Fandango in the Apse! (5 page)

As I trudged upstairs to my room, I was aware my world had just tipped on
it axis.  The strange thing is: I’m only realising now, that it has probably
never righted itself since.

Two months after my sixteenth birthday, I left school. My exam results
were decent enough to get into college, but I wanted to get out into the world,
earn money and get some independence.  However, I wasn’t expecting the haste at
which my wishes were granted.  I arrived home after a weekend camping on Bodmin
Moor with Alison and a group of our friends, which incidentally, I’d been
amazed my mother agreed to let me to go on.  As you know, she had an aversion
to allowing me do anything I might enjoy. 

She was sitting on the sofa with a number of items neatly stacked beside
her.  The first things my eyes latched onto were a pair of suitcases.  For one
glorious moment, I thought my mother was off on holiday for the first time in
memory.  My euphoria lasted about two seconds.

            ‘Sit down, Katie, I want a word with you.’  Her voice was
unusually pleasant, which gave me the first inkling that something was
definitely amiss.

            ‘You are sixteen now and I have done my duty by you as far as
I am concerned.  You are old enough to make your own way in the world. 
However, I have made every effort to help you on your way,’ she said, pointing
to the array at her feet.

            ‘I have found you a bed-sit in town and paid the first month’s
rent.  I have also collected a few items you may need.’ 

For the first time I took notice of what was in the plastic-wrapped
bundles.  By the looks of it, there was a neatly piled selection of sheets,
blankets and towels.  Next to these was a box of newspaper-wrapped items, which
I assumed to be crockery.

            ‘Oh, I see.’  It was all I could muster by way of a response.

            ‘Yes, well,’ she sniffed, ‘if you’d like to give me a hand we
can be on our way.’

            ‘Right now?  But Mum, please…I don’t want to live in a bed-sit,
I don’t want to be on my own.’

            ‘Nevertheless you will be,’ she said, as she handed me the
bundles of linen. 

We completed the journey in silence.  I was doing my best to fathom if
this was a new form of punishment my mother had dreamt up, and any minute we
would be heading home once she’d made her point, when she pulled up outside a
four-storey townhouse.  With my belongings deposited on the step, she handed me
an envelope and a set of keys.

‘I have given you fifty pounds to help until you get a job,’ she said,
walking down the path to her car.  At the gate she turned.

‘Your room is on the top floor.  Good bye, Katie.’

The smell of
damp was my overriding impression once I had made several trips up and down the
four flights of stairs collecting my bits and pieces. That in itself was a pain
in the arse; each floor had those push button lights, which snapped off before
I was halfway up; I had to negotiate the last few steps in total darkness. 

The furniture in the pokey room was the minimum I needed and no more.  A
bed, a table with two stools and a rickety old chair placed under the skylight
to catch whatever light could penetrate the dirty windowpane.  In the corner
behind a chipboard screen was the kitchenette, if two electric rings and a sink
with a cupboard underneath deserved such a grand title.  I had never felt so
alone in my life.

Panic bubbled perilously close, but I absolutely refused to cry as I hung
my clothes from the picture rail in lieu of a wardrobe.  Living with my mother
was not ideal, but definitely preferable to this dingy hole.  One thing was obvious:
she hadn’t shopped around. 

Pacing the threadbare carpet was no help in deciding on my next move, so
I sat on the chair hoping it would actually hold my weight. Inspiration came in
a flash and grabbing the fifty pounds I ran to the nearest phone box. Ten
minutes later, for the first time in my life, I had arranged to meet Alison, her
boyfriend Mark and a couple of other friends in town. 

I have to tell you, the appeal of what had seemed a marvellously grown-up
idea waned dramatically the following morning.  Nursing my first Cherry B and cider
hangover, I crawled fully dressed off the bed.  After rummaging in the box, I
made my way to the tap and waited for the suspicious-looking yellow water to
clear before drinking a full glass.  I remember reflecting that I should
perhaps have sipped, after vomiting in the sink for a full five minutes. 

A couple of hours later, having found the shared bathroom on the landing
below, I was showered and dressed and had no option but to face the task I’d
been putting off  since I’d woken.  A search of my jeans pocket revealed the
princely sum of seventeen pounds and thirty-eight pence.  Accepting I was in
deeper shit than the previous day, I cursed myself for the fool I was, and
curled up on the bed to bawl my eyes raw.

