Taking Off
Chapter 4
Chapter 4
A bell chimed in the distance. Katie wiggled around in her bed. The sound didn’t go away. Was it a fire alarm? An alarm clock? Her mobile? This persistent noise, like a regular siren. What was it? Her home phone! It was her good old home phone. She let it ring away and curled up.
***
The day had started without waiting for her. The sun shone through her white curtains and warmed her face. Her stomach gargled and, as her fridge was empty, she put on some clothes she picked from a pile on the floor and made her way out of the flat. She turned left into Coldharbour Lane and just about managed to avoid some soggy chips spilled on the pavement. She stepped to the right. Her sandals squeaked. She looked down. Her shoes were bathing in a brown pool. That brown liquid, just like the one, just like the one, just like the one that had flown out of her the night before. It was hers! Her own stomach contents from a boozy day spread for all to see, not in the gutter or near a wall, but right in the way of passers-by. Her belly rumbled again and she backtracked home. She spent ten minutes in the toilets, as a flow of liquid poo came out of her. Sick and disgusting, that’s how she behaved when she drank. She needed a detox, she needed not to drink alcohol for a whole month. She needed it, needed to know she could rid her body of all those toxins.
***
On Monday, Katie went back to work. A lot of meetings happened that day so she made hundreds of cups of tea and coffee, opened thirty packs of biscuits and smiled to over fifty people. She had few opportunities to sit down and when she did, she rose back up on her feet straight away to attend to someone, leaving her no time to chat with her boss Elaine about her wages. Daniel was on leave so there were no jokes to cheer her up, no pranks to make her laugh, no opportunities to unload her thoughts.
She brought home a few leftover sandwiches from the meetings and warmed up a soup for dinner. She binned the tasteless sandwiches, added soup to her shopping list and fall asleep at nine in front of the TV.
***
At ten past one on Tuesday, Katie received a text from her brother Matt asking why she hadn’t turned up for Sunday lunch. She dumped her mobile in her desk’s drawer and carried on eating her pack of crisps. Her phone beeped again, this time a message from her mother expressing concern as Katie hadn’t spoken to her since her return to England.
When she had chewed the last bite of her lunch, she picked up her mobile and called Matt from the only private place in the office, the place Daniel dubbed “the no entry zone” even though it was a mixed facility. Not only did Daniel call it that, he believed in what he said as he didn’t use it himself and Katie had often wondered how he did his business until Elaine had commented on his eating habits, observing he popped out to McDonalds three or four times a day. Daniel was weird and crazy, she missed him.
“Sorry I didn’t come last week-end, I didn’t feel too well,” Katie said.
“It’s fine, we weren’t really expecting you,” Matt said, “even though Mum did make an extra batch of parsnips for you.”
“Oh good, so Mum didn’t worry?”
“No. Did you enjoy your holidays?”
“Yes I did.”
“Good.”
“Well, actually, I enjoyed the first half but then my wallet got stolen.”
“Stolen? Damn it, how?” Matt raised the pitch of his voice to notes Katie believed he hadn’t hit since his boyhood.
“At a party.”
“How much did they take?”
“A few grands.”
“Pardon?”
“A few grands.”
Katie paced the corridor twice, rubbing her forehead with her right hand. She caught her left shoe in the gap between the bin and the wall and almost lost her balance as she yanked it out.
“How? I mean… how?”
“I was… it’s a long story.”
“I have time, tell me all.”
She lifted herself up onto the work surface next to the washbasin and watched her feet as they dangled into the space below. She froze for a few instants then kicked the air in front of her.
“I thought my bag was lost at first so I spent a whole day looking for it. When I finally reported it, they had taken seven and a half grand from four different credit cards.”
“And the insurance?”
“Wasn’t covered.”
“You had no insurance?”
“No, no, I did take the travel insurance when I booked my flight but it didn’t cover that.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Panic and panic,” Katie said with a laugh. “And panic some more.” She paused for a couple of seconds. “Seriously, I‘m so angry but what can I do?”
