Got You Back (19 page)

They hadn't spoken for a few days. The initial excitement of texting each other whenever James said or did anything newsworthy had died down and they had fallen into a routine of a quick catch-up after each of his visits. Stephanie knew she should have called Katie yesterday, once James had hit the road to head back up to Lincoln, but she had found she didn't feel like it. They had actually had quite a pleasant few days. Stephanie, nurturing the secret of her upcoming date, had felt less resentful of his presence than usual and he, in turn, happy, she had guessed, to be away from the recent pressures of his country life, had seemed relaxed and glad to be there. They had got through the whole time without arguing once and, although there was no doubt in Stephanie's mind that things would be easier once he wasn't there at all any more, she had almost managed to forget her anger
and hurt and the feeling of betrayal his double life had caused her and pretend that things were normal. It was easier now that she truly believed she didn't want him any more.

The only awkward moment had been when James had brought up his birthday party and asked her what she was planning. They were having it at the house and Stephanie had gone through the list of the people she was intending to invite: family, friends, colleagues. They were going to have catering, with the teenage children of various friends earning a few pounds each by working as waiters. The music would be provided by James, who was intending to sit down and make playlists on his iPod that would take them right through from eight in the evening until about four in the morning, with several changes of mood scheduled along the way. One of the first-floor bedrooms was to be turned into a giant playroom for their friends’ younger children.

‘I can't wait,’ James had said, and Stephanie, in turn apprehensive, excited and uneasy, had said nothing.

Michael was waiting for her outside the gallery when Stephanie arrived, sheltering from the drizzle under an awning. He looked good, she thought, relieved, because she had been worrying that her memory of him might have been coloured slightly rosy by the fact that he had liked her. He waved as she got close and did the crinkly-eyed smile thing that had made her notice him in the first place. He was wearing baggy combat trousers and a long-sleeved T-shirt under a shorter-sleeved, contrasting-coloured one. His thick hair, which was a dirty blond
colour, was just the right amount of ruffled. He looked totally at home in the urban chic Hoxton surroundings in a way that James could never have pulled off. He looked, maybe, a bit too much of a
type
for Stephanie's usual taste, a bit like he spent longer than he should thinking about the impression he was going to make. But he definitely looked good.

‘Am I late?’ she said breathlessly, as she got within speaking distance. She was always late. It was one of the things she liked least about herself and something which she seemed to be powerless to change. The time just went, no matter how organized she tried to be. She put it down to the fact that, to all intents and purposes, she was a single mother — well, for most of the week.

‘No,’ he said, smiling. ‘Not at all. I wanted to be here early in case you couldn't find the place. It's not really an area you want to get lost in.’

He held the door open for her and they went into the stark white space. The photographs, no holds barred, warts and all depictions of underprivileged family life, were both shocking and moving and, best of all, Stephanie thought, conversation starters. By the time they reached the end, almost an hour and a half later, she felt as if she and Michael knew all about each other's backgrounds and upbringings and their views on family life and relationships. She felt like she hadn't talked so much in years, certainly not to someone who had at least given such a good impression of being interested in what she had to say. Michael's family, like hers, came from the stifling corridor between city and suburbia. ‘Neither gritty nor idyllic,’ he'd said, and she had laughed, knowing exactly
what he meant. ‘Just ordinary. Really, really boringly ordinary.’

By the time they stepped out into the damp evening again it was eight thirty and Stephanie knew that if she was going to stick to her plan then she should make her excuses now and head straight home, but when Michael asked if she wanted to go for a drink she heard herself say yes.

They walked round the corner to an achingly self-consciously cool space with an eclectic mix of armchairs and mismatched tables where they squeezed themselves into a corner and drank beer out of the bottle. Just as Stephanie was beginning to feel completely out of place in the crowd of young men with sticky-up hairdos and courier bags slung across their chests and the girls in their vintage dresses, and was starting to think she might just drink up and go home after all, Michael leaned over and touched her arm. ‘I can tell this isn't your sort of place,’ he said. ‘Let's go somewhere else.’

