What You Make It (16 page)

Coffee in hand, he sat back down at the desk and fruitlessly turned the piece of paper over again. It still had no marks on it.

The checklist had arisen out of the fact that he always sat down to write to Susan and Isobel at the same time. It generally took him at least a day to build himself up to letter-writing mode, and he couldn't face doing that twice in one week. The problem being that he ended up an utter disaster waiting to happen, in the shape of two contradictory piles of paper. If they should ever reach the wrong people, all hell would break loose and nothing in the world he valued would be left at the end of it.

At first he'd tried writing one and then the other, making sure the first was safely sealed inside its addressed envelope before starting on the next. The problem was that he couldn't refer to the first letter as a reminder of events already tediously dredged up out of his memory, and it also meant that he couldn't reread the first letter, which he liked to do before adding the final paragraph.

In the end he'd developed the checklist, and had settled with that. He wrote the two letters simultaneously, and then put addresses on two different coloured envelopes. He noted the number of pages of each letter on a piece of paper, and rechecked it. He checked the name at the beginning of the letter, and the pet name used at the end of it, twice each before tucking the letter into the envelope with Susan's address on it. Then he wrote the name ‘Susan’ over her number on the checklist. After he'd gone
through the same procedure with Isobel's letter, he took Susan's letter out, quickly scanned through it to make sure all of the pages were hers, bundled it into the envelope and immediately sealed it. Then he did the same with Isobel's.

He knew the system wasn't foolproof, but that wasn't the point. Checking and rechecking the door didn't increase the likelihood of it being shut when he knew he'd done it properly the first time. He did know, in some sense, that he wouldn't have dropped a cigarette to the floor without noticing, just as he knew that he set the alarm properly first time. But in some other sense, he didn't know. He didn't trust his memory of events, even when he had no reason to doubt it. If you thought too hard about things you believed you'd done it became harder and harder to remember doing them with any degree of certainty, almost as if it wasn't really you who'd done them. And what was true for trivial things was even more so with the most important things in his life. Isobel and Susan.

And today, thanks to Mr-fucking-Baum, he hadn't done his checklist. For once he'd behaved like a normal human being, which would have been fine if he hadn't found out he'd done it.

But he had.

When his hands were no longer actively trembling, he booted his illustration program and set about coming up with a logo for a local printers. At least, he set up a blank page. After that he moved the mouse around, watching the pointer flash over the screen. He typed in the name of the firm, and then erased it. He drew a series of shapes, and then deleted them too. He did all of this as if under time pressure, working quickly and accurately, foot tapping unconsciously on the floor.

It would all be over in the first line, he knew. Both were easily well-acquainted enough with his handwriting to know it was him who'd written this letter to a girl with another name. They'd know before they were an inch down the page.

He typed the firm's name again, and tried it in several typefaces. They all looked the same. He erased again.

After that, the rest would just be the shit on the cake. Susan would read slowly through a letter that was over twice as long as the ones she normally received, seeing all the detail in his life he told her didn't exist. Isobel would see references to old times and deep friendship which she and Richard didn't have. And just as the horrible, fascinating novelty of yet another unfaithful sentence was beginning to wear off, they'd both read the other's final paragraph, and find new reserves of hate for him.

No they fucking
wouldn't.
Furiously, Richard spun the mouse across the desk and stood up. He jammed his hands into his pockets and walked stiffly across the room to the other window. They wouldn't because he hadn't put the letters in the wrong envelopes. He hadn't done the checklist, but that didn't mean he'd done it wrong. It didn't mean anything.

He walked back to the desk and tried to sit down, but was up again immediately. He took another cigarette out but before realizing there was one still burning in the ashtray, the end of the filter turning brown. He'd forgotten all about it.

He stubbed it out viciously and lit the other. He had to do something. He couldn't tune this out. He knew he hadn't made a mistake. He knew that he was a normal, efficient human being, and that like anyone else, he'd have put the letters in the right envelope. But he couldn't remember doing so. He couldn't recall the moment clearly enough, and the harder he thought about it, the fuzzier it became.

