Later on in bed, my cling-filmed hip, with its angry-looking skin and new elephants underneath, catches Johnny’s eye.
‘I thought you didn’t like tattoos,’ he says. Johnny loves nothing more than to remind me of the times I said something with absolute conviction and then contradicted myself later. These moments are few and far between, so he goes at them like it’s Super Bowl Sunday. He licks his eye teeth with a sort of gleeful relish. ‘I thought you said they’d look stupid when people are on the beach at seventy?’
‘Can you not just let me have this one thing?’ I ask him quietly, soberly.
He doesn’t ask what the tattoo is of, or what it means. Neither of us bothers to say the quiet part out loud: I madea decision, and a fairly big one at that, without him. They may only be two elephants on my hip bone, but in some small and strange way I’m pushing ahead, on my own.
‘Come have a look at this,’ Johnny says, gesturing me towards the laptop. He has a page open, full of holiday deals. Blue skies, yachts and aquamarine ocean as far as the eye can travel.
‘Croatia could be a good place to… get away to,’ he says. ‘Or maybe Thailand.’
‘Hnyeah,’ I tell him. He keeps clicking away. Is he really that oblivious to the fact that we are humming in two completely different keys these days?
‘Canada could be fun,’ I offer.
He looks at me quizzically. ‘The cold place over North America?’ Johnny’s idea of a relaxing time is to find a sun-lounger, keep a sweaty beer at hand and read all theNew Yorkers he never gets to at home.
‘There are beaches in Canada,’ I tell him, the image from the jetty floating to my mind’s surface.
‘Try lying on them in January and see how toasty you feel,’ he says. ‘You’ve never mentioned Canada in your life before.’
‘Just, I’ve heard it’s kind of cool. Toronto has the most restaurants per capita in all of Canada.’
‘We live in London. We don’t need to go too far if it’s a restaurant you need.’
‘It’s not really that. I thought it might be nice to call in on a friend who lives there.’
‘What, that old school friend of yours? That I’ve never heard of until now?’
I’d forgotten all about her. ‘Well, yeah, there’s her,but… I don’t think you’ve met the other friend. Naomi.’ He doesn’t ask me who she is or how I know her.
‘Gotta tell you, Esther, I’m not all that keen on taking time out to go on a city break to Canada,’ Johnny says baldly. ‘What about somewhere we can really relax and just… be with each other. I think it would be a big help right now. It feels like a long winter.’
So maybe we are in the same key. He feels it too. But it doesn’t stop me wondering how I can persuade him to come around to the idea of Toronto, where we wouldn’t have to just be with each other.
Johnny looks over for an uncomfortable amount of time before finally saying, ‘Are we good, Esther?’
The gear-change catches me. ‘Course we are.’
‘No, I mean really.’
‘Yesssss.’
‘I think we should talk about what’s going on here. Like properly.’
‘We are fine. More than fine. I promise.’ Are we fine? I feel like I’m watching something or someone getting injured in real time, but with no idea how to call for help or what to do about it.
I can foresee the next bit a mile off.
‘Well, I’m bloody well not, but good for you,’ he says mid-stride as he makes for the door. The slam echoes off the mock-wood furniture, only serving somehow to regulate my pulse.
‘Mind if I have a word, Esther?’ the Swede in the Ozwald Boateng suit commands, flopping his head around the door. I’m in the middle of searching ‘Ted Levy Bathurst’ on Twitter, to see if anyone has posted seeing him in hisown neighbourhood. A few nights ago, a stranger took a picture of him at a bar in Leslieville. I must have stared at it for an hour, racked with longing and jealousy of a complete randomer.
The Swede and I walk wordlessly down the oyster-grey corridor to a shark-grey meeting room, where he throws a tasselled loafer on the stool closest to me and does a sort of casual squat over the oversized glass and chrome desk. Still, the vibe is less than casual, as I take it.
‘I’ll get right to the point, Esther,’ the Swede begins, folding his arms. ‘This time last year, you were inputting about five thousand five hundred codes a day into the system. That number has now fallen to about two thousand three hundred. You can see how there’s a discrepancy between those two figures, and how that might be considered unacceptable, or at least reason to open up a conversation.’
Wow. I know I was going a bit easier than usual, but not by that much. I thought being chewed out by the higher-ups might feel terrible, but strangely it doesn’t. I feel bulletproof.
