by Lucy Banks
“I . . . I did actually call out several times,” he stuttered. “I knocked too, but no one answered.”
“I see,” Miss Wellbeloved said. Her lips tautened to a thin line, and she leant back, glowering over half-rimmed spectacles.
He cleared his throat. The room was so much at odds with the rest of the building that it had completely thrown him off guard, leaving him as confused as a hook-caught fish hauled from the water. Why they chose to leave the downstairs corridor in such a horrendous state when their actual office was pleasant was completely beyond him. It was as though they didn’t want visitors, and were using the horrible entrance to discourage entry. But what sort of a business would operate like that? he wondered, feeling more perplexed by the second. How on earth do they get any customers?
Unlike the ancient hallway downstairs, the office was clean and spacious, with fresh paint, high ceilings, and elegant panelled walls, lending it a sense of gravitas. The faintest hint of a summer breeze drifted in from an open window, and four computers hummed quietly, each with a person behind them. Their modernity was a stark contrast to the rest of the setting, which was austere, timeless. At the end of the room, there were two simple wooden doors, leading to goodness knows where. Ugh, more doors, he thought, feeling his stomach lurch. Kester felt thoroughly displaced, an astronaut exploring alien territory. The sensation was an unsettling one.
“Oh Christ, I don’t bloody believe it,” one of the other occupants growled, a series of burly consonants slicing through the quiet.
Kester looked over to the source of the sound, just in time to spot a flurry of sparks erupting from one of the desks like a miniature volcano. He grimaced, surprised to see what looked like two large car batteries perching squarely in front of a bearded, baseball-capped man. The man glared at Kester, all hair, bristles, and sheer bulk. Kester shrivelled, wishing that he could somehow creep back out of the office without any of them noticing him.
“Mike, you shouldn’t be doing that at the desk, you’ll start a fire one of these days,” Miss Wellbeloved tutted with a disapproving shake of the head.
“That’s why I treated my desk with fire-retardant paint,” Mike retorted. His desk was a wild sea of electrical contraptions and wires. Jabbing a screwdriver in Kester’s direction, he continued, “Anyway, it was his fault for distracting me.”
A younger woman with a sharp black bob, and an even sharper chin, rolled her eyes from the neighbouring desk. “According to you, everything’s a distraction,” she scowled. “A sneeze is a distraction. Me itching my neck is a distraction. Someone breathing too heavily is a distraction. We should get you some earplugs.”
“Well, your neck scratching is a bloody distraction, it’s like an ape searching for fleas,” Mike barked back, folding his arms across his sizeable check-shirted chest.
Kester coughed again, feeling uncomfortably as though his presence had already been completely forgotten. “Erm,” he started, then stopped. At once, all eyes were on him again.
“Yes?” Miss Wellbeloved said. Her eyes narrowed to granite slits.
“Look, I’m terribly sorry to disturb you,” Kester continued, fumbling for his letter. “But I’m looking for someone, someone who I don’t think is here actually, judging by . . . well, judging by all of you. But perhaps you know where he might be? I presume he once worked here?”
A plump woman sitting in the furthest corner peeped over the top of her computer monitor. She had been so well concealed by her enormous computer that he hadn’t really noticed her before. Now he had the chance to study her more closely. Her face was doughy and mottled, giving her the general appearance of an overcooked dumpling. However, she looked slightly less annoyed by his presence than the others, which was a certainly a start.
“Well,” she said, in a voice that was almost kind, “why don’t you tell us his name? Then we might be able to solve the mystery for you.”
Kester smiled gratefully, tugging the letter open. He wafted it in her direction, a pointless gesture given that she couldn’t possibly read it from that distance.
“My mother,” he began, then stopped. “Well, you see, my mother, when she died, she told me to come and find this man. Only she didn’t give me any other information. So I did some research, and I drew a complete blank, but I did find this address. It took me a while to decide to come here, I really wasn’t sure what the point was initially—”
“How about getting to the point?” the black-bobbed woman snapped, rapping a biro in a staccato of ill-concealed irritation. “Just a suggestion?” She frowned, plucked eyebrows forming a sharp V above her weasel-sharp eyes.
