Something Only We Know (15 page)

Next thing, I could hear her footsteps coming down the path towards me, and a small cyclone of panic started up in my chest. Oh my God. What if she clocked I’d been gawping and strode over
and challenged me? What would I do? Whatever would I say? I wouldn’t give my name. I’d pretend I was someone else. Give a false name. Christ, if she found out I was a journo, and got
onto Rosa with an accusation of spying . . . But then again, all I’d been doing was standing on a public highway. A cat can look at a queen. She didn’t know about my Joe-dossier, she
couldn’t prove any dodgy motive—

When at last I risked a glance up, she’d gone right past me and was on her way towards the corner of the street. I watched as she took some keys out of her pocket and pointed them at a
black BMW, which winked as it unlocked. In she climbed, briskly rearranging the sun visor, her headscarf, something on the passenger seat. Less than a minute later she’d driven away. Back at
the house the side door was now shut, the windows empty of movement.

So there we had it. Whilst Ellie was safely occupied at the bank, Joe the home-worker was free to get up to whatever he fancied. He could see this woman every weekday, if he wanted. Or different
lovers, in rotation. It was the perfect set-up for an adulterer.

The experience had left me rattled. My first impulse had been to take the story straight to my sister and give her a blow by blow account of the incident, spell it out to her that Joe Pascoe was
still
a love rat all these years later and that, however hurt she’d been at fifteen, she’d had a lucky escape. After the news had sunk in we could pin a photo of him to a
dartboard, kick some cushions around, make sympathetic noises about his poor wife.

By the time I got home that evening, however, I’d decided to hang on and keep the information to myself. I wasn’t sure why. I suppose I was worried by what Ned had told me, because
Hel did seem fragile at the moment and I didn’t want to risk destabilising her. Only last night she’d claimed to have a sore throat and had left her lamb chop and her mashed potatoes,
which Mum had made specially, a separate, butter-free portion. Then later that night I’d heard Mum and Dad arguing. I’d caught Hel on the landing and I’d said, ‘Have you
really got a sore throat?’ And she’d said, ‘Look, it’s going round the kennels. Am I not allowed to catch germs like anyone else?’

Behind my swivel chair I could hear Rosa’s tinkling laugh as she flirted on the phone to some businessman or other. I tried again to focus on my stalking article. What the hell right had I
to be dispensing advice here when I was still checking Joe’s Facebook page every day? But however hypocritical I was feeling, the piece would have to be written within the next hour because
right now I was in so much trouble with Rosa it was like a black cloud hovering permanently above my head. Not just Rosa either: with the whole of the office.

What had happened was that The Diary had gone missing – The Diary being our most precious piece of hardware, over and above even the ranks of PCs or the phones. Without that simple A4
book, no one knows who’s doing what or when, and interviewees are left stranded and photographers wander adrift and the whole of the structure of the day falls apart. We’d turned the
place upside down, and I’d been as peed off as anyone because I urgently needed a scribbled mobile phone number so I could confirm the details of a Halloween event coming to Northgate Arena.
Then Alan had walked past my desk and accidentally knocked my bag to the floor, and what should slide out but The Diary, sandwiched between some loose papers and a brochure for Carden Park leisure
hotel. The upshot was, no one was speaking to me. I’d racked my brains over how it might have got there, because I honestly had no recollection of having handled it that day. It did cross my
mind that Rosa herself might have planted it; it felt like the sort of warped thing she’d do.

I cast a sneaky look at Gerry, but he had his head down, working. He’d been late for an appointment with an MP so he’d every right to be as annoyed with me as anyone else.

‘Jennifer! I hope you’re making progress?’ barked Rosa from across the room.

‘Uh-huh.’

‘Because I want that piece by midday. Forty minutes, you’ve got.’

‘Mm.’

She could probably see how little I’d done. I wondered whether it was possible to spontaneously combust with anger. The writing gears in my brain had seized up the moment she’d
spoken. I would never get this article finished. I would flunk the deadline and Rosa would tear me up and this time I might lose control and hit her and end up in a police cell as well as jobless.
Not that this even counted as a job, seeing as I didn’t get paid. So much flak for nothing.

