A Midwinter Match Page 10

  ‘Er, yes.’ Zac stared over my head, out at the darkening sky beyond. ‘I work here, remember?’

  ‘Well yes, but other parts of the city, I mean. Not just outside the office. Down on Parliament Street, where they’ve got lights in the trees that flash so it looks like snow falling.’ I thought for a second. ‘Purple snow, which does seem odd, now I come to think of it. And down Fossgate, where all the shops have lights in the windows and the market…’

  ‘Yes, all right, you can stop talking like the tourist brochure.’ He smiled at me. It was a bland smile, innocent even. No sign that he knew I was talking to try to distract him. To baffle him with the mass of words so that he’d forget any mention of depression. I didn’t know why I thought this, because the torrent of talk actually made me sound more as though I’d overdone my medication. ‘I haven’t seen all the lights, but there’s plenty of time for that.’

  Plenty of time. Did he mean this year? Or was he anticipating taking over the job and having many future years to stroll around the streets, relishing the illuminations?

  Priya came back with his coffee and he wrapped his hands around the mug as though he were cold, which seemed strange in this overheated and tiny space. People bustled in and out constantly, packages and parcels swinging and clonking against other customers, amid good-humoured commiserations about the grey weather, the early darkness, the expense of the season. The smell of wet coats rose and fell above the pungent coffee aroma and the scent of baking from the kitchen downstairs, and there was a concentrated cosiness about being in here whilst everyone went about their business.

  Zac was looking around now. He’d stopped staring out at the river, which was being enveloped by the night, and was glancing at the other customers. His eyes flickered from face to face and I wondered what he was looking for.

  I watched him cautiously out of the side of my eye. He was wearing a big grey duffel coat, unbuttoned to show a bright yellow distinctly hand-knitted jumper which seemed to sit halfway up his torso as though it were much too small, and he’d taken off a red knitted hat when he came in, so his hair was flatter than usual. There was a scattering of melting sleet still on his shoulders, soaking into the grey wool of the coat and the warmth of the café after the cold outside had made his cheeks flush.

  He looked wholesome and scrubbed, and open-hearted. Exactly like a counsellor should look. I was wearing knee-length flat boots, jeans and a hoodie with the slogan ‘I’m sorry I’m late; I didn’t want to come’. I looked like a student who’s got lost on their way to Freshers’ Week. The contrast between my uneasy and too-young clothes and his professional look made me feel ‘wrong’ here. As though Zac was laughing at me. As though I wasn’t quite good enough.

  ‘Look, Pri, I’m going to go.’ I drained my coffee.

  A look of concern crossed her face. ‘But you…’

  ‘You’ve got Zac to carry your stuff for you. I’ve just remembered I’ve got to…’ I struggled to think of a plausible excuse. ‘I promised to bake some mince pies for Sophie’s cake day at her work on Monday.’

  Zac and Priya were both looking at me. She could clearly see the panic rising in me and had a sympathetic expression. He just looked baffled by my sudden desire to bake.

  ‘Okay. I’ll see you on Monday.’ Priya toasted me with her cup. ‘Thanks for coming.’

  I grabbed my bags and coat and began weaving my way through the crowd coming in. The café was suddenly too small, the air too thick and unbreathable. The dark outside didn’t help, it concealed too much, made all the familiar landmarks into patches of shadow. I elbowed my way through the narrow door and out onto the flat riverside, where the water had risen far enough to be lapping threateningly over the concrete embankment, turning the grass into slippery mud. I stared down the river towards the centre of town, where the elegantly arched bridges suspended lights that reflected in the water and the medieval towers on Lendal Bridge sent narrow beams through their arrow-slit windows. Breathe.

  A hand grabbed my shoulder, but my adrenaline levels were already so high that I couldn’t even jump. ‘Are you all right?’ Zac had followed me, his coat still undone and flapping open to show flashes of the almost fluorescent yellow jumper, like an emergency signal. ‘Did I say something?’

  Part of me wanted to explain. It wasn’t him, it was the crowd, the sudden feeling of inadequacy, that I was failing at adulting. But because it was Zac, because I didn’t quite trust him not to tell tales to our bosses of my defectiveness and my inability to manage under pressure, I couldn’t. I just couldn’t. Even though to just confess to sudden panic attacks and generalised anxiety would make my behaviour more explicable. It was a catch-22 situation.

