Love...Under Different Skies Read online

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the authors.

  Text copyright © 2014 Nick Spalding

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Lake Union Publishing, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  ISBN-13: 9781477849897

  ISBN-10: 1477849890

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2013916321

  For the people of Australia. No worries.

  CONTENTS

  JAMIE’S BLOG Tuesday 4 October

  LAURA’S DIARY Thursday, October 29

  JAMIE’S BLOG Monday 2 January

  LAURA’S DIARY Monday, January 9

  JAMIE’S BLOG Tuesday 10 January

  LAURA’S DIARY Thursday, January 12

  JAMIE’S BLOG Wednesday 22 February

  LAURA’S DIARY Friday, March 3

  JAMIE’S BLOG Sunday 16 April

  LAURA’S DIARY Saturday, June 10

  JAMIE’S BLOG Monday 17 July

  LAURA’S DIARY Tuesday, July 18

  JAMIE’S BLOG Thursday 21 September

  LAURA’S DIARY Tuesday, October 6

  JAMIE’S BLOG Sunday 12 November

  LAURA’S DIARY Tuesday, November 14

  JAMIE’S BLOG Wednesday 22 November

  LAURA’S DIARY Thursday, November 23

  JAMIE’S BLOG Friday 24 November

  LAURA’S DIARY Friday, November 24

  JAMIE’S BLOG Friday 24 November Continued…

  LAURA’S DIARY Friday, November 24 Continued…

  JAMIE’S BLOG Friday 24 November Continued…

  LAURA’S DIARY Friday, November 24 Continued…

  JAMIE AND LAURA’S FACEBOOK MESSAGE Sunday 10 December

  EMAIL TO JAMIE NEWMAN Thur 29 Mar 12:32 p.m.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  JAMIE’S BLOG

  Tuesday 4 October

  I have a question for you, one that I would appreciate an honest answer to, if you’d be so kind. If you suffer a gigantic emotional breakdown at work and mortally insult your boss, what do you think are the chances of keeping your job? Go on, be honest.

  Yeah. That’s pretty much the conclusion I’ve reached, too. I’m basically more screwed than a hooker with a six-figure overdraft.

  It’s not been an easy few months for the Newman clan. In fact, it’s been dreadful, like a slow-motion car crash with none of the excitement. Since Pops was born, the financial thing has become a real struggle for us. Don’t get me wrong—I adore my weird little daughter with a love that borders on the psychotic, but she’s a bigger drain on the bank account than a classic British sports car.

  Laura’s still on part-time hours at Morton & Slacks, and I’ve been going slowly insane at my desk at the paper. My work hours have been growing longer and longer, while my nerves have been getting shorter and shorter. I’ve even started smoking again. This is the single most colossally stupid thing I could have done, given that cigarettes now cost an arm, a leg, and several feet of intestines.

  The recession hasn’t helped. My cost-of-living increase was frozen last April, and my yearly raise went out the window in July.

  You can imagine how delighted I was to hear that David Keene—the CEO of the newspaper—and his lovely silicon-enhanced third wife Kayleigh, had jetted off to the Maldives for three weeks on the same day I was told I wouldn’t be getting a pay raise. The knuckles on my right hand have only just stopped throbbing, and the stationery cupboard wall will need a jolly good replastering sometime very soon.

  Poor old Pete from Reprographics lost his job last month. Clare, the girl who once held my flaccid penis while I blubbed like a little girl, has been inconsolable. The two were married in the spring at a lovely reception, where he wore a Wolverine costume and she looked dazzling as Catwoman. I tried to point out the inconsistencies in that particular fantasy pairing, but nobody seemed interested.

