Page 8 of Take a Chance on Greece

Jim perked up right away. ‘Would you? That would be fantastic.’

His genial grin set my guilty conscience clanging all over again. How could I be brazenly smiling back at him when the etching of another man’s name was making its itchy presence felt on my back?

‘Tell you what, you settle yourself down in here, and I’ll bob out and fetch you a sandwich,’ he offered, already halfway out of the door.

‘Get that key cut while you’re at it,’ I called after his departing form, but I wasn’t sure he heard me.

It didn’t take me long to check Jim’s figures, and when he still hadn’t reappeared with lunch, I thought I’d watch something on YouTube to distract me from my hunger while I waited. Jim was a stickler for client confidentiality and wouldn’t want me to leave his office unsupervised, however trustworthy the rest of the staff were. I clicked on the internet icon and it brought up a page he must have been looking at earlier in the day. It was a document saved in an online cloud drive. I would have clicked open a different tab immediately, but the sight of my name caught my interest and I couldn’t help taking a closer look. As I scanned down the page, I felt the anger start to rise. It was a list of all the employees at work and the pay increases they’d been awarded over the years. I knew that I shouldn’t be looking, but as I compared their wages to my own financial situation, I felt a big sense of betrayal. How come everybody else had had pay rises yet my salary had remained stubbornly the same? None of the increases were what you’d call generous, but the point was that everybody else had been given them while I had been left out. I checked the dates and realised the change in the way I was treated compared to my colleagues had begun when Jim and I had started going out with each other.

It was a punch in the gut. I worked so hard at my job, putting in hours far longer than I was paid for, yet my own boyfriend hadn’t bothered to make sure that my dedication was recognised and rewarded. I wasn’t just furious, I felt hurt and cheated by him. Jim might argue that he didn’t want to be seen to be favouring his girlfriend, but this was active discrimination against me, taking advantage of my status as his partner to get away with treating me differently to everyone else. It wasn’t only about the money, it was about what was right and fair. He knew how much I’d put into this place, working hard because doing a good job mattered to me, but also because I knew how much the success of the business meant to him. But apparently that dedication and care was meaningless. Suddenly I was forced to view Jim in a different light and it wasn’t a nice one.

One of the reasons it had taken so long for us to make the step of moving in together was because of the disparity in our financial situations. I’d grown up in a house where my dad was the main breadwinner, and made sure we knew it. I’d seen the emotional cost on my mum, having to ask him for money and justify every penny of spending to him, and I’d never wanted to put myself in that situation, not that I’d ever imagined Jim would behave in that way. But it seemed his control of my finances had been more subtle, and all the more upsetting for it. If he was this measly when it came to his own girlfriend’s salary, what other areas of life had he been short-changing me in too?

I sat there stewing, a thousand thoughts swirling around my mind as I questioned everything I thought I knew about our relationship. When Jim returned, I made an excuse to get out of his office as quickly as possible. While the thought of confronting him about what I’d discovered was appealing, I didn’t trust myself to do it yet. I was so hurt that I knew everything would pour out in a big emotional mess, and I’d make a hash of it. I needed to think things through, decide exactly what I was going to say to him and what I wanted the outcome of our conversation to be.

I spent the rest of the afternoon getting increasingly anxious, veering between finding excuses for Jim’s behaviour and being appalled by it. Was I overreacting? Or was I not reacting enough? Part of me was desperate to message the girls and get their take on the situation, but the other part of me knew what their response would be and I didn’t want other people’s anger to cloud my judgement over something so important.

Just after five o’clock, an instant message popped up on my screen from Jim.

Have to stay late to finish this off. See you at home… As requested, I got a key cut at lunchtime and have left it in your pigeonhole.

For a moment, my feelings towards him softened. And then I reminded myself that his small, overdue gesture didn’t change the magnitude of what I’d found out.

