Alec Milius Spy Series Books 1 and 2: A Spy By Nature, The Spanish Game

She stands slowly, as if expecting me at any moment to pull her down onto the sofa. Just the action of her moving releases that exquisite scent as she turns and walks into the kitchen. I hear Fortner’s frozen Volvic falling into glass tumblers, then the slow glug-glug of whisky being poured onto ice. The noise of her moving quietly around on the polished wooden floor fills me with regret.

‘You take water in it, don’t you?’ she asks, coming back in with the drinks.

‘Yes.’

She hands me a glass and sits beside me on the sofa.

‘Can I ask you something?’ she says, taking a sip of her whisky straightaway. It is as if she has plucked up the courage for a big subject while she was in the kitchen.

‘Of course.’

Tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ear, she tries to make the question sound as easygoing as possible.

‘Are you happy, Alec? I mean really happy?’

The question takes me by surprise. I have to be very careful what I say here.

‘Yes and no. Why?’

‘I just worry about you sometimes. You seem a little unsettled.’

‘It’s just nerves.’

‘What d’you mean nerves? What about?’

It was a mistake to say that, to speak of nervousness. I’ll have to shift the subject, work from memory.

‘I was joking. Not nervousness exactly. I’m just in a constantly fraught state because of Abnex.’

‘Why?’

‘Because of the pressure to do the best job that I can. Because of the feeling of being watched and listened in on all the time. Because of the demands Alan and Harry put on me. All that stuff. I’m so tired. It’s so easy to get locked into a particular lifestyle in London, a particular way of thinking. And right now all I seem to worry about is work. There’s nothing else.’

Katharine has tilted her head to one side, eyes welled up with concern.

‘You’ll get the job, won’t you?’

‘Probably, yes. They wouldn’t spend all that money training someone just to chuck them out after a year. But it still hangs over me.’ I take a sip from the whisky tumbler and a slipped ice cube chills my top lip. ‘The truth is I have this deep-seated fear of failure. I seem to have lived with it all my life. Not a fear of personal failure, exactly. I’ve always been very sure and certain of my own abilities. But a fear of others’ thinking that I’m a failure. Maybe they’re the same thing.’

Katharine smiles crookedly, as if she is finding it difficult to concentrate.

‘It’s like this, Kathy. I want to be recognized as someone who stands apart. But even at school I was always following on the heels of other students–just one or two, that’s all–who were more able than I was. Smarter in the classroom, quicker witted in the playground, faster on the football pitch. They had a sort of effortlessness about them which I have never had. And I always coveted that. I feel as though I have lived my life suspended between brilliance and mediocrity, you know? Neither ordinary nor exceptional. Do you ever feel like that?’

‘I think we all do, all the time,’ she replies, lightly shrugging. ‘We try to kid ourselves that we’re in some way distinct from everyone else. More valuable, more interesting. We create this illusion of personal superiority. Actually, I think men in particular do that. A whole lot more than women, as a matter of fact.’

‘I think you’re right.’

I have a longing for a cigarette.

‘Still,’ she says, ‘I gotta say that you don’t seem that way to us.’

‘Who’s us?’

‘Fort and I.’

‘Don’t seem vain?’

‘No.’

It’s good that they think that.

‘But are you disappointed to hear me say these things?’

She jumps at this: ‘No! Hell no. Talk, Alec, it’s fine. We’re friends. This is how it’s supposed to be.’

‘I’m just telling you what I feel.’

‘Yes.’

‘Like for a long time now I’ve thought that things are down to luck. Success has nothing to do with talent, don’t you think? It’s just good fortune. Some people are lucky, some aren’t. It’s that simple.’

Katharine tucks her feet under her thighs, curling up tight on the sofa, and she breathes out through a narrow channel formed between pursed lips. I can feel the wine now, the dissembling brew of vodka and whisky.

‘For example, I was predicted straight-A grades for university, but I got sick and took a string of Bs and Cs, so I didn’t get my chance to go to Oxbridge. That would have changed everything. Oxford and Cambridge are the only truly optimistic places in England. Graduates come out feeling that they can do anything, that they can be anybody, because that’s the environment they’ve been educated in. And what’s to stop them? It’s almost American in that sense. But I meet Oxbridge graduates, and there’s not one of them who has something I don’t, some quality I don’t possess. And yet somehow they’ve found themselves in positions of influence or of great wealth, they’ve got ahead. Now what is that about if it isn’t just luck? I mean, what do they have that I haven’t? Am I lazy? I don’t think so. I didn’t sit on my arse at university screwing girls and smoking grass and raving it up. I just didn’t get a break. And I’m not the sort of person who gets depressed. If I start feeling low, I tell myself it’s just irrational, a chemical imbalance, and I pull myself out of it. I feel as if I have had such bad luck, you know?’

Katharine brings her eyes down from the ceiling and exclaims, ‘But you’re doing such good work now, such important work. The Caspian is potentially one of the most vibrant economic and political areas in the world. You’re playing a part in that. I had no idea you harboured these frustrations, Alec.’

I shouldn’t go too far with this.

‘They’re not constant. I don’t feel like that all the time. And you’re right–the Caspian is exciting. But look at how I’m treated, Kathy. Twelve and a half thousand pounds a year and no future to bank on. There’s so little respect for low-level employees at Abnex, it’s staggering. I can’t believe what a shitty company it is.’

‘How are they shitty?’ This has caught her interest. ‘Tell me,’ she says.

‘Well…’

‘Yes?’

‘I’ve only just started admitting this to myself, but after what happened with MI6, Abnex was a bit of a rebound.’

‘MI6?’ she says, as if she’s never heard of it. ‘Oh yes, of course. Your interviews. How do you mean a rebound?’

‘Well, that was my dream job. To do that.’

‘Yes,’ she says slowly. ‘I recall you saying.’

I watch her face for a trace of deceit, but there is nothing.

‘Not for Queen and Country–that’s all shit–but to be involved in something where success or failure depended entirely on me and me alone. Working in oil is okay, but it doesn’t compare to what I would have experienced if I’d been involved in intelligence work. And I’m not sure that I’m cut out for the corporate life.’