Chapter 3
SAMMIE
Ugh. My first ‘Happy Fri-yay’ email of the day. There’s nothing happy about waking up an hour before your alarm and then just lying there, making a mental to-do list of all the things you need to do before you can enjoy your weekend. Well, try to enjoy your weekend.
I have a million emails to send. Meetings to sit in on – most of them on Zoom, which makes me wonder why I have to take them here in the office, and not at home, only smartly dressed from the waist up, like normal people.
A site visit to arrange, a report to tighten up, a health and safety video to watch – they always make us watch them again when someone does something stupid.
It’s boring, and a waste of my time, but so long as it isn’t me who did the something stupid, I don’t mind.
I work as a water engineer and, why yes, I can make the job sound even less impressive.
Dirty water is my area of expertise. It’s my job to make sure what goes into the sewers stays in the sewers.
I promise you, on first dates, I don’t open with that.
Mostly to avoid awkward conversations where people ask me, personally, when I’m going to clean up the Thames so they can swim in it.
‘Sammie, do you have that historic spill data?’ Tom asks, popping up from behind his screen. Our desks are back to back so we’ll often chat while we work.
‘I’m still downloading it,’ I reply, tempted to kick my super-slow work PC to see if it gives it a boost. ‘Historic data can wait, it’s not going to change now…’
Hopefully. I’m sure people have said that before, right before it floats off into the cloud, never to be seen again.
I do like my job. Well, no, I like problem-solving – when that bit actually comes around.
It’s just that these days the problems that need solving are mostly clients wanting something for nothing.
What I want to be doing is going out on site, envisioning great feats of engineering that are actually useful and help people.
Instead I have to think of new and innovative ways to build the same thing over and over again, but just for less money each time.
The more I think about it… do I like my job?
I’m starting to think it’s not so much that I like it, more that it just takes up the bulk of my time.
I’m pretty much always working – and even when I’m ‘off’ my brain is still very much switched on to it.
My annual leave is seriously stacking up – but the problem is, with the exception of a select few, I mostly work with clowns.
I’m scared I’ll take a week off and when I come back someone will have changed all my designs, or not done anything in my absence. I’m not sure which is worse.
It’s not that I’m a control freak, I promise, but I know that it will be my job to fix things, if they go tits up.
There are two kinds of people in this office – Friday people and Monday people.
Friday people clock off early for the weekend.
Monday people have to start their week by doing the work that the Friday people sacked off.
I would love to be a Friday person. Sadly I’m a Monday person.
Actually, no, I’m a Sunday person. I get ahead of the game, worrying about work, feeling like the weekend is over pretty much from the moment I wake up on Sunday morning.
The Sundays, that’s what I call it. And it’s stupid really because it makes my weekend feel half as long.
‘Stressful day ahead?’ Tom asks, still peeking at me.
‘How did you guess?’ I ask sarcastically.
‘You’re staring at your screen like you’re about to punch a hole through it,’ he replies.
‘Oh, well, that’s because I am,’ I say casually. ‘You’re so observant.’
‘I try,’ he says with a laugh. ‘Although my wife would disagree.’
‘I’m sure she has her reasons,’ I tell him.
‘I have this theory that she’s messing with me,’ he explains. ‘She asks me to get things, knowing I won’t be able to find them, because she’s hidden them. Then she gets to chew me out, because I can’t find them. Then she finds them right away and I look like a dick. What do you think?’
‘Occam’s razor,’ I reply. ‘The simplest answer is the best place to start investigating.’
‘So you think she’s right?’ he checks.
‘Do I think it’s more likely that you’re terrible at finding things than it is that your wife is actively messing with you for sport?’ I say, as though the answer would be obvious. ‘Yes, I absolutely think that.’
‘Your problem-solving is too basic sometimes,’ he points out.
‘Problem-solving 101 is to always try the easiest, quickest, cheapest thing first,’ I remind him. ‘The equivalent of unplugging it and plugging it in again.’
