Sarah Mayberry - Her Favourite Rival

Okay, definitely time for coffee.

He made a point of keeping his gaze dead ahead on the return journey and lost himself in his work once he was at his desk. Over the next two hours, the office slowly came to life as the rest of the staff trickled in. He looked up a couple of times as people called out greetings to him, but otherwise he was undisturbed, and he managed to finalize his notes to the supplier.

As nine drew closer, a familiar tension settled into the back of his neck. He waited until nine-thirty before picking up the phone. It was a Monday, after all, and he always checked in with Vera on Mondays.

“Hi, Zach,” she said when she picked up.

“Vera. How are things? Did your daughter have her baby yet?”

“She’s due next week. Although from the size of her I’m beginning to think she’s having twins.” Vera laughed, years of smoking giving the sound a husky roughness.

“This’ll be your third grandchild, right?”

“You’ve got a sharp memory.”

He did. For lots of things, good and bad.

“How’s Mum doing?” he finally asked.

Might as well cut to the chase, since neither Vera nor he was under the illusion that he was calling to talk about the imminent arrival of her grandchild.

“All quiet on the western front at the moment. There might be a new boyfriend on the scene. It’s hard to tell sometimes.”

He pinched the bridge of his nose. A new boyfriend. Great. His mother had disastrous taste in men.

“But otherwise everything is good?”

“As far as I can tell.”

“Thanks, Vera. I appreciate it.” Next time he visited his mother, he’d drop by next door, too, and give Vera a box of the Scottish shortbreads she loved and some passes for the movies. She refused to take anything more from him, even though he’d done his best to convince her otherwise over the years.

“You look after yourself, sweetheart,” she said warmly, then he was listening to the dial tone.

He couldn’t stop his mind from racing ahead to what the future would almost inevitably hold if what Vera had said was true. None of it was good. If his mother had a new boyfriend and he ran true to type, there would be hospital visits in the near future. Police visits, too. Then the inevitable binge as his mother drowned her sorrows post-breakup.

Acid burned in his belly. He’d been looking out for his mother one way or another for more than twenty years, and the cycle of ups and downs was always the same. Never-ending. Relentless. And it was always going to be that way, until the day she died.

Suddenly he felt infinitely weary. As though gravity had doubled, dragging him down. He stared at his desk blotter, lost in a world of worry.

The ping of an email arriving cut through his thoughts. His gaze shifted to the screen.

There was work to do—there was always work to do. Reaching for his keyboard, he pushed his troubles aside and concentrated on the matter at hand.

* * *

THE NEW SHOES had been a mistake. By the time midmorning rolled around, Audrey’s feet were throbbing so much she wanted to sob with every step she took. Every time she was safely behind her desk she toed them off, which only made squeezing her now-swollen feet back into the shoes every time she needed to leave her office even more painful.

A lesson learned. Next time she bought new shoes, she would run a marathon in them before she so much as considered wearing them to work.

The “best” thing was that Henry Whitman still hadn’t set foot in the building. The steam off the office street was that Zach’s guess had been right—Henry had taken breakfast meetings with the company’s top five suppliers. Which meant her early start and painful shoes had all been for nothing.

Awesome.

She had a slew of phone calls leading up to lunch and was about to rush out to a sandwich shop to grab a bite when she saw her fellow buyer and friend Megan hustling past her office with her head down. Spider senses tingling, Audrey followed her to the ladies’ room. She entered in time to see her friend’s face crumple with misery. She didn’t hesitate, opening her arms and pulling Megan close for a hug.

“Is this what I think it is?” Audrey asked.

“Yes.”

“Megsy, it’ll happen,” she said quietly. “By hook or by crook, it’ll happen.”

Megan and her husband had been trying to get pregnant for a while now, having suffered a miscarriage early in their relationship.

“I’m so sick of this. Why won’t my body work? What’s wrong with me?” Megan’s voice was thick with tears, her small-featured face flushed.

Audrey pressed a kiss to her temple and squeezed her a little tighter. Megan was going to make a great mum, and Audrey didn’t doubt for a moment that somehow she would get there, whether through the old-fashioned way or IVF or adoption, but it was a long, exhausting row to hoe.

“Hang in there. It’ll happen. And if it doesn’t, you’ll find a way to make it happen.”

“I know. It’s just...hard.” Megan sniffed loudly and Audrey released her, leaning across to pluck a handful of tissues from the box next to the washbasin.

“Thanks.” Megan blew her nose, then took a big, shuddery breath. “Do I look like a panda?”

They both turned to consider her reflection in the mirror—smudged eyes, sad mouth, wavy blonde hair down to her shoulders.

“I’m thinking raccoon. Or Lady Gaga the morning after,” Audrey said.

Megan gave an almost-smile. “I wish.”

“Want me to go get your handbag?”

“Would you?”

Audrey gave her a gentle punch on the arm. “Even though it’s a feat on a par with landing a man on the moon, I will. Because it’s you, and because I’m that kind of girl.”

By the time she’d returned and helped Megan repair her makeup and talked some more about her friend’s recalcitrant ovaries and uncooperative uterus, the window for sandwich-grabbing had well and truly closed. Audrey was due in her office for a phone hookup with some interstate colleagues. Not that she minded, at all. Megan had saved her sanity more times than she could count, and Audrey would have been happy to hold her friend’s hand all afternoon.

Still, by two-thirty hunger was gnawing a hole in her belly, and she hobbled to the staff room to collect the tub of emergency yogurt she had stashed in the fridge. She did a little air punch when she saw that a generous colleague had left a bunch of bananas on the table with a note taped to them: Help yourself. Banana and yogurt—practically a three-course meal.

She took a seat before pulling the largest and ripest fruit from the bunch and peeling the top off her yogurt. She’d just eased her shoes off and taken a big bite of banana when a tall, gray-haired man in his late fifties appeared in the doorway. She recognized him instantly as Henry Whitman and nearly choked.

“Excuse me, can you tell me where Gary O’Connor’s office is, please?” The man smiled thinly, his gray eyes flicking over her in efficient assessment before taking a quick inventory of the staff room.

Audrey swallowed a mortified moan. She’d dragged herself out of bed at the horrific hour of four-thirty so she could be in a position to make a good first impression on this man, and instead she got to meet him with bulging cheeks and an enormous half-peeled banana in her hand.

She chewed like crazy and tried to force the lump of banana down her suddenly tight throat. The silence seemed to stretch as he waited for her answer, eyebrows slightly raised. She was on the verge of attempting to mime directions to Gary’s office when the banana finally slid down her throat.

Thank. God.

Eyes watering, she summoned what she hoped was a gracious, professional smile. “Sorry about that.” Her voice sounded funny. As though she’d choked down a chunk of banana, in fact. “Gary’s office is the first on your left around the corner. The one with the Father Christmas suit hanging from the coatrack.”