Two Years After ; Friends Who Lie ; No More Secrets

by Paul J. Teague

  ‘One of the things we’re assessing for the future is unisex toilets; I did check that nobody was in here first.’

  Lying bastard! Rosie thought, almost blurting it out loud.

  ‘Well, I’d like to use the facilities, Edward, and as they’re not unisex yet, I’d appreciate it if you gave me a bit of privacy.’

  ‘Yes, er… of course.’

  ‘Maybe you could send a memo around letting everybody know about the proposals for unisex toilets. A heads-up might save the other members of female staff getting the kind of shock I just did.’

  Good old Annabelle – always polite, but firm. Rosie wanted to burst out of her cubicle and give her a hug. She listened as Edward made his quiet exit from the female toilets.

  ‘Rosie? Are you still here?’

  Rosie slid the lock and pulled the cubicle door open.

  ‘I thought you must be in there. What a creep that man is. The moment the meeting ended, he headed straight here. I knew what he was up to. He wanted to find out if you were putting it on with the period line.’

  ‘I was,’ Rosie confessed. ‘But I had to get out of there.’

  She stood up and stepped out of the cubicle, noticing two small pieces of graffiti which had been scrawled just below the toilet roll holder.

  Please wipe thoroughly to remove all evidence of Edward Logan

  Wash your hands – Edward Logan says it removes all traces of responsibility

  ‘Nice to see Edward has inspired some toilet cubicle art,’ Rosie smiled. ‘It’s quality vandalism too – the spelling and punctuation are correct.’

  Annabelle laughed.

  ‘I’ve never known a man divide a workplace so effectively. He’s like an angel of death – particularly now these job losses have been announced. Is that why you excused yourself?’

  For a woman whose life was all about numbers, Annabelle Reece-Norton had an uncanny ability to interpret human emotions. Maybe she had a formula tucked away on a spreadsheet somewhere. Either way, she’d managed to hit the nail directly on the head as far as Rosie was concerned. She felt her eyes begin to well up, the very thing she’d been trying to avoid when she left the conference room.

  ‘Oh, Annabelle, I feel like everything is such a mess. I really need this job, even though I’m not even sure I’m still capable of doing it. It’s been so long since I did anything that didn’t involve cleaning the crap off Sam’s arse or trying to keep my sanity intact.’

  Annabelle gently placed her hands on Rosie’s arms and pulled her towards her, giving her a hug. At that moment, it was precisely what Rosie needed. Annabelle was silent as the two of them stood there, Rosie now sobbing quietly.

  ‘My life is such a mess,’ Rosie continued. ‘I daren’t tell anybody, for fear that they’ll commit me to Trinity Heights, take Sam away from me or fire me from this job. We’re all supposed to be getting touchy-feely about mental health, aren’t we? It seems that admitting you’re struggling with psychological issues is the best way to volunteer for redundancy.’

  ‘Hello? Is anybody there?’

  Rosie looked up, trying to figure out who Annabelle had called out to.

  ‘It’s okay,’ Annabelle said. ‘Probably someone was coming in for a pee and thought better of it when they heard us talking. I just heard the door open, then close, that’s all. Are you still feeling that bad?’

  ‘Yes,’ Rosie said, looking directly into Annabelle’s face. ‘Some things that have happened here are making me wonder if I’m going mad.’

  ‘You and me both,’ Annabelle. ‘We’ve both worked here in much saner times. I’ve been looking for a job on the quiet since the day after Logan arrived. The man is an idiot; who would ever think to put him in charge of a company merger? He has all the empathetic skills of a concrete block. He’s in HR too – you’d think a bit of empathy would be a pre-requisite for that job.’

  Rosie forced a smile through her tears. She moved away from Annabelle towards a mirror.

  ‘I look a bloody mess,’ she said. ‘This was the one thing that I promised myself I wouldn’t do when I got back to work. How long did I last? No more than three days.’

  ‘Cut yourself some slack, Rosie. You’ve been through a lot of shit in your life; you can’t just roll up back at work and think it’s all over. Work through it at your own pace. And forget Edward Logan – I suspect David may have something up his sleeve.’

