Chapter 2 #2
Until one day, as I was pouring out my tale of woe and tantrums to Nur from Finance, Rob was in the break room watering his pet rat/designated emotional support animal, Peter.
First, he snorted. Then he scoffed, “Parents!”
Nur pinned him with an evil eye, but I was desperate enough to ask, “What do you mean?”
He sniffed before saying, “You want your daughter to behave when you’re not willing to regulate your own feelings.”
“And what precisely do you mean by that?”
He rolled his eyes, and I bit my tongue. He might be irritating but I needed a different perspective; maybe he could give it. “She’s just had a stressful day and yet she has to accommodate your need to hear how it has been. Who’s the grown-up? Give the kid some space.”
He stood, gathering up his rat. “You normies are all the same,” he said. “Think people need fixing when all they need is to let them be.”
“Don’t listen to him,” Nur, mother of two boys, said after he’d left. “He’s a single guy whose closest relationship is with a rat. What does he know about raising kids?”
A lot, it turns out. I took his advice. I stopped pressuring Effie and things got better immediately.
Now we have a routine. Effie has the drive home in silence, with her choice of activity and she gets free time at home until dinner.
But when we’re both sitting at the table after eating, I ask and she talks.
On Fridays, the drive takes a little longer as Max and Dana live further south.
Max is Effie’s best friend and Dana is mine.
We met at antenatal classes, where we were constantly paired up because neither of us had partners.
Theoretically, I had a partner, Effie’s dad, but Mike never made a class.
Dana had no-one. We were a diverse lot of expectant mothers; power-suiters through to rainbow-haired radicals and even one woman touting an electronic ankle tag.
It may have been Dana’s very middle-of-the-road normality that drew me to her.
But after the first class, she was no longer alone; she had me.
Our lives have waxed and waned since, but we have been there to support each other. Luckily, the peaks of her life have generally coincided with the troughs of mine, and vice versa. Hopefully, we will never find out what it is to hit rock bottom together, but I think we would muddle through.
We get together at least once a week on Friday evenings, alternating between our homes.
When the venue is Dana’s house, like tonight, Effie and I sleep over.
When it is mine, Dana will head home, leaving Max to sleep over, tucked top to toe in Effie’s bed.
She does so much for me. It is a small thing I can do for her. One night, child-free every fortnight.
With Effie happily ensconced in the back, mouth moving as she struggles to puzzle out unfamiliar words, I reflect on my own day and the astonishing proposal from Anders.
I try to remember his exact words so Dana feels the same level of shock and incredulity in the retelling as I did.
But as I replay it, something isn’t adding up.
At the time, I was too busy reacting to his ‘Marry me?’ to consider why he asked the question.
If a man wants to woo a woman, he starts with a few compliments, a joke or two, escalates to flirty comments and culminates in an invitation to coffee or dinner. Anders has had girlfriends. He knows all this. So why did he skip all those steps and go directly to the proposal?
I’d assumed it was nerd-level crassness, a combination of confidence and insensitivity. But Anders runs a successful games studio with dozens of employees; a studio he’d built from nothing. And most of those employees loved him.
I’d seen him extract money from reluctant investors, keep sceptical game journos excited about our upcoming release, and negotiate jaw-dropping discounts from tight-fisted suppliers.
The guy is next-level at getting what he wants, amply assisted by his hypnotic blue eyes and wide-mouthed, single-dimpled smile.
So why did he abandon all that charm and go for a full-frontal, bald-faced, no-frills proposal?
I was bound to turn him down. But then, I’d have turned down an offer of a date too.
To be fair, his proposal mirrored most of his dealings with me.
He might wheedle and coax and enchant others but the two of us had usually been up front with each other.
He tells me what he wants. I tell him what I will do.
Perhaps this exchange hadn’t been any different to others. Except in magnitude.
I’m no nearer to an answer as I turn into the street where Max and Dana live.
Finding a spot to park, I slot Lucinda in with practised ease.
As soon as the engine cuts, Effie unclips her seat belt and bounces off her booster seat, batteries apparently recharged.
She has to wait for me to reach the doorbell, though.
Dana opens the door and Effie streaks into their home calling for Max to come and see her latest treasure.
“How do they do it?” Dana asks. “It’s the end of the week. I just want to curl into a ball and watch mindless rubbish on the television.”
“If they can ever harness it, energy from little kids and puppies could power the world.” I shrug.
To be honest, today I’m as eager to share my news as Effie.
But dinner awaits and I really don’t want to mention Anders’s proposal in front of Effie.
She’d have me married off in an instant.
When Mr Carter, a new male deputy head, started at her school, Effie slipped him my phone number and suggested he call.
Apparently, Effie said, “She’s sort of pretty and not too fat. ”
Thankfully, the happily married father of two teenagers still recalled life with little kids and managed to resist the urge to seduce me after such an overwhelming pitch.
