“No. I can’t sit here and say I am. I’ve not touched anything in the past weeks, but that doesn’t mean that one setback and I won’t be back down there.”
“Thank you,” she said softly. I think she looked… Not impressed. Definitely not that. Just.
Relieved.
And I allowed myself to breathe. Fuck, it felt good.
“I have some suggestions. I won’t say demands because I am making them up as I go along here.”
“You removed me from the website.”
“We had a major grievance. I have to be seen to react. I did, and suitably so.”
“Agreed.”
“Can you, for once, Oliver, let me speak?”
She was smiling, and just that? I had to smile too. Allowed myself to sink back in the chair.
“I’m really sorry, Juliet. I can’t even… It was just a really…”
“It was bad. Bad choices, bad times and incredibly bad decisions on your behalf. That part is on you. My part in it is equally disastrous. I take full responsibility for not dragging you in here sooner because I knew we had a problem on our hands, and I was quietly hoping you would be able to pull out in time. You didn’t, and knowing what I know now, that was a huge mistake on my part.”
What could I say to that? I wanted to cry. What was it with all this crying? The emotions. All the bleeding emotions.
“It’s…very numbing,” I said, like she would understand what I was getting at. “Sometimes it helped.”
“I understand that. And I need you to understand that that kind of thing is a very normal human reaction. Wanting to block reality out and just be able to escape into whatever works for you. Trust me on this, I’ve been there. Not exactly snorting coke up my nose, but. Yes. My vices are different. And they were not always good for me.”
“We all make…bad decisions,” I admitted. That was a first for me. In here. In this suit. My heart beating…just fine.
“We do. Doesn’t take away from the fact that you lost us a major client, dragged the company into disrepute and, on top of that, flaunted every social media and public engagement guideline in your contract by signing yourself up for a reality show. Under your real name. With your company profile photograph.”
Fuck. I had. I’d forgotten about that.
“Do you want to give me…reasons? Excuses? Were there any redeeming circumstances I completely missed in this? Oliver?”
“No,” I said sternly. Because yes. I was learning lessons. All of the lessons.
Silence. She just looked at me. Juliet. There was so much disappointment in that look. I felt it. I deserved it. I did.
“I want to go see HR and see if they can refer me to medical. I know there is an addiction programme. I would like to see if that would be useful to me, but I understand…I may no longer be employed here.”
“Sneaky.” She smiled.
“Honest,” I said back. Calmly. “I have issues. I am trying very hard to deal with them. One at a time.”
“Good plan.”
She stood up and walked around her desk, picking her phone off the charger. Then she sat herself back down.
“We’re going to go slightly different here. My way. Because this is my company, and I’m not trying to hide anything from HR or sway the rules, but the medical programme we’re signed up with is not…top notch. Let me share that without giving any details. We’re locked in for another year, so I will deal with that eventually. For now, I’m going to send you somewhere else. And this will not be child’s play, and it will not be easy. You are going to go in with your eyes wide open, and when Dr Wilkes tells me you’re good to go? Then we talk. Is that an agreeable interim solution for you?”
I had no idea what she’d just said, but…I nodded. I would have agreed to anything at this point. Having a job. Any job. Just some kind of anchor in the world where I wasn’t spiralling so badly.
I was. Spiralling. I knew that, and right now I was trying to hook anchors into the things I knew would hold. Peter. Work. My flat. My fragile sanity.
“I’m texting Dr Wilkes now. I will send you your appointment details, and you will go. You will also check in with me every day from now on. I don’t care if it’s a Sunday or four in the morning. You check in.”