  Rossie dabbed her eyes with a paper towel, trying not to make them look any redder.

  ‘Really?’ she asked, turning away from the mirror. ‘Is something going on?’

  ‘Well, you heard how pissed off David was in that meeting. He’s been mumbling for some time about Silverline Supply Chains not honouring the details of their contract. I think he might try to get the company back.’

  ‘He’d better move fast. They might destroy it before he can do that,’ Rosie replied. ‘I should show my face again, otherwise I’ll be getting one of these penalties that Edward keeps imposing and I’ll have to stay on an extra quarter of an hour after work.’

  ‘Just tell him the machine needs re-stocking with sanitary towels and ask him what he’s going to do about it. Any mention of lady-issues and Edward looks like an inept teenager – it works every time.’

  ‘Thanks for looking out for me, Annabelle.’ Rosie said. She meant it. She needed friends.

  They stepped out of the toilets and headed back to their respective offices. The tension was almost tangible; the news of the impending redundancies seemed to have made even the fabric of the building fraught and nervous.

  Rosie’s office door was open, as she’d left it. The view over London was the first thing that drew her eye as she entered. It was a mystery why anybody would cover that window, even if it did prevent the paperwork from fading; it was a spectacular sight.

  There was something on her desk, the position suggesting it had been thrown there rather than placed. She’d missed the excitement of a brown memo envelope. Who knew what it held in this Russian roulette of corporate nonsense? Would it be an invitation to a strategy meeting, to review the previous plans which were failing to deliver? Would it be some office trivia, like a warning to remove decomposing food from the fridge, or a threat to incinerate all abandoned cups with more than one centimetre of mould growth?

  How about that firm favourite of hers, a passive-aggressive gripe about not hiding cutlery in personal drawers because it was for the use of all staff? Memos were an endless source of office entertainment, providing a flow of information and gossip that kept the wheels grinding.

  Rosie flicked open the envelope. It wasn’t a single page of A4 like she’d expected; there was something different inside. She pulled it out. The paper was more substantial, and something was printed on it.

  She turned it over. It was a photograph, taken at some distance, across a busy pub. It showed her and James talking at the public bar in the pub the previous Friday. Rosie’s mind began to race. Who’d been there that night? Who could have taken the photo? Was this Edward Logan doing some kind of sinister surveillance?

  She walked over to the window, her eyes darting between the photo and the view. Anybody could have taken that picture. It was grainy and poor quality, but obviously showed her and James. They all had mobile phones. It would only take a moment to get a photo like that. Nobody used cameras or flashes any more, so anyone could take a picture of somebody else in a public place, and the subject would be none the wiser.

  So who was it? Was it one of her colleagues winding her up about how she and James had sloped off to avoid the awkward situation with Edward?

  ‘Hiya!’

  It was Mackenzie Devereux, a pile of files in her hands. Her eye make-up looked even more severe than it had done before. It was like looking at an extreme version of Lisbeth Salander.

  ‘Don’t mind me, just filing again.’

  ‘Hi Mackenzie,’ said Rosie, shaken out of her distraction. ‘You haven’t seen anybody in my office today, have you?’
>
  ‘Nah, we’ve all been in that meeting. Bit of a bummer, wasn’t it? I’ve never seen so many adults shitting themselves in one place before.’

  She seemed amused at her own comment. For a moment, Rosie felt a surge of anger towards her. She was probably still sponging off her parents and had no concept of how important it was to keep the salary flowing in. One disruption to the family budget and the entire house of cards could come falling down. Then she had a more sympathetic thought; that Mackenzie’s generation would probably never be able to afford their own homes. Either way, both generations were screwed.

  ‘What happens to the memos nowadays, Mackenzie? They used to get picked up from our trays and distributed around the building with the morning post. Does that still happen?’

  ‘Don’t think so,’ Mackenzie replied, delivering her words whilst manipulating a piece of chewing gum in her mouth. Rosie wondered if she was powered by the stuff; she seemed unable to get by without a bit of gum rolling around in her mouth like a sock in a tumble dryer.

