When She Was Bad(46)

She called Oliver. His ‘hello’ was flustered and she could hear a high-pitched reedy cry in the background.

‘Who’s that crying? What’s happened?’

‘Nothing’s happened. Everything’s fine.’

‘But I can hear someone crying.’

‘It’s nothing. Just a stupid argument.’

‘It doesn’t sound like nothing.’

‘For fuck’s sake, Sarah. They were perfectly OK until just a second ago. It’ll be forgotten in a minute. I can manage, you know. The world doesn’t fall apart just because you’ve gone away for a night.’

‘Sorry. I know you can manage. I’m just jittery, that’s all. I’m dreading what’s going to happen next. We’ve all been summoned to the lobby in half an hour’s time in exercise gear.’

‘I did say—’

‘And please don’t say you told me not to come because I don’t think I can bear it.’

‘All right.’ His voice was gentler now. Conciliatory. ‘I know you’re having a tough time. Just grit your teeth and keep remembering it’s only one night. I’d kill for a night in a hotel. Uninterrupted sleep, big telly to watch whatever you want on. Room service. And isn’t there a pool and a spa in the basement?’

‘Yes, but we won’t have time to do that.’

Even as she was saying it, Sarah was remembering with misgiving the email that had gone around the department from Rachel listing what they would need to bring with them for the weekend. The words ‘swimming cossies’ had been slipped in far enough down that Sarah had been able to gloss over it. There was no way she was getting into a swimming costume in front of her workmates.

After she’d put the phone down to Oliver, Sarah lifted her case on to her bed and stared at the contents. They’d been told to bring ‘active wear’, everything in her weeping at the phrase. She extracted the faded blue sweatpants she wore around the house. Oliver loathed them, but that didn’t stop her slipping into them the minute she came home from work at night. They were so comfortable. But in the setting of this grown-up, almost luxurious hotel room, the sweatpants looked cheap and shabby. She’d brought one of Oliver’s T-shirts to wear with them and, modelling the mismatched ensemble in front of the full-length mirror on the wardrobe, she knew it had been a mistake.

She bumped into Amira by the lifts. The younger woman was wearing a zip-up black top over black Lycra leggings. Her long dark hair was pulled back into a ponytail. She didn’t exactly exude glamour but at least she didn’t look like someone who last exercised when the Beatles topped the charts.

‘I feel like I’m in some reality TV show,’ said Amira. ‘Like The Apprentice. I’m expecting Alan Sugar to pop up any moment and tell us we’re all fired.’

‘Do you know, I’d welcome being fired right at this moment. At least then I wouldn’t have to go through with this.’

In the lobby, some members of Sales and Marketing appeared to be doing warm-up exercises in a joky way that definitely wasn’t a joke. At first Sarah had been encouraged by the fact that other staff members were going on the dreaded weekend, thinking their presence might defuse the Rachel Effect – until she’d found out they were forming a separate team, to be ‘hosted’ by someone else.

‘My God, this is like one of those Iron John male-bonding weekends, isn’t it?’ whispered Charlie, who was waiting on a sofa wearing a pair of long baggy shorts that were clearly from a different era in his life and an ironic 1D T-shirt. ‘We’re all going to have to go into the forest and daub ourselves with wode and hunt each other with spears.’

The lift doors pinged and Chloe and Paula stepped out, both walking in that stiff way of people trying desperately not to appear self-conscious.

‘I look like such a dork,’ said Chloe, gesturing down at her endless bare legs in their Lycra shorts. She took off the elastic band holding her hair back and shook it out before putting it back up again.

‘Er, hello?’ said Paula flatly, standing still to model her outfit, one foot extended in front, arms bent out to the sides. It had to be said, it was not the most flattering look. The trousers were an indeterminate brown colour and rolled up at the ankle and they were teamed with a maroon-coloured hoodie that, judging by the size of it, probably belonged to Ian or her son. What was his name – Cameron? Sarah still found it impossible to believe her own sons would one day become big man-boys, lurching out of bedrooms in their boxers at midday. She was shocked at how much older Paula was looking suddenly. Paula had always seemed older than her years, because of the way she dressed and her air of quiet resignation, but now it was as if she’d aged ten years in the last weeks; her face was leached of colour, her eyes disappearing into swollen puffy cushions of skin.