Chapter six #2
‘I know that. You’ve been extremely productive from home, and you’ve always had excellent client feedback.
’ Allen shrugged helplessly. ‘All I’m saying is, don’t let yourself get sidelined.
I know how good you are for us, but Christian doesn’t.
I’ll be making recommendations, obviously, but it’s no substitute for letting him realise your capability for himself. ’
I stared at the board of club captains, starting back in 1887 (men) and 2001 (ladies).
Someone called M.R. O’Shaughnessy had hogged the captaincy for most of the post-war era.
I knew I should say something but I could feel the strange, stiff resistance building up in me, like those mythological women who turned themselves into trees to avoid being interfered with by rampaging gods.
I reached out and took a chocolate chip cookie from the plate next to the silver coffee pot. The cookie I’d been successfully ignoring up until now.
‘Lisa would go mad if she could hear me saying this, but what the hell,’ Allen went on, ‘if you’re going to move up the ladder, Beth, now’s the time.
When your pal Natasha was promoted, I did wonder if that might have encouraged you to push for a bigger role yourself, but .
. .’ He trailed off, conscious that he’d galloped halfway across an HR minefield, but manfully ploughed on.
‘I sometimes wonder if I should have done more to help progress your development. I’m sorry we never got our mentoring lunches up and running again properly after lockdown – I felt they were helpful. Weren’t they?’
I nodded.
He was framing it in appropriately mentoring terms, but finally the concerned dad in Allen burst through his professional reserve.
‘Beth, is there something in the office that’s stopping you from coming in? Because if there is, for Pete’s sake tell me, while I’m still in a position to help.’
I bit my lip.
I wished he hadn’t brought Natasha into this. Natasha was definitely not ‘my pal’.
Natasha Sinfield had joined the firm a year after me, and for a while we’d been good mates – we were the two youngest members of staff, both young female graduates in a mostly middle-aged male team, and we gravitated together, drinks after work, sandwiches from the deli near the office, that sort of thing.
But slowly I’d noticed an edge to her. She was competitive.
She hacked into the system and found out how much everyone was getting paid, then leveraged a pay rise.
She made jokes that weren’t quite jokes when you thought about them later.
Natasha was still really sweet towards me, but something was slightly off, and once I’d noticed, I couldn’t un-notice.
I’d find her in the kitchen chatting to colleagues, and the conversation would stop when I’d walk in; after Fraser and I split up, she hugged me in front of everyone, and said she’d told Harriet not to give me the collection card for Sophie’s baby shower ‘in case it upset you’.
She’d hand me a big slice of whatever office celebration cake Harriet had left in the kitchen, but then pat her own flat stomach and said, ‘Not for me, it’s so hard to lose weight once you’re over thirty, isn’t it? ’
It wasn’t anything specific I could put my finger on; it just made me feel unsure of my own reactions, a horrible sinking-into-quicksand sensation that I got high up in my chest every time I got in the car to drive to work.
Days when I didn’t go in felt so much easier.
Days when I was just myself over the phone to clients.
But I didn’t want to say that to Allen. I’d sound jealous of Natasha who was, undoubtedly, an excellent accountant, ambitious, a natural networker. It wasn’t her fault my life had got stuck; that was on me.
‘I don’t want to intrude, but after all these years . . . If there’s something I could offer advice on, I’d like to think you could trust me?’ Allen continued. ‘I’d like to step back knowing you’re set on the right track.’
He risked a hopeful smile and if I could have come out with a coherent explanation as to why the prospect of going into the office, even to save my own job, filled me with horror, I think I might have done.
But I couldn’t articulate it, even to myself, and then I saw a familiar car pulling up outside which distracted me completely.
Eddie Davidson, head of compliance, drove an old London black cab, the only one in the area. The office opinion was that he only had it because it gave him ‘a fun fact about yourself that no one knows!’ to use in interviews, in the absence of any other fun facts.
‘Are you expecting anyone?’ I asked.
‘Yes, I’m speaking to a couple of people, off the record.’ Allen tapped his nose. He seemed to be relishing behaving in such a cloak-and-dagger fashion. It was most unlike him. This, clearly, was the magic of a midlife career change. I wished he’d tell me how to do it.
‘Eddie?’
‘At eleven o’clock, yes.’
‘Well, he’s early.’ I started to gather up my stuff.
I didn’t want to see Eddie, or rather, I didn’t want him to see me.
Allen was the sort of person who genuinely wouldn’t notice I’d gone up three dress sizes since I last saw him, but Eddie wasn’t.
He’d had a warning about making personal comments to a couple of temps (Natasha had hacked into the HR emails, and told me the full extent of his bitchiness, and also his punishment; she’d pulled a very sad, but not totally convincing, face).
‘I’ll skedaddle before he sees me,’ I said, pretending it was for Allen’s benefit, not mine. ‘Thanks for the coffee!’
‘There’ll be an email in the next couple of weeks, but Christian will start informal interviews by the start of next month.
’ Allen gave me another warning look. ‘Get everything up to date, create some projects. He’s big on prospecting projects for clients.
Getting us into management support. You know the type of stuff people like him get hot and bothered about. ’
People like him, eh? If Allen was relaxed enough to be throwing shade at Christian, his leaving date must be sooner than he was letting on.
‘Got it,’ I said, scanning the room for a different exit. There! By the bar. Brilliant.
