There was a series of clicks and the phone went eerily quiet.
‘Raj, please can you give us an update on the finance meeting you attended?’ asked Hudson. He looked over at Anna who was jotting notes. She paused and they waited for Raj to speak. Nothing. Total silence. Anna checked the names she had managed to tick off: Raj was ticked off. He was definitely on the call. She shrugged at Hudson. He unmuted their end and started to speak. ‘Raj, are you okay to give us an—’
‘Sorry, I must have been on mute,’ said Raj, followed by an embarrassed chortle. Raj proceeded to run through far too much detail about the very dull finance meeting he’d attended, which had no consequences for their project at all. When Raj finally stopped talking Hudson thanked him and moved on. ‘Carol, Programme Office update please.’ Hudson muted their phone and leaned back.
A loud bark came from the phone making them both laugh nervously. ‘Buster! Quiet. Mummy’s on a conference call,’ said Carol, who was working from home. ‘Hi, everyone, yes. We’ve set up the filing system on the shared drive …’ But Buster was determined to be heard and continued to bark all the way through her update. The only pause was when ‘Todd has left the meeting’ was announced by the automated call system and closely followed by ‘Todd has joined the meeting.’
‘You okay, Todd?’ asked Hudson.
‘My phone keeps cutting out. I don’t know what …’
‘Todd has left the meeting.’
‘Does anyone have any questions or anything they’d like to add?’ asked Hudson.
A jumble of voices all spoke at once, followed by a round of apologies and lots of people politely repeating, ‘No, after you.’ When everyone did exactly the same again Hudson stepped in. ‘Okay. Steve, you had a question?’
‘Yeah, hi, Hudson. The workshop next week, is lunch provided?’
Anna slapped her forehead with her palm and Hudson spontaneously laughed at her. ‘I’m not sure Steve, but I’ll check and get back to you.’
‘Who else had a question?’
There was a long pause. ‘Hi, Hudson, it’s Paul. It’s okay, I was going to ask about lunch too.’
‘Okay, any questions that weren’t about lunch?’ asked Hudson and was met with a bark from Buster. ‘Okay, if there’s nothing else. We’ll catch up again on Wednesday. Thanks, everyone. Bye.’
A series of disembodied voices said bye in quick succession.
‘Todd has joined the meeting.’
Hudson hit the end-call button and let out a sigh as he slumped back in his seat. ‘Sometimes, things are a lot harder than they need to be,’ he said and Anna had to agree.
‘Night night, Mummy,’ said Arlo, looking perfectly angelic. Sophie’s heart melted with love for her first born. He was a monster sometimes but she loved every inch of him more than she could ever explain.
‘Night night, darling.’ She kissed the top of his head and reversed from the room. She’d almost made it to the door when he spoke and her heart sank. All she wanted was to sit down and put her feet up. She’d had a crappy day at work as she’d managed to forget to go to a meeting and send out the wrong documents twice.
‘Mummy?’
‘Yes,’ she said, being as patient as she could be when she’d been on the go for fifteen hours, her back ached like she’d been carrying cement around all day and her feet were feeling puffy.
‘I’m looking forward to animal day tomorrow. Night night.’
Sophie froze. ‘Animal day? What’s that?’ It couldn’t be World Book Day – they’d done that a few weeks ago.
‘I need a costume of my favourite endangered animal. Can I be a dinosaur? They’re endangered aren’t they?’
‘Costume? Animal?’ said Sophie, struggling to form a sentence.
Arlo giggled. ‘Mummy, you’re funny. Costume. Animal,’ he mimicked. His expression changed to deadly serious. ‘It has to be better than Willoughby Newell’s. He’s coming as a turtle.’
‘You get some sleep. Mummy will sort it out.’
Within minutes Sophie was rifling through Arlo’s school bag. At the bottom was a screwed-up piece of paper smeared in mud and some unidentifiable sticky substance. She unfolded it and speed-read the letter. ‘Argh!’ Arlo was right. He needed to wear a costume to school, a costume that represented one of the many endangered animals on the planet as part of Climate Change and World Awareness Week. How could schools do this to parents? Where was she meant to get an endangered animal costume that was better than Willoughby sodding Newell’s turtle at this short notice?
Dave’s face peered around the living room door. ‘You all right?’
‘Arlo needs to go to school as an animal tomorrow.’ The fight was fast ebbing from Sophie as her body gave way to exhaustion and fatigue.
‘How about a monkey? He goes as that every day,’ said Dave, with a big grin. Sophie wanted to slap him.
‘It’s serious, Dave. He needs an outfit and it’s …’ she checked her watch ‘… a quarter to nine at night.’
‘Ah, don’t worry about it. I bet most of them won’t have a costume. He’ll be fine without one.’
‘He can’t be the odd one out!’ Sophie was outraged. Pictures of poor Arlo dressed in his school uniform danced through her mind, alongside ones of all his friends and Willoughby Newell sporting the best endangered species outfits money could buy. ‘You could help more, Dave.’
‘Okay. What did he wear for Halloween? Could he wear it again?’
‘He was a zombie pirate.’
Dave pulled a face. ‘Sorry. Dunno then.’ And he disappeared back to watch the television. Sophie sat on the stairs, clutching the school note, and felt like crying.
The next morning Sophie came flying into the office; her wild hair matched her eyes and the buttons on her cardigan were done up out of sync. ‘You okay?’ asked Anna, already knowing the answer.
‘No. I have been up half the night sewing.’
Anna did the thing where you open your mouth to speak but your brain is going ‘Nope, I’ve got nothing of any use in this situation.’ ‘Sewing?’ said Anna.
‘Yes, sewing. I made a polar bear costume out of an old sheet, a cardboard box and a weird furry scarf thing Kraken gave me for Christmas, which I’m sure was something she was regifting.’
‘You are such a good mum. Any photos?’ asked Anna.
Sophie fumbled with her phone and passed it to Anna. Anna studied the picture of a white mass with drawn-on claws in black Sharpie and a conical-shaped head with yogurt pots for ears. It did resemble an animal of some kind but she would have struggled to identify it as a polar bear. More like a ghostly aardvark. ‘It’s amazing,’ she said, in what she hoped was an encouraging
