What happens when a man falls in love with his guardian angel?
Richard Sullivan is plagued by white feathers turning up at the oddest moments. Amy, his best friend, suggests his guardian angel is trying to contact him, but he dismisses the idea out of hand as nonsense.
Until, that is, he meets Sky. Six feet of muscle in a man skirt with white feather wings.
What exactly is a guardian angel? And what happens when your guardian angel takes leave and sends in a temp to cover? Do you wait for a perfect boyfriend on the off chance you may be able to touch him, to be with him, or do you grab happiness with another human? And, why the hell has Richard’s life suddenly become so complicated?
Chapter 1
It all started on my way back from the wrong job. I’d just turned it down because I couldn’t stand to listen to that lot going on about sustainability this and putting bees on the roofs of houses that. I just wanted them all to fuck off. I didn’t need their job offer. I had a good feeling the law firm application would get me onto their graduate scheme. I knew it. I could feel it in my water.
The law firm sent me a letter thanking me for the application. And good luck with my other job searching.
Fuck it.
I returned to the office just west of Liverpool Street station to do my last week of temping—my last week temping there, after a long series of temping jobs, some of which had made me want to jump under the train some mornings, others I could just sail through with my brain in neutral. And now this one. Well, this one was fine.
It had been fine. At first I thought it was quite interesting to try to do what New York City had done with its unloved, unknown areas, and name them. Like their SoHo was the area south of Houston Street. TriBeCa was the Triangle Below Canal Street. All this was interesting and news to me when I’d started at the Between Town Partnership. They were trying to make the area between the City of London, Liverpool Street, and the West End, happen. At the moment it was a sort of nowhere between the proper shopping of the West End and the financial district—a sort of no man’s land. No one had reason to go there specifically, unless they worked there, as I had for a variable three months.
I turned on my PC, went to the kitchen to make myself an instant coffee, but not Nescafé because they were doing something nasty about bottle-feeding in Third World countries. I had listened at the time, a bit, but had just internally rolled my eyes. No, this was all free-range, organic, preloved coffee. Shame it still tasted of shit, though.
I sat at my PC and noticed a white feather next to the mouse. I picked it up, looked at it closely, noticing it was pretty perfect as far as feathers went, and then threw it in the bin.
The morning passed without incident: spreadsheets about the CO2 output of various buildings, some brainstorming for this new area, and another offer of an extension to my contract.
“I’ll think about it, thanks,” I said, folding the offer letter into my bag and leaving for lunch.
I sat on a bench in a little park. The grass was covered in office workers, each eating their lunch and grabbing some air and sun for a moment in their day. I pulled out the offer letter from my bag, and another perfect white feather fell into my lap. This one was a bit larger—as big as my index finger—and still perfectly white, still not bent or dirty. I folded it back with the offer letter, then rang Amy at work. She’d know what to do.
“Good morning, The Music and Video Shop, how can I help you?”
“It’s me. How’s your morning?”
She swapped her phone voice for her proper, slightly Welsh accent. “Busy as it goes. I can’t believe people still actually come into a shop to buy this stuff.”
“Just be thankful they’re trying to close down Pirate Cove. And there’s plenty of people who don’t know how to use it anyway, playing it safe, buying DVDs and CDs from you lot.” I paused, thinking about my morning, my situation, and the feathers; she’d want to hear about those. “So, white feathers, what do they mean?”
“Oh, exciting! I’m due my break. I’ll make myself an herbal tea and call you from the staffroom.” After some muffled shouts about breaks, she rang off.
I stared at the office workers, talking on their mobiles, shovelling lunch into their faces, or sitting in groups, laughing and joking together. A bus stopped outside the black iron railings of the park and filled the air with fumes and a screeching of its brakes.
My mobile rang with Amy’s number. “What else except this feather?”
“I’m still debating if I could really be that person and accept the offer of the job and stay longer at this place. I mean, I know it’s okay money. I know it’ll mean I can pay the mortgage and eat for a bit longer without resorting to selling my body. I’m aware of all that. But really, Between Town Partnership? I just can’t be arsed. It’s balls, isn’t it? It’s all a load of balls, and I just can’t decide if I can bear it five days a week for another three months. I didn’t go to uni for three years to do this shite, did I? All that debt—it’s got to be worth more than this?”
