The Bursar's Wife (21 page)

“Fingers crossed,” I told her.

NINA OPENED THE DOOR TO HER FLAT IN A SWISHY SKIRT AND
soft wool cardigan. I stepped inside. It was an open plan affair, flat-pack furnished and arranged to look like a page from the catalogue it came from. I saw no hint of Nina’s heritage here, except maybe in the faint smell of incense long since burnt. The lighting was soft and the set table was candlelit. Two doorways led from the room, one doorless but with a bead curtain that obviously led into the kitchen. I gave her the bottle of wine I’d bought which I’d chosen based on price since I know nothing about wine. Nina took it to the dining table.

“I just need to check on something in the kitchen. Take your coat off and open the wine for me will you, I always struggle with corks but you shouldn’t have a problem.” She swished through the beads behind which a nice smell wafted. I hung my coat by the door and did the manly thing with the corkscrew that was on the table, pouring ruby liquid into large glasses. Nina came back out and picked one up, holding it to the candle. Her soft wool top had lots of tiny buttons down the front, except a third of them were unbuttoned and the rest looked ready to pop. I caught a glimpse of promising shadow.

“Perhaps we should start with a drink, George.” Shit, maybe she’d caught me looking down her cleavage. I nodded, glad of the low lighting.

“Let’s drink to, let’s see… anticipation,” she said, looking at me over the top of her glass, her dark eyes flashing in the candlelight. Was she teasing me again? I raised my glass.

“Anticipation,” I echoed, although I’d had all the anticipation a man could handle. I was ready to sweep the carefully laid crockery onto the floor and ravish her on the table. The only thing that held me back, apart from Nina’s probable objection, was a vision of Stubbing’s smirking face as she charged me with date rape.

* * *

We ate salmon as a starter followed by stir-fried vegetables. It tasted good despite the lack of meat. I asked her how she became a nutritionist.

“I worked as a beautician for a while, but there were only so many bikini waxes I could do. So I trained as a nutritional advisor and then realised you can sell on herbal supplements as part of a franchise, so that fits in nicely with my nutritionist’s hat on. There’s frozen yoghurt for pudding, just to prove that being healthy doesn’t mean you can’t be naughty.” She flashed a playful smile and went to the kitchen. I studied the room for clues about Nina’s interests and passions but couldn’t see much; no books, no music, some inoffensive easy-on-the-eye impressionist prints. I wondered what anyone would make of my surroundings at home; I would have to explain that it was my parents’ house and that I hadn’t changed anything, that it didn’t reflect the real me. Or did it? Nina came back with a pot and a couple of bowls.

“So, George, tell me how you got into your line of work.”

“I drifted into it, to be honest.” I told her how after college I’d got a job as an assistant for a form verifier at an insurance firm and moved on to checking the facts on claimants’ forms for myself. Before I knew it I was staking out health insurance claimants to see if they were playing football when they claimed to have whiplash. I’d enjoyed the non-office based work but not the insurance side of it, as all they were looking for was a reason not to pay out. Eventually I’d set up my own business and expanded into other things.

“Although I still do some insurance work for bread and butter,” I said. “As well as benefit cheats and serving court papers. Oh, and the odd missing person.”

“You must have some stories?”

“Yes, but I’m not telling.”

She smiled. “Do you like the marital stuff best?”

“‘Like’ isn’t the right word. It’s satisfying, because it’s getting at the truth, although often as not it ruins a marriage and I think people are better off not knowing the truth. The trouble is once someone has come to me things are pretty much over.”

We ate our puddings for a bit, then, mainly because I couldn’t think of anything else, I asked, “So you’ve never thought about settling down, maybe having kids?”

“Come on, George. Is that the only choice women have, to settle down and have kids?” She scooped more frozen yoghurt into my bowl. “The way I see it, to have kids, or even a man, is to be weighed down with responsibilities, not something I particularly want. Look at your secretary, what’s her name?”

“Sandra.”

“Yeah, look at Sandra, she’s lumbered with two of them by different fathers, neither of them around. She has no life of her own beyond the kids. It’s not for me. I like the idea that I can do whatever I like, go wherever I like without worrying about anyone else.”

I waited for her to ask me about my life choices – I was ready to give her my sob story about Olivia – but she hadn’t finished.

“That’s why Sandra doesn’t like me, you see.”

