Chasing Charlie (16 page)

We walked to the café, grabbed takeaways and then walked home without talking any more between ourselves. I was happy to listen to the kids prattle. I couldn't help stealing glances at Ed's face now and then but it looked like the Minkley shutdown was in action. I wouldn't be getting any eye contact from him now. Which was a good thing, of course. I'm nowhere near his type – far too ditzy – and anyway, it was Charlie I wanted to impress. I watched my feet walking one step in front of the other all the way home.

CLAUDIA

In the end, I couldn't seem to come up with an excuse not to have dinner with John. I saw him in the corner as soon as I walked in and my tummy did a little flip. He had chosen a beautiful restaurant to meet. I wasn't sure what was worse: telling him my sordid news in a place like this – candles on each table, murmured conversations peppered with the chink of fine glass, the chip-chip of silver on bone china – or a fast food outlet with fluorescent lighting. How was I meant to say chlamydia in this room? Then again, I hadn't set foot in McDonalds since I was a teenager and I wasn't intending to any time soon, so this wasn't actually an argument. He had also seen me. I took a deep breath and walked across the room.

He stood up for me as I took my seat. I wished he wouldn't. Not tonight.

‘You look lovely,' he said.

‘Thank you.' I picked up the menu. I had really thought I could do this. I thought I wanted to but now I wasn't at all sure how I was going to get the words out.

I had left work early that day and sat in a hot bath at home for twenty minutes, hoping to boil my nerves into submission. It worked long enough for me to dress and get out of the door but as I travelled across town, they started writhing away in my belly again. I tried to ignore them, to take control of the situation. In the back of the black cab, I wrote down a list of all the men from the last six months in careful script. I reached twelve but I had a feeling there were a couple missing. I could sense them rather than remember who they were. But my head was noisy and not behaving. I snapped my notebook shut. There was the restaurant. First things first, I had to tell John.

‘So . . .' John put his menu down. I waited for him to ask me how I was. That was when I was going to tell him the truth. Straight into it, get it over and done with.

‘Have you heard about Greg and Laura?' he asked.

Oh, thank you! He knew some office gossip and it became clear to me that he was easing me into the evening. It could be possible that I had never spent time with a man with better social skills. We chatted about our colleagues and the starters came, were eaten and were cleared. The elephant in the room sat politely a little out of view and my nervous tummy settled down a little.

Over the main course we stayed on another safe topic: sharing tales of woe and stupidity from holidays. John told me an elaborate tale from his last holiday, when he found himself stranded in a small village in France waiting for his motorbike to be fixed. The locals were about as welcoming to this large Englishman as Mrs Thatcher was to the miners. He was a natural, spinning out the story bit by bit, making himself the self-deprecating hero who tried every way he could to ingratiate himself with the locals and failed. I almost forgot why I was there and was surprised to find myself laughing. I reached for my mineral water.

‘You're not drinking?'

‘I don't really feel like it,' I answered, trying to brush him off. He smiled, as if me not drinking was something to be excited about.

Finally, as we were drinking coffee, I invited the elephant to come and join us.

‘John, I need to talk to you,' I said.

John put his cup down on its saucer, linked his fingers together and rested them on the table. That's weird, I thought. He's reminding me of someone.

‘I'm all ears.'

‘Right. OK.' I paused and took a breath. ‘I went to the doctor last week.'

John smiled again, as if I'd just given him a present and he was about to open it.

‘Yes?'

I paused. I wished he wouldn't look so expectant.

‘I . . . ah . . . I found out yesterday that I've tested positive for an STI.' There, I'd said it.

John's face stopped shining abruptly. ‘Y-you've what?' he stammered.

I sighed. I didn't want to have to say it again. ‘I've tested positive for an STI, chlamydia to be precise.' Argh, wash your mouth out.

‘Oh dear,' he said evenly, blinking as if that would somehow make his brain take in the information faster.

‘Yes,' I said. I couldn't think of what else to say so I took another sip of coffee. It was lukewarm and tasted stale. I realised in that moment that I'd expected to feel relief when I told him but now I just felt tired.

‘So,' I prodded after a bit, ‘you'll need to get tested for it too.'

He looked at me, his mouth grim. ‘Yes, of course.'

We sat in silence until I couldn't bear the tension any longer, at which point I excused myself to a thankfully empty bathroom and leant on the basin to stare in the mirror. A very jaded Claudia looked back. My lips were flat and turned down at each corner, drawing down my cheeks, my eyes, my nose and making me look much older, beakier even. And sad, so sad. What did John see in me in the first place? All I could see now was a washed-up old hag. I felt overwhelmed with loneliness.