However, as a person of action, rather than introspection (believe me, introspection
always bore fruit I wasn’t ready to pick), I eventually sorted myself out and
hit the streets looking for a job.  By the end of the third day, I had one
behind the till in the local supermarket.  I was able to subsidise my meagre
wages by buying out of date stock, and when Mrs Bunn started sending weekly
parcels of freshly baked food with Alison, I was actually very well fed.

By the time the dark evenings drew in the following year, I found myself
with very little company.  Mark had enrolled at Nottingham University and
Alison had moved up there to be with him, so, out of desperation I joined an
evening class.  I had always been good at maths, and decided on a Book Keeping
and Accounts course, which eventually led to a placement as a junior clerk in a
finance brokers, and that is where I met Eddie Roberts, an upwardly mobile
accounts manager, later known as “The Pig”.

Eddie wasn’t my first boyfriend, Lord no.  In the eighteen months since
my eviction from home, I’d had a few.  You see, the problem with a convent
education is this: there are no boys.  Therefore, as soon as you are unleashed
from the confines, with just enough sex education to whet your appetite (don’t
French kiss boys and never, ever kiss a boy with a cold sore… I kid you not,
that was it, as told by Sister Calasanctious, the home economics teacher), you
tend to go a bit wild – well, I did anyway.  I think it’s a well-known
phenomenon, though. 

 I have to admit I was dissatisfied with most of them.  Pardon me if this
is distasteful to you, but my problem lay with my very first partner and his
hugely endowed nether regions. 

Is it just me, or can you see the celestial input here too?  How unfair to
come across the biggest, erm…appendage you are ever likely to find, at a time
when you are too inexperienced to appreciate it.

To be honest, I think it ruined me for other men; they were always going
to come up short from that point on.  With Eddie, I was prepared to overlook
his shortcomings for three reasons.  He had a good job, he was a rugby player
with a great body, and I was in my “I need to be looked after” mode.   

The first time I clapped eyes on him I was sitting at my desk in what was
laughingly referred to as the administration department.  In reality, it was
little more than a cupboard, crammed with two desks, two filing cabinets and regularly
used as a dumping ground by everyone who didn’t want to do their own typing.  Due
to the confines of our office, Suzy the occupant of the other desk preferred
the door open.  For this I was grateful; with the door closed, the room was
stuffy and claustrophobic.

Eddie had propped himself on the edge of a desk in the outer office. 
Collette Harper, a girl I’d only spoken to once, but had been hugely impressed
by her false eyelashes and peroxide blonde hair, was laughing delicately at
something he murmured in her ear.

‘Who is that?’ I whispered to Suzy.  She had just rammed a chocolate
biscuit into her mouth and now waved an ineffectual hand in front of her face,
as if that would make the biscuit go down quicker.

‘Who’s who?’ she replied, while skimming the chocolate from her teeth
with her tongue.

‘Look, him,’ I beckoned with my hand, ‘sitting on Collette’s desk.’

            Suzy bent two-thirds of the way across her desk in order to
look through the door (yep, it was
that
close). ‘Eddie Roberts…accounts
manager extraordinaire.’

I stared at her…waiting…

‘And?’

‘And what?  You asked who he was…I told you.’  I gave her what I hoped
was a disparaging look.

‘OK…’ she relented, dipping into the packet again and waving another biscuit
in the air as she spoke.  ‘He is the blue-eyed boy at the moment, due to
bringing in more business this year than old Harrison has in the last three.
He’s got a bit of a reputation though… likes the girlies.’ Suzy’s small eyes
twinkled with amusement. ‘He must be after Collette now, Paula from reception
has blown him out, I think.  She’s welcome to him.’

I eyed Eddie’s muscled thigh resting on Collette’s desk as it strained
against the fabric of his trousers.

‘You don’t like him?’  Personally I couldn’t see anything not to like: he
was good looking in a blonde nicely tanned way and judging by Collette’s
giggles, quite amusing to boot.

‘No…why would I?  Not when I have my Rick at home.’

