‘I can’t tell you.’ I paced up and down, wringing my hands. ‘We don’t have time for that. I have to think of a way to prevent him from getting fired.’ I looked at them all, they stared back at me with dull tired faces. If they could think of a way of stopping him from being fired they would have either used it already to help the others we lost or they were saving it for themselves. I paced some more, going through everything in my head.
I looked at Life, looking through his phone, searching for a text. ‘Maybe the signal is out,’ he said to himself, raising his phone in the air and moving it around. ‘I’m going to try out in the hall. He opened the door and left the room.
‘I know what I have to do,’ I said firmly.
‘What?’ Nosy asked but I couldn’t answer, I was already charging towards the office, my mind made up, the words forming in my mouth.
I pushed open the door and burst into the room. Edna and Quentin looked up.
‘Fire me,’ I said firmly, standing in the middle of her office, my legs apart ready to take on the world.
‘Excuse me?’ Edna asked.
‘Fire me,’ I repeated. ‘I do not deserve to be in this job.’ I looked at Quentin and hoped that he would understand this, ‘I am a two-bean salad. I didn’t deliver on what I promised, I don’t deserve to be here, I only truly appreciated being here in the past two weeks. Before that, I took this job and everybody in this building for granted.’ I studied Edna’s face and she just looked shocked. I needed her to be angry, I needed her to fire me so that Quentin could stay. I gulped. ‘I gave everybody nicknames, I’d rather not tell you what they are but if you want me to I will.’ I closed my eyes tight. ‘Yours was something to do with a fish.’ I opened them again, embarrassed. ‘I wasted a lot of time. I smoke indoors. I am a fire hazard, I could have killed us all.’
I heard Mary gasp behind me and realised that I hadn’t closed the door and they were all listening. I turned around. Life had come back into the office and was staring at me with an open mouth. I hoped that he was proud; I wasn’t lying, I was sacrificing myself, I was doing the right thing to protect an innocent man.
‘Up until last week, I didn’t even like this job,’ I continued, spurred on by the sight of Life. ‘I wanted to be fired. But I realise now that was unfair because all of these good people were being fired all around me and it should have been me. I’m sorry, Edna, and I’m sorry to all the people who were fired and I’m sorry to Louise and Graham and Mary and Quentin. Please don’t fire Quentin, he has done nothing wrong. He didn’t know about my Spanish lie until that morning, he honestly didn’t know. Please do not punish him for my mistakes. Fire me.’ I finished and bowed my head.
There was a silence. It’s fair to say it was a shocked silence.
Edna cleared her throat. ‘Lucy, I wasn’t firing Quentin.’
‘What?’ I quickly looked up and then at their table; there were papers strewn about, diagrams, instructions.
‘We were discussing the new heating-drawer manual. I was asking Quentin to translate the Spanish section.’
I made an oh shape with my mouth.
Quentin was sweating. ‘But Lucy, thank you very much for defending me.’ He twitched more than ever.
‘Eh … You’re welcome.’ I wasn’t sure what to do so I started to back away. ‘Shall I just …’ I threw my thumb back towards the open door.
‘I think,’ Edna raised her voice, ‘bearing in mind all that you said and all that has occurred in the past while that you should …’
She left it for me to answer. ‘Leave?’
She nodded. ‘Do you think that’s wise?’
I thought about it. Felt so embarrassed it was beyond belief. I nodded and whispered, ‘Yes. Em, perhaps it is. I’ll go get my things.’ I halted. ‘Do you mean now?’
‘I think that’s a good idea,’ she said gently, clearly embarrassed for me but probably happy that I’d solved her problem.
‘Okay,’ I whispered. ‘Em … Bye, Quentin. It was lovely working with you.’ I shuffled over and held out my hand. He took it, looking rather confused, looking from Edna to me. ‘Eh, thank you, Edna. I enjoyed working with you,’ I lied, having just revealed that I thought she was something close to a fish. ‘Maybe I can call you another time for a reference or something.’
She looked unsure but shook my hand anyway. ‘Good luck, Lucy.’
I turned then and finally faced everybody in the office. They were lined up on the walkway to the door. Life wasn’t in the office.
‘He’s outside,’ Mouse told me.
