A Certain Chemistry (2 page)

Anyway, by the time I’d finished my degree I’d made some friends here and couldn’t see any point in moving. I certainly didn’t want to go back home (a tiny village located somewhere in Kent, somewhere in the seventeenth century), and the prospect of heading off to London to find glittering success filled me with a shrug. So, I hung around and got a job on a local advertising paper. Wherever a cycle path was poorly defined, whenever a pensioner was doing something vaguely amusing for charity, I was there. I can’t really see how I could have lacked any more flair, but I could spell and I worked fast; in journalism just one of those is often enough to build a career on. This all went along nicely for a time until an acquaintance of mine was asked if she’d ever thought about writing a book.

The acquaintance, Janine, owned a shop that sold bollocks: reflexology charts, tarot cards, little statuettes of fairies (“faeries,” probably) holding crystals, feng shui manuals, those pairs of shiny metal balls that always come in black, velvety cases—she stocked pretty much the complete range of pointlessness. Janine’s speciality, however, was aromatherapy. Not only did she sell the oils, books, and burners, but she was also available, for a modest fee, in a consulting capacity. Panic attack? Personal crisis? One phone call and Janine would race over so you could score some safflower oil. Tricky situation at work and you need to subliminally influence your colleagues in your favor? A few notes and Janine would see to it that you, quite literally, came up smelling of roses. Inevitably—I mean,
inevitably,
right?—some of Janine’s users worked in publishing. One day, while Janine was giving her a hit of kanuka, one of these clients remarked that there was always a market for books about this kind of crap (I paraphrase) and had she, Janine, ever thought of writing one?

Janine was very taken with this idea but didn’t feel up to the task of putting all those words down on paper. As she knew I was a formidably mercenary wordsmith, she asked if I’d ghost the thing for her—she’d give me the basic details, and I’d work them up into a book. I said if we called it
Aromatherapy,
I’d do it for a flat fee. If we called it
Sensual Aromatherapy,
I’d do it for a proportion of sales. She went for the latter, which was a tremendous boon for me (ghostwriters never get a proportion of sales—you get a one-off payment and that’s it, no matter what). The book came out at a really good moment, just as aromatherapy was that month’s top media fad (I want to say “It was right on the nose,” but I’m not sure I’d ever forgive myself), and it sold very well.

We cranked out a follow-up,
Extra Sensual Aromatherapy,
which didn’t do anywhere nearly as well as the first book but still shifted enough copies to confirm that there is no justice in the world. More important was that during the process of doing the two books I met both Hugh (then lowly enough to have to deal with aromatherapy publishing) and Amy. With the odd lead from the former and the savage tenacity of the latter it was just about financially viable, within a year or so, for me to walk away from my job at the paper and ghost books more or less full-time. I supplemented my income with magazine articles on how I’d coped with the menopause or what to do when your dentist is also your lover; even doing this, the money wasn’t very good—and was very sporadic too—but it was enough to get me by. And I did have about twenty weeks off a year, which is an
excellent
holiday package by any standards.

Hugh sighed a long sigh. “Confronting your own mortality, it really makes you take stock of your life, you know?”

“Does it?”

“Of course it does. I mean, when you’re a bairn you have all those dreams. How you’ll be a big star. How Michael Parkinson will have you on his chat show all the time—and as the final guest too, not as the
’But first . . .’
You’ll have really made your mark for something or other. Then, one day, it settles upon you. You’re trying to get a garbage bag out of the kitchen before the plastic stretches and comes apart at the top and you’re thirty-seven years old and it settles upon you—the realization that it’s over. This is it. Not only are you never going to be as famous as Elvis Presley, but you’re never even going to be as famous as the wee bald guy in
Benny Hill. . . .
Christ.”

His head sagged down over his desk.

“Done any more work on your book?” I asked.

“Yes. It’s crap. Utter crap.”

“Oh, well, maybe you can sell it to another publisher. I can think of two names right now.”

I saw Fiona. She’d come into the office and paused to pour herself a drink at the water cooler.

“Awww, don’t, Tom. It’s easy for you—if you decided to write a novel—”

“Oh, don’t start that again.”

“Well . . .”

“Can I just”—I hung a finger in the air, indicating Fiona. “I just want to have a quick word with—”

Hugh let out another sigh as his only response. I took this as clearance to get up and quickly move over to where she was standing.

“Fiona!” I exclaimed with a grin. I meant it to come out convivial and engagingly larger-than-life. It just came out loud. She turned to look at me as you would at a person who’d come up to you in a quiet office and shouted your name at the side of your head.

She took another sip from her paper cup before answering, “Tom.”

“I was just sitting over there”—I pointed—“and I saw you.”

She glanced lazily over at Hugh’s office. “Did you? Must be all of four yards away. Be sure to leave your retinas to science.”

“Haha, nice one.”

Fiona Laurie. Early twenties. Around five foot five (without her heels). Star publicist of McAllister & Campbell. Her eyes were pale blue, and her blond hair was short, in that style that normally indicates that a middle-aged woman is having some kind of crisis, but she’d managed to conjure “sophisticated” from it somehow. Like me, Fiona was English, originally from Hampshire, I think, and she had been with McAllister & Campbell for just a few years. Most of that time had been spent in their London offices. The word was that she’d been sent up here because she was still too new for it to be seemly for her to be elevated in a choir-accompanied ceremony of corporate apotheosis, yet she was clearly too big for her junior position down there. She’d come to Edinburgh in the same way that in former times a favored son of the Empire might be given Canada to rule for a bit before returning to become Home Secretary.