  ‘No, it’s not you.’ I was scanning the street, looking for an escape. ‘I’ve just remembered…’

  ‘Mince pies, yes, you said.’ He let go of my shoulder. ‘If you’re sure. Would you like me to walk you to your car?’

  His offer was such an old-fashioned courtesy, and rather kind. But I wanted and needed to be alone, to be in a space I could control. ‘No. Thank you.’ I took a deep breath. ‘Priya needs help, carrying.’ Then I turned and half walked, half stumbled my way up the slope, away from the river towards where my car was parked on the top of the hill.

  I chanced a quick look back when I reached the pavement, and Zac was still standing there, jumper strobing, watching my retreat. I couldn’t see his expression, it was too dark, but he’d got both hands in the pockets of his coat and his shoulders hunched against the cold, as though he was going to watch me all the way.

  I hurried my way up towards the bulk of Clifford’s Tower. Usually it sat on its hill, a friendly landmark at this end of town, like a rather austere cherry on a bun. Tonight its illuminated walls seemed to shine with menace and its gateway looked sunken between the shoulders of stone, like a defeated shrug.

  Breathe. I told myself. It’s an old castle, not a dragon on its hoard. But I kept my head down and tried not to look. Even the Christmas lights that swung above Castlegate and Tower Street looked sinister; sharp points and weird shadows that patterned the skin of passers-by with bilious colours and leprous shapes.

  Once inside the car, the panic started to abate. I was in a closed space and alone, which always helped, except in the middle of the night, when I craved the opposite. I sat and gently bumped my head on the steering wheel, berating myself. The panic attacks had become far less frequent lately, and there was every sign that I was managing better. They were gradually being subsumed under the general business of life, and only arose now when I felt overwhelmed.

  But had I felt overwhelmed? What had triggered it this time, apart from Priya’s relentless pursuit of the perfect stationery set for Nettie? There had been nothing particularly unusual about anything – did this mean that the panic and depression were making a reappearance, after having been reasonably well controlled? The doctors were happy with my dosage, these drugs seemed to suit me well, everything had been moving in a positive direction. And then Zac had arrived.

  It had been Zac. His quiet confidence. His seeming assuredness in his role, his general easy-going adaptation to the new location and the situation we found ourselves in. The way he was taking this ‘making us compete for our job’ nonsense in his stride. The calmer and more confident he was, the more disconcerted and insecure I was becoming.

  ‘Oh, stop it!’

  I leaned my head back against the seat and noticed a passing group of young girls, easy in their tight jeans and Puffa coats, catch me talking to myself and start giggling as they moved on through the car park. I saw them nudging one another, glancing back over their shoulders. Laughing about the crazy woman, talking to herself in her car, no doubt. But I had to remember that this paranoia was just another symptom. Of course they weren’t laughing at me. They had a million and one more pressing demands on their gossip time.

  I also had to remember that of course Zac wasn’t responsible for my patchy mental health. Nobody was. But that di
dn’t stop me blaming him, ever so slightly. Well, maybe not him, but this whole damn situation – if we hadn’t been competing for the job, I’d have been able to admit I was struggling now and then.

  I closed my eyes and then opened them slowly. Here, insulated in my car, I was starting to feel better. Better, and slightly stupid about the way I’d run away and dumped Priya and Zac, to dash off through the night like a curfewed Cinderella. The thought of Sophie, Ed and Cav as the Ugly Sisters made me smile, and the smile raised my spirits enough for me to be able to start the engine and head for home, before the roads filled up with shoppers heading home too.

  8

  Things ticked on into the next week. The weather improved slightly, lifting from the grey blanket which was guaranteed to depress even the sparkiest Christmas lover into bright crisp days. The sun did wonders for my mood, even if it did only appear briefly, flaunting itself as it stood proud over the top of the Minster in a couple of hours of flashing overdone brightness, like a five-year-old’s school recital.

  I trudged into work on Thursday morning, through acres of leaves which had fallen into soggy drifts and were now crisping in the frosts again. I’d had to park my car further away today. Now Christmas was approaching in all its inevitability, even those who put off their shopping until just before the day itself, were being forced onto the streets, and all the free parking got jammed up very early. The shops squeezed into the narrow ginnels and lanes had windows so heaped with seasonal offerings that they almost seemed to burst out onto the pavements and the market stalls set out along the main shopping streets were already humming with activity. The smell of hot chocolate trailed promisingly like a Pied Piper, weaving in and out of the shops and trees and lamp posts, making my stomach rumble with forgotten breakfast as I headed into the back entrance to work, through the car park.

