Things Get Better

I started at PricewaterhouseCoopers on the same day as Gavin. We were both on the Management Consultancy program but in different teams. Gavin didn’t look or sound like a twat, which I suppose is what disarmed me initially. He was good-looking and confident, dressing to impress and grooming himself to match.

We were only an open-plan section of the office floor away from each other. We both had our own social areas and kitchen, so there was no real need for our paths to cross. But he liked to use our fridge as an overflow, popping in his deli meats which he would then cram between two layers of posh bread. Once he sliced up a stonebaked Kalamata and Halkidiki Olive Batard. I pointed at the packaging and asked him if he’d been to private school. He slapped me on the back, a little too vigorously, chuckling softly. He told me he’d boarded at Repton, but they’d never had bread like that. And with a flash of his Union Jack cufflinks, he was gone.

Over the first few weeks in the job, I grew to like him. On our second or third night out he offered me coke in the toilets of The Queen’s Head. We’d been drinking hard since finishing work, and it was nearly kicking out time. He leant back away from the urinal next to mine as if he was abseiling with an invisible rope, one hand on his member, the other extended towards me with a white line over the back of the thumb. Joseph, he said. Have summa dat. I declined, and he shrugged before stowing away little Gav and then smoothly inhaling the party talc. That night, at a bijou and naughty little club in the West End, we became Riggs and Murtough, partners in (solving) crime and (management) consultancy. Lethal Weapons. The ladies did not know what hit ‘em.

The year went through peaks and troughs of intensity at work, only assuaged by our full-on social grandstanding. Christmas, we went out on a predictably massive festive bender. I knew Gavin was probably after the team leader job I’d been eyeing up, and after a few beers and a wrap of speed in the bogs, I stupidly moved my cards away from my chest.

‘Have you given much thought to the team leader job?’ I shouted in his ear.

Gavin looked askance at me, his face bathed in scrolling bars of purple and white. ‘About as much thought as I’ve given to becoming a monk.’

‘Why not? You’d be good,’ I said, nodding sincerely.

He turned to look at me properly. Ignored the question. ‘Aren’t you going for it?’

‘We-ell,’ I slurred and made a face. ‘Maybe. It’s a shitload more money, and I’ve got to keep up with your posh twat lunches. Yeah. Why not?’

Gavin laughed, suddenly seeming more sober. ‘Good for you. The reason I’m not going for it is because I’ve been riding a wave of farts and piss for…well, pretty much since I’ve been born. Things can’t keep getting better for me automatically, and - ’

‘- shut the France. Get the door, the front one,’ I interrupted, insistent. ‘You say all the right things and know all the right people. Guppy Thumb? Jackie P? I don’t even know their real names. You, you’re - ’

‘Joseph. It’s not happening. Come on, let’s go to the WC pharmacy and forget about it.’

So I stopped trying to persuade him about the job. And he offered me coke again. Except this time, I took it. Snorted it right off the cistern. And he was in the cubicle with me, telling me he didn’t want me to throw a whitey as it was my first time. I didn’t notice his phone out. As it must have been.

So in the new year, when it came time for my interview, I got two emails about different things. Neither about the job. One, a notice of dismissal pending investigation of drug usage on a work night out. And two, a line – just a line - from Gavin.

Sorry, buddy. I guess things have to keep getting better after all.