Clapham Lights (8 page)

Claire grabs his shoulders, grunts, and brutally flips him over, exposing Mark’s naked body as he howls in pain and desperately tries to cover himself.

T
he Land Rover Defender stops at a gate along a deserted country road and the nine members of the Cinq Estates team – Christian, Craig, Danny, Ibrahim, Paul, Suresh, Adam, Bradley and Jamaal – are told to take off their blindfolds and get out. As soon as the door is shut, the driver speeds off. There is nothing but woodland and fields for miles.

‘Where are we?’ Danny asks.

‘Surrey,’ Christian says. ‘That’s all you need to know.’

The team are dressed in army fatigues and everyone is carrying a rucksack. Craig is leaning against the gate, yawning. It is warm but
overcast
, and muddy underfoot. One of the new boys, Jamaal, has wrapped his shirt around his waist to reveal a Chicago Bulls basketball vest which almost comes down to his knees.

There’s a rustling in the bushes and then suddenly a savage howling as a huge figure in combat dress and a balaclava charges towards them firing a pistol over their heads. The Cinq team throw themselves on the floor, apart from Bradley, who sprints off down the road. The gunman flings himself over the gate, pulls his balaclava off and laughs manically. He is well over six feet tall and heavily built with a bent, scarred nose and a thick brown moustache. He has black and green war paint smeared over his cheeks and forehead.

‘Sorry ladies, did I frighten you?’ he barks. ‘Get to your feet and line up in front of me.’

They follow his orders. Suresh, a timid teenager who only joined the company yesterday, is shaking. Craig and Christian stand at opposite ends. He points at Jamaal and without having to say anything Jamaal puts his shirt back on.

‘My name is Griff Hammerson and I’ll be leading you today.’ He’s Welsh and his tone is cold and intimidating. ‘I am a retired Royal Marine commando and I served this country for almost three decades in some of
the most violent and bloody conflicts in our history.

‘I’ve killed men in the Falklands, Northern Ireland, Iraq,
Afghanistan
, the former Yugoslavia, Libya and Sierra Leone… and Germany, although that was an accident. I am a trained killing machine.’ He walks towards Craig. ‘If I wanted to, I could kill all of you with my bare hands, dismember your bodies and bury you in these woods, but luckily for you I’m in a good mood today.’ He pulls a manic, teeth-baring smile. ‘That was a joke. You are allowed to laugh.’

The team exchange nervous looks and eventually manage fake grins.

‘Good,’ Griff continues. ‘You now look a little less like frightened rabbits. Now, you may be wondering why I surprised you like I did. It was
not
to frighten you, or purely to give myself a good laugh, even though I did find it rather amusing, it was to assess how, as a team, you react in a high-pressure situation. The aim of today’s session is to build confidence and teach you how to think clearly under pressure.

‘Now, your reactions told me you are a team low on self-confidence and lacking leadership. The fact that one of your team scarpered at the first sign of trouble told me everything. What was his name?’

‘Bradley. He’s new,’ Christian answers, frowning.

‘Has anyone got his mobile phone number so we can get him back?’

‘He hasn’t got a mobile at the moment. Some kids mugged him on a night bus.’

‘Jesus Christ. He’s as good as useless then. Forget him. He can find his own way home,’ Griff says, shaking his head. ‘As for the rest of you, why did nobody stand up and try to disarm me? Where was the
leadership
? Who was going to put themselves on the line for the sake of the team? Well?’

‘We thought you might shoot us,’ Danny says.

‘If I’d have been firing real bullets rather than blanks, I would have shot all of you. It was one against nine, yet your first reaction was to protect yourselves which made you all equally vulnerable. It would have taken only two of you to wrestle me to the floor and disarm me. I accept that it takes a brave man to tackle a guy with a gun, but you have to be brave in whatever you do, be it fighting wars or selling houses. One, or at worst two of you may have been wounded but with the threat neutralized you have seven or eight other guys who you’d be able to rely on to treat your wounds and call for medical assistance… unless of course you’d
taken a bullet to the head from close range, in which case you’d be dead as fuck.’

