Melissa

Dean jokes that we need champagne, not the chipped mugs of coffee we clink in my tiny cramped kitchen. He tells me he’s happy for me, that it’s a job well done, says that maybe they’ll give me a pay rise big enough to make up for the extra bazillion stairs I’ll be climbing up every day to get to floor sixteen.

He looks good today, his cropped hair a dark shadow, his brows heavy over bright blue eyes. A tight white tee under a loose checked shirt. Torn jeans and bare feet. Bare feet always look good on a man.

It’s when Dean says he’s happy for me for the tenth time that I know something’s up.

It’s in his smile.

Tense.

More like a grimace as he raises his mug. Again.

I put mine down on the draining board. “What is it?”

He shrugs and the smile doesn’t even flinch. “What’s what?”

I poke my head through to the living room to check Joe’s still playing with his picture book, and then I fold my arms. “Don’t give me that. You look like you’re trying to hold in the shits or something.”

The smile eases up. “It’s nothing, I’m just…”

“Just what?”

He passes his mug from hand to hand, back and forth. “I just thought the novelty would have worn off by now. Plenty of places closer, Lissa. Plenty of places more flexible. Better pay, too.” His eyebrows pit as he stares at my filthy apron. “Without a crappy uniform.”

“There aren’t…” I begin, but he shakes his head.

“Don’t give me that. How long do you spend on the Tube every morning? Half hour? Three quarters?”

“I don’t notice… it’s not so bad…”

His eyes are so big and so genuine. “What you gonna do, Lissa? Floor sixteen this week, then what? What happens when you do make it to his office?”

When. Not if. I resist the urge to smile.

“Then I sniff his seat.” I try to make light of it, but he doesn’t laugh.

“Don’t pretend this thing is a joke to you.”

A horrible tickle in my belly. More like a scratch. Desperation.

“It is a joke.” I laugh. “Me and Sonnie, we both say…”

“Like she’s serious. Like she’s you.”

I hate the way he says it.

I choke back the fake giggle and ease the door closed until I can only just see Joe through the gap. “I know this is hard on you, I know it asks a lot, you being here, all the time. You shouldn’t have to, I know that… and if it’s too much…”

“If it’s too much then what?” His eyes are right on mine. I don’t have an answer and he knows it. He sighs, and I feel like shit. “This isn’t about Joe. I love having Joe. I love helping out. I can start up college again next year, like we said.”

I clutch at straws. “I could pay you, maybe… if they do give me that extra money… or a babysitter… so you can go back…”

He looks stung. “Like it’s about money.”

“But it could be…”

“Stop.” He holds up a hand. “Just stop doing this.”

“Doing what?” I flick the kettle back on.

“Deflecting.” He has to tip the jar to scoop the last of the coffee granules into our mugs. Dregs. Story of my life – credit card debt from funeral expenses don’t leave much of a budget for anything else. “This thing with Alexander Henley,” he continues. “It’s not… healthy…”

Like anything about my life is healthy. I don’t say it.

“I know what I’m doing,” I tell him. “It’s just fun. Something to dream about. And I’m planning on working my way up, maybe be a team leader one day… maybe even an admin junior… and then who knows…”

“Right?”

“Right,” I lie.

“And you aren’t gonna do anything? Not when you get there? Not when you’re close enough that his seat really is there for the sniffing?”

I take my coffee black, saving the milk for Joe’s cereal in the morning. “Anything like what?”

Dean takes his black too. “Like stalking him. Like following the guy around until he catches on to you, and fires you, or sues you, or worse.”

“Worse?” The thought makes me smile. “What on earth could be worse than being fired or sued?”

“I’m being serious, Lissa!”

His raised voice takes me aback, and I check the door for Joe. He’s still flipping those picture book pages, smiling to himself, lost in his own little world like I used to be.

When I turn back, Dean’s pulled his phone from his pocket and he’s flipping across the screen, flipping through images I recognise from my own Google searches.

He turns the handset in my direction, and my stomach flips but I don’t look away. I don’t need to.

I’ve already seen it.

Already read everything there is to read on Alexander Henley Jnr.

“I did some digging,” he tells me, “while Joe had his nap this afternoon.”

My cheeks burn as I check out the headline on screen.

The legal Puppet Master pulling the strings of the dirty elite. Just who is Alexander James Henley Jnr?

I can’t see the rest of the text, he pulls his phone away too quickly.

Like hell it was just this afternoon. I didn’t find that crap, and I searched hard. Really hard.

Dean’s eyes are fierce. “There’s a woman here, or there was before she retracted her comments. Said he paid her. Said he’s dangerous. That she was afraid for her life.”

I roll my eyes. “Tabloid gossip, I’m sure. Sour grapes, maybe.”

“And if it’s not? There’s plenty of stories, Lissa, if you dig hard enough. All retracted. All hushed up soon after. What if he is dangerous? Who knows what a guy like that’s into? He’s not like us. He’s not from our world.”

