Lewis with a legitimate excuse to hurl abuse at women, but I’m looking for something that exposes him for the bully I know him to be. It doesn’t take long to find tweets about him pushing his victims to their limits but none are genuine complaints. He’s actually found a way of turning his cruelty into a business opportunity.
I’ve scrolled past a comment before I realise its importance. There are a few flirtatious comments about one to one workouts, with other boot camp recruits joining in. One mentions that Lewis has a girlfriend. Another replies that it won’t last – she only wants him for his UK citizenship. There follows an argument about the legal status of EU citizens but I’ve found what I needed from this thread. Ellie is his girlfriend.
I’m vaguely aware that the chilli is burning but I can’t take my eyes from my phone as I go back up through the latest tweets. There’s no further mention of Lewis’s girlfriend but one very recent comment catches my attention. A new recruit is begging Lewis to go easy on her when her course starts on Saturday because she’ll be hungover that morning. I check the date of her tweet and realise she’s talking about this weekend.
It would be foolhardy to go there but it’s not like I have to speak to him. Seeing me should be enough to send a message that I can stand up to him. I can’t believe I’m contemplating doing this. It’s not like me. It’s more like Meg and that thought fires me up.
‘See you there,’ I mutter to myself, then hurry to the kitchen to stir the boiling pot that’s been left for far too long.
Ruth
The conference room looks like a war zone, with battle plans scattered across the table. Friday afternoon was not the best time to receive another set of queries from the planning department regarding the Whitespace project, not when we have a meeting with them on Monday morning, so action had to be taken and quickly.
McCoy and Pace’s reputation will be on the line if we don’t secure planning approval but after a quick brainstorming session, I’m quietly confident. Geoff might have a knack for innovation, but whenever we hit a problem with the conceptual boundaries he likes to push, I’m the one who fixes them. And from the look on the faces of the team as they file out of the room, I’ve found a solution they can work with.
‘Geoff looks happier than he did at the beginning of the week,’ Jen says as she gathers up the CAD drawings.
The glass partitioning allows me to look out across the office to where Geoff has pulled up a chair next to one of our senior architects, and he’s pointing at whatever plan she’s opened up on screen. If drinking less is the barometer for my husband’s happiness then, yes, he is happier. I have no other means of measurement. ‘I suppose,’ I reply.
‘Has he mentioned any more about retiring?’ Jen asks quickly as she sees me reach for the door handle.
I pause. ‘Not a word.’
Like me, Geoff has relaxed back into the life we scavenged from the wreckage of Meg’s death but there’s something not quite right between us. This year’s anniversary has caused a ground shift that’s unnerving me, and it’s not difficult to trace the cause. Geoff and I still haven’t sat down and talked about his proposition for our premature retirement; in fact, it’s a subject I’ve been deliberately avoiding, and as a consequence, our conversations at home have stagnated.
Our silences aren’t necessarily a bad thing. It’s always been difficult finding something new to talk about when we spend so much of the working day together. It’s why we maintain our separate interests. Geoff has his golf and he leaves me to the day to day running of the foundation. Ours has never been the perfect marriage but I thought we were settled. I shouldn’t have baited Lewis on TV. I should have known I was asking for trouble.
Jen continues to shuffle papers. She’s been exceptionally quiet in recent days but I suppose it’s natural that the uncertainty Geoff’s plans have cast over our future would shake her too. Returning to my seat, I pull out the chair next to me. When Jen joins me, she fidgets with the papers she’s set down on the table. She doesn’t look up.
‘There will come a time when Geoff and I have to think seriously about retirement but I don’t want that to worry you, Jen. When it does happen, we’re not going to simply abandon you, or the rest of the staff for that matter. There’s no harm planning for the future, and that includes yours,’ I tell her, willing her to lift her gaze. When she does, I add, ‘Are you still serious about becoming a counsellor?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then you already have your new path to follow, all you have to do is take it.’ When Jen squirms in her seat, I catch hold of a half-remembered conversation that had been lost in the fog that descended as Meg’s anniversary approached. ‘Wasn’t there a part-time foundation course you were looking at? Shouldn’t you have started it by now?’
‘It was only a vague idea and I didn’t think the timing was right this year. We’ve been snowed under with the Whitespace project and the helpline relaunch, and I know you said the foundation could fund me, but there isn’t the budget and you know it. It’s fine, honestly,’ she adds when she sees me raise my eyebrows. ‘I’ll do it next year.’
‘Oh, Jen, you can’t keep putting these things off.’
‘Yes, Mum,’ she says, only for her smile to freeze when I flinch. ‘Sorry, stupid thing to say.’
It’s hard to predict or avoid the comments that stab at my heart without warning. I love Jen dearly, and there have been times when we treated her more like a daughter than a niece, but she isn’t. Meg is my daughter and always will be, and it feels like a betrayal having the kind of conversation with my niece that I can’t have with Meg.
Bringing Jen back into my life was always going to be a blessing and a curse. My sister-in-law, Eve, had distanced herself and her daughters from her brother’s family as if suicide were contagious and for a time, that suited me because Jen’s presence served only to amplify Meg’s absence. But I’d been furious when I heard Jen had turned down her place at university, angrier still when I found out she was working as a cleaner for Charlie’s fledgling company. I had to do something and I still do. I need to make sure Jen reaches her full potential because I know that’s what Meg would be doing if she were here.
But it’s not easy, and there are times like this when it bloody hurts.
I brush off Jen’s comment with a smile. ‘Just promise me you’ll do something about it. If you’ve missed the September intake then find out if there’s one that starts in January. At the very least, apply for next year and send me the bill. If this is your dream, go for it.’
Jen relaxes. ‘It is, and I will.’
‘Good, because I don’t want you stuck here shuffling papers for the rest of your life.’
‘But I love it here and I’ll do anything to keep the helpline going,’ she says with such conviction that it takes me by surprise.
‘You’re already doing more than enough. Geoff pulled up the stats and was surprised at the increase in activity … although I did have to point out that a good few were put-down calls. You didn’t have any on Wednesday night, did you?’
Jen’s lips are pressed tightly
