I Know Who You Are(62)
Her food is ready when she arrives to collect it.
“Chicken Madras, plain rice, garlic naan, and chips?” says the man behind the counter as soon as she walks through the door, as though that were her name. He sounds the same as the man she spoke to on the phone, but she can never be sure, and he looks so much younger than she imagined, little more than a boy.
“Beef Madras. It should be beef, not chicken.” Her voice sounds strange, deeper than it should.
“It’s beef, yes, sorry. Beef Madras.” He hands her the flimsy white plastic bag containing her celebration supper. She tuts, mumbles that she can’t eat chicken, then shakes her head at the boy’s accent while he continues to apologize for his mistake. Maggie wonders why nobody taught the boy to speak proper English. She pays the ￡11.25 using the exact change, so that there can be no further confusion.
She watches the news while she eats, hoping to see something about Aimee’s arrest on the television. She records it, pressing the red button on the remote, just in case. Sometimes she talks at the screen, maybe because there is nobody else to talk to. Maggie has never had much luck meeting the right people, even with the help of dating websites.
She still remembers the first time she came across Ben Bailey. She didn’t think much of him initially, had no idea of the role he was going to play in her life and the story of Aimee Sinclair. Sometimes, at our lowest moments, life lends us a signpost, and Maggie was smart enough to follow its directions, once she’d thought the journey through and realized where it might lead. She’s glad that she did, very glad indeed.
Ben Bailey was the kind of guy who kept himself to himself. Didn’t have any family or friends to speak of, at least none that Maggie could find after trawling the internet. His house was a mess. Shame really. Neglectful even, given its value and location on a nice street in Notting Hill. She thought it was strange that he didn’t tidy up after himself a bit more, didn’t seem to mind that people would see all his clutter when they came to the house, but then, there are some strange folk out there, people who are actually comfortable wearing the skin they were born in.
Ben Bailey’s garden was the biggest travesty of all. It had the potential to be a beautiful, secluded oasis, in the middle of an overpopulated city. But instead, it was a jungle of overgrown grass, dirty white plastic chairs, and an ugly patio. Maggie had always been keen on gardening and right from the start thought decking would be much easier on the eye.
It was obvious that Ben Bailey was a clever man; there were lots of fancy-looking books on his shelves. Most of them looked as if they’d actually been read, too, not like when you visit some people’s homes and you can tell it’s all for show. He didn’t have a single photo on display, not one. She still sometimes wonders what he did to push everyone around him so far away that he seemed to be completely alone in the world. But she tried her hardest not to think ill of the man; he had helped her in ways she had never previously dared dream possible.
The planning had to be meticulous: one mistake and the game would have been over before it ever began. It was so hard keeping it all to herself the whole time, but she knew she couldn’t tell anyone what she was doing if she wanted the plan to work. And Ben Bailey couldn’t tell a soul either.
He’d lost his job.
Gross misconduct the letter on his desk had said. She felt bad reading it, as though she were intruding during that first visit to his house. But then she figured he’d left it out knowing it would be read, as though he wanted her to see it. She’d googled gross misconduct when she got home that night; she had felt embarrassed to not really know what it meant. She didn’t enjoy feeling as if she knew less than other people just because she didn’t have a fancy education and hadn’t been to university.
Maggie had worked hard for everything she had; she might not have a degree, but she was smart in ways that couldn’t be learned in any school. Anything she didn’t understand, she taught herself, with the help of the internet.
Gross misconduct is behavior, on the part of an employee, that is so bad that it destroys the employer/employee relationship.
The definition reminded her of Aimee straightaway. Aimee had behaved badly and destroyed their relationship. Aimee and Ben were both guilty of gross misconduct in Maggie’s eyes, the only difference being that Ben had been punished for his behavior, and Aimee had got away scot-free. Until now.
Maggie couldn’t stop thinking about Ben Bailey those first few days; it was like an obsession, and she wanted to know everything about him. She visited the building where he had worked as a journalist and took one of his shirts home with her after her second visit to his house. She wore it in bed that night, thinking about him and everything he was going to help her do to teach Aimee a lesson she’d never forget.
Maggie puts down her knife and fork, feeling very uncomfortable now that she has eaten everything on her plate. She should not have ordered rice and chips. She turns off the television, disappointed that there was no mention of Aimee or Ben, and makes a mental note to watch the later bulletin on a different channel, hoping they might have better news judgment.
When she cannot wait any longer, she walks to the bathroom and vomits up her dinner. All of it. Thanks to the gastric band, she doesn’t even have to stick her fingers down her throat. She feels much better afterwards. She knows she can’t eat a big meal like that anymore, but she did it anyway. It’s okay to sometimes do the wrong thing in life, so long as you accept the consequences, that’s what Maggie believes. You do something bad, you pay the price, them’s the rules. Maggie has done some very bad things, but she doesn’t regret any of them, not a single one.