Humbug (5 page)

Weirdly, while seeing Leon with Ben hadn’t prompted the stab of jealousy I’d been imagining I’d experience when this meeting finally happened, his casual mention of Freddy really bothered me and it wasn’t easy to keep my forced smile in place. Freddy was
my
best friend and had been so for more than a decade. It pissed me off to hear fucking Leon talk about her in that casual, easy way.

“I told Freddy I’d try to come along tonight,” I said stiffly, then, catching sight of Ben’s sceptically raised brows, added, “My office has closed early for Christmas, actually, so I should make it.”

“Really?” Ben said, his grin huge. “That’s fantastic! So, we’ll see you in The Dragon at six for drinks first, yeah?”

“Six?” I frowned, thinking. “Well, I might have to sort a few work things out from home before I come out”—surely I could log on somehow?—“but I’ll try to get there ASAP.”

Ben’s face fell and for a moment it was just like old times—me saying I’d be somewhere then letting him down. Except that, instead of him going off on one at me, this time he just sighed, then shrugged.

“If you start working when you get home, I don’t think we’ll be seeing each other tonight—I know you, man.” He gave a little laugh and stepped back from me, grabbing Leon’s hand as he did so. “Listen, you have a good Christmas. Give your family big hugs from me and
try
not to work too hard? Maybe we can catch up in January, yeah?”

I could tell he didn’t actually believe that would happen, and for some reason that brought a lump to my throat. Although Ben had left our relationship, it hadn’t felt as though he’d given up on me entirely. Not till right now.

Back when we were together, Ben used to accuse me of being a workaholic. I always protested that he was wrong, pointing out it wasn’t my choice to work long hours—it was just the job. But he’d been right all along, and in truth, I’d known it, even back then.

This was who I was. When I committed to something, I did so absolutely.

I used to think it was a good thing.

I cleared my throat and made myself speak. “Okay, if I don’t make it tonight, January it is.” I couldn’t believe how normal I sounded.

“It was good to meet you at last,” Leon said.

“Likewise,” I lied, forcing another smile. “Hopefully see you both later.”

We said our goodbyes and turned away from each other, heading off in different directions, two cogs diverging once again.

On the way back home, I determinedly set aside my miserable thoughts about Ben and decided to focus on something more productive. By the time I reached the—thankfully empty—flat, I’d come up with a plan to get access to my office desktop.

Grabbing my laptop, I settled myself on the sofa, quickly logged on, and brought up Quicks’ remote working site. Usually I needed my work mobile to log on—it had an app that generated a code to give me access—but I figured the IT department had to have a workaround if I could get hold of someone by phone.

I groaned aloud, as I recognised my first problem. I needed a phone.

Thankfully, we had a landline—Freddy’s gran had a thing about being able to call Freddy on a “proper telephone number” and for some reason Freddy’s a major pushover when it comes to her nana—but where the actual handset was I had no idea.

After searching for twenty minutes, I found it languishing in the middle of a pile of junk mail on top of the microwave, but there was no dial tone to be had. The fucker was dead, and I couldn’t even think how it was charged.

Wait—landline. Oh yeah. The charging unit had to be plugged in somewhere. I trailed round the skirting boards till I reached the horribly overloaded multiple plug adaptor behind the TV. Sure enough, one of the snarled-up cables led to the handset charger, lying forgotten and dust-covered behind the bean bag in the corner where Freddy often lounged. Jamming the handset in to charge, I sent a prayer of thanks to Freddy’s nana.

For the next half hour, I paced the room, waiting for the handset to pick up enough charge for me to make a call. When I finally got a dial tone, I immediately called the London office and demanded to be put through to IT.

The harried-sounding IT Support assistant who finally answered my call—after ten minutes on hold—informed me that half the IT department were off with flu and the other half were run off their feet trying to sort out other urgent problems. No sooner had she finished telling me this than the handset conked out again. Cursing with frustration, I slammed it back in the charger.

