Working It Out. Alex George

people who have.’

      ‘Perhaps you should try yourself.’

      ‘Perhaps I should.’ Johnathan began to eat again.

      ‘Bet you won’t,’ said Kibby.

      ‘I bet I won’t, too,’ agreed Johnathan with his mouth full.

      ‘Shame, though.’

      ‘Yes, isn’t it?’

      There was a pause while Johnathan busied himself in skewering the last mushroom with the end of his fork, jabbing at it half-heartedly as it skidded around the plate. Kibby watched him closely as she sipped her mango and guava juice.

      ‘You only get one chance at this,’ she said eventually.

      ‘At what?’

      ‘Life. It’s not a dress rehearsal. You can’t come back and have another go. It’s now or never. Aren’t you worried that you’re going to wake up one day when you’re sixty and ask yourself what you’ve ever achieved in your life and arrive at the rather awkward conclusion that the answer is probably nothing? And by then it will all be too late. You’re right when you say that there are more important things in life than money. There are.’

      ‘Breakfast,’ suggested Johnathan.

      Kibby ignored him. ‘It’s pointless spending your life running after money if you’re empty inside. At least if you enjoyed your work that would be a reason for doing it, but you don’t. You’re a nice bloke, Johnathan. You deserve better, you really do. You should at least think about it.’

      ‘I will,’ said Johnathan.

      ‘Bet you don’t give it another thought.’

      ‘I will. I promise,’ said Johnathan.

      ‘We’ll see,’ said Kibby. She drained her glass, and looked at her watch. ‘I should really go.’

      ‘Oh. Right,’ said Johnathan, suddenly realizing that he desperately wanted her to stay. He watched helplessly as she got up and began collecting her things.

      ‘Thank you for a nice evening,’ she said. ‘And a nice morning.’

      ‘Thank you,’ said Johnathan.

      ‘Here’s where I am,’ said Kibby, writing down a number. ‘It would be nice to see you again, so give me a ring.’

      Five minutes later Kibby was gone, after a slightly embarrassing goodbye kiss. Johnathan had aimed for Kibby’s mouth and she had gone for his cheek, resulting in an awkward clash. Johnathan had only narrowly avoided poking out Kibby’s left eye with his nose.

      Alone in the flat, Johnathan stood in the middle of the sitting room with a broad smile on his face. After a while he became bored, and so instead sat on the sofa with a broad smile on his face.

      Kibby Kibby Kibby, he thought. Nice name. Kibby what? He realized that he did not know her second name. Who was she, actually? He had slept with someone without knowing their surname. Johnathan felt appalled and then felt an unstoppable rush of elation. Kibby. Kibby Something. Kibby Something with whom I have recently had sex. Twice. Johnathan nodded with satisfaction. It sounded good.

      Johnathan walked into the kitchen where the dishes from breakfast were stacked up neatly by the sink. He would do them later, he thought. Perhaps on Wednesday. Just then he didn’t want to spoil his moment of glory.

      He leaned down towards Schroedinger’s bean bag. ‘Oi,’ he said. ‘I scored.’

      Schroedinger looked up at Johnathan, unimpressed. ‘Suit yourself,’ said Johnathan. He beamed. Schroedinger emitted the sigh of the long-suffering self-righteous, and closed his eyes.

      Johnathan remembered the winking answer-phone. He went into the hall and reluctantly pressed the button. After a brief crackle of static, a familiar voice echoed through the flat.

      ‘Hello? I know you’re there. I do. I can sense it. Why won’t you pick up the phone? Johnathan, we need to talk. I’m worried about you. After Troilus. I know you’re upset. I just want to talk to you. I want to check you’re all right.’ There was a small pause, followed by an artfully controlled sob. ‘I think you need help. I wish you’d call me. Soon. Please.’

      Johnathan let out a low whistle of appreciation. Some performance. Brilliant. He had fallen for this sort of thing before, but no longer. Chloe was history. He made some more coffee and walked through the flat thinking about Kibby and what she had said about his job. It was, he reflected, nothing new. Such thoughts had been lurking at the back of his mind for years. He had learned to ignore such ideas when they fought their way to the front of his consciousness. Dissatisfaction was all part of the job package, along with private health insurance and gym membership.

      Money. The root of all evil. Also the root of quite a lot of pleasure, thought Johnathan. A thought began to nag at the back of his mind that if that was true, he should be getting a lot more pleasure from it than he actually was. He began to wonder where his salary went. He stared at the ceiling, trying to remember what he had spent money on in the previous week.

      Johnathan went to the hall table where the last few months’ bank statements had amassed, unopened. He found the most recent one and opened it. He was hugely, cripplingly overdrawn. Johnathan scanned the column headed ‘withdrawals’. He sat down and began systematically to account for each figure on the sheet.

      Half an hour, later the awful truth had sunk in. The electricity bill, council tax, mortgage, house contents insurance, income protection plan, water rates, telephone, television licence, car insurance, credit card repayments, interest charges on some long-standing loans and membership of a few university clubs whose standing order he had never got around to cancelling left him with a net income per month which just made it into three figures. His life had been hijacked by a never-ending stream of pleasure-less bills which had set him firmly on the road to financial ruin.

      Johnathan threw the treacherous bank statement into the wastepaper basket. Perhaps Kibby was right after all. Something was clearly wrong. There seemed little point in carrying on like this. Something had to be done.

      He thought about what Kibby had said. Life was not a dress rehearsal. He thought about his money, or lack of it. He thought about his job. He thought about Gavin’s self-righteous preaching of the night before. Maybe, he thought, the time has come to actually do something about all of this.

      Ah, sod it, he said to himself. What have I got to lose?

       FIVE

      Johnathan arrived at work the following Monday morning burning brightly, full of resolve. Resolve to do what, exactly, he did not yet know. The first thing he needed to do was to check his employment contract and see how much notice he had to give before he could leave.

      As Johnathan walked through the marble-encrusted reception area he heard a voice call his name. His heart sank. He stopped, and turned to face Derek, the security guard.

      ‘Derek, hello. How are you?’ he asked with as much grace as he could muster.

      ‘Not bad, Corporal, not bad,’ said Derek.

      ‘Oh good,’ said Johnathan shortly. He detested Derek.

      To compensate for spending his entire career behind a desk, Derek, who was about forty, had created a glamorous past for himself. He claimed to have spent several years in a crack unit of the SAS–the Official Secrets Act meaning, conveniently, that he couldn’t go into any details about what he had purportedly done. Instead of walking, he performed a peculiar strut, one arm outstretched in front of him, buttocks fiercely clenched together, a mix of goose-step and quickstep. Presumably this was how people marched in the SAS, like effete nazis.

      Derek addressed everyone by military title, according to his perception of their seniority. He cringed respectfully