The waitress was taking John's card when I returned. We were off then. I hovered next to the table, my handbag in hand and waited for the waitress to leave.

‘So I'd better go home,' I said.

John didn't look up. ‘OK,' he said to his fingers. And then I had it – Papa linked his fingers together like that. My gentle, darling father. Hot pain stabbed my belly and tears welled, threatening to overflow. There was no way John had given me this horrid STI. How on earth could I have thought he'd given it to me? He was a tart, sure, but it took one to know one. Yet seeing his fingers quietly interlocked with those big hands, I could see he was also a gentleman, a solid, self-aware man. I choked out a quiet goodbye and hurried out into the dark night, running down the street, trying to run from the disappointment, the dreadful realisation that I'd met my equal at long last, slept with him, brushed him off and then told him he might have chlamydia.

SAM

I yawned. I'd been chasing Charlie all night in my dreams, and now my eyes felt dry and gritty. Behind my forehead sat a sluggish tiredness. I tried rubbing my face in a pathetic attempt to invigorate myself but it was no use. It was as if concrete had been poured into my head, smothering all useful brain activity. All that was left was a feeling of stolid dullness. I was drowning in dullness – what a lovely way to spend your day. This could top shopping in H&M.

Thankfully I didn't have to think too much for myself. Keeping my eyes and ears open and being sensible were the key skills required on set, which was lucky considering that was all I could manage. Late the previous night I'd said yes to a job as a runner on a commercial the next day, starting at six in the morning. I really didn't want to do it but I didn't have a choice. As my grandfather was fond of saying (usually when I was broke), when the wolf was at the door you just had to feed it. It was just a pity that keeping the wolf from the door started so early in the morning.

The shoot was on a pedestrian-only street so most of the day had been spent on one side of the set-up directing shoppers around the scene, making sure they didn't walk straight into shot, but also, more importantly, making sure they didn't stop and gawp. Somehow the minutes and hours had ticked over. Now it was mid-afternoon and all I wanted to do was lie down and sleep. I could do it right here, I mused, staring at the now-very-familiar footpath under my feet. In fact, the longer I stood there, the more I was sure that if I lay down I would go straight off.

‘Can you take this to the production office?' I jumped. The production manager, clutching a small package, was suddenly at my elbow.

‘Sorry,' he said.

‘Oh no, I'd love to.' I couldn't wait to have another job to do.

‘I meant, I'm sorry for making you jump.'

‘Yes, of course.' I glanced at his hard face, his mouth pinched with tension, and had one of my moments of utterly despising the whole stressed-out world of film and TV, where too many people took themselves far too seriously. But although I couldn't wait to get away from him, whatever his name was (concrete head couldn't recall it), my damn professionalism stopped me from taking off straightaway.

‘Who's going to direct people while I'm gone then?'

‘I will, so make it snappy.'

‘Right.'

I set off at a quick march. Soho wasn't far away and I trotted through the narrow streets busy with creatives coming back from lunch. It was good to be on the move and to get away from the boredom of being on set.

The office was a postmodern number that the architect had forgotten to give windows to, tucked in-between two older buildings. At reception, what looked like a fourteen-year-old girl sat at her desk, trying to look busy. The intern, no doubt. As I got closer, I noted the girl was dressed head to toe in something exceedingly expensive, and so cutting edge it made the office furniture bought all of six months ago look desperately uncool.

‘Can I help you?' she asked politely. I smiled. The vowels confirmed it. Here was a fine specimen of the trust-fund intern. I waved the package at her.

‘I need to give this to . . .' I looked at the package again. ‘Caro Schneider?'

‘One moment.'

The girl picked up the phone, listened and then replaced the handset.

‘She's on the phone right now. I'll let her know that you're here.'

‘I'm from the Moore & Tyler shoot.'

‘Right, thanks. Take a seat.'

I knew if I sat down I'd have trouble staying awake so I remained standing and paced the small foyer. The open-plan office behind the receptionist was empty but at the back of the room were a couple of small rooms walled off from the rest of the space with their doors open. Through one of them I could hear a woman talking animatedly on the phone, presumably Caro. After a couple of minutes it was clear Caro was organising a dinner date with a friend. Good, I thought. She won't be long then. But the minutes ticked by and soon two minutes were five. I briefly wondered if I should just leave the package with the intern. Surly old whatshisname hadn't specified that I give it to Caro in person. But he hadn't said give it to just anyone either. I decided that, on balance, I'd rather return to a grumpy production manager a few minutes late than find out tomorrow that the rushes from the morning had been lost and it was all my bloody fault.

