She would have been in her late thirties by then, the same age I am now, but she looked nearer fifty, hair scraped back into a lanky ponytail, dull brown and greying at the temples, pale eyes hooded in a lined face. She had the sort of face that would have benefited from make-up, and that’s not the sort of thing I would say often. In fact I could have imagined her on one of those ghastly makeover shows, going in as a frumpy old maid and coming out as a beautiful, poised mature woman.
As if she could read my mind she smiled, and her whole face changed. She was almost beautiful – the old hag to the angel.
After that I spoke to her quite a few times. We often seemed to be in the kitchen at the same time making tea. She was never chatty, but polite and formal, and – I can’t believe I’m saying this – I enjoyed her company. When she went off sick I almost missed her. But then she was gone so long we forgot she existed, until the day when that incompetent numpty from personnel took us into the meeting room and told us that Janice’s body had been found at her house. I imagined she’d had a heart attack, and was waiting to be told when we could recruit someone else, but then he went on to tell us that she’d been lying in her house rotting for some four months.
And it was just before lunch.
Janice’s sad demise was the chief topic of conversation for the next few days, to the extent that I got sick of hearing about it and was on the verge of standing up and shouting some obscenity if I so much as heard her name. What was more alarming, though, was that moment when my name was suddenly brought into the conversation.
‘I beg your pardon?’
It was Martha, of course.
‘I just said, Colin, if you’d been listening, that you were friends with her, weren’t you?’
‘With whom? Janice? I was not.’
‘You talked to her more than any of us did.’
‘I spoke to her – that doesn’t mean we were friends.’
‘Nevertheless, don’t you think it’s just awful that she was dead for all that time and none of us checked up on her?’
‘Yes, awful,’ I said, through my teeth. I carried on working in the hope that they would all get the hint, and fortunately they moved on to talk about something else.
I did find myself thinking about her, though. Why had she spoken to me on that day, after so long without a word? Could it be that she’d found me attractive? I thought more about it: the way she’d smiled, the way her face had changed. I tried to imagine her in my bedroom at home, tried to imagine taking off her cardigan and that dreadful shapeless blouse she always seemed to be wearing, finding a brassiere underneath that could be generously described as sturdy. But underneath the clothes, when what I needed was something real, something solid, with hair and creases and moles, curves and the scent of sweat, all I found was the body of my angel, firm and lithe and golden and glowing, flawless and serene and untouchable, and with it my ardour faded, as it always does when faced with perfection.
The gym is emptying and I head to the changing rooms, a quick shower to rinse the sweat away and then thirty laps of the pool, a nice easy rhythm to cool down. Even so I’ve got one eye on the clock. Last week I did this in nineteen minutes. It’s possible I can get it down to fifteen, which seems much more appropriate, but I will need to work up to it. Push myself.
When I moved to this gym from the one in town I was self-conscious about my workout. At the old place there had been a group of young women who always seemed to be there when I was, giggling and whispering behind their hands. And it was always packed – another reason to leave. There’s nothing worse than watching someone’s sweaty arse swivelling on a bike seat, waiting for them to finish.
This gym is more expensive, but to my mind it’s worth the difference. It’s much bigger, which means more equipment, and the cost of it means one can expect a certain standard of clientele. The women with nothing