He knew what the missing memories had to be about, but he couldn’t make himself fill in the gaps, put the visuals together. He literally had nothing to reference. He didn’t know why this had happened to him, or who had done it to him. Or what, exactly, they had done.
Spen wanted him to face up to it. But if in facing up to it, those missing visuals made it all so much more horrific, would he be any better off? He didn’t think so. He didn’t see any point in forcing himself to see himself as a victim, to imagine in details what had been done. Better to keep it off in the distance, as if it had happened to someone else. Regrettable, awful, but not something that touched him personally. Not something like that visit from the police, telling him the world as he had known it for twenty-one years, was over for good. He remembered every second of that day, and the days afterwards, in perfect, gut-churning detail. He wished he could forget them. He never would. He didn’t want more memories like that in his head, not even by proxy.
The quiet noises in the house stopped. His bedside clock told him it was eleven. Normally he would be soundly asleep by now. He’d never felt more awake, yet too tired to get out of bed and find something to do. If only Spen was—
No. He couldn't go there either. What was the chance Spen would ever view him as a competent adult now, especially with him resisting Daniel’s every attempt to resist victimhood? Obviously seeing Daniel as anything but pitiable didn’t fit Spen’s internal narrative. Too bad Daniel wanted him more than ever now. Like his parents coming back from the dead, Spen was something Daniel could never have.
From the end of the bed, Kani mewed pitifully. “Come here, kid,” Daniel whispered. His kem picked his way delicately up Daniel’s body, and nestled under his chin. Kani’s warmth was soothing, and if it wasn’t the same as being held by someone, it was much better than being alone and lost. He stroked Kani gently and was rewarded by quiet trilling. The vibrations soothed him, gave himself something to concentrate on other than the hole in his memories. Somewhere along the line, he finally fell asleep.
Chapter 10
“Well, Daniel, are you now completely recovered from your overindulgence?” Tony took his glasses off. “Please sit down.”
Daniel obeyed, glad to be able to hide his shaking knees. “Yes, I’m fine,” he muttered, not able to meet Tony’s eyes.
“Good. It was quite disappointing to have to tell people that the seminar was cancelled. It left quite a gap in their knowledge.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Yes, I believe that. Such a shame to spoil such a satisfactory work performance up to then by getting carried away with alcohol.”
“It wasn’t—” Daniel stopped. Admitting it was drugs—however administered—sounded much worse. “Um, it was probably something I ate.”
“Ah. Well, I suppose that’s something we could all fall prey to. However, we still need to fill that information gap, and quickly. So I expect you and Spencer to turn your presentation into a detailed handout by the end of this week, and you and I will attend the meeting of Northern’s managers at the end of this month to give them the final rundown. It’ll be an overnight trip on the twenty-eighth, with the meeting in the morning next day. Make your arrangements as you need to.”
“Yes,” Daniel mumbled.
“A lot rides on this, Daniel. National roll out is expected to be underway by the end of the year, beginning with Northern. I depend on your support, and if you don’t feel you’re up to it, then I’ll have to find someone who can give it to me.”
Daniel swallowed. “No, I can do it. I just ate something that made me sick.”
“Very well. There’s a backlog of messages to attend to, and I want the Underwood file. That needs to be followed up.”
“Yes, Tony.”
Back at his desk, Daniel stared at the list of emails but didn’t really register them. He hadn’t expect this hostility from Tony, though maybe it wasn’t surprising since he must have lost a bit of face when Spen had cancelled with so little warning. Daniel had tried so hard to be the model employee, to give more than expected at every turn, but now his job was threatened by something that wasn’t his fault and he had no control over. A wave of anger rushed through him, and for a few mad seconds, he contemplated throwing his laptop to the floor or through Tony’s window.
The rage left him just as quickly as it came on, and was replaced by a depression so profound, his eyes filled with tears that no amount of wiping could remove. He went to the men’s loo to wash his face. Was Spen right, he asked himself as he stared at his mottled complexion in the mirror? Should he give this up now, instead of persisting for however long it took to find another job?