He got up. He sat down again. He looked at the screen for a while but didn't even bother to retrieve the mouse from where it had fetched up. He stared out of the window at the street, taking manic interest in a passing child. He considered cleaning the bath.

It was no good. He had to do something about it.

Suddenly, something occurred to him. He looked at his watch. It was 3.20. He carried the ashtray to the sink, filled it with water and flicked the ash from the current one into the grey sludge. He closed the window and twisted the lock hard, and then, struggling into his coat, headed for the street.

As he walked quickly down Leighton Road, Richard rehearsed reasonable-sounding excuses in his head. By the time he got to the Kentish Town Sorting Office he knew that, if necessary, he'd tell the truth.

He rang the bell at the enquiry desk and stood fretfully reading very dull and badly designed posters until a man appeared. He didn't ask if he could help or even raise an eyebrow in signification of readiness for enquiry, but simply stood behind the desk in a resigned fashion, waiting for Richard to speak.

In the end, Richard didn't even get to use his first excuse for wanting to retrieve two pieces of mail. Once provoked into speech, the man proved surprisingly well-informed and helpful. Yes, he confirmed, it was possible to take back a piece of mail once it had been put into a mailbox. All that was required was a detailed description of the article in question, and comprehensive proof of identity.

Feeling relief wash over him, Richard reached for his wallet to produce credit cards, video library memberships, whatever it took. He was about to explain that there were actually two envelopes he wanted to take back when the man suddenly held up his hand.

‘Hang on,’ he said. ‘When did you post it?’

‘Twelve-thirty,’ Richard replied quickly, trying to be helpful. ‘Just before the lunchtime pick-up.’

The man shook his head regretfully.

‘No use you showing me anything, then,’ he said. ‘We're only part-time here, see. Only the first collection gets sorted here.’

‘What happens to the rest?’ Richard moaned.

‘Goes straight to King's Cross Sorting Office.’

‘And then?’

The man looked at him carefully.

‘It gets sorted,’ he said.

‘Yes, but what then?’

‘It gets put on a train,’ the man said slowly, obviously hoping that he wasn't going to have to explain the postal system from first principles.

‘Yes. When? At what time?’ Richard asked frantically, struggling to remain polite. The man looked at his watch.

‘Lunchtime, you said. Well, quite soon then. Ten, fifteen minutes.’

Armed with the address and phone number of the King's Cross Sorting Office, Richard ran back out to the street and looked quickly up and down it. The man's regret at professing himself unable to let Richard use his phone had been genuine, but final. The main sorting office was at least 25 minutes away by tube and foot. He didn't have time to find the nearest working phone booth, which was probably in Germany. So he trotted back towards his flat.

The light was flashing on his answering machine, but he ignored it and grabbed the handset.

The number was engaged.

Swearing wildly, Richard stomped over to the kettle and switched it on. He tried the number but it was still engaged, or engaged again. He fished the waterlogged buts out of the ashtray in the sink and slopped them into the bin. When he'd washed and dried the ashtray he set it on his desk, lit a cigarette and tried again.

This time he got a ringing tone. He continued to have a ringing tone for quite some time. Eventually it was answered by a female voice that seemed to conjure up endless, monumental vistas of boredom, a tumbleweed-strewn desert of futility.

It took Richard a few moments to get the person on the other end to understand that he was enquiring about the current status of the lunchtime pick-up of mail from a particular mailbox in Kentish Town. Once that was finally clear, the precise information that Richard didn't want to hear was immediately forthcoming. The mail had been sorted, and was beyond reaching.

Richard put the phone down, and watched the light on the answering machine flash for a while. He made a cup of coffee, and sat back down at the desk.

In a way it was a relief, of a terrible kind. There was nothing else he could do. The letters were on their way.

For a brief moment he had a sudden flash of rationality. There really was, he realized, no reason for him to suspect they'd gone in the wrong envelopes. There was a very strong chance that everything was going to be all right.

