Authors: Lynne Barrett-Lee
Tags: #General, #Fiction, #Romance, #Contemporary, #Mystery & Detective, #Electronic Mail Messages
No. The only one thing that leads to another with Phil is it being seven o’clock and then it being eight o’clock and so on.
Okay. Phil missed the coach.
No. Never.
Okay. Phil got on the coach, realised he’d left his wallet or something...
No. Never.
Okay. Phil got on the coach and the coach set off, but it broke down en route, and they all got off and went to the pub while it was fixed (or whatever) and by the time the coach was ready to go they were all a bit worse for wear, and he wasn’t able to call me because Ben was surfing the net all evening and our phone was constantly engaged (
must
get extra line), and he couldn’t call me today because he was indeed on the coach all day with a hangover and probably fully intends to call me tomorrow. And may even have tried to call me this evening, of course. Yes.
No. the Flag and Fulcrum is in the middle of Queen Street which is nowhere near the coach station, but
is
very close to Phil’s office.
Okay. Phil lied.
No.
Surely
not.
Okay. Phil......um.....Phil.............Yes. Yes! Phil.......No. Never.
Okay. Phil lied.
Trouble is, I really can’t believe that he did. Phil simply isn’t that kind of a guy. He’s straight, uncomplicated; a man with integrity. A man with - oh, hell. How would I know,
really
? All I really know about Phil is that he
appears
uncomplicated. But how can a forty year old divorcee
ever
be that uncomplicated? He has a whole chunk of past that does not include me. And as he steadfastly refuses to talk about any of it, I haven’t a real handle on what makes him tick. Perhaps that’s it. Perhaps that’s why we don’t work. Because we’re starting from scratch, without reference to anything. Always skimming the surface - not plumbing the depths. But still...Phil lie? To what end? For what purpose? But just as the idea of Phil lying seems crazy, I have simply no reason to know that he won’t.
One a.m.
I’m beginning to feel that a small hours cyber-meander could be a possible route to inner calm and stress reduction. Strange odours are always marginally less intense in the study (or nasal sensitivity is possibly cyclical, like sleep) plus the surfaces are not clogged with cooling preserves. Also I can surf the net for pictures of obscure geological features and perhaps find details of a previously unadvertised June trek to the Himalayas, without the need for jostling with son two re. net time. Or perhaps I can find a friend with which to share love of plate tectonics. With GSOH, FSH etc. Or even stray griffith, perhaps? In any event I can send a cheap rate email to Dan about pant preferences, in preparation for providing a well stocked clothing holdall next term. Make tea. Boot computer. Switch blow heater on. Pour tea. Sit down. Look up to find new unread email to view.
Hello stranger.
Just wanted to check if you were all right.
Griffith.
Yes! No! Tsk! I’ll give him bloody
G
riffith. And then, hmmm. Curious. I check the time it was sent. Well, well, well. Only fifteen minutes ago. Curiouser. Maybe..... Consider pausing to reflect. Consider not answering his email until I’ve had a chance to order my thought processes and sharpen my investigative powers. Consider saving till morning for a very small percentage of a second, then, as minimum billing time with cymserve is one minute anyway, type;
Dear
G
riffith,
What makes you think I’m not?
C.
Dear Charlie,
Look, I was just concerned. That was all.
Griffith.
Dear
G
riffith,
What’s with the capital G? And what do you mean “concerned”? How concerned? And
why
concerned? And what do you mean by typing ‘Look’ in that aggressive tone? And why aren’t you in bed? And why aren’t
I
in bed, for that matter? It’s one in the morning and my house smells of hobgoblins and my boyfriend (laughable; ho, ho, ho etc.) has been sighted, inebriated, in a sleaze-bag pub in town when he should have been hot-footing it up to Castle Howard or wherever it was the Brontës hung out, and admiring the view from the dormer and so on - and all for reasons best known to himself, and certainly not to me. And everyone else - Caroline Stableford, particularly - seems to know all about it and- and, well, like I said.
