CHAPTER 57
This was it. I had prepared as best I could, with the ‘carry letter’ Alec had insisted on drafting before he left at the weekend, the ‘spy tit’ as Larinda had christened it working, and the best preparation and presentation I had been able to manage that morning. I looked up.

“Morning, Graham. I’m on an office day today”

“But…shit…”

“Coffee? I’m making one”

Graham Thorpe, another control Officer, was standing open-mouthed in the doorway. He had a file in his hand, and one by one the loose pages were slipping out and falling like autumn leaves. I couldn’t keep up the pose.

“It’s a long story, mate. Pick your bits up and I’ll get a brew, then I’ll talk you through it, aye?”

“You…oh hell, you must be crapping yourself if I have this right. Shit. Oh, just get me a white one, no sugar”

There was nobody else in the little kitchen, thankfully. I had picked the Monday as my office day because most staff would be out, and it normally allowed me to get more work done without the constant interruption that gossip brought. That Monday it also meant I had time to find my feet before the deluge.

I have no real passion for cosmetics. My skin is old enough that a lot of the stuff would just look silly, and I have always seen that heavy foundation stuff as making a girl look plastic. I knew there would be beard shadow, but that would be eradicated one day, and so I stuck to simple touches. A couple of colours round the eyes, mascara and some lippy did all I wanted. It had been good enough to fool blokes in the night club, but then again it had been dark, and they were on the way to being drunk. Graham, though…I carried the cups back into our office, where he sat trying to put his bits of paper back into order. Setting the drinks down, I took my seat, and he watched as I automatically swept my skirt forward to sit.

“That bit sort of answers it, Rob. I was wondering if this was some odd, early, April first crap, but no, it’s you, isn’t it?”

“It’s Jill, Gray. Here, have a read, this should tell you most of it”

Alec had been most insistent. “Think about it, Jill. You are in the bogs, doing what you need to do, and some silly woman complains. What do you do? I mean, you like your skirts and they hardly fir the dress code for the gents’, do they?”

Fossy had been listening to that one, and he and Neil just shared a look. Alec caught it, and started to laugh, and that was a sign of his, their, healing that I had been longing for.

“Yeah, yeah, I know, but I was never into cottaging! You two are beyond words sometimes!”

That Monday, though, Graham was poring over the letter, brow furrowed. He carefully folded it and placed it back into the envelope, all without looking at me, then his eyes rose to meet mine.

“You poor fucker. This why you split up with that Welsh bint?”

“Siobhan? Aye, more or less. We had a discussion, and she sort of threatened me”

“And that new piece? The one with the grin?”

That surprised me. I would have expected him to have commented on her possession of tits, or legs, or an arse, but a grin? That was looking more deeply at a woman than I had expected him to do.

“Larinda, aye?”

“Yeah, that one. She knows, obviously, if you’re shacked up together. She OK with, well, ‘Jill’?”

His fingers made quotation marks in the air, and I sighed. “She is going to have to be, Gray, because this is what I am”

Rachel chose that moment to cease hovering just outside the door and enter, carrying her own drink. “Jill, what are you doing about seeing the AD? Needs to be done, girl”

Gray shook his head. “Might have known you’d be in on this. I thought you two, you know, were playing hide the sausage”

I suddenly found everything extremely funny, and they let me laugh myself out and waited in slight but obvious puzzlement. Graham raised an eyebrow. “You want to share that?”

“Graham, the only sausage-hiding Rach is doing involves some Northern gorilla, and as for me, well, it’s a bit well-hidden right now, aye?”

“Fuck me, if MAC had known…”

That one set Rachel herself off, and we needed the tissues, and the repair kits from our bags, and Graham just watched, shaking his head every so often in negation. A decision sparked behind his eyes.

“Look, er, Jill. The union man is out today, but if you want, you know, with the AD, I could come in with you…”

“Thanks mate, but Rachel has already---unless, Rach, better mob-handed?”

She nodded. “Yeah, like steaming, too many for him to pick one out”

I picked up the phone. “Penny, is Mr Asher busy at the moment? No? Can I pop in for a bit? OK, in ten? Ta!”

I looked across at the other two. “Well, aye, we have coffee to drink and I have the shakes to master”

Rachel snorted, and Graham looked at her, and then he was off again, and I just caught the word ‘mistress’ before he was lost. Rachel sniggered a little, but in the end she sat patiently with me as Graham recovered.

“Gray…”

“Yes?”

“MAC, yeah? John? He does know. We actually see quite a lot of him now. Had dinner with him at the weekend. He’s, well, he’s sort of seeing the world a little differently now”

That was neat. She had described his problem exactly, but without revealing anything personal. Graham’s eyes were wide.

“You are being sociable with that little shit? After…”

His voice trailed off, and he sat looking from me to Rachel and back again. Shaking his head, he muttered something about buying a lottery ticket, given the way the world had upended itself, and then stood.

“Come on, girls. We need to go and see Brian”

Down the corridor we trooped, and I tried to keep my eyes forward as we passed other rooms, but there was the odd eruption of swearing, or a murmured ‘wasn’t that…?’ from three or four. Rachel took charge.

“Thank you, Penny, we know the way”

She opened the door, behind which the big boss was working on some file or other. He didn’t look up.

“Take a seat, Rob, be with you in a sec”

Graham popped the door open, shushed Penny quietly, and brought another chair in. As he sat, Mr Asher lowered his pen and sat back rubbing his eyes.

“Right, then, what---Jesus bloody wept, what the hell is this?”

Rachel held out a hand. “Letter, Jill”

“Jill? Oh, thank you, Rachel, is this….”

His eyes fluttered over the letter, mouth moving as its import became clear.

“May I take a copy? Thank you. Penny!”

She was at the door, looking like a rabbit caught in headlights.

“A copy, please. Now, Rob---“

“Jill”

“Jill, fine, OK, Jill, but could this particular bombshell not have arrived subsequent to a warning? Allow us to decide what course we are to take with you?”

Rachel’s head was back. “And what course is there to take other than to carry on as normal, Mr Asher? I do believe the guidance is quite clear”

“Yes, Rachel, but…”

I held my hand up. “Please. This is hard enough. Look, boss, you’ve read the doctor’s letter, aye? You know the score. What you might not understand, like, is that I don’t really have a choice in this particular dance. I’ve taken the dance in question right up to the edge, and I am trying not to go over. This was my decision, mine alone, but I have enough good friends around me that it ended up being a sort of consensus thing. Put simply, I had to do this one day. I can’t hang around on the edge of the water dipping a toe, I’m a coward, aye? So I had to do it quick, like ripping off a plaster, or a wax strip”

I saw Rachel wince, and I shared her pain. Well, once a month or so I actually shared it, but she knew what I meant. I pressed ahead.

“Look, I would have dithered and worried and skated all around the issue, but my partner, my friends, they saw better than me. Get in, get it over with. That’s what this is”

Asher steepled his fingers. “I see. And you know that there is no way that you can put this particular genie back into its bottle?”

“Aye, I do. That, with all due respect, is the whole bloody idea. Now, what next?”