Lasting Damage

Chapter 8

17/07/2010



Olivia Zailer flicked through her diary, sighing loudly at the sight of each new page. She’d made too many appointments for the next few weeks, most of which she knew she would at some point cancel. Lunch with Etta from MUST magazine to discuss a column about famous books and which meals they would be, in the unlikely event of their being turned into food – Wuthering Heights equals Yorkshire Pudding was the example Etta had given; aerobic walking on Hampstead Heath with Sabina, Olivia’s personal trainer; tea at the British Library with Kurt Vogel, who wanted her to judge an Anglo-German journalism prize in which all the entrants would be between the ages of eleven and thirteen.

Olivia wondered if she was the only person in the world who, with great gusto in the moment, made plans with almost everyone she came into contact with, knowing full well that she would email to cancel in due course. Why was it so hard to say straight out, ‘I’m sorry, Kurt, but no, I can’t be a judge’? Why did it feel so right to say, ‘Oh, God, I’d love to,’ and then sneak in the ‘can’t’ bit later on? Olivia would have liked to ask Charlie; she knew no one else who’d be willing to discuss it with her. Dom certainly wouldn’t. She suspected it had something to do with being eager to please others, but even more eager to please herself.

Her mobile phone rang, and she picked it up, determined not to make an arrangement with whoever it was, even an arrangement she wanted to make and would not cancel. She needed to purge her diary of all the fake appointments before she made any more real ones.

‘It’s me. Chris Gibbs.’

‘Hello, Chris Gibbs. Oh, my God, that proves it! A watched pot really does never boil. You’re only you because I was expecting you to be Kurt Vogel from the Dortmund British–German Society. All the times I was expecting it to be you, it wasn’t – and now here you are.’

‘Have you still got a spare key for Charlie’s place?’

‘Why, has something happened?’ Olivia was immediately anxious.

‘Not as far as I know.’

‘Then why do you need a key?’

‘I thought it’d be a good place to meet,’ said Gibbs.

‘You and me?’

‘No, you, me, Waterhouse and Charlie, when they get back. For their wedding reunion evening.’

What the hell was she supposed to say to that? ‘Wouldn’t that be . . . a bit awkward?’

She heard a snort. ‘Joking,’ said Gibbs. ‘Yeah, you and me. I haven’t seen you for . . .’ There was silence as he worked it out. ‘. . . about forty-four hours. I’m thinking of making it my new mobilising grievance.’

‘You usually don’t see me for forty-four hours,’ Olivia reminded him. ‘You’ve spent most of your life not seeing me, and you’ve been fine.’

He made a joke, a whole joke. And he’s quoting me. Again.

‘That’s a matter of opinion,’ said Gibbs.

She couldn’t meet him at Charlie’s house. Have sex in the bed Charlie shared with Simon? It didn’t bear thinking about. She reached for a pen and wrote ‘Olivia Gibbs’ next to where it said ‘Name’ in her diary, on the personal details page. It looked good, well balanced: the roundness of the two capitals, O and G . . .

Should she scribble over it? She’d wanted to know how it would feel to write it, that was all. She ought to cross it out now. On the other hand, Dom would never look, not even if someone held the diary in front of his nose. The great thing about Dom, from a deceiving him point of view, was that he was interested in almost nothing.

‘What do you reckon?’ said Gibbs.

‘No. Absolutely not.’ If only she could be so forceful with Etta from MUST magazine.

Olivia had no willpower, and thought people who had it and used it on themselves were weird. Luckily, she had fear and anxiety in abundance. She couldn’t have agreed to what Gibbs was proposing without feeling as if she’d crossed a line she was terrified of crossing, even with the safety net of pos-sible future cancellation in place.

‘All right then, a hotel,’ he said.

‘What about your work? What about Debbie?’ She turned to the ‘Notes’ section at the back of her diary and wrote ‘Olivia Gibbs’ again, in neater handwriting. She wrote it underneath in capital letters.

‘My problem, not yours,’ said Gibbs. ‘If you don’t want to come to Spilling, I’ll come to London.’

‘If you want a . . . a girlfriend, you should find one closer to home,’ Olivia told him, praying he wouldn’t take her advice. Why give it, then?

‘Why should I?’ said Gibbs. ‘There are only two people I’ve ever met who don’t bore me: Simon Waterhouse and you. I don’t want to shag Waterhouse – that leaves you.’

