It was a bit vague and about as witty as a tax audit, but she hadn’t the heart to be her usual sparkly self.
She sat gazing at the phone and drifted into a reverie. She closed her eyes and remembered his mouth bumping against hers .?.?. his weight pressing her back against the rough wall.
Just then her phone jangled, making her jump.
‘Howaya, I’m on my vape break.’
‘Oh, hi, Rosie.’
‘I’m in bits. I keep looking at your empty desk. So does Crystal, she says it reminds her ofMarley & Me.’
‘What?’
‘You know at the end, when the dog dies and all they have is his bed .?.?.’
‘Jesus .?.?.’
‘I mean, not literally. I think she meant well. Obviously, you’re not a dog. Or dead .?.?.’
‘Listen, Rosie, I meant to say, I’m really sorry. I hope I didn’t get you into trouble, putting your name on that stupid email. Has anyone said anything to you? I texted William, have you seen him around?’
‘No one’s said anything, we’re just keeping our heads down. The fact that nobody replied to the email means it’s probably over.’
So, there’d been a cull and now the pack would re-form. That was how damage was contained in organisations.
‘Right.’
‘So, what’re you doing now?’
‘Feck all. Eating.’
‘Sure, what harm? Oh, listen, here’s the CFO, I’d better go. Look after yourself.’
And she was alone again. Having admitted to eating as a coping strategy, Ally decided that she’d better get on with it. She opened the fridge and had a look. It contained all the ingredients she’d splashed out on for her ‘eight foods to a sexy body’ diet. Which could have worked beautifully if only she’d stuck to them, rather than seeing them as a starting-off point.
But then, at the back, hiding under a pack of smoked salmon, she found a box of Butlers chocolates left over from a dinner party six weeks ago, waiting for the perfect moment to be shared with friends. Feck that. She settled on the sofa, wrapped herself in a fluffy blanket and tore open the box, biting into each one slowly, letting the chocolate melt in her mouth, blocking out everything else. Mocha, double chocolate truffle,crème brûlée .?.?. She allowed her thoughts to wander back to Francis and the old feeling of living as a couple, how the world was created by both of them, and even if it hadn’t been perfect, it had been safe. Now, the worst had happened: she’d got herself booted out of her job, albeit not one she particularly liked .?.?. but still, here she was .?.?. at eleven thirty in the morning, facing a jobless future .?.?. alone.
By now the chocolates were just a memory and she was starting to feel slightly ill.
Well, she clearly wasn’t going to go anywhere for the rest of the day, so she closed the recently opened bedroom curtains and got back into the unmade bed. After a traumatic night of hyper-alertness, her body sagged with relief and she sank into a deep sleep filled with dreams of emails, except that they were actually slippery weasels who vanished into burrows. Then she kept catching sight of William but, no matter what direction he turned, she could only ever see his back.
* * *
She woke to find the light starting to fade. Oh dear, she was already slipping into a netherworld, the opposite of normal working people. She was becoming an unemployed vampire. Just then her heart leaped to see there was a message .?.?. from William. She snatched up the phone in excitement, only to find it was .?.?. a thumbs up. Disappointing. Better than being totally ghosted but only just. What she longed for was a lovely text chat where she could share her feelings with him, and he’d be understanding but sensible in a blokey sort of way and play everything down and put it into perspective. They might even laugh at the whole thing. Because right now there was feck all funny about it.
Rosemarie had gone away after work on a quilting weekend somewhere down the country, so Ally was left sitting alone on the sofa, wrapped in the blanket, dressed in only her knickers and pussycat-bow blouse, stewing in her own shame and loneliness – and everything in her life felt as though it were tinged with green furry mould.
There was only one thing for it: romcoms. But her old favourites –Love Actually,Four Weddings and a FuneralandNotting Hill– all felt pathetically naïve and dated. Everyone was just kooky enough to be cute. The heroine didn’t look at all like a bolster in a flowery dress and no matter how chaotically the pieces of the love-jigsaw were flung in the air, they landed in a perfect, if highly unlikely, pattern.
Real life, on the other hand, was shite.
So, she decided on a good old western. There was something about Kevin Costner inDances with Wolves, alone on the frontier in those big empty landscapes, which was kind of how she felt right then in her one-bedroom apartment that everyone told her she was so lucky to have bought earlier that year.
She found herself drawn into the story of a man connecting with the totally unfamiliar world of Native Americans, but who was smart enough to recognise that there was another way of life apart from his own. That’s how people should be, she mused philosophically, before suddenly being hit with a flashback about the stupid email and panicking. Oh God, just wait till her family heard about this one.
As the credits rolled, she looked at her watch. It was 7 p.m. on Friday evening, so a perfectly reasonable time to open the bottle of Merlot (budget) left behind from the same dinner party, which she’d found stashed behind a bucket in the kitchen.
She sipped the first glass and ran through her options:
