Marshmallows for Breakfast (10 page)

“OK, I'll see you,” I said when it became clear neither of us could find the right words.

He nodded.

I turned to leave. As I was walking across the grass I could feel his eyes on me. It felt as though he was watching over me; just like he'd been making sure the children were safe while they were sitting on my doorstep, he was ensuring I made it the short distance into my flat. He actually cared.

As I opened the door, he called my name. I turned back to him.

He tipped his chin up in a nod.
Clean slate?he
was asking.

I nodded back.
Clean slate.

PANCAKES & BACON
SMOTHERED IN MAPLE SYRUP

CHAPTER 8

O
hhh, look, Kendra, a letter from Australia,” Janene called across the office while waving a white rectangular envelope in the air as though trying to flag down a car with a handkerchief.

Everyone in the office—even the two young potential temps who'd walked in without an appointment and were filling out forms and waiting to be interviewed—stopped and stared.

Four of us worked in Office Wonders
Lite:
Gabrielle, me, Teri, who was a forty-year-old mother of four who worked two and a half days a week as a senior recruitment consultant, and Janene, our office assistant.

Janene was a twenty-four-year-old mean girl. And she made no secret of the fact that she didn't like me. Not me per se, so much as Kendra Tamale, head of temp recruitment. She thought that should have been her position, even though she'd only worked with Gabrielle for three months and hadn't had any training in recruitment. It galled her that someone else had been practically airlifted in to do the job and she'd told Gabrielle that she was disappointed in her for not at least giving her an interview. As a result, in the three weeks I'd been here, she obsessively concentrated on the minutiae of her job to derive some kind of satisfaction from gaining the upper hand on me.

It was something I'd experienced the world over: someone who had no power in their lives—be it at work or at
home—took control over the tiniest things and became obsessed with carrying them out to the letter. For Janene it was ruling with a rod of iron her admin duties. Including—actually,
especially
—handing out the mail.

She would go through the post and open anything that she thought was interesting or juicy or would help her know what was going on in the business, then claim she thought they were invoices that needed reconciling. It was pathetic that she got such pleasure from opening other people's mail, but I still wasn't going to put up with it. I'd reminded her it was illegal to open anyone else's post without their express permission and asked her not to open any more of mine, no matter what she thought it was. In response, she did this, called out where the post came from. If it had a return address, she would call that out, too.

“Forwarded from your old office, over there, I think,” she continued, examining the letter as though trying to read what was inside. Had she been alone in the office she would no doubt be in the kitchen, hunched over the kettle, trying to steam it open.

“Thanks, Janene,” I said mildly as my heart began jittering in panic—there was only one person who would take the time to write me a letter and ask my former employers to forward it.

Clearly this was not the response Janene wanted. She came across the office from her desk, pointedly placed it on my desk between my phone and my keyboard and stood, arms folded, in front of me waiting for me to open it.

I didn't even acknowledge it. Instead, I glanced up at the two temps who'd gone back to writing on their pads. The white girl with her hair severely pulled back in a bun still had her head down, poring over her clipboard. The other girl, who had flawless mahogany skin, huge chocolate-brown eyes and shoulder-length, straightened black hair
was looking up, smiling. She'd obviously finished the spelling test.

Pretending I wasn't desperate to see if I was right about the letter, and at the same time terrified to see if I was right about the letter, I got up. “Are you done?” I asked the temp. She nodded.

Brushing past Janene, whose frustration at me not playing along pulsed outwards from her, I went towards the candidate. As I took the clipboard I knew my hands were shaking.
It's from him, I know it is.
Scanning the clipboard, I smiled. “Wow, Kathleen, you've got 100 percent on the spelling test. I think that's a first. If you follow me, I'll set you a computer test. It's not difficult; we just need to get an idea of what programs you're familiar with.” I led her through the archway down the corridor into the computer room, chatting all the way.

I busied myself with the two candidates for the next hour and a half. Talking to them, testing them, interviewing them and then seeing if I had anything suitable for them. All the while, I was actively ignoring the letter that was burning a hole beside my phone on my desk.

A couple of hours later I was alone in the office. The other three had gone out to lunch and I was covering the phones. I finally picked up the letter. Stared at it. The original address had been pasted over with a white sticker, but “Kendra Tamale” was in the original handwriting. It was his handwriting. Thin but full lettering.
Breathe,
I told myself.
Inhale, exhale. Breathe.

The door rattled as it was opened inwards and my heart leapt to my throat. Gabrielle came almost bounding in. I snatched the letter out of sight, under the desk, into the darkness where it belonged.

“There's a guilty look if I ever saw one,” Gabrielle said, shedding her green coat and sitting down behind her desk.

“You're probably right,” I replied. “I was brought up Catholic so guilt is embroidered into the very fabric of my soul.” I ducked under the desk, pressed the letter into the pages of my diary, gently shut it.

“Who was your letter from?” Gabrielle asked, uncapping the plastic top of her soup. It was a vivid red; the pungent aroma of tomatoes and onions filled the office.

“I haven't opened it so I can't rightly tell you,” I replied.

She swirled her spoon in her soup, stirring up the smells.