I shook everybody’s hands. Once again, for the third time in a fortnight, they weren’t sure whether to love me or loathe me. I packed away my things – I didn’t have much, I had never personalised my desk – and I awkwardly backed out of the room, waving and thanking them and apologising all at the same time. Then I closed the door, and took a deep breath.
Life was looking at me. Fuming is not the world. ‘What the hell was that about?’
‘Not here.’ I lowered my voice.
‘Yes, here. What the hell did you do that for? You were keeping your job, I can’t believe it but for some reason, you got away with it. And what did you do? Threw it all away. Marched in there and deliberately threw it all away. What is it with you? Why do you deliberately sabotage every good thing that happens in your life?’ He was shouting now and I wasn’t just embarrassed, I was also scared. ‘Do you want to be miserable?’
‘No.’
‘I don’t believe you.’
‘Of course I don’t.’
‘Would you just ignore everybody else for one moment and concentrate on me?’ he shouted. ‘For once!’
I looked at him immediately. He had one hundred per cent of my attention and everybody else’s.
‘I thought you’d be proud of me. I defended Twitch, even though it turned out I didn’t actually need to, but I did. I put other people first instead of myself, and now we have enough time to go to see Blake so that I can tell him I love him. Everything works out just … em, perfectly.’
He lowered his voice but the anger bubbled beneath his words as he battled to keep them under control. ‘The problem, Lucy, has never been your ability to put other people first, it has been your complete inability to put yourself first. But however much you try to dress this one up as a selfless act of kindness, it doesn’t cut it. You did not go in there to defend Quentin, you went in there to give up again and I wouldn’t put it past you to have concocted this entire thing just to get to Blake quicker than tomorrow.’
I can’t say it hadn’t passed through my mind.
‘But I love him,’ I said weakly.
‘You love him. Will your newly discovered unrequited love pay the bills?’
‘You sound like my father.’
‘No, I sound responsible. Know what that means?’
‘Yes,’ I said firmly, standing up for myself. ‘It means I live unhappily ever after. Whereas I am now taking back control of my life.’
‘Taking it back? Who had it?’
I opened my mouth and then closed it again.
‘Please don’t put the guilt trip on me. I’ll get another job.’
‘Where?’
‘I don’t know where,’ I said. ‘I’ll have to look around, I’m sure there’s something really great for me. Something that I’m passionate about.’
He groaned at the use of that word. ‘Lucy, you’re not passionate about anything.’
‘I am about Blake.’
‘Blake won’t pay the bills.’
‘He might if we get married and I have babies and I give up work,’ I said, joking of course. I think.
‘Lucy, you had a good job and you threw it away. Congratulations. I am so fed up with you, when are you going to grow up?’ He looked at me with such disappointment, then he walked away.
‘Hey, where are you going?’ I started to follow but he sped up. I ran after him and joined him in the elevator. There was somebody else in there
so we didn’t speak. He looked straight ahead while I stared at him and willed him to look at me. The elevator doors opened and he darted outside at top speed. Finally we were outside in the chilly air.
‘Where are you going?’ I called. ‘We have to go to Wexford! Woo-hoo!’ I whooped. ‘To follow a dream. See? Life? I have dreams.’ I ran along behind him like a small dog.
‘No, Lucy, you have to go for dinner with your family.’
‘You mean, we have to go for dinner with my family.’
He shook his head. ‘I’m done.’
He rushed towards the bus stop. A bus swiftly came along and stopped and he got on and was lost from sight, leaving me standing alone in the car park.
When I got back to the apartment I tried to ignore the tousled bed while I packed my bag for Wexford. There was no point waiting till tomorrow to go and see Blake if I didn’t have a job any more; I officially no longer had anything here to hold me back, apart from dinner at my parents this evening … and a cat. I knocked on Claire’s door and waited, hearing the music to In the Night Garden in the background. Finally Claire answered. She looked exhausted.
‘Hi, Lucy.’
‘Are you okay?’
She nodded but her eyes filled.
‘Is it your mother?’
‘No.’ A tear ran down her cheek and she didn’t bother wiping it. I wasn’t sure if she even noticed it was there. ‘She’s actually getting better, it’s just Conor, he’s, you know, not well.’
