Chapter sixteen
In my and Ashley’s Heartbreak Cave of Gloom, weeks had slumped into months had slumped into years. I completely grew out a set of highlights and Ashley’s passport expired, both without us noticing.
In Longhampton, though, time passed differently.
The days had the same number of hours, but they seemed to fit a lot more in.
It came as a shock when my phone reminded me to give Tomsk his wormer, and I realised that I’d only been living above Martine’s garage for one month. It felt like I’d been here forever.
Maybe it was a side effect of transcribing Rosemount’s collected life stories – galloping through the decades, bombarded with hundreds of names and dates, marriages, dramas and weird coincidences.
Then there were the real-life people, all with names and faces, dogs and grandchildren to remember: with every visit, I got to know Pam a little better, and Lewis, and the nurses and carers, and the other volunteers.
I still worried that I’d say something stupid, after all those months stewing in my own company, but the atmosphere at Rosemount was so gentle I found myself asking questions that would have made me sweat with anxiety before.
Obviously there were times when I came home overloaded, drowning in other people’s memories.
The best way to process these deluges of information was a long walk, in silence, along the canal with Tomsk, where – again, to my surprise – I started to have some ideas for my screenplay.
In the space of one startlingly productive week, and twenty-one thousand steps, I managed to get Arthur embarked on a steamer to the Yukon Territory’s gold rush (thanks for the inspiration, Bob Garfield’s great-grandfather) while Seraphina joined a Women’s Suffrage movement (just as Wendy Baker’s grandmother had apparently tried to do, but been ‘talked out of it by her nan’.)
Martine was delighted when I told her I’d finally broken through my writer’s block. ‘I knew you’d get there eventually,’ she said, as if it had been her twilight nagging that had done the trick. Which, if I’m honest, it kind of had. ‘All those family stories must be giving you plenty of material!’
I laughed, but to be honest, I wouldn’t have minded a few more stories from Martine’s own family.
My attempts to winkle out some fresh details about Fraser had come to nothing.
Despite living right in the heart of the Hendersons’ universe, I hadn’t learned one new thing about Fraser beyond that solitary photograph on the piano.
Where was he working? Was he single? What was he doing?
Even old facts would have done. I’d never got the full story, for instance, of why there’d been such a drama about Fraser choosing cybersecurity over the family business.
Why hadn’t Heather taken it on? Or Cara?
Martine generally adored being asked questions, but if I nudged the conversation towards Fraser, she always managed to steer it back to something else – Longhampton’s plague pits, ice cream parlours, my screenplay – and there were only so many innocent questions I could ask Jackie, in between reassuring her on our Whatsapp chat that Martine wasn’t throwing out the family silver or behaving oddly.
There were no clues in the boxes above the garage, or in the bags I dropped off at the charity shop.
And so one busy day followed another, ticking off the squares on my calendar until the one with the big red ring around it: Martine’s anniversary. But I wasn’t wishing the time away because before I could see Fraser again, I had to see Christian, and the rest of the Jacobs’ team.
And that meant going back to the office.
The suffocating dread mounted with every twenty-four hours that brought my return to the office closer.
I couldn’t sleep the night before. My brain was churning, working out what time I’d have to leave, what Christian might ask me, what stupid things I might say by accident, etc.
, etc., and eventually at four a.m. I got up to make myself a mug cake. Which, for once, didn’t help.
Tomsk, at least, had a great day ahead of him.
After investigating the various options – I couldn’t leave him at home, and he wasn’t the sort of dog you could smuggle into the office – I’d phoned George the vet for advice, and he’d told me to bring Tomsk over to the kennels where Rachel ran a doggy daycare facility.
Any guilty doubts I had about triggering Tomsk’s abandonment issues were blown away when he gave Rachel the same adoring steam-train-of-love welcome that he’d given George.
‘Oh, he is the same boy I remember but so happy!’ she exclaimed.
Tomsk shoved his big head joyfully into her legs.
I’d interrupted her dishing out breakfast for the rescue dogs, but she still looked unfairly stylish in jeans and one of George’s checked shirts, tousled hair wrapped in a silk scarf, winged eyeliner in place despite the early hour.
