What are you thinking about?”

“Nothing important. Believe me. Now, where were we?”

At the end of the night Matt dropped me off without wading in for a kiss. A true gentleman, I suppose. Besides, I felt the date had gone quite well (although I hardly had a list of dates to compare it with). I hesitated on whether to call Carla for a post-date analysis, but decided to keep this one to myself. At least until I could report on something a bit more exciting.

I hoped that would be soon.

M
onday and Matt was fine. Perhaps distant. But I understood his need for privacy, wary of becoming Monday-morning office gossip.

“Lois, I’m not sure what’s going on with you, but you’d
better snap out of it,” said Keitho in that New Zealand drawl the following day as I returned from lunch.

I made a confused face as he led me out of the office, away from the others.

“You were assigned a really important job last night, but you chose to go home—”

“Excuse me? I was assigned four jobs after four p.m. last night, the last one around a quarter to six. So I completed them all before I went home. Two log-on problems, slow email connections and a broken mouse. I did those.”

“Well, I had a complaint from the director’s PA saying she called the helpdesk way before five p.m.”

“I didn’t get any notification from Jamie or Matt…Not even an email.”

“You sort that out with them, Lois. But just for the record, I’m not happy about this. Anyone but the director’s office!”

I wasn’t keen on Keitho’s tone, but decided to let it go.

“I’m sorry, it won’t happen again, okay?”

“Make sure it doesn’t. Sloppy stuff like this reflects on all of us.”

“T
here you go, Ms. Bates, it’s all yours!” said the handsome salesman with a touch too much oil in his hair, as he handed me the keys to the sporty gray MG. It drove like a dream and, passing the busy streets of New Kent Road, through to Deptford and then home, I imagined Dad beside me with a huge grin on his face, ticking me off for my bad driving habits and wanting to swap seats, just to show me how to really handle “this machine.”

I was desperate to show off my new car, and as Carla was away with Rob the City Banker, I headed to Mom’s.

“Wow, it’s a great little car!” enthused the Bingo Caller.

Mom joined us outside, Abbi trying—without success—to zap free from her grip.

“I hope it doesn’t go too fast!” moaned Mom, with a sharp squint of her eyes.

“Faster the better!” enthused the Bingo Caller as I ruffled Abbi’s soft hair. As always, her hand remained glued to that almost decomposed donkey, which, thankfully, wasn’t stuck up her nostril this time.

“It’s fine, Mom,” I said, determined she wasn’t about to dampen my mood.

Abbi sprang free from her captor and I clasped her hand.

“Can I have a go?” she asked in that sweet tone reserved for confectionery requests or when asked if she’d done a bad thing.

“No!” said Mom.

“Why?” she asked.

“I said no.”

But like a dog determined to hold on to a particularly juicy bone, Abbi persisted. “Pleeease, Mommy! Please.”

“Don’t worry, Mom. We’ll just go and get some gas then we’ll stop off at Mr. Tally’s and I’ll have her back in about twenty minutes. Twenty-five at the most.” It felt necessary to list my plans for Abbi. Ever since she’d wandered off, Mom’s paranoia had, quite understandably, amplified.

“Well…Oh go on then!”

“I’ll look after her, Mom. Promise.”

“I know you will.”

My little sister jumped up and ran around in a small circle like a dog chasing its tail.

“She’s just happy to spend time with you,” said Mom.

I checked Abbi’s hands for any sticky substances and attempted to ban the donkey.

“Noooo, Lois!” she protested as I strapped her and, reluctantly, the smelly donkey into the seat.

“You are potty trained, right?”

“Lois, I’m four!”

“Just checking.”

Offending half the driving population of Charlton with my ultra-slow pace, I pulled into the gas station.

“Out!” I ordered playfully.

“Me and donkey can wait for you.”

My mind flashed back again to two years ago. Abbi missing. The panic. The sorrow.

“I don’t think so. Let’s go and pay together. There’s a toy in it for you.”

“Purple dinosaur on TV?”

“Maybe.”

“And a chocolate?”

“Done.”

I took Abbi’s hand, helping her skip up to the paying booth, and then I heard my name.

“Lois?” a voice from behind me asked.

I turned, taking in the woman with a double buggy, shopping bags swinging from the handles. Short, unkempt hair, overlong gold chain, cleavage in need of plastic surgery, and dressed in a tatty tracksuit.

