Half Plus Seven (2 page)

Sincerely,

Dr L. Taylor

Chapter 2

I worked in a medium-sized office, which is to say there were about fifty other lemonheads doing the same shit I did to varying degrees of authority, success and interest. The shit was writing bullshit for bullshitters to sell bullshit. Or PR to you. Public Relations. Relations with the Public. It's fair to say that if you wanted a job which showed you the world only cared about money, and the odd pat on the slimy back – which in its wicked way led to, you guessed it, money – then this was it. I duped people for a living. Which, as you're beginning to discover, was quite a sad one. Heck, a lot of the time I even duped myself. Which is what made the moments of realisation that smacked you bang on the bridge of the nose at ten to four on a Tuesday afternoon all the more poignant. Chocolate bar brands sponsoring never-seen-their-dick fatsos to eat balanced diets, reality TV stars trying to reposition themselves as relevant, selling the ‘social benefits' of a multi-million pound housing estate and its subsequent new fume-spewing road to dumb-fuck mothers with Ventolin-sucking kids. If your shit needed shining, then my chamois was at your service. And damn the consequences. They just didn't make for a nice story. Every PR man since Goebbels knew it.

Having spent the bulk of my working life selling in stories on behalf of everyone from greedy blue-chips to not greedy enough wafer-thin F-listers, it was inevitable my imagination would sometimes daydream headlines where I was the protagonist. ‘Bill in Thai drugs bust: I'm innocent', ‘Railroad death of drunk spin doctor', shit like that. The hacks at
The McDare Mercury
were canny copywriters on the topics of doom, gloom and disaster. The poor readers needed a good war to cheer them up. I put these thoughts not down to narcissism but a normal by-product of the job. When you picked up the news rock to see the squirming ants underneath, you realised anyone – repeat ANYONE – with a good enough jawline/tits (delete as applicable), the right wind and the wrong PR behind them could become ‘famous' almost overnight. So why not me, if only in my own head?

It was a Monday. A day which I un-stereotypically liked. Full of hope, aspiration and purpose. This is the week your shit life changes. You straighten up. You make a difference to yourself. To society. All of these hopes evaporated like steam off piss in the desert by 11 a.m. when you realised you weren't going to make a difference, to yourself or society, and the only purpose you had was to get the story out of the door and follow closely behind it.

It was 11 a. m. Time for a cup of tea. Like most things in my life, tea drinking was taken to excess. Even an innocent pleasure such as this could be turned into a crutch when seen through the eyes of a dedicated addict. I think it was the ritual of it which drew me in. Ritual loomed heavy for lapsed Catholics. Boil the kettle, warm the pot, scatter the leaves, pour the water, let it steep, splash the milk, strain the leaves, pour the tea, stir. Hit. After three or four cups, your body reached a caffeine plateau and subsequent cups made you strung out and scratchy. Bad for you. Bad bad bad. Everything was bad for you these days.

Pete was in the kitchen. The office kitchen looked like it had been moved pine door by pine door from a mid-1990s show home. Yes, this was the height of homeware for the Mondeo man and his Asda Price wife hoping to social climb onto some soul-destroying development called something like Sovereign Chase or Cunts' Horizon. And now it lived in our grey little office, looking as out of place as a sunbather at a wake. But it had tea and biscuits and often this was all that mattered.

Pete had his back to me but it was evident he was resplendent in the office wear of the damned. A cheap shapeless suit hung from his podgy late-30s frame, looking as comfortable as a Jihad Warrior hanging from a crucifix. Plasticy slip-on loafers finished the look. From behind, his hair seemed like a good solid cut. One you could set your watch to. But as he turned around to greet me it was clear that an identity crisis occurred in the mirror every morning at around 8.30 a.m. as he worked wet look gel from the root up, not quite sure whether to play it edgy or safe and ending up with a compromise which ticked neither box and that a grandmother would find hard to ruffle without losing the family silver in.

‘Ah, hello there, young man. How was the rest of your weekend then?'

Pete was stood next to the boiling kettle. His hearing was selective at best, irrevocably damaged at worst.