“Right, I’m here now.” She slurped from the usual dandelion and burdock herbal tea.
I could practically smell its vileness wafting down the phone. “So?”
“Take it if you want. Don’t take it if you don’t want. You can always get a different job if something comes up. At least you’ve got this one bagged.”
“Says the woman who still works at her ‘just for the summer holidays at uni’ job.”
“Say what you want, Richard, but I’ll be a manager within a year and I’m already managing easy listening and books, so it’s looking up.”
“Amy, is that really looking up? Is that genuinely your definition of looking up? Because if it is, I’m very disappointed in you.”
“I suppose I’m just more pragmatic about these things. Look, you’ve got to work no matter what. No option. No rich parents willing to pay for you to loll about after uni. No lottery win in the pipeline?”
I shook my head and mumbled, “No.”
“Right. Well, then, beggars can’t be choosers. In this economy, you should be glad of the offer and take it. Think about it.”
“But I don’t want to do this. I don’t give a shit about what they’re doing. Not only is my heart not in it, my body, soul, and mind aren’t in it either. And I just don’t think I’m ready, this early in my career, to sacrifice all that just for a pay cheque each month.”
“It’s three months, not indentured servitude tied to your home. Three months. Think about it.”
“I will.” I knew I wouldn’t. I’d already thought about it, and talking to Amy now was just reinforcing my original decision. “So, the white feathers. Bottom line, what’s it about, according to your sources, I mean. Actually, it’s just a stray white feather or two, but I’m up for a laugh, so go on, entertain me….”
“Carry on like that and I’ll put the phone down.”
“Sorry. I am really interested. It’ll make me smile, ’cause God knows nothing else today will. I am, as they say, all ears.”
Amy took a long gulp of her tea, cleared her throat, and began. “There’s many different theories about the white feathers. Some people think it’s the spirits of dead relatives trying to get in touch with the living—”
“I don’t like the sound of that. Imagine who it could be! Granny, angry ’cause I never visited her enough when she was alive, or that strange Auntie Muriel with the big smock dresses, enormous bosom, and wet kisses of bright red lipstick, smothering me every time I visited.” I shuddered at the memory. “Sorry, go on. It’s interesting, and I’m not being sarcastic. I’m really interested.”
“Or it could be something to do with fairies. People think there are little fairies and pixies around us all the time, and sometimes one of their little wings brushes against something and knocks off a feather.”
I blew a long raspberry down the phone and rolled my eyes, grateful she couldn’t see me.
“I can soon put the phone down, you know. I’m not saying it’s what I believe, it’s general theories. That’s what you wanted, isn’t it?”
I nodded, then explained that yes, that was what I wanted. “Sorry,” I added.
“So the fairies knock their wings—” She paused and I imagined her counting off the reasons on her hands. “—oh yes, and then there’s the angels theory. People believe—some people—that everyone has a guardian angel looking after them and the white feathers are their way of trying to get in touch with the person they’re looking after.”
“Why would they do that?” This sounded even more far-fetched than the fairy explanation, and I knew that one was shite.
“Lots of reasons: to tell you they’re helping you with something, to help guide you to make a particular decision, loads of reasons.”
“Shit, do you think this means I’m meant to stay at this job? That it’s my destiny to think of a natty name for the area of London west of Liverpool Street and east of Holborn viaduct?” I paused and took a deep breath. “Fuck me. If that’s it, I might as well jump in the Thames now and be done with it.”
“Don’t be so dramatic. It doesn’t suit you, Richard. I read somewhere that some bloke said he found a white feather and it was his guardian angel trying to say he was sorry for not giving him as much good luck as he’d have liked, but he was still learning.”
“So the angels have L-plates, do they? Is there a British School of Angeling they go to, sitting next to more experienced guardian angels and learning how to stop people choosing the wrong things or to stop them from falling down manholes? I don’t think so.”
“Believe what you want to, but I’m done. I did what you asked, and it’s up to you if you want to believe it.”
“It certainly is. Thanks, talk soon.” I put the phone down.