A movement at Gerry’s desk. I looked over and, his gaze still fixed on his screen, he was tilting a piece of paper carefully, so that I could see it but Rosa couldn’t. I squinted to
make out the detail. It was a printout of a bird with a brown back and a spotty chest. ‘THRUSH’ said the caption underneath. Then he gave me a lightning-quick wink.

‘GOD save us from incompetence,’ I heard Rosa mutter, followed a moment later by the clunk-shut of her office door.

One bright spot in the day was that I’d be spending my lunch hour at Owen’s. Chelle was still hanging around, but I was a lot less troubled by her than I had been.
Over the past few weeks I’d scored several small victories: I’d got her to contribute to the household bills by making her do a midweek shop for milk, bread and other basics we’d
run out of; I’d removed my toiletries from the bathroom and stored them in Owen’s wardrobe, which meant she had to go out and buy her own instead of filching mine; I’d even dared
challenge her over one of her protest-memoirs, because I’d read the very same story on an internet forum and I knew it had actually happened to some Canadians in the 1990s. In front of Owen
she’d denied all knowledge of this other group, which was stupid as what she should have said was, Yes, I know, we copied them. Instead she claimed it was the sort of stunt that could have
occurred to anyone, great minds think alike, etc. But I’d said, ‘What?
Two
sets of illegal trawlers boarded by activists dressed as mermaids? Really?’ And she’d
shut right up.

I’d also taken to asking her lots of questions about New Zealand, in the hope that might prompt a bout of homesickness. What was her house like? Was it large or small? Rural or urban? Did
she miss her parents? Her mates? The culture? What were the shops like? How did their education system work? Did she have any friends who were Maoris? Was the climate very hot? Very rainy? What did
they do for Christmas? Was there more or less traffic on the roads than in the UK? What was their biggest-selling newspaper? Could you buy a Mars Bar over there? Where was the best holiday resort?
Had she ever seen an echidna? A volcano? A real live kiwi? On and on I went with my stream of bland, annoying enquiries, knowing I was driving her up the pole and that there was nothing she could
do about it.

And Owen-wise, I was making real progress. I now sometimes stayed over twice a week, and I was planning meals and doing some of the cooking. I was using his washing machine. I’d brought
along a hairdryer, shoe cleaning kit, a dressing gown and some better towels. The one thing I hadn’t had much time for was the website development I’d promised him the month before, but
there were so many other to-dos on my list and Chelle was putting a few hours in here and there and, unlike the newspaper, it wasn’t as if we were working to a deadline. In any case, Owen
himself seemed to have gone off the boil with the project after chatting online to a man who was raising money to send bicycles to African midwives. Now he was all fired up with that campaign, and
badgering the customers at the bookshop café with sponsor forms and petitions.

So, the stalking article put to bed, it was with a fairly buoyant heart I trotted down the hill in the direction of my boyfriend’s flat. I’d picked up a bit of gossip about a dodgy
councillor which I knew he’d be pleased with, and then I thought I might rustle us up some French toast, because I’d made some last week and he’d said how much he’d enjoyed
it. Heck, I might even go mad and make a slice for Chelle.

I did my special doorbell ring, then let myself into the hall with the key he’d finally given me. Music floated down the stairs, some jaunty Antipodean band that I was sick of hearing, but
I wasn’t going to let that bother me. This building was my refuge from office-hell and I was going to be nothing but smiles and lightness and sizzling, vanilla-scented bread.

When I reached the landing I saw the door of the flat was ajar. I pushed it open, and at the exact same second the music stopped. Owen was sitting in the middle of the sofa with his head in his
hands, the flat around him strewn with papers and magazines and odd pieces of household equipment. I paused on the threshold, trying to work out what was going on. Briefly I wondered if he’d
been burgled, because there was something disconnected about the layout of the scene, the placing of the furniture odd – as if there were gaps, maybe, though I couldn’t at first
identify what had been removed. The table seemed bigger and the room lighter. There were dust-shapes marking some of the surfaces. An electrical socket extension cord trailed untidily from behind
the chair.

‘Everything all right?’ I said. ‘What’s happening? Owen?’

He made me wait a few beats, then he raised his eyes to mine. ‘Well, Jen, you got your way.’

‘Got my way with what?’

