Men at Work [Quick Read] (3 page)

It was the next morning and Ian was making his way to his usual bus stop on the Hagley Road. Even though it was meant to be summer, the sky above him was a deep, dark gun-metal grey. It was three-layers cold and the lack of office girls in skimpy tops on their way to work made him wonder if he had missed the memo about the entire season being cancelled. As it happened, a beautiful summer’s day would have been completely wasted on Ian, given his current mood.

Although some fifteen hours had passed since Emma had broken the news that she would be temping in his office for a whole month, Ian was still finding it hard to come to terms with. He had put on a brave face as he took her out to Brindley Place for a drink and a bite to eat, and did his best to fuss over her and make it clear that he was really happy. But the truth was very different. He wasn’t happy. He wasn’t happy for her at all. The more she kept going on about how much fun it would be getting the bus to work together, having lunch together and getting to put names to all the faces of his work friends, the more Ian thought that this was the end of life as he knew it.

“You think I’m making too big a deal out of this don’t you?” said Ian as he and Amar sat in the break room, each eating a bag of crisps. “You’re thinking, ‘Why’s he moaning? It’s not like she’s going to be at the desk next to him watching his every move.’”

“You took the words right out of my mouth,” said Amar through a mouthful of cheese and onion crisps. He swallowed and then poked his tongue around his mouth to clear up any bits. “Look mate,” he said, “don’t get me wrong, I do understand. If it was my missus coming to work here I’d top myself. I mean I love Rukmani to bits and I would lay down my life for her in a second but the woman never stops talking. From the moment I get in from work to the moment I leave, all she does is tell me a whole bunch of stuff I don’t want to know! If you’ve been wondering what Rukmani’s second cousin’s next-door neighbour had for breakfast, I’m your man! If you want to know why the husband of the woman who sits at the cash desk next to Rukmani left her, I’m your man!”

“If you’re desperate to hear what Rukmani’s old college friend Natasha is thinking of calling her new terrier puppies, I’m your man! Mate, if you want to know any bit of news about a whole bunch of people you’ve never met and would never hope to meet then, once again I’m your man. But I’ve met your missus. Emma’s lovely. She’s not a gob on legs like mine. So I don’t quite see why the fact that she’s temping here for a little while is such a huge deal.”

“Because she’s my girlfriend.”

“And?”

“Well I already live with her. So if I start working with her too it’ll mean I’ll be spending twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week with her.”

“So what?” said Amar, shrugging. “People do that all the time. Look at Steve and Annette in Bought Ledger. They live and work together.”

“That’s different. Steve and Annette met at work. The only version of Steve that Annette knew was Work Steve but Emma and I met out in the real world. She has no idea what Work Ian is like. She only knows Home Ian who is kind and lovely and all that.”

“Well, maybe she’d like Work Ian if she met him.”

Ian shook his head sadly. “No, mate, Emma can never meet Work Ian. She’d hate him. She’d think he was a boorish, show-off boozer who spends too much money and a little too much time flirting with his boss’s PA.”

“So ditch Work Ian then.”

“But I love Work Ian. Work Ian makes me happy. And anyway Home Ian only exists because I get to be Work Ian from Monday to Friday. If I have to spend the whole week being Home Ian, I’ll die.”

“Come off it, mate,” snorted Amar. “It can’t be that bad! Look, you need the money don’t you?”

Ian nodded.

“And it’s only for a bit, isn’t it?”

Ian nodded again.

“And it’s not like you can even stop her is it?”

Ian looked at the crisp packet in his hand. Could he stop her coming to work in his office by locking her in the bathroom? It was not a bad idea and, of course, he wouldn’t leave her there. Even so, Ian was pretty sure that Emma would go mental. And if there was one thing worse than working with Emma, it was living with Emma when she was angry at him.

“No,” he said, looking up at Amar, “it’s not like I can actually stop her from doing anything.”

“So the choice is she comes to work here and you make the best of it, or she comes to work here and you make the worst of it?”

“Yeah,” sighed Ian, “it’s pretty much like that.”

“So what’s it going to be?”

