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  The last time I was in love? Same as the first.

  The last time I saw her? 12 years ago.

  She was Irish, and her name was Paula Fraser.

  Chapter 2

  ‘I completely understand your frustration, Mr Johnston, and I want to help get this sorted out for you as quickly as possible.’

  I hoped my voice didn’t sound as bored as I knew my face must look. I would have held the receiver away from my ear had I been able, but modern telecommunications technology had done away with such antiquated concepts as receivers and dials. Instead, what would once have been a simple telephone had been transmogrified into a computer station - the dial was now a keyboard, and the receiver a set of headphones with a thin plastic microphone snaking out of my left ear and curving ergonomically round the contours of my face until it all but disappeared up my left nostril.

  Still, this huge leap forward did have a couple of benefits. The main one being that I knew exactly what the caller was going to say before they said it, thus removing the necessity for me to actually listen.

  I knew, for example, that Mr William Johnston lived at 109 Braidbar Road in Giffnock, because this information appeared on my monitor the instant his call connected. I also knew he was a retired civil engineer living alone in his two-bedroom terraced house. I knew he had gas central-heating but an electric cooker; I knew he had both a bath and a shower, but used mainly the shower; I knew he had a gas fire in his lounge, but rarely used it; I knew he had his central-heating checked for faults annually. I didn’t know what school he’d gone to or how his sex life was these days, but I could probably have found out fairly easily.

  I also knew that, three days ago, he had received an electricity bill for £4,538. I therefore knew exactly why he had phoned, and what he was saying at that very moment. Indeed, as he continued his tirade I couldn’t help but pick up a couple of key phrases despite having turned the volume on my head-set to practically zero.

  ‘Four and a half grand … it’s a bloody disgrace … you big companies … damned liberty … this is the eighth time I’ve phoned …’ and so on.

  I’m not an ogre, I did have some sympathy for Mr Johnston’s situation; there was sod-all I could do about it, though. It was patently obvious he would have to be powering the Blackpool illuminations from his kettle-socket to rack up a bill so high, but this fact didn’t change the facts. The system said he owed the money, which, until someone far higher-up than me admitted that the guy who last read Mr Johnston’s meter was clearly dyslexic and possibly blind, meant he owed the money.

  I’d been in the job for a while, so knew the appropriate tactic to adopt in this situation.

  ‘Mr Johnston,’ I said as he took a breath-break. ‘I agree this is a very serious matter and I’m going to put you through to a senior manager who’ll be better placed than I am to help resolve this for you, okay?’

  ‘Oh for fu—’

  ‘Yes, sir. Please hold while I transfer you.’

  I punched F6 on my keyboard to switch the muzak on, and leaned back in my chair, stretching my arms above my head and yawning loudly as I swivelled my neck in an effort to relieve some of the stiffness I’d been feeling all morning.

  I closed my eyes for a second, trying to find my first wind. I was of course hung-over. I checked my watch – a half-hour till lunch. What would it be today? Sausage roll and a yum-yum from Greggs, a six-inch club and a packet of cheese and onion from Subway, or a couple of swift pints from Dave in The Fixx?

  I was enjoying my food-based musings when I remembered Mr Johnston was still holding, under the impression he was going to be connected to someone else as he listened to a pan-pipe version of Devil Woman. I’d left the old guy hanging longer than intended and felt a stab of guilt as I hit F8, disconnecting his call.

  The saddest part was that Mr Johnston, and everyone else who called us to complain, had to pay 35p a minute for the privilege. I estimated Mr J had just cost himself the best part of six quid, and this made me feel a bit better about cutting him off. The poor bastard was in enough debt as it was, no sense in adding to his woes.

  ‘Hey, Cooper,’ Terry said from across the desk we shared. ‘Are you fixing for a Fixx?’

  ‘Might as well,’ I replied. ‘Can’t make me feel any worse.’

  ***

  Sixty-five minutes, two pints of Stella, one bag of smokey-bacon (for me, Terry had four) and five Marlboro Lights later, we were back at our desks.

