“It is.”
“So why is Sarah talking about bringing someone else in on it?”
Sarah was her boss and a woman Kim had always enjoyed working with. She’d stared at Rohan in the mirror. “Who?”
“That curly-haired man, I think.”
“Jeff?Bring him in how?”
“As a project supervisor.”
“But I’m the supervisor.”
Rohan had frowned and run his toothbrush under the tap. “Maybe I got it wrong. It was noisy in the bar; maybe she meant for support.”
“But did Sarah say I needed support?”
Rohan had hesitated. “It was really loud, Kim. I probably misheard.”
In bed, Kim had stared at the ceiling, analyzing her recent conversations with Sarah. Rohan had rolled over.
“Sarah hasn’t spoken to you about needing help to meet the brief?”
“No.”
“Well, look, that’s on her. She should have done that first, before sounding out Jeff at a bar. It’s unprofessional. God, I’m not surprised you’re stressed there.”
“I’m not,” Kim said. “Or, I wasn’t, at least.” She was a little now, though, and it had taken a while to fall asleep. On Monday, she had booked some time with Sarah to discuss the Williams brief. Kim had turned up to the meeting to find that the working outlines of the central design concept were missing from her files. She spent the next three days trying to recover them. On Friday afternoon, Sarah suggested bringing someone else on board to help Kim redo the work in time for the deadline. Kim, embarrassed and frazzled, agreed, and Jeff was duly summoned.
Rohan took her out to dinner to cheer her up and bought her a book on toxic management techniques. He asked her which ones applied to Sarah, and when Kim said none of them seemed to, he’d laughed gently and told her she was always too nice.
Rohan left his phone lying about. On the kitchen counter, on the coffee table. Kim knew the pass code. She had known Charlie’s as well, but Rohan seemed to offer his up as a sign of trust. He was always handing his phone to her, asking her to dig out an email, read from a recipe, get an address from his texts. She did the same, because it felt like something that was important to him, and anyway, she had nothing to hide.
“What did Naomi want?” Rohan said one day as they were cooking dinner.
Kim had glanced up in surprise from the pan she was stirring. “Not much. Just called for a chat.” She hadn’t told him that Naomi had phoned, but it was recorded right there in her call history.
Rohan didn’t say anything, focusing on the carrots he was chopping into neat batons on the wooden board.
“What?” she said.
“Nothing.” He gathered the vegetables together and scraped them into a baking tray. “Really. I’m sorry. I’m just always vaguely aware that everything we say to Naomi or whoever eventually makes its way back to Charlie.”
Kim had laughed. “I don’t think that’s the case.”
“No?” His question seemed genuine as he checked the temperature on the oven. “They don’t all talk to each other like they used to?”
Kim had stopped stirring the pan. “Well, yeah, they do, but—”
“I suppose it doesn’t matter, anyway.” He shut the oven door and flashed her a smile. “Let them talk.”
Kim looked at her husband. “Does it bother you?”
“No. Not at all. It’s fine.”
But Kim could tell it wasn’t. And Rohan maybe had a point, when she stopped to think about it. She became more mindful of what she said on the phone, which was a little tiring but perhaps not a bad idea. She’d recount the conversations later to him, and he’d put forward the odd suggestion or mild objection. And it worked for a while, but Rohan knew every time that someone from home called, and after a while tiring became tiresome. With everything going on at work, it was one more thing Kim could do without.
So the next time Naomi texted, Kim had simply ignored it. She’d flipped her phone over on the couch and turned back to her husband and the movie they were watching, and he’d slipped his arm around her, and life was suddenly easier. She did the same the next few times, and again, and then again, and quite a few months passed before she realized she hadn’t had any calls to ignore in a while.