‘Trust me, that’s not what Sara wants from me…’
I laugh. I’ve met Sara once, she seems really nice. She asked me if I was Tom’s ‘work wife’. I guess I am, if such a thing existed – I’m the one who makes sure he can find things in the office.
‘Site visit later?’ he asks.
‘Nah, I’m waiting until Jon is back – he’s out of the office today.’
‘I thought the pain in my arse had gone…’
‘Yeah, well, he’ll be back,’ I reply. ‘The water Terminator. He Zoom’d into the last meeting. He was banging on about drainage capacity not matching projections – my fault, obviously. Even though it’s his fault – if he’s even right about it being wrong.’
‘Which… it’s Jon… so he probably isn’t.’
I sigh. I can always count on my work husband to bitch with me.
My PC has gone to sleep while I was chatting. I wiggle the mouse violently to wake it up. It freezes for a moment – like it can’t quite get itself going today either.
Bloody hell – I have twelve new emails. Emails to reply to ahead of my next meeting – that will probably result in more emails, more meetings. Nothing that actually feels productive.
I take a sip of my (now stone-cold) coffee and start working through them.
Annoyingly, I’m good at it, sorting through the messages, prioritising tasks, telling people what they need to hear.
I like to break things down into manageable steps, so that I can get things done as promptly as possible.
Of course, more things crop up almost right away.
Next, Tom and I run through the project updates. Numbers. Timelines. As an anxious thinker, I’m especially good at identifying all of the risks and coming up with ways to manage them. Yes, I’ve basically monetised the panic attack. Yes, you should be impressed.
‘We’ll need to reassess the drainage modelling,’ I tell him. ‘The current projections aren’t aligning with the on-site data.’
‘How far off are we?’ he asks.
‘Enough that we can’t ignore it,’ I say with a sigh.
‘Are you okay, Sammie?’ he asks, his tone making it obvious that he’s changing the subject from work.
‘Yeah… I’m fine…’
Even I think I sound like I want to tell him.
‘Oh, shit, it was your blind date last night,’ he says as he realises. ‘How did it go?’
Rebecca, one of the girls in the office, set me up with Danny.
Her boyfriend is Danny’s PT – at least he was, before Rebecca set him up with me.
I sent him a message this morning, thanking him for a lovely evening.
I know, it hasn’t been long, so it’s not that weird that he hasn’t replied – except he has read the message.
There’s no clearer sign than being left on read, is there?
‘It was… good,’ I say.
‘Right, well, my missus says I’m not good at reading between the lines, but I got that loud and clear,’ he replies. ‘What happened?’
‘It was all going so well,’ I begin. ‘I cooked, the house looked great, he seemed really nice, funny, interested in me…’
‘That sounds positive…’
‘And then my mum walked in.’
‘Ah.’
‘Yep – ah. She told me she would be out, so I thought it would be safe. Rebecca had bullshitted something about me being an amazing cook, so I had to actually make a decent dinner materialise, and I did. I couldn’t believe I’d pulled it off.
But then Mum walked in, and it became immediately obvious that we lived together, and I could see it all over his face. He didn’t want to get involved.’
‘Woman loves mum enough to let her live with her – it’s not exactly a shocking headline,’ he points out.
‘But it’s not a great line to open a Matcher profile with either, is it?’
‘Yeah, fair,’ he replies. ‘How long is she staying now?’
I shrug.
‘She sold her house,’ I say. ‘So… undefined. She isn’t really making any moves to find anywhere. And what kind of monster would I be, if I pushed her?’
‘But if it’s having an impact on your life…’
‘It’s fine,’ I insist. ‘She needed to downsize, since she lost Tony.’
Tony wasn’t my dad; my dad passed away a long time ago. He was Mum’s second husband.
‘It’s just hard, learning to live in that family dynamic again,’ I tell him. ‘She’s my mum – you know?’
‘Yeah, I know what you mean, we had Sara’s mum stay, after she had her hip done, and I swear Sara touched me even less than usual.’
I laugh. I’m sure he’s joking. At least mostly.
‘You need to get her out,’ he says.
‘Yeah, I don’t know why I didn’t think of that, thanks – could you come and help me evict her?’ I reply sarcastically.
‘Not like that,’ he says. ‘I mean, get her out there meeting people. Find her some friends. Hand-pick yourself a new daddy.’
I almost spit out the sip of coffee I just took.
‘You know The Loft has a singles night tonight, right?’ he tells me.
‘Does it?’
‘Yeah, an over-fifties mingle night – whatever that is,’ he replies. ‘I’m going out with the lads from squash. We were joking about stopping by, but absolutely planning to go somewhere else. Why don’t you tell your mum to go?’
‘Because there’s no way she’s going to agree to go to an over-fifties singles night,’ I reply. ‘I could probably get her to go out, but not to that.’
‘So, don’t tell her,’ he suggests. ‘Occam’s razor.’
I laugh.
‘You can’t just say that to put forward whatever idea you have,’ I point out.
‘It’s a good one though,’ he replies. ‘Tell her you’re taking her out for a drink. She knows you go to The Loft for work drinks, right? So style it out like you didn’t know.’
‘Your wife is a very unlucky woman,’ I joke, given his manipulative nature.
‘I know,’ he replies with a smug smile. ‘She tells me every day.’
‘I can’t believe you want me to trick my mum into going to a singles event,’ I say, laughing, because as wild as it is, it would probably work. ‘It would get her there, maybe, through the door, but when she realises what it is…’
‘You’re not forcing her to do anything,’ he points out. ‘You’re just… facilitating her meeting new people. People other than you. People who can keep her busy while you try to get a love life going. I’m sick of your miserable face.’
I know he’s joking there. It’s not a terrible idea though, is it? Or is it? I don’t know, because it really has been that long since I properly dated anyone…
‘She gets a life. You get your house back. Everyone wins,’ he concludes.
‘If only you were this good at your job,’ I point out.
‘If only you were as good at your life as you are at your job,’ he claps back.
I shake my head.
‘They knew that I would be too powerful if I could solve my own problems.’
He laughs.
I drum my fingertips on my desk – it always helps me think when I fidget. That or it’s simply a side effect of my cogs turning.
It seems like a ridiculous idea on the surface. It’s manipulative. It’s a gamble. It’s…
‘You know what? It might work,’ I say slowly.
‘It might?’ he replies. ‘It will. A room full of single over-fifties, drinks flowing, standards lowering – like any singles night, really.’
‘You haven’t been single for a long time,’ I remind him. ‘Maybe that was the way you did things…’
‘Oh, definitely,’ he says with a smile.
I sit back in my chair as I get more comfortable with the idea.
Well, what do I have to lose? I take her to the event, see if she meets anyone, makes any friends, maybe she’ll meet a man…
The important thing is that it gets her back out there, it shows her that there’s a life that goes on, and she’s still got so many years ahead of her – I’m sure she doesn’t want to spend them all with me, it’s just that my place has got comfortable for her, it’s easy to hang out with me, to avoid getting back out there.
The only problem is, it’s keeping me in too.
So I have to do something, and I don’t have any better ideas than this.
‘I’ll have to be strategic about how I pitch it,’ I say.
‘Obviously,’ Tom replies.
‘If I push it too hard…’
‘So don’t push,’ Tom says. ‘Simply suggest. Casually. Like it’s no big deal. Just mother-daughter drinks. Like you’re gal pals.’
I nod slowly. I can do that. To be honest, it will be nice for the two of us to go out together. It beats sitting on the sofa watching repeats of old game shows. I’ve seen some episodes so many times I’m actually starting to learn the answers.
‘Okay,’ I say. ‘I’ll think about it…’
Tom smiles – a real cheeky grin.
‘You’re going to do it,’ he says smugly.
‘I didn’t say that.’
‘You’re already picking out what you’re going to wear,’ he jokes. ‘Maybe even thinking about bagging a fifty-something fella for yourself.’
‘I’m not ready to leave my own age bracket just yet, thanks,’ I reply.
But he’s right, I am going to take his advice. I’m going to invite my mum out, see how it goes.
Whatever happens, at least it gets us both out of the house.