She and I had met six months before at some Personal Development for Probation Staff conference in a terrible Holiday Inn in Loughborough. The place was a dizzying expanse of static nylon carpets and tootling pan-pipes wherever you went. The chap running the course kept banging on about ‘effective communication’ but was using a dried-up marker pen and kept scrawling diagonally across his flipchart so that we had to peer at it sideways. Emma was sitting across the other side of the room and kept sighing and making me laugh, So when we were asked to ‘find ourselves a partner’ we made a bee-line for each other. Unfortunately, it was one of those psychometric personality test quiz things that we both knew was a complete bag of bollocks before we’d even started it.
‘Oh Lord, a northerner. This’ll be interesting,’ she’d grinned. ‘I’ll speak slowly and you can see if you can manage to read my lips. Now… are you ready? Eyes down… Okay… Agree or disagree on a scale of one to six…’ She pored earnestly over the paper.
‘Eh? You’ve lost me already.’
‘Christ, a real clunker. I’ll mime it if you like.’
We giggled non-stop like schoolkids, finally working out that her personality type was a ‘caregiver’: a people-pleaser, highly sensitive, looking for approval from others, with a tendency for self-absorption. By contrast, I was a ‘duty fulfiller’: well-organised, loyal, faithful and dependable with a need for security that tipped over into being controlling.
‘So I’m a bit of a namby-pamby twat and you’re a mind-numbingly boring fascist. Is that what it’s telling us?’ She pushed the sheet across the table.
‘Seems like they’ve got half of it right, then.’
The course tutor gave us a warning look, so we had to shut up.
‘So are you pining for your whippet and your chavvy jeggings then?’ she said as we were packing our stuff away.
‘You’re such a snob and so behind the times,’ I shook my head and laughed. ‘Most of us have pit bulls and shop at Primark.’
‘But you do put curry gravy on chips, don’t you?’ She looked genuinely concerned. ‘Don’t burst my bubble about that too!’
‘Rest assured,’ I patted her arm. ‘You can sleep easy. We do.’
Meeting her in the bar later meant we laughed and got drunk together. Getting drunk meant I told her stuff that was happening back at work, only hinting at the ‘Dan’ situation, then weeping copiously but scrabbling to find a tissue. She’d gone off to the toilet and come back with a whole toilet roll and got a dirty look from the bar manager. I didn’t tell her the whole sorry story, but I think she filled in the blanks.
As a result, it was Emma who persuaded me to put in for a transfer when a vacancy came up in her office; it was Emma who told me what to say in the interview and told Viv, the boss, she’d heard on the grapevine that I was brilliant. I don’t think I mentioned whippets or fried potatoes or curry in that conversation, and I certainly don’t think even Emma realised the extent of the favour she’d done me. She never knew how grateful I was that I was finally able to run away – even if it was mostly from myself.
* * *
The taxi dropped me outside the pub just as the first few spots of rain hit the pavement and I pushed through the doors. It was one of those wonderful old Yorkshire pubs with a wide bar and wood panelling, its big crackling fire roaring in an ornate black grate. I was greeted by a madly waving arm.
‘You made it!’ Emma’s moony face grinned up at me as I squeezed into the table by the window. ‘A log fire in April! Shit, you can tell we’re in Yorkshire can’t you? My meeting was great by the way!’ She lifted up and rattled a posh-looking carrier bag. ‘How was yours?’
‘Don’t ask a single thing.’ I dropped my coat and briefcase onto a spare chair and exhaled heavily. ‘I don’t want to talk about it. Talk to me about stuff that’s got nothing to do with work.’
She pushed a chinking vodka and tonic across the table at me. ‘No probs. Get that one down you while I show you my latest purchases. Look at this—’ she reached into the carrier and pulled out a black and shiny top to go with all the other black and shiny tops she’d got. ‘Half price! I’m going to wear it when I meet Connor tonight…’
‘Connor?’ I looked at her in surprise. ‘You mean Connor Connor?’ I took a long swig of vodka and tonic as things began to fall into place. ‘So he’s up here too, then? Ah, that explains it – and there’s me thinking you were desperate to come on a jolly with your lovely mate. I wondered why you were so keen to volunteer to come with me on a visit to sunny Yorkshire when you could’ve stayed basking in even sunnier Hackney. I might’ve guessed.’ I took another swig. The cold drink slipped down deliciously.
‘I did want to come up here with my lovely mate!’ she protested. ‘And you know how much I love the cold and rain! I just thought while I was up here with you, I might as well…’ she waggled her head comically.
‘What are you like?’ I gave her an old-fashioned look and took another long slurp. A half-melted ice cube tinkled dully down the side of the glass. Connor was her latest. The latest in a long line of lying charmers who treated women like shit.
‘Let me get you another of those,’ she nodded pushing her chair back.
‘Guilty conscience?’ I grinned.
‘No! He’s up here with the Prison Inspectorate. He’s been off doing his inspectoring thing, and I did my obligatory prison visit and then I went shopping. Who could possibly find anything wrong with that?’ She batted her eyelashes.
‘His wife, maybe?’
‘Ex-wife.’
‘Ex-wife in the same house.’ I picked up my glass and let the ice cube slither into my mouth, crunching it loudly.
She flapped her hand. ‘Anyway, anyway… Guess what?’ She paused for dramatic effect.
‘I’m guessing you’re not getting that other drink.’
‘I’m being serious!’
I sighed. ‘Go on then. Tell me.’
‘He’s moving out and moving in!’
I literally felt my mouth open. ‘Moving out? What, you mean out from wifey’s?’
She grinned wildly and nodded.
‘And moving in? With you, you mean?’
She started babbling on, ten to the dozen, describing the row he’d had with ‘that cow’, what he’d said, what the cow had said, all the complications running in together as I desperately tried to unscramble the very convoluted story.
‘Anyway, anyway, that’s not all. Guess the other thing?’
‘I really can’t.’
‘He’s looking into emigrating to New Zealand. Their Corrections department is looking for people just like him!’
‘And?’ I felt a quiet tickle of apprehension.
‘He wants me to go too.’
I shook my head slowly.
‘Can you believe it?’ she beamed.
‘But you said no?’
‘No… I mean, no, I said yes!’
‘You can’t do that—’ the words came out in a kind of choke that shocked us both.