Chapter fourteen
When I saw the Jacobs’ number on the screen, my whole body clenched. Even more so when I answered, and heard Christian’s judgy monotone.
‘Ah, Beth, at last,’ he said. ‘We were beginning to think you’d left the country. Sophie’s chased a couple of times, voice notes and email. Didn’t you get them?’
‘Sorry, I was just about to call her.’ I stuffed the pages back into the envelope and opened my laptop to the spreadsheets I’d been working on before I’d allowed myself to get distracted.
The envelopes of memories had come from the drop box at Rosemount, and though I’d tried to keep them until after I’d finished my own day’s work, I’d been unable to resist having a quick peek – and then been completely swept away into a more romantic world than the one I currently occupied.
Christian cleared his throat. A bad sign. ‘It’s not good news, I’m afraid. It’s about Allen.’
‘Allen?’ You don’t know about the plans to step back, I reminded myself.
‘Yes, I’m sorry to say Allen’s wife called me this morning to say that he was taken into hospital over the weekend.’
‘What?’ My eyes widened. ‘Hospital?’
‘Yes, he fell off a ladder at home. He’s broken his wrist and his leg, but he’s undergoing assessments for a possible mini stroke too.’
‘No! Poor Allen!’ I sank back in my chair, winded. All I could see in my mind’s eye was Allen in his jazzy Pringle golf jumper, quietly exhilarated to be doing shady meetings at the golf club, full of energy about his Sign Language for Grandparents project. ‘Is he going to be all right?’
‘Too early to say, but obviously our thoughts and prayers are with Allen’s wife and family at this difficult time.’
I hadn’t exactly warmed to Christian in the short time he’d been working for Jacobs’, but ugh. He was exactly the sort of person who’d say thoughts and prayers, while not actually bothering to find out what Allen’s wife was called.
‘Oh, poor Devora, what a time for this to—’ I bit my tongue before I accidentally revealed that I knew about the plans this would be ruining.
But it didn’t matter: Christian had moved on to the real point of his call.
‘From a business perspective, certain plans that were in the pipeline will now be actioned sooner than scheduled. I can share with you now that Allen was intending to move to a non-exec role at Jacobs’, triggering a team reset . . .’
I was doing my best to stay tuned in to Christian but he really did talk like a press release, and my mind was still on Allen.
What was he doing up a ladder? I couldn’t picture him doing DIY.
Devora was the handy one in that relationship, always sanding down something or other, according to Allen’s occasional weekend updates.
I opened the NHS website, typed in ‘mini stroke’ and scrolled silently. How easy was it to recover from orthopedic surgery? Would he be able to sign with a broken wrist? The answers didn’t fill me with much optimism.
Tomsk had been stationed on his chair by the window, his favourite place after the warm patch under the shelf full of orphaned Staffordshire dogs, where he’d been eyeballing the squirrels in Martine’s mountain ash.
Now he turned and gazed at me through his wispy fringe, as if sensing a sudden change in the room’s atmosphere.
‘. . . for the time being you’ll be reporting directly to me, as I’ll be overseeing Allen’s day-to-day as well as my current role,’ Christian press-released. ‘I’d like to set up a review as soon as possible. Beth? Are you still there?’
‘Yes, sorry.’ I swallowed and closed the NHS page. ‘I’m just shocked. About Allen.’
‘Naturally. We’re all shocked. So re your current role – Sophie has taken over administration for my diary and she’s sent you some dates for an in-person review.’
In-person? No, thanks. I was still only a week into my four-week-old Beth Recovery plan, and though the trousers went over my hips without threatening the seams, the zip was no closer to zipping.
‘Why don’t we schedule a Teams call for the end of this week?’ I suggested, more confidently than I felt. ‘I can do Friday morning?’
‘No, all meetings have to be in-person going forward. Hybrid working will continue on a case-by-case basis but the company reset will focus on building a high-performing team, and in my experience, the best way to do that is to connect in the office, around the table, committing to collective goals.’
What? My heart rate spiked with anxiety just picturing what that would look like.
Natasha, Christian himself, Dan, Steve and Mike (the Tax Bros, as Natasha called them), the super-keen graduate apprentices whom everyone was terrified of, all round a table staring at me and wondering whether I was the same Beth who’d been there before, or some new Beth. Who’d eaten the old Beth.