  Seeing the poor cow moping around the office for the past few weeks has really topped off the deep sense of dread and loathing I’ve felt each and every day for the past eighteen months. This was never a job I was in love with, but it paid the bills and kept me off the streets. In recent times, though, I’ve come to see it as some kind of punishment for my wrongdoings of the past. I’ve tried to remember what I might have done to incur such a horrific fate, and I’ve narrowed it down to the time I drop-kicked the little baby Jesus during rehearsals for the school nativity play when I was eight, and when my drunken antics as a fully grown adult led to a glob of my semen destroying an oil painting of His face.

  This sorry state of affairs came to a rather inevitable head yesterday.

  The morning started as it usually does these days with an argument. Laura and I used to share a lovely breakfast together, discussing our day ahead while sipping hot tea and munching on buttery slices of toast. These days, though, we’ve decided that a better way is to conduct a blazing row over something incredibly trivial while our daughter screams her head off on the couch.

  Yesterday the source of our lively debate was my inability to load the dishwasher properly. You wouldn’t think that putting the cheese grater on the wrong level more than once in a fortnight would be the catalyst for a potentially marriage-ending conflagration, but my wife and I managed to achieve it, to the charming accompaniment of Poppy rupturing her vocal cords while she sat in the corner.

  “Maybe I should just stick my fu—my fudging head in the dishwasher and drown my stupid bast—blinking face, eh?” I spit at Laura from the doorway as I pull on my coat.

  “You could try, you enormous bag of horseshi—horsepoo!” Laura replies eloquently, picking up the screeching Poppy. “But there’s every chance you’d stick it in next to the fu—fudging cheese grater and break the spray arm completely.”

  “Good! I hope the spray arm breaks. I hope it breaks off and cuts my throat so I don’t have to listen to you moaning at me about that blood—blooming cheese grater ever again!”

  “Don’t you say things like that, Jamie Newman. We haven’t got the money to fix that dishwasher, and I am not spending my evenings up to my ar—bum in greasy pans anymore.”

  From the outside, this sounds like the dumbest argument in human history, especially with the self-censorship going on thanks to the presence of our firstborn. I’m sure poor Mrs. Withering two doors down certainly thinks it’s all very strange as she puts out her rubbish bin and tries to ignore the appliance-based nuclear war on our doorstep.

  “I’m going to go to work now, Laura,” I say, pointing a trembling finger at her. “Where I’ll try to earn enough money to keep you in cheese graters and spray arms for another few weeks at least.”

  “You do that, Jamie. I’ll stay here, look after our daughter, and try to extricate our existing cheese grater from where it’s now jammed against the spray arm. Then I’ll go to work, too…because I have to do that as well, in case you’ve forgotten.”

  “No! No I haven’t,” I blast, and notice Mrs. Withering giving me a very worried look from over her wheelie bin. This dampens my rage somewhat. I turn back to Laura. “Have a good day, dear.”

  “Don’t you tell me to have a good day you sack of sh—Oh, hello Mrs. Withering! How are your joints this morning?”

  “Better, thank you,” the old ba
t says from her new vantage point looking down our hallway. “Is everything alright, my dears?”

  Apart from the fact my wife and I may be getting divorced thanks to a ballistic cheese grater, you mean?

  “We’re fine, Mrs. Withering,” Laura says in as calm a voice as she can manage. “Why don’t you get off to work now, Jamie?” she orders.

  I don’t need telling twice. I wave at Poppy, who completely ignores me and buries her head in her mother’s shoulder.

  With that final dismissal I bid Mrs. Withering a good day and stride towards the Ford with a lump of hot coal burning its way through my stomach.

  I call at least fourteen other drivers “twats” on the twenty-minute drive to the office, such is my foul mood. A tension headache has formed over my right eye, and my left eye has started to twitch and water so much I look like someone’s just sprayed chili powder into it. The four cigarettes I smoke during the trip no doubt contribute heavily to this, as do the three cups of awful coffee I consume in less than an hour once I actually get to my desk.

  By half past ten I’m twitching like an arsonist in a match factory, and the tension headache has now broadened its horizons to encompass my entire head, both shoulders, and, inexplicably, my arsehole.