“Why did you leave Australia?” Gabrielle asked.

I glanced out of the window behind her head, stared at the sky. It was beautiful out. Beautiful and blue, stroked gently with white clouds. When I was a little girl, I used to want to live in the clouds. I wanted to skip from cloud to cloud, to feel myself sinking into the softness, feel its soothing embrace. I was such a daydreamer. “Why do you ask?” I replied.

“When I e-mailed you and asked if you'd come back, I thought you'd tell me to get lost. Five weeks later, you're back. I'm glad to have you, don't get me wrong, but you know, why did you come back from Australia?”

A current of tension ran up my neck, settled at the base of my skull, pummelled at the soft, tender space to the left. It shot forwards, pooled thickly behind my right eye.

I moved my head to the left, to the right, trying to stretch out the tendons. Trying to pull myself together. “To be honest, Gabrielle, I don't want to talk about it,” I said. “It's enough that I'm back, isn't it?”

She scooped soup into her mouth with the deep plastic spoon, swallowed. “What's his name?” she asked.

I pressed the palm of my hand onto my eye, trying to
push back the pounding in my head. I pulled my head from side to side. I wanted relief. I needed relief from this agony.

“What part of ‘I don't want to talk about it’ don't you understand?” I said quietly at Gabrielle.

“Pretty much all of it, I guess,” Gabrielle said, then lowered her head and concentrated on her soup.

To Gabrielle, I was being obstructive. Reticent. For no good reason. We were friends, right? Had known each other ten years. Why wouldn't I tell her my secrets? Share the truths about my departure from antipodean shores. She didn't realize that I couldn't tell her because it'd make her hate me. She'd think so much less of me and I didn't need that in a person I saw every day.

I didn't need to see the look of disgust, nor to hear the lecture on how stupid I'd been. I knew it, I knew it all. But feelings aren't like thoughts, they can't be changed at will. I'd tried. I'd tried so hard, so many times. And it still happened. I still felt it. In the deepest part of my heart, in my soul, when I woke up in the mornings, when I went to sleep at night I was still doing it. I was still in love with a married man.

“Here, take this,” Gabrielle said, scrawling on a yellow stickie. She held it out over her desk and I got up, went over to collect it, then perched myself on the edge of her desk while I read it. “Mick Stein,” his number and his address, which was in Rochester on the other side of Kent, were scrawled on the small yellow square.

“Who is Mick Stein and why are you giving me his number?”

She pointed at my head. “The way you've been rolling your shoulders, moving your head, blinking lots, I'm guessing you've got a pain in your neck.” She let a beat pass and both of us avoided looking at Janene's desk. “He's a chiropractor. He'll
be able to knock your neck back into the right position. And believe me, you'll feel a whole lot better after seeing him. He'll cure whatever ails you.”

A chiropractor wasn't going to cure what ailed me. I doubted anyone could do that.

Gabrielle watched me in that way she did. She, like Jaxon, had a way of staring at you, making you think they knew everything that was working its way through your head; that your heart and mind were transparent and everything you had painstakingly buried was written in huge letters. “Just go. If you don't like him, you can go to someone else.”

“There's a chiropractor down the road—why would I go to the other side of Kent to see this one?”

“Mention my name and he'll give you a discount.”

“Really?”

“No! Just go to the damn chiropractor, Kennie. I don't want you to be in pain when you don't have to be.”

“More like you don't want me to have you up for health and safety.”

“That, too. And to show you what a great boss I am, I'll let you have the afternoon off to go see the most gorgeous chiropractor in the U.K.”

Evangeline, a friend, had just had her script accepted by a film company and was celebrating with drinks in the center of Sydney.

We'd known each other for years in England before she returned home to Sydney and I wanted to support her, so had forced myself to go—even though I'd only know Evangeline, Evangelines husband and one other person.

I plucked up my courage as I walked up the stairs of the bar, pulled back my shoulders, plastered a smile on my face and entered the room. Mild anxiety fluttered in the space between my heart and stomach, my palms were sweating slightly as I scanned the darkened room, seeking out Carrie, the only other woman I knew. I saw her, sitting on the bank of sofas, surrounded by people. I went past the bodies drinking in the bar and made my way over to her. She smiled a hello, but was in midconversation so just scooted up so I could sit down. That action of moving her bum a little to her right instead of to the left was a moment that changed my life. I didn't realize it, of course. I just sat down and waited for her to finish her conversation.

To my right, a knot of people sat, tight in conversation. The man sitting beside me was mentally hovering on the edge of the conversation, his body turned slightly towards them, but his eyes were focused elsewhere. He wasn't there. “You have no idea what they're talking about, do you?” I said to him.

He blinked, turned to me. “Is it that obvious?” he asked. He was British, had a strong clear London accent. For a moment I was transported home, back to the other side of the world.

“Yup, and I'm so telling on you.” This was unusual for me. I was usually so shy, especially with people I didn't know. But I'd decided that, to avoid slinking home feeling like a failure, I had to speak to someone. And since Carrie was otherwise engaged, this man would have to do.

“I'm Will,” he said and held out his hand. “I think you should know my name before you destroy my reputation.”