A Cold Logic  

I know the part you want to hear and I’ll get to it, I promise — but if it’s okay with you, I’ll start a while before that. I need to put it in context for you. Or for me maybe, I’m not sure. But I feel I need to add some background, some events that led up to it, for you to truly understand it. Is that all right?

It was a few weeks ago on a Friday, definitely a Friday; I went into the big department store opposite my work. One of those stores that does everything, you know the type, where you can walk seamlessly from the woman’s lingerie section into the area stacked with stainless steel pots as if it were the most natural thing in the world. Well that’s exactly what happened. I was browsing through the racks of lace negligée’s in the self-conscious way we all do, I’m sure you’re no different? I wasn’t after anything fruity you understand, just something that showed Lydia I’d made an effort to make her feel special. That’s when I first heard the voice. It was quite high pitched when I think back, but not unpleasantly so. The accent was unmistakably South African. “Hey bru. Looking for something for the little lady?” he called across from his little stand.

I’ve never been much good at ignoring people, salespeople, it drives my wife Lydia mad on holidays when the young hustlers try it on. “You’re encouraging them,” she’ll say if I so much as look in their direction. Well in this case I looked up — my first mistake. “Come and try this bru?” he called over, waving a glass containing a stiff purple liquid. He was a young guy no older than twenty-five I’d say, a handsome chap I guess, he had a tan that made me think he had only been in the country a month or two. It was February, after all.

Did I mention that? It was the 14th February, Valentine’s Day. A day every man loves to whine about, I bet you’ve had a moan about it in the past? It’s okay, I’ve done the same. But in truth I have to admit that I’ve always quite liked it really. Lydia was cooking a meal and I’d be taking home some wine and a present, and we’d eat, drink and chat in a way we didn’t manage very often. I’d been looking forward to it for weeks beforehand.

Sorry, I’ve gone off track haven’t I? Right, where was I? Yes, in the shop. I looked up and there was this young South African fellow, surrounded by bowls of fruit -- strawberries, bananas, berries, all in little glass bowls. “Wild berry smoothie?” he said as I walked towards him, a bit relieved to be leaving my brotherhood of bashful men browsing female undergarments. I thanked him and took a sip. It was nice I have to admit, very sweet, but healthy sweet, and pleasant. “I knocked it up here in this smoothie maker,” he said, pointing towards the shiny steel blender that was the focal-point of his little stand. “Does the little lady like smoothies?” he asked. I told him she does. She does. She’ll pay four pounds-a-pop for a pulped pineapple or a blitzed up banana and it’s always pissed me off.

It was as if this lad had read my thoughts. “This little beauty will pay for itself if she’s anything like my Misses, and she pays a small fortune for those cartons,” he said. “I know it looks like a normal blinda,” he went on. There was something about the way he pronounced the word blender; it seemed to accentuate his South African tongue like no other word.

“Although you can use it as a blinda,” he said, “it’s perfect for smoothies as it’s got this spout here, you see? You can dispense a little, then put it in the fridge and save it for later.”

So that’s how it went on, I chose from his fruit selection and he guided me through making my own. It was as easy as he promised, and tasted even better than the last. Before I knew it I’d forked out £42.99, he’d wrapped the box in pink paper, and I was marching it back to the car.

Do you know there was not one doubt in my mind that she wouldn’t love it; thoughtful, different, it ticked all the Valentine’s Day gift boxes. Looking back now I realise how naïve I was. I was like one of those cats that bring a mouse into the house in their mouth expecting to be rewarded for my bravery, only to be met by a hysterical woman with a broom. She opened it, and smiled at me. That was it, a smile. Not the long "oooh" you get from jewellery, not the giggling you get from lingerie, but a sort of grimace disguised as a smile — a non-reaction if you like. She looked at the box for a few seconds, said thank you, and then put it aside and turned to continue with her Jamie Oliver recipe.

It was only then I saw the name for the first time: The MegaMix Super-Blender+. The box displayed a picture of a sweet old lady with white hair and a pinafore toiling away in the kitchen. Now I’m not the most sensitive man in the world but even I understood her indifference towards it at this point, so I tried to explain. I told her I’d bought it as a smoothie maker, and that she could make all sorts of fruit-based nectar with it, I even promised to go down to the market and pick up a load of fruit first thing in the morning. But she’d made up her mind; she just gave me another grimace-smile and said, “That’d be nice,” in a sort of soft self-pitiful voice.

