What You Make It (23 page)

When she realized she'd been staring at the flame from her lighter for more than five minutes, spinning the wheel time and time again in a mindless daze, Jane decided it was time to go to bed. She glanced at her clock on the filing cabinet – 12.35 a.m. – then let her head loll back, listening to the bones click in her neck and trying to summon up the energy to move. The flat's owner, a Mr Gillack, had wallpapered the ceiling and it was coming apart in a line down the middle. There was a crack in the plaster by the window, the baby sister of another running down the wall by the kitchen.

It cost £230 a week to live here. £1.36 an hour. Jesus Christ. Just having a
bath
was 60p.

While she waited for the computer to finish juggling 0's and l's she stood with her mug at the window, looking down into the garden of the flat below. Thin moonlight glinted off a few pieces of iron furniture. One of the white chairs had been half-painted black in a desultory way, making it look like a frozen Dalmatian. The set looked like a tableau, the kind of thing the self-proclaimed avant garde at college would have celebrated as subconscious art. Unconscious shite, Jane had always felt.

Jane had been living in the building at 51, St Augustine's Road for two weeks, but still hadn't spoken to the young couple who owned the ground-floor flat. She hadn't spoken to anyone in the building, in fact. They never seemed to be in. Mail came and went from the downstairs hallway, and sometimes she heard voices and thumps at night from the flats above and opposite. That was all. It was like living in the
Marie Celeste
, but without the view.

As she walked across to the tiny kitchen to rinse her mug, the floorboards creaked massively. The boards were right at the top of the list of things which most irritated her about her new flat, along with the tiny kitchen full of hideous 1980s cutlery. Her mug was the only thing in there which was hers.

When she walked back out, the floorboards in the centre of the living room squealed extravagantly again. ‘At least I don't live underneath,’ she muttered, suddenly feeling a little better. It really was time to go to bed. If she kept staying up so late she was bound to get tired, and if she was tired she was bound to feel grumbly. There was no point doing that. Upwards and onwards.

In the hallway she clicked the catch down, then pushed it again as hard as she could, counting quickly to eight out loud. It was a source of more than a little irritation to her that she seemed to feel compelled to do this. She wasn't especially concerned about the prospect of intruders, and the house's main door was double-locked. So why this big thing over the lock?

She pushed down on the catch once more, and counted to eight again, twice, maintaining the pressure throughout. Then she twisted the knob hard, reassuring herself that the door was indeed secure. It was, not surprisingly, but she twisted it again, counting to eight three more times to make sure.

In the bedroom she undressed quickly and hopped beneath the duvet. She smoked her customary final cigarette propped up on one elbow, looking at her room. She hadn't got round to moving any of the furniture around in it, simply stowing her clothes and leaving it at that. It was the biggest room in the small flat, unhelpfully. She would have preferred an extra couple of feet on the living room. A large bedroom seemed too much like a taunt.

Catching yet another negative thought romping through her head, Jane stuck out a foot and tripped it up. Christ, she thought, what a wingebag. Shut up and go to sleep.

She rolled onto her side and snuggled up into the duvet. At least the pillows were good and thick.

A few minutes later she was on the edge of sleep when she heard a creaking sound. When it came again, louder this time, her eyes flicked wide open. She stared at the wall, listening. The creak had sounded as if it was coming from the hallway.

Then voices boomed from the hallway outside the door, and the light in the corridor flicked on, sending shadows through the pane of glass over her front door. The boards obviously stretched from her hallway into the corridor. The people returning to the flat opposite had set them off. That was all.

Jane closed her eyes and headed back towards sleep.

She felt much better when she got up the next morning, and determined to shape up. It was pointless dwelling on negative things. There was no problem in the world which could be solved by feeling depressed about it, and the world was a much drabber and more dangerous place if you allowed yourself to feel down.

This state of Genial Positiveness took a heavy knock when she discovered that there was no hot water. Again. Swearing vigorously, she turned the tap off and stalked into the kitchen to boil the kettle.

Before leaving the flat she stood on the creaking floorboards in the hallway for a moment, checking the lock. It seemed fine. Reassuringly sturdy.

