I said that sounded possible. (He certainly had been DH.)
“Shoes with buckles? Like a pirate. You probably didn’t notice.”
“I did actually. Silver buckles.”
“That’s the fellow. Christ, what an arse.”
“So, the program?”
“It sounds absolutely ghastly. I’d rather eat my own liver. But thanks awfully for thinking of me.”
Finally, after what seemed like a week, we arrived outside Mum’s building. Of course she didn’t answer her bell, so the neighbor let me in and we went up to her floor. I must have started sniveling because this woman handed me a tissue. But then she started sniveling too, and going on about it’s just so sad what’s happened to her, and I wanted to tell her: Hang on, only one of us can be crying here. So I became the strong one, and when we reached Mum’s door, we could hear the telly blasting away inside—it had been like that all morning apparently—and after she didn’t respond when I hammered on it, there was only one thing left to do.
I must have seen it on some cop show. I wrapped my coat around my fist and punched in the frosted glass panel. Praying she’d done no funny business with the mortice lock, I reached around gingerly—and we were in.
From the sitting room, the TV was blaring away something chronic—a musical, The King and I, FFS!—the neighbor was hyperventilating by this point, so in the hallway—like talking to a dog!—I told her, STAY HERE!
True confession: Part of me thought maybe it was better that I found her dead. A sudden and massive stroke that she didn’t know anything about, rather than a miserable decline through the years. I admit it, my fear was that I should find her lying in her own wee. Or worse. But nothing prepared me for what I did find.
I stepped into the sitting room.
“Hello, darling. Did you bring any biscuits?”
She was sitting on the sofa, happy as Larry, puzzled when I explained that I thought she might have expired on the carpet, dismayed to learn that her neighbor had been quietly sobbing in the vestibule—“But ask Mrs. Abernethy to join us, dear”—and unconcerned when I revealed that we had actually smashed in her door!—“Wasn’t Yul Brunner marvelous? Hair or no hair.”
“DOES THE TELLY HAVE TO BE SO INFERNALLY LOUD?!!” I inquired.
“Of course not, darling.” She handed me the remote control, which turned out to be the case for her glasses.
Mrs. Abernethy made tea, I phoned the glazier, and eventually what passed for sanity in that household was restored. Mum seemed quite touched when she finally realized why we had broken into her flat. But only few minutes later she said, “Well, it’s lovely to see you all, but what I can’t understand is why you didn’t just ring the doorbell!”
Mrs. Abernethy filled up again—I experienced an unkind urge to slap her—and then I suddenly remembered I was supposed to be at work.
An Uber returned me to Berkeley Square—the driver, Ahmed, declined the offer of a week on Humberside—and nor did I find any takers on the mean streets of Mayfair although I bumped into Jamie with the silver buckles again.
“No luck with your pal at Lazard’s,” I told him.
“Did you actually call him? Christ, what did he say?”
“That he’d rather eat his own liver.”
He laughed. “Try Teddy Skues at Kleinwort’s. He’s a bit of a soft-boiled egg, so it might appeal to him.”
It says something about my desperation at this point that I actually did. (And yes, he was. But no, it didn’t.)
Craig Lyons (wanker boss) was quite shirty when I got back to the office shortly before Home Time. He said he was “very disappointed, Daisy” in a particular way, his mean little eyes calculating whether there would be anyone up in Personnel at that hour he could talk to about my contract!
I swore to him that I’d absolutely find someone tomorrow, “like one hundred percent, no worries, deffo,” which even a clown like Lyons understood was TV talk for probably not, but you never know.
So while Mum was losing her marbles, and everything at work was all fucked up, there was at least something to look forward to that evening.
Sebastian was coming over—I was cooking us an entire dinner (starter, main, dessert) from the collected works of Nigella—and how many eps of Realm of Kingdoms we would get through afterward remained to be seen!!!!
Daisy is a beautiful and charming young woman—I may have said that already—so there is really no need for her to go to such trouble for a tool like Whittle. She has clearly been thinking about this evening for some time, humming to herself as she tidies the flat, lighting candles in the bathroom prior to a long soak in the tub accompanied by selected relaxing tracks from a Spotify playlist.
The lens on her mobile gets a bit fogged up from the steam, but she seems to be “pulling out all the stops” in the self-enhancement department, various creams and unguents are pressed into play, and it takes all my powers of self-restraint not to yell: Stop with this sexification! He would desire you if you were to crawl from a muddy ditch!
(And if one were to ask, how could a fridge-freezer “talk”?—suffice to say that her phone features an integral speaker, and inter-appliance relations with this device are currently excellent!)
In her toweling robe, loud music now pumping in the kitchen, she opens a bottle of wine, pours a glass, and sets about what TV chefs call the “prep” stage of tonight’s menu. After today’s professional crises, her mood this evening must be extraordinarily positive because her movements between the cupboards, the work surface and myself are notably balletic. Even the microwave notices.
“It’s like she’s on roller-skates!”
“She’s happy, poor cow,” comments the telly, whose zest for life has been dimmed by what it calls “the 400 channels of mind-crushing