I couldn’t care less about any of that, though. The most impressive thing about Fiona, in my opinion, was her immaculate superiority. How
did
she get her whites that white? Why did she never crease? I’d never seen her look less than witheringly perfect: shiny or matte in all the right places. She moved slowly too. That’s always arresting, isn’t it? Everywhere she went, she looked like
she’d
decided to go there because it suited
her
purpose. She was cool. Aloof.

It had a potent effect, the flawless presentation and the easy condescension: an overpoweringly attractive combination. Oh, and she had great tits too. Really
great
tits. Tits Classic. Each one (tellingly) just the size of my cupped hand, firm as fresh fruit and possessing the kind of nipples whose very existence powered the invention of thin, white, cotton blouses. I was utterly—
utterly
—ashamed of the things I’d lately started thinking that I wanted to become involved in doing with those tits—it wasn’t like me at all.

“I . . . er . . . just popped in . . . to see Hugh.” I smiled.

Fiona took another sip from her paper cup and raised her eyebrows at me in reply. It was an efficient and winning way of wordlessly conveying “Yeah? How very, very interesting.” She was belittling me using nothing but the power of her eyebrows. I shivered and was unable to step in to block myself from having an involuntary glance down below her neckline.

“Well,” I said, hammering it home by following up first with a long exhalation from between pursed lips and then, cleverly, a meaningless click of my tongue. “Well . . . I . . . I’d better be getting back to Hugh. Things to discuss . . . you know . . .” I clapped my hands together and opened my eyes indicatively wide. “Stuff.” Suddenly, I reached forward, my hand having gone insane and made a break for it with the intention of patting her affectionately on the shoulder. I regained control just in time, however, and managed to turn things around by changing the movement into a thumbs-up sign. Situation salvaged, I judged that there wasn’t much more I could achieve today, so I backed away from her, returning to Hugh’s office. “Bye.”

“Good-bye,” replied Fiona, watching me evenly as I retreated. “I’m glad we had this chance to talk.”

“Which arm is it that’s supposed to hurt if you’re having a heart attack?” asked Hugh as I flopped into the chair by him.

“The left, isn’t it?”

“Hmm . . .” Hugh rubbed his right arm thoughtfully. “What about the other arm? What does that mean? Have they discovered what that means?”

“I believe there is a school of thought that believes it’s linked to reckless use of rowing machines, but supporting evidence is still sketchy.”

“Yes.” Hugh nodded, unconvinced.

“Well, as we’ve got a couple of minutes before the Reaper arrives for you, have you got anything for me? Any work on the horizon? Talk quickly and stick to the basic facts.”

“No . . . well, aye. Maybe. I’d rather not say at the moment, Tom.”

“You’d rather not say? What does that mean?”

“There is
something
in the pipeline. But it’s big,
very
big, and I don’t want to raise your hopes.”

“Oh, come on, you tease. I’m damn near broke—throw me a crumb.”

“You know it’s not my say, Tom. I can make a suggestion, put in a good word for you, but that’s all. This is an A-list book, and I don’t want to get you all excited, then have it come to nothing—have you mentally spending money you won’t get.”

“It’s a lot of money?”

“Oh, aye. A lot.”

“Tch. Tell me. I promise to speak glowingly of you at the funeral.”

“No. I’ll know in a day or so. I’ll put them in touch with Amy.”

“Okay.”

Hugh had become distracted again.

“You know, I think my legs are aching too now. What about legs? What does
that
mean?”

two

“Tom? Is that you?”

Sara was calling from the living room. We’d been together for five years, and no one else lived in the house or had a key, yet every time I came in she always asked whether it was me.

“No,” I shouted back, “it’s your lover.”

“Okay. But Tom will be back soon, so we haven’t much time. We’d better do it on the floor down here. Leave your socks on.”

I ambled into the living room. Sara was curled up on the sofa, watching TV.

“Some men take their socks off?” I asked, alarmed, as I pecked the top of her head and sat down beside her.

Sara kept her eyes on the television but nodded enthusiastically. “Aye—I saw it in a film once . . . Good day?”

“Nyah.”

“Do you love me so much that my absence is like a weight on your chest?”

“Yeah.”

“So you should.”

She waited for an advert for margarine to finish, then turned to look at me. Her eyes scanned quickly all over my face; I think she’d always looked at me like that after we’d been apart for a while, but I’d noticed it more lately. “What have you been up to, then?”

“I had lunch with Amy, then went to see Hugh.”

“Any commissions?”

“No. Hugh told me that something’s coming up, but he can’t be sure I’ll get it so he’s not saying much.”

“We could do with some new carpets.”

“Yes, I told Amy.”

“You
didn’t.
. . . Did you?”

“No.”

“Yes you did.”

“Yes, I did.”

“Tch.”

She gave me a poke in the stomach.

“Ugh. She’s going to hand out some flyers with my photo on them—’Will work for underlay.’ So, how was your day?”

“A freezer fuse blew in Fish. No one spotted it, and we lost a pile of haddock.”

“I see. What’s for dinner?”