Keep your friends close, p.13
Keep Your Friends Close, page 13
‘Um…’ She dithers for a moment. ‘Doctor Campbell did stress to me that it would be best if you came in today.’
‘Sorry, today is out of the question.’
‘If it’s really impossible for you today, how about tomorrow morning at ten o’clock?’
‘Why the rush? It’s nothing urgent, is it?’
My reply is met with silence and I realise.
It is urgent.
‘Okay, Grace. I’ll come in tomorrow.’
I end the call and sit myself up in bed.
Urgent: what does that mean?
Maybe I should have gone in today to find out. Perhaps there’s something seriously wrong with me that will explain the weird episodes I’ve been having. It would be a good thing if there was a reason, as long as it was curable. But realistically, I don’t believe that I need to see him urgently at all; Doctor Campbell has called me in urgently in the past to inform me that I’m anaemic and need to start taking iron tablets, so I’m not unduly alarmed. I glance down at my phone screen to see there are loads of messages and as I’m about to open them, I notice the time: ten thirty.
I’ve slept for nearly fourteen hours.
After picking myself up from the floor by the front door last night, I stumbled into the bedroom and crawled into bed, so exhausted that even the thought of Owen coming back again failed to keep me awake. I had no intention of going into work today but nevertheless, I’m shocked that I’ve slept for so long. I never heard Carrie come home last night and she’ll have left for work hours ago. Sebastian will be wondering where I am. Several of the messages are from Sebastian and I open them up; he’s asking how I am and sounds concerned which isn’t surprising as I haven’t told him I won’t be coming into work today. I’ll have to lie and pretend I have a recurrence of the migraine, although despite having a raging thirst and feeling slightly sick, I feel better than I’ve felt in weeks. I had a lot of dreams last night but no nightmares. I can’t remember much about the dreams now, but Owen featured in them. He was circling around in my head along with everything else and even now, what I’ve discovered seems bizarre, to say the least. I feel much calmer about what happened now. I don’t think Owen did intend to hurt me; I think, as he said, he wanted to frighten me.
He certainly did that.
What I can’t understand is why Jim told him it was me who reported him; why would he do that? It must be some sort of mix up at head office and I’ll be having words with Jim when he comes back on shift because aside from it being a lie, he shouldn’t be giving out information like that, particularly to the person involved. Especially when it’s the wrong information. Although he couldn’t have expected that Owen was going to storm his way into my apartment and confront me.
I’ve no idea who made the complaint, but really, it could be anyone. There are a lot of apartments in this building and maybe he was over-familiar with one of the other residents and they didn’t like it. It seems like a harsh overreaction to report him but not everyone’s like me; some women take offence at over-friendliness and feel uncomfortable with it. I think Owen’s visit was fuelled by alcohol because I definitely smelled it on him, but that doesn’t excuse his bursting in here and threatening me. I was genuinely terrified. It’s going to be difficult for him to get another job without a reference so I can see why he thought I’d ruined his life.
But the other question that I’m forced to ask myself is, did I make a complaint to the management company and then forget I’d done so? It’s perfectly possible because I’ve seen and heard things that are a figment of my imagination, haven’t I? I need to check, but if I did do it, can I retract it – or would that look entirely mad? Owen shouldn’t have to lose his job because of my strange episodes. My finger is hovering over the recent calls list on my phone to check, when it starts to ring. Sebastian’s name flashes up. My first instinct is to ignore it but if I don’t answer, he’ll keep ringing.
I don’t want to speak to him or anyone, but I’ll have to. I press the button to answer.
‘Hi Sebastian.’
‘Mia, how are you feeling? I’ve been so worried about you.’
‘I’m not feeling great, to be honest. It’s this awful migraine, I can’t seem to shift it. All I can do is rest and wait for it to go; that’s what I usually do,’ I lie.
‘Poor you. I never knew you suffered with migraines.’ There’s a hint of accusation in his tone and I wonder if he knows I’m lying.
‘I rarely get them but when I do, they’re pretty awful. I’ll be fine in a few days. I’m so sorry that I dashed off like that yesterday without saying anything.’
‘It doesn’t matter; I’m just worried about you. I could come over at lunchtime, make you something to eat, keep you company, cheer you up?’