Chapter 2
I finished the week at the Between Town Partnership and attended my own half-arsed leaving do, consisting of a gift pack of toiletries and a box of chocolate chip cookies. Siobhan the receptionist-stroke-HR person said there weren’t any cakes left in the whole of the City of London, so she’d got me biscuits instead. We stood around the plate of biscuits, dunking them in our tea—no wine before five thirty. They promised to keep in touch and said they’d definitely see me around.
Around where? Why am I going to come to this little office again? At every temp job I’d left over the last nine months since graduating, it had been the same drill as this. Half-arsed leaving party, because when you take a short contract you always know it’s ending, even at the start. But this etiquette seems to have grown where you still do a leaving party, just like you would for someone who’s worked there for twenty years. And at the party, we’d all stand around saying we were bound to bump into each other again soon. “Moving in the same circles” was often mentioned. At a factory that made and distributed toilet roll to hotels, when the manager said that remark, I’d just nodded while staring at a piece of stained carpet in the distance. If I move in these same circles again, something will have gone very wrong with my life.
Now they patted me on the back. Siobhan gave me my HR paperwork once I handed in my ID badge and swipe card. It all felt quite ceremonious in its own sad little way as I handed back my stapler. She said I could keep the pen and notepad I’d written in.
A small victory.
“Where you working next?” someone who worked in Finance asked, but whose name I’d never bothered to find out.
“I’ve got some applications in: graduate jobs, graduate schemes, that sort of thing. Keep your fingers crossed for me.” I smiled weakly.
Finance man smiled back, then made two thumbs up. “Stay in touch!”
He was nice. He is nice. We could have been friends if I’d bothered to find out his name. Not now—that ship had sailed.
I left for the Tube and made my way back to north London, to the flat in Tufnell Park, which had seemed so perfect when I was sharing it with Jenny, my friend from uni. Until just as we graduated, we fell out. In a rather strange way.
“What’s wrong?” I’d asked one night, almost a year ago, both of us slumped in front of the TV after a day of job-hunting.
“Not that you’d care?” she spat, and lit a Silk Cut Ultra cigarette.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I’ve failed.”
“Job-hunting… look, it’s not easy. I know that too. I can give you a hand. We’ll do it together.”
“No. Uni, everything. I’ve failed.”
“What did you get?” I’d just scraped a 2:1 but didn’t want to ram it down her throat.
She flicked some ash into the Quaglino’s ashtray we’d nicked one night, both of us mindless pissed and out of control, rolling home in the small hours. Good times.
I started, realising she wasn’t going to reply. “2:2? Or was it a third? It’s not too bad. You can still get a lot of jobs with that. And it’s a good university, this. Best for teaching in the south-east they say, and history apparently.”
“I didn’t do teaching, or history. You know that.”
“What did you get?”
“Ungraded.”
Now this had been a surprise. This I hadn’t expected. Jenny wasn’t exactly an academic. She wasn’t a “get your books out when you get the essay questions” sort of girl. And in fairness, I wasn’t that sort of boy either. We’d sort of breezed through the other two years together, scraping by with a C here and a B minus there, propping each other up with coffee when we pulled an all-nighter to finish an essay due the week before, having begged our tutor to give us another extension. Jenny had that many dead grandparents, I feared for their neighbours—there must be something in the water round her way.
And okay, so we did get a bit too into the London scene. Both of us grew up in, as she described it, “Buttfuck nowhere.” Jenny from rural Gloucestershire’s rolling hills and farms, and me from Wiltshire, from a tiny village the other side of Salisbury where the nearest petrol station or big town was a forty-minute drive away.
Coming to London was a bit like being let loose in a sweet shop. I’d frequently had to remind Jenny why we were actually at uni in London.
“It’s your fault, I blame you,” she said, staring me in the eyes.
“How’d you work out that one?”
“Dragging me to night clubs in the week, making me stay out all night when I’ve got an essay deadline.” She picked up the ashtray. “This. This is a symbol for our recklessness in uni, and I blame you for it.”
“But I did all those things with you. And I still got my essays in—just about—on time.”
“That’s the bit you didn’t tell me. In the third year, it’s all so much harder. And after going out, somehow you managed to still get your work done. Or had you done it before we went out?” She peered at me, like she’d just found me furkling through her purse.
“I don’t know. Sometimes I’d done it, sometimes not.” I shrugged. “I assumed you were working away on your laptop in your room too. You never said anything?”
