Diary of an Unsmug Married (22 page)

I sigh, then pick up the phone.

‘Are you Bonjour Freight Shippers?’ says someone whose voice I don’t recognise at all.

‘Um, no—’

‘Well,
this
was the number I got from 1471.
^fn1
I checked the last caller after I got your answer-phone message, as your man forgot to leave his number.’

‘Er, sorry – who is speaking, please?’ I say. I still have no idea.

‘Mr O’Nyons,’ says the man.

He pronounces it exactly as you would expect: Oh – Nye – Ons. I have never heard of him.

‘Well, I’m sorry,’ I say, ‘but I have no idea what you are talking about. There must be some mistake.’

‘No,’ says Mr O’Nyons, speaking very slowly, as if I am a halfwit. ‘The man who left the message said that you had a large shipment of onions that you’d been asked to deliver to me, and that you wanted to confirm my address.’

Oh. Oh,
Christ
. Onions. O’Nyons.
Bloody
hell.

‘I’m very sorry, but I have never heard of Bonjour Freight Shippers, and I can only assume that there must have been an error at the exchange,’ I say, after an over-long pause. ‘Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a family emergency to attend to.’

I put the phone down, take a deep breath, and go upstairs. Josh is lying on his bed, laughing his head off.

‘
You
are grounded,’ I say. ‘For the next ten years. And don’t you
dare
touch that phone again while I am at work.’

‘You’ve got to admit it was funny, Mum,’ says Josh. ‘
O’Nyons!
What a muppet. I did mean to put 141
in first, though.’

I don’t reply. I am married to a Botox-Queen-snogger, I have Gary Glitter as a father
and
I am raising a juvenile delinquent. I see nothing whatsoever to laugh about.

TUESDAY, 3 AUGUST

This evening, Dad replies to the email I sent him on Sunday by saying, ‘Women never understand.’

My reply is equally terse: ‘Women understand only too well.’

Now I’ll have to wait and see what his next move is.

It doesn’t take long to find out. Dinah phones less than half an hour later. ‘Why have you upset Dad?’ she says. ‘There was no need for that.’

‘What d’you mean?’ I say. ‘What’s wrong with you? You’re usually the first to go nuts about the way he behaves. Remember the Peyronie’s thing?’

‘I know – that
was
disgusting – but calling him Gary Glitter, for no reason?’ she says. ‘Bit strong, wasn’t it?’

Ah. I think I know what’s happened now. ‘Dinah, has Dad actually sent you his holiday photos?’ I say.

‘No,’ she says. ‘Why?’

‘You’ll see. Just check your email in a few minutes, when all will become
crystal-clear
.’

I forward Dad’s pictures to her as soon as she hangs up and, thirty seconds later, she sends me a text. It just says, ‘Holy shit!’

The sweet sound of vindication.

WEDNESDAY, 4 AUGUST

I’m telling Greg about Dinah’s reaction to Dad’s photos, when I get a call from the policeman who’s dealing with Miss Harpenden’s stolen identity.

‘Can we have an off-the-record conversation, Molly?’ he says. ‘I
can
call you Molly, can’t I?’

‘Um, yes,’ I say. ‘To both questions, I suppose.’

Another outing for the good old dual-purpose answer – though I probably should have chosen a version that contained the word ‘no’. I’d have been
much
better off not knowing what the officer tells me next.

‘Well, Molly,’ he says, ‘there’s a reason we don’t seem to be doing anything to help Miss Harpenden, though there
is
a lot of work going on behind the scenes. To put it bluntly, we suspect that her long-term boyfriend’s the one committing the identity fraud, and we don’t yet know if she’s in on it, too. So we need more time … to find out.’

‘Oh, my God,’ I say, once I’ve got over the shock of Miss Harpenden having a boyfriend, let alone a long-term one. (Greg’s always been
convinced
that she’s lonely and a lesbian.) ‘I’m sure the poor woman has no idea – what am I going to tell her if she phones?’

‘Just try to fob her off, until our investigations are complete,’ says the policeman. ‘In the meantime, it’d be best to pretend you know nothing at all.’

