Marnie looked again at her diary and found she had filled in some entries, in a looping drunken scrawl, when she’d been off her face. Amongst others she had blocked in a four-hour lunch on Wednesday with Hugh Jackman and a trip to Lanzarote with Justin Fox on Thursday. Saddest of all, she had booked the following Saturday and Sunday for a catch-up, spa and shopping with Caitlin. She was pathetic with a capital ‘P’ and she’d ruined her diary with the stupid inclusions. She ordered a new one from Amazon and then took out the recycling, noting that she’d put away two full bottles of wine. Usually after two glasses she was comatose. No wonder she’d told a perfect stranger her entire life story and filled her diary with pitiful gobbledygook. Regrettably, she had more chance of having lunch with Hugh Jackman than she did of a whole weekend catch-up with Caitlin or that holiday in Lanzarote with Justin Fox.
Chapter 4
A big part of why Marnie felt unable to really chill out at home was because it wasn’t her home. It was just a house filled with someone else’s furniture, none of it fitting her concept of ‘aesthetic’. She was renting 34A Redbrook Row in Doreton on the outskirts of Sheffield on a short-term lease and she hated the damned place. She had shut herself away for Christmas and cried herself stupid in this alien house, where every room was decorated in miserable greys which reflected her mood perfectly. Her mother had gone down to stay with Gabrielle in Leicester for the festive season so at least Marnie didn’t have to hide behind a facade that all was well with her. A lone Christmas was, at least, better than putting herself through the strain of all that acting.
Since moving into the house in early December, she had felt increasingly restless and agitated, unfulfilled and frustrated. She did love her job at Café Caramba, but she had to try so much harder than her male counterparts to be taken seriously. Sometimes life felt like such an uphill slog and she had too many anxiety dreams about trying to catch up with a figure in front of her whilst she could only walk in slow motion, or screaming and no sound coming out of her mouth. The only light relief in her present existence was meeting Lilian Dearman in the cheesecake forum every weekend. Someone who may or may not be a sweet old lady. Someone who had a wicked sense of humour, whoever she – or he – was.
Marnie had set up a new account with the Sisters of Cheesecake and she was so glad she had because it had been the best entertainment. Without fail, for the last three Friday and Saturday nights Lilian had been causing merry hell on the far-too-serious baking forum to Ealing comedy standard and Marnie hoped that this weekend would be no different. Lilian operated under multiple personas to cause maximum havoc: BigBase, Yorkpud, Creamtop, Lilette amongst others. Marnie powered up her laptop to find ‘Lilette’ single-handedly battling an army of cheesecake fanatics as always. Marnie grinned, suspecting that Lilian was being deliberately controversial.
‘I have on occasion had a very successful result replacing butter with extra virgin olive oil,’ Lilian had typed, causing a woman from Kings Lynn to resort to capital letters in her vituperative response. Marnie waded in. ‘Or goose fat. Though more sugar should be added to the crumb.’ She chuckled heartily at the wave of abuse that started scrolling up on the screen, turned to scratch an itch on her neck and caught sight of her cheerful reflection in the mirrored glass door. She realised then that she couldn’t remember the last time she’d laughed properly before this.
‘What a bunch of old farts,’ wrote Lilian on the forum private messaging page. ‘How are you, dear?’
‘I’m good,’ replied Marnie. ‘How are you?’
‘Could be better. Crumbling spine, alas,’ came the answer. ‘More crumbly than a Digestive base, in fact. I’ve become intolerant of sleeping tablets but I’ve found a good debate wears me out and helps me to have a decent sleep. Have the new mugs arrived? How’s Mr Fox?’
Lilian knew everything about the new swanky mugs and her involuntary attraction to Justin. In fact she seemed to know everything about Marnie, thanks to that first communication, which Marnie tried not to think about.
‘I shan’t be online for a couple of weeks,’ Lilian typed after half an hour’s jolly chat. ‘I have to go to hospital on Monday to hang upside down like a bat. Or at least that’s what happened last time I went on traction.’ She added a couple of smiley faces but Marnie didn’t feel comfortable making a joke of it.
‘Doesn’t sound too great,’ she fired back. ‘Hope it goes well.’
‘Lots of love,’ Lilian replied quickly. ‘I am now off to bed early for a change. Sweet dreams. Hope you have something to report about Mr Fox the next time we converse.’
Marnie doubted it, but she was wrong to. It would shortly go from zero to ninety miles per hour, commencing with a screaming orgasm.
*
The next week began on a particular low as Marnie broke her resolve not to look at Aaron’s Facebook page and found that he was in Sorrento with his girlfriend looking very loved up. They were staying in the hotel that Marnie had found online the week before they split up. She’d wanted to book it for them but he’d said that he didn’t fancy Sorrento. He’d meant, of course, that he didn’t fancy Sorrento with her. The next picture featured a close-up of his girlfriend’s hand showing off a big sparkly ring. Marnie forced herself to close the app and gave herself a stern word when she felt a prickle of tears behind her eyes.
She had a lunch meeting on Monday with the departmental heads though Justin Fox didn’t attend as he was away in London until Thursday. She got lumbered with Sweaty Andrew who put her off her quiche with his sour odour and bored her to death with his flawed vision of million-calorie dessert coffees. The days after that dragged uncharacteristically, though there was a retirement party on Friday lunchtime in the pub local to Café Caramba for the old bloke who worked in the post room to look forward to. It spoke volumes when that was the highlight of the week.
Clifford Beech had been in the building since before it was Café Caramba, even before it was the HQ of the West Riding Building Society and was Fraser & Lunn Insurance, where he was taken on as a school-leaver to be a post room boy and, over his fifty-year stay, he worked his way up to post room man. He liked it there; he had no interest in fancy job titles and no ambitions further than working in the post room, though he had trained many other entry-level post room boys and girls – some of whom were now management. He was as much part and parcel of the building as were the cavernous cellars which sprawled under the city and the oversized cockerel weathervane that spun on the rooftop and if someone had cut Clifford Beech in half like a stick of rock, they would have found the words ‘post room’ written through the middle. Thank goodness no one had, though, and he was able to retire healthy and intact.
More or less the whole building popped into the Dirty Dog on the Friday lunchtime to buy Clifford a drink, or give him a present or an envelope with money in it collected by their department. Laurence the CEO had done the formal gift presentation in the atrium: a set of golf clubs and two all-expenses paid tickets to a course in Spain for a week. Clifford was delighted to tears, especially because Laurence had the reputation of being tighter than a worm’s arsehole and he’d been expecting a carriage clock. Marnie let her staff have an early and extended lunch break so they could join him and say their goodbyes. She went to the pub herself after they’d returned and would go home straight from there because she’d booked half a day off to sort out her car. She took with her the envelope of money that Beverage Marketing had collected for the old lad and a bottle of rum that she’d bought for him herself.