The Two Lives of Lydia Bird(28)

‘Lydia,’ he smiles, all veneers, striding across the small room to pull me into a hug. It’s not lost on me that both of my male colleagues seem more emotionally equipped to deal with my arrival than my female counterparts. Dawn disappeared pretty much on sight, and at the back of the room Julia lifted a perfectly manicured hand without rising from her chair. Granted, she seems to be on a conference call, but even so she doesn’t exactly exude warmth. That’s not really fair. Julia and I have worked together for some years now and she can’t help coming over as a cold fish, even though I know for a fact she’s butter-soft. She’d just rather no one knew and uses her oh-so-glamorous braided hair and long blood-red nails to terrify people into thinking she’s a tough taskmaster. She’s easily the eldest of our cohort, an indeterminate age somewhere between fifty-five and sixty; I suspect she’ll remain in that bracket until someone challenges it. Which no one will.

‘Sorry about your desk,’ Ryan says, leading me by the hand towards it. ‘Let’s sort it out.’

His idea of sorting it out involves sweeping everything up into his arms and dumping the lot on top of the nearest filing cabinet, but I appreciate the gesture all the same. He casts his eye around for a chair, and coming up with nothing, he wheels his own across and then performs a tiny bow to indicate I should take his seat.

‘Your throne, m’lady.’

I don’t argue. I can’t, because the simple gesture of kindness has caught in my throat. He notices and, to his credit, he doesn’t panic. He just pats me on the shoulder, finds me a tissue and nods sagely.

‘I know, Lyds,’ he says. ‘I’m devastating. I have this effect on lots of women.’

I gulp-laugh, glad of his humour, and catch Dawn’s relieved eye as she drifts towards me with the promised cup of tea. She’s no doubt pleased that I’m smiling, and actually, so am I. I can feel myself slowly settling, my fingers running over the familiar bumps and dinks in my battered old walnut desk. I have a place to be.

‘No sugar, too much milk,’ Dawn says, as she always does. It’s subtle, but I hear it. It’s I remember, it’s You’re amongst friends here, it’s We’ve got you.

Julia appears too and places a small vase of pink and purple sweet peas on my desk.

‘Perfume was getting up my nose,’ she sniffs, her perfectly made-up eyes assessing me, no doubt taking in the fact I’ve lost some weight and making a mental note to bring cake tomorrow and lie about buying it from the reduced counter.

I look at them, one face to the next, and swallow hard.

‘Thank you,’ I say. ‘It’s good to be back.’

‘We weren’t sure whether to, you know, to say anything, about …’ Ryan says, his lovely dark eyes full of consternation. Again, I admire him for being the unelected spokesman for a group of people twice his age, even if he did stumble at the last hurdle.

‘Freddie,’ I say, forcing the word out clear and untearful, saying it so Ryan doesn’t have to. ‘You can say his name, it’s okay.’

They all nod, hovering, waiting for more.

‘I’m grateful for the chair and the tea and the flowers,’ I say. ‘But more than anything else, I’m glad of the company. I couldn’t spend any more days on my own at home, I’m boring myself stupid.’

‘Say if you need anything,’ Dawn says, too fast, trying to stop her bottom lip from wobbling. She feels for a tissue in the pocket of her oversized cardigan. All her clothes swamp her; she’s been on a wedding diet for months and not had the spare money to replace her wardrobe. She’s let her robin’s-wing-brown hair grow too; there’s an air of the waif about her today.

Julia shoots her a withering look, sliding her horn-rimmed glasses down her nose, letting them hang on the rose-gold chain around her neck. ‘I’ve got a list of things you can make a start on, when you’re ready.’

Ryan hands Dawn a tissue, and she dabs her eyes as she plucks my lunchbox from my bag. ‘I’ll put this in the fridge for you.’

‘Hideous colour,’ Julia mutters.

‘Bagsy the biscuit,’ Ryan says, squinting through the pink plastic.

They drift away, and I let out a slow hiss of relief, glad to have jumped the coming-back-to-work hurdle. Next up, actual work.

Between the four of us and Phil, we run the local town hall. Ryan has the gift of the gab so he’s in charge of the local community magazine, which mostly involves selling advertising space and the odd outing to photograph prize-winning marrows or locals with unusual hobbies. It’s a hit-and-miss affair; he’s never fully recovered from his visit to a life-painting class featuring his retired physics teacher as the nude model.

Julia handles the business side of things, managing the finances, strong-arming local businesses to contribute towards the upkeep of our building and the town fund. That leaves Dawn and I under the catch-all umbrella of ‘events management’, which really means we plan everything that happens in our historic town hall, from summer fetes to Christmas fayres, concerts, dances and parties. I’ve heard Phil refer to us as his community programmers, which I guess is pretty much on the money. We timetable Darby & Joan clubs on Monday afternoons and Mother & Toddler groups on Friday mornings, and everything possible that goes on in between. It’s one of those jobs you kind of fall into as a stopgap and stay for ever, because life slides into the cracks around it, cementing it in place. The people become your friends, the building becomes your second home, your chair moulds to the shape of your bum. On paper we’re a disparate bunch, yet somehow, together, we’re more than the sum of our parts and the town hall has become the thriving hub of the community – a minor miracle on our shoestring budget. I realize as I make a start on Julia’s to-do list that she’s been covering some of my role, and that Dawn’s been doing five days rather than her usual three, even though Tyler’s still preschool and she struggles for childcare. They’ve managed somehow and no one has breathed a word to me of being under pressure. I understand now why my desk hadn’t been prepared for me; there simply wasn’t the time. They’ve been up to their eyeballs just holding my place ready for me to come back to, shoring me up from a distance without me even realizing.