He’s trying to be nice, I know that, but I don’t want to see him. I don’t want to have to make normal conversation. I’ve so much going around in my head from yesterday that I’ll have difficulty concentrating on small talk.
‘That’s really sweet of you but I’ll be asleep. That’s the only way I can get over it.’
‘Oh. What about this evening after I finish work?’
When did he get so needy? I feel irritation rise that he won’t take the hint that I don’t feel up to seeing him. Marco was never needy. I was the needy one. I couldn’t get enough of him; the more disinterested he was, the more obsessed with him I became.
What does that say about me?
Nothing good.
‘Sorry, Sebastian, but I’m intending knocking myself out with some more painkillers and having an early night. Once I’ve got rid of this, we can get back to normal.’ Now please leave me alone.
I can hear his disappointment as we say our goodbyes and I decide that the next time he rings, I won’t answer. I’ll let him assume I’m asleep. I sit for a moment to try to remember what I was doing when he rang and then remember I was checking my outgoing calls. I scroll through my phone and flick open the recent call records and scroll back over the last couple of weeks, just to be sure, studying each call carefully to be sure I don’t miss it. There is no record of any call made to the management company’s head office. I flick open the email app and repeat the process, checking all sent emails and the result is the same: nothing.
Jim’s got some explaining to do.
I’ve dressed and showered and forced a slice of toast down, even though it tasted as if I was eating cardboard. Despite my stomach growling with hunger, when I’d gone to the bother of toasting two slices of bread and buttering them, it was as much as I could do to eat just one of them. I took one of my pre-made smoothies out of the fridge but put it back again without even taking the lid off; I’ve completely lost my appetite.
I’m in the foyer, waiting to speak to Jim. He’s just taken a delivery in from a courier and is stowing it away in his office. I wait by the desk, mentally rehearsing what I’m going to say to him and trying to get it straight in my head. He shouldn’t have repeated something that head office told him in confidence and he should definitely have got his facts right before he told Owen.
He emerges from the office and gives me his usual tight-lipped smile. Or is it more tight-lipped than usual because he thinks I got Owen dismissed? It’s difficult to tell; Jim’s expression never gives much away.
‘Morning, Miss Enderby. Something I can help you with?’
‘Well, I hope so Jim. It’s about Owen.’
His expression doesn’t change but there’s a flicker of his eyes that he doesn’t quite manage to hide.
‘Owen?’
‘Yes. Owen who used to work here.’
There’s an uncomfortable silence and I hold Jim’s gaze.
‘I wondered,’ I say, slowly, ‘why you told him that I’d made a complaint about him to head office.’ He looks puzzled and I can see that he’s wondering how I know. ‘Owen confronted me with what he thought I’d done, and he wasn’t very happy about it,’ I say, suddenly angry. ‘And neither am I. I don’t care for being accused of something that has nothing to do with me.’
‘Owen spoke to you?’ Jim looks worried.
‘Yes, he did, and it wasn’t a pleasant conversation. You shouldn’t have told him what head office told you, Jim, especially as it wasn’t true. I’m sure they wouldn’t be very pleased if I contacted them and told them what you’d done. I don’t think that would go very well for you, would it?’
‘I’m really sorry,’ Jim says, his face flushing red. ‘I never meant for him to say anything to you about it. Head office wouldn’t tell him who had made the complaint; just that he’d as he’d already had a warning and ignored it, he was being dismissed. They told me though, and no, I shouldn’t have told him but it just sort of slipped out when he was talking to me about it. He was a nice lad and was really cut up about it. I felt a bit gutted for him, truth be told, because I don’t think he deserved to lose his job.’
‘I see. Okay. Well, you obviously got it wrong and misunderstood what they told you, because it definitely wasn’t me.’
Jim doesn’t say anything; I thought at the very least he’d apologise. I could make a complaint about him but do I really want to be that vindictive? One person has already lost their job; why make it worse?
‘That’s it, then,’ I say, when it becomes apparent that no apology is going forthcoming. ‘There’s no more to be said, really, is there?’
Jim looks relieved and I turn to leave.
‘I never told Owen it was you, though,’ Jim says.
‘What?’ I turn back to face him.
‘Head office never gave me a name. They just said the complaint came from apartment twenty-five.’