A clatter from the direction of the bathroom made me jump.

‘Owen?’ called Chelle, her voice echoing slightly. ‘Is it OK with you if I take this half-tube of toothpaste?’

A moment later she walked in carrying her rucksack by its straps and plonked it on the floor in front of her. ‘Oh,’ she said when she saw me.

Now I understood that the table looked bigger because the balled-up sleeping bag underneath it had disappeared. The extension lead trailed out because Chelle’s phone charger was no longer
in situ. The sofa was lighter because her fern-pattern throw was gone.

‘I’ve left you those leaflets about recycled bike parts,’ she went on. ‘And the addresses you wanted. If you need to contact me, use my Hotmail account, yeah? I can still
work remotely on the website. Just let me know what needs doing.’

There was an awkward silence. No one looked at anyone else.

‘Anyway, that’s me packed. Looks like I’d better be off.’

‘Please don’t,’ said Owen, getting to his feet.

‘Ah, I’ve got places I need to be. My work here is done.’

‘But you’ve weeks before your visa expires. You don’t have to move on yet.’

‘I think I do.’ Chelle jerked her head in my direction.

This whole situation felt horrible, almost as if I’d been caught out in some act of vandalism or poison-letter-writing.
What? WHAT?
I felt like shouting.
So she’s off?
Well. Why the long faces? She’s had a bloody good run. She never was a permanent fixture. Isn’t it time for her to move on, spread her enlightenment elsewhere?

She came and stood right in front of him, hands on hips. ‘So thanks for having me, Owen. I think we’ve made real strides together. You’re an awesome person, you know.
It’s been a total blast. And Jen,’ she half turned and gave me a sarcastic salute, ‘well done you. Mission accomplished.’

Too stunned to react, I watched as she and my boyfriend came together in an embrace, then held onto each other as if they might never let go.
Get off him!
I wanted to cry out.
He’s mine! Have you no shame? Just go!
Owen’s eyes were closed; I couldn’t see her face because she had her back to me.

They swayed, broke apart.

‘That’s me done,’ said Chelle, bending to pick up her rucksack.

Owen was shaking his head.

She said, ‘Keep in touch, yeah?’ But she was addressing him, not me.

In three or four strides she’d crossed the room and was gone. We heard the door bang shut behind her.

‘Oh, Jen,’ he said bleakly.

My heart was thundering in my chest, my mouth dry with fury and dread. She’d made me out to be a villain, had she? The jealous girlfriend who’d driven her out? God knows what tales
she’d spun. I knew I had to keep calm and not overreact or I’d risk playing into her hands. But how to redeem this moment? How to hold my nerve?

‘Well, that was a surprise,’ I ventured.

Owen sank down onto the sofa again. He looked sick.

I said, ‘I shouldn’t worry, she’ll most likely reappear in ten minutes.’

No response.

‘I mean, it’s a shame she couldn’t have stayed. I know you’ll miss her. She’s been useful with her ideas and that. But at least you’ve got your floor back.
You can pull the chair forward now and we can use the table properly again. You can spread your papers out. See what you’re doing. So that’ll be better. And anyway, she’s still
here in a virtual sense. You can always email and Skype her, can’t you? Take your laptop to the pub and it’ll be as if she’s sitting round the table with us. These days no
one’s truly absent. They’re only ever on the end of an internet connection. She’s not gone at all if you think about it in those terms.’

Still he said nothing. There was a massive weight of words in him, though, ready to burst like a dam. I felt it. I knew I had to ask.

‘What was it made her decide to leave today?’

At last he met my gaze. ‘For God’s sake. Stop it. Stop pretending, will you? Chelle and I talked through the night. She’d just had enough of you making her feel
not-wanted.’

‘What? What’s she been saying? I bet she’s been making stuff up. She’s always doing that!’

‘I said, stop it, Jen.’

‘But she has. I’ve caught her out on all sorts.’

‘You’ve made it your mission to undermine her, I do know that. You and your friends.’

‘No! No, I was just trying to—’

‘Enough. I don’t want to hear it. You’ve let me down. Honestly, I’m not even sure I know you any more.’

He slumped against the cushions, staring at me, and to my horror I saw his eyes were full of tears.