Back in London, the city feels too crowded, too loud, too frenzied. Though it’s less densely populated than New York, there’s still a suffocating atmosphere with cars and lorries and cyclists piled up on top of each other, always impatient to get somewhere. Sirens and construction equipment relentlessly split the air, and the parks feel small and claustrophobic after the wide-open spaces in Michigan. Time skips and sprints here, and I find myself missing the slower, shuffling pace. City life offers no refuge for real peace and quiet or undomesticated nature, and it gives me a persistent, low-grade headache. It doesn’t snow, but just rains, and the damp coldness cuts to the bone without the benefit of Michigan’s winter-wonderland splendor. And after a week back in a small town where the neighbors all knew my name, it feels brutally anonymous among the throngs of strangers who don’t even offer eye contact.
I’m more homesick than when I first moved over, and a vibrant vision of a house of my own in Michigan with dogs and kids and a husband who makes Kit Kat pies on my birthday keeps flitting through my mind like a fly I can’t swat and don’t want to.
I start going into the office every day. The last thing I want is to be sitting alone in my flat, looking out the window to catch a glimpse of Rory on the bus. And now that I’m leading the case, I feel an increased level of investment in my work. Though I still don’t agree with Turpi’s fossil-fuel business model, I want the project to be successful so it clinches my promotion at the end of the year.
Going into the office is worth it, even if I do have to endure Harold and his obnoxious airs. What HR is doing—or not doing—about him is still very much on my mind, but I’m not in the headspace to check in about it just now, especially with all the increased pressure I’m under as the proxy partner.
During my first week back after the break, Harold calls me into his office. I expect him to want an update on the projected cost savings, or to make another snide remark about how I never join him for drinks. But it goes differently than I expect.
“Kat,” he says, looking up from his swiveling desk chair. His spray-tanned face is splotched with more orange than ever, and his sagging cheeks look reinflated with fresh fillers. “No more Kitten this year—how’s that?” He smiles his seedy smile, looking like I should be thanking him for this.
When I don’t say anything, he carries on, clanking his pinky rings together for something to do with his hands. “I did just want to … apologize,” he says, like the word is difficult to grit out, “if you didn’t quite enjoy that night at Annabel’s.”
There’s a flicker of something in Harold’s eyes—maybe embarrassment for his actions or more likely just trepidation about what might happen if I escalate this up the chain and involve the board of directors. “Thought it was just a bit of fun,but I sense you might view it differently,” he goes on. “And I’m sorry about that—I am.”
Abruptly, he comes to a halt, as if he’s reached the end of his earnings call script.
Now is my chance to say something. To speak up and stick up for myself. To protect any women he might prey on in the future. But I find myself oddly disarmed by his apology—or half apology at least.
“It’s okay,” are the words that come out even as my brain is screaming,It is not okay! Make him pay for being the pig he is!“Let’s just move forward?”
Harold’s face splits with relief. “Brilliant,” he says, stroking his head with his hands as if he thinks he still has hair. “Just brilliant. Well, glad that’s sorted.”
And just like that, he switches the conversation over to the latest metrics from the automation rollout plan and the bottlenecks we’re facing on the operations side.
Back in my own office afterward, I gaze out the window, at the cluster of clouds hanging over the Thames, dulling the water. Everything feels as monochrome as it looks.
Replaying the conversation that just took place, I launch into a string of self-attacks. I shouldn’t have rolled over so easily. Maybe it’s because of how conditioned I’ve been to be a people pleaser. To be the good girl and not cause conflict. Or maybe I let it go because I’m just desperate to move on and forget what happened.
That afternoon, I get an email from Helena in HR.Heard you connected with Harold—glad all is well. Wishing you a Happy New Year.
It lathers my skin with a grimy, guilty feeling.
When I get back to Marlow House that night, I collect my mail, which gets dropped through the slit in the door every day. Amid the water and electric bills (which I have no intent on opening, thanks to online payments), there’s a coupon for Nando’s on Upper Street and then a plain envelope that just saysKat.
Opening it, I find a thank-you note from Rory for the flights, signed by his whole family. Rory’s handwriting is just about the opposite of calligraphy—stick letters that aren’t straight, but it looks like he’s tried very hard to make them even at least.
I wish he’d written Kit Kat, not Kat. The one syllable feels very stiff and formal. Like it’s proof he doesn’t want to be friends with me now that he’s back with Emily.
There’s no stamp, so he must’ve come by to drop it off in person. I wonder if he buzzed up to see if I was home.
I text him a thank-you for the thank-you. I nearly tell him that I spoke to Harold today. I nearly see if he wants to come over for gelato and a movie (no rom-coms). But I don’t. He’s with Emily now. Our friendship is as good as dead. As is the potential for more than friendship.
It’s all gone now, before it ever really existed.
Things are manageable in the weeks that follow.
Harold tones down the level of his comments from crude to cringeworthy, and he mostly leaves me alone in my office. As I lead the case into its final stretch, we’re on track to meet the deliverables and time lines.
As part of those time lines, Turpi announces another round of layoffs. I feel more than a little responsible since it’s part of thecost-savings plan I’ve helped come up with after Harold and his team shot down the clean energy idea. Because they’ve refused to invest in new revenue streams, their only option is to slash costs, which means that thousands of people in Turpi’s factories, and the headquarters where I work, are suddenly made redundant.
I soothe my conscience by telling myself that this is just how the corporate world works. Everyone knows that going in. Businesses aren’t married to their employees. They don’t have to commit to them for their whole lives. Firing people is just a natural part of the economic cycle.
But it’s harder to stay unattached when there’s a forlorn-looking man in the elevator with me at the end of the day. He’s carrying about ten different plastic bags, all stuffed with different office supplies, as if he cleared out his desk in a hurry, without forewarning.
He drops something on the elevator floor. I bend over to pick it up for him. It’s a framed photo of the man with a little girl hoisted on his shoulders. Above the photo, there’s one of those fill-in-the-blank prompts: “My hero is …”
The little girl had filled it in with shaky handwriting:My Daddy.