“It is you! It’s me…don’t you remember? We went to school together!”

The woman would have been a few years older than me, and as far as I remembered the older girls never really mixed with us.

“You’re Lois, right? Lois Bates?”

“Yes.”

“It’s me!” She smiled, revealing smoke-stained yellow
teeth, yet still I couldn’t place her. Abbi wriggled about in my hands.

“I’m sorry…”

“Sharlene Rockingham.”

I located my shock. “Sharlene?”

“That’s me!” She bent down to attend to one of the children, who’d begun to sob deeply. “It’s me all right—SHUT UP YOU LITTLE BRAT!” she screamed at the child, which of course Abbi found totally hilarious, but for me it induced a barrage of unhappy memories. Memories I had long escaped from and had no intention of revisiting.

“These are my two, Robbie and Raven. Say hello to Auntie Lois!” she squealed.

“Hello!” I said with a short wave. The children’s sobs subsided quickly, replaced with blank looks.

“I’ve got two more at school, Ricarde and Reeka. How old’s your one, then?”

“She’s my little sister.”

“No kids then?”

“Say hi, Abbs,” I said, ignoring her question, needing time to think.

Abbi refused to oblige of course, perhaps feeling cheated at the absence of the purple prehistoric teddy currently sitting on the gas station shelf or perhaps she was sensing what an evil, manipulative, horrible cow this girl had been and probably still was.

Sharlene’s face drooped. “So, no kids then?”

“No.”

“Oh…That’s a shame,” she enthused.

“You think so?’ I replied sarcastically.

“We live up on the Hankle Estate. Ricarde is seven and he lives with his dad. Reeka is five, and then I’ve got these
two. One and two. Just waiting to get re-housed at the moment.”

“I really have to go, but it was nice seeing you again,” I said quickly, heading for the car, pretending I’d left something, hoping she’d see what a success I’d made of MY life. I opened the door feeling the burn of her eyes upon me. And instead of the fear such a look would have invoked in the past, I felt nothing.

O
n hindsight, seeing Sharlene Rockingham again had been good for me. A kind of therapy I suppose. Because I realized she just didn’t affect me any more. I’d moved on. I lived in a decent apartment and had a job I was good at. Well, at least, I
thought
I was good at it—because soon, mistakes began to appear. Small ones, like my call logs not being kept up-to-date, even though I was meticulous when it came to paperwork. I knew it wasn’t paranoia. Someone was clearly out to get me, that much was obvious—and there were only three suspects.

“W
ell done. You found me out.”

I pushed the soap dispenser button.

“It was me. Always has been,” my previously silent enemy, admitted.

My suspicions had focused on Matt right from the start, so I decided to watch his actions around me. His tone of voice. How he looked at me. We’d never really spoken much about our “date” so when I decided to bring it up one afternoon, just to gage how he felt about the whole disaster, he just laughed and told me to “get over myself.” As brief and as embarrassing as that exchange was, it convinced me that Matt wasn’t involved. That just left Keitho, who seemed more concerned with the latest software and an online
New Zealand dating agency he’d just discovered. This just left Jamie and if I’d even bothered to suspect her in the first place, the following conversation would have taken place about a week before.

“It was me,’ she said, rubbing the firm’s frothy soap onto her palms, as if in glee. “I did wonder how long I could get away with messing up your call logs and—”

“Forgetting to tell me a user had rung through with an urgent problem, or telling me it’s a software problem when it’s actually a very urgent hardware problem.”

Jamie rinsed her hands in the swanky glass basin and turned to leave.

“Which just happened to be on the director’s computer. Again,” she smiled, turning to face me.

“And that’s it? That’s all you’re going to say to me, Jamie?”

She tilted her head. “What else is there? It’s not as if you have any proof. I’ve been really careful.”

“I just thought you’d made a mistake at first…I really wanted to believe that.”

“No mistake. And if you want to think about reporting me—Keitho will back
me
up. Every time.”

“Why did you sabotage all those jobs, making it look like I was slacking off? Why did you do that to me? I thought we were friends?”

“One shopping trip hardly qualifies us as that. And apart from anything else, you have to be the coldest person I have ever met, Lois Bates. I’m into fun, me, wouldn’t usually be seen dead outside of after-work drinks with someone like you.”

