He is waiting for her to speak.
She says, ‘I think I’m going to take the children to London this weekend.’
He nods, very sombrely. ‘Okay,’ he says.
On Sunday night, she returns to Hove with her terms. There are three of them. The first is that he stop drinking. He seems to think about this for a moment. Then he says, ‘All right.’
‘I’m serious,’ she says.
‘I know. So am I. I want to.’
She stares at him with open scepticism. ‘I mean completely.’
‘I understand. I’ll do my best.’
‘No, that’s not good enough,’ she says, shaking her head.
‘I’ll stop drinking, Heather.’ She holds him in her serious gaze. ‘I’ll stop drinking.’
The second is that he get ‘help’.
‘What do you mean “help”?’
‘Help,’ she says. ‘Professional help.’ And then, ‘I don’t know what exactly. There must be something — some sort of help you can get.’
He shrugs.
‘And you know … I thought you wanted to stop taking those pills,’ she says.
‘I do.’
‘Then you’ll need help.’
‘Yeah, maybe.’
‘Will you get help?’ she wants to know, still unnervingly serious.
‘Yes,’ he says after a pause, ‘I will.’
‘You promise?’
‘I promise.’
The last of her terms is that he find a job in sales. In fact, she says ‘a proper job’. There is, however, only one ‘proper job’ that he is able to do.
The second of these terms fares the worst. He has a short conversation with Dr Marlowe, who prescribes his Felixstat, and who advises him that, while it might be desirable in principle, in practice he should probably not stop taking it. Especially not now. He finds a few phone numbers on the Net, and sets up a single appointment with some sort of mental-health professional, which he postpones twice and then fails to turn up for. This takes a few weeks and by then — perhaps because he is making progress elsewhere — Heather seems willing to let it lie.
The first of her terms, meanwhile, is allowed to morph into something other than its original form. In its new form it stipulates, essentially, that he is not to drink in the house. Once he starts his new job he does drink in London, which must be obvious to Heather — though in those first few weeks he never shows up drunk — and eventually, over several months, this too, like the second of her terms, is quietly phased out.
The last, however, is fulfilled in full.
He quits the night shift, and in the morning phones Neil Mellor. ‘You still looking for someone to sell fruit, Rainey?’ Neil says as soon as Paul has identified himself. ‘No, mate,’ he says. ‘I’m looking for a job.’
Neil laughs loudly. He seems to be showing off to someone. ‘Went that well, did it?’ he shouts.
‘It went all right, actually. It was just a one-off.’
‘And do you really think Lawrence is going to let you work here again?’
‘Lawrence? I thought he’d left.’
‘Yeah, he is leaving,’ Neil admits.
‘And I hear you’re taking over. As sales director.’
‘Do you? Who told you that?’
‘I just heard it.’
‘Well … It’s not official yet.’ Neil is speaking more quietly now. He pauses, and then says, ‘I do have a managerial vacancy as it happens.’
‘Yeah?’
‘Remember Simon Beaumont?’
‘Simon. Of course.’
‘Had a heart attack.’
‘Shit …’
‘He’s still alive. Just can’t work.’
‘Oh. Is he …? What’s he going to do?’
‘Don’t know. This is quite funny actually,’ Neil says, ‘because you know what he was going to be working on?’
‘No.’
‘European fucking Procurement Management.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Your mate fucked it up, didn’t he. I heard about that. Delmar Morgan fucked it.’ The name draws from Paul a delicate qualm of depression. ‘They totally fucked it,’ Neil is saying, ‘and the federation sent it straight back to us. We started on the January edition last week.’
‘I thought Simon did the in-flight magazines,’ Paul says.
‘He did. Till the fuckers took them away from us. World Alliance.’
‘They took them away?’
‘They did. So … Up for it? European Procurement Management? Only because I’m desperate, you understand.’
‘Well. Yeah. I need something.’
Neil sighs. ‘All right,’ he says. ‘I’ll have to talk to Yvonne about it. I’ll get back to you.’
‘Yvonne?’
‘Yvonne Jenkin. The MD …’
‘Yeah, I know who she is. Why do you have to talk to her?’
‘You’re quite controversial, mate. She might not appreciate you being rehired.’
‘All right. Well …’
‘I’ll get back to you, yeah.’
‘Thanks, mate.’
Neil does not get back to him that day, or the next, and Paul starts to suspect that Yvonne has vetoed his appointment, and to wish — in view of this — that he had not phoned Neil at all. He went to PLP first, despite what had happened, for the simple reason that it seemed easier to be somewhere he knew, with people he knew, than to start again at an unknown place with strangers. There was, of course, something humiliating about it. It was the idle, the fearful, the easy option, and he almost hopes that it will not work out.
It does work out, though. He phones Neil two days later and is told that he has spoken to Yvonne and that there is a job for him there if he wants it, starting on Monday. ‘Oh, and another thing,’ Neil says, pleased with himself. ‘You can have young Andy back on your team.’
‘Andy?’
‘Yeah. Andy. I hear he’s been doing some freelance stuff for you anyway.’ Neil laughs. ‘See you on Monday, Rainey.’
It is a strange, quiet, somehow melancholy weekend. They spend most of Saturday in the presence of predictably smarmy estate agents. The houses they see are all more or less the same, Hove being a town of a thousand two-storey Victorian terraces. Though Norris Jones has not found new tenants and would have let them stay, they have decided to move — to escape from Martin, who has not taken things very well, and to make a new start themselves.