Griff takes a pen and paper from the pocket of his combat trousers. ‘Which one of you lot is Christian?’

Christian steps forwards. Griff makes a note.

‘Right, Christian, who’s your number two?’

‘I haven’t got one. It’s just me.’

Griff looks annoyed. ‘Well who’s the second most experienced one of you?’

‘Err, Craig I suppose.’

Griff makes Christian and Craig stand either side of him and divides the others into two teams. He then asks them to come up with a team name for their opponents.

It’s Christian’s Crusaders vs. Bitch Boy Squadron.

Craig blows his nose and then pours a cold and flu remedy into a mug of boiling water. His eyes look sore and he keeps feeling his face and
forehead
with the back of his hand.

The Monday morning meeting has been cancelled as Christian has emailed to say he’s at a branch managers’ conference and won’t be back until tomorrow.

Craig makes a rasping, dry coughing sound and blows his nose again. He leaves his drink to cool on the worktop and goes to the bathroom to get some more tissues.

When he gets back, Hannah is there making herself a hot chocolate. She’s wearing glasses and her hair is tied back. She looks over her
shoulder
and when she sees it’s him she turns and smiles.

‘Don’t come too close, Han. I think I’ve got a cold.’

She looks slightly aghast as he nears her. ‘Craig, you look really poorly. Have you got a temperature?’

‘I’m not sure. My head feels hot but I keep shivering.’

‘Craig you might have flu. You should be at home in bed.’

‘I can’t afford a day in bed. I’ll be OK. I feel a bit better than I did earlier and once I drink this I’m sure it’ll go off,’ he says, pointing at his mug.

‘Yes, but if it doesn’t go off you should go home. I don’t think anyone’s
going to want to be shown round a house by someone who’s
coughing
all over them.’

Craig sneezes into a tissue and apologises.

Hannah takes half a step back. ‘And you might be passing your germs on to other people.’

‘Sorry, Han,’ he says again.

‘Did this start on the teambuilding weekend?’

‘I started feeling ill on the way home but I thought that might have been lack of sleep.’

‘Didn’t you stay in a hotel?’

‘Everyone else did but me and Danny had to sleep under a tarpaulin in the woods all night and it poured with rain. We got soaking wet.’

‘You slept in the woods? Why did you have to do that?’ Hannah throws her spoon in the sink.

‘It was a forfeit for being on the losing team. There were four of us at the start but one guy almost drowned when our raft fell apart and was taken to hospital and then Jamaal – do you know him?’

‘Is that the kid who talks all
gangsta
?’

‘Yes - even though his real name’s Malcolm and he’s from High Wycombe - well, he got us lost on the orienteering because he wouldn’t go near any dark areas on the map because he thought that meant they were muddy and he didn’t want to get his trainers dirty.’

Hannah is smiling. ‘Are you joking?’

‘I wish I was. He stormed off when me and Danny had a go at him and then Danny twisted his ankle, which is why he’s not in today.’

‘But didn’t they give you a tent or something and a sleeping bag?’

‘The bloke running it, this mad ex-army guy, gave us a tent but it didn’t have enough ropes or pegs so we had to hang it between two trees, which didn’t really work.’

‘And you were out there all night in the rain?’

‘It didn’t rain
all night
, just for a few hours. And there were cars going up and down the track at all hours. They told us in the morning that we’d pitched up close to a well-known dogging site.’

Hannah laughs.

‘It didn’t seem that funny at the time. Anything could have
happened
.’

‘You could have joined in. At least you would have kept warm.’

‘Are you being serious?’

‘No, of course not! Imagine what kind of old freaks you might bump into.’

‘Err, yeah. Anyway, how was your weekend? How was the spa?’

