looked at his phone to check the time – two p.m. He would need to hurry. Scrambling to get his laptop switched off and packed, then wriggling into his coat, he left the building, heading for Bank tube. Bank would be better than Tower Hill, though a longer walk; the Central Line was more reliable than the Circle Line. The Circle Line is often delayed because it’s the favourite one to commit suicide on.
Luckily, the tube was running well. Richard made it to Hyde Park Corner in plenty of time. He was waiting at the bandstand by 2:45. Who am I waiting for? he wondered.
It got to 3:05. No one had turned up. Richard had eagerly scrutinised every passer-by, trying to build a reason around that particular person; who they were, what their connection to Mitchell was, and why they would want to meet him. The girl in the mini-skirt who smiled at him would’ve been a particularly happy choice. Too good to be true.
A couple of squat, rough-looking Bulgarians had passed by too, giving his imagination a scenario that was less pleasant to contemplate. Richard told himself to keep a grip on his imagination as they passed him by without incident, spitting out their conversation in guttural tones, completely unaware of Richard and the wild speculation they had caused him.
Quite a lot of people passed by, with Richard’s imagination, now suppressed, failing to relieve the boredom of waiting. There were loads of people cycling in London these days. Richard knew he was not brave enough for anything like that. He was not courageous; not physically; most of the time not even mentally. If someone criticised his work as incorrectly documented or badly structured, he would agonise for ages. That was what made him a good techie – fear of doing something wrong – even something trivial.
The girl in the mini-skirt was coming back. She looked vaguely familiar somehow, unless his memory was playing tricks from having noticed her ten minutes ago. She was in her late twenties, quite smartly dressed, with lovely, long blonde hair. Her shoulder bag looked expensive. All her clothes did, in fact. He speculated that perhaps she was Mitchell’s daughter. She looked a little too cheerful and rather too well dressed, even glamorous, for that though.
“Hi,” she said. “ … Richard?”
“Yes.”
“Melanie. I sent the email from Andrew’s mobile. I didn’t know how else to get in touch.”
Richard was still slightly taken aback. In spite of his speculation, he hadn’t expected the girl in the mini-skirt to be the one. He couldn’t get over the impression that he’d seen her before somewhere.
“Have we met before?” he asked.
“Possibly,” she said, more shyly than he expected, given her confident demeanour. But she continued without further explanation, “I have something for you. It’s from Andrew.”
Richard realised the expression of doubt that had clouded the girl’s face must be a reflection of his own puzzlement.
“You did know Andrew, didn’t you?” she asked.
“Andrew, yes. We called him Mitchell though. Andy Mitchell. I didn’t know him all that well; only a few months. He was my boss.”
There was a slightly awkward pause.
“So who are you then?” Richard asked.
“I was his girlfriend.” The vague idea they had already met persisted, but it was suppressed by another idea – Richard seemed to remember Mitchell had a wife. Yes, of course he had a wife. Well, it seems he had a girlfriend too. A hell of a girlfriend, in fact.
“You seem quite cheerful for a girlfriend who’s just lost her nearest and dearest,” Richard said bluntly.
“Ah.” Her eyes looked down, showing that she was rather contrite after all. She hesitated a moment and then, after brushing her hand elegantly through her hair, the cheerful look returned to her face and her eyes looked directly up into his. “I was more of a girlfriend experience.”
“A girl…”
“I work at Aphrodite’s Secret.” She snapped open her shoulder bag and took out a glossy card.
“See,” she said, offering the card.
Richard took the card. Out of a vague sense of embarrassment, he didn’t look too closely at it, but a brief glance at the shiny black card with gold lettering was enough to let him know what kind of a girlfriend Mitchell had had.
“Anyway, take this too.” She handed him a padded envelope. “He told me not to open it, and I haven’t. He gave it to me with instructions to pass it on to you if anything happened to him. I had no idea that he had probably already decided to kill himself.”
“Thanks.” Richard felt slightly abashed. For some reason, it seemed like she had acted with the greatest kindness to give him the envelope. Still unopened, too. In fact, such was the level of altruism she had exhibited, it was Richard’s turn to feel contrite; he suddenly realised she needn’t have bothered. He wondered why she had, in fact. Was that suspicious? Am I being set up? he wanted to ask.
“So what’s in it for you? Why have you – ” he blurted out.
She interrupted before he finished asking. “Oh, it’s quite simple. When he gave me the envelope, it reminded me that he was pretty much irreplaceable as a customer. He gave me this.” She showed him her necklace.
“Very nice.” Richard was trying not to make it too obvious that his eyes had decided not to focus on the necklace but to look a little further down the top of her blouse. It wasn’t just his eyes that were enjoying themselves; his nose too was enthralled by her scent. No wonder the poor bastard was in debt.
He couldn’t get over the impression that he’d seen her before somewhere. “Did you say we’ve met before?”
“Yes, don’t you remember? I had dark hair then. I was staying in a hotel with Andrew and ended up in the cocktail bar being chatted up by some nice gentleman.”
Richard was still mystified.
“The Grand Sokos Hotel… I had green eyes too… contacts.”
“Oh my god! Oh it’s…” Richard was going to say “so nice to see you again”, but in the circumstances he wasn’t sure if he should.
“Andrew got me to fly over to see him. That was when he gave me this handbag. It’s Miu Miu,” she explained. “He was always giving me lots of little things like that.”
“So you felt obliged to help him out because of that?” Richard asked, returning to the subject of the envelope.
“Not exactly. I decided it would be a good idea because, I thought that, seeing as we got on so well together in Helsinki, I thought maybe if I helped you with the envelope, you would quite likely be interested in seeing more of me.”
Richard was surprised but delighted with this idea, but before he could express his delight she added: “As a customer.”
9. A Word For Winter
Karl Marx was right. In late capitalism, every human relationship would be based on money. Now that the idea was in Richard’s head, it was pretty much irresistible. The idea of Melanie, that is, not the idea of Karl Marx being cynically correct.
So it seemed Melanie had simply taken the opportunity to