Kester shrank under the weight of her contempt. He felt as though one glare of those bright green eyes might be enough to deflate him, puncturing his flaccid body with a single needle-sharp stare. It was something he was used to. Most girls found him rather an unappealing prospect. Attractive women, like this one, even more so. And they generally weren’t afraid to let him know how they felt, in no uncertain terms.
“Serena, be kind,” the plump woman said with a frown. Turning back to him, she nodded, encouraging him to continue. Kester pulled at his collar, trying to ignore the audible tutting from across the other side of the room.
“Of course, I appreciate I’m wasting your time here,” he said stiffly. “I don’t even know why I came up really. I should have realised from the start that you weren’t the type of business to welcome visitors. And it’s now obvious to me that there’s no one called Dr Ribero here. Please excuse me for interrupting you.”
He turned, the blush still firing his cheeks. What a pompous group of people, he raged silently. And I’ve wasted all that money coming down here for nothing. He felt like a fool. He hadn’t managed to get a job since graduating and money was tight, too tight to waste on pointless trips to the West Country, regardless of how pretty the landscape might be.
“Wait!” an imperious voice commanded. Kester paused. He peered reluctantly over his shoulder.
Miss Wellbeloved had risen from her seat, erect as an obelisk. “Dr Ribero, you say?”
Kester nodded. She clicked her fingers impatiently at his letter, which he obediently handed over. Like a schoolboy in front of a headmistress, he waited, twiddling his thumbs together as she scanned the paper.
“Where did you get this?” she asked eventually.
“I just found it in my mother’s address book.”
Miss Wellbeloved reached over, shaking the letter in the plump woman’s direction. “Read this, Pamela,” she said, ignoring Kester. Silence descended as the larger woman scanned the contents of the paper.
“Goodness me, how on earth did you come by this?” she said finally, handing the letter back to her colleague.
Kester shrugged with confusion. “Well, I suppose it was sent to my mother. It is addressed to her. I don’t understand it though; it made no sense at all.”
“Your mother was Gretchen Lanner?” Miss Wellbeloved asked.
Kester nodded. The woman gasped, iron composure shaken. She slumped forward, pressing her palms against the desk, and breathed heavily.
“My goodness, does that mean Gretchen is dead?” Pamela said. She covered her mouth, eyes widening.
“She died two weeks ago,” Kester said quietly. He still hated saying it aloud. He wondered if he would ever get used to saying it. Right now, faced with these strange people, he realised with an even greater pang of pain that she had been his only real friend in the world.
“My goodness,” Miss Wellbeloved murmured, closing her eyes. Her face had gone remarkably pale.
“Hang on a minute,” Serena said, striding the room and seizing the paper. “Are we talking the about famous Gretchen Lanner here?” She looked at Kester, pursing her lips in disbelief. “And you’re her son? Are you serious?”
“Serena, there’s no need to be unkind,” Pamela said, squeezing out of her
chair. She padded over to Miss Wellbeloved, giving Kester a sympathetic look. “I’m so sorry for your loss. We knew your mother a long time ago.” She paused, and a look passed between her and Miss Wellbeloved that Kester couldn’t decipher. “She was a wonderful woman,” she concluded, nodding.
“You knew her?” Kester said incredulously. His mother, like himself, hadn’t been one for socialising. To the best of his knowledge, she had only had two friends. Only one, if you didn’t include Mildew the cat. The other was their elderly next door neighbour, Mrs Winterbottom, who popped round for the occasional chat about the garden. Aside from that, he and his mother had simply enjoyed one another’s company, and had never really needed anyone else in their lives. She had never mentioned these people. He was sure he would have remembered her talking about such a strange cluster of individuals.
