Cecelia Ahern - The Time of My Life

‘Good morning, Lucy.’

‘Morning, Louise.’ I smiled at her and waited for random question number one of the day.

‘Have you ever been to Egypt?’

I’d been there with Blake. We’d done the whole shebang: ridden camels in the Sahara, sat with the pharaohs, dived in the Red Sea, cruised the Nile. However, Nosy was asking for purely selfish purposes, not so she could float with me in my wonderful memory bubbles. ‘No, sorry,’ I said, and the hope on her face diminished. I went straight to my desk, threw my cappuccino cup in the bin, hung my coat up and headed off to make a fresh coffee. The rest of the team was squished inside the galley kitchen.

‘What’s this? A secret meeting?’

‘Good morning, princess,’ Graham the Cock greeted me. ‘Coffee?’

‘It’s okay, I’ll make it.’ I squeezed past him to get to the kettle. He leaned out from the counter a little so I had to rub against his crotch. I considered kneeing him. Graham was the office cock who had watched one too many episodes of Mad Men and was on the lookout for an office affair. Married with children, of course, he slicked back his hair in a greasy quiff in an effort to emulate his Madison Avenue advertising allies and wore so much aftershave you could tell that he’d arrived by the sweet stench that lingered in the air. I didn’t feel one bit complimented by his smarmy advances; I might have, if I’d wanted to spend a night with Pepé Le Pew and if his advances weren’t directed at every woman who so much as walked within a mile of his pong. To give him some credit, he might once upon a time have been attractive if his venture into a lifetime of commitment with the same human being who wanted to share everything with him including his soul, yet who would never understand the real him, hadn’t killed his internal spark.

I filled the kettle with water.

‘Did you hear?’ Mary the Mouse said in her voice that always seemed to be a decibel under a normal speaking tone. Mary’s eyes were almost twice the size of her head, an amazing miracle of nature. Her nose and lips were dots on her face, hence the nickname Mouse.

‘Hear what?’

‘Now, now, we don’t want to scare Lucy, she’s just walked in the door.’ That was Quentin, named Twitch because of his habit of blinking both eyes twice in twenty-second intervals which increased in meetings or when he was addressing a crowd. He was a nice man, if not a little boring, and I had no problems with him. He did the graphics for the manuals so he and I worked closely together.

‘We’re having a meeting in Edna’s office this morning,’ Mouse said, her little face still and her big eyes moving around like a frightened rodent.

‘Who told you that?’

‘Louise heard it from Brian in Marketing. Everybody’s section is having a meeting.’

‘Brian Murphy or Bryan Kelly?’ Steve the Sausage asked.

Explaining Steve’s nickname was simple. Steve, bless him, looked like a sausage.

‘What’s the difference?’ Mouse asked, eyes wide.

‘Brian Murphy spells Brian with an i and Bryan Kelly spells Bryan with a y ,’ I said, knowing full well that’s not what she meant. I felt Cock’s breath on my neck as he laughed to himself and I was pleased. I was a laughter whore, I’d take it from anyone.

‘No, I mean why does it matter who told us?’ she asked timidly.

‘Because Brian Murphy is full of shit, and Bryan Kelly isn’t,’ Cock explained.

‘I’ve always found both of them to be reputable men,’ Twitch said respectfully.

Mouse pulled open the door. ‘Louise?’

Nosy joined us in the already crammed kitchen. ‘What’s going on?’

‘Was it Brian Murphy or Bryan Kelly who told you about the meeting?’

‘What does it matter?’

‘Because Bryan Kelly is full of shit,’ I said, deliberately mixing it up. Cock smiled again, the only one who noticed.

‘And apparently Brian Murphy isn’t,’ Mouse said. ‘So who said it?’

‘Which guy is Brian Murphy?’ Nosy asked. ‘Is he the redhead or the one with the bald patch?’

I rolled my eyes, made my coffee as quickly as possible and pushed my way through the group. ‘Either way it means more cuts, doesn’t it,’ I said to no one in particular. And no one in particular answered. Everyone just stared into the distance and retreated to their minds, thinking about the personal dangers ahead.

‘I’m sure everything is going to be fine,’ Twitch said. ‘Let’s not all worry.’

But they already were, so I returned to my desk to do my crossword and left them all at it.

Commonplace, lacking originality or wit.

I looked around.

Banal.

When I heard the office door open, I hid the crossword under some paperwork and pretended to concentrate on new manuals as Fish Face tottered by, the smell of leather and perfume following after her. Edna Larson was the boss of our section and looked very much like a fish. Her forehead was high, her hairline started far back on her head, her eyes popped, and her cheekbones were sucked in, emphasised even more by the bronzer she applied to show off their already quite evident height. Fish Face went into her office, and I waited for the Venetian blinds to open. They didn’t. I looked around and noticed that everybody was doing the same. After a while of waiting for the meeting to be called we realised it was business as usual and the rumour had been merely that – which sparked off a small debate about the strength of Bryan Kelly’s word versus that of Brian Murphy.

We went about our morning. I took a cigarette break on the fire escape so I wouldn’t have to go all the way downstairs to get outside, but even though I didn’t smoke I had to actually smoke because Graham came with me. I turned down both his offers of lunch and dinner, and as though understanding that those two things were far too much commitment for me he came back with a counter-offer, so I then turned down his suggestion of no-strings-attached sex. Then I sat with Twitch for an hour over the new super-duper steam-oven manual that neither of us could afford even if we sent all our own home appliances to a pawnshop. Edna still hadn’t opened her office blinds and Louise hadn’t once taken her eyes off the windows, even when she was on the phone.

‘It must be personal,’ Louise said to no one in particular.

‘What must be?’

‘Edna. She must be having a personal issue.’

‘Or else she’s dancing around naked and lip-syncing to “Footloose” on her iPod,’ I suggested, and Graham stared at the windows with hope, planning new offers in his head.

Louise’s phone rang and her perky phone voice replaced her dull tones but she quickly lost her enthusiasm and we could tell there was something wrong immediately. We all stopped working and stared at her. She hung up slowly, eyes wide and looked at us. ‘Every other department has just finished their meetings. Bryan Kelly is gone.’

There was a long hushed silence.

‘That’s what you get for being full of shit,’ I said quietly.

Graham was the only one who got the joke. Even though I wouldn’t sleep with him, I appreciated that he still took time to laugh at my jokes and for that, he commanded my respect.

‘It’s Brian Murphy that’s full of shit,’ Louise said, frustrated.

I pursed my lips.

‘Who was that on the phone?’ Sausage asked.

‘Brian Murphy,’ Louise said.

That was it, we all couldn’t help but laugh and we were joined together for the first time ever in a moment’s laughter during a horrible awkward time in their lives. I say ‘their’ because I didn’t feel it, I didn’t feel worried or anxious or afraid because I didn’t feel like I had anything to lose. A redundancy package would have been quite nice, and quite the bonus after my last job dismissal. Then Edna’s door finally opened and she looked out with red-rimmed bloodshot eyes. She looked around at all of us in what could only be described as a lost apologetic way and for a moment I searched myself to see what I was feeling but the only thing I felt was completely indifferent. She cleared her throat. Then: