Soul Protector (22 page)

She peered into her cup and
nodded.

“You do realise you’ll be
making a huge mistake?”

“Maybe… but it’s better than
waiting for him to dump me.”

“Lyd, I really don’t think
you’ve got anything to worry about with him.”

“But how can you be so sure?”
she said, frowning.

“Because anyone can see that
what you and Phil have is special. You just need to have a little
faith in him.”

She was still frowning.

“Lyd, any relationship can go
wrong, but you can’t throw it all away
just in case
. I mean,
no one can ever be a hundred per cent sure, but he has to come in
at a good ninety-nine.”

She turned and stared into the
middle distance for a while. When she looked back, her lips were
squeezed into a smile.

“You’re right… again.”

“So, promise me you’re not
going to do anything silly.”

She gave me a firm nod.

“Phew. At least I’ve done
something useful today.” I grinned at her and at the same time my
chat with Dan at the lake popped into my head. It didn’t matter how
well you thought you knew someone, you could never tell what was
going on under the surface.
Unless you switched with them, of
course
.

“So, what have you been up to?
Slammed the door in anyone else’s face lately?” she said.

I bit my lip. “I’m so sorry
about that.”

“Oh don’t worry about it. It’s
all water under the bridge now, as long as you promise to never do
that again, alright?”

“I promise.”

Her eyebrows shot up as she
remembered something. “Kerry tells me there was a hot new man in
your life.”

I took a deep breath.
“
Was
is right. It finished before it really got
started.”

“Do you want to talk about
it?”

Not really.

I started to fill her in on
some of the details, being careful not to reveal anything that was
off-limits about the SP world. Lydia, true to form, got bored after
about five minutes and turned the subject back to her, and some big
project she was working on.

Lunchtime over, she skipped out
the café with a big smile on her face. I plodded back to Elevate,
ready to lose myself in work again.

~

I stood in the communal area
and selected a hot chocolate for Arthur and poured myself some ice
cold water from the cooler. I began walking back to my desk but
Camille called out as I passed her office. The pitch of her voice
splintered through my skull. I gritted my teeth and popped my head
round her door, noticing how little paperwork she had in her
in-tray compared to my overflowing one. In fact there was a crack
in the bottom of mine due to sheer weight.

She was reading through some
papers, and didn’t do me the honour of eye contact. “Thought I
should let you know, you didn’t get that writer position.”

I gripped the door handle
tighter as the words crashed inside my head.

It took me a while to find my
voice. “Oh… right. Do you know why?”

She stopped what she was doing,
looked up and sighed. “Do you want me to tell you,
truthfully
?”

“Yes, of course,” I said,
moving further into her office.

“Okay
,
but you’re not
going to like it. After Uncle Don, err, Donald, wasn’t happy with
the quality of that report you compiled the other day, he felt he
had no choice. He says that piece had too many errors; poor
sentence structure and stuff, so he’s lost all confidence in
you.”

“But Camille, what about all
the other articles I’ve written? He’s been happy with those. He
published all of them except that one.” My voice had gone several
octaves higher. It was so unjust. One bad article and I’d blown
it.

This time Camille’s voice was
uncharacteristically gentle.

“I know it’s a big blow for
you, Gracie, but I’ll still let you dabble in a bit of writing now
and again. Anyway, what would we do without you in this
department?”

I looked at her in disbelief. I
could almost feel the walls closing in around me. I thought about
going to see Donald to try and make him see he was making a
mistake, but deep down I knew I was in no position to complain.
This was my punishment for not doing that damn report the other
day, for allowing my primary body to slave away while I crashed at
Lydia’s. What was the saying, ‘if you snooze, you lose.’

“Okay, thank you.” I said in a
small voice, and retreated out of her office.

I plonked Arthur’s hot
chocolate on his desk without saying a word, which wasn’t unusual
these days. Then I sat down with my head bowed and my shoulders
slung forward.

“Gracie, are you okay?” he
asked. “You look terrible.”

