Life Without Me Page 5

  ‘Ali, what’s in Georgie’s diary for today? Uh-huh … OK, slow down a bit! Got that …’

  He was taking notes on his mobile phone. He was entering my diary dates into his calendar! He was taking over my job, the twat! And I wasn’t even cold in my grave yet!

  ‘No, no, it’s fine! I can manage. We don’t need to put anything off. Thanks. Oh, one more thing! Can you get IT to unblock Georgie’s account? I want to check her emails. Just to stay on top of things till she comes back.’ ‘If she comes back’, he mouthed under his breath. ‘Good girl, thank you.’

  He leaned back in my chair and stretched his legs under my desk; stared at the ceiling and smiled; wiggled, displeased. He looked for the lever under the seat, found it and began re-adjusting the chair to his height. He returned to the chair, and smiled again. I wished I could wipe that stupid pompous grin off his pimply face.

  Ali rang and confirmed he could now access my computer. He thanked her and called her, again, a ‘good girl’. My blood boiled. Ali was at least twenty years his senior!

  Still, there he was, on my computer.

  Perhaps there was hope after all, I thought. Perhaps he would check my notes on Ehler’s case. I’d left a trail of Companies House searches and a draft brief for the guy from CFG. But Aitken the Twat wasn’t looking at case notes. Firstly, he went into my emails and scanned for any personal ones. There weren’t any. I have a private Hotmail account. He didn’t bother opening a single one of my work emails. My fingers were itching to do that for him. There was one from CFG, hopefully confirming today’s appointment.

  Aitken abandoned my email account and moved to my internet history. One by one, he ventured into every single website I had looked at in the past, including the singles dating site I had joined a few months ago out of boredom or stupidity, or both. I couldn’t explain why I had gone there and what I had been looking for. Maybe an antidote to the haunting memories of my hot romps with Tony …

  Aitken was relishing his finds. His grin was getting wider.

  The telephone beeped.

  ‘Yes, Ali?’ Aitken scowled. Quickly he glanced at his electronic diary. ‘There’s nothing in her diary about that … hmm … well, OK, send him in.’

  A man in black with a military bounce in his stride walked in.

  ‘Thomas Ridley, CFG.’

  ‘Gavin Aitken.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear about Mrs Ibsen’s accident.’

  ‘We’re all shocked.’ Aitken pointed to a chair and the man in black sat down.

  ‘You’re OK for a drink?’

  ‘Coffee’d be nice.’

  The pimply twit phoned through to Ali with the order.

  ‘This meeting,’ he started hesitantly, ‘wasn’t in Georgie’s … Mrs Ibsen’s diary …’

  ‘She only telephoned yesterday to arrange it. She felt it was urgent as the case had already reached the sentencing stage.’

  ‘And which case is that?’

  ‘Michael Ehler. Receiving stolen property, I understand. I see from my briefing she felt there were grounds for money laundering charges. At least a possibility –’

  ‘Oh, that!’ Aitken butted in with the knowing expression of someone who actually had a clue. He didn’t. ‘No, no … I looked at Ehler’s case closely. Only this morning. It’s cut and dried, but there’s nothing more to it. Georgie could be … sometimes … well … over-diligent.’

  They both smiled.

  ‘I see,’ said the man in black.

  ‘It would be a waste of taxpayers’ money if we pursued it any further. It’s a dead end. Ehler is a small fish. That was a one-off, actually. One of those unfortunate chaps the recession hit harder than others. Thoroughly honest otherwise. Clean record, clean as a whistle …’

  ‘I see,’ the man in black repeated.

  ‘Sentencing today. I won’t be asking for a custodial sentence. It wouldn’t serve any purpose. Wouldn’t serve the public interest in any shape or form. The man is of better use working in his shop and paying his taxes.’

  ‘Then it was a waste of time coming here.’ The man in black stood up.

  ‘Sorry about that.’

  Ali walked in with the coffee as they were shaking hands, bidding each other a good day in a chummy sort of fashion.

  ‘We won’t need that coffee after all, Ali,’ Aitken declared imperiously.

  I could’ve strangled him in all his sanctimonious smugness.