It took two more periods of charging the handset and three more conversations with IT before I was finally told by an exasperated Senior Support guy that he didn’t know the fix to my problem off the top of his head, that there was no one else available at that point in time who could help me, and that I’d just have to log an online request through the “help hub” like everyone else and wait my turn. I shouldn’t, he informed me irritably before he hung up, hold my breath.

“Fucking
dick!
” I swore, chucking the clunky handset aside. It
thunked
against the sofa cushions uselessly and I dropped my face into my hands, rubbing hard. I’d tried to be charming, I’d tried to be threatening. I’d tried to
“do you know who I am?”
my way to the top of the queue—nothing had worked.

Fine. I wasn’t giving up.

Online request it would be.

Except…how could I log an online request on the system when I wasn’t
in
the system?

“Shit.”

When in doubt, go to the top.
That was what Marley always said.

I picked up the handset again and called London, demanding to be put through to the Head of IT.

“Hello, this is Sharon Bell. I can’t come to the phone right now but if you leave a message—”

“For fuck’s sake!” I yelled and disconnected.

After fuming for several minutes, I furiously typed a ranty email to Ms Bell about the various failures of her minions to sort out my problem and rounded it off with a demand for an immediate call back. Then I sat back again to wait, glancing at the clock in the corner of my screen and noting with dismay that I’d already spent two and half hours just trying to access the system.

While I waited for Sharon’s call, I began noodling around on my laptop. I rarely used it—other than to look at porn—but when Ben and I had been together, he used to upload all our pictures and videos into neatly labelled albums. Now I found myself idly scrolling through them.

Each folder was dated and named:
Lakes – October 2010
,
Brittany – May 2011
,
Freddy’s 25
^th
 –
July 2012
. All Ben. I’d always been too busy to bother with that stuff and you could easily identify when he’d left—the last album was dated September 2013. After that, nothing.

I clicked on the folder for Christmas 2011—we’d gone to my parents’ that year. It had been the first time Ben and I had spent Christmas together. Before that, we’d gone to our respective families for Christmas, then met up again for a riotous and drunken New Year.

But that year—I thought hard, brow furrowing—yes, that year, we’d been together and we’d been so excited about it. My sisters and their families had been staying too, so Ben and I had been relegated to my childhood bedroom with its narrow bunk beds. We’d squeezed into the bottom bunk together because back then, having Ben wrapped round me was more important to me than getting a decent night’s sleep. And in the morning, we’d opened our presents to each other in bed, while sipping glasses of Buck’s Fizz.

The first picture in the album was of Ben, half-naked amongst the rumpled sheets, toasting me with his champagne flute and grinning that absurdly huge smile of his, his pale blond hair all sleep-mussed.

God, Ben.

He’d put up with a lot of crap from me before he’d finally gone.

I swiped through photo after photo. Ben with my mum, me with my dad, my sisters, my nephews and niece. Ben playing Cluedo with my sister and her boys, one hand dipping inside a tub of Quality Street. I paused at a picture of the whole family sitting round the dining table. We all wore listing Christmas hats of purple, gold and silver, and the table was covered in plates and glasses and half-full wine bottles and discarded cracker casings. Everyone was grinning at the camera except Ben and my mum. Ben was looking at me, his face soft and so—so full of love. My mum was looking at both of us. Smiling.

I swallowed, and the lump I felt in my throat shocked me.

When Ben left, I’d been so angry. I’d forgotten what it felt like to be looked at like that. Like he loved me. Like he believed in me.

Blinking hard, I swiped past the photo, flipping through more happy pictures before reaching a video clip. Ben with my nephew, Luca, playing with a Brio railway set. I watched it from beginning to end. It was nine minutes and seventeen seconds long, and nothing really happened, but I watched the whole thing and I couldn’t quite put a name to the tangle of feelings inside me, just to watch those nine minutes and seventeen seconds unfolding before my eyes. There was happiness, but sadness too, and an awful yawning sort of horror that I’d missed something important along the way, like the feeling you get when you think you’ve misplaced your passport or wallet.

Towards the end of the video, the lens veered away from Ben and Luca.

“Hey, Uncle Quin!” the voice behind the camera said. Milly, my sister. Luca’s mum. The picture blurred as she resettled the view, refocusing on me. I was leaning against the kitchen doorway, staring down at the phone in my hand.