But if he left now, Tony would have every excuse to write an unflattering reference. Leaving before his probation was completed couldn’t ever look good, even without a bad or carefully neutral recommendation. Daniel didn’t know if he could face months of job hunting again, especially now he realised how little he’d enjoy the jobs he’d be applying for. Maybe beans on toast for supper every night weren’t so bad. For his own sake, he’d rather live frugally than take another office job. He couldn't ask Dee and Alex to do that though, and it still didn’t answer the problem of a long-term income. The lawyers had warned him it could be years before the various criminal and civil actions were settled.
So he’d better bloody well get on with it, and stop feeling sorry for himself, hadn’t he? He was the head of the family. Mum and Dad had never whined about their responsibilities, so neither would he.
He returned to his desk, and sent a brief email to Spen telling him what Tony wanted. It wasn’t the politest thing he could have done—Spen had texted him several times over the previous days to ask how he was, but Daniel hadn’t answered. Spen’s company would have been so very welcome, but Daniel hadn’t dared give into his desires, and didn’t want to give Spen more reason to believe in his inability to cope. He’d taken refuge in housework, cooking, doing a few odd jobs, and the rest of the time, designing a prototype for a remotely controlled artificial hand. It had been his last project at Uni, one he’d barely started before he’d had to leave to deal with his parents’ deaths. He would never hand it in, and he wouldn’t produce anything that wasn’t being done bigger and better by appliance researchers, but robotic devices were one of his interests, and it kept his mind off other things.
The nights had been tough. He would rather die than admit that to Spen...or anyone. Talking about it would make it worse, he knew that in his heart.
He scrolled through the list of emails, marking those that needed attention, deleting those that didn’t, as a way of procrastinating until he found the energy to actually deal with the damn things. So many of them were actually for Tony to answer, but instead of them going direct to him, they were sent to Daniel, who would then have to ask Tony how to answer them, then sit down and transcribe his thoughts. Why this was supposed to be more economical than Tony dashing off a quick answer, Daniel had no idea. Increasingly, he found office affairs meaningless and staggeringly inefficient, offensive to his engineering instincts almost past toleration.
His phone pinged to tell he had a text message from Spen. “Meet me 4 lunch 2day, 12:30.”
Daniel texted back, “Sorry. 2 busy.”
Seconds later, “Make time or will sic Myko on2 u.”
“U wdnt dare.”
“U sure?”
Daniel sighed. “Wnker. OK.”
He got a “;-)” as his only reply.
He really didn’t want to talk to Spen because he was bound to bring up the...thing. But he also missed the big guy, and had been so very lonely over the weekend even with Dee and Alex around. Spen looked at the world, analysed problems in almost exactly the same way Daniel did. They were always finishing each other’s sentences when they talked about Cross-Channel or anything else remotely technical. Daniel had no one else in his life like that any more. If he could just persuade Spen not to keep bringing up the other matter, they could be friends
again.
If Spen hadn’t texted him ten minutes before their lunch ‘date’, Daniel would have completely forgotten. As it was, he rushed into the pub five minutes late. Spen looked at Myko. “Told you,” he said to his kem. “Where’s Kani? Myko’s jonesing.”
“Aren’t you all butch and forceful today? Kani? Come out, squirt.” Kani’s head appeared with a joyful chirp, then he leapt down to be greeted ecstatically by Myko. “I wish Tony would back down on this one.”
“Force it. He has no right asking you to hide him. I ordered some of that veggie lasagne you liked so much, and got you a juice. Figured you’d be pushed for time.”
Grateful as he was for the forward thinking, Daniel was just a teeny bit pissed off at being managed. Okay, a lot pissed off. “You don’t have to nanny me.”
“I’m not. It’s just efficient. If you want something else....”
But just then the food arrived and it smelled delicious. Kani took a long sniff, his tail shivering with delight. Daniel nudged him away and loaded up his fork. Suddenly he was starving. “No, it’s okay. Why did you want lunch?”
