44. FORTY-FOUR
When Poppy woke on Monday morning back at the London flat, she was surprised to find Roscoe still in bed beside her. It was six AM, and he was normally up long before now.
“I know,” he said, before she even turned properly to look at him. “But I…can’t seem to get out of bed.”
He was lying on his back, staring fixedly at the ceiling, jaw tight.
Unease crawled down her spine. “Is it a panic attack?”
“No. Maybe. Not quite like the others. I keep trying to get up, but it’s like there’s…there’s this huge fucking weight on my chest and I can’t.” His voice snapped off on a sharp inhale.
“It’s OK,” she soothed, squeezing his shoulder, then stroking the hair back from his forehead. “It’s OK.”
“Everything was so easy yesterday. Being with you. Helping your family. It was all right and easy and good. But I think about the office, I think about walking in there, and I can’t…” He forced out a breath. “I can’t breathe.”
“Don’t go. Stay here.”
“I can’t. I have to go in.”
“Do you?” Though she knew what his calendar looked like today. Every day. Yes, he needed to go to work. But that was only if you cared more about the job than the man. “You can take a day off if you need to. Take some time off.”
“I just had a weekend away.”
“Barely. With lots of driving. And several hours of work snuck in. And interrupted by phone calls. And…with a very demanding girlfriend.”
He was still staring at the ceiling, hardly blinking, but he cracked a faint smile at that, just as she had hoped he would.
“It’ll be OK,” she said again, still stroking his hair back. “If you won’t take today off, then you’ll still be able to get through it, OK? And I’ll be there. I’ll be right there with you. And maybe…maybe if you went back to the doctor…”
“Should I start taking the pills?”
“I don’t know. I think that needs to be your decision. But there might be other things that can help, if you choose not to. Some kind of therapy or something.”
“I don’t know how that’s going to help my workload.”
“If Aubrey Ford took over the tax project…”
“My dad won’t budge. I just…” He let out a ragged breath. “I just… It feels like there are walls. Everywhere I look. I see fucking walls.”
“Hey,” she said gently, the anguish in his voice making her heart stutter. “Look at me.” She cupped his cheek. He stiffly turned to meet her eyes, apology and guilt and embarrassment in his. “I’m here. I’m not a wall.”
He managed a smile, sorrow at its edges. “Far prettier.”
She laughed. “I’d hope so.”
His smile faded as his gaze ran over her face. “I’m so sorry. I promise I won’t always be like this. I’m going to get a handle on it. Get it sorted.”
“It’s you, Ross. I don’t want you sorted. I just want you…happy? Whatever it takes.”
“Shit,” he muttered, because there were tears in his eyes. So she held him, his head on her chest, the weight of it strange but also right. She stroked his hair and told him that it would all be OK.
She told him that she loved him. Said the words out loud. And that felt right, too. As though she had been saying it for longer than she knew.
Ask me for the Dodge file…
That’s what Poppy said to him after she held him together enough to get out of bed, get in the shower, drag his suit on as though he was dressing for his own funeral, the fabric clammy and cold. She passed him a cup of coffee—decaffeinated, alas, because she had read caffeine wasn’t good for anxiety. “If it gets too much, ask me for the Dodge file, and I’ll find a way to get you out of the office. I’ll clear your calendar, invent an appointment…”
He had managed a smile. So had she. But he could see the worry in her eyes—the way it was warring with letting him insist on going into work. She didn’t want him to, thought he ought to call in sick, but that wasn’t an option. It wouldn’t help anyway. None of it would go away if he hid at home. The work would just pile up. People would get annoyed he wasn’t there. Already tight timelines would get tighter.
Ask me for the Dodge file…
It was hellishly tempting as he passed her desk. She looked up, gave him an encouraging smile that cracked something in his heart. He nodded back—all he could do to acknowledge her, this woman, who meant everything—and he rushed away, out of the office, Aubrey stepping into the lift when it stopped at the sixth floor. Across town, a thirty-minute drive away, Hendrich Lissi was waiting for them. The man had called five minutes ago to say he happened to be in London, happened to be meeting Domnall White, the billionaire owner of Actuaris, and might they like an introduction at their lunch meeting, which was starting right about now?
“Think this is some kind of power play?” Aubrey asked as he stood next to Roscoe and the lift continued down.
“Partly that. And partly testing our mettle.”
