each and every one of them called out as I passed, ‘not long to go now, Anna!’
And now that young lad Adam from the warehouse was standing in front of my desk with a soppy grin on his face.
‘So how’s the blooming bride?’
‘What?’ It came out much more tersely than I’d intended.
He shifted uneasily on the spot.
‘How are you?’ His grin lost some of its previous sparkle. ‘Not long to go now, eh?’
Why hadn’t I noticed before that everyone at work seemed to talk in trite little clichés?
‘What’s that then, Adam? Month end? Pay day? The end of the world?’ I knew which one was most apt for my new circumstances.
‘Er, no, I meant your wedding, it’s this Saturday, isn’t it?’
‘Ah right, yes, silly me. How could I have forgotten? Ha ha, well, that’s hardly likely, is it, with everyone around here reminding me of the fact.’ I looked up at Adam’s crestfallen face and felt a momentary pang of guilt. I’d clearly just gained another label across my forehead. ‘Office bitch’ as well as ‘office bride-to-be’.
Only I wasn’t the office bride-to-be now, I was the office laughing stock, even if the office weren’t yet aware of the fact. And if they weren’t aware of it now, they soon would be if I returned to work after the honeymoon without that magic ring on my finger, or even on Saturday for the lucky few who had been invited to witness the wedding crash of the year. Oh yes, I was definitely on the fast track to obtaining company notoriety. Maybe I should just climb up onto my desk right now and make the big announcement.
Ladies and Gentlemen! Sorry to interrupt your early-morning internet browsing disguised as working, but my wedding, which seems to be the hottest gossip on the office floor, is officially off! Cue stunned faces and hushed whispers. So maybe we could all stop dissecting the finer details of my non-big day and move on to discussing someone else’s life. Yes?
That customary prickle of shame ran across my skin again. I knew I’d never be able to return to work if the wedding didn’t go ahead, facing everyone’s sympathetic looks, hearing the furtive whispers. No, I just couldn’t do it. I’d have to run off and join the circus or something or find another job at least.
I looked up at Adam who’d turned a fetching pink colour.
‘Sorry,’ I muttered, grabbing the contents of my in-tray and straightening them in my hands, ‘it’s just that I’ve got lots to do here before I can even think about marrying the man of my dreams. Was there something in particular you wanted?’
‘Oh right, yes, of course. No, it was nothing. Nothing important. Just a chat. I’ll let you get on with … your, um, work then.’ He shuffled backwards in to the corridor looking like a man desperate for a means of escape.
Huh, the man of my dreams! Had Ed ever been the man of my dreams? If you’d asked me before yesterday morning then I would have said a categorical yes. Now, he’d morphed into the man of my nightmares and I felt as though I didn’t know diddly-squat about anything.
Mum thought Ed was God’s gift. In fact, I sometimes wondered if she didn’t get on better with Ed than I did! They chatted incessantly, bonded over obscure American TV thrillers and shared silly little jokes. Admittedly she’d put him through an extensive and arduous interview process for the position of ideal son-in-law, over several Sunday lunches, and he’d passed with flying colours. But what would she say when she found out that the golden boy was nothing more than a two-faced conman?
He’d appeared to be all the things a mother would want in a potential son-in-law: he was kind and friendly, clean-cut and polite, with impeccable manners and good prospects. In fact, he possessed all the things a woman would want in a potential husband, but all those good traits had now been wiped clean away by the discovery that he was just another low-life, lying little toerag.
I took a sip of my coffee, put down the wad of papers in my hand and clicked on my inbox. Ninety-six unread emails in one day. Yuk. I had no idea where to start, what my job was even or what I’d been doing when I’d left the office on Friday night, – full of hope, heading off for my last weekend as a single woman. Now it would be forever remembered as my last weekend as a happily engaged woman before the bolt of lightning struck, with the upcoming weekend looming like a toxic cloud over my head. Somehow I had to get through the next few days pretending everything was normal and that I was perfectly capable of carrying out my job, which at that moment seemed way beyond my reach.
‘Anna?’
I jumped and my hand flung out involuntarily, knocking my mug of coffee and spilling the entire contents over my desk. The huge heap of papers I’d been aimlessly shuffling around were now drenched.
‘Oh, Christ! What is it? Look what you made me do! If you’ve come to make small talk about my wedding that’s very nice of you, but I really don’t have the time. I do have a job to do, you know, and if I don’t get this lot cleared by Friday, then there’s every chance I won’t have a job to come back to.’ I picked up the soggy mass of papers and held them up in the air over my bin, watching the brown water drip out. They were past saving, I knew. I slumped down into my seat and finally looked up with a scowl at the person who was frankly the cause of my current damp predicament.
‘Oh shit! Helloo!’ I said, sitting up straight again in my chair. My boss, the official holder of the title ‘Office Bitch Numero Uno’ was looking at me darkly.
‘Everything okay, Anna?’
‘Yes, yes, absolutely fine. Sorry! Just spilt my coffee.’ As if that really needed explaining.
‘Yes. I can see. Well, I’m glad to hear you’re attempting to clear your desk, but had you forgotten about our meeting?’
‘Oh shit!’ My three-month review with Nina Palmer, how the hell could I have forgotten? The meeting I’d been dreading for weeks, it had been uppermost in my mind until yesterday when it had been trumped in spectacular style by the discovery that my boyfriend was a complete shit. It was the meeting where she would tell me how I’d been getting on in the company and whether I had any future with them. Judging by her tight-lipped expression, I guessed I already knew the answer to that one.
‘I am so sorry,’ I said, apologising in my head for the over-use of the shit word, which was the only one that seemed to want to come into my head at the moment and then apologising for completely forgetting about our meeting. I glanced at my watch. It was 9.25 a.m. and from the recesses of my memory our meeting was set for 9.00 a.m. I was clearly not in the line-up for the ‘most punctual employee of the month award’.
‘Get yourself cleaned up and then come into my office, would you?’
‘Yes, yes, of course,’ I said, feeling my skin turning a bright shade of pink as Nina waltzed off.
Oh well, this is just bloody marvellous, I thought, when I returned to my desk armed with a wad of kitchen towels, making a half-hearted attempt at mopping up the mess. Somehow not only had I managed to alienate my fiancé and send him running into the arms of my best friend, it looked as though there was every chance I could lose my job as well and all in the space of a couple of days. Everything was Ed’s fault. I looked down at the warm soggy patch on my jeans and sighed again. Had I got dressed in the dark this morning? Jeans and T-shirt, what had I been thinking? I never dressed so casually for work. If I’d been looking to make a good impression, I’d clearly failed.
‘So,’ Nina said, when I stumbled in to her office and she beckoned me to sit down opposite her, ‘how do you feel your first three months at Purcells has gone?’ She sat back in her chair, and crossed one stockinged leg over the other.
‘Okay, I think.’
‘Just okay?’
What the hell did she expect me to say? I’d been stuck in the corner of the office entering invoices and manipulating spread sheets for three months. It was hardly