18
Should be home by six, I’m sick of work! x
I reread Carrie’s last message to me that she sent at three o’clock this afternoon when I asked her if she was going to be late tonight.
It’s now a quarter to seven.
I’ve been wandering around the apartment for the last few hours after my visit to Jim and I feel jittery and all over the place. My brain is a jumble of thoughts and I just want everything to be straight in my head. I feel confused and unable to think straight, which isn’t surprising after the last few days. I’m about to message Carrie again when I hear the sound of her key in the front door. I stand up from the sofa, about to rush out into the hallway, and then sit down again.
For God’s sake, let her get in and settled before demanding to know whether she was the one who put the complaint in about Owen. It’s hardly urgent, is it? Is it even important? No, probably not. When Jim said apartment twenty-five, I assumed that he’d made a mistake, because that’s the number of my apartment and I definitely didn’t make a complaint, not even when I was having one of my episodes, because I checked. Jim was adamant that he wasn’t mistaken and asked me to wait for a moment while he went into his office to check his email. I waited patiently by the security desk, confident that he’d return red-faced and embarrassed and admit that he’d made a blunder.
He didn’t.
He came back and said that the email definitely said apartment twenty-five and if I wanted, he’d print it off and show me. I nearly said yes, print it, before realising how ridiculous that would make me sound. I left him and came back upstairs and it dawned on me that it must have been Carrie because she lives here, too. She must have been the one who contacted them. I wanted to message her and ask her immediately but managed to stop myself; she knows nothing of Owen’s visit yesterday and I need to tell her about that first.
‘Hey.’ She walks into the lounge. ‘One more day and it’s the weekend. Are you okay? Did you manage to sleep your headache off?’
I’m confused for a moment before remembering that I messaged her the same lie as Sebastian this morning to account for still being in bed when she left for work.
‘Much better.’ I smile. ‘Good day?’
‘Better now today’s over. Bloody people and their money.’ She collapses onto the sofa next to me and stretches her legs out and wiggles her toes. ‘Not too much more to do, so I’m definitely having some time off, important meetings next week or not. They can get stuffed. Randoll Finance have had more than their money’s worth out of me this week. Every week, actually.’
‘You’re actually going to take time off?’ I ask in disbelief; Carrie never has weekends off.
‘Well, Sunday definitely. I’ll have to go in on Saturday to finish everything off but I’m having Sunday off even if I have to work until midnight on Saturday.’ She puts her head back on the sofa and closes her eyes. ‘But let’s not talk about work; it’s depressing. Do you fancy a takeaway tonight or are you seeing Sebastian? I didn’t even have time for lunch today and I’m absolutely starving.’
‘No, I’m not seeing him tonight; I’ll catch up with him tomorrow night. Takeaway sounds good.’ The thought of food makes me shudder; I cannot face eating anything.
‘I fancy pizza,’ Carrie says. ‘Dough balls and everything. A proper carb-fest followed by something with gooey chocolate smothered all over it.’
‘Owen turned up at the door yesterday,’ I blurt out.
Carrie opens her eyes and swings around to face me, a surprised look on her face. No, more than surprised: alarmed.
‘He came here? What for?’ she demands.
‘He wanted to know why I’d reported him to head office for inappropriate behaviour. He’s been fired.’
Carrie stares at me for a moment, her face a picture of concern, her cheeks flushed. ‘What did you say?’
‘I said I didn’t know what he was talking about, which I didn’t, because I did no such thing. It was you, wasn’t it, Carrie?’
‘What was me?’
‘You reported him, but he thought it was me.’
She nods. ‘Well, yes, of course it was me. What else did he say?’
‘He blamed me for getting him fired and said he wanted revenge. That was pretty much the gist of it, over and over again. He’d had a few drinks to give him the courage to come here.’
‘How did he know? The management company told him? That’s disgusting! I’m going to make a complaint; they shouldn’t be giving information out like that. Are you okay? Was he really horrible to you?’ She looks at me with concern.
‘I’m fine. He was fine,’ I lie. ‘Head office never told him; Jim did, because he felt sorry for him and thought he deserved to know. He had no idea that Owen was going to come up here and confront me. But why did you report him, Carrie? I thought you were going to contact your guy and get him to sort it out.’ I sound whiney when I say it and also slightly accusing.
