Looking for Andrew McCarthy (9 page)

‘Yes, and you’ve had two years minus three dates to get used to it! Whereas I’ve had nineteen seconds! And that’s not fair! And, for God’s sake, stand up.’

Very slowly, Loxy put the box back in his pocket and stood up.

‘I feel stupid,’ he said.

‘You look stupid,’ she said, tenderly. The rain continued to pound down on both of them.

He started to laugh.

‘Great. I’m stupid and you’re finishing with me.’

‘I am not fucking finishing with you! Stop being a baby!’

She stalked ahead of him.

Already drenched, Loxy looked at the ground and started to splosh up and down in the puddles.

‘I’m laughing at clouds,’ Loxy started singing mournfully to himself.

‘You’re not listening to me. I just need time to think about this, okay? It’s just come out of the blue.’

‘… so high up above …’

‘Okay, Lox, I’m going to go home now. We can talk tomorrow.’

‘I’ve sun in my heart …’
splish splosh
.

‘I’ll phone you tomorrow. I’ll think about it, I promise.’

She practically ran down the grey and empty street.

‘… and I’m ready for love …’
splish splosh splish splosh
.

‘Wanky doodle
dandy!
’ said Ellie.

‘Can’t you at least try and be constructive?’ said Siobhan to her. ‘This is exactly the kind of crap you came out with when Patrick … went away.’

‘Actually, that is kind of how I feel,’ said Julia. ‘Just a random line of gibberish.’

‘But I don’t know what to say,’ complained Ellie. ‘Nobody ever asks
me
anything interesting. I get freaked out if someone asks me if I want large fries. Why don’t we all have another Bloody Mary. Then we’ll try and talk sense.’

‘I think those two things might be mutually exclusive,’ said Julia, but made up another batch anyway.

Julia had gone home and sat in the tiny darkened living room of her tiny darkened flat – she’d deliberately bought a small one-bedroom so that Ellie could never conceivably move in with her. She’d always liked the way it was furnished, although these days she was noticing just how much Ikea there actually was – and tried to think long and hard into the night, but she wasn’t really of a philosophical turn of mind. So after about fifteen minutes she’d phoned up the cavalry and after mass screaming, they’d marched around with Worcestershire sauce and celery sticks; even Siobhan was temporarily roused from her Medusa-like life-long evil plottings long enough to empathize. Which was pretty good of her,
seeing as Julia suddenly had the exact opposite of her own problem. Arthur was excluded – he was going to be furious, as he’d always insisted he’d had just as many childhood wedding dress fantasies as they had, but this was a woman-thing deep down, no doubt about it.

‘I thought … if, or when it ever happened, it would be, like, just the most exciting moment of my life,’ moaned Julia, sucking loudly through a straw.

‘That’s because the people that made the whole thing up had never had sex,’ said Ellie. ‘It was a tossup between getting engaged or dying in the throes of having a bastard in a workhouse.’

‘Yes, thank you Catherine Cookson,’ said Siobhan. ‘Well, I say, if someone asks you, you should just say yes immediately. It’s going to fail anyway, and at least this way people buy you stuff and pay you lots of attention.’

‘Me and Loxy wouldn’t fail! We’d be fine! It’s just, I’d kind of hoped for amazing, not
fine
.’

‘When you first met Loxy you swore he was the most amazing thing that had ever happened to you.’

‘Yes, but that’s the same in every new relationship, isn’t it? It’s new person sex voodoo. I don’t think I wore pants for six months, and if I did wear them they were made out of polyurethane and feathers. But now … we’re just …’

‘Big pants,’ said Ellie suddenly.

‘What?’

‘You’re in the “big pants”, stage of your relationship. Okay, what pants are you wearing?’

Julia shrugged.

‘I’m wearing La Perla,’ said Siobhan.

‘Exactly,’ said Ellie. ‘You’re suddenly single, and you never know whether or not you’ll bump into John Cusack on the way home. I’m wearing special Marks and Sparks green pants, because if I buy white, black, pink or red, Big Bastard steals them off the washing line. Jules?’

