That was the theory. But she was acutely aware of the mistakes she’d made during training, infrequent as they’d been. The odd passing reference to Liam or to some real-life work colleague. Some comment that didn’t quite square with who or what she was meant to be. Most had been trivial, and probably wouldn’t have been noticed by a casual listener. But she’d watched herself on the video replays and realized how easy it was to make an error. And, as the trainers had repeatedly emphasized, even one error could be one too many.
So she spent those first weeks thinking carefully about every word she spoke, hesitating before she opened her mouth. Constantly reminding herself that ‘Marie Donovan’ up here was, in some critical ways, a different person from the Marie Donovan back home. At the end of the day, she just wanted to hide herself away, safe inside her flat where there was no danger of saying or doing the wrong thing.
She’d been advised that the best approach for the first month or so was simply to immerse herself in it. She had to become the new Marie Donovan to the point where she no longer had to think about it. Unconscious competence, Winsor the psych had called it, as he talked her through a more sophisticated version of Salter’s driving analogy.
She’d decided therefore that she couldn’t afford to interrupt her immersion by paying repeated visits back home. That would just make the whole process even harder. Liam hadn’t been pleased – well, of course he hadn’t, she acknowledged now – but she’d pointed out that once she’d got through this initial acclimatization she’d be able to establish a routine of regular visits home.
He’d grudgingly accepted that, but set a deadline of a month for her first trip back. She’d planned to leave Friday lunchtime, telling Joe that she was visiting her elderly parents back in London. Almost inevitably, things hadn’t gone smoothly. They’d had to redo a large print job because of some technical fault with the machine, and she’d finally got away later than she’d intended. She had taken the train from Piccadilly rather than facing the Friday night traffic on the M6, and though it wasn’t quite peak time, the carriages were already tightly packed. With no reservation, she’d eventually found a seat next to an overweight man who made no great secret of his resentment at having to move his bag from the spare seat beside him. She’d reached Euston at the tail end of rush hour only to find that the Northern Line was up the creek, the trains sporadic and full.
It was gone seven thirty when she finally arrived at their South Wimbledon house, at least a couple of hours later than she’d expected. She’d been updating Liam periodically throughout the journey, but still he’d seemed to treat her late arrival as a personal affront.
‘I was going to book us a table somewhere,’ he said, looking pointedly at his watch.
‘You still can,’ she pointed out. ‘What about the Italian?’
‘They’ll be booked up by now,’ he said. ‘Friday night, after all.’
She considered some sarcastic rejoinder, then decided just to go with the flow. He was only pissed off because he’d wanted her back earlier, she told herself.
‘Let’s just do the pub, then,’ she said. ‘We can grab a bite there. Better than ringing around the other places trying to find a table.’
He looked for a moment as if he were about to argue, then smiled. ‘Yeah, why not? It’ll be more fun than some overpriced pasta, anyway.’
As it turned out, it was quite a lot more fun. She hadn’t realized, until she arrived back here in her home environment, quite how tense and constrained she’d felt in Manchester. It was as if she’d thrown off some ill-fitting garment and was finally able to breathe properly. At another time, she might have expressed her tiredness by getting irritated with Liam, but tonight all that seemed to melt away. Liam played it just right for her mood, cheerfully pulling her back into the moment, not bothering her with questions about how it had all gone.
Home. That was what this was. Not just the poky little Edwardian terrace that was all they’d been able to afford in this part of London. But all of it: Liam; the Irish pub round the corner that, unlike virtually every other pub in London, really did feel like a local; the neighbours that she hardly knew but who nodded to her and Liam from the surrounding tables as they entered the bar.
She hadn’t realized till that moment quite how isolated she’d felt for the past few weeks. It wasn’t only that she was living alone in that anonymous apartment block. It wasn’t that, apart from Salter and Joe in the print shop, there was no one up there that she’d even been able to call an acquaintance. In the end, it was the fact that she was living a lie. She’d become a person without a past, without a context, without, in the long run, a future even. She wasn’t a great one for nights out with the girls, but down here there’d at least been a few female colleagues who she could join for a drink or two after work, some old college friends that she saw less often than she ought to. There was a life outside the job.