  There was a loud shout from along the corridor. Both Rosie and Mackenzie stopped in their tracks and looked at each other. For a second, Rosie thought it was Neil getting wound up about something again. But this was more urgent; it was the sound of somebody who’d been hurt.

  Rosie moved swiftly to the door. Other staff members had heard it too and were beginning to emerge from their offices to investigate.

  ‘It came from the kitchen,’ Rosie said, speeding up along the corridor. She was first there.

  David Willis was lying on the floor, motionless, his face grey, his eyes closed.

  ‘David!’ said Rosie, rushing up to him.

  She was soon joined by her colleagues who’d also heard the cry. There was a collective gasp of shock as they saw what had happened.

  ‘Has he croaked it?’ came Mackenzie’s voice from the small gathered group.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Rosie replied, as she felt for a pulse.

  Chapter Sixteen

  ‘I can’t believe David won’t be there,’ Rosie said, gulping down the last bite of toast. ‘It feels like we’ve lost the heart of the company.’

  Her dad had everything in control. Given that she had to work the weekend, things could have been worse. Sam was content, mangling a Marmite soldier, Iain had bought himself a newspaper on the way over and was happily reading the TV pull-out, and Rosie was ready in time. In fact, she had at least another five minutes before Haylee arrived with the hire car.

  ‘How is he now?’ Iain asked, looking up from his reading. ‘I’ve known guys of his age have heart attacks, and they never returned to work. In my line of business, they were on the scrap heap after that.’

  ‘It was only a mild attack, what they call a wake-up call, I think. He’ll make it through, but we could have used his support over this weekend. I think it might end up becoming a blood bath.’

  Rosie had had five days to get used to the idea of redundancy. Although terrified at the prospect, she’d begun to formulate plans. She’d uninstalled the Facebook app from her phone and used the time she’d have spent on it to register with agencies and job search sites instead. Fortunately, there seemed to be a lot of new ways to go job-hunting since she’d landed her job at David’s firm.

  She’d refreshed her CV, glossing over her sustained absence. Because she’d been continuously employed, with no gap in employment in terms of her receiving salary, she could get away without mentioning her recovery period. It was more of an omission than a lie; a little like the sleight of hand about who’d been responsible for renewing the car insurance.

  ‘He’s lucky he works in an office,’ Iain said. ‘At least he can still make a living shuffling paper, or whatever it is you corporate people do all day.’

  Iain Campbell had never understood how Rosie made a living. If it didn’t involve shovels, lorries, sand or cement, it was all a mystery to him.

  ‘They’ll be here soon.’ Rosie said, ‘I’ll clean my teeth, then I’m on my way. Thanks for doing this, Dad. I promise it won’t be forever. You’ll get your retirement soon.’

  She placed her hand on his shoulder, and he moved his own up to give it a gentle squeeze. His hands were worn, wrinkled and covered with liver spots. When had he got so old?

  As Rosie finished in the bathroom, she heard something drop through the letterbox at the bottom of the stairs.

  ‘I’ll get it!’ she shouted.

  It was the first day she’d been at home late enough to hear the post arriving. She’d been tense all week, expecting more worrying packages or pornographic images. They hadn’t arrived, either at home or at work. She wished she hadn’t deleted the pictures on her phone. In her less confident moments, she wondered if she’d imagined it.

  No, she’d held the pages of the pornographic magazine in her hands and the Chucky doll was real – Leonie had seen that too. She hadn’t imagined it. Someone was screwing with her, but they seemed to have lost interest at last. Although she’d been on edge and unsettled for the past five days, nothing new had happened. And if more images had been sent via Facebook, she didn’t know. She’d stopped checking it for now.

  Rosie came down the stairs.

  ‘That’ll be a pile of Valentine’s Day cards!’ Iain called from the kitchen.

  ‘I doubt it,’ Rosie replied. But as she said it, she noticed a pink envelope among the bills. She felt a momentary surge of expectation. Was it from James? They’d been getting on well in an office-only kind of way, chatting in the corridors and co-ordinating tea-breaks in the kitchen. Friday after-work drinks had been put on ice until they could re-group and come up with a new plan to evade Edward Logan.