All this made my straining grey trouser suit feel even more meh. But I’d squeezed into it, I reminded myself. It was on. Just. And I would definitely do up the button on the waistband before I got into the office. I clung to this tiny win. Being too stressed to eat had a silver lining.
‘He won’t think I’m leaving him here for ever?’
‘No! He knows you love him too much to leave him.’ Rachel slipped Tomsk something from her pocket. I think it was kibble. If it had been tranquillisers I don’t think I’d have cared, as long as he was happy. ‘We’ll see you at five, is that right?’
I nodded. ‘If I can get away sooner, I will. It’s my first day back at the office for a while, not looking forward to it.’
She pulled a sympathetic face. ‘Best of luck. Do you, um . . . do you want a safety pin for your trousers?’
I glanced down.
There was a long, pale snake of flesh starting on my hip just below my waistband and continuing almost to the knee, where the seam of my trouser suit had split, forced apart under the pressure my thighs had been exerting on it during the short drive over.
I closed my eyes and let out a silent howl of pain in my head.
There was no point going home to change, as this was the only office wear I had.
Shopping opportunities before nine a.m. being limited, I eventually screeched into the Jacobs’ car park at twenty-three minutes past nine, wearing a badly fitting skirt and cardigan combo, courtesy of the superstore in the business park.
The meeting started at half past, and I knew Christian would probably have a stopwatch. I had seven minutes. Seven minutes.
I found a parking space, but then my pass didn’t work on the front door.
I swiped the pad over and over, but it must have expired, so I had to attract the receptionist’s attention from outside, which took a precious, excruciating minute, in which my heart rate peaked, then peaked again until I felt two breaths away from a panic attack.
Was this the universe telling me to go home? I waved my arms, which didn’t help my heart rate. Was this another of Ashley’s ‘signs’?
I was about to spin on my heel, and run away when someone behind me opened the door and I dashed in with them.
‘Beth Cherry.’ Breathless, I pushed my pass across the desk. ‘Might need resetting.’
She took it, looked up at me, looked down at the pass photo again and knitted her laminated eyebrows together in confusion, as if she couldn’t connect the two Beth Cherrys. ‘Mmm-kay. This is old? We issued new cards two years ago, so . . .’
She clicked away at her keyboard with her butterfly nails and then pushed a temporary card back across the desk. ‘HR will make a new pass, but this is only valid for twenty-four hours, so you’ll need to do a new photo.’
‘Can’t HR just upload the old one?’ I tried to control my panting. I couldn’t.
‘No, it has to be a new ID photo. Security reasons. But they’ll take it in their office, no worries.’ While she spoke, she dropped my old pass in a bin before I could say, ‘Give that back.’
I stared at her, and she smiled back sweetly. ‘Have a good day!’
So that was a good start.
The next challenge to my nerves was that the office layout had been remodelled in my absence, so radically that I wasn’t sure if I’d come to the right place.
Every partition had been dismantled; no one had their own door to shut, apart from Christian, whom I could see behind a glass wall, talking to Sophie, Allen’s assistant.
She was writing things down performatively on an iPad.
The desks were now arranged in lines, and seemed much smaller than I remembered, with none of the usual friendly desk clutter of photos and mugs; just a monitor, and a scarily ergonomic chair.
Something about the visibility of everything set me on edge, and from the tense, whispered conversations going on, I didn’t think I was alone in feeling that.
‘Breakout pods’ had been set up in the middle of the floor: clumps of green chairs with glass tables with fake cacti on them. How was that going to work with pages of notes and files and all the other paraphernalia accountants usually carted around?
And more to the point, where was my desk?
I looked around, desperately hoping to see a familiar face who might be able to guide me in like a lost plane.
Then, out of nowhere, two hands descended on my shoulders from behind, and someone cooed in my ear, ‘There you are! I thought it was a mirage!’
I spun round.
Natasha. She, at least, hadn’t changed. If anything, she looked a few years younger and brighter and her nose seemed pointier. Although that could have been the lighting.
‘How are you?’ she cooed, mwahing an air kiss each side of my face, glancing over my shoulder to check if anyone was looking at us. ‘You look . . . well!’
I cringed. Every woman knows what that means.
‘I’m fine, thank you,’ I said. ‘And you?’