‘Right.’
‘And I haven’t been getting much sleep. Anyway.’ She wiped her face roughly. ‘What can I do for you?’
‘Oh, you know what, you have enough on your plate, it’s okay.’ I backed away.
‘No, please, I need a distraction, what is it?’
‘I have to go away for a few days and I was wondering if you would be able to take care of my cat? I don’t expect him to stay in your place or anything, just check on him every now and then and maybe bring him to the park when you’re going, and feed him?’
She was looking at me angrily.
‘What? What have I said?’
‘You don’t have a cat,’ she said, her eyes dark.
‘Oh! I forgot you didn’t know.’ I lowered my voice. ‘I’ve had him for years but if anyone finds out I’ll be evicted and it just doesn’t seem worth it,’ I joked then turned serious. ‘You don’t mind that I have a cat, do you?’
‘I’ve never seen him.’
‘He’s right behind me.’
‘No, he’s not. Lucy, whatever you’re doing, it’s not funny.’
‘I’m not doing anything. What are you talking about?’
‘Were you talking to Nigel?’
‘Nigel? Who’s Nigel? Should I have been?’
‘My husband,’ she said angrily.
‘No! I’ve no idea what you’re talking about. What …’ But I didn’t get a chance to finish my sentence because the door slammed in my face. ‘What the …?’ When I turned around to interrogate Mr Pan on what on earth he’d done to poor Claire, I finally understood. Mr Pan wasn’t there, he’d run off down the corridor leaving her to think I was asking her to mind an invisible cat. Feeling cruel, even though that hadn’t been my intention, I ran after him and found him, right at the feet of a grumpy neighbour who never spoke to me.
‘Oh, my goodness,’ I said in shock. ‘Is that a stray cat? How on earth did he get in here? Or maybe it’s a she? Who’s to know? Let me just get rid of him for you.’ I scooped Mr Pan up in my arms and hurried back to my apartment, mumbling, ‘Dirty, yucky, horrible stray cat,’ for anyone and everyone to hear.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
I sat at the dining table in my parents’ home and fought the urge to fidget with everything. I clasped my hands on the table and contained the anxiety that I felt within. I hadn’t yet found the courage to tell them that once again I was lifeless, not because I had brushed it under the carpet as I used to do, but because Life disagreed with my decisions and had left me. I had stalked him with phone calls all afternoon in a pretend effort to apologise but really it was to see if we could cancel the family dinner. He hadn’t answered the phone and then after six tries his phone was switched off. I didn’t leave a message; I couldn’t find the words because I wasn’t near sorry enough to beg for his forgiveness and he would sense I wasn’t genuine. It wasn’t a good situation to be in; it was neither funny nor clever. It was one thing to ignore your life yourself, it was quite another for your own life to ignore – then abandon – you. If Life had given up on me, what chance did I have?
The evening was too chilly to eat outside and so Edith had decided to set up the dining room, my parents’ most formal room and used only for special occasions. Initially I had thought she was trying to get me back for stealing her cake and presenting it to Mum as my own home-baked gift, just like the bouquet of flowers last time, but on observing her that evening, I felt she was genuinely excited to meet the extra special guest and wanted him to receive the grandest of Silchester welcomes. Mum hadn’t held back on preparations either as every room leading off the entrance hall had a Waterford Crystal vase filled with fresh flowers, the dining table was cloaked in white linen, the finest silverware was laid out, her hair was freshly blowdried, and she was wearing a pink and turquoise tweed Chanel shift dress and jacket with one of her dozens of pairs of flat pumps. Most people called their dining rooms the dining room, or in some households the kitchen table; we, however, called our dining room the Oak Room. Thanks to our great Literary Writer who came before us, the walls of the dining room were panelled floor to ceiling in oak, and crystal wall lights shone over the expensive eclectic collection of paintings – some abstract, some of men with tweed caps dipped low as they worked the bogs in Mayo.
‘Can I help?’ I asked Mum as she floated into the room for the third time, carrying a sterling silver tray to add to the table of condiments which totalled more than any human being would ever need in a lifetime let alone in one meal. There were tiny silver bowls of mint sauce, mustard – whole-grain and French – olive oil, mayonnaise and ketchup, all with tiny silver spoons displayed beside them.
