Talking to Addison

‘So you don’t listen to people when they come to say “hello”? What were you doing?’

He stared at his hands again and didn’t say anything. I thought for a bit.

‘OK, shall we start again?’ I announced. ‘I’m Holly, and you’re Mr Addison, I presume.’

‘Not mister, just Addison,’ he said quietly.

‘Ooh, what a great name!’ I said, reaching out to shake his hand. He didn’t take mine, and regarded it with some alarm. ‘Addison Madison?’

What? What magic potion had I just taken to turn me into the Moron of the Western World? I cringed.

He blinked. His eyelashes practically bounced off his sweetly pouted lips. ‘Ehm, no … Addison Farthing.’

‘Farthing, Farthing – right, of course, how silly of me,’ I gushed, like I was interviewing him on a breakfast show. ‘Of course.’

I was backing away and backing down big time.

‘So, anyway, I thought, you know, time to say hello, pop in, have a chat …’

Addison continued to regard me impassively.

‘So, here we are, having a chat … and it’s been lovely chatting to you. Really. We must do it again some time.’

He continued staring at me as I backed out of the room.

‘Great! Nice to meet you! Nice Starship Enterprise, by the way!’ I said as I got to the door, but he was already turning back to his enormous screen and had clearly forgotten my very existence. Huge cables twisted round the table legs, heading off God knows where. The tapping started up again and I closed the door gently. Outside in the hall I leaned on the wall and let my jaw drop in wonder. Oh my God. No wonder Kate liked him locked away.

‘I spoke to Addison last night,’ I announced to Josh the next day. He was eating dinner and I was eating breakfast and trying to avoid his dinner – the smell of pork chops half an hour after I’d woken up made me feel a bit sick, I had discovered.

Josh looked up at me from an article he was reading in Homes & Gardens. I’d suggested Loaded as a slightly more useful manual for pulling, but it didn’t quite suit him, somehow.

‘And?’

‘And?? AND?? Excuse me, but as landlord of this establishment, I do believe it is your duty to let me know when you’re hoarding Johnny Depp in geek form on your property!’

‘You never asked.’

‘Why did I never think to ask?’ I asked, slapping myself on the forehead. ‘So many gorgeous computer geeks in the world, so little time. Josh! If it hadn’t been for my extreme bravery last night I might never have met my future life partner! Ooh –’ a thought occurred to me – ‘and our kids get to be brainy, too!’

‘He is very pretty, I suppose,’ said Josh, a tad dreamily. I narrowed my eyes at him.

‘Only in an objectively aesthetic way! Not in a romantic way! Not that there would be anything wrong with that! But I don’t! Not that it’s bad!’

‘Stop, stop! You’ve got caught in the Richard Gere “I’m not gay/but it’s OK” cycle of eternal justification. The only way to break free is to remove that plate of pork chops from my vicinity before I vomit on it.’

‘Thank goodness for your magic spell-breaking powers,’ said Josh, picking up his plate and moving over to the sink.

‘You know, I must have him,’ I went on. ‘He will be mine.’

‘But he doesn’t talk.’

‘That’s OK. I can talk to you, or my mother. Addison is for kissing and worshipping.’

‘So, like, there’s no difference between me and your mother?’ asked Josh gloomily, rinsing his plate off.

‘Well, you haven’t ordered me to help with the washing-up yet, so, perhaps there is.’

‘Don’t you have work to go to?’ he asked, a tad crossly.

‘Ah, that’s more like it.’

‘Fine. See you later. I’ll just continue here on my lifelong mission of female identification.’

I popped my head back round the door.

‘You know, if you meant that sarcastically, you should really take that pinny off.’

He gave me the V’s.

‘Bye, Addison!’ I called out cheerily as I passed his door. There was a small break in tapping in response. I took it as a good sign.

Two

It was getting dark when I hopped on the bike and headed up to the market. Going out in the chilly nights was the worst; I knew I had several hours of rushing about with my hands wet to come, and all around me the nine-to-fivers were heading for home, fresh pasta and The Bill. And they all made twice as much as me. It didn’t seem fair. Working in the market wasn’t anything like working in a shop. Then, you got to choose things yourself and put them together, and if someone had been rude to you on the phone you could put a bug in their gladioli. Here, I had to check ten thousand tulips and try to work out which ones were the best.

