The Past and Other Lies (5 page)

‘
I rilly wanna see you tonight!
’

Gloria and Jennifer spun around to see a guilty-looking nine-year-old with a top-knot grinning at them nervously, a Ring Me!™ phone clasped in her hand and her finger on the talk button. They glared at her and the girl dropped the phone and fled.

‘
I miss you so much
’ said the phone as it bounced onto the floor.

‘I don’t participate in stocktakes,’ said Gloria calmly.

It was true that, as a rule, Gloria, as a PA, did not participate in stocktakes; it was a definite perk of not being sales staff. Still, procedures and processes were under continual scrutiny these days and perhaps, Jennifer mused, from now on non-sales staff
would
be expected to participate in stocktakes? She would give the matter some serious thought. In the meantime, this little power play had been pushed as far as it would go. She looked up and gave Gloria a bright smile.

‘Of course. Naturally you must have Saturday off for your dress fitting.’ She beamed benevolently and prepared to enjoy the gratitude that Gloria was now forced to bestow upon her.

Gloria’s gratitude came in the form of a tight-lipped smile.

And perhaps at a sign from Gloria, or maybe just by coincidence, Adam Finch himself appeared at the end of the model airplanes and remote-controlled vehicles aisle and waved cheerily.

Jennifer raised a hand to wave back then she realised Adam was probably waving at Gloria and not at herself, and that in fact he was marrying Gloria and not herself, and her own raised hand went instead to straighten a stack of Tanya Starr, Supermodel™ dolls.

Adam Finch, who had a degree in Phys. Ed. from Loughborough and had been a Southern Counties 1500-metre junior champion, was manager of the computer and software department on the third floor. He strolled up to them now in a shiny nylon tracksuit, in defiance of company policy, carrying a clipboard that ought to contain sales data on product availability and item price changes but which, Jennifer could see, actually contained running times (Adam frequently did laps of Regent’s Park during his lunch hour). His face was shiny and there was moisture on his top lip.

‘Sorry I’m late, my sweet,’ Adam was saying, and he kissed Gloria’s unproffered cheek dutifully. ‘I stepped in something unpleasant in the park and didn’t realise till I was in the lift coming up here. Stamped it into the carpet all the way from the front door to the fifth floor.’

He smiled ruefully in the manner of someone aware they’ve probably caused an inconvenience but who knows that someone else will always clear it up. Perhaps, Jennifer mused, it would be Gloria’s mum who would have the task of scrubbing the something-unpleasant from the lobby carpet this evening. And possibly Gloria was thinking the same thing, as she responded to his apology with a cold look and Jennifer wondered, not for the first time, about this wedding they were supposed to be having.

‘Gloria, is Mr Gaspari still on hold for me?’ she asked abruptly, because she’d just remembered him and because she really wanted to break up this little fiance-to-fiancee moment.

‘Yes, he is,’ replied Gloria, smiling sweetly. ‘I told him you were just coming.’ She turned towards Adam in the manner of someone about to go off for her tea break.

Jennifer returned the smile and marched off towards the Staff Only door and her office.

It did take some getting used to, this idea of Gloria and Adam getting back together and now hurtling, unstoppably, towards marriage. It changed the way you looked at things. For instance, it made you think that if that incident hadn’t happened four years ago, perhaps Adam and Gloria wouldn’t have broken up after all. Perhaps they would have stayed together and got married years ago. Perhaps (and contrary to what you had assumed at the time) they had been happy together then and were happy together now, and the awkward breakup and the three years apart had not been a blessing after all.

It made you wonder if, in fact, you hadn’t got the whole thing totally wrong.

But that made it sound as if she had orchestrated the incident with Adam just for their sake, to help them out of a dead-end relationship, when in fact she hadn’t thought about them at all. Not at the time. Only afterwards, when it had been necessary to explain her actions to herself. No, at the time she had been thinking entirely about Nick. Well, Nick and herself and their own forthcoming wedding. Actually, she had been thinking mainly about herself.

And she hadn’t orchestrated anything. Not really. At least not until she had sat on Santa’s lap at the staff Christmas party four years ago. She hadn’t even wanted to go to the staff Christmas party but Nick had invited her to his own office’s Christmas drinks at some Mexican-themed wine bar in Islington and she had definitely wanted to avoid that.

She’d found herself avoiding Nick quite a bit in the weeks leading up to that Christmas. Pretty much dating back, in fact, to that drunken night at Rafael’s in early December when they had split a bottle of Frangelico and had ended up engaged.

It had seemed a hilariously amusing thing at 3 am in the back of a black cab somewhere near Victoria. An engagement had seemed less amusing the following morning, especially when Nick had excitedly begun drawing up guest lists and ringing caterers. By the time of the Gossup’s Christmas party a date had been set for early spring and she was feeling distinctly odd about the whole thing.

Odd, bordering on panic-stricken.

Not about Nick exactly, just the wedding. It ought to have been the easiest thing in the world to say, Hold on, I’m not ready, let’s not do this, but somehow it wasn’t easy, and as the weeks had passed it had got less and less easy until she had woken up on Christmas Eve with a wedding date set, a celebrant organised, a reception booked and a roomful of guests already shopping for presents.

So she had gone along to Gossup and Batch’s Christmas party staged, as per custom, in the executive meeting room on the sixth floor and, after some misgivings and three vodka and oranges, had sat on Santa’s lap. Which was when she had realised that Santa wasn’t Gary Harding from Sportswear this year, but Adam Finch, the new assistant manager in Computers who was going out with Gloria Clements and who, last time she had seen them together, had been arguing and looking pretty miserable.