Why
concerned? You were
there
, weren’t you? Tell me your name.
C.
Now.
Dear Charlie,
But you didn’t really want to see him any more, anyway, did you? To be fair. So you can hardly feel aggrieved about it. Surely it’s a blessing?
Griffith.
Tsk!
Dear,
dear
Griffith,
That’s not the point. Anyway, I’m beginning to have a very ambivalent feeling about this conversation. And you haven’t answered my question.
C.
PS And scrub that bit about Castle Howard. That was Brideshead Revisited. It was Haworth I meant. I wouldn’t want you to think I was stupid or anything. I’ve read that as well, actually.
And I must have read
something
by Emily Brontë.
Must
have. Was she
Northanger Abbey
? And what about Ann? (Anne?) And what the hell did Bram (Bramwell? Brom? Bromwich?) write? Very irritated by the fact that Phil, undoubtedly, has all the answers. Slurp tea and await bing. Bing!
Dear Charlie,
I didn’t think so for an instant. And I haven’t. Jane Eyre was torture. And Brideshead was considered
passé
at college. We all thought it was Poncey.
Why ambivalent?
Griffith
College! Aha!
Dear Griffith,
Ambivalent because much as I want to find out who you are, there is a part of me that’s apprehensive about it - supposing you have got a face like a scone topping, or worse - supposing you’re drop dead gorgeous? Actually, I’m not sure which is worse. Yes I am - absolute worst will be if you’re someone I know and really don’t like, which is what always happens, doesn’t it?
I beg to differ about Brideshead (though Jeremy Irons
has
become a bit of an over earnest thespian since then). And who’s ‘we’? And you still haven’t answered my question. And most importantly, which college? And which course? A Clamtec diploma?
C.
But, Charlie, it’s not going to be a problem, is it? Because you’re
not
going to find out who I am. Then we can carry on our chats without worrying. Anyway, which question was it you wanted answered? G.
Dear Griffith,
Stop pratting about. I’ve started so I’ll finish.
1. The question about how you knew there was anything to be concerned about.
2. The question about who ‘we’ were.
3. The question about who
you
are.
4. The question about what the hell I’m doing sending emails to a qualified clam digger from Tenby.
5. The question about
whether you were there
.
C.
PS - the underlining is a new departure. Is it significant?
Significant only in that my typing has improved no end these last few weeks. I even do italics now.
And
bold
. Impressed?
Answers;
1. You already told me about the Phil situation (it was an all purpose ‘are you all right’).
2. My fellow clam diggers. We preferred Amis. (Martin.)
3. Pass.
4. Enjoying it.
5. Pass.
G.
Griffith, you’re a rat. So how come you emailed me at one in the morning?
Fortuitousness.
Oh, and the boxing being on.
Boxing? Huh? But I am just about to type ‘what
about
the boxing?’ when a strange and hair-prickling sensation of comes over me; a sensation I am beginning to recognise as one that should be attended to at all costs. Scan brain. Slurp tea. Scan brain some more. Say ‘fortuitousness’ in soft tones to myself, then ‘look’ then ‘GOOD GOD ’ then ‘fortuitousness’ again. Go into kitchen and retrieve the hankie from my jacket, ball into my fist then walk back into the study. Sit down, open fist, spread out hankie on desktop, peer in light from computer at monogrammed corner.
Read; A G J.
A
G
J. A
G
J. Blink. Sit back. Read again. Say out loud. Lean forward. Type;
I have your handkerchief. Don’t email me again.
Then I switch off the computer and go straight to bed.
Sunday 11.07 a.m.
And carefully noted, as a
totally
pyroclastic moment in my life. Pyroclastic in that free flowing sensations of utter consternation/ churning stomach/ disbelief etc. are now tumbling in a almost seismic wave over the landscape of my psyche, while boulders of angst rise and bob on the surface; married-boulder, Davina-boulder, pillar of community-boulder, boss-boulder, blanket horror-boulder etc. If I was given to hand wringing I would most certainly wring my hands.