“Missed you, that’s all. Wondered how you were. You look tired.”
“Yeah. But I’m fine.”
“I’m sure,” Spen said, taking a long sip from his beer. “So, Tony’s got his nuts in a tangle this morning? He sent me the pissiest email. I nearly sent it off ‘accidentally’ on a round office list.”
“He’s um...not happy. I told him it was something I ate, so he’s less cranky at me directly. He thought I’d drunk too much.”
“Yeah, right. Are you okay on that score? No headaches or anything?”
“No, Nanny Spencer. I’m just fine, I keep telling you.”
“Good. What’s this about you going to the Northern meeting?”
“Oh yeah, I need to ask your mum if she can mind Dee and Alex for one night—the twenty-eighth. Tony says it will be an overnight trip.”
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why is it an overnight trip? Northern’s head office is a two-hour train trip away, and Tony gets a vehicle allowance. You could easily drive up and down in a day.”
Daniel frowned. “I don’t know. He just said it was and I wasn’t going to argue, since he was already so worked up. Does it matter? If your mum can’t do it, I think Dee and Alex can manage one night on their own, so long as they have her to call.”
“I’m sure she’ll be fine with it but that’s not the point.”
Daniel swallowed the bit of lasagne he’d been chewing, lay his fork down and looked directly at Spen. “Then can we stop talking about it? It’s my business, not yours. I’m about this close to being thrown out on my ear and like I’ve explained to you, I need to keep the job a little longer.”
“So you said,” Spen muttered, eating some of his salad. “So, do you want to watch some more movies some time?”
“Uh, don’t you have better things to do with real friends?”
“You’re a real friend, and no. God, Daniel, you have such low self-esteem. You can’t imagine anyone enjoying your company.”
“Sorry. My friends were either at Uni or from school, and when Mum and Dad died, they kind of...evaporated. I think they thought they would catch bad luck.”
“Idiots. Look, if you think I’m bothering you, just say so. I don’t want to be a pest.”
Daniel flushed, and looked at Kani, utterly blissful as Myko groomed him. “No, you’re not a pest. But I’m not a kid. So long as we’re clear on that.”
Spen held his fist up for Daniel to bump. “Totally clear. So, what did you get up to?”
~~~~~~~~
Spen managed to smooth the hackles of his prickly friend, and even raised a smile or two on his weary face. Despite Spen’s worst fears, Daniel’s strategy of denial seemed to be working for him, at least for now. As a long-term tactic, it sucked, but only Daniel could take the next step. But Spen hadn’t given up on the police angle, and what Daniel had told him about an overnight trip—an entirely unnecessary overnight trip—with his sleazeball boss, had sent all the alarms bells ringing. So while he carried on a pleasant conversation with Daniel, his mind was busy turning over how best he could find the evidence he needed, and work around Daniel’s refusal to bring the law into it. Denial was all very well but he didn’t think it would survive a second attack—and if it wasn’t Daniel, it would be someone else.
“I need to get back,” Daniel said, wiping his mouth. “Thanks for the meal. My turn next time.”
“You’re on. I’ll ask Mum about the twenty-eighth.”
“Thanks. I’ll draft up something for the handout and you can comment.”
“That’ll save me some time. I’ll walk back with you.”
He’d have done it anyway, but he had an extra reason today. Luke had heard about Daniel’s ‘bender’ before Spen had mentioned it, and the gossip wasn’t flattering in the least, he reported. Some of the speculation came far too close to the truth for Spen’s comfort. He couldn’t stop people talking, but he could at least show that Daniel had the support of at least one senior manager, for what that was worth. People stopped and looked as they passed. Daniel didn’t seem to notice. Spen wasn’t naïve enough to believe he would remain oblivious.
Daniel waved goodbye and headed for the lift, while Spen walked to the stairs. Ten minutes after he sat down, he received an email from Daniel to say Noble had explained that he was going to Northern’s office early on the twenty-eighth, and he wanted Daniel to be available for a breakfast meeting the next day. It sounded completely plausible, and yet Spen was at the point that if Noble said grass was green, he’d have to stick his head out the window to check for himself.