After that moment of recognition, what had followed soon after had become as inevitable as the conga along the executive corridor. Two more vodka and oranges, and a half-hour of dancing to ‘I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day’, and she had found herself on the rooftop terrace leaning dizzyingly against the wall and peering across the clear icy night sky towards the Christmas lights along Regent Street.

She hadn’t had to wait long to hear the footsteps behind her, feel warm breath on her neck and two hands placed on the wall on either side of her, enclosing her. She didn’t need to look around to see who it was.

‘All alone?’ he had asked, and she had hoped he was in his own clothes again—she wasn’t so drunk that kissing a man in a Santa suit seemed appealing.

‘Not often, no,’ she had replied, turning to kiss him. He
was
in his own clothes. But that hadn’t stopped Clarice Fennel from Homeware identifying him, identifying them both, and before the night was much older, Gloria had left in a cab and Adam had thrown up in the women’s toilets on the fifth floor.

And really that had been the extent of it. Except, of course, that Adam and Gloria had split up early in the new year, and Gloria had asked for a transfer which she hadn’t got and had been frosty towards Jennifer ever since.

The other thing, apart from a nagging sense of unease at her own rather trashy behaviour, was a realisation that if Nick found out about the incident he’d be... well, not happy about it. Might even call off the wedding.

And actually that would be much simpler than calling the whole thing off herself.

So, with Adam a free man now, they had seen a fair bit of each other that January—just coffees and films and lunches and the pub after work—but it had made Nick stop and think. And that was all. Nick, it had transpired, was not the suspicious type—what woman would look twice at someone else when they had him?

But then she had had a stroke of luck. Adam had rung up and left a cryptic message on her answering machine on the one rare occasion that Charlotte had been at her flat.

Charlotte. If ever someone was going to take sanctimonious delight in spilling the dirt on her own sister, it was Charlotte.

‘Oh, Adam!’ Jennifer had said, rolling her eyes at Charlotte’s arch questioning. ‘Adam works with me, that’s all. We go out. We have fun. It’s not serious.’ And Charlotte had pursed her lips and said nothing but you knew, you just
knew
, what she was thinking, that she couldn’t wait to find some opportunity to tell Nick all about it. There would be a row, a falling out. The wedding would be cancelled. No need to break up, just a bit more breathing space. Perfect.

But it hadn’t been perfect.

Charlotte had said nothing. Not a damn thing. And it wasn’t as though there hadn’t been ample opportunity in those final weeks before the wedding. Consequently, Nick had suspected nothing. The wedding had loomed closer and closer until only the last-minute discovery of herself and Adam sharing an illicit moment in Nick’s own bed could have halted the steam train that was marriage.

But she couldn’t do that to Nick, not that, not in his own bed. So she had stopped the lunches and the films with Adam and gone through with it. Oh well, a marriage isn’t forever, she had told herself and so it had proved, for just two years later they were divorced and now Nick was living with Milli, and Jennifer saw almost as much of him as she had when they’d been married, only now he asked for her advice on things and told her what he was thinking. It was quite sweet really.

‘Ah, hello. Excuse me.’ She had almost made it to the Staff Only door and now some Hugh Grant type had accosted her. ‘I’m looking for something for my little boy. He’s eight—well, nine really. It’s his birthday. Last week, actually.’

Jennifer stopped and turned round.

She took great pains not to wear a black suit or to look in any way like a sales assistant in order to prevent just this sort of thing happening but the clipboard she was clutching and her hand on the Staff Only door had given her away. Now this idiot was going to try and get her to choose a present for his brat of a son whose birthday he had obviously forgotten and who probably lived with his ex-wife and her boyfriend in Essex or somewhere and whose very existence he had probably forgotten about entirely until this morning when the boy’s mother had rung him up at work to abuse him, and now here he was.

Jennifer turned on a smile. He did look astonishingly like Hugh Grant. Perhaps it
was
Hugh Grant, although she was fairly certain Hugh Grant didn’t have a nine-year-old son.

‘Of course, sir, I’ll get someone to help you.’ She raised her head to catch the attention of one of the sales assistants, but every cash register in sight appeared to be unattended, which meant a couple of staff were going to get it in no uncertain terms at the next staff meeting.

‘Peacekeeper™,’ she said, grabbing a long, flat cellophane-wrapped box from the top of an untouched pile nearby. ‘It was our biggest seller this Christmas—you’ll have seen it advertised on TV?’ The Hugh Grant look-alike nodded vigorously. ‘It’s a thrilling adventure game but you learn about life at the same time,’ she said.

‘Oh. Right,’ he said hopefully, and Jennifer thought, you haven’t got a clue.

‘Every boy in his class either has one or wants one.’ That clinched it. She handed him the box and pushed him firmly in the direction of the cash register.

Mr Gaspari was still on hold.

She pushed open the Staff Only door and made her way along the drab uncarpeted corridor that ran the length of the fifth floor and at the far end of which was the office she shared with Gary Harding, the Sportswear Manager. Outside the office was Gloria’s desk, neat and empty but for her PC (logged off) and her telephone, on which a red light was flashing urgently. It was late January but Corporate Services still hadn’t removed the Christmas on-hold CD, which was Bing Crosby’s
Christmas Classics
—though for some reason whenever you got put on hold he was only ever singing ‘The Little Drummer Boy’.