A man in overalls was touching up the paint on the steps outside the house. She wondered briefly who'd hired him, and then dismissed the thought.

When she walked into reception at FreeDot Communications, Whitehead was standing in the middle of the main office area smugly surveying his empire. On seeing Jane he stared theatrically at his watch.

‘Bright and early this morning,’ he beamed, surprising her. She'd been expecting a dose of his running joke about part-timers sneaking in at the last moment. Then she realized it was only 9.50, and that she was ten minutes ahead of schedule.

‘Keep forgetting I don't have to leave home so early.’

‘How is the new flat? Compact and bijou?’

‘Compact, mainly. Compact and expensive.’

Whitehead glided alongside Jane as she walked down the corridor, heading towards his own spacious lair at the far end. ‘Ought to buy, you know,’ he opined. ‘Buying's the thing.’

‘So everyone tells me,’ said Jane. They did, and it was beginning to piss her off.

They paused briefly outside the door to Jane's room. ‘I'll pop in a bit later,’ said Whitehead. ‘See how you're getting on.’ Then he ducked into his own office, where his phone was bleating. He spent most of the day murmuring into it, reassuring people that the association he ran really did have a purpose. Up until recently Jane had been his right-hand person in that endeavour, and it wasn't something she missed.

Walking into her room, she took her filofax out and got straight to phoning Klass 1. It was only as she sat listening to the phone ringing that she noticed something had happened to the office. A desk had been placed along the window wall, and a computer sat squarely on its empty surface. Not only that, but one of her shelves had been unceremoniously cleared, its contents stuffed into crevices in the shelf above. Jane reached out and pulled one of her software manuals from where it had been wedged. The cover was crumpled and torn.

When Victor – the tall and elegant Indian half of the double act that was Klass 1 Accommodation – eventually answered, Jane was too distracted to be properly cross about the hot water. The letting agent expressed sympathy, tutted, and promised to get something done about the boiler that very day. Jane replaced the phone, then went back to frowning as she took in the room once more.

As she stood in the kitchen area, waiting for the kettle to boil and smoking her third cigarette of the day, she was joined by Egerton. Her heart sank, as always.

‘Morning!’ he sang, rosy-cheeked face beaming with idiot good humour. ‘And how are you!’

Jane had tried long and hard to work out quite why Egerton
irritated her so much. Her provisional conclusion was that it was partly his continual chirping banter, partly the fact that he swanned about the place as if he owned it, partly that he had a ten-word job title which didn't actually define whatever it was he spent most of the day avoiding doing, and partly that his hair was so bloody curly. But mainly it was just that he was incredibly irritating.

Egerton yanked the lid off the kettle and peered into it, checking the amount of water inside. He looked like he was appearing in a pantomime for intellectually challenged children. Satisfied, he nodded curtly, slammed the lid back on, and went back to beaming at Jane.

‘How was your weekend?’ he shouted.

‘Fine,’ she replied, dismissing a conversational sally that had palled for her after the first fifty or so Monday mornings she'd spent at FreeDot. ‘I couldn't help noticing that there appears to be another desk in my office.’

‘That's right,’ Egerton confirmed cheerily, nodding several times, as if she'd complimented him on something.

After a pause in which Jane realized that he really didn't understand the subtext of her observation, she continued. ‘Why?’

‘You're going to have company. Didn't Whitehead tell you?’

‘No.’

Egerton waggled his eyebrows at her, still beaming, and then sailed off down the corridor just as Whitehead emerged from his office.

‘I gather I'm going to be sharing my office,’ she said.

‘That's right.’ Whitehead nodded. ‘Bit of a reshuffle after the staff meeting on Friday. Decided to reorganize things a little, maximize resources. Getting a bit crowded in the main office, so …’

He trailed off smoothly, as if there was no more to be said. Making an effort to speak as conversationally as possible, Jane pressed him. ‘But why my office? It's not the largest.’

‘True, but you are only here three days a week now, and not really a member of staff any more, so…’

Jane nodded, to show she understood. She understood all right. After three years of doing half of Whitehead's job for him she was now just a freelancer, and bought labour sat where it was put and did what it was told. ‘I see. So who …?’

