I distract myself on the train journey by doing that back-to-work-and-traumatised Cheshire Mama post I meant to do the other day. Most people will never know – I hope – exactly how traumatising that trip back to work really was. I do some housekeeping on my Instagram – so close now to the magic 10,000 that would make me a real player in the social media world that it would be a shame to neglect it – and post the picture of Poppy I took at Ronnie’s gate. There, like it all happened today. If only I could pick and choose what time slot I exist in in real life so easily. Zoom back to a week ago.
On the train, I message Flick to warn her that I’m coming in and then I email the website operator again, as I did as soon as I got home from the lawyer’s yesterday.
‘Just chasing!’
I delete my exclamation mark when I realise I have never written an email I want to exclaim in less.
When I get off the train, the reality of what I’m facing by returning to this office hits. I feel my body start to shake. I walk the five minutes from the station and by the time I am there, it’s worse.
‘Hey,’ I say to Sanjeeta as I sit down. And she is so eager as she leaps up from her desk to hug me that I feel like she has been told to make me feel included. She is my junior; she pities me.
Freddie does the opposite, staring straight ahead, apparently intrigued by a social media graphic.
I turn my computer on and wait for it to power up.
I think about the time I spent painting layers of thick respectability over my messy years and what a fucking waste of time that was. I’m swearing a lot more in my head the last few days. Drinking more. Old me has risen from the dead online, I think, and now she’s making a play for my real life.
‘Morning, Scarlett,’ says Felicity, matter-of-fact as she powers over in skintight jeans and high ankle boots that still don’t make her anywhere near as tall as me. She ushers me straight into a boardroom. As I walk through the door, I see glances exchanged, eyebrows raised.
‘Morning,’ I say.
I sit down and put my hands on my lap. They tremble. It’s not subtle. Felicity sees it too, and looks away. She nudges her glasses back on her nose. Twirls her ruby wedding ring. It’s embarrassing for us both, and I hate that I have piled this on her. My role as Digital Marketing Manager is a senior one, one rung down from the top, AKA Flick, our MD. I am a professional person, an adult. I’m not the woman who hauls her relationship problems to the office or the guy who gets too drunk on tequila at every single leaving do and insults people.
I can be relied upon. ‘One of the grown-ups,’ Felicity used to say with a wink because there are a lot of twenty-two-year-olds in high-tops in digital marketing. I am a grown-up. I put the bins out. I sweep up the toys. I have a grown-up house and husband and life. I have a grown-up job.
And now I am this.
‘Scarlett, I’m so glad you came back,’ says Flick, smoothing down her T-shirt. ‘I would have hated for you to leave like that, over something so …’
She struggles for a word.
‘Sordid?’ I offer. ‘Grubby? Disgusting?’
I am angry with her, for reasons unknown to me. Maybe I’m just angry with everybody.
She stares at me, hard, and thinks.
‘Something so past,’ she says, after a while, crossing her legs to the other side. ‘Something so unrelated to your work. Which is brilliant by the way, as you know.’
I don’t know why this makes me cry, but it does. It feels like a loss. Felicity hands me a tissue then lowers the blind so the rest of the team can’t see in. I wipe my eyes but then I get up.
‘I need to get on,’ I say, decisive. I throw the tissue in the bin. ‘It’s time to work.’
I take out a compact and wipe away AWOL mascara.
‘Not too rough?’
She smiles and hugs me, then gets the door.
‘How is Ed doing, by the way?’ she says, casual. ‘Can’t be easy for him either.’
Flick and Ed aren’t close but they’ve known each other for a long time, as long as I’ve known Ed. After-work drinks when he worked here, the odd double date with whoever Flick was seeing at the time.
‘It’s nice of you to ask.’ I smile. It connects the dots of my life. Sometimes it’s like Ed exists in a vacuum. My mum friends barely know him. ‘Typical Ed. Shutting down on the emotional stuff.’
‘That must be hard,’ she says. ‘For you, I mean.’
I shrug. ‘You know. That’s what I have mates for.’
She winks at me and squeezes my hand and I head out to work. But it’s outside in the huge open-plan office with faces and voices and eyes everywhere that it gets me.
I sit at my desk and know that most people in this room are looking at me and speaking about me. A colleague asks if I want a cup of tea and I see him smirk. I log into my email and feel my skin crawl, thinking about them all, logging into their accounts that day, clicking the link, eyes widening, heads tilting, realising who it was and that this was the gossip of the decade.
Because whatever anyone says, I know. I would have felt the same if it had happened to someone else. Of course it’s gossip. We’re human.
Do they still have it? I wonder. Can they picture it? Bring it up for a laugh at 11 p.m. when everyone’s had one too many wines and then they watch it in the pub like a Man United match? Are they messaging about it right now? I