Don’t be ridiculous, I told myself. There had been a time when I’d been in the office all day, every day. And I’d been fine. Fine.
But that was before, said a little voice. When I had other things going on in my life, better things.
‘We’re looking at Monday the nineteenth,’ he continued.
My head pounded. I dragged my laptop closer. ‘I’ve got client meetings booked for most of Monday,’ I said, fumbling to open the shared system, so I could quickly block out the rest of my diary for the month. ‘How about . . .’
No! No no no no no.
I stared at the screen in horror. There was already a window stretched across all of Monday, marked ‘Christian Re-boarding Meeting?’
‘Sophie’s taken a look at your schedule and Monday seems to be fine our end?’ he went on.
‘I can’t do the nineteenth,’ I insisted. ‘I’ve got scheduled meetings. I must have forgotten to put them in the system.’
I felt Christian’s wordless judgement whistling down the line. Or maybe he was just breathing out in a particularly judgemental manner. ‘And this is exactly why I want to get everyone back into the office.’
The room’s atmosphere must have plunged even further, because Tomsk, unable to bear the fraught expression on my face, slid down from the chair by the window and padded across the room to lay his shaggy head on my foot.
I looked down at his gesture of support. I didn’t want to go back to the office, and he certainly didn’t. Tomsk had never known a world where I even went to the office – now nearly an hour’s commute each way. How could I leave him for the entire day? He couldn’t cope with that.
Anxiety crawled across the pit of my stomach but so did a sudden fierce resistance. I wasn’t going to take this lying down.
‘I’ll revert to Sophie with alternative dates,’ I said briskly. ‘I’m currently living some way from the office so I’ll need to revisit my travel arrangements.’
How long could I put this off? If I couldn’t get into the grey trouser suit, I could always buy a new one, but the mere thought of trying on clothes in a shop made me feel stubbornly resistant, that toddler-on-the-verge-of-a-tantrum agitation.
The unflattering mirrors. The sizes that wouldn’t fit.
The styles that I’d once loved that were now my enemies.
I was conscious of my bra digging into my flesh, as if my body was expanding in panic. I’d have to move my haircut appointment forward too.
‘Beth? Sophie’s made a suggestion. We’re having an all-team meeting the following Tuesday, so she can schedule our meeting either before or after that. Which suits you better?’
How many days away was that? Fourteen. How many steps could I do in that time? How much weight could I lose? I felt sick.
‘Before or after the meeting?’ repeated Christian.
Neither, I wanted to yell, but I heard myself say, ‘After.’ There was always a chance it would overrun and get cancelled. Although, with Christian, I doubted it.
‘Great.’ He didn’t add, ‘Now that was easy, wasn’t it?’ but the implication was clear. ‘If you don’t mind, I’ve got a few people to speak to so . . .’
‘Is it OK to send a card to Devora?’ I asked quickly. ‘Allen’s wife?’
‘Um, yes, why not? Sophie’s organising something, speak to her.’
I finished the call, closed my laptop, and without thinking, I stood up and robotically flicked on the kettle, robotically placed four slices of bread in the toaster, then robotically ate all four slices of toast.
It didn’t make me feel any better.
When the phone rang an hour later, I half-expected it to be Christian calling back to move the meeting again, and panic fizzed instantly inside me like an Alka-Seltzer dropped into water (more like three Alka-Seltzers, into acid).
It took me a second to realise that it was the house phone ringing, not my mobile.
‘Darling, it’s Martine,’ said Martine. ‘Could you do me a favour and drop some donations off at the charity shop? I’ve been having another sort-out – there are more creative writing books you’re very welcome to have.
’ But it had to be in the next day or two, she added, because otherwise Jackie might come home and start unpacking the bags.
‘She seems to think this house is either a storage facility or a museum to her childhood,’ she went on. ‘If you’re not too busy, this afternoon would be ideal.’
Since Christian had pretty much ruined the day for me, I offered to take her into Longhampton after lunch.
There were four more bags of clothes and two boxes of books waiting by the front door; three of the bags were filled with jumpers, cord trousers, checked shirts, all top quality.
Ray’s, I presumed (although, yes, I did have a quick look while I was loading them into the car, and no, there was nothing of Fraser’s that I recognised, beyond a couple of football albums).
‘Is there any particular reason for this spring-cleaning?’ I asked, when we were heading towards the town centre.