  Terry and I worked in the customer care department of Combined Utilities, recently voted by Watchdog viewers as the least customer friendly power company in the country. Our duties included answering complaint calls, responding to complaint letters, teaching new recruits how to deal with complaints, and denying to the Office of Fair Trading that we ever received any complaints. I was more senior than Terry, but all this meant in practice was that I got to help him and the other staff think up lies to tell the customers as well as lying directly to them myself.

  Given my elevated position (I was, according to the carefully worded contract of employment I couldn’t remember signing, deputy something-or-other, responsible to someone-or-other, with special focus on BLANK), I got to spend my afternoons answering complaint letters instead of phone calls. I found there was more satisfaction to be had in a carefully-crafted, thoughtfully-worded, grammatically-correct lie, as opposed to the off-the-cuff bollocks I spouted on the phone in the mornings. Untruths sounded that bit more genuine when you had the time to put some thought into them. I could almost say I took pride in it. Almost.

  I eyed the pile of correspondence that had magically appeared on my desk over lunch. I’d been in the job for over two years and still had no clue who secreted these tragic/angry pleas for clemency on my desk every day. They were just there whenever I came back from wherever I’d been between twelve and one. This mystery intrigued me slightly. Not so much that I ever considered staying in the office between twelve and one to find out, though. My life was boring, but it wasn’t that boring.

  By eye, I estimated I had fifteen letters to answer before five. I then counted them - there were twenty-six. An error margin of eleven was pretty good for me, especially after a Terry/Fixx lunch.

  I set about my task with, if not quite vigour then at least desperation, which I find achieves a similar result.

  The first four were easy - burst pipes, screaming weans, crap maintenance - the usual. Most others in my position would have had a pre-formatted insert-victim’s-name-here letter waiting and ready for these, they were so common. I chose not to work that way. I preferred to write an individual letter from scratch to each individual poor fool.

  Invariably, though, I ended up saying pretty much the same thing every time. After all, there are only so many synonyms for not, and our, and fault. ‘It appears unlikely this is our organisation’s responsibility’, was my current favourite.

  The fifth letter was along similar lines, and I had decided on: whilst that may well be the case, I fail to see how Combined Utilities could possibly be held liable, when I noticed the name and address of the sender.

  Mr Simon Fraser, 63 Newlands Road, Glasgow.

  I knew that address. I’d been in that house. I’d spent the night in that house, once. I had tried to make Mr Simon Fraser think I was a good guy, a good prospect, once. Mr Simon Fraser was Paula Fraser’s dad.

  Bloody hell.

  At that moment, my liquid dinner from the night before and that day’s largely liquid lunch met up in my stomach, signalled the combination of adrenaline and endorphins suddenly shooting through my nervous system to join them, formed a gang, and decided the time was ripe for an assault on the outside world.

  ‘Hey, Coop—’ Terry began. He stopped talking when I puked on him (well, he was a big target). In fairness my monitor caught the bulk of it and Terry only got the top edge, the liquidy bit.

  Time slowed as I stared at Terry, wide-eyed and unable to think of anything constructive to say. Terry peered back, a mixture of
surprise, horror and revulsion on his face. I feared briefly that he was going to return the favour, but instead he stood up slowly, straightened his legs sharply so the back of his knees pushed his chair away, and sidled towards the toilets, his shocked, disbelieving gaze never leaving mine. He seemed to be silently asking Why? Why would you do that? As he disappeared backwards into the gents.

  ***

  It said more than I wanted to know about my employers that I was allowed half-an-hour to sort myself out then assigned another desk to work from. Terry only got fifteen minutes.

  Unsurprisingly the letters I had still to answer were waiting for me at my new station. Paula’s dad’s was top of the pile. The ink was smudged and a sharp tang in the air indicated it had been subject to some sort of Dettol-based cleaning regimen.

  As I picked up Simon Fraser’s letter I detected the faint yet pungent aroma of vomit. Appropriately, it made me feel nauseous again. I can happily stand the sight of just about anything - road-kill, jobbies, Big Brother contestants - it’s not a problem. Smells are a different story. One whiff of an over-ripe banana and I’m barfing for Scotland.

