Wrong Place Wrong Time(25)

Ten o’clock in the morning. A sweet black coffee, her desk, and Rakesh. He has stood here thousands of times over the years, often swings by early and complains that he doesn’t want to start work. That was the foundation they built their friendship on: moaning.

‘Can you try to contact Andy for me?’ Jen says to Rakesh now.

She has just told Rakesh, again, what’s happening to her. Jen rushed through her explanation to Rakesh, appearing inauthentic and haphazard. She’s told it so many times, she has become tired of the tragedy of it, like somebody who’s seen so much death and destruction that they are immune.

Still, Rakesh seemed to believe that she really thinks this is happening to her, the same way he did last time. Passively, serious, perhaps internally diagnosing her with something, but not saying what.

‘I can’t get hold of him, and I need to,’ Jen says sincerely but urgently. She needs to speak to Andy today: it’s all she has.

Rakesh steeples his fingers together in that way he does. ‘I’m sure I’ve never told you about Andy,’ he says with a small smile.

‘You do – in a few days.’

‘I see,’ Rakesh says, looking at her directly, his brown eyes on hers. He’s wearing a sweater vest, today, in purple, and holding a coffee. The rectangular outline of a box of cigarettes is visible in his trouser pocket. Some things don’t change.

Jen can’t help but smile back at him. ‘Please call him. He’s nearby, isn’t he? John Moore’s? I can go to his office – whatever.’

‘What’s it worth?’ Rakesh leans on the doorframe.

‘Oh, are we negotiating?’

‘Always.’

‘I’ll do your costs schedule on Blakemore.’

‘God, deal,’ he says immediately. ‘You’re so easy. I would’ve done it for a potato.’

‘And I’ll take your cigarettes so you can get back on the wagon.’ She points to his pocket. He blinks, then pulls them out.

‘Wow. Okay. I see.’ He retreats back down the corridor. ‘I’ll call him now.’ He raises a hand, a parting gesture. ‘Let you know.’

‘Thank you, thank you,’ Jen says, though she doesn’t think he can still hear her. She rests her elbows on the desk she’s worked at for the past two decades, feeling momentarily relieved to have instructed an expert.

The sunlight warms her back. She’d forgotten this little warm spell. A few days in October that felt, for a second, just like summer.

Andy says he will come to Liverpool city centre in two hours’ time. Jen – like a mug – does Rakesh’s costs schedule for him.

Jen and Andy arrange to meet in a café that Jen likes. It is unpretentious, cheap, the coffee good and strong. She finds romance in the retro quality it has: tea that costs pence, not pounds, ham sandwiches on the menu, torn vinyl benches to sit on.

As she walks there, weaving between shoppers and past off-key buskers, all the ways she’s ineffectually mothered Todd crowd into her mind. Feeding him too much so he slept more, upending the bottle while watching daytime television, bored, no eye contact. That time she shouted in frustration when he wouldn’t nap. How early she went back to work because her father put pressure on her; enrolling Todd in nursery so young, too young. Has she planted these seeds here? Was she a shit mother, or just a human? She doesn’t know.

Andy is already there, at a Formica-covered table: Jen recognizes him from his LinkedIn photo instantly. About Rakesh’s age, unruly hair woven black and grey. A T-shirt that says Franny and Zooey on it. J. D. Salinger, is that?

‘Thanks for seeing me,’ Jen says quickly, taking a seat opposite him. He’s already ordered two black coffees. A miniature silver milk jug sits on the table, which he gestures wordlessly to. Neither of them uses it.

‘Pleasure,’ Andy says, though it doesn’t sound like it. He sounds jaded, like how she gets when pushed into giving free legal advice at parties. It’s fair enough.

‘This must be – I mean, this must be unorthodox,’ she says, adding sugar to her coffee.

‘You know,’ he says, sitting back with a small shrug. He has just a trace of an American accent. ‘Yes.’ He makes a lattice with his hands and rests his face on it, just looking at her. ‘But Rakesh is a good friend.’

‘Well, I won’t keep you long,’ she says, though she doesn’t mean it. She wants him to sit with her all day: ideally, into yesterday.

Andy raises his eyebrows, not saying anything.

He sips his coffee then replaces it on the table, calm hazel eyes looking at her. He motions wordlessly, the kind of gesture you’d make when letting somebody through a door.

‘Go ahead,’ he says crisply.

Jen begins to speak. She tells him everything. Every last piece. She talks fast, gesticulating, insane amounts of detail. Every last part. Pumpkins, naked husbands, Cutting & Sewing Ltd, the knife, how she tried to stay up, the car accident, Clio. The lot.

A waitress silently fills their coffees up from a steaming percolator, and Andy thanks her, but only with his eyes and a small smile. He doesn’t interrupt Jen once.

‘I think that’s everything,’ she says, when she has finished. Steam dances around the overhead fluorescent lights. The café is near empty on this day – whatever day it is – in the mid-morning, mid-week. Jen is so tired, suddenly, with somebody else temporarily in charge, she thinks she could sleep right here at the table. She wonders what would happen if she did.