Today, though, Melanie and Serena come clattering in before I’ve had time to nod off. Quickly, I scoot my feet up off the floor so they won’t see me. You can learn a lot about office politics from hiding away in bogs.
‘Did you see her?’ Melanie starts to gob off, almost before the main door has swung shut.
‘I did.’ Serena’s voice is slightly distorted from where she’s puckering up her mouth to paint on more lipstick. ‘She’s so pathetic. Reckons she’s well in there. As if he’d be interested in someone like her. He smiled at me in the canteen the other day.’
Canteen? What the buggery bollocks was she doing in the canteen? She doesn’t do eating.
‘He held the art room door open for me when I was carrying all those trannies,’ Melanie says smugly. ‘I think he fancies me.’
‘It’s not as though she’s even good at her job.’
‘I know. Rumour has it they’re going to get rid of her.’
‘When?’
‘Soon.’
It doesn’t take a fool to realise they’re talking about David. After all, he is the only male in the office. Idly, I wonder who the ‘she’ who is going to be sacked is. It could be anyone. Everyone flirts with him, after all. And because he’s so polite, everyone has, at one time or another, dared to hope that he fancies them back. The older women mother him and buy him cream buns, which he shares with me, and the younger ones just salivate over his arse. It might be Fat Claire. I know there’s been some animosity because she’s just had an undeserved pay rise.
But before I can glean any more info, the Flight of the Bumblebee warbles robotically from the depths of my bag at ever increasing volume. Shit. My bloody mobile. I delve in to switch off, but not before Serena and Melanie have fled, tottering on three-inch heels to the safety of their computer screens.
It’s David.
‘Thanks,’ I tell him. ‘I was just listening to some juicy office gossip then and you’ve gone and ruined it.’
‘Where are you?’
‘In the loo. I was having a bloody nap.’
He laughs. ‘Come back. I’m trying to play Hangman. It’s boring with one.’
‘Can’t,’ I say firmly. ‘I’m tired.’
‘I’ve got a cherry bakewell in my top drawer.’
I scramble to my feet and leg it back to my desk where, after three games of Hangman, David gets back to work. He’s still the New Boy, after all, so he has to at least look interested. The afternoon drags like buggery. George phones once, to ask me to go to his mother’s birthday lunch in Kent with him in a couple of weeks. Apparently, she’s asking ‘when are you going to settle down?’ type questions, which might all go away if he brings me over and nuzzles my shoulder every once in a while. I do love George’s mum, especially when she makes apple crumble and custard, but I think she deserves the truth, so I refuse.
‘Why don’t you go on your own and tell her you’re a raving homosexual?’ I ask him. ‘How hard can it be? She’s pretty cool, you know, your mum.’
‘I don’t want to upset her.’
‘You won’t.’
‘She’s old. She might be shocked. She might just give up breathing or something. I can’t exactly see her marching round Tunbridge Wells in an “I love my gay son” T-shirt. She hasn’t got my dad any more either, remember?’
‘I know.’ I pick up a paperclip and start bending it into comedy shapes. ‘But she’s got People’s Friend and Rich Tea. Not to mention endless cups of PG Tips. And, to be honest, I think it’ll be a relief to her to find there’s a reason for that appalling mauve coat you wear. She’ll be fine.’
‘I dunno.’
He then has one more go at persuading me to rent out my womb for a bit. It’s only for nine months, he insists. He can’t see what the problem is. Am I being deliberately obstructive, just to spite him? It’s not even as though he’d be a sitting tenant. He’d be in and out before I knew it.
I hold firm. ‘No. No and NO.’ George can be very persuasive and I don’t want to suddenly find myself agreeing accidentally.
‘God, you’re so selfish,’ he rants. ‘I sit here all day putting up with po’ white trash who want to go on telly and all you can do is depress me. Do you know how hard this work lark is?’
‘Er, yes actually.’
‘Do you though? I have to interview raddled orange hags in slingbacks every day of my life, darling. People from chip pan families who say TOILET and LOUNGE. People who live in bungalows and think it’s perfectly OK to do so.’