‘I drank, wandered town, met some people, went to an all night drugs party, was sick on myself, was sick on a girl, got up, got lost, had a fight with a man taking his kids to football practice…'

Pete was straining to hear me over the water.

‘Sorry, buddy, I didn't quite catch all of that. Sounded like a nice weekend though. You seemed to be talking to a rather lovely lady when I snuck out of the side door of the pub. You know three is my limit on a Friday. Foolish to ruin the next day, especially when the garden centre's got a sale on.'

The kettle had boiled and Pete poured the water into his cup. It said ‘My Other Mug is The Holy Grail' in an italicised font on the side. It never failed to make him titter. Some of his drink spilled onto the mock marble counter.

‘Oh Christ. Oh no, I blasphemed then. Now I'm not religious but I do have my own little beliefs. Every time I take the Lord's name in vain, I feel like I'm one step further away from heaven and one step closer to eternal damnation.'

I got out of the kitchen as quick as I could. Fuck the tea.

The annoyance thresholds of those who spent the majority of their waking lives marking time close to each other could be broken by the most nominal of noises. Sometimes it was the chime of a text message tone or the way they laughed sharply, just once, when reading a forwarded email about misspelt road signs from someone in accounts. These little things punctuated the nine to five not as a common comma but as a rarely seen semi-colon; eyebrow-raising, abnormal, unwanted; chipping away day-by-day until the listener snapped.

‘Will you just shut the fuck up with that sneeze of yours? It's driving me slowly INSANE.'

With me, it was a cough. An irregular but virulent cough. It came, it produced, it went, it bothered. Usually-sympathetic colleagues turned and shot scornful stares. People talked in the kitchen. Emails were sent. I had to be told. Concentration was being broken. Trains of thought derailed. Germs being spread. It was Carol who came to talk to me.

‘Have you got two minutes? There's something sensitive I'd like to talk to you about.'

Intrigued, I spun around on my chair and gave all 5 foot 2 inches of her my complete attention.

‘Let's go to the breakout room. I've made you a tea. Just how you like it.'

I said nothing, but stood up and acceded. Carol smiled a mumsy smile and turned to walk to the room at the end of the open-plan floor. She had the look of a woman who had once been pretty, deep in her distant past. Never sexy or fuckable, just ‘pretty'. Like when she was fourteen, but was far too conscientious to do anything about it, staying in doing her biology homework listening to Donny Osmond when her less pretty friends had stuffed socks into their older sisters' bras and gone uptown to suck some bouncer's cock in return for free entry to a theme pub.

‘You need to see someone about it. Everyone is worried about you. Really. A cough can be a sign of much deeper problems. Are you eating well? Are you looking after yourself?'

‘Yes I'm eating well, Carol, thanks. I even had one of my five-a-day this morning. Amen to Minute Maid.'

‘Your health shouldn't be a joke, Bill. It's important. One of the chaps in my quiz team had a similar tickle you know. Sometimes we'd mishear important questions because of it. Turns out he had cancer. Dead now. We kept the name, “The Fab Four”, though. In memory.'

‘Thanks for brightening up my Monday and scaring me half to death, Carol.'

‘Just get it seen to, Bill. It's important you're well. We rely on you here.'

It was Carol's concern that pushed me towards the Medi-Health Centre. Well, that and the fact that I'd spat blood in the urinal earlier, but mostly Carol. The blood had been appearing sporadically in the mucus I'd hack into the bog every time I'd take a piss. Which with the amount of tea I drank, was higher than average. It's not right for young lungs to be coughing up blood but when you'd been caning Marlboro Reds since a first sly drag behind the scout hut on your twelfth birthday, I tended to see my breathers as aged in dog years. Well worn-in. Loved, if you will. There was bound to be a bit of wear and tear every now and again, right? That's what I kept telling myself anyway. And why I'd put off seeing anyone about it for so long. Who wants to go to a small room to have some kid you would have bullied at school give you really bad news? Not I. I hated going to the doctors. All those sick people spreading germs over each other. Sneezing kids. Whooping pensioners. Shell-suited teenage mums. Shit magazines. So when Carol talked me around, there was no way I was crossing the threshold of an NHS establishment. Each visit came with free MRSA.

