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Working It Out
Alex George
Watch out Bridget Jones and Ally McBeal – Johnathan Burlip wants you to know his side of the story!For Johnathan Burlip, solicitor and virtuoso shirt ironer, nothing is ever simple. Girlfriends, dysfunctional families, petulant bosses – all cause him grief and confusion. Marooned in modern London, Johnathan finds himself rudely ejected from the comfortable life of corporate lawyer, leaving him spinning out of control towards an undistinguished legal career in Finsbury Park, where the clientele and professional challenges are somewhat different. While he participates in a love story for our times, Johnathan is tormented on his journey by a chorus of politically correct parents, well-manicured mobsters, a bionic hamster and a cat with only one (curtailed) life.
Working It Out
Alex George
For Christina
Table of Contents
Cover Page (#u3da08cf6-0118-574d-8ab7-32d0d551042f)
Title Page (#u964692dc-2d19-5579-89d8-13d390dfe2b9)
ONE (#u823b3c42-a6ed-5583-8a6a-cd0072bd0c80)
TWO (#ud46775cc-b34a-5023-94d5-b0d668f72e6d)
THREE (#u822d3ca7-3fe2-5203-b97d-cf7bae58d1e1)
FOUR (#u4fbcbc1a-07be-5484-ae5c-4a90e153480d)
FIVE (#u29d7b63f-86c8-5c1b-b47d-f1af1a2b4814)
SIX (#uc6fbdc06-b877-53ac-bd02-24a9b4da180c)
SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
TEN (#litres_trial_promo)
ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
TWELVE (#litres_trial_promo)
THIRTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
FOURTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
FIFTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
SIXTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
SEVENTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
EIGHTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
NINETEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
TWENTY (#litres_trial_promo)
TWENTY-ONE (#litres_trial_promo)
TWENTY-TWO (#litres_trial_promo)
TWENTY-THREE (#litres_trial_promo)
Acknowledgements (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
ONE (#ulink_468eebaa-7782-5145-b281-ed03afe83251)
Johnathan Burlip zipped up and sighed. There was something reassuring about peeing in Chloe’s bathroom. Watching the blue, Domestos-drenched water in the bowl ripple and then assume the hue of the flesh of a ripe avocado, he had reflected that some things in life never changed, immutable in their truth and simplicity. Two and two still made four, and when you mixed blue and yellow, you still got green. Such things were precious, to be grasped in times of crisis.
He looked around the terracotta and black bathroom with distaste as he pulled the duck that sat suspended in mid-flight on the end of the flushing-chain. Blue noisily replaced green, ready for the process to be repeated. Johnathan sat down on the loo he had just used, and wondered what to do. He desperately didn’t want to go back downstairs. He traced a line through the brown Terylene shagpile with his foot, and considered possible excuses. An upset stomach, perhaps. Chloe’s aggressive vegetarian dietary tactics always had an adverse effect on his digestive system. Results were spectacular, having a similar effect on the lavatorial plumbing to that of a jack-knifed lorry in the Dartford Tunnel on a Friday night. Nothing got through. No U-turn. No U-bend, for that matter.
Johnathan decided that nobody would be convinced. He belched chickpea and got up. He opened the door and slouched towards the stairs, stopping outside the kitchen to consider a petunia, which he had given Chloe some months previously by way of apology for some deemed transgression, he forgot what. The plant looked how he felt. Thirsty. And wilting.
The door opened and Chloe’s sister Harriet appeared. She looked at Johnathan balefully. Her eyes were smudged with cheek-bound mascara.
‘How is she?’ he asked.
Harriet considered. ‘Like Eeyore with a period.’
‘Oh dear,’ said Johnathan.
He went into the kitchen. Chloe was slumped in a chair at the large table in the middle of the room, staring into a half-empty wine glass. She did not look up as he approached.
‘Um,’ said Johnathan.
Chloe did not move.
Johnathan waited, wondering what to do. He glanced over towards the sink. Troilus was lying on the floor, horribly inanimate. The pool of blood which surrounded his squashed head like a halo had started to expand with a ghoulish inevitability towards the fridge.
‘I’ll get a cloth,’ he said. He went to the cleaning cupboard and began to pad kitchen roll around the edges of the growing puddle.
Once the tide of blood had been stemmed and the sodden roll disposed of, Johnathan stood up and waited for instructions. Her eyes still fixed firmly on her wine glass, Chloe finally said, ‘Bury him by the mange-touts, and then leave. Don’t come back.’
