Two Years After ; Friends Who Lie ; No More Secrets

by Paul J. Teague

  She resolved to keep her head down and get on with it. She had to claw back the arrears on the mortgage and pay off the credit card debt. Sam seemed to be getting bigger by the week and was constantly growing out of his clothes. And if the social workers were going to leave her alone, she’d have to convince them that she was stable now – even if she knew that she wasn’t. Rosie realised she’d have to suck it up, in spite of the uneasy feeling in the pit of her stomach from the moment she’d met Edward Logan.

  She spent the remainder of the morning stocking her drawers and organising her work area. After what seemed an interminable amount of time hanging on the end of a phone line, she also got her computer login restored.

  ‘All my old emails are gone,’ she said to the tech-guy who had patiently worked through everything with her.

  ‘Yeah, we got authorisation to ground zero your account.’

  ‘Who from?’ Rosie asked. She knew the answer.

  ‘The initials are EL. It was only done this week. Everything was archived and moved over to HR. That’s unusual, but they’re allowed to do it under the T&Cs. You should read them sometime. Nothing you do on your work PC is private.’

  At last lunchtime arrived and she left the office with a massive sense of relief. She’d never felt that way before; her time at Willis Supplies Ltd had always been happy. She was glad to see the food truck was still stationed in the small square opposite the office block, feeding the workers from the surrounding high-rise buildings. She’d intended to bring sandwiches to save money, but with Sam creating such a fuss, things hadn’t worked out that way.

  Rosie took out her mobile phone and called her dad. She was relieved when he figured out how to answer it after nine rings.

  ‘Everything’s fine, Rosie – me and Sam are having a lovely day. In fact, we’re at the park right now. I can’t get him off this swing.’

  She longed for a time when she could share her dad’s easy relationship with her son. She was always so tense, as if she resented Sam for surviving over Phoebe. Whatever he did, she framed him as a bully, as if he’d pushed his sister aside and dared to survive the accident. She knew she was being ridiculous. It was the luck of the draw, but that’s how her mind worked since the crash. Sam was an innocent two-year-old, and he’d got lucky – the surgeons had got to him first. An emergency caesarean with an unconscious mother. She was lucky they’d got one child out alive.

  As Rosie tucked into her baked potato, she was aware of somebody approaching. She looked up to see Haylee, a polystyrene container packed with food in her hand.

  ‘Hey, Rosie. How’s it going?’ She sat at Rosie’s side.

  ‘Hi Haylee. It feels like a long time since you and I did this. I’ve got beans with my potato – it’s the cheapest option. I should really be eating sandwiches.’

  ‘The place has changed, hasn’t it?’ Haylee said, out of the blue. ‘You must see it, Rosie – it’s not just me, is it?’

  Rosie rested her plastic fork in the polystyrene tray.

  ‘It’s different, that’s for sure,’ she replied. ‘This Edward Logan guy, he’s a bit of an odd one, isn’t he?’

  ‘He scares everybody,’ Haylee said. Rosie noticed that she was struggling to hold back tears.

  ‘He keeps telling us how expensive we are and that David was over-paying us. He even makes a big thing about me going on my lunch break and monitors how long we’re out of the office. Can you believe that? You know, he actually keeps a note if we’re back just a few minutes late.’

  ‘I guess I don’t know him well enough yet,’ Rosie said, thinking about the way he’d touched her mole. It made her feel a little sick just thinking about it.

  ‘He calls me at home, too. In the evenings and at weekends. He even came to my house once.’

  ‘Edward did? Surely not?’

  ‘Yes, seriously. He keeps calling with trivial questions about things that happened during the workday. He calls at all times of the night. How do you stop him? He has to have our personal information because he’s the HR guy. It’s really getting to me Rosie – I’m thinking about leaving. But that bastard manages the references too, so I have to stay on the right side of him.’

  Rosie had never seen Haylee like this before, unburdening herself; she hadn’t even started eating her own baked potato. Her eyes were red as she fought back the tears.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Haylee said, touching Rosie’s arm. ‘Here I am, sounding off about my own problems, and I haven’t even caught up with you properly yet.’