  ‘There won’t be enough of us left with jobs to go for Friday drinks,’ Neil Jennings said.

  Rosie tore open the pink envelope, not wanting to view it in front of Iain. As the envelope was opened, a cascade of glitter flew out onto the carpet at her feet.

  ‘For God’s sake!’ she cursed.

  ‘Everything OK?’ Iain called.

  ‘It’s fine dad. Somebody has sent me a card and the envelope’s been filled with glitter. It’s made a right mess on the carpet.’

  She pulled out the card. The front image wasn’t visible because it had been placed face down. She turned it over and gasped. The front was covered with obscene photos which looked like they’d been printed out from the internet. Inside the card it read Happy Valentine’s Day, Rosie x.

  Rosie felt her cheeks burning again and sensed a sick emptiness in her stomach. She had to report this to the police now; she couldn’t ignore it any longer. Was it James? He seemed to be the obvious candidate, but she liked him and simply couldn’t believe he’d do something so crass.

  There was the sound of a car horn outside.

  ‘They’re here,’ Rosie said, walking through to the kitchen. ‘I’m so sorry, Dad. I’ll have to leave that glitter mess for you to vacuum – I’ve got to rush.’

  She tucked the card into her coat pocket and placed the unopened bills onto the worktop. Then she kissed Sam on both cheeks – much to his amusement – and gave Iain a quick kiss on his head.

  ‘Have a good weekend,’ Iain smiled, ‘And don’t worry about Sam and me. We’ve got two days of fun all mapped out.’

  ‘Thanks, Dad.’

  Rosie put her coat on and picked up her weekend bag, prepared the night before. Even that simple act proved she was getting a firmer grip on things. She’d turned up at the office for seven days and managed to get on top of the washing and shopping well enough to spend a night away from home. That would have been unimaginable six months previously.

  As she stepped out of the front door with glitter on her shoes, she faltered for a moment, trying to spot her colleagues in their car hire on the street. A car horn sounded, and Rosie followed the source of the sound. Tucked into a small gap on the opposite side of the road was a bright red Fiat 500, possibly the smallest car known to mankind that didn’t come from the Dinky range.

&n
bsp; Are you kidding? she thought.

  Packed into the back were James and Neil, looking like over-sized children. Haylee was driving, and Mackenzie was in the passenger seat. It made tube travel look positively spacious. Haylee’s window slid down.

  ‘Good morning, Rosie! Look what that fool Edward Logan hired for us.’

  ‘This is a joke, isn’t it?’ Rosie asked. ‘Is there even a seatbelt for me in there?’

  ‘That fuckwit messed up the hire car rental,’ Neil cursed. He looked like he was about to explode at any moment.

  ‘They had to substitute with this car,’ Haylee said, ‘It wasn’t entirely his fault. They’re short on cars this weekend.’

  ‘Aye, but if he hadn’a been such a skinflint, they’d have substituted it with something bigger,’ Neil cussed.

  Rosie moved round the back and flicked open the boot. It was already packed with overnight bags.

  ‘Does anybody have anything breakable in their bags?’ Rosie asked. ‘I’m going to have to ram these down to get them all to fit in.’

  With some difficulty, she achieved her objective. It was a good job none of them had over-packed.

  Mackenzie got out of her seat and stood on the pavement.

  ‘That’s really thoughtful of you Mackenzie,’ Rosie said, ‘letting me have the passenger seat.’

  ‘I’m not,’ she said bluntly. ‘I get car sick, so I’ve got to go in the front.’

  ‘Oh,’ was all Rosie could think to say. Yet again, Mackenzie had left her searching for a response.

  Rosie climbed into the back of the car, greeting James, who shuffled into the middle seat.

  ‘Hi, Rosie. There are only two seat belts, so I’ve volunteered to be crash test dummy.’

  ‘That’s illegal, isn’t it?’ Rosie asked.

  ‘Aye,’ said Neil, ‘but do you want to be the poor bastard who doesn’t turn up when we’re all fighting for our jobs?’

  He made a good point. Rosie forced herself into the small gap that James had left. The seat was warm, at least. Her hips jammed tight against his, giving her a flutter of excitement at the close physical contact.