“I was so hung-over one day, I turned on Carrie, and as I opened the document to start writing my essay, I threw up all over the desk. I was lucky to have saved Carrie from that.”
She’d named her laptop after the writer, Carrie Bradshaw, in Sex and the City. Yes, it was an Apple laptop—what else? With pink case. It was her pride and joy. Shame she’d not used it a bit more in that last year.
I was still struggling with how you could pass the first two years and then be so badly corrupted by me that you failed the third one. “What about the exams? How did you do in those this year?” Hopefully she’d have scraped a few Bs or Cs. I’d helped her revise for her exams over the two years we’d lived together, but now I thought about it, not lately.
“It was all coursework and self-directed study this year. No exams, Richard. None.”
“There must be something you can do? That can’t be the final word on your final grade. What about the other two years of study? Don’t they count for anything?”
She was in her bedroom now, throwing things into boxes. “I’ve had that conversation. Turns out years one and two together only counted for 30 percent of the final grade.”
“How was I supposed to know that? Come on, you can redo some modules. It’ll be fine. I’ll help you.”
“Never once did you ask me how it was going this year? You were too busy applying for your graduate training schemes and revising for exams. While you watched me self-destruct my life.”
“I didn’t know. I had no idea. I wanted someone to come out with me to celebrate as I finished each exam. You should have said something.”
She stopped throwing things into boxes and rested her hands on her hips. “I told Mum and Dad it was your fault. I had to blame someone. And it was your fault, at least in part. If I said it was me doing it on my own, they wouldn’t pay for me to repeat the year. This way I can blame you, and I get to do it again.”
“So you acknowledge it wasn’t me?”
“It was fun while it lasted, and now it’s over.” She nodded. The intercom buzzed. “That’ll be them.” She ran downstairs and let her parents in.
I stood by my bedroom door as her dad carried her boxes to their large Volvo estate and her mum helped pack her room into more boxes. They both glared at me every time they passed my door.
Her parents waited in the car. I looked at her empty bedroom. “What am I supposed to do for your half of the rent?”
Jenny shrugged. “I’ve left you the Quaglino’s ashtray.”
“Will I see you again?”
“Doubt it.” Then she had started to shout loudly at me, accusing me of ruining her life, how I’d led her astray, that she couldn’t believe how much of a waster I was, and that it had infected her.
I just stood there as she bellowed at me, directing her voice down the stairs to the Volvo estate. As she finished, she shrugged her shoulders and left.
Since then I’d been quite reluctant to get another flatmate. After a while I’d got used to living alone and enjoyed the extra space. The landlord had asked if I wanted to buy it, because he needed the money straight away and couldn’t hang around to do it up, and he offered it to me for not quite a song, but maybe the first few songs on an album. Although in Tufnell Park, I was relieved it was an ex-local authority block on a main thoroughfare in the “N7 Holloway, untrendily far from Hampstead Heath” postcode bit, or it would have cost telephone numbers. But this little wrong bit of the right area of north London was soon mine. I was surprised to find the mortgage was about the same as the rent had been. A form-filling session followed, with a mortgage advisor called Deborah, who had advised me to say I was self-employed, and then I was a proper adult, with a proper adult mortgage. These banks really do lend to anyone far too easily, don’t they?
Now, I used Jenny’s old room as my spare bedroom, with my laptop, printer, and music, as well as some of my clothes. It was very extravagant, considering how much the flat was costing me, but I just knew I’d get one of the proper jobs. Something would turn up.
I had an entire weekend in the flat alone. I opened my bank statements, which had been resting on the mat by the door. Another letter from the bank reminded me I was no longer due an interest-free student overdraft and asked me to call in to make alternative arrangements.
What alternative arrangements did they have in mind? Would I still owe them the money?
I looked in the fridge—nothing edible, really. Venturing into the freezer, I found some chips.
Later I sat at the kitchen table, dipping the chips in ketchup and mayonnaise mixed together. Jenny used to hate that. There was a letter from the council—a reminder about paying council tax. Another thing I hadn’t had to pay when I was a student.
I put the plate in the sink—I’d clean it up, at some point—and walked to my gracious spare bedroom. A pile of job and graduate scheme adverts I’d cut out of newspapers and magazines was waiting for me to complete their application forms. At an average time of over two hours each, the pile was at least sixteen hours’ work.
