or both.
‘Close the door,’ he said as he took his seat behind his desk. He probably imagined he looked foreboding – but he didn’t. He was too small, too fine a creature, too weedy to intimidate me. I wondered whether his mother still took his trousers up for him.
‘Sit down,’ he said, and I did, straightening my skirt and taking a deep breath. I looked at him.
‘So the dentist?’ he said.
I shrugged, unsure what he wanted me to say.
‘You were there this morning?’
I nodded. ‘I told you that, and I took unpaid leave.’
‘Is your dentist a very Godly person?’ he asked, and I was sure I could see the hint of a sneer.
‘I can’t say we’ve discussed theology,’ I replied. Tone light. Not rattled.
‘Well, it’s just you seem to have been in church this morning, so I wondered was your dentist moonlighting as a priest? Confession and tooth removal a speciality?’ A wave of dread shot right to the pit of my stomach.
I willed myself to think fast.
‘Who? What? I don’t know … what?’ I stumbled, feeling the heat rise in my face as my cheeks blushed red.
He turned his computer screen towards me, and I saw my image frozen in pixels, creeping from the church ahead of the mourners. Looking shifty. Ducking out of view – but clearly not enough.
‘I had to go to the funeral,’ I stuttered, ‘and I knew the company policy about compassionate leave being only for immediate family. I took unpaid leave. It doesn’t really matter, does it?’
That was clearly the wrong thing to say.
‘Of course it matters. We have targets to hit and you took time off on the premise of a medical issue and instead you were getting a nosy at the big funeral of the year. Did you even know her?’
‘It’s not like that,’ I said. The blush in my cheeks was now so hot, I could almost hear the roar of the blood rushing to my face. ‘I saw it. I saw the accident. I was a witness. I had to go. I had to get closure.’
The words were spilling out. My hands were shaking – maybe not enough for Andrew to see but I could feel them jittering as I tried to get enough air into my lungs between my short, sharp sentences. I willed the panic not to take hold.
I saw Andrew shake his head. Heard him sigh. I wanted to scream at him.
‘You know we can’t carry dead weight here, Emily. We’ve talked before about this. About your attendance. About your attitude to being here and being part of the team. You’ve had enough warnings. We can’t keep giving you chances. And lying to management? That constitutes gross misconduct.’
I stared at him. ‘But I had to go. Don’t you understand?’
He shook his head again. I wanted to grab him and shake the rest of his weak, puny body along with his stupid head.
‘And you never mentioned it before now? Really? You want me to believe that?’ He snorted. A short, derisory laugh that made the room spin a little more. All sense of balance, of calm, was leaving me. ‘Regardless, Emily, you know that it’s not good enough. I have no choice but to dismiss you with immediate effect. You’ve had more chances than most. More chances than you deserve, if I’m being honest. I am very sorry it’s come to this but really, you have no one to blame but yourself.’
He sat back in his seat, either oblivious to or unmoved by my growing distress. I tried to find the words to reply, but my tongue felt heavy in my mouth. ‘No one to blame but yourself’ reverberated wildly around my head.
Blame.
It was all down to me. It was always all down to me. Isn’t that what Ben had always said? That I brought things on myself? Then and now – it was a fault I couldn’t escape.
I could hear a faint humming; he was talking again. Muttering about clearing out my desk and leaving immediately. HR would be in touch. He hoped I wouldn’t make a scene.
‘Don’t make it worse for yourself,’ he said, head tilted to the side. False compassion that made me want to cry more than any true compassion would have.
I felt my nails dig into my palms – the sharp, scratchy sensation at least making me feel grounded in the room that was becoming increasingly stifling. I willed myself to get up, to remember the breathing techniques I had learned in hospital. I willed my tongue to loosen – to tell him to go straight to hell. I willed myself to turn sharply on my mid-heeled court shoe and slam his office door behind me. But my legs were like jelly.
No one to blame but yourself.
I stood up, using the back of the chair for leverage. I was vaguely aware that Andrew was still talking but I couldn’t hear. All I could hear was the humiliation pounding through my veins.
Sacked. At thirty-four. With rent to pay on a flat I didn’t even like that much and credit card bills that were already a struggle.
No one to blame but myself.
And Rose, I suppose. For taking my place. For walking in front of me and getting hit by the fucking Toyota Avensis.
But I had let her, hadn’t I? I had smiled at her beautiful curly-haired baby and, touched by her cooing and singing and the baby’s toothy grin, I had said: ‘Mothers and children first’ and let her walk through the door before me.
No one to blame but myself.
I could have stayed and talked to the police. Had some sort of proof to show Andrew I had been there. But I had bolted. Like I wanted to bolt now. Or faint. Or throw up. React in any of the ways one would normally react to a shock.
At least, I thought, as I shovelled the contents of my desk drawer into my handbag without making eye contact with anyone else in the office, the company’s bleak clean desk policy meant I didn’t have much to pack up. A Cup–a–Soup that was long out of date. A mug with our faded company logo on it. A strip of paracetamol. A strip of Buspirone (my anti-anxiety medication, rarely used at work but a safety net in case a panic attack crept in, as they were prone to do, with no warning). A couple of faded business cards. Forty-seven pence in loose change. Three paper clips, two salt sachets and a torn, half-empty pepper sachet, spilling its dusty brown contents in my drawer. A button from a long-forgotten clothing item. Two pens.
Not much of a life. I popped two Buspirone from the packet and threw them back with a mouthful of water. They would knock me a little silly – take the edge off. Probably shouldn’t drive though. Wouldn’t be safe. Wouldn’t be right. And we all know how driving dangerously ends, don’t we?
Might as well have a drink, I thought. End the day on a big fat high of having no one to blame but myself.
I missed the smell of smoke in pubs. The comforting mix of stale smoke mixed with stale alcohol was a signal to the senses
