Alex George - Working It Out

For Christina

Cover Page

Title Page Working It Out Alex George

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

NINE

TEN

ELEVEN

TWELVE

THIRTEEN

FOURTEEN

FIFTEEN

SIXTEEN

SEVENTEEN

EIGHTEEN

NINETEEN

TWENTY

TWENTY-ONE

TWENTY-TWO

TWENTY-THREE

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Copyright

About the Publisher

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.

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.’