‘I thought I did bore you,’ Olivia felt obliged to point out, in case he’d forgotten. ‘You said I was like a colour supplement.’

‘I didn’t mean it. I didn’t know what to make of you, that’s all.’

She heard a crunch. Was he eating an apple? ‘That Los Delfines place,’ he said. For a worrying moment, Olivia feared he was about to suggest they meet and have sex at Charlie and Simon’s honeymoon villa. ‘I need to tell Stepford that’s where Waterhouse is. Something’s come up.’

‘What? No way, Chris. If you tell him, I’ll . . .’ She couldn’t think of anything to threaten him with. ‘What’s come up?’

More crunching. Then, ‘You let me tell Stepford, I’ll tell you what’s come up.’

‘No! You’re not going to ruin Charlie’s honeymoon by telling Sam where they are so that he can drag Simon home. I’m feeling sick just thinking about it.’

‘He won’t have to come home – Stepford wants a quick chat with him, that’s all. I’ll give him the caretaker’s number from the website – Domino’s Pizza, or whatever he’s called. Stepford’ll ring, it’ll all be over in five minutes – Waterhouse can go back to his deckchair.’

Olivia made a screaming face at the phone. ‘How important is it, exactly?’ She couldn’t resist adding, ‘Luxury villas have sun loungers, not deckchairs.’

‘A murder might be involved.’

‘Oh, f*ck. F*ck, f*ck, f*ck. Why did I tell you where they are?’

‘You really don’t want me to say anything?’

‘How can you not, if someone’s been murdered?’

‘Whoever it is’ll still be dead in two weeks’ time, when Waterhouse gets back,’ said Gibbs.

Olivia could hear the shrug in his voice. ‘What kind of attitude is that?’ she snapped. ‘Are you trying to impress me by being a maverick? If so, that’s not how it works. Tearing up the rule book and going it alone is cool. Not caring about the random slaying of innocent civilians is just plain unacceptable.’

‘I don’t even know for sure anyone’s been killed. You’re f*cking with my plan.’

‘Sorry?’

‘You were supposed to beg me not to say anything,’ Gibbs explained. ‘I was going to end up agreeing, on the condition that you agreed to meet me.’

‘Of course you were,’ said Olivia. ‘If you haven’t got a bunch of flowers to hand, there’s always blackmail.’

Silence.

She hoped she hadn’t offended him, though there was no doubt that he deserved to be roundly offended. Eventually he said, ‘Talking to you’s different to talking to other people. With other people, I say what I mean, they say what they mean. With you, it’s like . . . I don’t know whether I’m being a bastard, pretending to be a bastard, or reading out some lines from a play I don’t understand.’

‘It’s called pre-sex banter.’

‘Right.’ A pause. ‘I’ll make sure not to call it a deckchair, then,’ Gibbs said.

Olivia sighed. That was the second joke he’d made – in his entire life, probably. How could she say no? ‘You come to London,’ she said. ‘I’ll pay for the hotel. That way we’ll both be . . . contributing something.’ Given the choice between expending energy and spending money, Olivia opted for the latter every time.

‘I’m setting off n—’ said Gibbs, ending the call before he’d finished saying ‘now’.

Olivia stared down at her never-to-be married name in her diary, all the different versions of it. She swore under her breath when she realised what she’d done: she’d left out her own surname, after all the fuss she’d made about changing her name to Dom’s, her insistence that she must be Zailer-Lund instead of simply Lund, because of . . . she couldn’t remember the reason she’d given him.

Was she less than a hundred per cent sure about committing herself to Dom?

If she was marrying someone else – not necessarily Chris Gibbs, but . . . well, she might as well use him as a random example, even though the idea was utterly ludicrous, they had nothing in common, he was obviously a deckchair sort of person – would she feel differently?

Olivia told herself firmly that she wouldn’t. Her diary seemed to think otherwise.



*



Subject: 11 Bentley Grove, CB2 9AW

From: Ian Grint ([email protected])

Sent: 19 July 2010 00:10:53

To: Sam Kombothekra ([email protected])



Sam,



I keep ringing you and keep getting told you’re in the canteen. And your mobile’s going straight to voicemail. Can you pull your nose out of the trough and ring me? Soon would be good.



Cheers.



Ian (Grint)



*

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