They found a tapas restaurant, which was quiet and candlelit and sat and talked more and shared a bottle of red wine. At a quarter past eleven Michael suggested they share a taxi and Stephanie agreed, half wondering if, in fact, they were both going to end up at his place and not minding in the least if they did. As they pulled up outside his flat in Islington, however, Michael kissed her on the cheek. ‘Can we do this again some time?’ he said.

‘Definitely,’ Stephanie said, wondering if he was waiting for her to suggest that she come in for a nightcap.

‘I'll call you tomorrow,’ he said, as he got out and slammed the door behind him. ‘Belsize Park,’ she heard
him say to the driver, and then he turned to wave as he went up the steps to his front door. Stephanie sat back in her seat. Michael, it seemed, was a gentleman.

27

James's Monday had been equally eventful. A cow with mastitis, a sheep with an infected cut on its leg, and another with an eye infection. In between he had manned the phones at the surgery and badgered the temp agency in Lincoln to give him an answer about when they would be able to send someone to cover reception — no time soon, it seemed. There weren't many girls in Lincoln who were prepared to travel out to the village for the small wage the agency was able to offer. At ten past one, just as he was wondering if he could lock up for an hour while he sneaked out to get a sandwich — Simon and Malcolm having breezed off to the pub without asking if he needed assistance or even if he wanted to come with them — a woman in a dark blue suit, slight and rather attractive, had come through the front door. Unlike most people who called she wasn't accompanied by an animal but was holding a handful of papers. James had smiled hello, wondering whether she was lost.

‘Is James Mortimer here?’ the woman had asked.

‘That's me,’ James had said, standing up behind the reception desk. ‘What can I do for you?’

The woman had consulted her papers briefly. ‘I'm from the planning department,’ she said. ‘We've been led to understand you've had an extension built which we don't seem to have any paperwork for.’

James had swallowed his smile and then forced it back on to his face again. ‘I'm sorry, there must be some mistake. Who did you say had told you this?’

The woman hadn't smiled back. ‘I didn't. I'm afraid that's confidential. Now, if you could just show me round.’

James had noticed that the woman was holding a floor plan of the building, among other things. There was no way he was going to be able to avoid her seeing the extension. He'd run through in his head what the possible consequences might be. A fine? Nothing more serious, surely? Fucking Sally. She wasn't going to get away with it. OK, he had thought, there was only one way to deal with this. Bluff.

He'd led the woman, who had told him her name was Jennifer Cooper, towards the extension, which was currently housing a convalescent sheepdog and a postoperative cat.

‘I wonder if you mean this,’ he'd said, gesturing at the large room. To the side, through a door, was the small operating theatre. Jennifer was studying her floor plan. ‘I had it put up two years ago but the architect told me it was small enough not to need permission.’ He'd been aware that he was sweating. ‘Ten per cent, isn't it? Of the overall size?’ Jesus, what was he saying? Surely the worst thing you could do was lie to these people.

Jennifer had looked round, taking in the size of the room. Then she'd walked over to the theatre and had a good look in there too. And in the cupboards. She had returned to her floor plan. ‘You're saying that this addition is less than ten per cent of the original size of the whole
building?’ The way she had looked at him when she'd said this had made his heart sink.

‘Well, that's what I was told anyway,’ James had said, looking at his shoes.

Jennifer had produced a pen from somewhere. ‘Well, if you could just give me the name of your architect then.’

James had taken a deep breath. This was ridiculous. He hadn't, in fact, used an architect when he had put up the extension because he had known they would insist on going to the council for permission and that would have taken months. In fact, it would almost certainly have been refused, as almost any application for building works in the village was. Especially once Richard and Simone got to hear of it. Unless, of course, it was built from reclaimed stone and lime plaster and fashioned to look as if it had been there since the sixteen hundreds, which would, frankly, have cost him a fortune. He should just come clean with this woman, tell her the truth. Plead naïvety or ignorance. What was the worst she could do?