  I held the letter as far from my face as my arm would allow. I could still smell my vomit; I still felt inclined to add to it. What I didn’t feel like doing was answering it (the letter, not the vomit).

  I couldn’t ignore it, though. I hadn’t seen Paula Fraser for twelve years and hadn’t thought about her for almost twelve hours, but this letter had stirred something up in me. The fact that a fair proportion of what it stirred up had landed on Terry’s face wasn’t the point.

  There was a smudged date-stamp on the top left corner of the letter. This indicated it was ‘in the system’ and therefore required a response. An all-seeing, all-knowing computer somewhere kept up with these things, apparently. The poorly scrawled initials JC under the stamp meant someone had assigned this particular letter to me and, I had no doubt whatsoever, informed said computer of such. I was therefore compelled to respond (and log my response with HAL), or else the computer would, with no compunction and less emotion, almost certainly print out my P45.

  ‘Jim Cooper, you are by far the biggest wanker I’ve ever met.’

  Wow, deja-spew. I looked up dizzily. It was Terry, of course. He was maintaining a healthy distance to my left, and stood slightly hunched, like a cracked but not quite broken Humpty-Dumpty.

  ‘I cannot believe you did that,’ he said.

  ‘God, I know. Sorry mate.’

  ‘I mean, Jesus. You puked on me.’ Terry’s blue eyes looked hurt and confused. ‘Why did you puke on me, Jim?’

  ‘I didn’t mean it,’ I said, with more petulance than Terry deserved.

  ‘Do you have a disease?’

  ‘No,’ I admitted.

  ‘Food poisoning?’ I looked at Terry. He knew as well as anyone that you had to actually eat to get food poisoning. ‘Okay, sorry. Hangover?’

  ‘No worse than usual.’

  ‘What, then?’

  ‘Let’s get a pint after work. I think I need a chat.’

  This seemed to satisfy Terry, and he turned and shuffled back to his desk. As I watched him retreat, I felt something odd happening inside. An unfamiliar feeling tickled my brain and itched at my soul; it niggled my conscience and bothered my equilibrium; it made me feel queasy again until I finally identified, just before five, what it was - I had, apparently, made a decision.

  There’s a first time for everything.

  ***

  We went back to The Fixx. I liked it mainly because it was in a basement, which reminded me of The Basement. The Fixx also held the dual attractions of being less than a hundred yards from our office, and one of the few pubs in Glasgow that refused to play any music involving a drum machine. When we arrived it was quiet enough not to seem busy and busy enough not to seem quiet.

  ‘My shout,’ I made a point of declaring as Terry and I approached the bar.

  I took a step away from Terry as we waited for our drinks. He was stinking of puke after all.

  We found a table in the corner.

  ‘So?’ Terry said once we were comfortable.

  I took a breath. ‘Has it ever occurred to you that you’ve wasted your chances? That you do a cruel job you don’t enjoy and isn’t likely to lead to anything except the opportunity to be even more cruel on a grander scale?’

  Terry paused mid-slurp and returned his glass to the table. ‘Fuck’s sake, Jim. You work for the same pricks, why pick on me?’

  ‘Jesus, I’m talking about me!’

  ‘Oh. Oh well, no then.’ Terry was a good mate, but he had his limitations. ‘What’s brought this on?’ he asked cheerfully.

  ‘This.’ I took Paula’s dad’s letter from my pocket and passed it over. Terry looked more puzzled than usual as he read.

  ‘And? We get a hundred of these a day.’

  ‘I sort of know him.’

  ‘So? It’s a fucked-up bill, it’ll get sorted eventually. What’s the problem?’

  ‘The problem is I spend my days lying like fuck to people like him, making their lives that bit harder than they should be.’

  ‘You’ve been doing that for two years, why the crisis?’

  ‘Because I know him, I don’t want to lie to him. And that means I don’t want to lie to anyone anymore.’

  ‘Are you sure you’re not ill?’

  ‘Have you ever had an epiphany?’

  ‘Jim, I hate to break this to you but we don’t actually live in The Bible.’

  ‘Aye, ha ha. You know what I mean.’

