Catherine Steadman - Something in the Water - A Novel

Mark switched banks; all his colleagues had been let go where he was and he’d been left doing five people’s jobs, so he took a chance and went somewhere else.

The new bank, I don’t like. It’s not quite right. The men there manage to be fat and yet sinewy at the same time. They’re out of shape, and they smoke, which I didn’t used to mind at all, but now it has that air of nervous desperation. That worries me. It smells of bile and broken dreams. Mark’s colleagues sometimes come out with us for drinks and sneer and bitch about their wives and kids, as if I weren’t there. As if were it not for those women they’d be on some beach somewhere.

Mark isn’t like them; he looks after himself. He runs, he swims, he plays tennis, he keeps himself healthy, and now he sits in a room for eleven hours a day with these men. I know he’s strong-minded but I can see it’s wearing him down. And now, on this day of all days, on our anniversary, he announces he wants to focus on work more.

Focus means I’ll see him less. He already works too hard. He gets up at 6 A.M. every weekday, leaves the house at 6:30, has lunch at his desk and gets home to me totally exhausted at 7:30 at night. We have dinner and talk, maybe watch a film, and he’s in bed with the lights out at 10:00 to do it all again.

“That’s what I want to change, though,” he says. “I’ve been working there for a year now. When I moved there they promised I’d only be in this position initially, until we restructured the department. But they won’t let me do that. They won’t let me restructure. So I’m not actually doing what they hired me to do.” He sighs. Rubs his hand up and down his face. “Which is fine. But I need to have a proper conversation with Lawrence. We need to talk about my end-of-year bonus, or changing the team, because some of these jokers have no idea what they’re doing.” He pauses, then looks at me. “I’m serious, Erin. I wasn’t going to tell you this, but after that deal went through on Monday, Hector rang me crying.”

“Why was he crying?” I ask, surprised. Hector has worked alongside Mark for years now. When Mark left the other bank, when everything was going wrong, Mark promised Hector he’d find him a position if he moved. And he kept his promise. Mark made Hector part of his deal when he moved. They came as a pair or not at all.

“You know we were waiting for the figures the other day to sign off on the deal?” He looks at me searchingly.

“Yeah, you took the call in the car park,” I say, nodding him on. He’d slipped out of our pub lunch yesterday and spent an hour pacing the gravel while his food went cold. I’d read my book. I’m self-employed, so I know the “phone wander” well.

“Yeah, he told me he’d got the figures. The guys on the trading desk had been really hard to even get in the office over the holidays and they’d made it pretty difficult for him. They’ve called a meeting once we’re back to discuss overtime hours and fair practice. It’s ridiculous. Anyway. Hector spoke to New York, tried to explain that no one was in and why the figures were late and they went fucking mental. Andrew…You remember Andrew in New York, right? I told you about the—”

“That guy I heard swearing at you through the phone at Brianny’s wedding?” I interrupt.

He snorts and smiles. “Yeah, Andrew. He’s…highly strung. But anyway. So Andrew screams at Hector on the phone, and Hector freaks out and just prices the deal and hits send. Goes to bed. Wakes up to hundreds of missed calls and emails. Turns out they’d put an extra zero in the figures. Greg and the other guys on the desk put it in to slow down the deal. They thought Hector would look it over before sending and get them to redo it next week once we were all back in the office, but Hector didn’t check it. He signed off on it and sent it. And that is a legally binding contract.”

“Oh my God, Mark. Can’t they just say it was an error?”

“Not really, honey. So Hector rings me and he’s trying to explain that he just assumed it would be right and he always, always, usually checks…but Andrew said send it and…and then he just starts crying. Erin, I just…I feel like I’m surrounded by absolute—” Mark stops himself and shakes his head ruefully. “So, I’m going to put feelers out for somewhere else. I’m one hundred percent happy to take a bonus drop, or a salary cut; the market’s not going back to the way it was anyway. Who are we kidding? I just don’t need this stress anymore. I want my life back. I want you and babies, and our evenings again.”

I like the sound of that. Very much. I hug him. Bury my head in his shoulder. “I want that too.”

“Good.” He kisses my hair lightly.

“I’ll find a good place, hand in my notice after this Hector stuff settles, take my garden leave for the wedding and honeymoon stretch, and start back hopefully around November. Just in time for Christmas.”

He’s done “garden leave” before—everyone who works in the financial sector has to take a mandatory leave between jobs; it’s supposed to stop insider trading but it’s essentially a two-month paid vacation. This does sound like a pretty good plan. Good for him. But I could definitely take a few weeks away from my work too. We could make a thing of it, get some serious honeymooning done. I’m working on my first feature-length documentary right now but I’ll have completed the first stage of filming by the wedding, and then I should have a good three- to four-week gap before I start on the second stage. That three to four weeks could definitely work in our favor.

A warm feeling spreads through my chest. This is good. This will be better for us.

“Where shall we go?” he asks.

“Honeymoon?”

This is the first time we’ve really talked about it. It’s two months away now, the wedding. We’ve covered all of that but this we’ve left fresh. Untouched, like an unopened gift. But I guess now is as good a time as any to broach the subject. I’m excited by the possibility of it all. Having him all to myself for weeks.

“Let’s go crazy. It might be the last time we have the time or the money.” I throw it out there.

“Yes!” he shouts, matching my energy.

“Two weeks—no, three weeks?” I offer. I squint, thinking through the filming schedule and interviews I have to do. I can manage three.

“Now we’re talking. Caribbean? Maldives? Bora Bora?” he asks.

“Bora Bora. That sounds perfect. I have no idea where it is but it sounds glorious. Fuck it. First class? Can we do first class?”

He grins at me. “We can do first class. I’ll book it.”

“Great!” I’ve never flown first class before.

And then I say something I’ll probably live to regret.

“I’m going to scuba dive with you. When we go. I’ll try it again. Then we can go down together.” I say it because it seems like all I can give Mark to show him how much I love him. Like a cat with a dead mouse in its mouth. Whether he wants it or not, I drop it at his feet.

“Seriously?” He stares at me, concerned, the sunlight creasing his eyes, the breeze ruffling his dark hair. He wasn’t expecting that.

Mark’s a qualified diver. He’s been trying to get me to go with him on every trip we’ve ever been on together, but I’ve always chickened out. I had a bad experience once, before we met. I panicked. Nothing serious, but the whole idea really scares the shit out of me. I don’t like the idea of feeling trapped. The thought of the pressure and the slow underwater ascents fills me with dread. But I want to do this thing for him. New life together, new challenges.

I grin. “Yes, definitely!” I can do it. How hard can it be? Kids do it. I’ll be fine.