I worked for Johnny, who was wizened and had been on the flower markets for four hundred and seventy years, as he never stopped reminding me.

‘Aye, you never saw colours like that in my day,’ he’d snort derisively at one of the more over-the-top hybrids.

‘That’s because everything was in black and white, then,’ I’d point out to him. ‘It was the olden days.’

‘People used to eat flowers during the war, you know.’ He was quite one for reminiscing. In fact, he was absolutely, bar none, the best person I’d ever met at making up things about the war.

‘Hey, Johnny,’ I waved to him as I whizzed round the corner. The lorries hadn’t started to unload yet, so people were standing around, smoking roll-ups and gossiping about magnolias. The flower people despised the fruit people in the next set of bays, and they in turn thought the flower people were a bunch of big pansies who couldn’t lift a box of melons if their lives depended on it.

‘Hey there, lass.’ He regarded me critically. ‘You know, when I was your age, I was selling out the back of my own van.’

‘Johnny, you have no idea how old I am. In fact, I’m nine years old. And I have my own van. I do this for fun.’

‘I never met a lassie who knew when to shut up,’ he observed mournfully, and threw me over a pair of heavy gloves.

I’d only been there a couple of weeks, and already I hated it. It was exactly like school. The girls all wore inappropriate clothing, smoked behind the sheds and picked on me. Either that or they were so stupid they had to be reminded every day how to pick up a box of flowers without drooling on it.

So I tended to slog away on my own, pausing only to hurl abuse at Johnny or to point out things to the drooling girls along the lines of ‘Box – there! … You see box? Pick up box?’

The smoking girls teased me because I’d been to college, particularly Tash, their queen, this scrawny girl with thick black eyeliner who had a real mother-smoked-in-pregnancy look about her. Tonight she sidled up alongside me, observed my work closely for several minutes, and then said:

‘Hmm, yes, I see now why that needed a degree – getting all those tulip heads in a line can’t be easy.’

The rough boys all guffawed and I tried to laugh but couldn’t. I hated her, and I hated being bullied, and however rude I could be to Johnny it wouldn’t translate to this lot. They were rough as badgers’ arses.

‘Could you pass the sign-in sheet?’ I hated it but sometimes I just had to talk to her.

‘Sorry, love, I’ve only got a GCSE in general studies.’

All the boys laughed again, and one of them shouted, ‘Oi, watch out, Tash, she’ll trip on the chip falling off your shoulder.’

I grimaced and pretended to join in, boiling inside, but really I felt like when I was taken by some older girls to see The Rocky Horror Picture Show when I was eleven – it was all too trashy and I just didn’t get it, but I was laughing along anyway. They were mean, mean kids. Because I didn’t blow cigarette smoke out of my nose they called me TinBits.

‘Please,’ begged one of the lads, bending on one knee before me, ‘your exquisite virginal majesty, might I just for one second peek up your skirt?’

‘She’s got her knickers welded to her bottom,’ yelled Tash.

I very nearly flashed my tits at him just to piss him off, but instead made a hasty vow to myself to apply for every florist’s job in a five thousand-mile radius.

For the rest of the night, Tash contrived to make fourteen derogatory remarks, upset my flowers four times and spend at least an hour talking about me (I suspected) on prolonged fag breaks with the lads. I was being bullied! I couldn’t believe it! This wasn’t fair.

My shift finished at 4 a.m. and I freewheeled home as usual, down the hill back to the big house. I crept in and saw the light on under Addison’s door. The urge to see him again was overwhelmingly strong so I wandered into the kitchen and made two cups of tea. I didn’t know how he liked it, so I put three sugars in for luck as I’d never seen him eat – he probably needed the nutrition. Then I ferreted around for a couple of biscuits to add to it, but the only thing going was a very lonely Penguin – Kate allowed herself one every fortnight. I took it anyway, planning to replace it, pronto.

I knocked on the door softly.

‘Addison, it’s me.’

The soft clicking noises stopped for a second. I could imagine him desperately trying to wrack his brains for a single person he could be expected to identify from a ‘me’.

I pushed the door again and popped in.

‘I made tea!’ I announced, like a fifties housewife.

His short-sighted – oh, but beautiful – eyes swivelled round to focus on me. His glasses were sitting on top of the mother-ship console.

‘Tea!’ I indicated by holding the cups up and motioning like a lunatic.