The future is a strange and scary landscape; all at once full of excitement and promise, and at the same time, the risk of eternal damnation. Or some such waffle. It’s corny, I know, and overstating the obvious, but such was the enormity of the truth I’d uncovered that only the wildest and most clichéd of sentiments seemed to do justice to the situation I now found myself in.
Which was some situation. Here was a guy who was married to my boss and who, at the same time, and
with full knowledge of what he was doing
, was carrying on an email correspondence with
me
. And it wasn’t just anyone. It was Adam Jones. Adam Jones the GP. Adam Jones the
utterly gorgeous
GP. A guy that, well, - a guy that I really, really,
really
liked. A guy who I not only liked but admired. A guy that I knew
everyone
liked and admired - and why wouldn’t they? He was a kind, caring man. Who’s wife was Davina. Oh God.
Davina
. How - how on
earth
- would I deal with Davina? How would I face her, knowing what I knew now?
And then there was sex. There was a sex-thing at work here. Oh,
Lord
, I couldn’t even begin to think about that.
So this is what I did. About fifteen seconds after I went to bed, I got up again, went back downstairs, re-booted the computer and signed on to Cymserve. But there was nothing. Zippo. So I went back to bed.
About fifteen seconds after that, I went down and did it all again. But there was (infuriatingly now)
still
nothing. So, feeling stupid, I stomped back to bed once again.
And stared at the ceiling until it finally, amazingly, inexplicably hit me (possibly by means of the very mystical vision I have always been so sneery about) how the whole excruciating business might just have happened. In any event, a Willie JJ compliment slip became suddenly, horribly, mind-numbingly clear. So I went back downstairs and dug out my diary - an eighties style sliced-loaf sized mock leather organiser, within whose stout poppered cover resided some fifteen years worth of administrative data (plus a perspex ruler and London underground map. There also used to be a page detailing important international feast days, but as it faced Z in the address book section, the text had been totally obliterated by rabid doodles and tear stains - my divorce solicitor being one Clemenzia Zoot).
The diary sprung open - a decade and a half’s scraps are surprisingly springy - and I was soon ferreting feverishly among the snippets in ‘G’. And at last, there they were, in my own spiky writing: the fateful words ‘[email protected]’.
It was seven forty two, but I called Rose regardless. I knew she’d be whisking the pigswill or something.
‘So that’s how,’ I told her, having dropped my new bombshell. ‘I wrote this down for
Davina
. Must have been, oh...a good eighteen months back, if not longer. There was some sort of contract she needed to look at and she wanted the guy to email her at home. Austin Metro I think it was. Funny thing is, I can even remember thinking it was a strange address at the time. But you know how it is - she rattled on about how important it was that the guy got the right address when he phoned, that I never got around to it. It was one of those things you just do and forget. You know?’
‘Slow
down
,’ she advised. Then, ‘Hmm.
What
a business! But how come you thought it was ours?’
‘God, that’s just it! It was me! You know what I’m like with admin - six months in the handbag, three in the desk tidy and so on - when it surfaced in my handbag again, I simply copied it into the address book itself under G.’
‘And ours?’
‘Under R, of course. For Rose. I’m looking at it right now. It’s a system of sorts.’
‘Not when you then look us up under G for Griffith. Mind you, when was the last time you’d have looked us up anyway?’
‘Exactly! Must have been ten years ago.’
‘And your methods with most things are generally arbitrary. You must have had a filing-by-Christian-name moment.’ She whistled. ‘And Adam Jones ended up with
my
email. This is going to take some time to sink in! But - God! - just think - Davina could have seen some –’
‘The first thing I thought of!’ (Not strictly. The first thing, as I said, was more along the lines of Oh God Adam JonesWow Christ Not Not Fair Oh Wow). ‘But then I would have known about it like a shot, wouldn’t I? And
then
I remembered that Davina has her own PC at home now. I remember her getting it. It’s like Computers ‘R Us at their place. They’ve got a study each, too.’