Now, I was getting desperate at this stage, so I played what the young man had assured me would be my trump card, but, I knew as soon as I’d said it how pathetic it sounded. “It’s got a spout,” I said. She just stared through me for what must have been five or ten seconds, and then turned back to the stove. And that was how it went for the rest of the evening -- me chatting away, and Lydia giving me vacant stares, minimal eye contact, and one-word responses. After dinner she got up, did the washing-up, and went silently to bed. Looking back now, that was the beginning of the end. I just sat there for another hour scanning the box for the word smoothie. But nothing.

It was a week later that I came home to the letter; I’ve carried it with me ever since. Look? I won’t read it to you in full if that’s okay, it’s a bit personal, but the gist of it was that we’d been, ‘drifting apart for some time.’ Eighteen years brought to a close with a cliché, eh? I thought better of my Lydia. I’d become ‘distant and unpredictable’ she wrote, or something to that effect. But it was only when I read on that I realised this first bit was for her benefit, to ease her guilt. Maybe like I’m doing now I guess. Because then she hit me with the real reason. Steve. Can you believe it? My old pal, Steve. They’d become close after his wife left him last year, and a few days previously when she was feeling a little low, things had become physical, she wrote. I mean talk about leaving it to the imagination, what does physical mean? Holding hands? Working out together? You’re looking at me like I’m naïve. I’m not daft, I know what they’ve been doing but you see my point about the way she’s pitched it. It leaves you hoping one thing, while knowing something else. I’d rather hear "Steve’s been screwing me every which way for the better part of a year," that way everyone’s clear. Everyone knows what’s been happening, and everyone knows who knows what’s been happening. So that was it, my Lydia, the one love of my life was gone.

Oh wait sorry, there was one more thing. She topped it all off with one final kick in the guts. A p.s. no less. She wrote, ‘P.S. Who in their right mind thinks it’s appropriate to buy a blender as a bloody Valentine’s Day gift?’

It was the following Friday afternoon that it started to unravel at work. Do you need to know about my work? I suppose you do, a little background won’t hurt. I won’t go into detail as in truth after twenty years there I know less than I ever did. When the first ‘new system’ came in about five years after I’d joined the company, I stayed in touch; attended the briefings from a pre-pubescent whiz-kid called Zach, I showed some willing you know. The Data Master 3000 would change my life Zach said, and to be fair to him, it did. My job became looking after the people who did the important stuff rather than doing it myself, and overnight I became more important than them according to the people more important than me. Who knows what they did, probably less than me. The Data Master 3500 saw off the Data Master 3000 a few years later, and by the time the Data Master Y2K was rolled out I knew as little about my own job as ever.

All the while my team was growing, can you believe that? We got so busy that they split my team in two and my colleague and pal, Steve, took over the other team. Yes the same Steve, he features quite heavily in this story as you can see. As colleagues operating at the same level for over fifteen years, we became good friends. While other acquaintances drifted away he became probably my only good friend.

So on this day I was sat in my office reviewing a spreadsheet that, even with my limited knowledge of business operations, I could see showed a significant downward trend. I told you about the good times but since the recession hit we’d suffered quite badly you see, there were recruitment and pay freezes across the board that had resulted in empty desks pebble dashing the office. What seemed like most days, a new cut-back initiative from the head office appeared -- plastic plants had replaced live ones, extravagant coffee selections became permanently ‘out of stock,’ and the toilet paper all of a sudden started lacerating your sensitive regions.

So on this Friday I had a visit from the junior that worked in the HR department. He knocked on the door and told me I was needed in the boardroom. Now this wasn’t out of the ordinary, I assumed it would be a senior management briefing of some kind, they often happened at short notice. So I followed him up the stairs and do you know what he said to me? He said it with that irritating confidence youngsters have that they know everything there is to know about life, “Dude, is it true you bought your wife a blender for Valentine’s Day?” He was sniggering as he said it and if we hadn’t reached the boardroom I’d have put a rocket up him. But when we got there and I saw the panel awaiting me I immediately had bigger things on my mind.

You can probably guess at where this headed. Figures were down, the Group was no longer running at a profit, and operations were being rationalised. That week Steve had put forward a proposal to consolidate our two teams they told me. It would “drive efficiencies, and reduce overheads” they said. Yes, Steve. You heard me right, my pal Steve, who was now living with my wife.