“Yeah, just a bit of a
headache.” I was only half-lying. “I’ll be fine when these tablets
kick in.”

I felt beaten. I didn’t want to
just sit there, I wanted to scream and rant and rave. The two rays
of sunshine in my life, Dan and the writer position had disappeared
and there was nothing I could do to get either of them back.

~

My Dad once told me, during a
rare sober moment, that no matter what you do in life you should
always have a Plan B, because life rarely works out the way you
imagine. If you have a Plan B, when the rug is pulled out from
underneath you, you’ll be okay. You’ll know which direction to turn
next.

That was probably the only
piece of useful advice he had ever given me. And I’d disregarded
it. I didn’t have a Plan B.

Now my goal had disappeared, I
wondered how I would motivate myself to work. I’d pinned everything
on getting that job, originally because I really wanted it, and now
I’d broken up with Dan, as a means of getting me out of bed in the
morning. Without that ray of hope all I could see were days of
nothingness stretched in front of me, hour after hour of monotonous
drudgery.

~~~

CHAPTER 17

.

How Could She?

.

Despite the odds, I found
myself at work the following day. I was in zombie mode by then,
just going through the motions. I’d flirted with the idea of
languishing on the sofa all day, but when I thought about it, I
hated that idea even more than the thought of going to work. All
that time with nothing to do but think was scary. So with a lack of
other options, I put myself into automatic and followed the daily
grind.

I braced myself for Nisha’s
onslaught as I tried to race through the reception area.

“Hey, Gracie,” she said,
smiling as she lured me in.

“Oh, morning Nisha, how’s
things?” I asked, trying to focus on her instead of me.

“Yeah, fine. Did you hear
they’re offering the writer position to Sean? I have to say I was
quite surprised. I thought it was yours.”

My stomach muscles clenched as
I took the hit. I focussed hard to keep my face fixed in
neutral.

“Mine? Nooo, I knew I wasn’t
getting it. Good for Sean.”

Nisha pulled a face. “You don’t
mind then?”

“Of course not.” I managed to
smile as I made a sharp exit towards the lift.

I noticed Arthur was in the
weekly meeting and I was glad to be left to my own devices. Polite
conversation was beyond me at that moment. At ten o’clock I went to
the machine to get my third cup of strong coffee of the day. Normal
coffee just didn’t do it for me. I wanted raw caffeine in my body
because the buzz I got from it, which I usually hated, at least
made me feel alive. And I needed to feel alive. I was fed up being
in limbo, floating around. I knew it would only be so long before I
crashed to the ground.

I heard the conference door
click open and the bubble of voices got louder as everyone made
their way back to their desks, or headed outside for a cigarette.
Arthur came and joined me at the coffee machine and by the look on
his face, he wasn’t happy.

“Everything alright?” I asked.
Close up, I could see how cross he was. In fact, he looked
absolutely furious.

“Come and sit down, we need a
chat,” he said through gritted teeth.

I felt my stomach lurch.
What had I done now?
I really couldn’t it if Arthur was
cross with me on top of everything else.

I grabbed my drink off the drip
tray and hit the hot chocolate button – a peace offering for
Arthur, just in case.

I made my way gingerly back to
our work area and plonked Arthur’s mug on his desk, but he didn’t
even acknowledge it.

“What’s up?” I could hear a
nervous wobble in my voice.

Arthur threw the latest copy of
our magazine, Elevate, onto his desk. I could see he was breathing
faster than normal as his fingers expertly flicked through the
pages, stopping when he found what he was looking for.

“This,” he hissed, tapping his
fingers on an article.

I twisted my head round so that
I was at the right angle, and read the headline. My eyes opened
wider as the reason for his agitation clicked into place. For a
couple of minutes I couldn’t speak. I chewed my lip as I carried on
reading.

“It’s your article,” Arthur
spat, “the one Donald supposedly said wasn’t fit to print.”

“They must have changed it,” I
said. “Somebody else must have done it.” It was the only logical
explanation I could think of.

“No.” Arthur was adamant. I saw
his pulse beating away in his temples. “It’s definitely all