I sat at the desk and fired up my laptop—I hadn’t named mine. I picked the form at the top of the pile and started to write my application letter and tweak my CV according to what hardworking, enthusiastic, being-born-to-the-job qualities they were looking for. Some of the adverts read more like a religious cult. What had happened to just wanting someone to do the job? Since when had it been a prerequisite to be born to customer service or have a passion for frozen foods or whatever it was?
In the middle of the letter, the laptop stopped. I checked its battery, which was in and charging too. It had just given up the ghost. No matter, I thought, I’ve emailed it to myself, and I can nip round Amy’s and do a bit there—an excuse to see her if she’s in.
I rang Amy, told her my news, and tried not to come across as too pathetic.
“Course you can come round. Get a pizza, and we’ll make a night of it. Bring the USB stick with all the CVs and other applications you’ve done. We can use them. No reinventing of wheels here. We’ll make a game of it.”
Her enthusiasm was brilliant, amazing, exactly what I needed. As she talked about what we could do together that night and told me about how she’d just got a new dreamcatcher and I should tell it what my dreams were and it would make them come true, I looked for my USB stick.
I looked everywhere—and couldn’t find it.
Then it hit me, the memory of what I’d not done. “I didn’t email it,” I said.
“Why not?”
“Internet’s not working. It sort of stopped a while ago, and I never got round to fixing it. I’ve just been using my phone for essentials. You know, IMDb, Google, Wikipedia, emails.”
“How long’s it been down?”
“How long have I been at that Between Town Partnership job?”
“Three months!”
“Not the whole time, no. Just the last half. Say a month. Or so.”
“Did you call them to sort it?”
“Of course I did. I’m not a child. I do understand the responsibility of living alone, you know.”
She tutted loudly down the phone.
“Every time I called, I waited on the phone for hours and asked for a ringback. And did they ring me back? Did they, my arse.” I looked into the bathroom and noticed a white feather on the black- and white-tiled floor. Its white fluffiness was in complete contrast to the shiny black tile it landed on. “Amy?”
“Are you still coming round, or what?”
“What does it mean if you see another white feather?”
“When did you see the last one?”
“A week ago, maybe a bit less.”
“Right, I’m coming round. You get the pizza, I’ll be there in half an hour.”
“But I’ve not got any Internet? You do understand that concept, don’t you? Not just ‘it’s a bit dodgy, and we’ll have to wait a while.’ I mean no Internet at all.”
Amy arrived half an hour later. I lay on the sofa, resisting the smell of the pizza in the oven. “Show me the feather,” she said.
I led her to the bathroom, where it lay in exactly the same place on the shiny black tile. It was about two inches long, completely white, and in perfect condition, with no broken parts or missing sections. This was a show-quality, cream-of-the-crop white feather.
“Do you have feather pillows?” Amy held the feather between her fingers.
“No, they make me sneeze.”
“Duvet?”
“Are duvet cover feathers any different from pillow feathers?”
She looked me in the eye, stuck out her bottom lip, and replied, “Who do you think I am, the woman from the department store’s bed section? I don’t fucking know. I expect they’re the same.”
“Again with the sneezing.” I smirked.
“What about one of those little duvet-like coats everyone’s wearing? They’re full of feathers, and they pack up all small. I was thinking about getting myself one, but then I thought about all the birds who would have to die to make it, so I didn’t in the end.”
“It’s not like wearing fur. You can take the feathers off and keep the bird alive still.”
“So you think. It’s not like shearing a sheep. I’ve seen a programme about bird feathers, and I tell you, you’ll never buy anything with feathers again. Or eat a duck. I don’t eat duck.”
“Point, Amy. Have you met?”
“Sorry?”
“You don’t eat meat anyway, never mind bloody ducks.”
“So the coat, have you got one?”
I shook my head. “Again with the sneezing, although I did like the green one they do.”
She examined the feather in her hand. “So where’s this come from?”
“I could’ve brought it in on my shoes. Plenty of white pigeons out there, moulting all the time. Stuck on my shoe, and I tramped it in here.”
