Page 53 of Statistically Speaking
I have, I realize, added yet another person to the ever-expanding List of People Who Might Not Actually Want to Know Me. Talk about setting yourself up to fail.
Chapter 22
Eleven Unknown Numbers on a Mobile Phone Screen
I am at the end of an especially tedious staff meeting a few days later when my phone rings. We have been discussing exciting issues like budgetary constraints, renovations in the science block, and student parking passes being shared illicitly. Nothing gets the blood flowing quite like an illicit parking pass.
I have been avoiding Karim’s eyes for most of this endurance test because I know he will make me laugh. He will roll his eyes or mouth something at me or mime shooting himself in the head, and I will not be able to help myself. I will giggle. We will behave like the students and disrupt the very important business being very earnestly discussed.
I have forgotten about my phone, which very rarely rings anyway. Margie knows not to contact me during work hours, and either texts or uses my landline. Karim, the only other person likely to actually call, is sitting here in the same overfull room, the breath of the assembled staff steaming up the windows.
So when it rings I jump in surprise, rummaging around in my handbag so I can pull it out and silence it. There is a momentof quiet and I feel all eyes on me, some in sympathy, others in rebuke. Naughty Gemma. Behaving like a student even when I tried not to.
I mutter an apology and the meeting wheezes to an end, everyone running out of steam. The head of maintenance finishes his talk and asks if there are any questions. I look around and see that everyone is steadfastly refusing to put their hand up—if we ask questions, we will have to stay longer. This is already like detention and I’m not the only one keen to leave.
We draw to a close and everyone shuffles out, forming into small groups of friends and colleagues, all keeping their comments to themselves until they are safely away.
I am sitting near the door—I am no fool; I plan this stuff—and am one of the first out. Karim catches up with me in the corridor, the subtle scent of his aftershave warning me he is near. And, weirdly, making me smile.
“Who was on the phone, Miss Jones? Who was so important that they could interrupt the G8 summit?”
“I don’t know,” I reply, walking briskly, knowing he will easily keep up. “I think it might have been Leonardo DiCaprio. He won’t leave me alone.”
“Want me to have a word? I think I can take him.”
I laugh, and we finally reach the exit and walk together toward the car park. I pull out my phone as I reach my car and check the number that called me.
“Huh,” I say quietly, “it’s not one of my contacts. And I don’t recognize it. So it might actually be Leonardo DiCaprio.”
He peers at the screen, shakes his head, and replies, “Could it be the Adoption Register people? I know you’re deliberately not mentioning that very much, but I also know you probably think about it a lot.”
“You’re right, on both counts,” I say, unlocking my car. “But no, it won’t be them, or... her. The way it works is that if she gets in touch, if she asks for my details, they notify me. And they haven’t. So she hasn’t. If that makes sense. My money’s still on Leo. See you later?”
He is standing close to me, a small crooked smile on his face. He is doing that thing where he somehow manages to do sexy flirting without saying a single word. We are not “out” at work, so he does not touch me—but somehow his gaze lets me know that he would like to. I feel a flush of heat and know that I am blushing.
“It’s a date, Miss Jones—see you at the pub quiz,” he says, the crooked smile ramping up into a full grin. He gives me a wave and saunters off to his own car. As ever, I seem powerless to remove my eyes from his rear view as he leaves.
I sigh and climb into the driver’s seat. I slam the door, switch on the engine, and turn up the heater.
I was, of course, joking about Leonardo. We ended it years ago. But something about that call, something about that mysterious number, has rattled me. Put me on high alert. No voicemail was left, and I have no real reason to feel as I do.
Except... except I know that Geoff with a G would have passed it on, down the chain, through the top-secret Social Worker Fight Club. Possibly all the way to her—to my mother.
When I was little, I didn’t have a mobile phone—not many people did. They were nowhere near as ubiquitous as they are now; nowhere were they seen as essential to modern life. For most of the time, we didn’t even have a landline—we’d have spells where the phone was hooked up, but then there would be a bill that went unpaid, and magically it was gone. I used pay phones, which seem to be a thing of the past now.
By the time I was at Audrey’s, I had a very simple pay-as-you-go brick that did phone calls and texts and nothing else—it was way before the era we live in now, when everyone carries the Internet around in their pocket. I’m not sure my mother ever called me on that little Nokia, even though she had the number.
I try to recall the last time I heard my mother’s voice on the phone, and realize that it was so many years ago I don’t even remember what we talked about. Just that it felt like an ordeal for both of us.
The car has heated up, and I turn the engine off again. It is dusk, and all around me yellow headlights swoop and sweep across the car park as staff leave. It is like a carefully choreographed dance, bathed in illumination. Soon, I am the only one there. One small Hyundai in a sea of space.
I decide that I will call that number. That I will do it here because, for some reason, I do not want to take it home with me. Back to my safe place, where it might somehow take hold and invade and infect in a way I cannot control.
I call the number back, telling myself as it rings out that it could be anything—it could be a sales call. It could be phone junk. It could be a Hollywood superstar asking me out to dinner.
It is none of those things. It is, as I suspected, as some buried instinct told me, her. My mother.
“Gems? Is that you?” she says.
