“Come on, Andy-pandy. You and your missus have been together how long?”
Andrew took a sip of water. “A long time.”
“So come on, have you . . . ?”
“Have we what?”
“Got down and dirty somewhere public!”
“Ah. Um. No. Not to my knowledge.”
Meredith sniggered into her wineglass. Cameron laughed too, but his glassy eyes suggested he was too drunk to understand what was going on.
“Not to your knowledge?!” Keith said. “You do know how sex works, Andrew? It’s not like you can do it behind your own back.”
“Well . . . depends how flexible you are,” Meredith said. As she cackled at her own joke, Andrew excused himself to go to the toilet.
“Don’t think we’ve forgotten about you,” Keith called after him.
Andrew was in no hurry to return to the dining room–turned-school-playground, but there was something disconcerting about Meredith’s bathroom—namely the picture of her and, presumably, her now-former partner. It was a professional shot—all fluffy white shag pile and unnatural body language. Andrew looked at the man smiling gamely at the camera and wondered where he was at that moment. Maybe he was out drowning his sorrows with friends, that same fixed smile on his face, telling everyone that no, seriously, honestly, this was the best thing that’d ever happened to him.
Back in the dining room, there was no sign of things having calmed down, although Cameron did appear to have passed out. Keith was standing next to him holding a marker pen, apparently preparing to draw something on his face. Meredith was at his side, bouncing on her feet and wheeling her arms excitedly like a toddler who’s just learned to stand unaided. Just as Andrew approached the table he saw Peggy clearly lose patience and stomp over to Keith, making to whip the pen out of his hand.
“Oi!” Keith said, ripping his hand away. “Come on, it’s just a bit of fun.”
“Could you be any more immature?” Peggy said. She went to make another grab for the pen but this time Meredith stepped in front of her, eyes fiery with defending Keith. “I don’t know what your problem is, Mrs. Uptight,” she hissed.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Peggy said. “How about the fact he’s clearly in a bad way about his wife, as you so kindly brought up earlier. Just because you two are apparently so happy doesn’t mean you get to humiliate him.”
Meredith tilted her head to one side and stuck her bottom lip out. “Oh, hon, you sound ever so stressed. You know what you need? A good yoga sesh. I know this great place—Synergy—where I was last week? Get all that frustration out of you, yeah?”
Synergy, why does that sound familiar? Andrew thought, edging around the table to stand next to Peggy. He’d planned to try to calm things down, but Peggy had other ideas.
“You know what?” she said. “Every time I’ve had to be in the same room as you these last few months, the only thing that’s given me any sort of pleasure is trying to work out what exactly it is you both look like.”
“Peggy,” Andrew said, but she raised a hand. A hand that wasn’t to be trifled with.
“And, I’m very pleased to say, I’ve finally reached my conclusion, because it’s now very clear to me that you, Keith, look like a health warning on a pack of cigarettes.”
Meredith made a strange gurgling sound.
“And as for you, hon, you look like the result of a dog being asked to draw a horse.”
As much as Andrew was enjoying the looks on Keith’s and Meredith’s faces he knew this silence was his last chance to stop things from getting out of hand.
“Look,” he said, startling himself with how loudly he’d spoken. “Remember the cutbacks thing we saw in Cameron’s presentation? You really think this sort of behavior is going to go down well if he’s got to make that decision? I know he can be an idiot, but he’s still the most important person in this room.”
It was at that moment that Cameron began to snore.
“Ha, yeah, he looks really important right now,” Keith scoffed. “You’re just scared, as fucking usual. I, for one, am sick of trying to pretend he’s anything other than a streak of chamomile-tea piss. Let him fire me, see if I fucking care.”
He took the lid off the pen with his teeth and spat it onto the floor, doubling down on his bravado. For the first time, Meredith looked uneasy, Andrew’s words about the cutbacks clearly getting through to her at least. Andrew and Peggy exchanged a look. He wanted to tell her that they should just get out of there, let these two idiots seal their own fate. But before he could say anything Peggy darted toward Keith and grabbed the pen.
“You bitch,” Keith snarled, grasping at thin air as Peggy dodged him.
“Oi!” Andrew yelled, rushing over, banging his hip on the table in the process. Peggy feinted one way, then doubled back and climbed up onto a chair, where she held the pen aloft, Keith and Meredith straining to reach it. If a stranger had walked into the room they might have been under the impression that they’d just chanced upon a strangely angry Morris dance. Just as Andrew reached the melee Peggy pushed Keith away with her foot so that he stumbled backward. Andrew could see the fury in Keith’s eyes, and as he lurched back toward Peggy, Andrew instinctively reached out and pushed him in the side as hard as he could. Unbalanced, Keith stumbled away and slammed backward into the wall with a horrible double thwack of back followed by head against the doorframe.
At that moment, several things happened at once.
Cameron woke with a start.
Keith reached for the back of his head, looked at the blood on his fingertips, and promptly collapsed to the ground with a thud. Meredith shrieked.
And then, as Andrew’s brain finally clicked—Cynergy, not Synergy—he felt his phone vibrating and pulled it out of his pocket. It was Carl.
— CHAPTER 26 —
Andrew wasn’t sure how long he’d been in the bath (or why he’d decided to run one in the first place), but it had been scaldingly hot when he’d lowered himself gingerly in, and now it was barely lukewarm. He’d put Ella on in the living room, but the bathroom door had swung shut so he could only just hear the music. He’d considered getting out and opening the door, but there was something different about experiencing the music like this, where he had to train his ears so intently that he heard every key change, every subtle shift in vocal inflection, as if for the first time. He felt overwhelmed at Ella’s capacity to surprise and thrill him after all this time, but now the record had come to an end and every time he shifted position he felt the coldness of the water seeping into his flesh.
He couldn’t really remember leaving Meredith’s earlier that evening. He’d stumbled out, his phone still ringing, vaguely aware that Meredith was screaming, “He’s killed him! He’s killed him!” as Peggy tried to calmly explain the situation on the phone to the emergency services. The next thing he could recall was the scuff marks and the strip light and his neighbor’s perfume. Maybe he was in shock.
He finally worked up the courage to get out of the bath and sat shivering on his bed with a towel wrapped around him, looking at his phone on the floor in the corner where he’d dropped it. He’d turned it off after the third time Carl called, but he knew he couldn’t ignore him for much longer. Carl and Meredith. Meredith and Carl. There was no way Carl’s calling him now was just a coincidence. And then there was Keith. Maybe he should call Peggy first, see what had happened. He couldn’t really have hurt him that badly, surely?
He went to the living room and sat with his phone, switching between the two numbers, unable to make a decision. Eventually, he pressed “call.” Digging his fingernails into his arm, he waited for Carl to answer, the silence horribly absolute. He was suddenly desperate to puncture the stillness, and he rushed over to his record player and clumsily dropped the needle, Ella’s voice filling the room. It was the closest to backup he was ever going to get. He walked around the train tracks in a figure eight, the phone still ringing out.