We will miss you!
Happy to wait for you to return when you feel better.
I knew you couldn’t hate FUGUTH – you’re the reason I have 4 rentals, your enthusiasm for property development changed my life.
Then a call came in from a Hamilton number, which my phone suggested may be the solicitors I interviewed at. My phone’s hunch was correct, as was my belief the job was mine for the taking. The woman who interviewed me – who I did go to school with but who had no memory of me when prompted – made her offer and I fought my initial urge to accept the first salary she proposed and moved her up to the top end of the bracket in the advert.
After the call ended, I was compelled to ring my mother to let her know about the job. Today has shown me how quickly things can change; maybe a mother deserves infinite chances to prove herself. This attempt to contact her went straight to voicemail, which made me wonder if this means I’ve been blocked, a thought I abandoned when I read on social media that a Hamilton man had been arrested for multiple murders and one attempted.
Brian’s name swirls on Facebook, nowhere official. The high of examining pictures of him being huckled into court will be denied to me until he is officially charged, which is a shame as I’m growing bored. Everything has panned out how it should. There are no surprises, except what Gavin is up to. This is the longest they’ve ever gone without contacting me. Unless they’re ghosting me immediately after one bout of successful penetrative intercourse, which will be very damaging to my self-esteem.
I still haven’t heard from them when Malcolm’s story appears on the evening news. Next to the newsreader’s head is a publicity still of Malcolm smiling, his veneers dazzling against his mahogany skin, the broken alcoholic capillaries across his nose Photoshopped out of existence. The newsreader uses a concerned voice in contrast to the cheerier one she used for the previous story about free childcare.
The buzzer to the flat goes and I know it’ll be Gavin because no one else would turn up at this time without a message beforehand to warn me.
I wait for them at the top of the stairs, their ascent accompanied by the aroma of curry and the clank of bottles in a bag hitting off one another. The time I’ve spent glued to my phone looking for updates has stopped me eating or drinking anything for hours. This hunger makes the embrace and kiss I give Gavin in greeting even more lustful than it would have been otherwise.
‘I was worried about you’ is the kind of thing a girlfriend whose partner has gone off the grid all day after a juicy text would say, and so I say it now, too.
‘What a day I’ve had.’ They walk into the kitchen, rummage about the correct cupboards for plates and cutlery.
‘I agree, but why do you think it’s been quite the day? Have you heard about Brian?’
‘Yeah, I know all about it.’ They pass me a plate with my favourite paneer curry from the takeaway up the road, a portion of rice and a naan dangling off the plate, which won’t fall because its heft will keep it in place. I hold it while watching Gavin arrange the same meal on their plate before producing two bottles of craft beer from the bag.
Together we go into the living room. There is a proper dining table but usually we arrange ourselves on the floor around the coffee table with the telly on mute talking all the shit we’ve thought about work during the day and stored for the occasion. Only once we are both comfortable with cushions under our bums, bodies positioned so the angle we eat off the low table works for us, do we resume conversation.
‘So, what do you know?’ I ask.
‘Well, I know a bit from Leanne.’ A huge forkful of food pauses them until they swallow it all down. ‘She was suspicious of him – she always has been, of course – and tracking his phone. Everything he was doing, where he was going and when, didn’t link him with any women. When she googled where he’d been she found he was hanging around a lot of locations where dead people were turning up shortly after.’
‘Wow. Jesus. Surely not?’ It’s good to offer disbelief. A normal colleague would not readily accept their boss was out killing folk between shifts.
‘Well, that’s what she thought, until that woman was ran over. We followed her story, do you remember?’
‘Vaguely.’ I tear off a chunk of naan, enjoy the oiliness of its garlic butter on my fingertips.
‘Leanne visited her in the hospital because she was starting to believe he’d done it. So she visits the woman when she’s out the coma and describes Brian to her and that’s apparently unlocked the woman’s memory. Made all the fragments she remembered make sense. Suddenly she can see his car hurtling towards her. Well, Leanne says it filled in all kinds of blanks for her: that he keeps disappearing, his increasing need for online attention – he’s been losing his mind and killing folk. She knows she can’t let him keep on doing what he’s doing – who says he won’t go for her and the kids next? – so she dobs him in to the police and that’s why what happened this morning happened.’
‘And you knew? That’s why you weren’t in work this morning?’
‘Nope, didn’t have a clue until Leanne asked to meet me. She wanted me to fill her in on a few things about Brian, then asked me if I wanted to run the agency in his absence. Which I imagine is forever.’
‘Well done, darling.’ We hold our bottles towards each other and dink their necks together. In an ideal world they would have any other job that exists, but I love them and they look so chuffed I can let this slide for the time being. Then, once the dust has settled, I’ll work on them making Perfect Property Solutions as ethical as it can be, help change the system from the inside as a way of continuing my mission.
‘You don’t seem that shocked about Brian. Like, I know you didn’t love him, but you can’t have suspected he was off murdering?’
Gavin wipes their frothy lips with the back of their hand. ‘Not shocked at all. I mean, he wasn’t the one off murdering, was he?’ Gavin’s not blinking, their eyebrows raised, asking a question.
‘Wasn’t he?’
‘Do you want to know where I was this morning?’ They don’t give me time to respond. ‘I was at the solicitors you had that interview for.’ They’re on too much of a roll for me to use this as an opening to tell them I was offered the job. ‘Because I’m the beneficiary of Colin O’Donnell’s will.’
‘Right.’ I draw the word out, not knowing how to proceed until I do. ‘I didn’t realise you knew him well enough for that?’
‘How well does anyone ever really know their father?’
The naan is now oily slime between my fingers from how much I’ve kneaded it; I release it with aploponto my mound of rice as I process what they’ve said. Gavin is the cretin child of Colin who needed Amara’s flat. This whole chain of events has been set off by Gavin.
