Chapter sixteen #2
‘Oh, you know.’ She rolled her eyes. Natasha had round eyes, like a doll’s, which she accentuated with lash extensions. ‘Run off my feet, as per, but soooo excited for the new changes!’
‘Yes, poor Allen,’ I said.
Natasha’s expression instantly switched to ‘sympathetic’. ‘God, it’s so tragic.’
Tragic? He wasn’t dead. ‘Yes, it is. He—’
‘I used to beg him to educate himself about blood pressure.’ She widened her eyes even further.
‘We had a conversation about it – several conversations, truth be told – but you can’t tell men of his generation anything, bless them.
They think it’s millennial nonsense, healthy eating and exercise, and not letting your weight get dangerously out of . . .’ Natasha trailed off.
An uncomfortable silence filled the gap between us, like a fart.
‘Shall we head?’ Natasha recovered her composure. ‘Christian’s rearranged the meeting room and if you don’t get in quick smart, you have to stand.’ She pulled another concerned face which didn’t quite suggest that she wasn’t sure if I could stand for more than ten minutes, but came close.
Oh God, I hadn’t missed this. The final dregs of confidence were draining out of me by the second.
I followed her into the meeting room which, as she’d said, had been rearranged.
The old artwork had gone, replaced with new artwork which was, incredibly, even blander than what had been there before.
Extra chairs had been brought in. How many people were going to be present? How many people worked here now?
I made myself breathe mindfully. Although I’d got used to being around more people at Rosemount, the energy here was different: tension and judgement and watchful eyes everywhere.
Conversations at Rosemount were slower – to be honest, everything was slower – and I struggled to respond quickly enough to Natasha’s questions before she fired another one at me.
How had I found the new bypass?
Oh? So where was I living now?
How was Fraser? Are you two in touch or . . . Oh sorry!
And so on.
She sat down in the middle of the front row, my least favourite seating choice, and started telling me about the house that she and her husband Sam had bought on a new executive development, which had already increased in value by eleven per cent, and had shaved twenty minutes off their commute.
Her words washed over me as I watched the Jacobs’ team drift in, smiling briefly at the faces I recognised and trying not catch anyone else’s eye.
Was I the only one wearing a cardigan? Ugh, I was.
Had my colleagues always been this smart?
I thought people were meant to be more relaxed with office wear these days?
Occasionally someone waved, or mouthed ‘hello’ and I smiled back awkwardly.
Since Natasha and I were on the front row, I was impossible to miss, and I felt hot and self-conscious and itchy.
And then just as Natasha said, ‘But enough about me, I thought we’d never see you again, is everything—?’ Christian strode in, with the sort of swagger that made me wonder if he was listening to entrance music on his AirPods.
I won’t bore you with the details of Christian’s presentation.
It was basically an extended press release, with slides.
He talked, barely pausing for breath, but actually said very little.
Even in the few weeks I’d been doing the Life Story work at Rosemount, I’d got so used to people modestly shrugging off major life events in a few words (‘. . . and then we moved to Uist because I was lead engineer on a project bringing electricity to the island . . .’) that I found myself frowning, trying to work out what specific facts Christian was sharing.
The gist of it was that under his glorious leadership, Jacobs’ was going to expand to the next level, providing more services, streamlined client management and aiming, overall, to be the leading accountancy firm in the West Midlands within three years.
Negotiations were already underway to acquire the biggest local mortgage brokerage, and a similar pensions specialist ‘to bolster our own offer’, and to reinvent a wealth creation team for high-net-worth individuals.
‘Good luck finding them round here,’ Eddie, he of the black cab, behind me, muttered.
I was so grateful for a flash of cynicism that I nearly turned round and hugged him.
The final takeaway was that Christian would be restructuring the departments for maximum efficiency, with immediate effect. Although Allen had warned me, and presumably others too, this drew a low but audible murmur from the room.
‘. . . and on that note, I think we can look forward to a fresh and exciting new chapter here at Jacobs’,’ Christian finished presidentially.
There was a pause, then Sophie coughed and passed him a note.
‘Oh! Yes! And an update from Allen. He’s out of hospital but will be taking early retirement as of today,’ he added. ‘Get well soon, Allen. And best wishes for your retirement. He will be hugely missed.’