‘No, dear, you are our guest.’ She surveyed the table. ‘Balsamic?’
‘Mum, it’s fine, really, I think there’s plenty on the table.’
‘He might like some balsamic for that lovely two-bean salad you brought for Mum, Lucy,’ Riley said, stirring it – the tension not the condiments.
‘Yes.’ Mum looked at Riley. ‘You’re right. I’ll get it.’
‘She likes salad,’ I defended my gift to her.
‘And that it came in a plastic container from your work canteen makes it all the more special,’ he smiled.
I hadn’t told them my life wasn’t coming for dinner partly because I didn’t know whether he would show or not but mostly because I rather stupidly thought it wouldn’t make much difference whether or not he turned up. I thought that when the time came I could think of a polite excuse for why he couldn’t make it, but I misjudged it. I hadn’t anticipated such eagerness on their part to be acquainted with my life. There was a buzz in the air, an excitement and surprisingly, almost a nervousness. That was it. My mum was nervous. She was rushing around trying to make sure everything was perfect in an effort to please my life. Edith was too, which astonished me. Technically it was me they were trying to please and I couldn’t help but feel flattered, but mostly I knew I was in trouble. The news wasn’t going to go down well and the later I left it the worse it was going to get.
The gate intercom buzzed and Mum looked at me like a deer caught in headlights. ‘Is my hair okay?’ I was so surprised by her behaviour – Silchesters didn’t get flustered – that I couldn’t answer so she rushed to the gilded mirror above the gigantic marble fireplace and stood on tiptoe to see the top of her head. She licked her finger and stuck a hair down in place. I looked around at the table settings for eight people, and suddenly I was nervous.
‘It may be the carpet
man,’ Edith said, trying to calm Mum down.
‘Carpet man? What carpet man?’ I asked, my heartbeat beginning to quicken.
‘Your life friend kindly gave me the number of a carpet company whom he said did wonders in your apartment, though I wish he could have come after the dinner,’ she frowned as she examined the time again. ‘I must say, it was so pleasant speaking to him on the phone, I’m really looking forward to meeting him in person. I know I’m going to love him’ Mum scrunched up her face again and hunched her shoulders at me, lovingly.
‘The carpet man?’
‘No, your life,’ she laughed.
‘What happened to the carpet, Sheila?’ my grandmother asked.
‘Coffee on the Persian rug in the drawing room. Long story but I desperately need it cleaned by tomorrow because Florrie Flanagan is visiting.’ She looked at me. ‘Remember Florrie?’ I shook my head. ‘You do, her daughter Elizabeth just had a baby boy. They called him Oscar. Isn’t that nice?’
I wondered why she never asked Riley whether the birth of any child was ever nice. We heard footsteps coming towards the door. I watched as Mum took a deep breath and smiled in preparation, and I tried to think quickly what to do if either Don or my life walked in the door. I didn’t need to worry as Philip popped his head in the door. Mum exhaled.
‘Oh, it’s you.’
‘Well, thank you for the warm welcome,’ Philip said and as he stepped inside his seven-year-old daughter, Jemima, followed him. She was as serene as always, her face didn’t change, no expression but a calm look around the room and her eyes slightly widened and lit when she saw Riley and me.
‘Jemima,’ Mum said, rushing towards her for a hug. ‘What a lovely surprise.’
‘Mum couldn’t come today so Daddy told me I could visit,’ she said in her soft voice.
Riley cupped his breasts and I tried not to laugh. Philip’s wife Majella had transformed herself over the past ten years so much that there wasn’t a part of her skin that could move voluntarily. Philip was a plastic surgeon and though he claimed it was only ever reconstructive surgery, Riley and I did wonder if it had become cosmetic ‘on the side’ for his wife, something my father would be appalled at. I always felt that as a result of Majella’s surgery, her daughter Jemima, following her lead, was completely without expression. When she was happy, she appeared serene; when she was angry, she was serene. She didn’t frown, didn’t smile too largely, her forehead rarely crumpled, just like her Botoxed mother. Jemima high-fived Riley on the way around the table to me. My grandmother tutted.