‘I don’t think he would’ve responded to a simple cease and desist request or I would have made it.’
Roger’s nostrils flared.
‘You could’ve come to me at several points to have me sign off on what was best to do. Instead you saw the trust I placed in you as licence to indulge in sophomoric sniggering and inflame the situation further. Do you have any idea how this is going to look when I have to explain it to Councillor Grocock?’
And there it was. Roger had a flea in his ear, so he was bloody well going to pass the flea on to Delia. Only by this time, the flea had become the size of a walrus.
‘Do we have to say we’ve been in touch at all?’ Delia said.
Roger went puce.
‘Yes, we do. Your attitude towards what constitutes proper disclosure is extremely worrying. I’m giving you a written warning and it will go on your file,’ Roger said.
‘That’s not fair,’ Delia said. ‘I was working undercover with special rules …’
‘You were not undercover when he contacted you on your email here! Do you have any idea how he knew you were looking for him?’
Delia miserably shook her head.
‘Your achievements are exactly nil. Game, set and match to the Naan.’
It occurred to Delia that the Naan might not have finished making her look bad. The Twitter account hack signalled unlocking a new mischief achievement level.
When Delia got back to her desk, she started as she saw she had an email from the Naan waiting for her. She felt considerable anger towards this invisible architect of her misery, and had absolutely no freedom to say so.
Hey: what if Councillor Hammond meant his bleached bumhole looked like a RUBY grapefruit? Make you think.
She hit delete.
Delia doubted her day could get any worse.
Then mid-afternoon, everyone uncharacteristically got out of their chairs. Delia glanced around in confusion.
‘Fire drill?’ she asked Mark.
‘Team-building thing,’ he mumbled, apologetically.
Delia noticed he was sheepish because she was getting the sotto voce tone reserved for someone in trouble. She had been branded with The Dark Mark, and no one wanted to be seen colluding and fraternising with her for the time being. It was vaguely ridiculous.
Roger might favour a degree of quivering melodrama – Delia wondered if it was his way of offsetting a very quiet life of chess and golf – but she didn’t see why proper adults had to play along.
They trooped down to a meeting room on the next floor. There was another whiteboard at one end, this time with a list of commandments, an agenda for discussion. (No.4 was ‘Overcoming Diversity’, which Delia was pretty sure was meant to be ‘adversity’, but she wasn’t going to mention it.)
Once they’d all been herded in the doorway, a woman in a plum two-piece skirt suit with a badge bearing the name LINDA addressed them all. She had the air of worn down but persistent jollity that could only have come from twenty years ploughing the ever-decreasing returns of the regional training circuit.
They couldn’t sit down because the desks had been dragged around into a formation that Delia couldn’t fathom, with one sat on its own in the middle.
‘Good afternoon! Are we happy campers?’
Muttering.
‘Oh dear, that’s not very upbeat. I said, ARE we all HAPPY campers?!’
Slightly louder mumbling.
‘We’re here today to run a workshop that’s going to leave you all with an invigorated sense of what you do, and who you do it with!’
Delia glanced sidelong at Ann. She didn’t want an invigorated sense of Ann.
‘First up, the purpose of the Table Fall exercise is to create a sense of trust in co-workers.’
Oh God no, they were doing the ‘falling backwards and being caught’ trust thing? Had the city council finally got wind of this decade-old fad?
‘This is about how we support each other and co-operate to create a real physical sense of togetherness as a team.’
Delia didn’t want that either.
‘Who would like to go first, and win extra bravery points?’ Linda twinkled merrily, in the manner of all perky sadists.
Delia’s colleague Jules put her hand up.
‘Right, so if we have the volunteer step onto this chair, and everyone else stands like so, with arms outstretched and linked, to create a net …’ Roger said, suddenly Linda’s helper. Delia betted he’d done that to distract from the fact he wouldn’t be doing it, and risking them all dropping him.
Delia reluctantly joined the group who’d made a hammock with overlapped arms and winced at how embarrassing this was going to be. She was in a flared cotton skirt, what if it flew up when she flew down? She had a phantom shiver at the memory of aggressive, knicker-flashing birthday bumps at primary school. In fact, this situation bore uncanny resemblance – the pretence of positivity masking intent to humiliate, with no option to decline.
Nice, obliging Jules was helped onto the chair, and the desk.
She looked nervous. To be fair, everyone looked nervous; Jules had done Lighter Life last year and then relapsed badly.
Jules turned round, tried to lean back. Everyone tensed. She squealed: ‘I can’t let myself!’
‘Harder than you think, isn’t it!’ trilled Linda, delightedly. ‘It can be surprisingly difficult to let go.’
‘It’s not advisable to mimic fainting from furniture, is why,’ Delia said. She knew she was getting herself into more trouble but she felt too mutinous to care.
Linda turned the swivel eyes of a fanatic upon her.
‘Exactly! Unlearning our inhibitions is real work. De-inhibitisers bring us closer together: emotionally, socially, even spiritually.’
‘I’m the only Christian,’ Ann said.
‘Spirituality can take many forms,’ Linda said, sweetly.
‘That stuff with the aliens that the actors do isn’t religion,’ Ann retorted. ‘Jesus was the son of God, not the son of Zod.’
Linda looked confused and Delia found herself unexpectedly giggling at a bona fide Ann zinger.
After two false starts, Jules let herself drop backwards onto their arms, the slippery sweatiness among the interlinked hands palpable.
As Jules fell towards them, Delia had an awful premonition they’d fail her and she’d perish in the world’s most ludicrously unnecessary death. Spin that, council.
As it was, they staggered slightly but they supported her with ease. Or, they thought they had, until a bloodcurdling scream was emitted.
At first, Delia thought it was Jules, but Jules was still horizontal, blinking up at them. She looked as frightened as everyone else.
As they set her on her feet, Delia turned to see Ann sat on a chair, holding her arm out in front of her, face contorted in a rictus of pain.
‘My arm! My arm!’
‘Heavens above, what’s the matter?’ Roger said.
‘It’s a fracture. I’ve not got the support bandage on today.’
Someone stepped