Julia sighed. ‘Well, okay.’ She reluctantly tugged them over the waistband of her trousers.

‘Yeuch,’ said the other two simultaneously.

‘They are clean, thank you.’

But it was true that the outwardly fastidious Julia had a pair of massive saggy washed out grey knickers with a hole in them.

‘You’re just too comfortable. Your relationship has become a takeaway,’ Ellie said.

‘
What
?’

‘You remember when you started going out together? You used to lay the table? Light candles? Cook for him so you could pretend to be his mum and play house together? And now it’s just, sod it, let’s get a takeaway and eat it watching the TV and not talking to each other …’

‘I miss it
so
much,’ said Siobhan sadly.

‘… and that’s why I never have relationships. I really can’t stand takeaway food.’

‘And absolutely nothing to do with deep-seated psychological trauma.’

‘Siobhan, I order you to shut it. Anyway, that’s the takeaway relationship – lukewarm, stirred over, made up of lots of different kinds of crap. And yet everyone seems to want one. God, I’m good tonight.’

‘Have you heard from Billy?’ asked Siobhan suddenly.

‘I have actually. He said if I came back he’d hand over my Terence Trent D’Arby album. I’m standing my ground.’

‘Ignore her, Julia,’ said Siobhan decisively. ‘You and Loxy are great together. You’re relaxed and comfortable enough with each other not to have to worry about your underwear or nutritional intake. He’s a lovely guy. We like parties. Get married.’

‘Oh God,’ said Julia.

‘You’re late.’ Mr Rooney was patrolling the corridor outside Ellie’s office.

‘I was helping a friend in crisis, Sir.’

‘Don’t tell me – she wanted to take four weeks leave to do something stupid?’

‘Oh no sir – when
she
asked for leave she got it straight away.’

‘You’re trying my patience, Miss Eversholt.’

‘You’re ruining my life, Mr Rooney.’

‘You’ll thank me in the long run, Miss Eversholt.’

‘This is the long run, Mr Rooney.’

Ellie hummed and hawed, stomped around the office, made coffee, went to the loo, played about with her e-mail and finally flicked around the large scruffy piles of paper on her desk. This wasn’t looking good. Her plan couldn’t possibly come together without her. This stupid fucking job.

‘Oh God. Can you think of anything interesting to do?’ she called to the temp.

‘Well, there’s fifty voicemail messages piled up from over the weekend if you’re interested,’ said the temp in a bored voice. Ellie stood up and marched over to the doorway.

‘Why didn’t you tell me before, when I walked in?’

‘Because I hate this job and everyone here.’

‘Can you take the messages down for me?’

‘No. I’m only supposed to do word processing this week.’

‘But there’s no word processing to do.’

‘But I don’t care.’

Ellie sighed. Five of the messages were from one potential client with an old tile making factory who was deliberately trying to push Ellie to see how nice she could be to him. Ellie was getting increasingly tetchy. Now he wanted to be taken to a horse race then a car rally in return for possibly sending them a small bit of business that would involve ripping out a century and a half’s worth of hand fired tiled walls to provide extra metal bathrooms.

Six were messages from another firm to whom Ellie had lied about some paperwork she had been supposed to send to them, which she had no intention of ever sorting out before the world’s end; seven were from different people she had been trying to arrange a meeting between, none of whom appeared to have a simultaneous opening until 2020. Eight were about the buildings insurance which would require her to meet with the fire officer, who had only a moustache differentiating him from a toad who could stand up, nine were from the finance office – no problem, she had her phone on automatic delete for those, and ten were from Billy, starting off apologetic and finishing actively offensive.

‘And a Partridge in a Pear Tree,’ said Ellie crossly. ‘Oh God. This is all unbelievably shit.’

The phone rang. She picked it up.

‘Sugarcakes,’ said the voice. ‘You know, there’s no trombonist like you.’