“This isn’t a pigeon feather. And if you’d tramped it in, why’s it perfect? No mud, no breaks, nothing.”
We both stared at the feather for a while.
Amy spoke first. “He’s trying to get in touch with you again.”
“Who’s it this time, please?”
“Your guardian angel. He’s trying to get in touch to tell you something about your life.”
“Can he tell me what to do about having no money? That would be really useful, really practical. And what about getting a job? Should I have taken that other job, or will one of these graduate ones come to anything?” I looked at the ceiling, for want of anywhere else to look except the feather or Amy’s serious face.
“They don’t get in touch for shit like that. It’s not your own personal counsellor-stroke-Wikipedia angel, Richard!”
“Sorry for being so stupid.” I rolled my eyes. “What we gonna do then? We can’t do my applications ’cause I’ve lost my USB thingy. We can’t look on the Internet—”
“What? Why not? What’s wrong with it?”
“I knew you weren’t listening. I have no Internet—it’s not working. We talked about this before.”
“I vaguely remember, now you mention it. I think I ignored it because I couldn’t really comprehend or believe that someone would be without Internet at home for eight weeks.”
“I have tried. Many times. But nothing.”
Still holding the feather, Amy asked, “What happened at work today?”
I told her about it being the last day, and umming and aahing about whether I should have taken the job there, and about the man from Finance.
“So what’s the plan for Monday? Where you working?”
“You know the answer to that. I’ve already told you.”
“I know, but I just want you to say it again, so I can arrange it alongside all the other stuff that’s happening in your life at the moment.”
“Please don’t tell me this is something to do with cosmic ordering and the universe bringing me numbers. I really don’t think I could cope.” I put my hand over my face and closed my eyes.
“I brought my dreamcatcher, and that’s got feathers on it.”
“Maybe that’s where it came from.” I looked at her hopefully.
“They’re brown feathers, you idiot.” She reached into her bag and brought out the dreamcatcher and a green crystal.
I braced myself.
“So, what are you doing for work on Monday?”
“During the day I’m standing wearing a sandwich board pointing to a snack bar just off Oxford Street.”
“And at night?”
I hung my head in shame. “I’m handing out flyers for a nightclub in King’s Cross.”
“All week?”
“Monday to Friday. The agency said I could do Saturday too, for an extra pound, but I said no, I was all right, I’d manage without the extra pound.”
“Couldn’t you do with the extra money?”
“It was an extra pound for the whole day—between the two different places, not per hour.”
“Oh.” She nodded slowly.
“And what do you make of all that? Pretty shit, I’d say.”
“So it’s actually getting worse, not better. Is that fair to say?”
I nodded. “Now you list all the things together, yes, that’s fair to say.” I paused.
Amy counted things off on her fingers, stared at her dreamcatcher, and then cupped the green crystal in her hands.
“Look, are we gonna eat this pizza? I’m starving. My whole life can’t be a complete washout, can it?”
“Sorry to say, Richard, at the moment, it does look like it’s moving in that direction.”
I walked to the kitchen, opened the oven, and took the pizza box out. The pizza was stuck hard onto the box.
We sat eating pizza, picking bits of cardboard off every mouthful.
Amy said, “He’s come back to tell you he’s sorry, about this… this bad patch you’re going through at the moment.”
“What are you on about now?”
“The feather. It’s from your guardian angel. He’s trying to get in touch again. Normally if things were going well, your luck would improve, but as you’ve said, it’s actually getting worse, not better. So he wants to apologise, explain, something. The feathers are his way of getting in touch with you.”
“So, is it like semaphore? Two feathers means B, and then another one will mean another letter or something?” I chewed the pizza and spat out some cardboard.
“I don’t know. I don’t make this stuff up. I’m just saying what I’ve read and what I’ve heard other people talk about.”
“Someone makes this stuff up. All this crap. Someone somewhere is making money out of all this, I bet. And I’m the sap, sitting here picking cardboard from my pizza, with a worse job than the one I’ve just left to greet me on Monday morning, no Internet, and no computer.” I put the pizza down on the table and felt myself crying. Big sploshy tears rolled down my face. Snot came from my nose as I closed my eyes.
Amy leant towards me and squeezed my shoulder. “Come on, it’s not that bad. You’ve still got this place, your health, me. It could be worse.”