Carrie sighs. ‘You came to me in a panic because he’d told you he knew about Marco so I sorted it. I thought that contacting the company’s head office would be better for Owen than letting them deal with him. Owen would have lost more than his job if I’d left it to them, Mia. They act fast and make sure that people don’t get the opportunity to cross them twice. I was doing Owen a favour: a massive favour. I didn’t tell you the details because you had enough on your plate. But Owen was gone, which was what we wanted.’
‘He didn’t even know about Marco.’
‘What?’
‘He didn’t know. He had no idea what I was talking about when I said I was sorry about Marco.’ I don’t tell her I thought he was his brother or cousin; I feel ridiculous now and almost wish I hadn’t told her that he even came here because what was the point? She did what she had to do because we thought he’d found out about Marco. Unfortunately for me, Jim decided to poke his nose in and Owen put two and two together and made five. I feel exhausted talking about it and trying to explain and actually, it doesn’t even matter now.
‘So what exactly did you say to him?’ Carrie looks thoughtful.
‘I told him I was sorry about what had happened about Marco and he blatantly didn’t have a clue what I was talking about.’
‘Well, that’s a good thing,’ she says. ‘That he doesn’t know anything. And he’s gone now, so no harm done.’
Well, he’s lost his job so there’s harm done to Owen. Maybe I should tell her how frightened I was, but the effort all seems too much; it’s over now so what’s to be achieved by going over it all again? Besides, it’ll just make her feel bad that I got the blame for something she did, and Carrie was doing it for me, wasn’t she? And I’m feeling a lot better now. My thinking process is sluggish and slow but aside from that, the nightmares have stopped. I’m no longer acting like a mad person. A few days and I’ll be totally back to normal. I can properly put all this behind me.
Time to put it to bed and move on.
‘You’re right,’ I say, scrolling through my phone. ‘So what’s it going to be: Hawaiian, meat feast, or both?’
‘Can I get you a coffee or anything, Miss Enderby?’ Grace is hovering in front of me and I bite down my impatience and wave her away with an ‘I’m fine,’ and a smile. She’s been flapping around me ever since the hour hand of the clock on the wall passed ten o’clock by a millimetre. It’s only ten past, for God’s sake; get a grip, don’t fuss so much.
‘I’m fine, Grace, I’ll just sit here.’
‘I’m really sorry about this. Doctor Campbell never normally lets his appointments overrun like this. He shouldn’t be much longer.’
‘It’s fine,’ I repeat.
‘While you’re here,’ she says. ‘Would you like to book your appointment with the therapist? She has an opening first thing on Monday morning.’
‘Sorry,’ I say, crisply. ‘I’m in meetings all day on Monday. Could you email me some dates and I’ll take a look at them?’
She hesitates for a moment. ‘Um, okay.’
‘Thank you.’ I smile, again, and then look down at my phone so she’ll take the hint that the conversation is over and leave me alone. After a moment, I hear her scuttle back to her desk and then the faint tapping of keys as she resumes typing. I stare at my phone but I’m not really looking at anything. I didn’t sleep very well last night, despite taking a tranquiliser – thankfully, no nightmares – but the events of the last couple of days were playing on my mind. The whole Owen thing has left me feeling unsettled and slightly depressed. I should be feeling more stable now that it’s been sorted and Carrie’s explained it, but for some reason, I don’t. I feel bad that Owen’s lost his job but I’m not going to beat myself up over it because doing that won’t change anything; it won’t get him his job back. However, there’s something niggling away at the back of my mind that feels as if it’s important, but I can’t seem to put my finger on what it is; I have a fear that this feeling is the start of another episode. It’s different from the paranoia that seems to preclude the hallucinations and feelings of panic, but there’s definitely something there and it’s unnerving. I’ve been feeling fine and normal, mental-health-wise, but I’ve been fine before and then had a complete meltdown. Am I on the road to recovery? I desperately hope so. I do wonder whether the tranquilisers are giving me brain fog and dulling my thinking process, because it feels as if my brain is full of cotton wool. I must remember to ask Doctor Campbell when I eventually get in there, before he dishes out a prescription for iron tablets or whatever it is that he’s called me in here for.