  With stabbing pain coming from my rear end and a throbbing dull ache emanating from my skull, it’s a miracle I get through the morning and into the lunch break in one piece. I consume a limp vending machine chicken-and-disappointment sandwich, smoke another four cigarettes, and drink a can of Red Bull before slouching back inside and shutting myself away in my office to try and come to grips with the promotional campaign I’m supposed to be creating for our new Sunday supplement. It’s exclusively for women and goes under the brilliantly bland title of “Living.” It was thought up by Kayleigh, so everyone with a good survival instinct has jumped on board the idea enthusiastically.

  I put forward a counter proposal for a supplement called “Dead” to appeal to our zombie demographic, but—as ever—my suggestion is completely ignored. So with caffeine pumping through my veins, a head that feels like it’s gripped in a vice, and an arsehole that for some reason still feels like it’s in the middle of a prostate exam, I hunch over my keyboard and try to think of a good way to sell a supplement that mainly features stories about handbags, periods, and Kim fucking Kardashian.

  As you can imagine, my mental state is now incredibly fragile. Antique Fabergé eggs are robust in comparison.

  If I had just been left alone for the rest of the day, the disaster that unfolded wouldn’t have happened, and I’d still be in gainful employment. As it was, though, at twenty past four I heard a knock on my door. I ignored it, knee-deep as I was in my attempts to build a cohesive advertising blurb for Kayleigh’s asinine supplement.

  The knock at the door is repeated, this time a little louder. “James?” says a mewling voice, and my heart sinks. It’s my boss, Alex. I was sure the little shit was off today, but here he is, standing at my door like a Jehovah’s Witness with a death wish.

  “Come in,” I grind through clenched teeth.

  The door swings open and in walks the single most annoying human being it’s ever been my displeasure to meet. Alex is scrawny, has a high-pitched voice, is going bald but won’t admit it, wears stupid round little glasses, and has a handshake limper than a piece of lettuce.

  “I need to talk to you, James,” he whines at me nasally.

  “I thought you were off today.”

  “I was.” He perches himself on my desk and moves my coffee cup. Do you know how infuriating that is? When somebody not only invades your personal space, but takes it upon themselves to start rearranging your things without permission? My stress level, already at DEFCON 3 thanks to the caffeine, aching arse, and cheese grater versus dishwasher incident, ratchets up another notch closer to meltdown.

  “I had to come in today just to speak to you,” he continues.

  “Really? What about?”

  Alex clasps his weedy little hands together in a sure sign that what he’s about to say isn’t going to be good.

  “Mr. Keene has expressed a desire to save money, and I’m afraid that means we have to cut back on some of our staff working hours.”

  My heart sinks into an abyss darker than the contents of my recently moved coffee cup. “Are you about to tell me I’m out of a job?” I say in a shaking voice.

  “No, of course not!” Alex cries with a little laugh and pats me on the shoulder. Then the hands come together again. “You’re just losing a few hours, that’s all.”

  “How many hours, Alex?” I reply, carefully putting down the ballpoint pen I’ve been squeezing in my left hand.

  “A few, I’m afraid.”

  “How many exactly is a few?” I’m trying my hardest not to imagine what the ballpoint pen would look like inserted into Alex’s scrawny little neck.

  “You’ll be going from forty hours to twenty-five.” He puts a hand on my shoulder again in what I guess he believes is a conciliatory fashion. “It’s bad, I know, but in the current economic climate these kinds of cuts are inevitable, I’m afraid. We’re all having to make sacrifices.”

  “Really? Really, Alex? And what sacrifice have you made as manager?”

  He’s ready for this one, I can tell.

  “Well James, I’m afraid I’m losing my car, and my expense budget has been significantly cut for this year.”

  The little prick actually thinks this would make me feel better. That he’s proving that we’re all in this together because he can’t drive an Audi anymore or buy lunch at Whole Foods every day.