Now, she was drawing circles with her right foot while her left surged from left to right to left in rhythm.
“That’s so unfair.”
“Yep.” Katie sighed. “Anyway, I’m looking for a week-end job, there wouldn’t be any I can do at the hospital by any chance?”
“I can’t think of anything at the moment but I will ask Janet.”
“Thanks, that would really help me out.”
“If there’s anything you need, you know you can ask me. I could lend you some money.”
“Thanks but I’ll try to manage on my own, it’s my mess.”
“I really admire you, you are being so positive about this.”
“I wasn’t taking it so well a few days ago, trust me.” Katie laughed and slid back down to stand on her two feet. Her ass had gone numb so she massaged it with her free hand.
“What did you do?”
“Got drunk on the flight and was in quite a state by the time I got home.”
“You did not!”
“I did. I’m not proud of it and I’m off the bottle now for a month. Please, don’t tell mum.”
“Don’t you think she should know?”
“That would hurt her more than doing any good.”
“Katie, don’t close that door behind you. The first step is admitting you need help.”
“I don’t. It was an one off, not a relapse.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“I got sick Matt, I puked my guts out on the pavement.” Katie mimed the action to herself in the mirror then covered her face with her hand. “Never used to do that before, my body is obviously rejecting the alcohol, which is a good thing, right?”
“Make sure it stays this way.”
“Trust me, not a day goes by without me thinking about it.”
“OK then, I will not tell Mum, but for this time only.”
“Deal. So, when can you ask your boss? Could I call you tomorrow or is it too soon?”
“Can you really cope with two jobs? I’d hate to be partly responsible for driving you back to the booze.”
“Of course I can.”
“I’d rather wait a little bit, see how you are doing first.”
“Fine.”
Katie ended the conversation with Matt and called her mother to apologise for not turning up on Sunday. She entertained her with tales of French people eating three types of cheese with each meal and laughed when her mother told her about her stepbrother Peter’s latest antics with a girl he had met in a nightclub, which included dropping his new Nike shoe in the toilets while trying to sneak out of her parents house via the bathroom window and getting bitten in the leg by her dog.
***
With the phone calls to her family dealt with, Katie could concentrate on approaching Steven. She had flicked through his diary after he had forgotten it in the meeting room that morning and he hadn’t written any afternoon appointment in it, an abnormality in his busy schedule. She rehearsed in her head various opening lines but didn’t like any. With Daniel on leave for the week and Elaine out for the day, she couldn’t ask anyone for help. What would come out of her mouth was what would come out of her mouth.
She knocked on Steven’s door and waited for an answer. Nothing. She knocked again. Nothing. She knocked again. Nothing. The receptionist walked by and suggested she knocked louder so Katie hit the door with full strength and grazed her knuckles.
“Come in,” Steven shouted.
Katie paced across the room and sat on the chair opposite Steven, her legs spread in front of her, her aching fingers resting on her lap.
“What do you want?”
She rubbed her forehead with her left hand.
“What do you want?”
“I’ve come here to… well… discuss the email from last week.”
“What email?”
“The email regarding the pay rise I asked Elaine.”
“I haven’t emailed you.”
“I know. I meant to say, Elaine told me you said no and I wanted to know if you could, you know, reconsider your position.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Give me a reason to.”
Katie reminded him about the innocuous yet deal clenching chat she had had with Mrs Hauss, the sister of the gentleman who had bought the mansion next to Mayfair Curzon. She added that she also had had a role in the sale of the hotel on the corner of New Bond Street, handling follow-up emails when Elaine was off sick. Steven nodded twice and smirked.
“You want to know why not? Let’s start with the way you sit. And the way you dress. And the way you talk. We are in the business of selling here, this is an estate agency, not a government office or a charity.”
Katie crossed her legs and ran the top of her trainer along the edge of Steven’s desk. “I do my work well.”
Steven lifted his coffee cup to his lips and dismissed her with his hand.