  ‘It’s okay,’ Rosie replied, picking up her fork again. ‘Don’t leave just yet, Haylee – I’ve only just got back. It’ll be alright, just like the old times, you’ll see. Everything’s going to be totally fine.’

  Even as she said the words, Rosie wasn’t entirely convinced if it was Haylee she was trying to persuade, or herself.

  Chapter Five

  Rosie heard the two sales guys before she saw them. She assumed they must have met their quotas for the day and they were back in the office now, no doubt after their customary boozy lunch. She’d been gone for two years. How much damage must Phil and Terry have inflicted on their livers in that time?

  She didn’t think for one moment that the pair of them were racist, sexist, genderist, veganist or whatever other -ists existed in twenty-first century Britain. But damn they could make everybody laugh. They sailed as close to the wind as was humanly possible without losing their jobs. David Willis had tried his luck once or twice, but Terry and Phil had been the first two sales employees in the business, and they’d exceeded their targets year-in, year-out. They were part of the furniture. But, as Rosie had already seen for herself, the furniture had been changed already since she’d been gone.

  There was a knock at Rosie’s door. She began to answer, but Terry was already in the room, appearing to ignore her, pulling his trousers down and pretending to go to the toilet.

  ‘Phil! Phil! There’s a lady in the gents’ toilet! Get her out of here.’

  Phil entered the room, cackling away.

  ‘Fancy putting you in this shit-hole!’ he said. ‘Pull your trousers up mate. You’ll get caught by off-his-heady-Eddy.’

  Terry pulled up his trousers and buckled his belt.

  ‘We’ve got to behave these days.’ Terry smiled at Rosie, walking over and giving her a hug. ‘Normally I’d touch you inappropriately, but I’d lose my job.’

  Rosie laughed. She knew that he didn’t mean it and would never do it; it was just how they were, a double act.

  Phil moved to the far wall.

  ‘You know there’s a window in this room, don’t you? Give me a hand Tez. Look, here it is – it’s just a bit of hardboard glued over the frame.’

  They were like a whirlwind, the two of them in perfect harmony, moving over towards a board which Rosie had assumed was a place to pin memos and a calendar. Their fingers worked away at it until they managed to pull it away from its fixing. Light flooded into the small office, nourishing her after two hours illuminated only by a strip light and a desk lamp.

  ‘I would never have known that was there. I might have died in here,’ Rosie said.

  Terry and Phil lowered the board and moved it behind the filing cabinets.

  ‘You’ll need to pay for that damage.’

  Edward was at the door, peering in.

  ‘Look what you’ve done to the paintwork. And look at the state of the glass. I’ll be invoicing you for the damage.’

  He walked off as abruptly as he’d arrived.

  ‘And you know where you can stick your invoice, don’t you?’ Terry snarled, at a suitable level of volume that it wouldn’t be heard by Edward.

  ‘Fucking tosser!’ Phil said. ‘I’ve worked here all my life, and I’ve never wanted to punch a man in the face as much as I want to punch Edward Logan. I haven’t got a degree or any qualifications, but if that’s what an education does for you, I’m glad I left school at sixteen.’

  ‘You’re a bit generous wit
h your timescales there, aren’t you mate?’ Terry queried.

  ‘Alright, yeah, I left at fifteen. But that was unofficial. Officially I left at sixteen, so my ma could still claim the family allowance for me.’

  The two men laughed, a couple of amateur comedians, bouncing off each other constantly.

  ‘Are you coming out for drinks tomorrow?’ Terry asked. ‘I know you’ve got the baby now, but you’ll still come along for the TGI Friday piss-up won’t you?’

  ‘Shhh!’ Phil warned. ‘Make sure Logan’s not around.’

  Rosie looked from Terry to Phil and back to Terry.

  ‘We’ve managed to keep it a secret from him for almost half a year,’ Terry began. ‘He thinks we all go home at five o’clock on a Friday. But we coordinate it by a WhatsApp group. We all leave one by one, then meet up around the corner. The prick still doesn’t know we do it.’