“I wasn’t aware that she didn’t like you,” I lied.

“Of course she doesn’t. I represent everything she’s not. I look after myself, she obviously doesn’t. She has kids with no man to help out, the worst possible scenario. I’m childless and free.” She laughed. “Did you know she goes on a dating website?” I felt my hackles rise.

“She’s had a rough time,” I said.

“She looks like she has,” she said, smirking unpleasantly. “That’s part of her problem. If she lost a little weight, wore something less baggy, maybe had a make-over…”

I put down my spoon.

“Are you full, George? You haven’t finished.” I didn’t want to blow my chances at getting laid for the first time in months but I couldn’t keep quiet.

“I don’t think you can judge people by their appearances, Nina.”

“Don’t you? I think in today’s world presentation is everything. Your outward appearance reflects the image you want to portray. Look at you, you shaved, put on a nice jacket.”

“I’m sorry, but that’s bollocks.”

She looked taken aback – maybe I’d been more abrupt than I needed to be.

“All I mean is that in my job I come across people all the time who are not what they appear. As for this,” I pulled at my jacket, “my ex-wife bought it for me and I wore it just to cover up the fact that I’m a middle-aged man trying to impress a thirty-something woman.”

“I’m twenty-nine. And I’m sorry, I didn’t realise you had feelings for your secretary—”

“She’s not my secretary, she’s my assistant, and I don’t have feelings for her, not in the way that you’re implying.”

“Well she obviously has feelings for you. When I told her we were going out last time she didn’t seem that pleased.”

“She looks out for me, that’s all,” I said. “She’s been overprotective since my wife left.” This would have been a good point for her to ask me about my wife but she started to stack the bowls. A chirping noise came from my coat.

Nina stood up and took the bowls from the table. I went to my coat – the chirping was probably the packet of condoms calling out, telling me to take them back to the supermarket for a refund.

But it wasn’t the condoms; it was the office mobile being rung by a Cambridge number I didn’t recognise. I had to dig it out from behind the DVD I’d brought with me. A DVD that would probably remain in my raincoat.

“Hello?” I said.

An incoherent female voice, upset.

“Who is this?” A sniffle, then a familiar man’s voice in the background.

“It’s Lucy, George…” She sounded drunk, again.

“Are you OK?”

“No…”

“Where are you?”

“I’m sorry, George…”

“For this afternoon? Don’t worry about it.”

“No… not that.” There was that man’s voice in the background again.

“Who’s there, Lucy?”

“I… I came to confront him but he’s not here. Please will you pick me up?” Her voice was slurring now.

Nina came back into the room with a tray of coffee and a bottle of sweet-looking liqueur. At least she was smiling. The light from the kitchen highlighted her figure; the swishy skirt filtered light between her legs. I looked at the carpet and spoke into the phone.

“Now? Can’t you get a taxi? Hello?”

“George, son, it’s Eric, at River Views. I’ve got this girl in my office, pissed as a newt, she says she knows you and wants you to pick her up. Says you’re the only person she can trust when she’s pissed.”

“Can’t you put her in a taxi? I’ll pay you back tomorrow.”

“She won’t…” he dropped his voice to a whisper, “I wouldn’t put my daughter in a taxi if she was this pissed.”

I sighed. “OK. I’ll pick her up. Keep her in the office and for God’s sake don’t let her go upstairs if the guy on the top floor comes home. Understand, Eric?”

“Yes.”

“I’m sorry, George,” shouted Lucy in the background. Eric hung up.

I put the phone away and looked up to see Nina sitting on the sofa, legs crossed, the skirt open to the thigh.

“Sounds like you’re going to bail out on me again, George.”

“I’m afraid so.”

“And you put that jacket on just to impress me.”

I nodded.

She smiled. “How long do you think you’ll be?”

“I’m not sure. Why?”

“Why don’t you come back later, when you’re done?” She leant forward to pick up her small glass of liqueur and the tiny buttons on her cardigan looked very flimsy. “It doesn’t matter how late.”

I DROVE STUPIDLY FAST CONSIDERING I
’
D DRUNK THREE
glasses of wine. But I reckoned I could get Lucy home and be back to Nina’s in forty-five minutes tops if I hurried.

I parked in the car park opposite River Views and checked the top floor; it was dark. The street was wet with fresh rain and Eric was waiting outside the gate. He smelled of mints which couldn’t hide the smell of whisky.

