Assembly(5)

The mother’s ambivalence was more traditional. She introduced me once with the awkward mouthful, ‘our youngest’s latest lady-friend’. Followed by a knowing smile to the acquaintance who had inquired. Still, I understood her. I felt I could see it through her eyes: to a love of her son, yes. But also, the family she had come from and the one she’d married into. Futures and children and purity – not in any crass, racial sense, no. Of course not. It was a purity of lineage, of history: shared cultural mores and sensibilities. The preservation of a way of life, a class, the necessary higher echelon of society. Her son’s arrested development (and what was this relationship, if not childish folly?) should not wreck the family name.

I was unsurprised to learn the titles and heritage properties were all on the father’s side. There was an uncertainty beneath the mother’s hostility that I almost identified with.

In the morning, I watched as their son sat on the edge of his bed and squeezed a sugar-coated tablet from a blister pack. He stared down at the white speck in his hand until finally – with needless, performative resolve – he threw his head back and clasped hand over mouth until all was swallowed. Citalopram, 5mg. One per day or as directed by your doctor. He leaned forward, flushed, threw the pack aside. Gulped water from the glass on his bedside table. Then looked over to me, expectant, like he’d just finished all the broccoli on his plate. I was across the room, pinning up my hair. We formed a perfect scene. Sun sliced through the sash windows. His room was bright and sparse and he sat small in it at the edge of the frame, a plump suitcase on the floor beside him. I chuckled and he smiled back, uncertain. I went over to him, cupped his jaw in my left hand and swept the soft edge of his hair back with my right. It was time to go.

He lifted the case into the boot of his car. Cold morning sun lit us unforgivingly and the air smelled damp. But he appeared inflated, revived. Imbued by the outdoors with the promise of a drive in the country, his family, his home, all ahead. Before I left, he placed his hands around my waist and leaned down for a kiss.

‘Could I, possibly, steal you away?’ he said, eyes smiling.

A part of me did want to get in the car with him and drive off. To spare myself the tense and unhappy day ahead. The full calendar of bullshit meetings, glass cliff-edges, and lying to children. But – to be rash, to act on impulse, to live like him… No. Though I had begun to recognize its confines, I remained bound to the life I led. I needed to keep moving. Gently, softly, I guided his arms away. Back to his sides.

I’d see him tonight.





Strategy Onsite


At the onsite, we review the latest figures, the overall trends, the key drivers of those trends, or – perhaps, the steps to determine the key drivers of those trends. I sit with right ankle over left, knees together, shoulders back, arms on the table, hands soft. Prepared. When I speak, I am to-the-point with a measured pace and an even tone. Backed by the data. Illustrated with slides.

Mid-afternoon, there’s a comfort break. The men stand, stretch, wander the room. The air is stale from sweat and talk and sandwiches. One man gestures at the espresso machine, says he doesn’t know how it works: which button to press, where to put the pod. When is the receptionist coming back? The others concur, they don’t know either. They ask me, perhaps I know.

Well.

I make their coffees. And if they’d like, add frothed milk to the top. The men, relieved, say oh, thank you.

Thank you.

After, I wait for Merrick in the small office. It’s cordoned off from the open-plan area with glass panes. This place is all glass. Its glass separates and divides without transparency. Still, Lou manages to watch. He watched the PA stop me on the way back to my desk. Watched over monitor tops as I walked across the floor and into the former managing director’s former office. And he’s watching me now, his neck straining with flagrant nosiness. I place my things – a notebook, pen, wallet – on the desk and sit down.

Let Lou watch.

But it’s there. Dread. Every day is an opportunity to fuck up. Every decision, every meeting, every report. There’s no success, only the temporary aversion of failure. Dread. From the buzz and jingle of my alarm until I finally get back to sleep. Dread. Weighing cold in my gut, winding up around my oesophagus, seizing my throat. Dread. I lie stretched out on the couch or on my bed or just supine on the floor. Dread. I repeat the day over, interrogate it for errors or missteps or – anything. Dread, dread, dread, dread. Anything at all could be the thing that fucks everything up. I know it. That truth reverberates in my chest, a thumping bass line. Dread, dread, it’s choking me. Dread.

I don’t remember when I didn’t feel this.

Oh, you’re here. Good.

Merrick’s face appears huge, beaming with effusive American warmth and insincerity. The conferencing screen refocuses, then pans out, revealing a woman sat beside him.

Good, Merrick says again.

The woman doesn’t smile.

I know this woman. My colleagues call her that woman. They say they know how that woman got that job. They say worse, too. She’s a frequent, favourite topic of theirs. This successful woman. This beleaguered, embattled woman. Kicked about and laughed about. Anyway, now she supports other women. She’s a regular speaker on the women’s events circuit. With fourteen mentees, apparently. And here she is with Merrick. Sitting back, her arms crossed, staring stone-faced down at me.