45
A scandal exposed
‘You can’t do this campaign, monkey. You can’t! Please, please, don’t do this campaign!’
An hour had passed since Gabriel had watched Killing for Kicks and she was still shaken. I was still angry that she’d tried to make me watch it – Gabriel, with all due respect, was only half the animal sympathiser I was.
We had adjourned downstairs to the lounge on the ground floor, Gabriel wanting to get as far away from the Court Room and that video as possible. I had stoked a fire and now sat flicking the Sky remote at the television next to her on the two seater couch.
‘I can do this campaign, Gabriel. I have to do this campaign. This is our future. Do you have any idea what a job at JAS 360 could do for us?’
‘No!' she snapped. 'You tell me.’
‘Everything!' I leapt forward on the couch and swivelled to face her, eyes fixed on her averted ones. 'JAS 360 are one of the most creative agencies in, not just England, but the world!' the accompanying flourish encapsulating not quite the world, but an indicative bit of it from the back of the couch to the floor rug. 'Their entire work ethic is based on creating great ads. They pick and choose their clients not just on their size, but on their willingness to take risks! Clients with eight and nine figure ad budgets come knocking on their door saying please, please, can we be your client! This is no small opportunity, Gabriel, is what I’m saying. I won’t get this chance again! And if I keep going with a few low rate freelance hours at Creative Solutions, we’ll be broke before the end of the year!’
I gasped. I gasped before I knew I’d gasped because I’d said what I’d said before I knew I’d said it. It just slipped out in the heat of the moment. In the sheer radiance of my imaginings. And even perhaps in the knowledge that I was now officially the only one in the relationship who hadn't sabotaged her parents, the only one with a clean slate. I had been the subject of so many accusations and so much suspicion for almost my entire stay in a new and foreign country. Suddenly I was completely absolved of all guilt. Equally suddenly, I had let my guard down on the tacit subject of perceived wealth. Virtuousness can be a very dangerous thing in the wrong hands. I couldn’t have flushed harder and redder if you’d tipped me upside down.
‘Excuse me?’ If only this could have been Gabriel admitting to an involuntary emission of air. ‘How are we going to be broke before the end of the year?’
All enthusiasm went by the wayside as I sought sanctuary at the back of the couch and sat as stiff as a peg. ‘We’re not,' I said.
Gabriel leapt to the front of the couch and swivelled to face me. ‘You just said we were’
‘Not if I get this job we're not.’
‘But even if you don’t get the job, we’re not exactly on the breadline, Bailey. Are we?’
‘Course we’re not!’ I flashed her with a millisecond of eye contact to confirm it.
‘If there’s anything you need to tell me,' she said leaning round to force a few milliseconds more, 'now would be a good time. I’m not exactly smelling of roses myself right now and I could use a bit of solidarity.’
Solidarity. Now there was a word. A word I’d used myself recently, when roles were reversed. A word I’d never used before in my life and normally associated with men in bandanas. A word I doubted Gabriel had any great call for either in her day to day dealings with tubby little women sitting on stools behind counters whittering, ‘Oooh, I’ve had such a run on potato peelers lately! I can’t seem to get enough of them! All these people suddenly peeling potatoes! I don’t know what’s going on. Oh, what the heck! Caution to the wind! Give us another two!’
Also give us that wonderful moment when two people who genuinely love each other come clean like a Chux multicloth under a hot tap. Over the last twenty four hours we’d given Gabriel’s Chux a thorough rinse and I hadn’t liked what I'd seen in the sink. There was however an opportunity to rinse the contents of my own multicloth in with hers while the plug was still in, swirl it all around a bit, dilute my foolishness in the sheer volume of hers, then when we both agreed it was a disgusting mess we’d both contributed to, pull the plug and start over with clean cloths.
‘I’m not as wealthy as you think I am, Gabriel.’
‘How wealthy do I think you are?’
I thought about this, took a punt. ‘Quite...wealthy?’
‘Do I?’ I so wished she'd sit back.
‘Don’t you?’
‘Honest answer?’
‘Please.’
‘Yes,' she said suddenly standing and doing a full tea pot before me. 'Not that it matters to me. I couldn’t care less if you were broke. What I could care about – and care about a lot – is if you’ve been pretending to be wealthy.’
I closed my eyes.
‘You’re not wealthy, are you?’ she said and it sounded hurt.
I opened my eyes and did my best deflated 'Woe is me‘If you'd given me half a chance, I was going to say it in my own way!’
‘When?' she screamed throwing every limb of her five foot frame at the word. 'And what way was that going to be? Why am I feeling vaguely sick all of a sudden?’
‘You tell me.’
‘No, Bailey,' she said standing over me as menacingly as a midget can stand over any seated person of normal size. 'You tell me.’
I sat forward to offset her height advantage and spoke to everything between her chin and her toes. 'Gabriel? We’ve both been through a lot in the last few months, you with your video and me with my terrorist accusations, the plague and everything else. I don’t deny that I'm upset by what I saw last night in your video. I don’t deny that I'm upset that your ex boyfriend has so callously trodden on your dream and shattered, yes, shattered any dream you had of some sort of compensation, albeit financial.’
‘Can you talk normally?’
‘I am talking normally.’
‘No, you’re not. You’re talking like some pompous ad wanker gearing up to telling me he’s broke!’
I said nothing. I didn’t need to. I’d already hung my head.
‘Are you broke, Bailey?’
‘No,’ I said to impossibly expensive Italian shoes I'd bought her on a whim.
‘Are you rich?’
‘No.’
She paced the room, looked out the bottom frames of a window. ‘So you’re somewhere in between?’
I said yes and she swivelled.
‘Where abouts in-between, Bailey?’ Her tone had taken on that of a slightly North Yorkshire-accented Nazi interrogator. Worse, she was calling me Bailey.
My eyes fell to my own shoes as she marched back in. ‘You haven’t got a bean left, have you?’
‘I have so!' I said jettisoning the couch with attitude and, more importantly, Everest-like altitude. 'Look around you! I paid for all this in cold hard cash! And no, that’s not a Skoda you’re driving anymore. It’s an Audi! A four wheel drive Audi! With fuel injection and turbo! You don’t see too many novice kitchenware reps driving around in one of those!’
Her tone turned perilously, seethingly calm. ‘You haven’t got a bean left, have you?' she said as her eyes climbed from base camp and planted a tired flag at the peak of my uncertainty. 'Or if you have, you were hoping it got us by until my father died. Is it all right with you if I feel really sick now?’ Ripples appeared in the calm. ‘I don’t understand! Why did you pretend you were rich?’
‘I didn’t pretend I was rich.’
‘This is very important, Bailey. I am probably going to leave you unless you can come up with a plausible explanation! Why did you pretend to be rich?’
I thought about this long and hard. Or as long as Gabriel would allow. Which was a couple of heart beats.
‘When I met you, I knew I wanted to marry you.’
‘This is fine so far. And I know what you’re trying to do. So please fast forward to the bit when you decided to lie to me.’ I didn’t and she may as well have spat on me.
‘You sad, sad fuck.’
Those were the last words Gabriel spoke in my suddenly disreputable presence. Within an hour she had packed and was gone. Within another minute she was back. Only for as long as it took to throw her engagement ring at me. It caught me on the eye. Then she was officially gone, leaving me with nothing. Well, next to nothing. Only two things were left. Two things worth living for. Kurt and Courtney. And the way things were headed, they’d be gone too before the nightmare ended.