How could I have forgotten Suzy’s Rick?  In the three weeks I had been
employed by Laurence & Wilson, I’d had to listen to Suzy drool on about
this mysterious Nick.  I was convinced he was a figment of her imagination.  No
man alive could be as handsome, virtuous or sexy as she portrayed him.  To be
honest, and I don’t mean to be nasty here, but with the best will in the
world…she was pug-ugly and
away with the fairies most of the time.  Not
for the first time I wondered how she managed to keep her job. If she had
snared an Adonis, I was prepared to run buck-naked through the outer office.

            ‘So, Eddie is on the look-out for a new “friend” is he?’
Well, I thought, it was only fair to give him a choice.

‘Looks like it.  Why?  Are you interested?’

            ‘Do you want a coffee to go with those biscuits, Suzy?’ I
asked, ignoring her question.

 She nodded, her full mouth impeding speech again.  I stood doing a
mental check… I was wearing my navy skirt.  I had managed to find it in a
charity shop when I was looking for suitable “office clothes” before I started
the job.  It was well cut and expensive looking… OK, it was a little tight and
maybe a couple of inches too short, but it accentuated my figure and beggars
couldn’t be choosers, and until my first pay check hit the bank at the end of
the week, that’s exactly what I was. 

Thank God, I had washed my hair the previous evening; it was now piled on
top of my head in a shiny mass of curls.  The uncomfortable night I’d spent in
huge rollers was about to pay off – I hoped.  Grabbing Suzy’s proffered mug and
my own, I deliberately walked past Eddie, swaying my hips a little more than
usual, as I circumnavigated the room to get to the kettle in the far corner. 
Well…come on
,
I had to make sure he’d seen me, didn’t I?

‘I watched him clocking you all the way round the room,’ Suzy couldn’t
wait to reveal as I returned with the two steaming mugs. ‘I should say you’re
in with a chance there.’

Yay!  Job done, I thought, although I tried to be more circumspect in
front of Suzy.

Three days passed and to my acute chagrin, especially as Suzy was in the
know, there was no sign of Eddie.  In an effort to mollify my bruised ego, I
began making excuses for him.  Obviously tallish, thin brunettes were not his thing…
perhaps he thought I was too young – pathetic really.  Trouble was, I was such
a confident little minx in those days, I just couldn’t accept rejection.

By the fourth day, I was out of excuses and hopping mad…how dare he?  The
office Lothario and he hadn’t shown the slightest interest.  Well, it was his
loss, I told myself, as I paddled through a summer downpour on my way home.

            ‘Katie!’

Someone had shouted my name.  I looked out from under my umbrella and
spotted Eddie leaning over from the driver’s seat, beckoning to me through the
lowered passenger window of what looked like a very sleek sports car.  I turned
and carried on towards the bus, which had with excellent timing, just arrived
at the stop. 

Ensconced on the top deck, willing myself not to look out of the window
to see if he was following, I fumed silently.  I didn’t know if I was angrier
with myself for letting the opportunity go, or him for thinking I would run
when he deigned to show interest. 

The next day I arrived back from lunch to find Eddie perched on the far
side of my desk, talking to an obviously flattered Suzy.  Her face was ablaze
with colour from the neck of her purple blouse to the roots of her greasy,
brown hair and she was fidgeting with the hem of her home-made cardigan, a sure
sign she was feeling uncomfortable under Eddie’s suave gaze.

‘Ah, there you are, Katie… I was looking for you.’ He gave me a
meaningful smirk, which raised my still ruffled hackles.

‘Really? Why was that then?’  In that split second I knew he was going to
ask me out, and I decided he could go hang himself.  It was going to give me
the greatest pleasure to wipe the smirk off his over-confident face.

Eddie reached behind him and produced a ream of paper. ‘I was hoping to
persuade you…’ Here it comes I thought.  ‘To photocopy this report for the
directors’ meeting in the morning?  Normally I wouldn’t ask, but Angie is off
with flu.’ Presumably Angie was his secretary.

            ‘Oh.’

            ‘Is there a problem?’ Eddie asked, a slight grin appearing as
he waited for me to respond.

            ‘Err… no, not at all, just leave it there and I’ll see to
it.’