‘OK,’ he had said, trying to put on his most charming expression. Maybe she was flirtable with. ‘You've got me. I can't lie to that sweet face. Nobody told me it was OK to put the extension up without permission. I took a chance. I figured it wasn't huge and it was out the back where nobody could see it —’

‘This is a conservation area,’ Jennifer had interrupted. ‘You can't just go putting up buildings left, right and centre without permission, whatever size they are.’

His fabled charm definitely wasn't working. ‘So what happens now?’ he'd said. ‘Do I get a fine?’

‘What happens now,’ Jennifer had said, ‘is that you apply for retrospective planning permission.’

‘And?’

‘And if it fulfils all the criteria it's granted.’

‘And if it doesn't?’ James had said, knowing what the answer would be.

‘Then you have to knock it down.’

‘You are joking? If I knock it down the practice will have to move. There's no way the building's big enough without it.’

‘Well, maybe you should have moved to larger premises in the first place,’ Jennifer had said, smiling for the first time. ‘You have sixty days in which to apply. Goodbye now.’

When she had left, James sat on the floor, absentmindedly stroking the ears of the sleeping sheepdog through the mesh of its cage. What was happening to him?

Half an hour later he was outside Sally's house, finger jammed on the doorbell. This had gone far enough. It was understandable that she was angry and he could see she might feel she wanted to get some small revenge. She hadn't yet managed to find another job, as far as he knew, because the village was small and there simply weren't that many opportunities. Maybe he had been a bit hasty, getting rid of her like that. After all, he was starting to realize that it was impossible to keep the surgery going with no one to man the desk. Then he thought about the letter from the tax people and Jennifer's quiet officiousness. Fuck it. He would rather spend all day
answering the phones himself than have that girl work for him.

He heard adog barking behind the door and heavy footsteps coming along the hall. Sally's father, Jim O'Connell, a red-veined-faced, usually genial man, appeared in the doorway. He frowned when he saw James. ‘Yes?’ he said curtly.

James hesitated. He tried to weigh up whether Jim could take him in a fight or not and decided that, if he put his mind to it, he definitely could but that he probably wasn't the fighting sort. ‘I'd like to see Sally for a minute, please,’ he said, smiling nervously. ‘If she's in.’

He stood on the doorstep for a few moments waiting, wondering whether he should leave and come back later when Sally might be on her own. He couldn't really shout at the girl while her father was lurking around in the background. In fact, he now wasn't sure why he had thought shouting at her at all would be a good idea. It was just that it might make him feel better.

Sally, when she eventually came down the stairs into the hall, was looking at him defiantly, he thought, and all his anger came flooding back. What right did she have to pick apart his life like this? He spoke in a low voice, hoping Jim wasn't in earshot. ‘Well, I hope you're proud of yourself.’

Sally's confident mask dropped. Her face, if only he had been able to read it, was registering utter confusion. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘You know what I'm talking about. Bit convenient that that woman from the planning department turns up out of the blue after all these years.’

Sally, who, although James couldn't know it, had been thinking that maybe he had come round to tell her it had all been a big misunderstanding and did she want her job back — in fact, on the short walk from her room to the front door she had decided that she would give him a hard time for a few minutes and then accept graciously — put her hand on the door frame to steady herself. ‘The planning department?’

‘Don't try and play the innocent with me,’ James hissed, and he had a fleeting out-of-body experience in which he saw himself, a middle-aged, slightly greying man, standing on a doorstep bullying a young girl and using language that sounded as if it came from a bad police drama. ‘It's enough, OK? The tax people, the planning people… You've got your own back, if that's what you were trying to do. I'm sorry if you feel hard-done-by but let's just call it quits now.’

He turned to walk away. There was nothing else he could say, really. There was no point pushing her even further. Who knew what else she had up her sleeve?

28

Katie had taken to going for a drink with her fellow students after her reflexology class. They were a nice bunch — mostly women, which suited her at the moment because her faith in men had been completely shattered. There was a pub just round the corner from the college where they could always get a table, have a couple of glasses of wine and chat through what they had just learned or, more and more, as the weeks went on, about their lives. Then she would drive home — very carefully because usually she knew that she was slightly tipsy — to an increasingly moany James.