I checked my watch again. I'd been waiting seven minutes.

‘Look, can I just pop my head in her door, please? I really need to get back to the shoot.'

‘She's quite particular about not being interrupted.'

Caro's words came out of her door shrill and clear, ‘But, darling, we can't invite her, she spends the whole time in the toilet doing who knows what and then falls asleep in the meringue. What was that? Oh no, darling, I work far too hard to make them myself, there's this darling little patisserie round the corner from work where I pick them up but I'm not doing them this time . . .' On and on she went, chirruping away about dessert after dessert.

I met the intern's eye. The girl grinned, which made her look reassuringly older and slightly cheeky.

‘I'm sure she wouldn't mind me interrupting pudding, it'd only take a moment.'

‘Go on then.' The girl motioned towards Caro's office, giggling quietly, and I marched quickly across the floor, knocked once and placed the package squarely on Caro's desk. She looked at me in surprise but didn't stop talking. I smiled at her without warmth, patted the package with emphasis and left, winking at the intern on the way and jogging down the stairs onto the street. Somehow I'd been away from the shoot for ten minutes already – great. Mr Surlypants was not going to be pleasant when I returned. I felt my phone vibrate and I hoicked it quickly out of my pocket, hoping it wouldn't be him. I didn't recognise the number so I answered it quickly.

‘Hello?'

‘Sam.'

My heart dropped.

‘Hi, Rebecca.'

‘How's your day going?' This wasn't a good sign. She was being nice.

‘Pretty shit to be honest and I can't talk for long, I'm working.'

‘That's OK. I was just checking in.'

Checking in? Rebecca didn't check in. Check up, yes, but not check in.

‘Right. Yeah. I'm OK, just tired. You OK?'

‘Oh yes, thank you,' she said brightly, ‘it was a nice evening the other night with Mum.'

If you say so, I thought.

‘I just wanted to say that you don't have to pay me back that money you owe me.'

‘That's not necessary, Rebecca, I will pay you back once I've been paid for this job.'

‘No, really, it's nice to help out. I've just got this job so I'm doing OK.'

You mean you're doing better than I am, I thought.

‘I will pay you back.'

‘No, please don't, honestly. Anyway, gotta go, hope your day gets better!'

‘Bye.' I shoved my phone back in my pocket. A generous Rebecca was even more annoying than the usual nasty one. It's because, I fumed, she doesn't genuinely want to help – she just wants to gloat. Left, right, right, nearly there. Fucking money, I thought as I stomped. Fucking smelly old wolf at the door.

Then I was back to the production manager, puffing slightly and frowning significantly and, no surprise, he echoed my expression minus the panting.

‘I know, I took my time!' I barked before he could open his mouth. ‘Caro made me wait while she discussed what dessert to serve at some dinner party. Eventually I gave up and put it on her desk.'

‘There was no one else there?'

‘Yes, the pretty thing manning the phones. But you didn't say drop it off to just anyone.'

‘Well, that's fine then.' He turned to go and then turned back.

‘Dessert did you say?'

‘Yes.'

‘From the darling little patisserie round the corner?'

‘That's the one.'

The corner of his mouth was twitching into a grin and I couldn't help but join in.

‘You shouldn't have been listening in, of course.'

‘I wasn't listening in, it was more like the office was being addressed by tannoy.'

The PM laughed then, a big barky laugh that squished his shrewd little eyes into raisons. ‘You're funny, Sam,' he said, then he turned away and went off to boss someone else around.

Eventually the day was over and I was paid in sweet cash. I stowed the money I owed Rebecca and Mara into a separate part of my wallet and counted the rest. That would keep the wolf from the door and maybe even buy me some shoes for the party. But shoes could wait. I just wanted to get home. For the first time all day I actually felt slightly relaxed, maybe even a little happy. Perhaps Mara would be home when I got in, with some food ready. We could have a nice catch-up and then I could have a bath and go to bed, safe in the knowledge I had enough money for a few days.

But the flat was dark and quiet when I got home, with a note from Mara saying she and Ed had gone to stay with their dad for the night. I felt very alone. Next to the note was a single, pathetic bill addressed to me. It was from EE. I sighed and opened it, knowing what it was going to say. There it was in black and white. I was overdue with last month's bill and if I didn't pay it in the next week, my phone would be cut off.