He tried his best to concentrate on his work, since he wasn’t being paid to be Daniel’s minder, but his thoughts kept going back to his friend—and his friend’s boss. He didn’t like what those thoughts were coming up with it.
“Spen, do you have a moment?” Jyoti motioned him over to her desk. “There’s something you need to look at.” Spen come over to stand behind her. She pointed silently to the relevant part of the print out in her hand. Myko squeaked and jumped up and down on Spen’s shoulder.
“Shhh, calm down, squirt. Jyoti, come with me.” Spen took her to the section’s small meeting room that doubled as storage for dying computers on their way to recycling. What she had in her hand was too explosive—and too important—to discuss in the office. She’d found the smoking gun he’d suspected. Now he had to work out the best way to use it.
Chapter 11
Coming into work knowing Tony would be away all day at the Northern office—even if he and Daniel would be meeting up later—was a relief. His boss had been, not to put too fine a point on it, an absolute shit to work for since the conference disaster. One minute he was praising Daniel extravagantly over something he’d done satisfactorily, and half an hour later he’d be tearing him down over some minor error, even if it wasn’t Daniel’s mistake. Daniel went home each evening with his guts in a knot, too tense to eat or sleep.
He hoped all the nastiness resulted from Tony’s anxiety over the Cross-Channel rollout. If not, and this continued, it barely mattered how long he stuck it out at his job—his reference was going to suck. He’d already started looking at job advertisements, but without any sense of hope, or belief he could push himself as being competent and employable. He did his best to hide his worries from Dee, but his sister knew something was up. He palmed her off with excuses about the rollout, but he couldn’t do that forever, and she was too smart to be fooled for long.
He wasn’t looking forward to this visit to Northern, but it did mean he would have the rest of tomorrow off, and then it was the weekend. If he could just get one solid night’s sleep, he would feel much better. Maybe he could take Spen up on his offer of a movie night. Spen had completely stopped commenting about the events at the conference, so Daniel could relax in his company again. It had been great to have an excuse to dro
p down to IT again. Kani had been making the most of it. And today Daniel could let him out without upsetting his boss.
Spen had arranged to have lunch with him again. The handout had gone to Northern already so there was nothing left for them to do, yet Spen was unusually tense, drinking his pint with a determination that bordered on the disturbing. “Something wrong?” Daniel asked.
“No. How are you?”
“Glad to have a boss-free day.”
Spen smiled but the expression disappeared too quickly. “Never trust a manager who’s shitty to his underlings. He sucks up to the clients and the bosses pretty well, but the test is in how he treats you.”
“Yes. I know he’s crap. Do we have to talk about this again?”
“No, we don’t. How are Dee and Alex? Mum was so pleased they were staying over again.”
“So were they. They really like your parents.”
“You’d be welcome over there too, you know. Any time. Doesn’t have to be when the kids need to stay.”
“Thanks. There’s just always so much to do at home.”
“Is it me? Because Mum would love to see you and I can go somewhere else.”
“Don’t be silly, Spen. I’m having lunch with you.”
“Yeah.” Spen laughed a little. “I guess that answers me. What time are you leaving? And what’s the hotel? A nice one?”
“At four, and I have no idea. ‘Lilyvale’, it’s called. I’m meeting Tony at seven.” Spen grunted. “I’ll be back here by lunchtime tomorrow. Half day for me.”
“Good for you.” He checked his watch. “Bugger. I’ve got to run. No, don’t rush. I’ll catch you soon. Good luck tonight.”
“And tomorrow.”
Spen stopped. “Yeah. Tomorrow too. I’ll see you.” He squeezed Daniel’s shoulder, a gesture from that Daniel secretly adored as much as he hated the exact same thing from Tony. Unfortunately, Tony did it a lot more often than Spen did.
A Fluffy Tale 2: Warm & Fuzzy Page 10