“He’s surely had this meeting with White in his diary for weeks.”
“Exactly. And he gives us just enough notice to ensure we’ll be over half an hour late. And couches it as a favour.”
Aubrey shrugged as the lift doors opened and they stepped out into the office foyer. A black car was waiting for them outside, the driver holding the door open. “It is a favour, given this is the closest we’ve come to White in years.”
“So long as we don’t fuck it up.”
“With your beauty and my brains? Not a chance.”
Roscoe pulled a face and nodded for Aubrey to get in the car first. He followed him in, pulled out his tablet as the car moved off. “More to the point: Poppy’s briefing notes. She’s been building a profile on White for months. Did she copy you in on the summary?”
Aubrey nodded, skimming through the pages on his own screen. “Yes. And we’ve got thirty minutes to read it and come up with a strategy. Plenty of time. No need to look quite so…ashen.” He frowned at Roscoe, who knew he looked exactly how he felt. Sick, sweaty, hunted. “Are you hungover? Ill? Open a window.”
So Roscoe did, but the warm London air, redolent of car fumes and hot tarmac, did nothing to ease his nausea.
Maybe Roscoe was dissociating, as sometimes happened when his anxiety was bad, but as he sat in the elegant little restaurant sipping the bitter-sweet aperitif Hendrich Lissi had insisted on, his mind was in a one-bedroom flat in Lewisham.
He was thinking about Poppy’s brother Liam, who had lost his job at the department store owned by Domnall White because of a generous impulse to help a friend. And he was thinking about Poppy’s mother, whose hours were about to be reduced at the supermarket Domnall White owned because such efficiency measures were the easiest bone to throw shareholders grumbling about lower than predicted dividends. And he thought about Poppy, fainting in his office from hunger. And the fingers of his hand curled tight around the cold stem of his glass.
Domnall was looking at him, expectant. And the kick Aubrey gave his ankle under the table suggested the man was waiting for a reply to a question. Roscoe’s smile felt like cut glass. “My apologies, my thoughts wandered.”
Domnall wasn’t pleased, but he repeated the question and the conversation went on, four very rich men sitting around a table manoeuvring themselves into positions where they could help each other make even more money. And help Domnall avoid paying tax on any of it. Because who needed hospitals, really? Or schools. Or social services. Or anything at all.
On the drive back, Aubrey asked him if he was OK. Well, what he actually said was: “That was a fucking shambles. Care to explain why you spent the entire time alternating between looking like you were going to be sick or start throttling Domnall White?”
He was annoyed. Quite rightly so. Because Roscoe had let him down. The pulsing, buzzing feeling in his skull turned a shade darker, and he closed his eyes, head back against the seat, black lines dancing through his mind.
“Both were true,” he said.
He heard Aubrey let out a breath. “What’s going on, Roscoe? You’re not yourself.”
“No. Exactly.”
That about summed it up. He was not himself. Didn’t have time to be, wasn’t allowed to be, had to pretend to be friends with the Domnall Whites and Hendrich Lissis of the world.
“A change of heart?” he said, eyes still closed, knowing he sounded a little drunk. Unhinged, a crack in his voice. His mind. “Or I’m sick. Or both. I’m sorry, though.” He opened his eyes, dragged his knuckles down his jaw hard enough to hurt. “I should have held it together better back there.”
Aubrey paused before speaking. “I’m not your line manager anymore. But if I was… I’d tell you to take two weeks off.”
Roscoe almost laughed. “Two weeks? I can’t take two hours.”
“Is it burnout? Stress? Speak to George. Speak to someone. A doctor?”
“I have. And Poppy… Poppy knows. She’s helping. She’s the only thing that is.”
A whipcrack of emotion closed his throat, and he sank back against the car’s headrest again, watching the passing streets through unfocused eyes.
“I’m glad you have her, but…don’t put it all on her.”
“I’m not. I’ll… I’m going back to the doctor.”
“Good. And offload some work to me—officially or not, I’ll second your lead on this tax thing. Or shift some PM stuff to me. Whatever you need.”
Roscoe nodded in thanks, though it wouldn’t really help. Might move the walls back an inch. But it wouldn’t make them go.
“It will pass,” Aubrey said after a moment, something in his voice that said he was talking from experience. “However bad it gets, it will pass.”
Roscoe thanked him, close to tears but forcing them back. The other man knew and merely nodded, and they finished the drive in silence.