He focused on the cup and followed its path as I went to place it beside him whilst I wondered if he was mentally subnormal.

‘Not there!’ he barked.

‘OK, OK, put the gun down. How about I hand it to you?’

Slowly he extended his arm. I placed the cup in his hand, handle facing outwards – which meant burning a hole in my hand, but I didn’t mind because when he took it, the tips of our fingers touched, and I swear I felt a bolt of electricity shoot through me.

I waggled the Penguin at him.

‘Penguin?’

He stared at it for a bit then shook his head, so I ate it. After all, as he’d taken the tea, that implied a contract that allowed me to stay for a little bit.

I leaned over. His computer screen was covered in bizarre symbols, just like in James Bond films.

‘What are you working on?’

He tried to cover up the screen, but as his arms were like matchsticks, it didn’t have much effect. However, as the symbols meant as much to me as EC policy directives, it was a pointless exercise anyway.

‘Ehm, nothing. Thanks for the tea …’

He sipped it, then tried to disguise his gagging reflex.

‘That’s all right. How was your day? Mine was shitty.’

And so I told him all about the nasty boys at the flower yard. Mainly for conversation really, because I knew the second I stopped talking there would be complete silence.

Much to my surprise he appeared to be listening – well, not doing anything else, which had to pass for it.

When I’d finished, I took another sip at my tea and said:

‘So, what do you think I should do?’

He looked at me for a second, then cracked an absolutely heartbreaking smile.

‘Not talk to anyone?’

A sentence! Almost. I grinned back at him, then decided to leave on a high note. I nodded with my mouth closed, mouthed ‘good night’ to him, and retreated, leaving him sniffing suspiciously at his tea.

‘Success!’ I crowed to Josh the following evening. ‘He talked to me.’

‘What did he say?’

‘Well, he told me not to talk to anyone. But apart from that I consider it an outright success.’

‘Oh, speaking of outright success, did you steal Kate’s Penguin?’

Shit; I’d forgotten all about it.

‘Mmmm … maybe.’ I surreptitiously checked round the outside of my mouth in case there was any chocolate left there from last night.

‘You’re in trouble.’

‘OK, OK, I’ll just go out and get her one.’

‘It’s too late. Plus, she knows it’s a blue one. I’d make myself scarce, if I were you.’

Unfortunately I wasn’t working that night and, annoyingly, felt that cold thing you get in the pit of your stomach when you know you’re going to get into trouble later.

‘Argh! I am not in trouble! I am going to go out now and buy her fifteen Penguin biscuits and … and make her eat herself to death like in Seven. I am NOT going to let her intimidate me like this. She is so damn ANAL about everything.’

‘Which is why she’s one of the best corporate raiders under thirty in London –’

‘Just under thirty.’

‘I know what she’s like. Be nice to her. She has it hard enough at work. Everyone is really mean to her.’

‘Ooh, gossip? ’Fess up.’

Josh was an indefatigable gossip, although he wouldn’t thank you for pointing out this particular trait.

‘Well, she just has an overwhelming inability to spot married guys. I mean, they can have a bloody suntan ring round their fourth finger and Kate believes them when they say it’s impetigo. And she’s seeing this guy now who only phones her in two-minute bursts from call boxes at eleven thirty at night, and they do a lot of their dating in their lunch hours … Any day now she’s going to find out he’s another louse. Deep down, I think she realizes they are and it’s all a big psychological mishmash.’

‘Wow,’ I said, nodding thoughtfully. ‘That whole big psychological mishmash thing.’

And we each thought about our own for a second or two.

‘So,’ I resumed, ‘she’s grouchy all the time and it’s not my fault.’

‘I don’t think she’s that happy at having another woman around the flat.’

‘I’m not exactly a threat,’ I said, looking down at where the button should have been on my pyjamas. Fortunately, I’d known Josh a long time.

‘It’s not that. It’s a territorial thing.’

I grunted. ‘What, like cats have? I thought there was a funny smell in my room. Maybe she’s pissed in it.’

‘Ssh,’ said Josh, as we heard the door open.

‘Shit! I’ve forgotten to go out and get the Penguins!’

He winced at me as Kate did her normal arrival routine: an enormous sigh, an elaborate dumping of her expensive accoutrements, and a full-body lunge for the bottle opener.

Josh winked at me, and I smiled manfully.