Hannah raises her eyebrows. ‘My weekend was awful. And it wasn’t a spa; it was a hotel in the middle of nowhere that turned out to be a retreat for women with drug and alcohol issues. We should have
realised
when they insisted on going through our bags when we checked in. There were all these positive thinking posters everywhere and when one of the girls asked what there was to do, the receptionist recommended counselling sessions.’

‘That’s ridiculous, what did you do?’

‘We stayed for a few hours and had a bike ride around the forest… the place was actually really nice but there was no spa, or bar, for obvious reasons, so at around seven we all got taxis back to the station and got the train home.’

‘Who organised it?’

‘No idea. Someone in head office I suppose. The people at the hotel couldn’t understand why we were there either. That was only the start of things though.’

‘What do you mean?’

Hannah sips her hot chocolate and then has a deep intake of breath. ‘I didn’t tell Marcus, my boyfriend, that I was coming home on Saturday as I knew he was having a night out with his mates and I thought it’d be a nice surprise for him, for me to be there when he got back, but he came in about four in the morning and he’d brought a group of people with him.’

‘What, for a party?’

‘Sort of, but that wasn’t the issue. They were being a bit loud and I recognised Marcus’s mates’ voices but then there were some voices I didn’t recognise. And it turned out that,’ Hannah’s tone hardens, ‘
Marcus
had invited a few girls back to the flat.’

‘Oh,’ Craig says. He has to blow his nose again. ‘But you never know there could be a reason-’

‘Craig, one of them was sitting on his lap with her arms around him when I walked into the living room.’

‘Oh, right. What did you say?’

‘I didn’t say anything. I just stood there. He jumped up and threw everyone out and then we had a huge row.’

‘Shit. Have you sorted things out now?’

‘No. I don’t know. I’ve not spoken to him since Sunday morning. He kept telling me that he’d done nothing wrong but I don’t believe him. I stayed at a friend’s house last night, which is why I look so rough.’

‘Hannah, you don’t look rough, not at all.
I
look rough. I’m sorry about… everything, but I’m sure you’ll work things out.’

‘Anyway, sorry, you don’t want to listen to me moaning.’

‘It’s OK.’

‘At least I didn’t have to sleep in the woods.’

Craig finishes off his remedy drink. ‘I’d rather hear about your
boyfriend
than have Christian going on at me.’ Craig starts to sway a little. ‘Is he really at a conference - Christian?’

‘I don’t think so. I got a call from one of the other branch managers this morning wanting to talk to him, and there’s nothing in the diary. Craig are you OK? You’ve gone a bit red.’

‘Yeah, I feel a bit light-headed. I think I might need to sit down. I thought these drinks were meant to make you feel better.’

‘How many have you had?’

‘This morning or in total?’ he asks as they wander back to their desks.

‘This morning.’

‘Eight.’

A
new Golf GTi screeches to a halt in the middle of the farmyard and Mark lets out two blasts on the car’s horn. A grey mare in the stable block rears up on her hind legs and whinnies, and a child-sized man dressed in wellingtons, faded jodhpurs and a green rollneck jumper runs out from the end bay and taps on the driver’s window. Mark lowers it fractionally using a button on the steering wheel.

‘You can’t use your horn in the yard,’ the stable hand says. ‘It scares the horses.’ He’s Irish, has a pallid, drawn face and only his head is
visible
from inside the car.

‘Yeah, I noticed that, mate,’ Mark says.

‘You can’t park here either. We’ve got the hay delivery coming in a minute.’

‘I’m looking for Jenny.’

‘And you are?’

‘Mark.’

‘Ah, so you’re Mark.’ His eyes narrow. ‘I’m Eoin. I think Jenny’s up in the top field with Augustus.’

‘Who’s he?’

‘A horse,’ Eoin says, picking at one of his dirty fingernails.

‘Where’s the top field?’

‘You walk up that road there. It’s not far.’ Eoin points up a muddy track running between a fenced-off show jumping area and an overgrown copse. ‘You can park at the back of the house.’

‘I’ll drive it. I’m not walking, I’ll ruin my shoes,’ Mark says pointing down at his Timberlands.