  Tony was in court long before the sentencing was to start. Clearly he wanted to talk. He wanted to talk me out of pursuing his panel-beating client. He was surprised to see the pompous pimply twat instead of me. At first he was surprised, then his brain began to tick. I could tell he didn’t know about my accident, but he was glad to be faced with a new adversary. A much less formidable adversary. A much less experienced one. An idiot.

  Tony dashed out towards Aitken with his arms wide open. He patted him on the back, asked after his posh uncle in London, chatted about his summer plans. Ibiza was indeed the place to be this summer!

  ‘The judge won’t like the idea of adjournment,’ Tony pointed out casually after the long preliminaries aimed at weakening his opponent’s resistance. ‘With only two weeks to summer break … well, judges are only human. They too have deadlines to meet. They too like their cases done and dusted before –’

  ‘We won’t be asking for an adjournment,’ Aitken was glowing in his momentary glory.

  ‘You won’t?’

  ‘I decided it wouldn’t be in the public interest.’

  ‘You decided? I can’t say I don’t agree, but does Georgie?’

  ‘You don’t know? You don’t know what happened?’

  ‘Well, I was wondering why you –’

  Aitken interrupted. He clearly didn’t like the slightest intimation that he was only a stand-in, a second-best. ‘I took over Georgie’s cases on top of my own. While she is convalescing.’

  ‘Has she been taken ill?’ I could see relief spilling across Tony’s face like liquid honey. He must have considered himself the luckiest man on this planet.

  ‘No, not ill. She was run over by a car. Hit and run. She’s in a coma. Critical, I’m afraid.’

  Tony’s face had undergone a sudden transformation. The smirk of sweet relief was gone. He went tangibly pale. For a second I thought he would faint, but he only sat down. I sat there with him. Minutes passed in stony silence. I wished I could kiss him. He was seriously shaken. I hadn’t dared to think he actually cared about me. But he did. He cared more than I had imagined.

  To say that I was flattered would be an understatement. I was touched to the core.

  Tony sat through the hearing and went through the motions with an absent look in his eyes. He nodded curtly as Ehler thanked him for his efforts. Ehler himself was beaming like a newborn baby with a silver spoon between his teeth. That didn’t surprise me – the devil had got away with murder! A suspended sentence was a joke.

  Aitken, too, was immensely pleased with himself. He was on a high, filled with adoration for himself which no one else seemed to share.

  Bramley-Jones looked at him in sheer frustration. ‘As long as you’re absolutely sure, Gavin.’

  ‘The case is closed. It may not be a concern for you, but I am accountable for every penny spent and the cost of grasping at straws is way too high in this economic climate.’

  ‘If you say so. Georgie, however –’

  ‘It’s out of Georgie’s hands.’

  ‘So it is.’

  If Bramley-Jones had any temper, he held it back well. I, on the other hand, was fuming. As soon as I was out of this flipping coma, I would bite Aitken’s head off and serve it to the wolves on a golden platter. I didn’t care how influential his relatives were. I just wanted his blood. Arrogant little prig! An idiot. All he was fit for was to stack shelves at a supermarket.

  I couldn’t bear being around him. Neither could Bramley-Jones. He took himself away from the pimply twat. Walking down the steps, he caught up w
ith Tony.

  ‘Congratulations are in order!’

  ‘Thank you,’ was the dry response.

  ‘If Georgie were here –’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘I can’t believe what happened to her.’

  To that there was no reply. Tony buckled under his words. He looked beaten up. Sick.

  Bramley-Jones gazed into his eyes, alarmed. ‘Are you all right, my man?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, thank you,’ Tony sounded as if he was pulling himself out of a slippery well. Every word seemed a superhuman effort. ‘I must go. Sorry.’

  I was drained. Life without me teemed with emotions. It was too much to handle. I needed a break: to sit somewhere quietly with a cup of tea and a Kit Kat. I guess in my earthly life that would mean a lunch break. Since in the spirit world food and beverages weren’t on the cards – and neither was idle sitting – I went to see Mother.

  It appeared that, since I saw her yesterday, she had not moved from her chair by the window. Neither had she changed her clothes. There was a cup of milky tea and some Rich Tea biscuits by her side, ready to be had any time this century. Mother wasn’t in a hurry. These days, haste didn’t touch the surface of her existence.