‘Hey, Kate, how’s it going?’

‘Shit! Holly, did you eat my Penguin?’

I cringed, which wasn’t what was supposed to happen. I was supposed to say something along the lines of, ‘Yeah – do ya wanna make somethin’ of it?’ and spit on the floor. Instead of which I said, ‘Yes. Look, Kate, I’m really sorry, I’ll buy you some more.’

‘No, it’s fine,’ she sniffed, LYING. ‘I’ve only been out working for twelve hours, slaving over a huge offshore investment, which is almost entirely my responsibility, something unheard of for someone under thirty …’

‘Just …’ I said, under my breath.

‘… why on earth should I want or deserve a little bit of relaxation, which I’ve already bought and paid for, when I come home exhausted? I’m silly, really. I should just give it up and mess about with flowers and eat other people’s Penguins all day long.’

She picked up the wine bottle and retreated from the room, continuing, ‘Really, I must just be so, so selfish.’

Once she’d gone I beckoned to Josh.

‘Hand me that bread knife.’

‘Now, you remember what I said …’

‘I heard what you said, and now I am going to kill her with a knife. GIVE it to me.’

‘No.’

‘I’m sorry. I don’t think you understand the situation: I am going to have to kill Kate with a knife, and I’m asking you to pass it to me.’

‘Sit down,’ he said, handing me a plate of couscous. ‘Ignore it. What else was Addison saying?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Don’t sulk.’

‘No, I mean it. Actually, nothing. Has he ever spoken to you?’

‘Not really. He just turned up when we put the ad in, and he’d brought so much computer equipment we didn’t have the heart to send him away again. Plus, Kate thought he was cute.’

‘He’s better than cute. Oh, did she try and pull him and fail?’ I asked eagerly.

‘No, she tried talking to him for ten minutes then ran out of attention span. Plus, also, he didn’t show any of the normal signs of bastardy.’

‘Ah, ooh, she is just SUCH a cow!’ I exclaimed again.

‘She’s fine. Now, go out and buy the biscuits.’

‘What! After all that – you must be joking.’

‘Unless you want “all that” every night for the rest of your life, I would go and buy the biscuits.’

‘Fine, fine, fine. I will go and buy the biscuits. Then, I will pee on the biscuits.’

I ended up heading to the gigantic supermarket which is open all night, all the time. I think they keep the staff caged there, like animals. They all have rickets from being out of natural light for so long.

I hate supermarkets. I can stand for hours in the shampoo section, stymied. Should I be putting fruit in my hair? What will happen if I don’t? What is shampoo, anyway? Are there any more foods just out there waiting to be discovered? Etc, etc. As usual, it took me three hours to collect a more or less random selection of products, plus fourteen packets of Penguins. I’d wanted Josh to come with me or, ideally, volunteer to do it himself, but he’d started to get a bit shifty and got out work files to do stern lawyer stuff with – like, as if.

Finally I wandered home, feeling a bit mournful and stopping to put my bags down every five minutes.

When I walked in, the house was very quiet. Josh was locked away in his room – I hoped it was with his Playstation – and Addison had disappeared. I had never even seen him go to the toilet. I liked that. He was too unearthly for bodily functions. Men, or at least the ones I’ve always known, think that it’s endearing to you if they fart a lot. Addison wouldn’t be like that. And then, they’d smell of angel dew.

Feeling mildly nauseous, I backed my way into the kitchen with my sixteen bags, swung them round to dump them on the table and accidentally clobbered Kate on the side of the head. With the one with the tin cans in.

‘Ow!’ she growled at me.

‘I’m sorry,’ I cringed, though I wasn’t really. But I didn’t want her to think I’d done it on purpose.

‘I didn’t do it on purpose!’

‘Oh, forget it,’ she said.

I did a mental double take. That didn’t sound like Kate. Surely she should be demanding my first-born child and threatening to take me to court.

‘Really, I am sorry,’ I said again, putting the rest of the bags down. I saw her properly for the first time. Her eyes were all red, and she was doing the giveaway, back-of-the-mouth sniff. As a world-class crier myself, I knew what had been going on.

‘Are you OK?’ I asked, as sincerely as I could, which of course meant it came out sounding like I was a confessional TV host.

‘I’m fine, really.’ She sniffed properly, and patted down her immaculately glossy hair. Now, there was someone who knew a bit about shampoo.

