‘She wasn’t still going on about you pushing her down that river bank, was she?’ Chloe asked Sarah now, who flinched as if she’d been hit.
‘No. God, no. She couldn’t. I’d have grounds to sue her, wouldn’t I, for defamation of character or something. No, that meeting this morning was her saying I’m a slacker, always late, always behind, and trying to make out I’d deliberately got pregnant because she’d threatened me with disciplinary action.’
‘She didn’t say that!’
‘Not in so many words, but the implication was clear. Luckily James from HR has some basic conception of how biology works and pointed out that it wasn’t likely I’d be able to conjure up a pregnancy just like that. And he also made it very clear that it would be extremely hard for her to get rid of me because the rules protecting pregnant women are so strict.’
‘So she backed down?’
‘No. She said she couldn’t work with me because I was so bad at my job. And I said she was discriminating against me for having small children as well as for getting pregnant.’
‘Good for you.’
‘Yes, except I was practically in tears by then, and she said that she couldn’t deal with staff who were so overemotional they couldn’t take criticism. So Mark Hamilton suggested I could be moved into a different department. As if I was some sort of item of unwanted furniture. Honestly, Chloe, it was so humiliating!’
Her voice had risen until she was practically screeching and her fingers clasped around Chloe’s narrow wrist in an uncomfortable echo of the way Ewan’s hand had gripped hers on Saturday night. Sarah was so quiet normally.
‘Any idea what’s up with Paula?’ Chloe asked, changing the subject.
The disappearance of the deputy manager the morning of the previous day had left her deeply perplexed, but when she’d tried to discuss it with Charlie and Amira they’d frowned at her as if she was being out of order in even bringing it up. Charlie reckoned Paula probably felt ill, while Amira just said, ‘None of our business, is it?’ Neither of them seemed bothered by how out of character it was. Even when Rachel came in at lunchtime, showing off that plaster on her forehead, and made a great big fuss about Paula not being there, and got Chloe to leave hundreds of messages on her answerphone asking where she was, Charlie and Amira hardly looked up from their desks. They’d said they were really busy, but later on she’d seen them huddled together by the lifts looking as if they were arguing about something, so clearly they weren’t as busy as all that.
‘No idea,’ Sarah said, dropping her fingers from Chloe’s arm. ‘Maybe she’s having some sort of post-traumatic meltdown after the rope-bridge incident. I’m surprised we’re not all falling apart right, left and centre. The atmosphere in this place is so toxic.’
‘Are you OK, though?’ Chloe asked. ‘With the baby and everything?’
To her consternation, Sarah put her hand to her mouth, as if she’d said something shocking.
‘God, I’m sorry. There’s nothing wrong, is there?’ Chloe asked, alarmed. ‘Have I put my foot in it?’
Sarah’s voice, when she finally spoke, was choked.
‘No, don’t worry. It’s just that you’re the first person who’s asked me anything about it. Anything nice, I mean. D’you know, in some ways I wish Rachel had sacked me. It’s so horrible, knowing everyone resents me. Even Charlie.’
That reminded Chloe of the argument she’d witnessed between Charlie and Amira, but just as she was about to ask Sarah if she knew what was going on with those two, the door to the toilets was flung open and Rachel came stalking in on those vertiginous heels. Click clack, click clack.
Chloe’s throat turned instantly dry.
‘Chloe, I assume you’ve finished those reports?’
‘I was just . . . going to the toilet,’ Chloe muttered, before slinking back, humiliated, to her seat.
After she’d finished the dreaded reports, which she knew Rachel would anyway find fault with and get her to change, Chloe logged on to her emails. Her inbox was reading 73 new messages. Chloe’s heart sank. She’d never been particularly ambitious, always imagining that life would come and find her rather than the other way around. But still, the idea that she’d gone through all those years of education – those private tutors who’d shown up at the door on a Wednesday afternoon with cycle helmets swinging from their hands and hi-vis reflector strips around their ankles, the 9 a.m. university lectures she’d dragged herself up for, the heart-stopping moment where she held the results envelope in her hand – all in order to sit at a desk in a demoralized office on a Tuesday morning dealing with seventy-three emails about health and safety initiatives, the new canteen policy, plus numerous queries from the Accountancy, IT and HR departments filled her with sudden panic. She glanced over at Paula and shuddered: a fleeting glimpse of an unwelcome future.