The moment faded, but left him feeling calmer than he had since discovering the blank checklist. He took a sip of coffee, feeling his heartbeat return to something like normal, and pressed the play button on the answering machine.

The message was from Isobel. She wasn't going to be in that evening, so she was calling now instead. She sounded disappointed not to have reached him, but chipper enough to have filled three minutes of tape with cheerful banter. At the end, her tone changed abruptly. I love you, she said, I love you very much.

When the message ended Richard sat motionless for a long time, listening to the sound of the words in his head, and wondering if this was the last time he would ever hear her say them. Say them like that, anyway. Say them like Isobel, instead of like Susan, with unthinking vehemence rather than considered resignation.

He managed to get a little work done in the remainder of the afternoon, but not much. At six he stood up for the tenth time in two hours, and this time elected not to sit down again. He took a shower and fixed a minimal meal, chewing it blankly in front of the evening news. Interest rates were up. England had won the cricket.

And some moron in Kentish Town had completely fucked up his life.

After trying to watch the television for a couple of hours he walked down to the corner newsagents/grocery/video library and took out the most gripping-looking film he could find. On the way down the idea of calling Susan popped into his head. He spent the time in the newsagents and during the walk back telling himself that there was absolutely nothing he could achieve by doing so, and then picked the phone up as soon as he was back in the flat.

She was out, which was unusual. Thursday was generally her night for staying in and catching up on work. It was probably just as well: as soon as he'd put the phone back down Richard realized just how impossible it would have been to have done anything useful by phoning her. What could he have said? By the way, please don't open the letter which arrives tomorrow?

The film, despite the outlandish claims to the contrary plastered all over the cover, failed to grip him or even hold his attention. His mind kept going back to the phone call at lunch-time, trying to picture his hands putting paper into envelopes, trying to see what had happened. The film ended, and he rewound it.

Two hours later he was in bed, and still awake. The door was locked, the alarm definitely set. Lying flat on his back, eyes lightly shut, he listened to the sound of traffic on faraway roads, and in his mind heard it mingle with the sound of a train, a train which held a sack, a sack which held two letters. He knew that by now the letters would be on different trains, heading for different parts of the country, but in his mind they lay together, rustling against each other with the rhythm of the train as it rushed through dark fields under a clear black sky.

When the alarm went he slapped it off and sat bolt upright, filled with dread before he remembered why. It felt like the opposite of Christmas morning, a long-awaited bad thing that was finally here. He showered and shaved quickly, expecting the phone to ring at any moment.

Because they would ring immediately. He would. Or would he? He thought he probably would. Some people, in some relationships, might save it up for the evening, let their anger ferment and refine the murderously cool way in which they'd reveal what had happened. Neither Susan nor Isobel were like that. In their different ways, they were very similar.

When by ten o'clock the phone still hadn't rung, Richard cautiously began to reassess the situation. They hadn't rung, which meant one of three things. The letters hadn't arrived. Possible, but unlikely given that they'd been out of the central
sorting office at four. They'd arrived, but the girls had left before the post. Possible in Susan's case, unthinkably unlikely in Isobel's case. With her it was easier to believe she hadn't got up yet, but ten was pushing it even for her on a weekday.

Three. The right letters had landed on the right doorsteps. Richard sagged where he sat. After all that, he hadn't screwed up after all.

The phone rang.

Richard stared at it for a moment, utterly paralysed, and then picked the handset up carefully. Mr Baum told him he'd received the designs, and was actually pleased with them. After noting down a few points, Richard put the phone down again, panting.

By the time he was beginning to think about lunch Richard felt fine, if a little foolish. The real moral of the last 24 hours was that he was becoming dangerously reliant on artificial reassurances. When he finished a cigarette, he put it out properly. When he shut a door, it was shut. When he put letters into envelopes, he put them in the right ones. It wasn't a matter of trusting his memory. It was simply a case of trusting himself.