Up there, there was nothing. She couldn’t afford to go out and make new friends, even if she’d wanted to. She couldn’t take the risk of letting people too far into her fictitious life in case they spotted something that didn’t fit or decided that they wanted to know more about her. Once or twice, Joe had suggested going for a pint after work, his manner suggesting that he was inviting her simply as a workmate, rather than with any other intention. She’d eventually taken him up on the offer, but only because she’d thought it would seem odd to keep refusing. That had been OK. Joe himself was hardly the most forthcoming of individuals. But she’d spent the evening on tenterhooks, nervous of saying the wrong thing or simply of saying too much. It had been OK, but nothing like this.
‘Penny for them,’ Liam said, raising his pint in a mock toast.
‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘Still thinking about the job. Takes a while to shake it off.’
‘I can imagine,’ he said. ‘Though probably nothing that a few drinks won’t cure.’
She laughed. ‘Worth a shot, anyway. Nothing to lose.’
The evening had gone on from there. She followed Liam’s advice and had those few more drinks, and she’d found that, yes indeed, all the stresses and strains of the job had quite quickly evaporated. They ate some forgettable pub lasagne, which she found surprisingly enjoyable, if only because, unlike most other meals she’d eaten over the last month, it wasn’t some ready meal she’d bought from the Tesco Metro around the corner. They chatted amiably about this and that, somehow managing to steer clear of anything that would have changed the mood, like Liam’s illness or her career. And finally, not long before closing time, they’d staggered back to their small house, gone to bed and made tipsy love, falling asleep in the warmth of each other’s bodies.
It was only in the small hours, suddenly awake with Liam breathing steadily beside her, that she suddenly thought about Jake Morton. He hadn’t entered her mind all evening, almost as if she’d deliberately boxed him away in some far corner of her head.
She’d agreed to go out for a drink with him the following week. Well, so what? It was nothing to be ashamed or embarrassed about. It was part of the job, following Salter’s instructions. Building her network, just as when she’d attended Kerridge’s charity dinner.
But she’d told Liam about that. She’d presented it as the tiresome chore it had been, and afterwards they’d had a good laugh over the phone about the naffness of the charity auction, the aspirational pretensions of Cheshire business folk at play. She’d talked about the fat middle-aged men who’d kept trying to entice her on to the dance floor, and about her role as Kerridge’s top-table eye candy. She’d told Jake about every over-ornate frock, every ill- fitting tuxedo.
But she hadn’t mentioned Jake.
There had been no reason for her to, of course. He was just someone she’d happened to sit next to. A brief acquaintance with whom she’d shared some polite chit-chat. Someone she probably wouldn’t see again.
But now she was going to see him again. Not just as a passing acquaintance or as a business contact. She was going to see him for what she was sure Jake himself would see as a date. And she knew that, whatever her supposed good intentions, whatever she might tell herself about this being part of the job, there was at least a small part of her that wanted to see it the same way.
She rolled over, pulling the duvet more tightly around her. Christ, why should she feel guilty about all this? She was just doing her job. OK, she felt some attraction to Jake. She was only human. Alone, a long way from home, struggling with a new life. No one could blame her for being tempted. But that was all it was. She wasn’t going to do anything about it.
For a long while, she lay awake, her mind empty but stubbornly refusing to shut down. Outside, she could hear the occasional hum of a car along the High Street. Inside, there was nothing but Liam’s rhythmic breath, the slow clicking of the cooling radiators. It was nearly dawn before she finally slept.
She awoke late. Liam was already up and she could hear him moving about downstairs, clattering dishes, whistling tunelessly along to some tune on the radio. She pulled on her dressing gown and made her way down the narrow stairs.
