Even After All

Part Eight

He’d been in Hong Kong a couple of days when she stopped answering her phone. It was hectic there, business was good, the deals were brokering, he’d presumed that he could work things out with her, make it up to her once he got back to London, but after a couple of months the divorce papers appeared at his desk.

Instead of dealing with how that made him feel, he signed them, not contesting the grounds of unreasonable behaviour, and posted them back. He was moving on to New York high on success when the decree absolute found him, and by then he didn’t care about her anymore, and he told himself he hadn’t until he walked into her hotel a week earlier.

A shower helped. He felt a little more alive. But as he scrubbed himself clean the image of Matilda’s mother Sylvia popped repeatedly into his mind. He couldn’t imagine the house in Oxfordshire without her in it. To him she epitomised everything that a mother should be, she was always happy, smiling, always hugging her daughter, and later him, and then there was the constant smell, fresh bread, coffee, cakes, pies. The house was so homely, and that was what he’d loved, along with the banter between the parents and their children. How would it be without her there at the helm? How had Matilda coped with losing someone so important?

He ran his hands over his face in frustration, he’d abandoned her too. Left her at the same time, they’d argued, he KNEW her mother was ill, but he had chased his dreams anyway. Then the debt had caught up with her instead of him, and she’d had to deal with bankruptcy at the same moment she lost her influential and much loved parent.

He was a bastard. His mother told him repeatedly that he didn’t think of anyone but himself, he learned that from her, but he had always convinced himself that he was different, that he was better than his self indulgent mother. But he wasn’t. Was he?

Self hatred was a horrible thing and he eyed the bottle of whisky that tempted him from the corner of the room. He couldn’t spend another day and night buried in a bottle of whisky.

Mattie was just applying makeup when there was a knock at the door.

                “I know, I’m coming, can’t a girl be late for a change?”

Stood there laughing at her was Andrew, who lived across the hall and the closest thing to a friend that she had.

                “You can be late for fun, but not for work. COME on!”

Taking her hand he literally dragged her out of the doorway and to the stairs.

For the last three months, since Andrew’s girlfriend had disappeared, she’d been masquerading on her evening off as her. Andrew was a casual worker for a hospitality company, and she’d started to join him.  It gave her cash, in her hand, illegal but a life saver for her. It was a long time since she’d had money to spend and she needed more work clothes to maintain the elegance in keeping with her position. When Andrew’s girlfriend left town, there was a vacancy at the company. The work was both erratic and casual, and if you asked no questions you were asked none back. A win all round if you weren’t the tax man.

She’d taken on an IVA, a step down from bankruptcy when her finances became unmanageable. Most of her debt was paid off, but she was committed to paying well over fifty percent of her salary to meet her end of the bargain. It left her with little to play with after rent and travel expenses. If she was caught doing this unofficial job she’d get in real trouble, but she had struggled without things for SO long, and she didn’t mean life’s luxuries, she meant food, drink, clothes. But Mattie’s almost abstract fear was being recognised by someone, friend, colleague, a patron of the Sunset Club, or worse, so she was in ‘disguise’, an auburn hairpiece changed her own hair dramatically, brown contact lenses transformed her own blue eyes, and spectacles, black rimmed but with clear glass all helped. The lenses had been expensive, but SO worthwhile.

Tonight she was joining Andrew at a PR party. These were the easiest nights, drunken people on a free night tipped hugely, especially when they got drunk. For these nights she was the most anonymous and usually earned loads of money serving drinks. The easiest money she could make.

The party when they arrived was quiet, but it had all the makings of a wild night. A decommissioned boat on the Thames with two different bands playing on two of the levels, four bars, two buffets, and dance space for several hundred people. As Mattie joined Andrew behind one of the bars, she could barely see for the money lust washing over her. It was pure greed and self indulgence, but the following day she was planning a trip to the salon, hair, waxing, the whole works. With Dylan being around her was feeling the need to both look AND feel good.

Bar work was easy to her, something that she felt natural doing, and to do it well wasn’t easy, but on the other hand it wasn’t as taxing as some of the other jobs she’d had in the past five years. For a month she was a security door worker at a nightclub, or then there were the night shifts at a rather dodgy petrol station. No she’d done worse, but she couldn’t risk being spotted, recognised.

                “Cocktail list.” Andrew called out from her right and glancing up she took the list from him, Mojito, margaritas, sex on the beach. Nothing too challenging. Giving a nod she looked up at the first customer with a smile. Candy from a baby, she sighed to herself as she started to deposit the increasingly larger notes in her back pocket.

                “Think of the feast we’re going to have in Khalif’s cafe when we get home, four course breakfast at five am. Sound good?”

Mattie glanced up and smiled at Andrew, “amazing. Counting down the minutes.”

Turning back to the people approaching the bar, a smile plastered on her face, she froze, heart stopping, breath whooshing from her lungs. There in front of her, waiting for a drink, for a moment unaware of who she was, a natural smile on his lips, was Dylan.