Oh,
brilliant
. That’d be no problem for The Boss, but a) he often
does
know nothing, and b) he’s far better at lying than I am. I’m absolutely
hopeless
at it. And, anyway, I’m sure Miss Harpenden hasn’t got a clue that it might be her boyfriend who’s stolen her identity, or she wouldn’t have reported it in the first place, would she?

What a piece of work
he
must be, if he isn’t being unjustly accused. I can’t get over it.

‘It’s hard to believe that anyone could do that to a loved one, isn’t it?’ I say to Max, later, as he’s cooking dinner.

‘I don’t know,’ he says. ‘I was concentrating on chopping these onions, sorry.
What
can’t you believe someone could do to a loved one?’

‘Make them think that you’re entirely innocent, when you’re not,’ I say. ‘
And
let them jump to all the wrong conclusions as a result. Imagine being cruel enough to do
that
to someone you’ve spent years living with!’

‘Ow,’ says Max, as he tips the onions into the wok too fast, and splashes hot oil all over his hand.

Third-degree burns seem a bit of a drastic way to change the subject, and I can’t imagine why Max would need to, anyway. Unless he thought we were talking about Ellen, not Miss Harpenden, of course. I can’t think
why
he would.

WEDNESDAY, 4 AUGUST (THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT)

Dinah’s insomnia’s getting out of hand. So is mine, seeing as I keep forgetting to turn the sound off on my mobile when I go to bed.

I’ve just got off to sleep (difficult enough while trying to work out if Max burned his hand on purpose or not), when
ping!
goes my phone, to tell me that I’ve got an email. Dinah has sent me the same article about the man who killed all those people as she did before, the bloody idiot.

I’m about to delete it without reading it when I spot that this email has a different subject line to the previous one. It says, ‘Check the photo, Molly – see if you can spot the difference.’

The picture is of the man’s Thai girlfriend, who is alleged to have used a false name, and to have conned him out of thousands of pounds, before dumping him for someone else. She looks exactly like the girl pictured sitting on what was presumably Dad’s hotel bed – while virtually naked.

Dinah’s only other comment is
:o
, which I imagine my expression closely resembles. Is
nothing
ever as it seems?

Max may say my job’s made me too cynical but, after today’s goings-on, I’m obviously
far
from cynical enough.

THURSDAY, 5 AUGUST

As part of his mission to collect every disaffected non-constituent within a 300-mile radius and add them to our workload, now The Boss has brought Igor back into the fold.

He looks astonished when Greg and I bang our heads on our desks simultaneously when he says, ‘Our friend Mr Popov may pop in, in a minute.’ (Try saying
that
after a couple of vodkas. The Boss obviously found it a struggle.)

‘Oh, God,’ says Greg, ‘Not bloody Igor again?’

Igor Popov is a madman, who looks exactly like Alexei Sayle in
The Young Ones
. He’s convinced he’s being persecuted by the Russian Mafia, even though he claims only to have been a bin man when he lived in Moscow. (I don’t think
bin man
is a euphemism for
hit man
in Russia, though I suppose it could be. I’ll ask Johnny when I get a chance.)

Igor’s definitely not a spy, though, as he’s far too big and flamboyant for that. He’s also a shameless flatterer, which is probably why Andrew can’t resist him. (
He
could use a healthy dose of my cynicism, when it comes to hearing good things about himself.)

Anyway, Igor breezes into the office shortly afterwards, and promptly falls to his knees in front of The Boss – whom he clasps around the thighs while muttering various overblown expressions of gratitude. Then he stands up and sings us a Russian song about brotherly love and comradeship. That’s what he says it’s about, anyway. He could be singing a shopping list for all we know.

The Boss sits there smirking, with his feet up on
my
desk, lapping up the adoration – while Greg pretends to be throwing up.

‘This is
nauseating
,’ he says, as he grabs his jacket and heads for the door. ‘Thank God it’s finally closing time. I need to leave immediately, to avoid being overcome by the urge to beat Igor to death. I’m far more of a danger to him than the bloody Mafia.’

I do my best to verify the truth of
that
assessment (after waiting until Andrew and Igor have also left the building), by sending Johnny an email, asking whether the Russian Mafia are really as bad as Igor claims they are.

I also tell him that I’m now an unwilling police collaborator, and that I’m feeling terrible about being forced to stonewall Miss Harpenden earlier this afternoon. I’m hoping for some Igor-style shameless flattery in response, to make me feel better about myself, but nothing ever goes to plan.

