Look, Tristan, go away please, I don’t want to talk to you. And I’m working very hard to be very polite now when all I really want to do is tell your smug stupid Ferrari-cap-wearing mug to go and jump.
Oh. He touches his cap self-consciously.
I tap on the pedestrian button over and over, trying to hurry the little green man along. The traffic is streaming towards the coast road on this beautiful day.
I’ve been telling your colleague Paddy all week that it’s really important I speak to you, have you been getting my messages.
No.
I haven’t spoken to Paddy since our phone call. He texts me the zones we’re working. I’m intrigued, but I don’t want him to know that. I want to punish him. Hurt him as he’s hurt me. The traffic light explodes with video-game-like sounds to alert us that it’s safe to cross. Tristan almost collides with a double buggy and a kid on a scooter as he follows me.
Sorry. So sorry. Allegra, where have you been, did you go home.
They switched our beats, sometimes that happens. Why, did you think that you had hurt me so much I couldn’t bear to come to work and see your face, I ask, knowing that’s exactly what had happened.
No, of course not, he lies badly, his face flushed. Look, I fired Jazz. What she did to you was abominable. I fired her straight away. She’s gone. We’re not … We broke up.
I stop walking when we get to the other side of the road. Tell me, Tristan, that game where people pulverise me to death, did Jazz design it all by herself.
No no – his hands in the air – that was me.
I’m sure Beavis and Butthead were only too delighted to help you design it.
He doesn’t deny it.
Suddenly at the window of the hair salon my mother appears, waving.
Uh oh we should move, he says, trying to take my arm and guide me away.
I shake him off.
She motions at me to wait. Allegra, she shouts from the open door. I take a few steps towards her.
Yes, Carmencita, I say, enjoying the feeling I get from this closeness and with Tristan witnessing it. I feel smug, as if I can do anything now.
Did your friend, Minister Brasil, say yes, she asks excitedly. I was thinking, I’ll print up new posters with her name on them as guest speaker. It’s an extra expense and time to replace them all around the village, but it’s worth it.
I squirm a little inside, not quite wanting Tristan to know how exactly I have made her warm to me. I’ve just emailed her, I say, I’m sure I’ll hear back from her soon, maybe you shouldn’t do anything until we have confirmation.
Of course, I’m sure she’s very busy. I’m sorry, I’m just so excited. You really think she’ll do it.
I’m sure she’d love to, I say. It’s not a firm yes. We’ll just have to wait and see.
She gives me a big thumbs up and a fingers crossed and everything else she physically can do to display her excitement.
Well that’s a turnaround, Tristan says. Does she know you’re her—
No. Not yet, I say, walking up New Street. I don’t want him to utter the word aloud.
What have you done, Tristan asks, and I don’t like the warning in his voice, the distrust, the doubt. I glare at him and he stops. Okay sorry, none of my business. But … okay listen to me, about the other stuff. I developed that horrible Warden Wipeout video game back in the first two weeks we’d moved into the office when I didn’t know you, when you kept giving me tickets every few hours.
I was doing my job.
I know that now, but I didn’t know that then. I was angry, angry at you and angry at everyone in the business. It wasn’t personal, because I didn’t know anything about you. You were just some horrible warden who kept ticketing me. Now I do know and I’m sorry that it hurt you. I really am. You’re the last person in the world I’d want to hurt. You’re the only person who treats me like I’m normal, the only person who tells me the truth, the only person who doesn’t care about my car.
Because your car is tacky and nasty.
See, that’s exactly what I like about you. No one says that stuff to me. Most people I know are proud of my achievements, you, not so much. I need to hear it. You’re my non-yes person. You hate the cap, I’ll throw away the cap.
He takes it off and squeezes it through the narrow hole into the bin.
I look at the bin in surprise.
When I first met you I said some horrible things, he says, but I was angry because I wasn’t happy with my own life, so I like, transferred my feelings on to you. Don’t roll your eyes, please, thank you. And then you actually listened to me and started to do something about it, you started to change your life or at least try. Anyway, just through watching you and talking to you, you’ve inspired me to look at my life and I realised my five weren’t who I thought they were either. I broke up with Jazz, I’ve made some big changes in the office just in the last week and there’s more to come. People are going to finally start listening to me, because you’re right, I was a complete pushover. And I’ve talked to Uncle Tony too. We’re not working together any more.