‘It’s a bit bumpy up there. If I were-’

Mark closes the window with Eoin mid-sentence and drives off with a loud wheel-spin.

The narrow track is littered with horse manure and water-filled
potholes
.
Mark drives carefully up the incline, slowed by his wheels sinking into the soft mud, until he’s forced to stop to let through a scowling, ruddy-faced old woman on a horse.

He waits until she is out of sight and presses hard on the accelerator. The wheels send mud shooting into the air and over the rear of the car, which goes nowhere. He jerks the steering wheel left and puts his foot down again. The car shoots across the track straight into a wooden post, knocking it flat and causing the barbed wire fence to sag. Mark swears, reverses and ploughs on.

The further he drives, the firmer the ground becomes. He reaches the brow of the hill and the track stops abruptly. In the distance, a huge figure with a long copper-coloured mane is nosing around in the mud. Mark lowers the passenger window and leans over the seat.

‘JENNY! JENNY!’ he shouts, his face splattered by drizzle.

Jenny gets to her feet and marches across the field. Her riding boots and jodhpurs are muddy and her gilet is soaking. She removes her
riding
hat, scrapes her hair off her rosy face and clambers over a stile. She bends down into the car window and kisses Mark on the cheek.

‘What are you doing here?’ she asks, happy to see him.

‘Hello, babe. I thought I’d surprise you,’ Mark says, wiping off the wet lip marks.

‘What a lovely surprise. How did you find me?’

‘The kid in the yard told me.’

‘Which kid?’

‘The Irish one’

‘Eoin? He’s older than you. He works here.’ Jenny coughs and takes a blackcurrant lozenge from her pocket. ‘How did you drive all the way up here? I’m surprised you didn’t get stuck.’

‘It was fine.’

Jenny eyes Mark’s clothes. ‘Since when have you had a Barbour?’ she asks, referring to the green quilted coat he’s wearing.

‘I’ve had it ages. Where’s the horse?’

‘He’s being used for a riding lesson.’ Jenny rummages in her pocket. ‘I was looking for my earring, one of the special ones you bought me for my fifteenth birthday. Do you remember?’

‘No.’

‘I’ve found it now anyway,’ she says, showing him a miniature silver
teddy bear on a hook. ‘Can I have a lift back?’

‘Jen, no way. You’re covered in mud.’

‘So is the car.
Please
can I have a lift? Haven’t you got anything I can sit on?’

‘No, walk. It’ll be good exercise. Or you can go in the boot.’

‘Mark, I’m not going in the boot.’

He reverses back down the track and Jenny follows on foot, stopping briefly to inspect the broken fencepost.

Eoin is spraying the yard with a power hose. Mark parks beside the stables, checks if there is any damage to the front bumper and looks back up the track. Jenny is about fifty yards away.

‘Mate, you couldn’t just give the car a quick once over with the hose could you?’ Mark calls out to Eoin.

‘There’s another hose round the back, you can use that.’

‘I’d rather you do it. I’ll pay you.’

Jenny waves at Eoin and Mark follows her into a portakabin which is the staff changing rooms and kitchen. There are posters of horses on the walls and riding paraphernalia litters the floor: hats, crops, stirrups, rugs covered in horse hair, and old saddles. It smells of animals and
chemicals
. Mark sits on a plastic chair which strains under his weight and plays with his iPhone as Jenny hangs up her riding gear and goes off to have a shower. Weak sunshine creeps in through the meshed windows.

Eoin jogs up the steps and removes his boots at the door. ‘I sprayed your car,’ he says. Standing up, he’s only at Mark’s eye level.

‘Cheers mate. You’re a legend. Do you want some money?’ Mark asks, taking a handful of change from his jeans.

‘No, don’t worry about it. It only took a minute.’

Mark accepts Eoin’s offer of a cup of tea but then changes his mind after seeing the grubby kettle.

‘Jenny said you work in London,’ Eoin says.

‘Yeah, I’m in investment. In the City.’