Johnny’s reply snaps back, within seconds: ‘Those of us who live and work in Russia do
not
discuss the M-word. Not here, or anywhere.’

Ouf
. That’s put me in my place, which is not much fun. I’ve never known Johnny to behave like an International Director of a Global Oil Company before.

‘Presumably you don’t discuss the Spanish Inquisition, either?’ I say, in an attempt to raise a laugh – which fails. Johnny doesn’t find the
Monty Python
reference funny, in the slightest.

‘This is not a joking matter,’ he says, so I tell him about Miss Harpenden, instead – even more to his disgust.

‘For God’s sake, woman,’ he says. ‘Do stop talking about your job. We’re supposed to be having an affair. Can’t we behave as if we are, for once?’

‘Okay,’ I say, which is a very bad move, as now I seem to have had virtual sex – by accident.

Being compliant obviously buggers your judgement, though it
was
rather nice, and at least I didn’t feel as if I needed to put a bag over my head in order to participate – so I’m quite exhilarated as I lock up and start walking home. I even do a skip or two when no one’s looking.

By half-way there, I’m dragging my feet, and in a total panic. Where in the scale of marital infidelities would
my
misdemeanour rank? Higher or lower than kissing a real, albeit cosmetically-enhanced person, in front of your wife and daughter? More or less forgivable than that?

FRIDAY, 6 AUGUST

Well, if my faith in men hadn’t already taken a nosedive this week, Miss Harpenden’s boyfriend has sent it plummeting
to the depths
. As soon as I arrive at the office, I get a call telling me that he has just been arrested, because ‘the evidence against him has become overwhelming’.

Poor Miss H had already left for work by the time that the police arrived, so she doesn’t even know about the arrest yet – though I suppose
that
will ultimately pale into insignificance in the face of everything else she’ll discover that she also didn’t know.

Maybe I should find out what’s
really
going on between Max and Ellen – as long as Max doesn’t make a similar effort to find out what’s going on with me.

Apparently,
that’s
obvious. According to some people, I might as well have a neon sign affixed to my head.

‘You have sex last night, Mol?’ says Greg at lunchtime, as he downs two cans of Red Bull in preparation for this afternoon’s surgery. ‘You look different, and you’ve got a bit of colour in your cheeks.’

‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Green. From deceit-induced nausea, and anxiety in case Miss Harpenden calls to ask why I didn’t tell her what was happening. I can’t
wait
for the office to close tonight.’

‘The day’s misery doesn’t end there,’ says Greg. ‘Not for you, anyway. Have you forgotten it’s that stupid fundraising thing tonight?’

Oh, no. I
had
forgotten. I am the unluckiest woman in the world (apart from Miss Harpenden). As if every weekday during Recess isn’t already bad enough, I’ve got the highly dubious pleasure of The Boss’ company to look forward to this evening as well.

One of the senior Party activists has organised an event to raise funds, and an ex-Minister is going to attend, to rally the troops. Of course, as soon as he found this out, The Boss lifted his ban on Greg and I mixing with Party staff – temporarily – and insisted that we
had
to go.

‘Bring your partners, too,’ he said. ‘Labour’s the party of hardworking
families
, don’t forget.’

Greg was infuriated by Andrew’s insensitivity. He
still
hasn’t got over his girlfriend.

‘Has that idiot forgotten that he’s not the only single person in this cruel world?’ he said, before making an excuse about being unable to attend, and claiming he had to give his mother a lift to the all-night Tesco’s on the outskirts of town.

When The Boss objected, Greg said, ‘Mum’s too busy working hard to go shopping during the day, and she’s given up her car, in an attempt to reduce her carbon footprint.’

‘Well, good for her,’ said The Boss, after a short pause, presumably to recall Labour’s manifesto. ‘But you and Max had better come, then, Molly – and that’s an order. It’s listed as “any other duties” in your contract.’

It probably is, too – so, at 7:00pm sharp, Max and I arrive at the venue, and immediately want to run away again when we’re met by the man in charge. He’s a notorious loony with delusions of grandeur, and an inexplicable desire to impress The Boss – which is all the evidence you need to prove the loony part, as far as I’m concerned.