I started to unpack the shopping.

‘What’s the matter?’ I asked, casually, as if I was a trained counsellor and did this kind of thing all the time.

‘Nothing … nothing. Oh GOD.’ Her face completely collapsed into tears. ‘I HATE him. I really, really, really, really HATE him! And he doesn’t even CARE!’

I put down the tin of Heinz spaghetti (where had that come from? Had I let a four-year-old do the shopping?) and sat down beside her.

‘There you go,’ I said, patting her lightly on the arm and saying the things you’re supposed to. ‘Don’t worry. Don’t worry. Absolutely, he’s a bastard.’

‘You don’t even know him!’ she snivelled.

‘OK, is he a bastard?’

‘YEESSS!’

I patted her harder. ‘OK. Tell me, what happened?’

Her sobbing slowed down a little bit.

‘I was seeing this guy, and I really liked him and I thought … well, stupid bloody me, eh, how dare I think that I could ever go out with someone who wasn’t MARRIED?’

‘Oh no!’ I thought of what Josh had said. ‘I’m really sorry. Didn’t he tell you?’

‘He said he thought I knew. I asked him to come out for my birthday and he said he couldn’t, he had to take Saffy to the dentist …’

‘Who’s Saffy?’

‘That’s what I said. Then he coughed and said, ehm, it was his dog.’

‘A dog dentist.’

‘Uh huh.’

‘So you guessed from that?’

‘Ehm, no. I believed him.’

‘Ooh, nasty.’

She hiccuped. ‘Then I went in to give him a surprise birthday present a day early …’

‘But it’s your birthday.’

She ignored me and sniffed even harder. ‘And he’d left his wallet open on the desk … and I saw a picture of Saffy.’

‘Not a dog?’

‘A five-year-old girl!’

‘Well, kind of a bit like a dog then …’

‘No!’

‘He could be divorced, couldn’t he?’

‘He isn’t. I asked him. And now it’s all over.’ She started sobbing again.

‘Why did no one else in the office tell you this?’

‘I don’t know! I don’t really … talk to the girls in the office.’

I bet you don’t, I thought. In fact, they probably set you up.

‘Would you like some Heinz spaghetti?’

She thought about it for a moment.

‘Yes, please.’

We sat and ate spaghetti in silence. I wanted to broach the topic of Josh, but I couldn’t bring myself to. Also, whenever I’m in Kate’s presence and trying to think of something to say, I always have a horrible compulsion that I’m about to accidentally mention Pop-Tarts, like Basil Fawlty and the Germans.

Kate appeared slightly coy and lifted up her fork.

‘Ummm … would you like to come out for my birthday?’

‘Sure!’ I said. I was so relieved she wasn’t giving me trouble, I’d agreed before I realized what I’d just committed myself to.

Josh wasn’t coming to Kate’s birthday do. He was on parental duty. His parents were officially now genteel poor, living in a huge house they could no longer afford to run. They’d been cleaned out by that, Josh’s education, and the education of his three sisters, who were all beautiful, and all completely stupid. Despite these extremely positive attributes, none of the girls had ever got married, which meant no new influx of old money into the fforbes’ family coffers. The family, though, were holding up very well, marching on with some good stories and a lot of dogs and gin and tonics.

Which left, as far as I could make out, all of Kate’s City friends and, ahem, me. Actually, I wanted to go. Young, rich, probably good-looking men … I liked the sound of it. Obviously, I was going to marry Addison, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t get taken to nice restaurants in the meantime.

Unfortunately, everything I had to wear was grubby – the market was going to make you dirty anyway, so it scarcely mattered – apart from my pyjamas, and I didn’t think they would cut it. Finally, I dug up an old black summer dress which was so faded it could pass as grey, the colour du jour, apparently. It was too chilly, even in April, to wear it, and as I didn’t have a tan it gave me an air of being clinically dead, but it really was all I had, which depressed me more than I wanted to think about.

I teamed it with my favourite daisy necklace and twirled in the mirror. I looked nine.

I was meeting Kate and her gang at some posh pub over an ice rink near Liverpool Street station. It was mobbed and full of braying, identical young men, who had rather better skin than the young men I’d grown up with but were just the same old wankers – with money.

‘You’ve got to take it to the EXTREME!’ one rather red-faced young man was hollering to his chum, two feet away.