Everyone murmured, ‘Hear, hear,’ and next to me, Natasha made a sincere yoga-prayer-hands gesture and inclined her head slightly.
I think I heard someone grumbling something under their breath, so it wasn’t just me who thought this was a bit much.
My anxiety levels began to drop once the meeting was over, and everyone trailed out to pick over the lunch buffet. I escaped from Natasha, and said hi to a few old faces, who in turn said how nice it was to see me.
I had a good chat with Eddie, head of compliance.
He’d visited Allen in hospital, since he lived close by, and reported that he was ‘over the worst of it’ but ‘had a long road ahead’ and ‘it was touch and go for a while’.
Which sounded like blokeish minimisation to me, but it was reassuring to hear Allen was on the mend.
I was almost starting to feel normal when Christian loomed up behind us, tapping his watch. ‘Five minutes,’ he said. ‘My office?’
My stomach sank, but I made an excuse about getting a glass of water and headed towards the kitchen to give myself a moment to gather my thoughts.
There were a couple of young accountants I didn’t recognise in there, engaging in animated conversation. Eddie had informed me, under his breath, that Christian had brought in several people from his previous company and they were a bit cliquey, but I gritted my teeth and went in anyway.
They were standing by the noticeboard where Harriet used to post a Positive Thought for the Day, and everyone else would post their passive-aggressive reminders about not using their soya milk. Both were looking at something and sniggering.
I made myself smile, even though the smile felt painfully fake on my face. ‘Hi! Do you mind if I squeeze past to get a glass from the cupboard?’
They stopped talking, stared at me, and then one of them suppressed a giggle of shock. Then they left in a flurry of mumbled excuses.
What were they looking at?
I took a step closer and saw a newspaper cutting on the board, mounted on a neon-yellow backdrop, with some neon arrows pointing at the photographs. The headline was THAT’S THE STORY OF MY LIFE! and I realised it was the feature Carrie Clark had written about Rosemount.
My mouth went dry.
The neon arrows were pointing at me. It took me a moment to recognise myself; I just saw a shapeless, bulging mass in a draped top, like a wardrobe that someone had thrown a dustsheet over.
A scalding wave of embarrassment rolled across me. I looked enormous. The photographer had caught me talking to Kay Lloyd, and next to Kay’s neat frame my bulk loomed even larger, rolls of fat bulging under my bra strap, my double chin, the worst possible angle for my thick upper arms.
Natasha had made the poster: I recognised her handwriting on the note – A massive round of applause for our own Beth Cherry! – written on one of the arrows, just in case anyone hadn’t spotted it was me.
I reached out to take it down, then realised I couldn’t, not without drawing even more attention to myself. I compromised by pulling off the arrows with shaking hands.
Masochistically, my gaze returned to the cutting, to make sure I wasn’t in the background of any more photos.
The photographer had done his best to make Rosemount seem like a fun place; in a different shot, Eunice Stafford was nagging Lewis about something while Pam Woodward held a pen and notepad like a secretary in a screwball comedy, and Nigel Callaghan was doing his crossword with a long-suffering expression, one leg crossed to expose a skinny ankle and a raffish red sock.
His very pose seemed to say, ‘Beirut was preferable to this carry-on’.
But again my eyes slid back to my own shapeless, lumpy form.
Was that really me? Was that what everyone saw?
I felt a hot, stinging shame that bordered on panic.
How could I have changed so much from the woman who went to jive classes with Fraser?
He used to be able to swing me round his hips. Gone. That Beth had gone.
‘Good effort with the volunteering, by the way,’ said Susannah, one of the mortgage team, swilling out her coffee mug at the sink.
I hadn’t even heard her come in. She nodded towards the noticeboard.
‘My niece is a nurse up at Rosemount, says it’s like a different place with that new bloke in charge.
Loves doing the story sessions with the residents.
She’s started asking our family about stories too, the things we’re learning about my dad . . .’
‘That’s great! Tell her thanks. Sorry, got a meeting with Christian,’ I mumbled, and dashed off to wipe away my tears in the privacy of the loos.