‘Do you enjoy it?’

‘I can’t complain,’ he says, cleaning his phone. ‘It’s long hours.’

‘Is that why you don’t come back very often?’

‘Yeah.’

Eoin pulls off his jodhpurs and stands in front of Mark in a pair of bulging y-fronts.

Wokafellas is a vast, canteen-style Japanese restaurant on Epsom High Street. After queuing outside for five minutes, Jenny holds the door open and Mark ducks under the arm of her baggy polo shirt. Another brief wait ensues before a waiter leads them to benches at a faux pine table near the windows.

Jenny squeezes onto the bench causing the people either side to shift along as the waiter scribbles their drink orders on the paper place mats.

Two teenage goths on the end of the table pay and leave so the couple to their right slide along, giving Jenny enough space to move her arms. She reaches into her bag for a two-for-one voucher as Mark accidently snaps his chopsticks.

Mark tugs at his Abercrombie t-shirt which clings to his paunch.

‘Chicken katsu curry?’ a teenage waitress asks, checking the scrawls on their mats.

‘That’s mine,’ Mark says, finishing off his last duck gyoza.

‘And chilli chicken ramen.’ She places the bowl of noodles in front of Jenny and picks up the empty starter plates.

‘No. That’s mine too.’ Mark slides the bowl over to his side. ‘We should have some kind of salad coming as well.’ He stuffs two spoonfuls of rice into mouth and attacks his noodles with a fork.

‘Don’t eat too quickly,’ Jenny warns, sniffing her wine.

‘I won’t,’ Mark says as he chews.

‘How’s work been this week?’

‘Really good.’ Grains of rice fall from his mouth back onto his plate. ‘Made loads of commission.’

‘Well done. You should be promoted soon with the amount of hours you’ve been working.’

‘Yeah I know. I haven’t left the office before ten thirty any night for the last few weeks. That’s why I haven’t been able to answer my phone, babe. If you’re caught on a private phone call, Justin goes ballistic.’

‘I’d hate to work somewhere like that.’

‘It’s just the culture at MenDax, babe. I can’t change that.’ Mark sips his beer. ‘What’s been going on at the farm?’

‘Oh, we had quite an interesting week. Remember I told you that we
were getting a new horsebox?’

‘No,’ Mark says with his mouth full.

‘Well, it arrived this week. It’s amazing. It’s so luxurious inside. You could have a party in there. It’s about twice the size of that horrible old thing we used to drive around. It’s got a really good shower and the beds are bigger. And do you remember in the last one the saddle racks kept breaking? Well in this one, they’re metal instead of plastic. And it’s got a microwave so we can actually heat food up rather than having to use those horrible little gas stoves. And there’s more room for the horses as well. It was so exciting when it arrived that-’

‘It sounds it, babe,’ Mark butts in. ‘Is there any chance we can save the rest of this story until later? It’s just a bit boring.’

The Golf mounts the pavement and screeches to a halt outside Jenny’s parents’ large semi-detached cottage. She undoes her seat belt.

‘Cheers, babe. I’ll give you a ring tomorrow,’ Mark says.

‘Aren’t you coming in?’ Jenny turns her body to face Mark and the car wobbles.

‘I’ve had a really tiring week, babe. I just want to go back to my own bed and sleep.’

‘I’ll come back to yours then.’

‘No, babe. I just need a good night’s sleep on my own. You know what it’s like at mine. There’s barely enough room for us both in my double. It’ll keep me awake. I can’t afford to be tired all week.’

Jenny’s mouth drops.

‘What’s up?’ he asks.

‘We haven’t seen each other for weeks. All I want you to do is come in. We hardly ever… I thought that…’ Her lips start to tremble. ‘I miss you when you’re not here. We’re meant to be a couple, Mark.’ A tear runs down her cheek.

‘We
are
.’

‘It doesn’t feel like it.’

‘It’s just work, babe. It’s been manic the last few weeks. I’m at the office pretty much non-stop. When it slows down we can see a lot more of each other. I miss you too.’

