The Switch(3)

‘This is a fucking gift, Leena,’ Rebecca says with exasperation. ‘Paid leave! Two months!’

‘I don’t want it. I want to work.’

‘Really? Because your face is saying you want to sleep. Do you think I don’t know you’ve been working until two in the morning every day this week?’

‘I’m sorry. I know I should be able to keep to regular working hours – there have just been a few—’

‘I’m not criticising you for how you manage your workload, I’m asking when you ever bloody rest, woman.’

Judy lets out a little string of quiet coughs at that. Rebecca shoots her an irritated look.

‘A week,’ I say desperately. ‘I’ll take a week off, get some rest, then when I come back I’ll—’

‘Two. Months. Off. That’s it. This isn’t a negotiation, Leena. You need this. Don’t make me set HR on you to prove it.’ This is said with a dismissive head-jerk in Judy’s direction. Judy draws her chin in as though someone’s clapped loudly in her face, perhaps, or flicked her on the forehead.

I can feel my breathing speeding up again. Yes, I’ve been struggling a little, but I can’t take two months off. I can’t. Selmount is all about reputation – if I step out of the game for eight whole weeks after that Upgo meeting, I’ll be a laughing stock.

‘Nothing is going to change in eight weeks,’ Rebecca tells me. ‘OK? We’ll still be here when you get back. And you’ll still be Leena Cotton, youngest senior, hardest worker, smartest cookie.’ Rebecca looks at me intently. ‘We all need a break sometimes. Even you.’

I walk out of the meeting feeling sick. I thought they’d try to fire me – I had all these lines prepared about unfair dismissal. But … a sabbatical?

‘Well?’ Bee says, appearing so close in front of me I have to stumble to a stop. ‘I was lurking,’ she explains. ‘What did Rebecca say?’

‘She said I … have to go on holiday.’

Bee blinks at me for a moment. ‘Let’s take an early lunch.’

*

As we dodge tourists and businessmen on our way down Commercial Street, my phone rings in my hand. I look at the screen and falter, almost running into a man with an e-cig hanging out of his mouth like a pipe.

Bee glances at the phone screen over my shoulder. ‘You don’t have to answer right now. You can let it ring out.’

My finger hovers over the green icon on the screen. I bash shoulders with a passing man in a suit; he tuts as I go buffeting across the pavement, and Bee has to steady me.

‘What would you tell me to do if I was in this position right now?’ Bee tries.

I answer the call. Bee sighs and pulls open the door to Watson’s Café, our usual haunt for the rare, special occasions when we leave the Selmount offices for a meal.

‘Hi, Mum,’ I say.

‘Leena, hi!’

I wince. She’s all breezy and faux casual, like she’s practised the greeting before making the call.

‘I want to talk to you about hypnotherapy,’ she says.

I sit down opposite Bee. ‘What?’

‘Hypnotherapy,’ Mum repeats, with slightly less confidence this time. ‘Have you heard of it? There’s someone who does it over in Leeds, and I think it could be really good for us, Leena, and I thought perhaps we could go together, next time you’re up visiting?’

‘I don’t need hypnotherapy, Mum.’

‘It’s not hypnotising people like Derren Brown does or anything, it’s …’

‘I don’t need hypnotherapy, Mum.’ It comes out sharply; I can hear her smarting in the silence that follows. I close my eyes, steadying my breathing again. ‘You’re welcome to try it, but I’m fine.’

‘I just think – maybe, maybe it’d be good for us to do something together, not necessarily therapy, but …’

I notice she’s dropped the ‘hypno’. I smooth back my hair, the familiar stiff stickiness of hairspray under my fingers, and avoid Bee’s gaze across the table.

‘I think we should try talking maybe somewhere where … hurtful things can’t be said. Positive dialogue only.’

Behind the conversation I can feel the presence of Mum’s latest self-help book. It’s in the careful use of the passive voice, the measured tone, the positive dialogue and hurtful things. But when it makes me waver, when it makes me want to say, Yes, Mum, whatever would make you feel better, I think of the choice my mother helped Carla to make. How she let my sister choose to end treatment, to – to give up.

I’m not sure even the Derren Brown kind of hypnotherapy could help me deal with that.

‘I’ll think about it,’ I say. ‘Goodbye, Mum.’

‘Bye, Leena.’

Bee watches me across the table, letting me regroup. ‘OK?’ she says eventually. Bee’s been on the Upgo project with me for the last year – she’s seen me through every day since Carla died. She knows as much about my relationship with my mum as my boyfriend does, if not more – I only get to see Ethan at the weekends and the odd midweek evening if we can both get away from work on time, whereas Bee and I are together about sixteen hours a day.

I rub my eyes hard; my hands come away grainy with mascara. I must look an absolute state. ‘You were right. I shouldn’t have taken the call. I handled that all wrong.’