Meanwhile, I ruled out any future career in sales for my child.
Following this incident, I had a little chat with Effie and made it clear pimping out her mother was inappropriate.
But I’m not sure she was entirely convinced of its unworkability.
The children scarper after food, permitted one hour of cartoons before bath and bed. And finally, I can share my news with Dana. She’s loading the plates into her dishwasher when I say, “I got a proposal at work today.”
“Oh,” she says, suddenly interested. “Please tell me it was indecent?”
“The opposite. It was for marriage.”
Her head comes up. The plate goes down. “Marriage?” she echoes, brows together.
“Yep. Marriage. I was even more shocked than you.”
Her eyes narrow. “Let me guess. Rob the Rat Boy?”
I shake my head.
“Oh, oh. Steve with the man bun?”
“Topknot,” I correct. “Man bun is gender restrictive.”
“Whatever,” Dana shrugs. We’ve had previous discussions about whether Steve was flirting with me. I was hoping not. While I’m a full-on Aragorn, son of Arathorn, fangirl, it takes a special person to rock those locks.
Another shake.
“Whatshername, the finance officer? You’ve tired of waster guys and have finally decided to widen your options?”
“Nur?”
Dana nods. “No, I’m not built like that and besides which, she’s married with two kids. Carry on, though. Think of the least likely person.”
Dana isn’t one to back away from a challenge. Her eyes drop away as she concentrates. She tries one last time. “Anders?” she asks, straightening up to face me.
“Bingo!” I give her a double thumbs up. “Anders wants to marry me.”
“Your wacko boss?” She often refers to him this way. Sometimes I pull her up. Today, I’m too pumped to bother. “The very same.”
“Why? Wait.” She turns to the fridge and pulls out a half drunk, re-sealed bottle of white wine. She pours healthy measures into two glasses. After carrying them to the table, she sets them down by me and pulls out a chair opposite. “Now shoot. Why?”
“Because he finds me adequate.”
“Wow, adequate, huh? Did you faint at the praise?” She flaps a hand in front of her face, fanning herself.
“To be fair, I think the actual word was ‘tolerate’. And my ability to have babies also featured. He wants to be a father.”
“So, it was all about him?” Dana gets right to the point, as always.
“Not totally. He did describe all the ways my life would improve. And he offered to settle some assets on me so I wouldn’t have to worry if anything happened.”
Dana’s eyebrows disappear. “If anything happened? He’s already anticipating the end?”
I keep quiet at this point. I would like to defend Anders, because he is not the person she is building in her mind.
Dana assumes this refers to divorce and I’ll have to let her believe it.
But that wasn’t what Anders meant. As personal assistant to the CEO, I minute the meetings discussing our unpaid tax bill.
I read the delay reports from the Development Team.
I see the calculations for redundancy payments.
Cerium Studios has gambled everything on this next game. But it is already late. Anders is under pressure to release as soon as possible, but he knows a buggy game will destroy us. And when the game finally comes out, if the public doesn’t like it, Cerium is finished.
It’s a problem for all small game studios.
We don’t have enough games in our portfolio to survive if a game tanks.
Especially not, given the resources it has taken to bring this latest game to market.
This time next year, we’ll either be ten times our current turnover, or we’ll be defunct.
I believe the potential demise of Cerium is what Anders had in mind, not divorce, but I can’t defend Anders’s altruism without giving away company secrets.
“How very Regency. All very ‘your portion is small’, while my situation in life is so much better, isn’t it?”
Dana thinks Anders is Mr Collins in Pride and Prejudice? Priceless.
But then she cocks her head to one side. “Still, some assets. What if you could get a house out of it? Or an apartment? It might be worth it. And you’ve always said he’s handsome. Of course, your taste in men is a little suspect.”
“He is good looking. He’s like the guy in that movie you made me watch. The one that made me cry.”
“A Star is Born?”
“That’s the one.”
Dana fetches a laptop from the dresser. She opens the lid and turns it to face me. “Show me,” she commands.
The company website has a headshot but for good measure, I also find a photo taken at a game jam showing Anders from top to toe in his habitual black.
“Shit!” Dana swears softly. “How come you’ve never shown me this before? He’s seriously sexy.”
“He’s also seriously eccentric. The man proposed to me out of the blue at our business meeting.”
Showing her the picture was a mistake. She is enlarging the shot and zeroing in on his crotch. “He looks like he’s packing too,” she says. “I take back everything I’ve ever said about him. I think you should give his proposal serious thought.”
No, no, no. Back up. Dana is not supposed to support Anders’s mad idea.
That’s not at all what should happen. We’re supposed to roll about laughing, cracking jokes about seeing his estate first or writing it on cue cards, or how he should have stood in the middle of the road in the snow.
She is absolutely not supposed to take it seriously.