smallhobbit | Moving On (Reply)

We were talking about whether there was anyway that Cal McAffrey from State of Play could have turned into the sort of character that Tom Ronstadt from Exile appears to be at the start of the series, which led to me writing this:

Tom Ronstadt locked the door of his small terraced house for the final time. In some ways he was sorry he had sold it, but it held too many memories; memories he would prefer to forget, friendships that had gone sour, a lover who had turned her back on him. He had hoped that over time she would allow him back into her life, but she had “moved on” and he was forced to admit that it would never be.

Moving into a new modern shiny flat would be in keeping with the new job he had recently started. His old editor had resigned. The excuse of spending a few months with a seriously ill wife had been gratefully accepted by a management that could never see eye to eye with him and was happy to offer generous severance pay. With the editor’s departure Tom had known his own contract would have little time to run, so he had chosen to jump rather than be pushed.

The new job was with a lad’s mag; not what he would have chosen, for it was nothing like the investigative journalism he had prided himself on, but it was work. And he couldn’t afford not to work; he was now mortgaged to the hilt.

Tom bought himself a new car, a beautiful Lotus, shiny like his flat. A friend of a friend had found him the finance, which was why the interest was staggering. But for once he felt he was having what he really wanted and not settling for second best: leaving home because he had to in order to escape a further beating, not because he chose to; a lover who was the wife of a good friend, who was looking for comfort as her own life fell apart.

Tom started to drink more heavily. The work gave him no satisfaction; his former colleagues had gone their own ways and the idle chattering of his new colleagues bored him, so he drank alone. Sometimes he would go out in the early morning and just sit in the Lotus, too drunk to drive, but just to imagine what life might have been like had he had a proper start. He knew he could never go home again. Sometimes he felt a pang of conscience when he thought of his sister having to shoulder all the responsibility for their father by herself and then he would go back into his shiny flat and pour himself another glass of whisky.

A colleague introduced him to a dealer and he started to take cocaine on a semi-regular basis. Anything to make him feel good, to stop him thinking about how his life had gone wrong, to provide some ups to the downs he could find all by himself.

Tom met Jane and felt an instant attraction. She was intelligent and responded easily to his overtures. Unfortunately she was also his boss’ wife. He knew she wasn’t happy with her husband and he suggested that she leave him and that they move somewhere else. Finally, he had found someone who had replaced Anne in his desires and for a while he was almost happy.

Then the boss called him into his office. He knew there was something going on between Tom and Jane. Instead of agreeing to back off, Tom took his frustrations out on his boss, telling him exactly what he thought of his poxy little magazine and the standard of the journalism on it. The boss fired him on the spot and called security to ensure that he left the offices.

That night he got tanked up on whisky and cocaine and went round to see Jane, desperate to talk to her, desperate for some words of comfort. He felt like he had done when he was eighteen years old and his world had just fallen apart; like he had when Anne had turned her back on him for telling the truth. Jane wouldn’t let him in and the badly hurting child within him lashed out.