“Your mother was . . . a friend of mine,” Miss Wellbeloved muttered, looking out the window. “Though we have not spoken in many years. Decades, in fact. And now it seems, we never shall again. Or at least, not in the conventional manner.”
Kester raised an eyebrow, but was distracted by Pamela placing a bundle of kindly, sausagey fingers on his arm. “I didn’t know your mother so well,” she explained to him. “I had only been here about a year or so when she left. But she always seemed very friendly.” She glanced at Miss Wellbeloved, who nodded. “She was very kind to me when I arrived; she really helped me to settle in. You must miss her terribly.”
“I do,” Kester said, clearing his throat. He felt strange discussing his mother with these people. Who were they exactly? And why had his mother never talked about them? It was all most mysterious, given how open she had been about every other aspect of her life.
The young woman with the black bob sighed. “Look, I didn’t mean to be nasty,” she said. Leaning over, she extended a hand with cat-like grace, albeit with a lingering air of hostility. “I’m Serena. I didn’t know your mother at all, but heard some impressive things about her. She was great at her job, from what these ladies used to tell me. It’s rough luck, you losing her. Sorry about that.”
Kester duly accepted the slender hand. He looked up, observing her pointy chin, wide cheekbones, and bright green eyes, which gave her the look of a cunning, but very pretty, pixie.
“My mother never talked about any of this,” he replied. “I feel a little confused, to be honest.”
Miss Wellbeloved and Pamela shared another meaningful look.
“Why don’t you sit down?” Pamela suggested, gesturing to a worn leather sofa tucked snugly against the wall behind him. “I’ll make you a cup of coffee.”
“I don’t drink coffee, but thank you anyway.”
“Tea? Everybody drinks tea.”
“I’ll have a cup of tea if you’re brewing, Pam,” Mike shouted from behind his desk.
Pamela sighed, giving Kester a conspiratorial look, as if to say, see what I have to put up with? He felt himself brighten at the show of comradery, in spite of the circumstances. “Milk and sugar?” she asked, with a flash of a dimple.
“Yes, three sugars please.”
“Three sugars? Blimey,” Mike commented. “Fast track to a heart attack, that is.”
“Oh Mike, do put a sock in it, will you?” Serena chided. Lowering herself onto Miss Wellbeloved’s desk, she added, “Though it is bad for you. You should consider cutting back. Sugar does terrible things to your body.” She nodded at his generous waistline. Kester folded his arms over his stomach, trying to breathe in as much as possible.
“Goodness, leave the poor boy alone!” Pamela exclaimed, scuttling through one of the doors at the back. Her voice echoed back through the office. “Last thing he needs is a lecture.”
“Might we ask what your name is?” Miss Wellbeloved asked, after allowing him a minute or so to get settled on the sofa.
“It’s Kester, Kester Lanner,” he replied. “I take it yours is Miss Wellbeloved?”
“Wellbelov-ed,” she corrected, emphasising the final syllable. “That is indeed correct. Serena Flynn has already introduced herself, I believe, and Pamela Tompkin is the final member of the team.”
“Oh, don’t I exist then?” Mike boomed indignantly from his cluttered corner, like a disgruntled thunderstorm.
“Mike’s just the IT guy,” Serena explained.
“There’s no ‘just’ about what I do,” Mike retorted. “It’s an integral part of this company, as you well know.” He scraped his chair back along the floorboards, ambling good-naturedly over to join them. “Sorry I snapped at you earlier,” he said, shaking Kester’s hand with a bear-like grip.
Kester noted the contrast to his own pale hands, complete with his unsightly patches of psoriasis. Up close, he could now see that Mike’s baseball hat was from Legoland, a strange choice of style given that he looked almost exactly like a muscular lumberjack who had never stepped foot outside the Canadian Rockies.
“That bloody machine has been driving me mad all morning,” Mike continued to explain. “I just can’t make it capture the right frequency. It needs to be so sensitive to capture spirit noises, and—”
“Spirit noises?” Kester said with alarm.