Well that was it. They did most of the talking and it was a short meeting. They would be taking forward Steve’s proposal effective of immediately they told me, meaning as of then my role no longer existed. It was as quick and clinical as that, within an hour I was driving my Hire Purchase car back to my large empty mortgage with a cardboard box on the passenger seat.

Right, if what I’ve told you up to now has been mainly for my benefit, you may wish to start listening yourself now, as this is where it starts to get illegal Detective. Do I have that right? Detective? Or Sergeant? No Detective of course, it has to be with the charges as serious as they are. It was about Wednesday the week after that I started following him. And I swear it wasn’t planned at first, he walked past me as if he didn’t know who I was, can you believe that? Like we’d never met. So I followed him.

I’d just left a recruitment agency for the first time in twenty years and was feeling low I must admit. A girl, young enough to be my daughter, had just condemned me to the scrapheap. She opened by spelling out to me, the man who’d just been made redundant from his only job after twenty years, that there was recession on. After that she pulled me apart with malicious relish; belittling my achievements, questioning my ability to match a shirt with an appropriate tie, and laughing out loud about my claims to have an expert knowledge of the Data Master 3000 — “When was that, 1984?” she squealed. I left her little office above a parade of shops with my confidence in shreds and my head spinning, and it was then I saw him. I remember being overcome with rage, feeling like I wanted to run up and jump on him and keep hitting him until I couldn’t hit him anymore. There was the man who’d kicked it all off, the man responsible for the capitulation of my life, wandering past without a care in the world.

So I followed him as he dropped into one of those small versions of a proper supermarket that have fast names, an Express, or a Rapido or something. I kept my distance so he didn’t cotton on that I was there as I followed him through the isles and out the door, through the busy street, and as far as his house. After he’d gone in I stood there for a few minutes staring at the door.

I’m getting a bit thirsty now. Do you mind if I pour myself a glass of this water? I’m nearly there. Nearly at the bit you want to hear.

That’s better. Where was I? Oh yes, the next morning, and the next few mornings in fact, I found myself back there. I have no idea how; it was as if some invisible force was dragging me there against my will. It became an obsession. I followed him across the common and sat and watched as he stopped for his coffee, picked up his paper, and then disappeared into his work.

This went on for a week or so, including today. Today is the seventh day I waited outside his house and to my mind he never knew, until today. I guess you don’t if you’re not expecting it. In the films when you see them always looking over their shoulder they make it look like it’s hard to trail someone, but in reality, if you’re just following someone’s relatively mundane life it’s not that hard.

I’d decided today was the day and I was there earlier than usual, I wanted to get it right you see. The last thing I wanted to be was one of those that messed it up. You’ve probably seen a few in your time? They get drunk and fall asleep, or they forget to load their gun or something.

The gun? Oh yes I glossed over that slightly, sorry. I got the gun a few days ago. I’m not going to go into detail about that now though if that’s okay? One thing I will say is you wouldn’t believe how easy it was to get hold of. Maybe you would, I’m not sure, but it shouldn’t be that easy, I know that. You should really look into it? But another time though, in this case I’m not going to name names and get others into trouble, we both know that’s not why I’m here.

So I sat there waiting. It was snowing and I was grateful of it as, although it sounds strange, it took my mind off the cold. It’s quite mesmerising if you take some time out and watch the way the snow behaves under the glare of a streetlight. The flakes dart about changing direction sharply like midges in the air, before the wind whips up and blasts them all sideways towards the darkness like they’ve all decided at exactly the same moment that they have somewhere else to be. You should try it if we get another snowfall this year, it’s almost therapeutic.

After he came out of the house, it was about a hundred yards up the road that I tapped him on the shoulder. It was at this point that I have to admit a little doubt crept in. I started to question whether I was doing the right thing. Maybe he was unaware that his little smoothie sales pitch was destroying lives? Maybe it wasn’t destroying others like it had mine? I had my gun in my pocket and at this point had half a mind to leave it there; and I nearly did. But then I saw the penny drop as he realised who I was, and he said something that made my blood boil once again. He looked at me through his healthy southern hemisphere tan, smiled, and said, “Ahh, howzit bru? How did the little lady like the blinda?”