yours.”

I had no idea if it was my
original or not. As I read through it, it certainly fitted the
‘memory’ I had of writing it, but I couldn’t be sure. I’d been too
busy switching bodies at the time.

“How do you know it’s
definitely all my work?”

“Because Donald said he loved
it. He was moaning that everything else had been submitted late,
and this was the only one that came through in plenty of time. It
must have been yours.”

“But it doesn’t make sense, why
would he tell Camille it was rubbish?”

Arthur took off his glasses and
looked at me.

“He didn’t. I heard whispers
yesterday that the report he didn’t like was one that Camille had
done herself. But she covered her ass and told him it was yours. I
wanted to tell you yesterday, but I decided I’d wait to see the
finished magazine today for proof.

As I listened and digested the
information, I felt anger begin to surge through me. It radiated
from my brain and reached all the way to my fingertips.
How dare
she
pass off her mistakes as mine?
I narrowed my eyes as
I watched her through the glass in her office, laughing away to
someone on the phone. Did she really think I wasn’t going to find
out? What planet was she from?

“Gracie, don’t do anything in
the heat of the moment. She’s well out of order I know, but you
need to think carefully about what you do next. No knee-jerk
reactions okay?”

I unfurled my fingers.

“Don’t worry Arthur, I can’t
stay here.”

“But aren’t you going to tell
Donald? Once he finds out, I’m sure the promotion will be
yours.”

“I don’t know what I’m going to
do yet, I can’t think straight. The only thing I am sure of is that
I need to get out of here.”

Arthur stood frowning as I
grabbed my coat, slung my bag over my shoulder and stormed out the
office. The last thing I heard was his worried voice calling after
me, “Take care love. Ring me if you need me.”

The lift was going to be too
slow for me, so I raced down the stairs, the exertion helping to
disperse the angry adrenaline pumping through my veins. As I
entered reception, Nisha looked up. She opened her mouth to say
something, and closed it again on seeing my expression.
Wise
move Nisha.
I was in no mood for an interrogation.

I threw open the glass door and
walked out into the sunshine. As I marched to my car, I sucked in
deep breaths of fresh air and by the time I reached my Corsa, I
felt a fraction calmer. I flopped into the driver seat, still
breathing heavily, and hesitated before putting my key in the
ignition. I had no idea what I was going to do. I knew I didn’t
want to go home. I wanted to speak to someone so I could rant about
how unfair everything was and get rid of the tension.

I thought through my options;
Dan’s name popped into my head first and I quickly erased it. Mum
and Kerry were the two people I usually turned to in a crisis, but
I knew Mum would be with a client, and Kerry would be busy in the
salon. I knew better than to call Lydia, she was busy dealing with
her own insecurities. I thought about calling Michelle. I pulled my
phone out and my fingers hovered over the numbers, but then I
quickly dismissed the idea and shoved my phone back in my bag.

I decided I ought to do
something practical instead, to distract me. I reversed out of the
parking space and turned the car in the direction of the local
Tesco Express. While I was driving, another thought struck me. How
was I going to pay for food if I quit my job? I desperately wanted
to leave, but I couldn’t. Not immediately anyway. I was held
hostage by rent and bills.

~

By Friday morning I knew what I
had to do. I breezed into reception late, and Nisha made a huge
point of staring at her watch. She drew in a sharp breath before
speaking. “Gracie, you are really pushing your luck. Camille’s
gonna freak.”

“Not as much as when she hears
what I’ve got to say,” I replied, winking at her.

“Why, what are you going to
tell her?” she called out, but I was already stepping into the
lift.

I got out on the second floor,
and walked through the familiar open plan area. I smiled at Arthur
and Sean, but didn’t stop to talk to them. I didn’t even hesitate
outside Camille’s office. I walked straight in without knocking and
shut the door behind me.

She looked up and scowled, the
phone attached to her ear. She flicked her eyes furiously towards
the door, indicating I should leave.