The clock hands crawled around to eleven forty-five. As soon as the big hand on her watch had touched the nine, she picked up her bag, stood and smoothed down her skirt.
‘Roisean, I’m taking a long lunch. I have a business meeting with Justin Fox.’ They had decided that avoiding each other entirely could cause as much suspicion as flirting. There was nothing wrong with announcing a legitimate tête à tête every so often.
‘Lucky you,’ said Roisean, clicking her tongue.
‘You think?’ said Marnie.
‘He’s certainly a looker,’ said Roisean.
‘I’ll put in a good word for you,’ Marnie winked at her.
‘No, you’re all right but I’ll hold the fort. I’m not going out anywhere.’
Marnie hated lying, especially to Roisean. She wanted to be able to say to her that she was taking a long lunch with Justin because he was her boyfriend. Or better still – her fiancé. She’d even started doodling ‘Marnie Fox’ on her notepad at home (never at work of course) to see how it fitted. It sounded like a name that kicked ass.
She was meeting Justin on the other side of Leeds, at a pub called the Blue Boy which didn’t look much from the outside, but inside it was newly refurbished with large comfortable leather seats and sofas with lots of private alcoves. She ordered two baguettes, a half and a pint of diet cola and waited, nervously drumming her fingers on the table because she was worried about telling him she’d booked the hotel. She had the awful feeling that she’d been too reckless and would lose her money because he wouldn’t go. Then annoyance began to replace any anxiety as half an hour passed and he still hadn’t arrived, leaving barely time to eat never mind have a snog in the car. But her tight pout instantly softened when she felt Justin lean over her from behind, enveloping her in a cloud of Joop and issuing a throatful of apologies that he hadn’t been able to get away from Laurence. Then he went and spoiled it all.
‘. . . Then Suranna called,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘I have no idea what’s wrong with her at the moment. I’m jumping through every hoop she’s putting in front of me and it still isn’t enough.’
Marnie hated hearing the ‘Suranna’ word. It made her into a real person, one who was still joined to Justin in holy matrimony, even if he did call it ‘unholy matrimony’. It was obvious that she was clinging on to him for grim death, using every excuse in the book to keep him consciously coupled to her. Didn’t she realise how stupid she was making herself look? How desperate and deluded? Marnie had a vision of Suranna hanging on to Justin’s leg every morning when he set off to work, with him dragging her down the path towards his company car.
She changed the subject quickly. ‘I got you a prawn baguette. Hope that was okay.’
‘Er . . . yes. Not really hungry though. Had a huge breakfast with the law firm lads.’
She bit down on what she had been about to say, But you knew you were coming out to lunch with me, because she didn’t want to sound as whiney as his wife. She was getting sick of constantly having to hold her tongue, though.
‘You okay? You look stressed,’ he said.
Marnie took a deep breath and, given the cue, dived straight in.
‘You know it’s my birthday on Sunday.’
‘Yeeees,’ he said, drawing the word out so slowly that it made her wonder if he’d remembered. Then again, she’d told him in a very heated moment.
‘Well . . .’
Her mouth stopped suddenly, like a Shetland pony faced with Beecher’s Brook.
‘What?’
It came out so fast it was almost one long word. ‘I’ve booked us a night away in a hotel. Not too far away in Derbyshire. And in the room where Mary Queen of Scots stayed. It has a four-poster and . . .’
His face, creasing in awkward regret, told her everything she needed to know and had really known from even before she had made the reservation.
‘I can’t, Marnie.’
‘Say it’s work,’ said Marnie with an unashamed tone of pleading in her voice.
‘She’d know it wasn’t.’
Marnie felt close to tears. Hot, annoyed, frustrated tears. ‘But you went away golfing with Laurence a few weekends ago.’
‘Yes, but that was work.’
‘I feel like I’m having an affair with a married man.’ The words burst out of her and she had to quickly gather the reins on the volume.
‘Well, technically, you are.’ Justin picked absently at a prawn.
‘You know what I mean, skulking around, having to wait for you to ring me, meeting in secret, never being able to spend the night together.’
She had bought him a daft tie with foxes on it, but he had left it in her house because he couldn’t take it home with him. Suranna would ask where he got it from and she’d know he was lying if he said ‘a rep’ or that he had bought it for himself. Suranna Suranna Suranna. Marnie felt like the second wife in Rebecca.
‘I know. It’s hard for me too,’ he said, stealing a look at his watch. ‘Come on, let’s have some “us” time.’
By which he meant a shag in the car. Her car. They’d only had sex once in his car and all traces of her had been removed immediately afterwards with squirts of Febreze and a sticky roller thing.
Marnie stood up to go with a resigned sigh. Maybe she could make him change his mind by ‘doing his favourite’ on her cloth rear seating.
Which she did. But he didn’t.
There wasn’t enough time then to do anything else that she might have benefitted from, not that she was bothered because she knew she would have had to fake anyway; her head was too full of disappointment to let lust come to the fore. She followed Justin back to the office and again felt that strange foreboding in the air as she walked through the revolving doors. It was thicker now, more pronounced, as if it was a fat spot, filled with infection, pushing up from below the surface of the skin, ready to make its vile appearance.
It was at precisely half-past three when the zit burst and the pus covered everyone on the trading floor. Marnie had been talking on the phone to Laurence when she heard the noise from departments away. Arthur and Bette looked up from their desks and then put their heads back down again. They wouldn’t stop trying to balance a sheet if there was a sudden earthquake and the roof fell in.
Marnie tried to focus on her conversation but one ear was now cocked to whatever was going on. A woman was shouting.
‘WHERE IS SHE? WHERE IS THE SLAG?’
Vicky, Elena, Roisean, the whole of Beverage Marketing now, including the older ones were looking at each other raising their shoulders, mouthing ‘what’s that’ at each other. Even Laurence, at the other end of the phone, was asking what on earth was going on and Marnie had to reply that she had no idea.
Then from around the corner appeared a short, Weeble-like woman wearing a blue swingy pinafore. Behind her, Dennis, the world’s most ineffectual security guard, was wheezing as he tried to keep up. The woman was facial-scanning everyone as she passed them, matching them up to a photofit she held in her head.
‘Madam, Mrs . . .’ pleaded Dennis, grabbing hold of the Weeble’s arm, but she shook him off forcefully and the effort swung her round slap bang in front of Marnie’s desk. The little woman’s eyes widened then narrowed. It seemed as if she’d found a match.