  Rosie cast her mind back to the Friday ritual. Once upon a time, they’d make an evening of it, and Liam would join her. She hadn’t drunk in two years. How could she, after the crash? And she had to think of her drugs too. The first rule of anti-depressants and anxiety pharmaceuticals was no alcohol.

  ‘I’d love to come along,’ she replied, ‘but no late-night booze ups or pub grub. Number one: I can’t afford it, and number two: my dad is looking after Sam. I’ll join you for a soft drink, but I can’t stay late.’

  The sun was pouring in through the window of her office. Rosie couldn’t believe it was the same space. There was an amazing view out over the commercial district, making her feel like a mole that had just broken through the surface of the soil.

  David popped into the room.

  ‘I’d forgotten that the window was covered up; we did that years ago. Blimey, it looks far better in here. We did it to protect all the paperwork from the sun. It gets wonderful light in this room. That’s a lot better. I felt terrible when Edward told me he was putting you in here, Rosie. I know I promised you the office that I’m in, but our friend in HR put a stop to that. He outranks me under this new arrangement. I’m just here until my brains are picked clean, then I’ll be on my way.’

  ‘You can’t get Mike up here to sort that paintwork out, can you?’ Phil asked. ‘The Loganator is threatening to dock it from our pay. He’ll touch it up for us, won’t he?’

  David moved fully into the room, so he couldn’t be heard.

  ‘Strictly speaking, I need to put a form in for it these days. But Mike owes me a favour. I’ll call him now, see if he’ll pop up and sort it out. It’ll only take ten minutes to fix; it takes longer than that to fill out Edward’s form.’

  David phoned down to the caretaker’s office and gave him the update on the paintwork situation. While he was speaking, Rosie whispered to Phil.

  ‘Is that the same guy who used to work here two years ago? Old Mikey, the man who never retires?’

  ‘That’s him,’ Terry replied, not giving Phil time to respond. ‘He’s still here. The man refuses to stop working.’

  Rosie gave David a signal, indicating that she wanted him to hand over the phone before he finished with Mike. He passed it over to her, and she resumed the call.

  ‘Hi Mike, it’s Rosie – Rosie Taylor. I don’t know if you remember me?’

  He did. That surprised her; they’d only ever exchanged pleasantries.

  ‘Did you bring the desk up from the basement for the filing cabinet office? You know the one, don’t you? Yes. There was a rat in the bottom drawer. You don’t need to get some traps down there, do you?’

  The unsettled feeling that had been sitting uncomfortably in her stomach all day worsened the moment Mike gave his answer.

  He’d checked and cleaned the drawers himself before leaving the room. They were completely empty; he was certain of it. If there was a dead rat in that drawer, it had to have got there after he’d left the room.

  Chapter Six

  The smell of fresh paint reminded Rosie of her time at Trinity Heights Psychiatric Hospital. As she’d emerged from her drugged stupor and slowly returned to the land of the sentient, it had been one of the first things she noticed.

  It turned out that wasn’t such a good thing in a psychiatric unit. One of the long-term patients there – a young girl called Tamsin – would crack her head against the pale blue walls whenever she became distressed. The blood from her forehead was so hard to wash off that it was easier to wipe it, let it dry and then paint over it. Vera had told her that during one of their talks. Lovely Vera, the woman who’d returned her to the world of the living.

  Rosie would often wonder just how bad she was if she was in the same ward as Tamsin. It terrified her, sitting in that office, thinking about how precarious life could be. How she could go from being a city high-flyer to a complete mental wreck, and then back to the day job, after everything that had happened to her? She wasn’t out of the woods yet, and she knew it.

  She’d put on a brave face for the social workers, effective enough to have secured shared custody of Sam with her father. What a win that had been, as she began the long, slow climb back from the mental abyss. She’d moved through the psychiatric hospital from being forcibly sectioned, to voluntarily committing herself, progressing to being a day patient and finally going back to the house to live with her father under the same roof. And for two months now, she’d lived there alone, still using a lower dosage of drugs, looking after Sam on her own and reclaiming her former life, day by hard-won day.