‘Right,’ said Johnathan, wondering what decomposing cat did for the nutritional qualities of vegetables. He rolled up his sleeves and picked up the dead animal, who responded with a last spirited gush of cloying blood, scoring a direct hit on Johnathan’s trousers. Johnathan smiled grimly. He didn’t care. Got you at last, you little bastard. He went outside to look for a spade.
Johnathan Burlip detested cats. He was very, very allergic to them. If there was a cat within two hundred yards, it would unerringly track him down and snuggle up to him, purring in unreciprocated affection. He had about ten seconds in which to whip out a handkerchief with which to stem the ensuing nasal catastrophe.
Troilus, unfortunately for him, had been particularly fond of Johnathan. He loved to coat Johnathan with his fur, huge quantities of which seemed to disengage automatically on contact. Johnathan’s enmity towards cats in general developed a new focus of Troilus in particular. Over time, this had gradually developed into an unhealthy paranoia. He used to have nightmares in which Troilus could speak, dance and sing. One night he appeared as Mephistopheles and explained how Macavity wasn’t that much of a mystery cat, he just had a good agent.
Johnathan kicked Troilus into the hole he had hurriedly dug. The chapatti pan had scored a direct hit on Troilus’s cranium, causing instant departure for Cat Heaven. Johnathan had been drying the chapatti pan after dinner, while Troilus, as usual, had been sitting archly at his feet, particles of cat wafting from his fur up Johnathan’s nostrils. Just as the chapatti pan was dry, the urge to wallop Troilus became overwhelming. Johnathan hadn’t really thought through the consequences. He was suddenly overcome by tiredness and irritation, and after a brief internal dialogue, the essence of which was ah, fuck it, he had deftly played a forceful on-drive with uncharacteristic accuracy and panache, Troilus’s head obligingly playing the part of the cricket ball. Wop. Out.
Johnathan covered the dead body with topsoil and enjoyed a brief jig of victory on his victim’s grave to smooth out the surface. He trudged back towards the warm lights of the house. Chloe had vanished from the kitchen. Instead Harriet had returned downstairs and sat at the table, watching the steam rise on the last cup of decaf of the day.
She looked at him. ‘She’s gone to bed,’ she said.
‘Right,’ said Johnathan awkwardly.
There was a pause.
‘Prat,’ remarked Harriet.
Johnathan shrugged. ‘I’ll let myself out,’ he said.
‘Bye,’ said Harriet.
Johnathan nodded, and opened the front door.
On the cold Fulham street a few empty crisp packets tangoed listlessly between the parked Peugeot 205s. He turned up the collar on his coat and headed down the hill towards Parsons Green tube.
TWO (#ulink_848d4fb0-c1ca-5d6c-b107-dfcbe0221052)
The telephone was ringing.
Slowly, very, very slowly, its insistent shrilling filtered through the syrupy mire of Johnathan Burlip’s sleeping brain. As consciousness arrived, he became aware not only of the telephone but also of a brutish throbbing just behind his eyes. He groaned, rolled inelegantly out of his bed, and tottered out of the bedroom. Barely awake, he picked up the phone and said,
‘Ugh.’
There was a pause. Then:
‘Bastard.’
Johnathan blinked. He swayed slightly. The throbbing was spreading from his eyes backwards into his brain and upwards to his temples, where it sat, deeply malignant, radiating pain. The clock in the hall seemed to suggest that it was six o’clock in the morning. He waited.
‘Bastardbastardbastard.’
Johnathan closed his eyes. It was Chloe.
‘Hello Chloe,’ he said.
‘Oh no you don’t. Oh no you bloody don’t. Don’t think for one minute that you’re going to sweet-talk your way out of this one. No way. Not this time. End of story. You’re history.’
‘OK,’ said Johnathan.
‘Look,’ said Chloe, ‘don’t even bother trying. It’s a waste of time. It won’t work. It’s pitiful, actually. You’re pathetic. You’re just a drivelly, snivelling pathetic man. God. I can’t believe this. At least have a bit of dignity.’
‘OK,’ said Johnathan.
‘I mean, Jesus. You killed my cat. You’re a murderer. I should report you to the police. The RSPCA. You are in serious trouble. Serious. You can just forget everything. How you can even ask me to contemplate having you back at this stage is beyond me.’
Johnathan woke up. He had asked no such thing, and nor was he going to. Best to make that clear right away. ‘You’re right,’ he said quickly. ‘I killed your cat. I killed Troilus. I am a murderer. I am vermin. You wouldn’t want to see me again even if I was the last person on the planet.’
Chloe’s tone softened. ‘This self-hate is not good for you,’ she said. ‘You’ve always had low self-esteem. It’s not going to get you anywhere. You need to look at yourself in a more positive light. You do have some good qualities.’
