When She Was Bad(80)

Rage mixed with heartbreak and frustration and self-disgust, forming a toxic liquid that travelled through his veins and arteries until it reached every part of him, and not one cell of his body felt known and familiar.

He’d taken a taxi round to Stefan’s flat and broken in through a back window that he knew didn’t lock properly. Half an hour later, when he finally let himself out, his anger was still churning and he’d been carried home on a tide of blind fury. So it was only when his alarm went off on Saturday morning to wake him up for Derbyshire, and he discovered streaks of blood across the sheets from the arm he’d cut breaking into Stefan’s flat, that the reality of what he’d done hit home. He had a sudden image of how Stefan’s bed had looked by the time he left, with the duvet ripped up, feathers strewn around the room like confetti, and he thought he was going to be sick.

On the journey to meet Amira and Sarah at St Pancras station, he’d rehearsed his story for how he cut his arm. Opening a can seemed like a lame excuse but it was the best he could come up with. His core muscles were clenched so tightly, he’d given himself a stomach ache, and a couple of times he thought he might actually throw up, imagining that at any moment, he might feel a hand on his shoulder and turn round to find the police standing there. But as the morning wore on with no irate messages from Stefan accusing him of trashing his flat, he began to relax. Maybe he hadn’t made as much of a mess as he’d thought. Maybe Stefan would see it as fair retribution for what he’d done. It never occurred to him that Stefan might fail to link him to what had happened. In his mind it was too obvious. Too inevitable even. But by the time he’d had a couple of canned gin and tonics with Sarah and Amira, he’d calmed down and was even starting to enjoy the weekend in a ‘so bad it’s good’ kind of way. Until the texts came. They’d started on Saturday afternoon and gone on all through that evening and Sunday. Stefan accusing, Charlie defensive, not admitting what he’d done, until it finally occurred to him that the reason Stefan had delayed contacting him was because he’d spent the night with Jacob. After that, the rage had returned until he’d had to turn off his phone just so he could breathe again. Then had come the business with Rachel falling in the stream, and the whole thing with Stefan had been pushed from his mind.

Now, though, walking back into the office on Monday morning, he was plunged into a kind of black gloom, torn between grief at the loss of Stefan, and fear about what he’d done to Stefan’s flat. He kept imagining Jacob Collins with his stupid beard and stupid hair. Charlie knew Jacob ran a successful business selling artisan ice creams from pop-up vans around the capital. Money. With Stefan, it all came down to money in the end.

He made a decision. If Rachel came back in today, he’d march straight in there and demand to be put forward for the promotion. He knew it wasn’t fair on Paula, but surely at some point he had to start looking out for himself. He couldn’t carry on living his limbo of a life, aimless and lonely. Going nowhere. He may have failed in love but he could still achieve something at work, get out of the rut he was in. He had to try to rid himself of the feeling he’d had ever since he could remember that he was somehow unworthy of happiness.

‘What’s the atmosphere like in there?’ he asked Amira when he popped into the kitchen straight from the lift, to find her filling up the kettle.

She shrugged. ‘Like you’d expect.’

Black shadows ringed Amira’s dark eyes, making them look as if someone had smudged them with a soft pencil.

‘Maybe Rachel won’t come in today – after what happened.’

She shrugged again. ‘She’s like one of those snakes who grow a new skin. She’ll probably turn up right as rain.’

‘What’s up, Amira? You seem really down.’

A third shrug. Followed by a sigh. Then her shoulders sagged.

‘I’ve fucked up, Charlie. Big time. Run up all these debts on store cards. Thought I’d be able to pay the interest when I got paid, but forgot about the bloody service charge on the flat. That came out automatically and now there’s nothing left – no credit anywhere. And I got a bailiffs’ notice in the post this morning.’

A tear formed in the acute angle at the corner of Amira’s eye. Charlie followed its track down her cheek with dismay. Amira wasn’t the crying sort. Sarah seemed to burst into tears with such frequency he sometimes found himself wondering if, behind the delicate membrane of her eyeball, there existed a reservoir of salty water, and one prick would send the whole lot crashing through. But Amira wasn’t like that. It wasn’t that she was hard, but she didn’t wear herself as close to the surface as Sarah did. So the tear made Charlie uncomfortable.