‘Well, thank fuck for that,’ said Ellie conversationally. ‘Now fuck off please.’

‘Hang on, baby.’

Then came the sound of someone trying to lift a phone and a saxophone at the same time, followed by the sound of a saxophone crashing to the floor and taking a phone with it and, possibly, a vase, followed by extended cursing on both ends of the line as Ellie put the phone down.

She started shouting at the temp again.

‘This is all crap. Cancel it all, chuck it in the bin, and if anyone asks, tell them the phone system’s down but I’m working on it. Oh, and I have a tropical disease.’

‘Really,’ said Mr Rooney, walking into her office. ‘You won’t be wanting to go away anywhere then.’

Ellie jumped up and just stared at him, mouth wide open in shock.

‘Do you know,’ he said, plonking his gingery-haired arms on her desk and trying to look caring and concerned, ‘why I came down here?’

She swallowed heavily.

‘Ehm, you’d heard what a joker I was?’ she started nervously. ‘And you wanted to hear if you could catch me in the middle of any hilarious pranks making up phone messages with the temp.’

‘No,’ said Mr Rooney. ‘Actually, I came down here to say that if this trip away was so important to you
and all your work was squared away, I was going to let you go. Hmm, perhaps an unfortunate turn of phrase …’

Ellie started turning very red.

‘… I was going to allow you to take the leave of absence. However, it appears that your ideas of finishing work and mine are rather different.’

‘
Please
Sir …’ muttered Ellie, wretchedly.

He snapped upright.

‘Any leave at all you’ve got booked is cancelled until further notice and you can report to personnel to pick up your written warning.’

She watched him turn around and walk out, absolutely dying inside.

‘Why the
fuck
didn’t you tell me he was on his way in?’ she asked the Temp.

‘I was bored and wanted to see what would happen.’

Ellie idly started throwing pieces of paper around her desk.

‘Oh God, oh God, what am I going to do?’ She bit back tears. ‘This is going to fuck up everything.’

‘If you walked out I’d get a half-day,’ said the temp.

‘Oh, well, I’m hardly about to …’

She thought for a second. Then she sat down, picked up the phone and dialled nine.

‘Arthur, have you ever walked out of a job?’

‘Oh, so you’re phoning me up for career advice but when it comes to the
really
important things in life I’m chopped liver am I?’

‘You’re what? Art, I’ve got a bit of a crisis on here.’

‘Never mind. Siobhan phoned me. We’ve only got a wedding in our midst and nobody bothered to inform me.’

‘Except for Siobhan obviously. Look, do you think …’

‘So is Julia getting married or not?’

‘She doesn’t know. She wanted our opinion. Our opinions were divided. Happy now? Okay, I want to …’

‘Well, I think she should. I don’t think they get any nicer than Loxy, and he has a tush to die for.’

‘Good for you. Now PLEASE help me.’

‘Oh well, seeing as you’re begging.’

‘Arthur, my boss just caught me misbehaving and he won’t let me go away.’

‘Oh no!’ Arthur was sympathetic, with a touch of natural fascination. ‘What did you do? Were you getting it on with the stockboy in the stationery cupboard?’

‘No, Arthur, that was you.’

‘Oh, so it was. Oh well. I hated that job.’

Actually, Arthur had a tendency to make up
encounters like this, otherwise the others teased him for being a married man.

‘I hate this job,’ said Ellie defeatedly, kicking the toe of her shoe against the rubbish bin. There was a silence.

‘You know,’ said Arthur, ‘you were going on and on about trying to get out of your rut.’

‘Yes, but I wasn’t planning to go directly from the rut to “do you want fries with that?”’

‘Well,’ said Arthur. ‘You could just take off. You’d be able to get another job somewhere, they’re all over the place. If all else fails you can always raise some capital and become Ellie.com …’

‘Uh huh …’ said Ellie uncertainly, although inside she was starting to feel very excited.