  Hold it together, I order myself. We still need this poxy job. Just hold your temper, get out of this office, and calm yourself down before you say anything you’ll regret.

  Alex thumps the table. “Oh damn it! I forgot. I’m afraid you’ll have to move offices as well. We’ll be putting you over with the Reprographics Department on the big table.”

  Seriously Jamie, take a deep breath and put the pen down again. You have to keep your shit together right now. Think of Laura and Poppy.

  “Mr. Keene has said he’s willing to discuss the cutbacks with you if you’d like,” Alex says, standing up. “He knows you have a young child to look after and wants to make sure you understand how hard it was for him to make these changes.”

  “Alright, Alex. I think I’d like to do that.” Preferably carrying a ballpoint pen. “Is he up in his office on the top floor?”

  “Oh no, I’m sorry, James. Mr. Keene is out of the office right now. He’s in the Maldives with his wife.”

  Oh fuck this shit. Go to town on the little bastard and we’ll worry about the fallout later. Just try not to do anything that’ll land us in prison.

  I stand up.

  Slowly.

  A variety of foul swearwords, phrases, and insults are queuing up at the front of my brain, ready to spew forth all over Alex’s stupid face.

  My arsehole puckers—partly due to the throbbing, which still hasn’t abated, and partly due to the fact it knows what is about to happen and is having a mini panic attack.

  “Alex,” I say in a voice laced with winter.

  “Yes James, how can I help?” The smug, self-satisfied tone is accompanied by a thin, wet smile.

  The Dalai Lama would have trouble resisting the urge to stab this idiot. Gandhi would have broken a lifetime vow of nonviolence and gone at this fucker’s head like a rabid gibbon.

  “Alex,” I continue in the same ice-cold tone. “You are without doubt the slimiest and most officious little cocksucker it has ever been my misfortune to come across.”

  I will replay in my head the change of expression on the slimy cocksucker’s face for many months to come. It is a thing of absolute beauty.

  “What did you say to me?” He stands up straight now, two bony knuckles depositing themselves on equa
lly bony hips in indignation.

  “Oh, I’m sorry. Has all that bullshit you’ve got floating around in that excuse for a brain finally filled up your ear canals?”

  He points a finger at me. Even that looks limp—in defiance of all the laws of body language. “You’d better stop talking James,” he hisses. “This could go very badly for you.”

  “Oh really? What are you going to do exactly? Cut my hours even more? Maybe have me work in the restrooms? I could balance a laptop on my knees—how would that suit you, you little prick?”

  “One more word and I’m writing you up.”

  “One more word, eh? How about weasel? Or maybe ferret? Possibly rat? All three are equally good at describing you, you son of a bitch.”

  “Right, that’s it. I’m writing you up, James!”

  “It’s Jamie, you brown-nosing little ass wipe! JAMIE. J-A-M-I-E. Always has been. If you took even five seconds to try and get to know the people who work for you, you’d know what my fucking name is!”

  He’s gone red now. A delightful shade of crimson that would look nice in the bathroom with the new mats we bought at Walmart last week.

  Alex holds up two knobbly fingers in front of my eyes, holding them a scant inch apart. “I’m this close to firing you, Jamie.”

  This is it, then. My last chance to back down and keep my job. In such moments the course of our lives is decided once and for all. I can calm down, apologise, and soldier on with Kayleigh’s “Living” supplement. Alex will put this outburst down to the stress of having my hours reduced, and within a fortnight everything will be back to normal. The bills will continue to be paid (more or less) and I’ll continue to let my soul die by small increments.

  Or I can go all in. Penny and pound. Sacrifice the next few weeks and months of my life for one glorious five-minute explosion that will destroy my bank account (and possibly my marriage), but will do wonders for my sense of self-worth. Sometimes in life you just have to leap without looking…

  My eyes narrow. My voice lowers to a whisper. “Fire me, you little scrotum. Go ahead.”