  For a moment, as she looked out of her office window, she felt proud of herself. It was two years after those terrible events, yet here she was, still alive, still fighting, salvaging the ruined remains of her former life.

  Rosie had been running through Edward’s newly updated induction manual since Mike had re-painted the window surround. She’d swiftly tired of it and chose instead to be distracted by the wonderful office view over London.

  ‘Hiya!’

  Rosie was shaken out of her daydreaming by an unfamiliar voice. It was the girl who was meant to have brought her coffee after her shock with the rat. If this was it arriving now, she was a bit late.

  ‘You’re Rosie then, the one who was in the mental unit?’

  That took Rosie aback. Was that how they’d been speaking about her while she was absent?

  The girl was young – eighteen or nineteen maybe – and she was chewing gum. Her trousers and top were figure-hugging, and she was displaying much more cleavage that was appropriate in any workplace. Her nails were immaculately painted with a bright, red varnish and her eyebrows were sculpted to within an inch of their life. She was astounded that Edward permitted such a colourful and shocking hairstyle.

  ‘You must be the apprentice?’ Rosie asked, choosing to ignore the bluntness of the introduction.

  ‘Yeah, I’m Mackenzie. I need to get into those filing cabinets behind your desk.’

  She held up a handful of files and raised her eyebrows, indicating to Rosie that she’d need to get out of the way to let her past.

  ‘Delighted to meet you, Mackenzie. It’s about time we started taking on apprentices here – I’m surprised we left it so long.’

  Rosie held out her hand, expecting her gesture to be reciprocated. Instead, Mackenzie looked at it like it was consumed with the pox, shrugged and started moving towards the filing cabinets. Rosie retracted her hand; maybe youngsters didn’t bother with such workplace pleasantries any more.

  Mackenzie moved over to the filing cabinets and began to flick through the hanging files, seeking the correct location for her folders.

  ‘So, what do you think about the blokes around here? A bit old for my liking – only a couple of them are fit.’

  Thankfully Mackenzie’s back was facing Rosie, because she could feel her face turning red at the directness of the question.

  ‘Did you know that Edward is on Grindr?’ she said conspiratorially. ‘Who would have thought an arsehole like him would be gay? But he is. My gay mate showed me his profile.’

 
Rosie was torn between giving some gentle guidance about how to behave in the workplace and telling the girl off. However, on day one at work after a two-year absence, which had caused the new HR department a great deal of consternation, Rosie decided to use evasion tactics as her preferred strategy.

  ‘Doesn’t it look better in here with that hardboard taken off the window? Goodness knows who put it there in the first place. I’m certain this room was cut off from the light when I last worked here. What a waste – just look at that view of the commercial district.’

  Mackenzie was having none of it.

  ‘So, what’s it like having a dead husband?’ she asked.

  Rosie was stuck for words. She decided to change tack. Mackenzie seemed to appreciate straight-talking.

  ‘It’s pretty damn horrible, to tell you the truth.’

  ‘I bet it is. My mate’s dad died last year; it was awful. He was really bummed out for ages. I feel sorry for you.’

  ‘That’s nice of you to say, Mackenzie, thank you.’

  ‘You’ve got a kid, haven’t you?’ Mackenzie continued.

  ‘You seem to know a lot about me,’ Rosie remarked.

  ‘Yup,’ she replied, as if Rosie ought to have known that all along. ‘It’s all on Google,’ she added.

  ‘What’s on Google?’ Rosie asked. ‘I’m only on Facebook and LinkedIn. Oh, and WhatsApp now—’

  She finished her sentence abruptly, not certain if the office apprentice was in on the Friday drinks or not. She didn’t want to be the one to let the cat out of the bag if it was supposed to be a secret after-work drinking club.

  ‘You can read all about it,’ Mackenzie replied. ‘About your hubby Liam, about the kid that died. It’s all there. And how he was over the limit when he crashed the car—’

  ‘Okay, that’s enough!’ Rosie said. ‘I’ve come here to get away from that and put the past behind me. I’d appreciate it if you didn’t talk to me about it again.’