‘You’re just saying that.’

‘No, I’m not. You mean the world to me.’

Jenny mops her tears with her fleece. ‘The last ten years with you have been the happiest time of my life. But now, I just, I just feel like we’re growing apart.’

‘Don’t be silly, babe. I won’t be in London forever. I know how much you love the farm, and of course we don’t see each other as much as we’d like, but it’s only short-term. Look, with a bit of luck I might be promoted to director level in the next few months. When that happens I’ll be on far more money and perhaps we can look at getting a place together, around here somewhere.’

‘Do you really mean that?’ Jenny asks, sniffing.

‘Of course I do, babe.’

‘I love you, Mark,’ Jenny says, putting her arms around him.

‘I love you too.’

They kiss briefly. Jenny says she’ll come over to Mark’s for lunch tomorrow and heaves herself out of the car. She blows Mark a kiss from the front door and crouches down so she doesn’t hit her head as she lets herself in.

The Hunter house is silent. Mark rolls out of bed and opens his
curtains
. There are no cars on the driveway and the gates are open. Mark’s parents’ detached mock-Tudor house is on King Road, one of the main routes into Epsom. Cars and 4x4s zip past as Mark looks out across the fields to the driving range at Epsom Hills golf club.

He opens his antique wardrobe. All it contains are three coats
covered
in plastic from the dry cleaners and his old school blazer. He digs around in the matching chest of drawers, puts on a tight pair of tracksuit bottoms and an old England rugby shirt and goes downstairs.

Mark sits at the breakfast bar in the spotless kitchen and gazes out into the garden. It’s raining again and the lawns need cutting. Someone has left the door to the summer house open and the cover hasn’t been put over the gas barbecue.

The fridge is fully stocked. Mark claps his hands, puts two griddle pans on the range and turns on the grill. ‘Where’s the George Foreman?’ he asks himself as he searches the cupboards. He pours oil into a pan and loads it with three Cumberland sausages and four rashers of bacon. He chops a tomato in half and places it under the grill next to a portobello
mushroom. He then microwaves a can of baked beans and drops two slices of granary bread into the toaster.

He stands over the crackling pans, rolling the sausages and flipping the bacon before messily cracking an egg. Large fragments of shell are lodged in the white but he only makes a half-attempt to pick them out. He turns the heat up and holds the pans at arms’ length as fat spits all  over the wall and the slate-tiled floor.

He loads his breakfast onto a serving plate and backs into the living room through the double-doors which stick in the thick carpet. Three oatmeal-coloured sofas are arranged in a U-shape around a circular coffee table. Mark lowers his plate onto unread copies of the
News of the World
and
Mail on Sunday
and turns on the giant plasma television which doubles as a mirror above the fireplace.

He demolishes the breakfast. After forcing down the last forkful of beans, he burps fiercely and lays down flat on the middle sofa holding his stomach. He flicks through the Sky channels, stopping at
My Super Sexy Sixteenth
on MTV. A spoilt girl from Hampstead has organised a disastrous diamond-themed birthday party. The rappers she booked - Stabbing Crew - haven’t turned up, the hotel has to be evacuated after a fire alarm, and she bursts into tears when a spotty boy called Ryan says he thought her parents were going to buy her a helicopter. When the credits roll, Mark turns down the volume and closes his eyes.

The front door slams and moments later his name is shouted from the kitchen. Mark’s mum, Patricia, bursts into the living room wearing a white tennis tracksuit and trainers. She is slim and her damp,
dyed-brown
hair is brushed back. She has a large nose and small dark bags under her eyes. ‘Mark, what have you been doing in the kitchen? Get up now and clean it up.’

‘I’ll do it in a minute. I’ll put it all in the dishwasher.’

She kisses him on the forehead. ‘Why did you cook breakfast
anyway
? I’m doing lunch at two o’clock. Have you had a shower yet?’

‘No, I’ll have one in a minute. Where have you been?’