After You (Me Before You #2)(21)

‘Sorry. My alarm didn’t go off.’ I rushed past Richard and hung my coat on the peg, pulling my synthetic skirt down over my thighs.

‘Three-quarters of an hour late. This is not acceptable.’

It was eight thirty a.m. We were, I noted, the only two people in the bar.

Carly had left: she hadn’t even bothered telling Richard to his face. She simply sent a text message telling him she would drop the sodding uniform in at the end of the week, and that as she was owed two weeks’ sodding holiday pay she was taking her sodding notice in lieu. If she had bothered to read the employment handbook, he had fumed, she would have known that taking notice in lieu of holiday was completely unacceptable. It was there in Section Three, as clear as day, if she had cared to look. And the sodding language was simply unnecessary.

He was now going through the due processes to find a replacement. Which meant that until due processes were completed it was just me. And Richard.

‘I’m sorry. Something … came up at home.’

I had woken with a start at seven thirty, unable for several minutes to recall what country I was in or what my name was, and had lain on my bed, unable to move, while I mulled over the previous evening’s events.

‘A good worker doesn’t bring their home life to the workplace with them,’ Richard intoned, as he pushed past me with his clipboard. I watched him go, wondering if he even had a home life. He never seemed to spend any time there.

‘Yeah. Well. A good employer doesn’t make his employee wear a uniform Stringfellow’s would have rejected as tacky,’ I muttered, as I tapped my code into the till, pulling the hem of my Lurex skirt down with my free hand.

He turned swiftly, and walked back across the bar. ‘What did you say?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Yes, you did.’

‘I said I’ll remember that for next time. Thank you very much for reminding me.’

I smiled sweetly at him.

He looked at me for several seconds longer than was comfortable for either of us. And then he said, ‘The cleaner is off sick again. You’ll need to do the Gents before you start on the bar.’

His gaze was steady, daring me to say something. I reminded myself that I could not afford to lose this job. I swallowed. ‘Right.’

‘Oh, and cubicle three’s a bit of a mess.’

‘Jolly good,’ I said.

He turned on his highly polished heel and walked back into the office. I sent mental voodoo arrows into the back of his head the whole way.

‘This week’s Moving On Circle is about guilt, survivor’s guilt, guilt that we didn’t do enough … It’s often this that keeps us from moving forward.’

Marc waited as we handed around the biscuit tin, then leaned forward on his plastic chair, his hands clasped in front of him. He ignored the low rumbling of discontent that there were no bourbon creams.

‘I used to get ever so impatient with Jilly,’ Fred said, into the silence. ‘When she had the dementia, I mean. She would put dirty plates back in the kitchen cupboards and I would find them days later and … I’m ashamed to say, I did shout at her a couple of times.’ He wiped at an eye. ‘She was such a houseproud woman, before. That was the worst thing.’

‘You lived with Jilly’s dementia for a long time, Fred. You’d have to have been superhuman not to find it a strain.’

‘Dirty plates would drive me mad,’ said Daphne. ‘I think I would have shouted something terrible.’

‘But it wasn’t her fault, was it?’ Fred straightened on his chair. ‘I think about those plates a lot. I wish I could go back. I’d wash them up without saying a word. Just give her a nice cuddle instead.’

‘I find myself fantasizing about men on the tube,’ said Natasha. ‘Sometimes when I’m riding up an escalator, I exchange a look with some random man going down. And before I’ve even got to the platform I’m building a whole relationship with him in my head. You know, where he runs back down the escalator because he just knows there’s something magical between us, and we stand there, gazing at each other, amid the crowds of commuters on the Piccadilly Line, and then we go for a drink, and before you know it, we’re –’

‘Sounds like a Richard Curtis movie,’ said William.

‘I like Richard Curtis movies,’ said Sunil. ‘Especially that one about the actress and the man in his pants.’

‘Shepherd’s Bush,’ said Daphne.

There was a short pause. ‘I think it’s Notting Hill, Daphne,’ Marc said.

‘I preferred Daphne’s version. What?’ said William, snorting. ‘We’re not allowed to laugh now?’

‘So in my head we’re getting married,’ said Natasha. ‘And then when we’re standing at the altar, I think, What am I doing? Olaf only died three years ago and I’m fantasizing about other men.’

Marc leaned back in his chair. ‘You don’t think that’s natural, after three years by yourself? To fantasize about other relationships?’

‘But if I had really loved Olaf, surely I wouldn’t think about anyone else.’

‘It’s not the Victorian age,’ said William. ‘You don’t have to wear widow’s weeds till you’re elderly.’