“That,” said Ian, “is a good question.” He looked at his crisps and lost his appetite. “I don’t know the answer. But I do know that the best thing right now is to go back to work.”

In the end, Ian decided to be as upbeat about Emma’s new temp job as possible and hang on to the fact that she’d only be at Holling House for a month. Over the next few days he managed to convince himself that it wasn’t such a big deal. He told himself it was a small deal, a very small deal indeed and before he knew it the whole thing would be over and he could go back to normal life. But then at ten minutes past eight on the following Monday morning, just as he had sat down on the loo for his usual ten minute thinking time, his mood was broken by Emma shouting up the stairs.

“Ian!”

Ian ignored her. It was an unwritten rule that he should never be disturbed whenever ten minutes past eight came and he headed to the loo for his ten minute “thinking time’. Up until now Emma had seemed to understand his need for both silence and regular bowel movements but now Ian wasn’t so sure. Maybe in the excitement of her new job she had forgotten the rule. He decided to ignore her in the hope that she might realise her mistake on her own.

“Ian!”

One more chance.

“Iaaaaaaaaaaaannnnnnn!”

Ian had no choice but to stop what he was doing, pull up his trousers and find out what she wanted.

“About time,” said Emma, from the bottom of the stairs, with her coat on and her bag over her shoulder. “I thought you were never going to come out of there! Come on, slow coach, we need to get going.”

“Going?” said Ian. “Going where?”

“Are you joking?” snapped Emma. “It’s my first day at work, you idiot, and I don’t want to be late.”

“So?”

“So I want you to hurry up.”

“But why?” As the words left his lips he saw what she was getting at. “You want us to go in together?”

“Well of course I do! I’m not going to turn up there on my own, am I?”

“Why not? You always turned up at the bank on your own.”

Emma narrowed her eyes. “You can’t mean it can you? Even though we’ll both be working in the same office, you want me to make my own way there?”

“Of course not,” said Ian, even though that was exactly what he had meant. “It’s just that . . .”

“What?”

It was clear from her face that if he told Emma he needed a bit of peace and quiet on his way to work, she would go mad. He needed an excuse and he needed one quick. He found one at the end of his wrist.

“All I’m saying is that if we leave now we’ll be too early,” he said, waving his watch. “Think about it. It’s only ten past eight, Ems! It takes exactly seven minutes to walk from ours to the bus stop. There’s a bus every five minutes that can drop you off at Five Ways. It’s a five-minute walk from the bus stop to Holling House. Then you’ve got a forty-two second wait for the lifts in reception and a thirty-eight second journey to the fourth floor once a lift arrives. If you leave now you’ll be . . .” he did the sums in his head, “. . . a whole thirty-six and a half minutes early.”

“I don’t care about being early!” said Emma. “I only care about not being late, okay? So whatever it is you’re doing in the bathroom just speed it up. I am not going to be late for my first day at work just because you take half an hour to do what takes normal people two minutes!”

********

As Ian walked along with Emma to the bus stop he found his mind beginning to drift. It wasn’t that he wasn’t interested in what she was telling him about her friend Petra’s relationships (although he wasn’t). But Emma’s new job had made him miss not only his ten minutes of loo-based “me-time” but also his seven minutes of iPod on his way to the bus stop. Worse, unless some kind of miracle was about to occur he would also miss out on a further fifteen minutes of iPod listening and staring blankly out of the bus window time, too. He looked at his watch. It wasn’t even half-past eight and already Emma’s new temp job had ruined his day. Really, he thought, as they waited for the number nine, how could this day get any worse? Fifteen minutes and a bus ride later, Ian found out the answer to his question.

“Where would you like me to sit?” asked Emma as Douglas finished the tour of the office right in front of Ian’s desk.

“Now that,” said Douglas, “is a good question. Free desk space is a bit short around here.”

Ian looked at the free desk space next to his own. It had been empty ever since Colleen Newman had left to go travelling. He felt ill. Surely Douglas wouldn’t do that to him would he? Not when there was a free desk next to Amar.

“How about there?” said Douglas, pointing to Colleen’s old desk. “I’m sure Ian will make you feel right at home.”