I stiffened at the sight of myself, so completely absorbed in the screen of my phone. On Christmas Day, at the height of my happiness with Ben.

“Quin!” my sister insisted, and I looked up.

“What?” I was frowning, distracted.

“Is he on his phone again?” That was Ben, his voice more distant that Milly’s. “Honestly, Milz, he never puts the damn thing down.”

The thing that surprised me was how fond he sounded. Not impatient or disappointed or irritated. Just a little exasperated, but with a smile in his voice.

“Mummy, look!”

The camera swung back to Luca and Ben, huddled over the wooden railway tracks. Ben was pushing a row of carriages along, each one with a different animal in it. Lion, elephant, giraffe, zebra. The carriages were held together with little magnets and every time he swept round a bend, it looked like they’d come apart, but they never did.

Ben.

He used to love me. He used to believe in me.

I don’t think we’ll be seeing each other tonight—I know you, man…

Maybe we can catch up in January…

Fuck that.

Fuck January.

Suddenly, I wanted to see Ben now. Not to win him back, just to show him that—well, maybe that I was someone he could believe in again. Someone he could be friends with, even if we’d never be lovers again.

I shut the laptop, not even bothering to power down, and abandoned it on the sofa, heading for my room. I snagged a clean shirt and my favourite jeans out the wardrobe and quickly changed, then roughly finger-combed some product through my thick, dark mop of hair. Moments later I was pulling on boots and a jacket and shoving my keys and wallet in my pockets. I’d never got ready so quickly in my life.

I was just about to head out when the phone rang. I wandered into the living-room but by the time I got there, the answer machine had already clicked on. A short generic greeting played as I searched for the handset. When I finally found it, the caller was already speaking.

“Hello, this is Sharon Bell, leaving a message for Quin Flint…”

I could easily pick up, but a quick glance at the clock showed me it was already six-fifteen. The whole crowd—Ben included—would be in The Dragon by now. And if I took this call, I probably wouldn’t make it. I’d get sidetracked by work. I always did.

“…you can get me on extension 6589. I’ll be here till at least seven if you want to call back.” The IT Manager’s voice paused, as though she was giving me one last chance to answer, then she added, “Bye then. And, um, Merry Christmas.”

She clicked off.

I stared at the silent handset in my hand for several long moments before bending down to carefully place it back in the charging unit. Then, straightening, I headed for the door, and this time I didn’t pause on my way out.

T
he Dragon used to be a proper old spit-and-sawdust pub but now it was an upscale hipsterish sort of place, all zinc and reclaimed wood and Dublin sinks. It offered a massive range of craft and hand-pulled beers, a decent cocktail list and an overpriced pub food menu. And even now, before seven o’clock, it was mobbed.

The Dragon disdained the usual glitzy crimbo decorations. Instead, it had reindeer garlands made out of what looked sheet music swagging the walls and pine cones painted duck-egg blue hanging from the ceiling. The Killers’ “Christmas in L.A.” played as I walked in.

I cast my gaze around the main bar area. I didn’t recognise anyone standing around, so I headed off into the back in search of Ben and Freddy, wandering through the warren of nooks and alcoves.

I was just heading round a corner when I heard a loud, drunken voice exclaim, “Oh fuck, no! Not him!
Please
tell me you did not invite Quin fucking Flint tonight!”

When a wave of laughter greeted the mention of my name, my stomach twisted. I still moved closer though, carefully edging forward to peek into the alcove the voice had come from.

There were a dozen or so people grouped round a big table, but thanks to the high backs of the benches they were sitting on—reclaimed church pews?—no one seemed to notice me. I drew back, plastering myself against the wall next to the opening so that no one would catch a glimpse of me.

I should have walked away, of course, but I didn’t.

“Fuck off, Charlie, Quin’s all right!” a female voice insisted. Freddy. I swallowed.

“Oh, don’t panic,” another voice said. “He’s not actually going to come tonight. He never does.”

“Actually, Ben and I ran into him earlier and he said he
was
planning on coming.”