Fishnet (4 page)

‘Not got a girlfriend yet, eh?' Moira says, listening in, playing matchmaker.

I don't think of Graeme at all when I'm not there. Graeme, going out for drinks with the boys, playing computer games with the boys, wouldn't really understand my world. The spaces, the silences, the waiting. The child care.

I'm not sure why I'm angry at him now, though.

‘Where are they going to go, Graeme? The, eh. The prostitutes? If we knock down their sanctuary?'

He's doing that thing with his face again. He looks like he's laughing, but it's actually nerves. Or wind.

‘Eh, well. Not really our thing, eh, problem. It's the council
sold the place. They should be taking it up with
them
, those women outside. We're just doing our job. Eh. And it's not just like we're knocking them down. It's the whole block. Leisure complex. Possibilities for multiplex, eight bars or restaurants, bowling, casino —'

‘And you're okay with that?'

This is further than we've gone in conversation before, and he's reddening, shifting to the door, glancing back over his shoulder.

‘Do you not need to take the bag out. Moira's cup.'

Then he turns around properly, in the door frame.

‘I've seen the blueprints. It's going to be an exciting project for us, you know? For, ehm, for me. Good opportunity. Big one. We'll make a really beautiful building out of it.'

Glass, crap techno, cut-price cocktails on Thursdays, I'm thinking to myself. He's running off. Moira's teabag is bleeding scorches of tannin into the cup. I'll need to start over.

XXX

‘They've got stamina, I'll say that for them. Well, they'd have to, eh, in
their
line of work.'

Norman has kept up a muttered commentary all day. There's a judgemental wind shaking the building, and even the diehard smokers like Elaine and big George from Maintenance haven't made it all the way down to the car park today. The protesters are still going, though, hours on, their faces whipped scarlet under cagoules, and we can still hear the chanting over the weather and the air con and the wheeze of Moira's old computer.

‘SHAME ON THE COUNCIL!'

‘SAVE OUR SANCTUARY!'

I had a look at them earlier, peeking through the blinds like a spy in an old movie. They must have been waiting for any sort of motion at all from our floor, because they all pivoted on the spot to face me, turned their heads up to the window, synchronised,
eerie. Five women and a man, earnest looking middle class types for the most part. Tomorrow's paper will tell me that they aren't all prostitutes, that one of them was a well-known independent local councillor whose outspoken views on
women's issues
had made her a target for that paper for a while, that the man was a noted Socialist Worker agitator, that one of them was Suzanne Phillips, the former ‘masseuse' who runs the Sanctuary Base. The paper will take pleasure in those quotation marks. The rest will just be given names and ages. Anya Sobtka, 27. Michelle McKay, 24. Carla Forlorni, 32.

A fierce-faced girl had made eye contact with me, mouthing some words I couldn't have caught, white-bleached hair and a little bolt glistening between her nostrils. The rest just glared up, damning me by association.

‘Oh my god they've been on the phone all morning,' Elaine, the office manager, is saying as she comes in to bring files and get Moira's sympathy. ‘My ears were ringing! And I just told them, a hundred times if I told them once, I told them, the boss isn't in today. We are not available for comment. I do not know what all the fuss about it is, I swear. It's what this area needs, a big new development in there. It's crying out for a bit of a smartening up. And property prices will rocket! Maybe bring a few decent folk into the area for once. These people. These people, eh.'

I want to shut her up, shut her ignorant mouth up, but all I manage to say is, ‘What about the, eh, women, though, Elaine?'

I'd borrowed Moira's soft voice for cowards, but she heard me anyway, turned the full force of her thick lipstick on me, the minty fug of her nicotine gum breath. You could look at Elaine, strip twenty years off her and know exactly what she was like at school.

‘We've not got a wee red in here have we?' There's an intense little catch in her voice, like she's laughing. She's not laughing.

‘Just leave her Elaine,' Moira's saying. Elaine is a straight-talking gal from her own private movie. She courts applause in her head.