  I thought I would just sit with her and keep her company. Together, we would companionably blank out the world. After all, nowadays, we had much more in common than we had ever had: we were both in a semi-vegetative state, teetering between living and dying, not quite able to make up our minds. She was muttering under her breath, her lower lip quivering as usual. My eyes followed hers into the park outside the window. The lawns were mowed and manicured to clinical perfection; hedges were sculpted into the shape of truncated prisms which resembled coffins. Mother was looking beyond them, into a copse.

  There was a look of great concentration on her face, the sort children have when they learn a new trick, like using a knife and fork. When I glanced up into the biggest tree in the copse I could see why she was so focused. Mother was climbing the tree.

  It wasn’t Mother as she was now; it was Mother when she had been about seven. She was a bright-eyed and bushy-tailed tomboy, wearing a pair of high-waisted shorts on elasticised braces and a straw hat. There were five rascals about her age swarming around the tree, all boys apart from Mother. She was taller and more agile than them. Her bare feet clung to the tree like a snail. She was balancing on the sloping trunk which hung over a bubbling brook, letting its branches down to tease the current. She was pulling herself up, higher than the others, always ahead of the pack.

  ‘Grab that branch! Not that one! That one!’ She was guiding a boy with two front teeth missing. He strained and wobbled on his toes, but couldn’t reach the branch. His face dropped into a scowl.

  ‘Here, give me your hand. I’ll pull you.’

  She was hanging upside down, her legs hooked on a branch, her arms stretched towards the boy. Their hands met as he leapt up, but he was too heavy for her. Slowly his fingers slipped from her grasp and he plummeted into the brook, screaming his head off as he bounced off the lower hanging branches. The others gasped as they were splashed with water. Seeing his fall from the tree (and from grace), and fearing his potential drowning, my seven-year-old mother unhooked her legs and dived head first into the stream. Even though I had the obvious hindsight knowledge that she must have made it safely to the bank, I froze. No need: within seconds both the boy’s head and hers bobbed on the surface. They were both laughing and spitting water – a loud, hysterical surge of heightened adrenalin. As they waded over to the bank, Mother poured water out of her straw hat and stuck it back on her head. Long, dark green weed curled around the brim like a snake. Her shorts were swelling with water.

  Paula turned up from nowhere in her usual Paula fashion. She was all glamour and no substance. One look at her crimson cheeks and stage makeup and I began to wonder if she had only just left the set of Macbeth. Her face was frozen in an expression of permanent shock. I couldn’t tell if it was Paula in character or in Botox. She was skin and bone: Pilates and egg whites taken to a new level of self-obliteration. She produced a bunch of grapes and a flamboyant bouquet, potentially recycled from her latest premiere. Her hands were claw-like and the black nail varnish didn’t help to dispel the impression she had just stepped out of her grave.

  She dug one of her claws into Rob’s shoulder. ‘And I was always the accident-prone one in the family,’ she intoned dramatically. Paula had a way of making a dramatic entrance. She made Rob jump. He stared at her, clearly not having the faintest idea who the apparition was.

  She sat on my bed and crossed her legs. Her heels alone could kill. Rob watched her, fascinated. Or frightened. He fidgeted, looking for something to comfort him. The kettle would have come in handy, but it was no longer on my bedside table. I wondered if it had got home at last, or if someone had stolen it. It was a decent kettle. I gave it to Rob two years ago, for his forty-fifth birthday.

  ‘I came as soon as I heard. Luckily, I’m friends with Tony Sebastian. We frequent the same places. Old friends. He told me.’ How the hell did she know Tony? His and Paula’s social circles weren’t exactly a Venn diagram!

  Were they?

  Rob shook his head, indicating he was lost.

  ‘Tony, Tony Sebastian,’ Paula cocked her head, ‘he knows Georgiana quite well, I understand … They’re … hmm … friends. Surely, you’ve heard of him?’

  I didn’t like Paula’s tone. It was incriminating. How much did she know, the dirty old coquette? She’d never stopped being a troublemaker, and wouldn’t pass up the opportunity to undermine my marriage, ever since the wedding night, come to think about it. Would Tony have told her about us …?

  ‘Yes, I know Tony Sebastian. Vaguely …’

  ‘Small world!’

  ‘I’m sorry, forgive me, but it’s you … I don’t know who you are.’