“She’s asleep in the office.”

“What happened?”

“She was pressing the buzzer for ages then she started shouting so I went out, didn’t I, to see what was going on. Told me she was here to see Mr Boyd. I told her he wasn’t in and she started crying, sort of collapsed on the pavement here.” He pointed to near where we were standing as if it were important to know the exact place she had collapsed. “So I told her to come into the office, didn’t I?”

I told him he’d done the right thing. We went through the gate.

“She said she wanted to call someone so I told her she could use the office phone.” He opened the door to his office and I stepped in. Lucy was in a foetal position on the tiny sofa, her open mouth drooling onto the worn plastic. She looked a little clammy but her breathing seemed regular. Her dress was up around her skinny thighs. I pulled it down over her knees and looked at Eric, who looked away. I wanted to believe she had fallen asleep like that.

“She had your business card on her, so we rang you.”

“I think the best thing to do is get her mother down here to pick her up.” I found Sylvia’s card in my wallet and dialled her mobile. Eric was called to the door and went out to deal with someone. I looked round the office as I listened to Sylvia’s phone ring. The door on the wall-mounted shallow metal cabinet that I’d seen last time was ajar. I checked the one-way window and saw Eric helping a woman carry groceries from her car. I opened the cabinet door. Bingo – it was full of keys on hooks. A row of hooks for each floor, a hook for each apartment. One hook right at the top, on its own. The penthouse. It was so tempting. Sylvia’s voicemail message came on, clipped vowels and businesslike. I hung up and looked through the window; I couldn’t see Eric. I took the penthouse keys and stuck them in my coat pocket next to the condoms – was I really choosing between a chance to use one and an opportunity to snoop round Quintin Boyd’s apartment? I still had to decide what to do with Lucy; I didn’t feel I could leave her in Eric’s boozy care.

I rang Sandra from the mobile and asked her to come down in a taxi to pick Lucy up. It was the wrong suggestion.

“Can’t you just put her in a taxi home, for fuck’s sake? It’s Friday night and I’ve got a toddler and a teenager who can’t hold his own cock to piss to look after here.”

“I can’t get hold of her mother and she’s in no state to put herself to bed, Sandra.”

“Then why don’t you take her to your place?”

I gave her a few seconds to think about what she’d said while I watched Lucy stir and moan. Sandra’s voice came back, sounding less shrill. “OK, I tell you what. Bring her here and she can sleep it off tonight. She’ll wake up in a bit of Cambridge she’s never seen before and I’ll give her some toast and put her in a taxi.” I didn’t want to leave; I’d have to come back and get Eric to open the gates with some excuse. I looked through the window to see him returning to the office.

“I can’t leave here, I’ve got an opportunity to get closer to this American bastard. I’ll put her in a taxi to yours.” Sandra agreed to keep an eye out for her and I hung up as Eric came in. I told him to call for a taxi. I shook Lucy by the shoulder; she stirred and opened red-rimmed eyes. When she saw me she sat up.

“Woah, not so fast,” I said, as she put her hand to her mouth.

“Taxi will be here in five,” said Eric.

“Best get a bucket,” I told him. When he’d gone I explained to Lucy what was happening. She nodded.

“What are you doing here, Lucy?”

“I came to confront him about my parents; he knew them but didn’t tell me. I overdid the Dutch courage though.”

Dutch courage in the form of Dutch gin. I wanted to ask her more but Eric came in with a bucket and Lucy bent over it as soon as it hit the floor. I held her hair out of the way while she emptied her stomach.

* * *

When the taxi driver pressed the buzzer I convinced Eric that he should stay in the warmth of his office while I took Lucy out to the taxi. He didn’t argue, no doubt desperate to get back to his bottle in the desk.

I steered Lucy through the gate and wedged it open with my packet of condoms – the best use I was going to get out of them at this rate. The taxi driver whined about Lucy possibly throwing up in the back so I bunged him an extra twenty of Sylvia’s money which shut him up and told him someone was waiting the other end.

With Lucy gone I walked away in case Eric was watching through his CCTV and then, with my back pressed against the wall to avoid the camera, sidled to the gate. I went through the gate, pocketing my condoms, and squatted to shuffle underneath Eric’s window. Ignoring the lift, the noise of which I figured Eric was attuned to, I found the stairwell and climbed to the top floor.