Every once in a while I'd splash out on a purchase. Generally it was upgrading to a double, but very occasionally it'd involve some hint of altruism. Like the time I bought my mum a Toby Carvery. Or the time I signed up to be a Cancer Research donor after being hounded by some white, dreadlocked mistake on my fag break and didn't cancel my direct debit as soon as I got back to my desk. A down payment for the future I reckoned.

This time it was a £299 comprehensive health check. I figured it was a small price to pay to stop me from thoughts of my demise. That the chest pains were just a hangover. Not the end of days. My days that is. A little MOT for little old me. I'd only spend it on fags anyway. Peace of mind. Fuck, I'd pay twice for peace of mind. The doctor would have to be Einstein crossed with Emmanuelle to give me that though. This was a good decision. If I keep telling myself I might actually believe it. Good good good.

The Medi-Health Centre was located about seven miles across town from my office. I'd booked the pool car under the auspices of going out to meet a hot new lead and blocked out a few hours next to my name on the whiteboard which acted as a bubble-written surveillance tool on our movements.

‘You're taking the car?' asked my pod neighbour Jill. Jill spent her weekends training to be a yoga teacher despite being the least calm person I'd ever met.

‘Yeah.'

‘But shouldn't you be taking this “hot new lead” out for a three course with wine?'

‘No. He doesn't drink so we're meeting at a Starbucks.'

‘Fucking hell, Bill, when in Rome is it? You? Not having a drink? Ha.'

Jill emitted a piercing shrill, which managed to infer surprise and degradation all at once.

‘See you later, Jill. Hold all calls, yeah?'

‘Whatever.'

The pool car would have been better off being driven into a pool, being as it was the culmination of the collective shitty nick-nacks of the retards I had the displeasure of working with. You really did never know what you were going to find. On this occasion, which while unique was symptomatic of every time I got behind the wheel, my tan brogues stuck to a cluster of diet bar wrappers (Carol's) while a
Best of Sting
CD sat at a right angle on the ledge above the glove compartment (Pete's). I daren't open the glove compartment. This was often for the best.

As I drove across town, thoughts danced as clumsily as teenagers pilled up on their first half in my head. I was about to enter a situation which presented the very real possibility of bad news, a situation that I usually avoided at all costs in preference of the laissez-faire of social comatose, either through work, love, life or drink. What if this doctor told me, no doubt in an ‘I'm-a-£300-an-hour-concerned-friend' kind of way, that ‘I'm sorry Mr McDare, but you're fucked'. I couldn't really complain, could I? I've been caning it like there's no tomorrow ever since I could remember because it didn't really seem like there was much else to do. But what if there was no tomorrow? Would anyone care? Would I care? Sure, people would be surprised (not shocked), supportive and look at me with the same pitying, superior eyes normally reserved for the skinny, fly-ridden Africans on the give-us-your-money adverts. But secretly, deep down, they'd be hoping the same as me – that this sorry excuse for an existence could be over so they could get back to their soap operas, their goofy kids, their new kitchen appliances and the new restaurant in town, without having to give a thought to someone who maybe, just maybe, didn't want the life they thought they were meant to be living.

Chapter 3

The waiting room at the Medi-Health Centre was everything the NHS one was not. It was a different kind of sickening. With a slight whiff of potpourri rising through the usual air of sterility, peach ceramics and carpeted walls, it gave the impression of an early 1990s leisure centre run under the firm but fair stewardship of a second-favourite aunt. Pan-pipe interpretations of hits of the 1960s hung in the air. It was the kind of muzak I'd imagine was played in the great glass elevator that greeted you when you'd snuffed it, the chimes of ‘Hey Jude' leaving you unsure whether the lift was going up to heaven or down to hell.

‘Mr McDare. Your Medi-Health Wellness Check is ready to commence. Would you like to follow me?' said an effeminate in dark chinos and a green Medi-Health embroidered polo shirt, whose name badge said ‘Leo' but you could bet your last smoke went by ‘Cleo' at some ketamine cave every Friday.