His & Hers(59)

“Priya, look, this has all been lovely, but I don’t want you to get the wrong impression.”

She looks appalled.

“Did I do something wrong, sir?”

“No and, once again, there really is no need to call me sir, especially when I am in your home, eating your food and drinking your beer. Christ, I should have brought something. That’s so rude of me—”

“It’s fine. Really. Jack.”

The sound of her using my actual name feels wrong too. I realize I’ve probably had more than I should have to drink, especially as I was planning on driving home. This was all a big mistake, and I need to set things straight before I see her again tomorrow.

“Look, Priya. I … like working with you.” She beams and it makes this even harder. I remind myself that I’m significantly older than her, and that I need to take charge of the situation before things get out of hand. “But…” Her face falters, and I conclude this speech would be much easier to deliver if I just stare at the laminated wooden floor. “We work together. I’m a lot older than you, and while I think you’re terrific and a very attractive young woman…”

Fuck, I think that last sentence could be construed as sexual harassment.

“… I don’t think of you or see you in that way.”

There. Nailed it.

“You think I’m ugly?”

“Christ, no. Shit, is that what I said?”

She smiles and I have no understanding of the current situation. I wonder if perhaps the rejection has caused her to lose it.

“Sir, it’s fine. Honestly. I’m sorry if I gave you the wrong impression,” she says. “I was making you food all the time at work because, well, I like to cook for other people, and at the moment I don’t have anyone to do that for. I bought you cigarettes because I thought you might need them. And if I sometimes hang off your every word, it’s because I think you’re great at your job, and I want to learn from you. But that’s it.”

I’m confused, but women do tend to have that effect on me. I can’t quite interpret the look on her face, but I fear it might be pity. I feel foolish and old and delusional all of a sudden, and perhaps I am: Why would someone so young, intelligent, and attractive be interested in a man like me?

Priya gets up and for the first time I notice what pretty little feet she has, with soft-looking brown skin, and red-painted toenails. She crosses the room, grabs two glasses and a bottle of whiskey—one I used to drink with Anna—then sits back down next to me. A bit closer than before.

“I would like to propose a toast,” she says, pouring two rather large measures. “Here’s to a long and happy strictly professional and platonic relationship. Cheers.”

“Cheers,” I reply, clinking my glass with hers.

She downs her drink—bit of a waste really, it’s good-quality stuff—but I drain my glass too.

And then I kiss her.





Her



Wednesday 21:00



Christ, I need a drink. I can’t remember the last time I went this long without one.

After a nonstop day of broadcasting—seemingly endless two-ways outside the school, then at the police station, as well as filming and packaging for various outlets—I am longing for my bed. I call to find out what time early bulletins want us on-air tomorrow, then scribble the requests down with a black felt-tip pen I found in my handbag. I don’t remember where I got it from, but it’s come in handy more than once today.

I’m cold, and my feet are killing me from standing for so long. I think I’ve gotten a little too used to presenting the lunchtime bulletin, sitting behind a desk in a nice warm studio. I don’t really understand where the day has gone—one hour rolling into the next, like a series of mini reruns stitched together. Life sometimes seems like a hamster wheel we can only step off if we know to stop running.

Time has changed too, and turned into something I can no longer tell. It started the night my daughter died. As soon as I left Charlotte—asleep in her travel crib at my mother’s house—it felt as though I had been separated from her for hours, not minutes. I didn’t want to leave her there at all, but Jack insisted we should go out for my birthday. He didn’t understand that after what happened on my sixteenth, celebrating a birthday was something I’d never really wanted to do again.

He kept insisting that I needed to get out of the house, something I hadn’t been doing too often since Charlotte was born. Motherhood doesn’t come with a manual, and it was a shock when we first brought our daughter home from the hospital. I’d read all the books they tell you to read, been to all the classes, but the reality of being responsible for another human being was a heavy burden, and something I wasn’t prepared for. The person I thought I was disappeared overnight, and I became this new woman I didn’t recognize. One who rarely slept, never looked in the mirror, and who worried constantly about her child. My life became only about hers. I was terrified that something bad would happen if I ever left her alone, even for a minute. I was right.

Since she died, time stretches and contracts in ways I can’t fathom. It feels like I have less of it somehow, as though the world is spinning too fast, the days falling into one another in an exhausting blur. I was not a natural mother, but I tried to be the best I could. Really tried. My own mum said that the first few months were always the hardest with a baby, but those were all I had.