‘Listen, missy, you'd better work out where your sympathies
lie on this one, and fast. This is the biggest contract we've had in years. We need it. Are you going to get hung up over a few old bricks? A few bloody hoors?'

‘Elaine!' Moira's saying. ‘There's no need for language.'

‘You've got a wean, Fiona. Keeping hold of your job should be your first priority. And in order to do that, you might wanty show a bit of company loyalty, all right? I'm just saying. And I'm not the first to say it, eh.'

‘She's had a stressful day, hen,' Moira says as the door slams, Graeme and Norman looking straight into their computer screens and nowhere else.

Ian, our department head, arrives at two, brings storm clouds in. The protesters had mistaken him in his big sleek car for the boss, had obviously been holding eggs very carefully in their cagoule pockets all day.

‘Fiona. Get my clean suit immediately and call the police. I'm disappointed that you've indulged these idiots even this long. Norman, Moira. I'm going to want you in my office for briefing. We'll all be spending the rest of the afternoon on the new site. We need to get moving fast. Graeme, if you could begin bringing Norman and Moira up to speed while I get changed. Fiona. Call George and have him bring the people carrier round the back entrance. The back entrance. You and Elaine will be holding the fort here for the rest of the day, and I want these people gone by the time I come back at six. Understand?'

Ian disappears off to the toilets, then sticks his head back round again.

‘And all personnel visiting the site should ensure they've got protective headgear with them. There's another party of this lot down there, more of them, and because the site's not been handed over properly yet, we don't have the power to have them removed.'

Norman, jaw set like he's going into battle, is pulling out all his official RDJ Construction-branded equipment, grimly folding his reflective jacket and setting his hard hat on top, just so.

A whole afternoon. A whole afternoon with the office to myself. I'm weighing up Elaine's dislike of having nobody to talk to over her hatred of me, and betting on a succession of crabbit phone calls but no actual state visit.

I'm not going to let myself think about my sister, though. No. No. For distraction, I walk under the flickering light in the corner, feel the bad harsh crackle of it beam down on me. I slip my finger inside my bra and rub my nipple till it hardens, just because it's the sort of thing I wouldn't ever do here. This movement usually happens constricted, under covers, in toilet cubicles. I pace. I notice the light still on standby on Graeme's computer, and I move behind his desk, just intending to switch it off. The mouse is greasy to the touch, layers of pastry flakes and three-pm-biscuit in the gaps between the buttons. I move it gently and there's that half-second of high fuzz before the screen lights up again.

Internet Explorer. Hotmail. Personal use of online privileges on company time? Bad boy, I tell him, in my head. Bad, bad boy. And he hadn't even thought to hide it.

Two unread, presumably from his sister as they shared the same last name.

Eight notifications from three different social networking sites, all of them read, even the one that came in an hour ago. Naughty. I click to the next page, and there it is, right at the top.

He'd read it. Which meant it probably wasn't spam. Click.

A thin woman in a black leather jumpsuit which cut away just under her breasts was standing over a supine, guilty-looking man. One long elegant leg was extended over his face, the spiked point of a heel in his mouth.

Graeme. Vague, timid Graeme.

My phone rings, on my desk on the other side of the room, and I almost knock Graeme's chair over trying to catch it in time.

Elaine, tinny, disapproving.

‘Fiona. Ian's just been on the phone. He said you're supposed to have called the police about those, eh, people downstairs, and as far as
I
can see they're still there.'

‘I was just about to do that. Ian did actually give me a long list of items to be taken care of this afternoon and he has only been out of the office twenty–'

‘Well, I'm fairly sure this is his top priority.'

‘I'm Ian's assistant, Elaine. It's my workload to manage. Calling the police is the next item on my list as it happens.'

‘Well, it had better be done. If they're still there in fifteen I'm making the call myself.'

‘All right, Elaine. I'm on it right now.'

I don't think I convinced either of us with that performance. Norman has the numbers for all local amenities, including the police station, taped to his desk, because of course he does.

Getting the tray with six mugs downstairs and out the heavy fire door is tricky, but I manage. They see me coming through the glass, and a couple of them tense up. I indicate that they've all got to keep their distance before I fob open the security door,
and they do. The tray and I go out quickly, let it slam behind.