“One o’clock!” said Emma breezily, looking at her watch. “I can’t believe I’ve already done half a day’s work. The time seems to have flown by, don’t you think?”

“Oh yes,” replied Ian, for whom the morning hadn’t so much flown as sunk without a trace.

“So what are we doing for lunch?”

Lunch?
thought Ian.
Isn’t it enough that I had breakfast with you and will have dinner with you later? Now you’ve got to take away the only meal I don’t eat sitting across from you?

“Er . . . well me and Amar usually just nip over to Gregg’s and bring something to eat at our desks.”

“Sounds like a good plan,” said Emma. “I’ll walk up with you but I’m going to need some cash so I’ll have to go over to the bank at some point.”

Amar came over and started chatting to Emma and then the three of them wandered up to the shopping centre at Five Ways. Reaching the sandwich shop, Emma asked Ian to get her a prawn mayo roll and a bottle of water while she made her way over to HSBC.

“So how has it gone this morning?” asked Amar once Emma was out of earshot.

“Badly,” said Ian as they got into the queue. “Very badly indeed.”

Ian felt it was the single worst morning he had ever had at work. It wasn’t that Emma had done anything wrong but the simple fact of her sitting next to him had killed his whole morning. “It’s like when you’re at school and you and your mates have been naughty, so the teacher splits you all up and one of you ends up sitting next to the class swot,” he explained to Amar as they stood in line at Gregg’s the Bakers. “Emma’s the class swot and that means I can’t have any fun.”

Amar looked surprised. “She’s stopping you having fun without saying a word? I take my hat off to her. My missus has to at least open her mouth to have that effect on me!”

“It must be some kind of Jedi mind trick,” said Ian. “All morning I could feel myself repeating the words, ‘My name is Ian Greening and I will not have any fun at all today.’ And guess what? It’s worked. I didn’t get to finish the Monday morning joke email, or sort out a venue for Chris in Bought Ledger’s leaving do. I didn’t even add the half a dozen rubber bands that came with the mail this morning to our ever-growing rubber band ball. In fact I haven’t had a single laugh all day.”

“So what are you going to do?” asked Amar. “Get her to sit somewhere else?”

“Oh yeah,” replied Ian. “I can really see that happening, can’t you? ‘Ems, you know how you’re sitting at the desk right next to me? Well, as it turns out, it’s putting me off my game so could you do me a favour and sit somewhere else?’ My life wouldn’t be worth living. Why couldn’t Douglas have put her next to you?”

“No, no, no,” said Amar shaking his head. “I don’t need her sitting next to me. Don’t forget Emma and Rukmani are Facebook friends. I can’t have your missus reporting my every move back to mine . . . even if it does save your skin.”

“Still, better you than me though, eh?” said Ian with a grin as he reached the front of the queue.

Amar frowned. “What does that mean?”

“That, my friend, means you’d better get used to the idea of toning down work larks. I’ve got a strong feeling that once I’ve used my gift of the gab on Douglas, you’ll find yourself lumped with a brand new desk buddy.”

********

“No,” said Douglas.

“But you don’t even know what I’m going to ask,” said Ian.

“You’re going to ask me if I can move the new temp – who funnily enough I didn’t even know was your girlfriend until Amar told me five minutes ago – to a new desk.”

“But—”

“Listen, Ian,” said Douglas. “I’d love to help you out but the truth of the matter is that I couldn’t move her even if I wanted to. I’d never hear the end of it if Emma complained to Human Resources that she was made to move desks just because her boyfriend didn’t like it. As much as I like you, mate, I can’t really get involved in stuff like this. Just think,” smiled Douglas, “if you had agreed to take my job, you’d have my lovely office with its own closing door all to yourself.”

“Oh, come on Doug,” whined Ian. “There’s got to be something you can do. How would you like it if I plonked your wife in the desk next to you all day?”

“I’d love it,” said Douglas. “I don’t see enough of her as it is.”

“And that’s all you’ve got to say?”

“Pretty much,” replied Douglas. “You have a good day now, won’t you?”

“Yeah,” replied Ian. “I’m sure it’ll be a barrel of laughs.”