Johnathan started to hop up and down in agitation. This was not going according to plan. ‘I killed Troilus,’ he reminded her.
Chloe sighed. ‘I know. I don’t pretend to understand why. You were looking for a form of externalizing your emotions, you wanted to project your frustrations. You were caught up in the sub-luminous ego strata.’
Johnathan frowned. ‘What?’ he said.
‘But you have a problem. You’re angry about something. You should try and talk about it. You need professional help. It’s nothing to be ashamed of. I go all the time. It’s been enormously uplifting, just to be able to share my problems with a sympathetic ear. Voicing my hopes and fears out loud helps them to crystallize within me. I come out more fulfilled, more rounded. More me.’
More fucking nutty, thought Johnathan blackly.
‘Chloe,’ he said after a few moments. ‘It’s over, isn’t it?’
‘God, don’t say that. Don’t ever say that. It’s never over. Things are never that bad. Christ. Things are worse than I thought. You must snap out of it, Johnathan. Come back from the edge. Take a step back and see the better you.’ Chloe’s reedy voice rose a few pitches with excitement.
Johnathan sighed. ‘No, not that. Us. You and me. We’re over. Finished. Aren’t we?’
‘Oh,’ said Chloe, the disappointment audible. ‘I see.’
‘I mean,’ said Johnathan reasonably, ‘I did kill your cat.’
Chloe thought about this. ‘We all have our moments of madness. The insuperable super-ego plays its trump card.’
‘But surely you must hate me now,’ said Johnathan hopefully.
‘Hate? What is hate, at the end of the day?’
‘Listen,’ said Johnathan quickly, keen not to get side-tracked. ‘You’re obviously still very upset. I understand that. You need some time alone. I’m sorry to have caused you so much grief. I understand if you’ll never want to see me again,’ he said.
‘Sweetie,’ cooed Chloe. ‘You’re being terribly hard on yourself–’
‘But I must, I must,’ cried Johnathan, and slammed the receiver down. He stood still for a few moments, dazed, wobbling slightly with queasiness and sleep. His mouth felt as if a herd of camels had surreptitiously crapped in it during the night.
He went into the kitchen and opened the fridge door, squinting against the anaemic glow of the electric fridge light, which felt as if it was burning holes in his retinas. There was no bottled water left. Of course there wasn’t: he had drunk it all when he had arrived home last night, hoping to stave off the mother of all hangovers. The empty bottle lay on its side near the bin. Johnathan dispiritedly took a glass and filled it with warm, slightly opaque liquid from the tap.
Chloe was addicted to self-help manuals. She could speak meaningless psycho-babble fluently, in several different dialects. She could analyse your dreams, tell you how to give up smoking or lose weight by meditation, determine what was the right job for you, and offer potted highlights of all of the world’s leading religions. Johnathan had had enough of her hectoring, if well-meaning, didacticism. All he wanted was to be left alone. It was extremely trying to have one’s numerous weaknesses pointed out and dissected at every available opportunity.
One of these weaknesses, it transpired, was spinelessness. Johnathan had decided some months ago that he could not take any more of Chloe’s banalities, but since then had done nothing until his contretemps with Troilus the previous evening. With anyone other than Chloe the best way to end matters would have been to explain gently that it was time to move on, sorry, and there are plenty more fish in the sea, and it’s not you, it’s me, and I just don’t deserve you, and so on. Johnathan realized that this approach would not work with Chloe: she would somehow manage to twist his words back on themselves and he would in all probability find himself engaged. Instead he had attempted a more oblique approach. In the lowest, slyest way possible, he did everything he could to make life for Chloe so unbearable that she would feel obliged to dump him.
One of the difficulties with this, however, was that he would find himself blinking in disbelief at Chloe’s equanimity as she calmly accepted his most outrageous and offensive behaviour with a brief shrug. Chloe clung on to the relationship with the tenacity of a pit-bull terrier. An entire section of her library was dedicated to Resolving Your Differences, Making that Love Work for You!, Talking it Through, and so on. Johnathan realized that there was a long, long way to go before she had exhausted the remedies available on her bookshelf.
Chloe’s refusal to accept the obvious was the principal reason for Troilus’s fate the previous evening. It had been in many respects a political execution, Troilus no more than a hapless pawn in an altogether more complex game. Johnathan had finally had enough. He had never knowingly killed anything before, apart from the odd mosquito or bath-trapped spider, but couldn’t find it in him to feel much remorse. Troilus was only a cat, after all.