Miss Wellbeloved tutted, glaring at her colleague. “Mike likes to come up with all sorts of preposterous inventions,” she explained quickly, entwining her spindly fingers across her hollow stomach. “Don’t listen to him.”
“None of the rest of us do,” Serena added.
“Preposterous?” Mike squawked. “Honestly, you ladies have no appreciation of what I do. I’m the one who makes all of this possible, and you know it. I’m what keeps this company modern and cutting edge.”
“I do not believe there is anything ‘cutting edge’ about this place,” Miss Wellbeloved snipped. “But let’s not get off the subject. Kester, will you please tell us more about why your mother sent you here?”
Kester shifted uncomfortably, crossing one leg over the other. “There’s nothing much else I can tell you, really. On the night that she died, she told me to find Dr Ribero. Until that night, I’d never heard the name before.” He gratefully accepted the mug of tea that Pamela gave him, though he now felt guilty about the three sugars. His mother had often told him to cut back, but he liked the taste too much. He swore it helped him to think better.
“I fully understand why she didn’t mention it,” Miss Wellbeloved muttered. Her expression darkened, and she turned away. Kester studied her intently, unable to interpret her reaction. Did she have a problem with my mother? he wondered. There was something going on here, but he wasn’t sure quite what.
“What do you mean?” he asked, sitting straighter.
“Well,” Pamela said, sipping from a chipped porcelain cup. “It’s not really the sort of thing you can easily explain to people, dear.” She winked at him, then looked at Miss Wellbeloved with concern.
Kester frowned. There was something strange going on, a mystery that united these four people, from which he was firmly excluded. He couldn’t even begin to imagine what it was, and by now he was feeling too exhausted to ponder on it much. It had been an odd day—perhaps one of the oddest in his life—and now that he had sat down, he felt his mind unravelling at the seams with tiredness.
“So,” he said suddenly, struggling to stir himself. “Is there a Dr Ribero here or not? I presume that there once was, given your reaction when I mentioned his name. Did he work here too, at the same time as my mum?”
Pamela and Serena looked at one another and laughed.
“It’s his company,” Pamela explained, pointing to one of the doors at the back of the room.
“Does he not work here then?” Kester asked.
“He certainly does,” Miss Wellbeloved answered. “Just through that door is his office.”
Kester frowned, confused. “Well, can I talk to him?”
All four colleagues looked upw
ards at the clock mounted above the window.
“No, not quite yet,” Miss Wellbeloved said finally.
“Why not?”
“He’s always asleep until three o’clock,” Serena replied with a grin. “And there’s one rule in this office. Never, ever disturb Dr Ribero when he’s having his siesta.”
Kester looked at the clock. “It’s practically three o’clock now,” he said.
“Yeah, practically. But not actually. And that’s a big difference,” Mike replied, slamming his mug on to the desk and spilling tea over the leather.
Kester paused. “So,” he said, mulling it over, “does that mean he’ll be awake soon?”
“In two minutes and thirty-two seconds precisely,” Miss Wellbeloved confirmed.
What sort of a man is this? Kester thought with bewilderment. Who has a daily siesta that runs until exactly 3:00 pm, and not a second less? And, more importantly, why had his mother decided that it was so important for her son to meet him? None of the facts were adding up, and it was making his head ache to think about it. He drank the rest of his tea, watching the slow progression of the clock.
As the long hand clicked into place at the twelve, he heard a low buzzer from somewhere behind Dr Ribero’s mysterious office door.
“That’ll mean it’s safe to knock on his door now,” Pamela explained kindly, tapping her watch for good measure.
“Shouldn’t I give him some time to come to, if he’s just woken up?”
“Oh no,” Pamela replied, “he’s always up like a bullet as soon as his alarm goes off. Let’s go and get you two better acquainted.”
Miss Wellbeloved took his empty mug, giving him a strange look. “I hope you’re prepared for this,” she muttered, pursing her lips together.