‘You don’t have to dash off,’ Allen was saying but I was already dashing, bumping into tables in my haste to get out, unseen, unjudged.
I sank into the driver’s seat, feeling overheated and bruised by some sharp table edges.
Right on cue, Tomsk uncurled from the back and laid his big head over my shoulder. His beard was damp with sleep, and he smelled of the blanket he’d been snoring on. I used a lot of fabric conditioner to combat his natural aromas.
Life at home was simple, I thought, willing my banging heart to return to its normal rhythm.
I made a list of work for the day.
I stopped for lunch at one.
I shared a walk with my dog.
I finished the work.
I tinkered with my WIP, deleted almost everything I wrote, got happily lost in a different world where corsets hid a multitude of sins and I was in charge.
I fed myself, and my dog.
I went to bed.
I didn’t have to talk to anyone I didn’t want to.
If I had to go back to the office, all that would vanish in an instant.
Vertigo hit me, as if I’d just plunged down a rollercoaster, and I gripped the steering wheel until my fingers went numb.
And yet, it hadn’t always been like that.
Allen was right – there had been a time when I had everything mapped out: I’d be a partner around the same time as Fraser would be promoted to director of his team of internet secret squirrels, then I could have a break for children, come back part-time, then full-time .
. . I’d created a spreadsheet of dates and savings and promotions, and whenever I’d felt wobbly, I pulled it up, and looked at it, and everything felt better.
Where had that Beth gone? I stared out at the golf course.
Without Fraser, it didn’t work. I couldn’t imagine having a child with someone that wasn’t him.
The spreadsheet Beth was already a mother of two, whereas the real Beth hadn’t moved at all.
My mid-thirties had tipped into late thirties – was there even time to find someone in time to have children?
I felt sick.
My phone was ringing. I dug it out of my bag, thinking it might be Allen again, that I’d left something behind, but it was Martine.
I’d already spoken to Martine today; just after breakfast, she’d called me on the kitchen phone to remind me that it was bin day tomorrow morning ‘if I needed to put out any recycling’; I’d made a note to take out her bins.
We’d spoken the previous evening too, when she’d called to ask if I’d seen the full moon, which was apparently known as an Apple Blossom moon in country folklore.
‘Why don’t you use that as a creative writing prompt?
’ she’d suggested, quite perkily for someone calling at nearly midnight.
I guessed what she was doing: being in contact just enough for me to know she hadn’t fallen down the stairs, so if Jackie asked, I could reassure her.
But I didn’t mind. And the full moon was indeed worth leaning out of the kitchen window to appreciate in its dazzling glory; it lit up the garden like a Hollywood film set.
‘Hello, Martine,’ I started but she cut straight across me.
‘Beth! Finally!’
Finally?
‘It’s Martine. Did you get my messages?’
‘Sorry, I’ve been in a meeting,’ I said. ‘When did you ring? Are you OK?’
I could hear her breathing hard. She was hissing too, as if she didn’t want to be overheard. Where was she?
‘Look, it doesn’t matter, I need you to do me a favour. I’m at the old people’s home on the Worcester road, and I need you to collect me as soon as you can, please.’
‘Which old people’s home? Why are you there?
‘Rosemount Court. Oh, it’s too ridiculous!
I was at the hospital for a routine appointment and the transport service dropped me off here instead of taking me home.
I only got out to help one of the old dears inside and when I turned round, the silly woman had left!
Can you come and get me, please? As soon as possible? ’
‘Well . . . yes. I’m at the golf club at the moment but—’
‘Oh, you angel. As soon as you can, I’d be so grateful, Beth. Thank you.’
And she hung up.
Tomsk exhaled heavily on to my shoulder, a warm biscuity resignation.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, stroking his long nose as I searched on my phone for a postcode for Rosemount Court. ‘I’ll walk you just as soon as I’ve worked out what on earth’s going on with our landlady.’
We weren’t too far away, as it turned out, and as I drove, I checked my missed calls and messages; there were several to catch up on, including the regular monthly query from a client about whether some random personal item could be claimed ‘as a business expense’ (answer: no) and then Martine’s first message.
‘Beth? Beth?’
Her voice sounded so panicked it took me a moment to recognise her.
‘Beth!’ A long pause. ‘Beth, are you there? Oh dear.’
There was a sigh of despair – fear? – that made the skin on the back of my arms creep. Then she hung up.
She’d called again, three minutes later, this time more composed but speaking in an undertone sharp with anxiety. ‘Beth! It’s Martine. Henderson. I need you to come here. At once.’ A long pause with voices in the background. ‘At once, please. I’m in . . . oh, for God’s sake, where am I?’
A kindly voice, off to one side, said, ‘You’re in Rosemount Court, my love. Can I take you—’
‘No!’ Martine snapped. ‘No, I don’t live here. Excuse me!’
There was something else, a short exchange, then the message ended.
No more messages.
What on earth had happened, I wondered? And why hadn’t she phoned Jackie? Why had she phoned me?
I shook my head. Duh. That was obvious: Jackie would probably see this as evidence that she should be in the home, not being rescued from it. (How true this was, I didn’t want to think about.)
It was probably a simple misunderstanding, I told myself, turning on to the main road. A funny story that Martine would doubtless tell with relish at a family gathering in the near future. A family story with a small but crucial walk-on part for me.
I don’t mind admitting that that gave me a little glow of happiness, a glow which dispelled any lingering gloom about the impending changes at Jacobs’.