  ‘So you’ve suddenly realised you hate your job, big wow. Most people figure that out long before they hit thirty-three. You’re just a late developer; it’s nothing to be ashamed of.’

  I slumped back into my seat. Terry was right, of course.

  ‘Who is this Simon Fraser anyway?’

  ‘I used to know his daughter.’

  ‘Ah, now I find myself interested. Do go on.’

  ‘She was ... I used to go out with her. She was a nice girl; her dad was a good guy, that’s all.’

  Terry leaned forward and rested his elbows on the table, cupping his chin on his hands. ‘Going to need a few more details I’m afraid.’

  ‘Piss off, it was years ago.’

  ‘I’m afraid that is less than satisfactory as an answer, James.’

  ‘I’m afraid that’s all you’re getting, Terence.’

  ‘I’m going to need a number, James.’

  In a futile attempt at not being a complete wanker, I had adopted a tactic learned from Four Weddings and a Funeral and given all my exes a number instead of naming them, when discussing them with Terry. I told myself this allowed me the freedom to be open and, where appropriate, bluntly truthful about the relationships or lack thereof without fear of having to insult (or, indeed, compliment) anyone directly. Glasgow is a very small big city, and you never know who you might bump into unexpectedly. Like Andy McDowell in the film, the numbers went in chronological order and were in no way a ‘rating’.

  ‘Okay, three.’

  ‘Wow, we are going back a bit, then.’

  ‘I believe I already acknowledged that fact.’

  ‘Right,’ Terry said, standing up. ‘I’m going to the bar while I think about this. You must have told me some stories about number three. Lager?’

  I nodded, smiling to myself as Terry went to get the beers in. I knew for a fact I had never, not once, no matter how drunk I had been, told Terry a story about number three. It wasn’t a rule; it wasn’t something I ever had to remind myself of - I just didn’t talk about Paula, simple as that. Those memories were mine, alone.

  I knew Terry would keep digging, but I wasn’t worried. I was about to change the subject.

  I could see he’d been distracted by the sight of four youngish guys who burst noisily through the door and hurried to the bar. They all wore tracksuits emblazoned with a Power Hut logo, marking them as staff members from a nearby Gym I’d joined briefly th
e year before (it had only taken three sessions of beetroot-faced misery before I admitted my stupidity and cancelled the direct debit). Terry’s eyes hung on the four wistfully for a second as they ordered their drinks. They were, as far as my private deductions could tell, just his type - fit, young and without an ounce of body fat between them. The exact opposite of Terry himself, in other words, who readily admitted he could afford to shed a ton or two. Possibly his tastes would change when he finally entered the world of the out, but until that happened I supposed there was no harm in him fantasising, however subconsciously, about only physically perfect, above-average-in-every-way specimens. If he wasn’t going to do anything about it, he might as well not do it with good-looking guys.

  ‘So, number three. Was she the witch?’ Terry said as he sat down, spilling his pint all over the table in his haste.

  ‘Number five,’ I said. ‘And she preferred Wicca.’

  ‘The junior doctor?’

  ‘That was four.’

  ‘Okay, was she the—’

  ‘Terry, forget it. I’m handing in my notice tomorrow.’

  That shut him up.

  One of Terry’s chins wobbled as he stared at me.

  I smiled and took a drink. ‘And for the first time in this nation’s history, Mr Terence Kendal is lost for words.’

  ‘Are you serious?’

  ‘Oh yes.’ I was enjoying this.

  ‘Have you got another job?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘What the fuck are you going to do?’

  ‘Don’t have a clue.’

  ‘Tomorrow?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Simple,’ I said. ‘Because I’ve finally admitted I don’t have an adequate answer for the question why not? The closest I’ve got to happy since I was twenty-one is too drunk to worry, Terry. That’s a terrible state of affairs. I want another go at being an adult.’

  ‘But … you’ve got a mortgage.’

  ‘I know. Not a good enough answer.’

  ‘Debt!’

  ‘Fuck it.’

  ‘Food, beer, fags!’

  Okay he had a point there, but I wasn’t for shifting. ‘I’ll figure it out.’