  She was gobsmacked. ‘Ah! You don’t remember me. Have I changed that much? It’s the shock, I’m sure.’ She uncrossed her legs Basic Instinct-esque and followed Rob’s downward spiralling gaze with an indulgent smirk, clearly hoping that the inside of her thighs would refresh his memory much quicker than her face. ‘Let me take you down memory lane, shall I, Rob darling? Last time we saw each other was at your wedding. We shared a few drinks. A few too many,’ she laughed. ‘It’s ancient history, really … Now, let me think … We go back even further: a chilly New Year’s Eve party, star-studded sky, ground frost that could penetrate one right up to one’s –’

  ‘I’m sorry … I didn’t recognise you. It’s Paula, isn’t it?’ Rob was pale, his complexion blending well with the colour of my deathbed sheets.

  ‘Paula! Paula, but of course! Ten out of ten!’ She was laughing even louder now. The whole hospital could hear her; even the dead had arisen. ‘Georgiana’s little sister Paula!’

  ‘Sorry, Paula, so sorry, I didn’t recognise you,’ Rob repeated in a desperate attempt to shut her up.

  ‘Oh, darling, I’ll have to forgive you.’ She patted his knee, her bony fingers stretching towards his groin. ‘Under the circumstances you can be excused for being a tiny bit forgetful …’ She gave me a throwaway glance. ‘So, how is she?’

  Paula took Rob out of the ‘stuffy hospital’ for coffee and a chat at La Rochelle. It was her favourite spot, she said. She had been back in Bristol for five years now, performing at the Hippodrome, did Rob know? But then how would he? No one would’ve told him; she kept a low profile. Given their past, she didn’t want to intrude on his marital bliss. Georgie wouldn’t understand. Like hell, I wouldn’t! I still didn’t. I couldn’t make heads or tails of the link between them. Considering that we had Paula in the equation, it had to be something seriously unholy. And what was it about the star-studded sky on New Year’s Eve? Which New Year’s Eve? She had been out of town for over twenty years! And what unthinkable filth exactly had passed between Paula and my husband when she accosted him at our wedding, and he rolled over and played dead for her entertainment? I could never
quite take that image out of my mind: a cat toying around with a dead mouse, just for the heck of it. I vaguely recalled seeing her steamroll out of the men’s toilet, the hem of her red dress just about covering her then still-perky arse. I still remembered wondering what the fuck she was doing in the men’s toilet … Getting lost in her drunken stupor? Or getting laid? I would never know, but I was wary of her now that she’d suddenly decided to set foot on my patch.

  My darling sister Paula posed a threat to the sanity and stability of my family, which was particularly unnerving because, as it happened, I wasn’t around to defend myself, or them. She had the floor, and she seemed to have my husband by the balls. She blathered on like a scratchy old vinyl record, over the hum of the restaurant, over my thoughts, over Rob’s head. She had thought of visiting us but all she had managed was to visit Mother a couple of times. It was such a traumatic experience! Mother wasn’t who she used to be. Paula felt Mother didn’t welcome her visits so she stopped bothering the old dear.

  They ordered: Rob took tea and a piece of cake; Paula managed a glass of water. She was full, she said. Full of shit, said I. They didn’t talk about me. I might as well have been dead and buried for years – old news, yesterday’s snow … It was all about Paula. She was ‘between relationships’.

  ‘And content with it, darling Rob,’ she chirped. ‘Relationships are so high-maintenance! And men just take. Rarely do they give anything back. I give all I have. I give myself unconditionally. You, of all people, should know … So, in the long run, you see, it isn’t fair on me.’

  Stiff as stiff could be, Rob nodded. Did he know what she was talking about? I sure as hell didn’t. No one took anything from Paula. It was the other way around. Paula had always been a taker. Was I a taker too? Was he making comparisons between us? Was he petrified of what similarities he saw between me and that sore excuse of a sister with whom I had the misfortune of sharing a gene or two?

  Paula smiled at him plaintively. I couldn’t say if she was being nostalgic about her past or seizing her new conquest. She watched Rob eat his cake. There was satisfaction in her eyes as if she was having the cake with him – anorexics usually compensate by vicarious eating, or talking excessively about food. ‘I don’t mind the coffee cake. Is it good?’