“Don’t say that, or it might actually get worse. Fuck it. I think I’m having some sort of a breakdown.” I pushed the pizza box away. The smell had made me feel sick suddenly. “I’m going to bed. I can’t handle this. Have I got any vodka in the kitchen?”
“I don’t think that’ll help, really.” She squeezed my shoulder again.
“No, seriously, can you check if I’ve got any vodka? I want a pint glass with five big shots, top it up with tonic and ice, and some lime. That should knock me out.”
Amy stared at me, not moving.
“If you don’t get it, I will, and you can leave. In fact, I think it’s best if you leave?”
“What’s wrong with you? You’re not yourself. Let me get you some warm milk, and you can go to bed.”
I said, very quietly this time so she knew I meant business, “I do not want milk. I want a pint of vodka and tonic. If you don’t get it for me, can you please leave? Thank you.”
She made me the drink, putting it on the table.
“In my bedroom, please. I’m going to bed now.”
She followed me to my room. I climbed into bed, fully clothed—the thought of undressing was just too much to contemplate. She put the pint glass of vodka and tonic on my bedside table, kissed me, and said goodbye.
“Light, please?” I mumbled as I pulled the covers over my head.
She turned off the light, and then there was blackness. Only the thrum of traffic and the shrill of an occasional ambulance or police car rushing outside broke the silence. I was used to the noise of London now, so it gently soothed me to sleep once I’d drunk the whole pint.
Chapter 3
Monday morning rolled round and I somehow dragged myself out of bed, where I’d remained for the rest of the weekend, wallowing in self-pity, rejoicing in how much of a fuck-up my life had become and not really knowing where to start to fix any of it.
Two weeks passed where I stood in the freezing cold wearing a sandwich board during the day, then got the Tube to King’s Cross and tried to persuade commuters and tourists—as well as the odd prostitute and drug addict—to come to the nightclub around the corner, behind the back of King’s Cross station. I wasn’t allowed to stop until I’d handed out all the flyers. The agency had persuaded me it was a well-paid job as I got a percentage of entry fee for every person who went in with one of my flyers. This had sounded great, brilliant, as I stood in the warm agency office.
Now, stood in the fuck-me-gently cold, I wondered how they actually worked that out. Because every week I’d only earned the minimum wage for the hours worked. The bare minimum they could pay me. In the fuck-me-gently cold.
One morning during the third week of leafleting, as I got out of bed, a dark feeling of dread surrounded me, like a cold black-gloved hand clasping at my heart. I couldn’t feel my legs properly. Rather than having a shower as usual, I ran myself a bath. I saw a box of tablets for the occasional but very intense migraines I had.
I popped six of the large circular white tablets out of the packet and slowly took one at a time, lapping water from the sink as I knelt on the floor. The bath was by now full enough. I turned off the tap and awkwardly managed to clamber into the bath, enjoying the floaty sensation from the water. I closed my eyes and lay back, after twenty minutes I started to fall asleep as the tablets took charge.
I remember thinking to myself that at least I didn’t have to stand outside in the cold with the sandwich board today. I smiled at that thought. I heard the radio from my alarm clock playing “Walking on Sunshine” by Katrina and the Waves. I kept my eyes closed, and the sound slowly muffled as I lay in the bath.
I woke, my head still over the edge of the bath, the water completely cold. I recognised the radio DJ as someone who did the breakfast show. Feeling sick, I leant over the edge of the bath and threw up on the floor.
I fell on the floor, covered in my vomit and water. Composing myself, I rolled away from the mess and rested, gasping for breath, laying on my back and looked at the ceiling. Stars shone against the lights of my bathroom. I scrabbled about with my hand and found my mobile, and I called Amy. “Now I know I’m having a nervous breakdown,” I cried, big howling cries down the phone. Amy’s voice shouted on the other end, but I couldn’t hear what she was saying. After a few minutes, I heard her voice projecting from the phone.
“What happened? What did you do? Richard, are you all right?”
“I couldn’t even do this right.” I rinsed my mouth with water, to take away the vomit taste.
“What? What didn’t you do right?” There was a pause and she said, “I’m calling an ambulance. Are you at home, Richard? Are you at home?”
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry….”
“On my way.”
The phone went dead.
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