‘Thought you might like some tea.'

This isn't what I imagined prostitutes to look like, I'm thinking. These faces. Their jeans. But until last weekend, I hadn't really thought about them much at all.

It's the fierce, bleached, pierced girl who speaks. She's got an accent – Scandinavian? Polish. It'll be Polish.

‘You haven't poisoned it?' She's smiling, though, which is more than can be said for a couple of them.

‘I haven't poisoned it. I have had to call the police, though. Mr Henderson, our chief surveyor, who was the, ehm, the. You hit him with the eggs. So. I've just come down to give you fair warning, really. You've got about ten minutes.'

‘We appreciate it,' says the girl.

There's something stark and intense and beautiful about her face.

‘I'm afraid we're staying put, though,' says one of the other women, the one I'll find out is Suzanne the former ‘masseuse'. She's nice about it. Motherly.

‘Look, everyone's gone. There's nobody on our floor but me, the maintenance team and the other PA. Everyone else left by the back entrance for a site visit about half an hour ago, and they'll be gone all day. And Elaine can't even hear you from where she's sitting, so it's just me, really. You could make a run for it? You could make a run for it and go down to the main site? To the, eh, Sanctuary? Lots of action there.'

‘We appreciate what you're doing,' says the blonde girl again. ‘We're going to stay where we are, though. Thank you. And maybe you might want to go back upstairs? So you are not caught fraternising with us?'

Her voice slow over the longer word, sounding out each syllable. Frat. Ter. Nis. Ing. Ting. Ting. Ting.

‘So sorry to have interrupted your workday,' says the older woman. ‘Really. And thanks for the tea.'

I convince myself I can feel the heat of the pierced girl's eyes
on the small of my back through the glass, till I turn up the corridor. I take a detour past the Ladies, push myself up against the cubicle wall and slide a hand inside my knickers again, concocting flash fantasies that she's in there with me, that it's her hand and it's forceful, that she's baring her breasts through black leather. I think about her nipple between my teeth. I think about the two of us masturbating each other with a foot each on Graeme, who's lying there, hard. I come. I come. I scrub with Moira's rose scented soap.

By the time the police get there, of course, they've all handcuffed themselves to the drainpipes and have to be cut away and formally arrested. Elaine officiates, buzzing around the policemen while I watch through the blinds. She calls my phone as soon as they've gone and I let it ring out, realising too late I've left the mugs down there, and realising I don't really care. After a few seconds the voicemail button begins flashing angrily. I move a notepad over the top of it and go back to my computer, with no Norman looking over my screen, his wet accusing eyes. Finally letting it all back in. Personal use of internet privileges on company time indeed.

In the years after Rona left, I padded out every dull temping job typing variations of her name into search engines. Flickr-tagged pictures. Blogs. Myspace pages. More recently, reading down the friends lists of everyone I could remember she knew at school who was on Facebook, going back to her year group's Friends Reunited page for fresh names and starting all over again. Nothing nothing nothing. If you want to disappear these days, disappear completely, then the first thing you need to shake off is your name. Why be Rona Leonard when you could be xxcutiexx, or Asriel1983, or Glitzfrau, or Kittylover, or MsStiletto?

It's supposed to be easy now. It frightens people, how easy it is. You can find the girl whose house you played at when you visited your gran, that guy you sort of fancied from the bar you worked in for five months during your second year of university,
a man you met through friends one night, three years back. You can bind all these people to you for as long as the internet lasts, on a page that exists nowhere tangible, look at who their friends are, watch their lives. And this small, small country we live in. Graeme-at-my-work used to go out with Heather-from-myschool's cousin. Beth's best friend's mum was a former pupil of my Dad's. I went to university with a guy whose brother was my gran's home help. Blips on a radar, spreading out across the country, across the world. I'm here. I'm here. Everyone knows someone who knows someone who knows someone, and yet my sister has found a way of removing herself completely from this matrix of nosiness, has wiped her fingerprints off the world.