“So, you thought you’d better fill me in now I’m up nine floors?” I shrug, sip my coffee. “I’ll probably never even get vaguely close enough to find out what he’s really into. As if a man like him is ever going to be into a little scrubber like me. Christ, Dean, are you blind?”

I wonder how long he’s been looking up Alexander Henley. I wonder whether he sees the beauty that I see.

I wonder if he’s saved a picture. Maybe several.

I wonder if he knows quite which way he swings yet, and if he’s still masturbating over gay porn when he thinks I’m asleep through the wall. I wonder if he’s masturbated over Alexander Henley.

The idea of a stash of photos makes me jealous. My phone has a cracked screen and barely any storage.

“That’s the thing,” he says. “I think you are gonna find out what he’s into. And I don’t think you’ll stop ’til you find out.”

I groan. “That polyester stripes don’t really turn him on, Dean, that’s what I’m gonna find out. That guys like Alexander Henley don’t date girls like me. That I’m not good enough, not smart enough, not pretty enough for a man like him. That’s what I’ll find out.”

He holds up his hands. “I don’t think that, not any of that. And you shouldn’t either.”

“Yeah, well he will. Probably.” That scratch scratch in my belly. The scratch scratch that seeing the job advertised in the paper managed to take away.

A Saaaaa, and then a Dee deee from the living room, and I push the door open. Joe is up on his feet, a big smile on his face as he claps his hands, picture book finished.

Dean sighs, and then he smiles, and I know it’ll be alright. I know he’ll never make me give up on my dreams, not while this little guy is depending on me to get us through this mess.

He grabs my elbow before I go to scoop up my Joe, and his voice is just a whisper, right in my ear.

“Henley won’t think that, I promise you. Not about you, Lissa.”

I could kiss him. Kiss him for the way he’s looking at me, as though I’m still the girl with straight-As and a big future ahead of her.

“Thanks,” I say.

“It’s the truth,” he whispers. “And that’s what worries me shitless. That it’s gonna be you who ends up hurt, and broken and retracting your comments when you make it a whole lot further than floor eighteen. Because you will. You will make it.”

Hope.

It’s a beautiful feeling.

I shouldn’t smile, not when he’s so worried, so I pretend it’s all for Joe, and choo-choo trains, and the cruddy second-hand trainset I picked up with my first month’s wages.

He deserves so much more than this. And I’m going to get it for him.

If Dean really pushed me, I’d tell him I really don’t have a plan beyond floor eighteen, and I wouldn’t be lying, not technically. The plan post being up close to the area Alexander Henley spends most of his working life is hazy. More a feeling. A feeling that I’ll know what to do when the time comes. Doors opening into darkened corridors, and more doors, deeper and deeper. Like the detective novels I used to pick up from the charity shop as a kid, there were always so many breadcrumbs, a trail unfolding as you flipped the pages, and then BAM, at the end it would all come together, a sense of satisfaction as the whole picture came into view.

That’s how I feel right now. Like I’m at the beginning of something, armed with nothing but that sense of knowing.

Maybe it’ll be a late night. Mr Henley working late as I stumble into his office, and there’ll be a meeting of eyes, a simmering recognition in the darkened room, just him and me, and maybe I’ll tell him, tell him I’m the girl he bummed the cigarette to, the girl who was late.

Maybe he’ll remember.

Maybe he’ll invite me to sit down and ask me all about my life, and I’ll pull the crappy cap from my head and shake my hair loose from my hairnet, and he’ll see something in me.

Something.

Something he wants.

I’m such a fool. Even the thought makes me laugh as I whizz Joe’s crappy train around the track and make the noises.

I’m pretty sure that’s not how a run-in with Alexander James Henley, the puppet master, is going to go down. Maybe sniffing his seat and laughing about it with Sonnie will be the end of it, nothing but a crazy fixation until I find a way up and off this crappy rung on the life ladder.

Before some asshole going thirty over the speed limit ploughed into my parents I was a girl on a mission. Determined to qualify as a criminal lawyer and run into the man who’d stolen my heart over an Insignia cigarette. It was supposed to be one hell of a different story to the way this one’s panning out.

See, we’re from here, Joe and me. From this shitty rundown part of town. My parents too, and their parents before them. Mum and Dad worked shitty jobs they hated, struggling to make ends meet for me and Joseph. They never moaned, not once, not ever. But I was going to be different. I told them so, and they believed me.

Lissa’s going to be a swanky lawyer, they’d say. Not like us.

But I am like them. They kept on going, day after day, working hard, just like I’ll keep going, just like I’ll keep on working hard.

They wanted so much better for me. For both of us.

Our Lissa would run through a wall if there was something she wanted on the other side. She’ll never give up. She’s that kind of kid.

I heard Mum say that once, to Mrs Manning who lived across the hallway.

She was right.

I wanted to step up after the accident. Wanted to hold the pieces together for Joseph, quitting my own A-Levels and taking on my parents’ rent. I wanted to do all of this, and I did.

I want Alexander Henley, and I’ll have him, too.

I just don’t know exactly how.

Yet.