Back at Jim’s – despite my new key, I still couldn’t help thinking of it as his place – I changed out of my sober work gear into slouchy leggings, tucking my loose T-shirt up under the band of my bra and removing the bandage so that the tattoo scab could get some air. I stood in the living room, staring at my boxes of stuff, thinking about how Jim had gone through them in my absence. He’d been so casual when he’d mentioned it, but it was an invasion of privacy. I’d been looking forward to us living together for so long, but all the joy and excitement I’d been feeling had been wiped out. Now I didn’t know what I wanted anymore.

Eventually, I heard Jim’s car pull up on the drive. For a second, I thought about pulling down my T-shirt to conceal my ‘Awesome Andreas’ tattoo. And then I decided against it. It was ridiculous to think I could keep it hidden from him forever. Surely a drunken holiday tattoo paled into insignificance on the relationship sin scale when it was compared to long-term financial deception? I would be honest with him, in exchange for his honesty about the situation at work.

‘Evening, what’s for dinner?’ Jim asked, looking at me expectantly as he came in through the door.

This was it, my moment to confront him about my discovery. But something made me stay quiet. I walked past him and stood with my back on full show, checking the contents of the fridge. It was more to give him the chance to see the tattoo than because I actually intended to magically produce food for him. If there weren’t bigger issues at stake, I would have said something about his assumption that I’d moved in to become his personal chef.

‘Well, I didn’t have time to go shopping today as planned, so nothing by the looks of the cupboards.’

I waited for the moment when he’d ask me about the tattoo which was plainly visible on my back, the tattoo which said the name of another man.

‘We’ll get a takeaway,’ he said, seemingly oblivious to everything except thoughts of his stomach. He scratched his chin and started riffling through the drawers for menus, selecting the type of food he wanted, and not bothering to ask me what I fancied.

It was then that I decided I wouldn’t say anything yet, and would wait to see how long it would take him to notice my newly acquired inking.

It became almost a game to me as I walked around the house, leaned over at the counter as I put the takeaways on plates, and even stooped right in front of him as I pretended to drop a knife on the floor. I was practically flaunting the tattoo at him, but whatever I tried, he seemed completely unaware of the addition to my skin.

Jim took his takeaway into the living room to watch a gameshow. I went and stood in front of the television with my back towards him, but even then, he only asked me to move because he couldn’t see how many points one of the contestants had got.

Eventually my frustration at my apparent invisibility and my rage at the work situation got the better of me and I muted the TV so I could confront him. Trying to keep my voice as controlled as possible, given my frustration and hurt, I asked him why everyone else in the company had got pay rises while I was still on the meagre traineeship salary I’d started out on, despite being more qualified and more experienced than most of my colleagues.

‘Ah, Liddy-Lou, don’t get yourself so worked up. It would have affected your tax bracket.’ He said it as if it was the most reasonable argument in the world. ‘And as we’re together, I can handle the finances anyway. It doesn’t really matter what you earn.’

I stared at him, my mouth open in astonishment. ‘But it matters to me, Jim, it really matters to me. You know how that kind of thing affected my parents’ relationship and eventually drove them apart. This isn’t the eighteenth century, and I want to be able to stand on my own two feet. I want to be given the salary I deserve, the salary I earn from all the hard work I put in, all the experience and knowledge I bring to the business.’

He shrugged. ‘Then, I’m sorry. I’ll take another look at it when I can find a moment.’

It didn’t sound like he’d be finding a moment any time soon and he certainly didn’t sound sorry enough. I could tell his eyes were wandering back to the TV screen and that he was itching to put the sound back on so he could carry on watching the show. That tipped me over the edge. I glared at him, wondering how I could ever have allowed myself to believe that I was in love with a man who was so lacking in consideration and understanding. Even if he had thought he’d been acting in my best interests, why couldn’t he take the time now to listen to my concerns and promise to act on them? As I was getting things off my chest, it seemed time to raise the other issue which had been playing on my mind, although in light of recent revelations, I felt far less guilty about it.

‘And haven’t you noticed something different about me?’ I couldn’t keep the incredulity out of my voice at his lack of observation.

Jim struggled to tear his gaze back towards me from the silent screen where someone was now having gunge poured over them for getting an answer wrong. I could tell that my persistence was starting to irritate him.

‘Something different?’ he said.

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