Jamie pressed the button on the hand-dryer, the sound effectively drowning out my next question. But she’d heard
me. “The shopping, I only did for my own means. I knew that if I got you kitted out for a date with Matt looking all tarted up, he’d go off you in all that bad make-up. And it was bad. I just wanted you to look as ridiculous as possible, and you did. And he saw that too. You see, I know what he likes: what is it he once said…? “Less is more.” That’s it “less is more.” We talk, you see. A lot. I know that his favorite color is cobalt blue. That he loves basketball. That he once watched the ballet version of
Romeo and Juliet
and really enjoyed it, something he’d never tell Keitho. I know everything there is to know about him!” She was shouting now, her voice fierce but passionate.

“Jamie. What did I ever do to you?” I whispered. “This still doesn’t make any sense.”

“That’s one thing we agree on then. First you walk into this firm with no real experience and take the position I’ve been after for ages…Then you just lean over to Matt and take him from me, too. Now, that wasn’t fair.” Her voice broke and suddenly she crumpled before my eyes. The transition so quick, so spectacular, my words failed to come out in the way I’d hoped, if at all.

“You took him away from me, Lois!” she sobbed.

“I didn’t…! I mean, I had no idea you were ever together. I thought you were in love with that secret—” Crush, who of course, happened to be Matt.

And with this new information, part of me wanted to console Jamie while another part wanted to get well away.

“I’m s…sorry,” I stuttered.

“So am I!” she choked in between crying.

It suddenly hit me that the friendships I’d carved out for myself for more than two years had all been an illusion. I thought I’d been part of a team, a working team that
included me in everything it did and experienced—but now it would seem nothing was left. Again.

So, I decided it was time to move on in my career. Perhaps Jamie had prompted this decision, but beyond that I needed to make my dad proud of me by becoming the success he knew I could be—and that was less possible with all the Jamie/Matt madness around me.

So, that evening, I emailed an employment agency before meeting Carla for a drink.

“I can’t believe you’re letting this bitch hound you out of your job,” she enthused. She’d just been telling me about her and Rob’s “wicked” time at a country retreat.

“I’m getting a bit bored anyway. A change of scenery wouldn’t go amiss. Plus, the money’s a lot better.”

Carla raised her eyebrow at the mention of money. I’d always been wary of discussing paychecks and promotions with her because, together, that wasn’t what we were about. Carla had never kept a job for more than two months, and ever since I’d known her welfare and a well-off boyfriend kept her in shoes. But I remembered how easy it had been to drift apart before, and this couldn’t happen again. She was my only true girlfriend and the situation with Jamie had reinforced that resolve.

I changed the subject to one of common ground. “Guess who I saw the other day?”

“Who?”

“Sharlene Rockingham.”

“Noooo!”

“Oh yes!” I replied, sounding not unlike that kid Sharlene used to threaten every moment she could.

“That little bitch! What she put you through…”

I felt my stomach muscles constrict at the memory.

“Did she see you?”

“Surrounded by about a hundred kids, yes.”

“Is she a schoolteacher?”

“She has four children.”

“But she’s only—”

“Our age, I know!”

“Actually, I remember now. She got knocked up straight after school by that thug Ricky Wotshisface who’s in prison now. Corey ran into her brother once.”

My stomach flipped at the mention of Corey’s name. “That must have been dad number two, because number one lives with her eldest.”

“Oh yeah, that’s right, and then she got knocked up by two blokes within a year. Brothers, apparently! What. A. Slut.”

“How do you know all this?”

“I remember Daisy from our year telling me when I ran into her in Lee Green.”

“You never told me.”

“I didn’t think you’d want to know! You’ve left all that behind you.”

This disclosure shocked but secretly thrilled me. “You think so?”

“Of course. You own your home, have a job with prospects, drive a fancy car. You’re sorted!”

Even though I was touched to hear this from Carla, I knew that all I’d achieved still wasn’t enough. Dad wanted more for me. He’d died before he could fulfill his dreams so wasn’t it natural he’d want me to do more with my life? Reach higher than I could ever have imagined, fulfill his wildest expectations? Be respected, strive for financial security, work hard? Luckily, I was now part of the world’s
fastest growing industry, so I was in a good place to achieve this.