I Know Who You Are(45)
Ben loves his job. He’s away almost as often as I am, traveling to any corner of the world that we deem to be more troubled than our own. The news is like an addiction for him, whereas I rarely pay any attention to it nowadays. If something bad had really happened, if he wasn’t able to go to work, then his employer would know; I’ve never known him to be off sick for a single day. All I have to do is prove that my husband is still alive, and that he is the one trying to hurt me, not the other way around. He’s trying to damage my reputation and destroy my career because he knows that’s all I have left and that, without it, I am nothing.
I force myself to walk through the revolving doors and approach the reception desk. I wait for the woman staring at her screen to look up, then I open my mouth, but the question seems too afraid to come out. The receptionist’s skin is a perfect black canvas, painted with critical eyes and an unsmiling mouth. Her hair is as restrained as her welcome, thick black strands pulled into a ponytail so tight, it results in an unnecessary face-lift. The lanyard around her neck displays a name badge reading JOY. From what I’ve seen of her so far, this seems a little ironic. My prolonged silence causes Joy to look at me as though I might be dangerously dim. Perhaps she’s right. Perhaps I am.
“Can I speak to Ben Bailey please?” I manage at last.
Her eyes, which had narrowed, widen, before a frown makes itself at home on her face. “Can I take your name?”
I don’t want to give her my name, I’d rather keep it to myself. I never give it willingly to anyone anymore.
“I’m his wife,” I settle on eventually.
She raises a drawn-on eyebrow in my general direction, then taps something on her keyboard. The name wife seems to satisfy the system for now. “Take a seat over there.”
I move to the red sofa where she wants me to wait. She doesn’t pick up the phone on her desk until I sit down, and she watches me the whole time while saying words I can’t hear.
I sit. People come and go. I watch the silver-colored lifts behind reception swallow some inside the building and spit others back out. Joy looks at and speaks in the same frosty fashion to everyone who approaches her desk, as though her thermostat is broken. The temperature of her tone is unchanging, and I think that it’s sad how some people are predisposed to coldness.
When the shape of a young man pops out of the lift and walks in my direction, I presume his outstretched hand is on its way to greet someone else, until I remember that I’m the only person still waiting. His twentysomething-year-old hair is too long, just like his gangly limbs, which jut out at peculiar angles beneath his shiny suit. He smells of aftershave and breath mints and youth.
“Hello, I believe you were asking for Ben Bailey?” His deep, upper-class voice doesn’t match his appearance. I nod and let him shake my hand. “I’m afraid Ben hasn’t worked here for over two years now. I said the same thing to the police yesterday. Did you tell reception that you were his wife?”
I can’t seem to form words just now, I’m too busy processing his, so I just nod again.
“How strange.” He takes in my appearance as though seeing me for the first time. His features adopt the familiar expression people wear when they can’t pinpoint how they know my face. He stumbles on, his sentences tripping over themselves in their eagerness to be heard. “I mean, Ben was the kind of guy who kept himself to himself, never came to the pub after work or anything like that. I didn’t really know him, none of us did. I’m sorry I can’t help. Is he in some sort of trouble?”
“You’re saying that Ben Bailey hasn’t worked here for two years?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
People are walking in and out of the building, the lift doors are opening and closing, the boy in front of me is still speaking, but I can’t hear a thing. Someone has turned the sound of my world off, and maybe that’s okay, because I don’t think I want to listen anymore. It’s true that I don’t think I’d asked him about his work for a while, we only ever seemed to talk about mine. But surely, losing your job is something most people would tell their partner? My mind is finally asking all the right questions, but it’s too late, and besides, I should already know the answers.
“Why did he leave?” It is a quiet question, but the young man hears me, and I hear his reply.
“He was fired. Gross misconduct. He didn’t take it too well at the time, I’m afraid.”
Thirty-seven
Essex, 1988
It’s a Saturday and I am sitting in the back room of the shop counting the coins and putting them into clear plastic bags. I check I’ve counted right with the red plastic coin shelf. I like to start with the ten-pence coins, stacking them all up until they reach the mark that says five pounds. Then I put them in the bag, it’s easy. Just as I’m folding over the top of the last bag, to stop the coins from falling out, I think I see a shadow move across the little window, but I must have imagined it, because Maggie and John are both in the shop, and it sounds awful busy.
Saturday is always the busiest day; people seem to really like placing bets at the weekend, I’m not sure why. Maybe they think it’s lucky or something. I think maybe I’m too young to understand why yelling at horses racing on a TV screen is fun. I get fed up listening to the sound of all the customers shouting, and smelling the stink of their cigarettes. The smoke creeps all the way to the back room from the shop, then hides in my nose so I have to smell it all day.