‘Camilla.’

‘Camilla?
But she's only been with us, with you, for three months.’

‘I know, but she's coming on very well. And she's used a Macintosh before, so …’

‘Isn't she mainly a secretary though?’ Mainly an ambitious, flirtatious and smug little smartarse, was what she meant, but tried not to let it show.

Whitehead finished manufacturing his coffee and floated back in the direction of his office, where the phone was once more ringing. ‘Won't do any harm to have someone else who knows how to run up a bit of design. Can't have all our eggs in one basket, can we?’

By the time she was standing on the Northern Line platform, waiting to go home, Jane had calmed down. The buzzing irritation that had built up in her during the day had burst the moment she left FreeDot, leaving her feeling empty and tired.

Sodding Camilla. Minutes after her conversation with Whitehead, the secretary/flavour of the month employee had slipped into Jane's office and settled herself at the new desk. She then spent the rest of the day alternating between typing fantastically loudly, and looking over Jane's shoulder as she finished the layout for the inside of FreeDot's new brochure. At one point she had asked Jane if there wasn't an easier way of doing the task she was currently engaged in. The politeness of Jane's reply, Jane felt, should have shut the girl up for the rest of the week. But it didn't.

As she sweltered on the tube, buffeted by meaty bodies and smothered by lank hair, Jane tried to rationalize her feelings about the girl. She was nineteen. She wanted to get on. There was nothing wrong with that. The fact that her star was in the ascendant at the same time as Jane's was taking a nosedive
was not her fault. Jane closed her eyes and tried to tune out the people around her, tried to grope once more for Genial Positiveness.

When she opened them, the tube was stationary at Mornington Crescent. On impulse she got out.

Walking down the road she fought hard against the feeling that this probably wasn't a good idea. They were supposed to be friends, after all. And friends called on each other, didn't they? She stopped at the flower seller at the corner and bought a small bunch of irises.

At the entry phone she pushed down another surge of doubt, and pressed Andrew's bell. After a pause a disembodied voice said something, accompanied by the familiar whine of feedback.

‘Hi,’ she said brightly, her heart beating irritatingly hard, ‘it's me.’ There was a pause. ‘Jane,’ she added, less brightly.

‘Oh, right, hi.’

‘Are you going to let me in then?’

‘Yeah … yeah, sorry.’

The lock buzzed and she pushed the door open.

His door was ajar when she reached the top of the stairs and she walked straight in. ‘I picked up some flowers,’ she said, smiling, ‘Because I know you never bother …’

Andrew was standing awkwardly by the door, hands thrust deep into his pockets. Sitting on the sofa was a tall and deeply tanned girl, dressed in a racing green suit that went perfectly with her carelessly blonde hair.

Jane faltered, and came to a halt a couple of feet into the room. ‘Well,’ said Andrew heartily, ‘Jane, Nikki, Nikki, Jane.’

‘Hello,’ the girl said, and before she dropped her head Jane noticed just how nauseatingly perfect her cheekbones were.

‘Nikki was just passing,’ Andrew volunteered with elaborate blandness. Jane nodded. She was looking at the table under the window. On it stood Andrew's large vase, filled with a huge bunch of uncut flowers, still in their paper. The same paper that was wrapped around hers.

‘Well,’ Nikki said into the silence. ‘I must be going.’

When Andrew returned from seeing her to the door he went to some lengths to convince Jane that Nikki really had just dropped in. He needn't have bothered: Jane believed him. Her shock had simply been that of seeing her for the first time, seeing the girl who previously had only been the shadowy cause of thirty different kinds of hurt. Now that Nikki didn't have Andrew either it didn't seem to matter so much.

Yes it did, actually.

And he'd lied. Nikki
was
more attractive than her.

The conversation limped along for a while. At first she said her flat was great, then admitted how much she hated it, how tired she was of living between someone else's walls, surrounded by someone else's furniture. Of hiring her life. When Andrew asked her why she didn't buy somewhere she couldn't help reminding him that she'd wanted to. She'd wanted to buy somewhere with him.