  Zac’s car was there, frosted over again. Did he ever go home? I wondered what the pretty girl in the photos thought of his early starts and late returns. Or did the ‘complication’ of his home life mean that she was never there? Maybe she wanted to break up but he didn’t? Maybe they couldn’t afford to sell the house – I knew all about how expensive it could be to have to quit a mortgage after a very short while. Maybe he still loved her, was using the opportunity of them being forced to live together to try to win her around again?

  In that case, he had some work to do – I scratched a finger through the ice on his windscreen. It was so thick, the car had to have been here for several hours. I knew he hadn’t left it overnight, I’d seen him drive away yesterday evening – why the hell was he spending so much time in the office? He’d never get her back that way, unless she was devoted to workaholics who leave before dawn and don’t get home until midnight.

  The building wrapped itself around me in familiar comfort. Karen, on the phone, raised a hand in greeting as I went in. I had a Christmas card pressed into my hand as I walked past the main office, and the smell of fresh baked mince pies being unpackaged drifted up to meet me before I went through the double doors that airlocked our part of the building off from the rest of the place.

  Some sad tinsel hung around the lampshades, making the light throw shredded shapes onto the floor, in a slightly threatening way all down the corridor, and someone with more enthusiasm than artistic ability, had pinned a home-made MERRY CHRISTMAS banner to the wall, decorated with shakily drawn snowmen and oversized robins. At least, I thought that’s what they were, there was something vaguely penile about the snowmen and the birds that had been drawn without any recourse to scale or nods to realism.

  The door to our office was open and Zac was standing drinking coffee in the middle of the room. He was wearing a well-cut suit and jumped when I walked in.

  ‘Don’t you ever go home?’ I asked testily, dragging my scarf off over my head.

  ‘Went once, didn’t like it, came back,’ he replied perkily. ‘Oh.’

  ‘Oh?’ I paused, coat half-unbuttoned. ‘What?’

  ‘Well, I thought you’d be wearing… um, not that there’s anything wrong with… but something, formal?’

  I stared at him. ‘Did we just institute Dress Up Thursday or something?’ I looked down. I was wearing my normal office gear, black trousers, a long-sleeved black T-shirt under a red cotton top. It wasn’t exactly formal, but equally it wasn’t a sequinned thong and tasselled bra combo. ‘Why?’

  He looked awkward, then his eyes widened. ‘Oh God. You did get the email, didn’t you? Yesterday?’

  The uncertainty started. I could feel those walls forming the faintest cracks. ‘From whom?’ I tried to distract him with grammar.

  ‘From our esteemed bosses? Well, mine, now I come to think of it?’

  ‘I mean, no. I checked before I left last night.’ Email? What email? The cracks started to widen and I felt my breath catch.

  ‘Shit.’ Zac went to run a hand through his hair, encountered its evidently product-filled texture and stopped. ‘Maybe you’d better check now.’

  Keeping one eye on him, as there was a tension about him that I wasn’t sure I liked, although the suit made him very easy on the eyes, I fired up my computer and went into our intranet. There, virtually throbbing in its unopenedness, was an email from the Management Team. My hand was shaking as I pressed the button to open it and, as it flickered onto the screen, my mouth was flooded with a sour taste as though I’d been licking metal.

  Miss Oldbridge,

  We would be very grateful if you and Mr Drewe would give a presentation of your work and what it entails to an external group tomorrow morning at nine. It need only last half an hour, so will not impact on your workday.

  It was signed by Michael and two unfamiliar names. Presumably the aliens.

  ‘Shit.’ I echoed him. Then I squinted at the mail. ‘It only came in at half past seven last night. I left at six, so there was no way I could have read it.’

  ‘Unless you picked it up at home.’ He sound half-apologetic, as though he were ashamed to have known about it. Maybe he had picked it up at home?

  ‘Well maybe, but it shouldn’t be assumed that we access work mail when we’re not here. And besides, I do have a life.’ I thought about yesterday evening, when I’d helped Ed put up the tree that Sophie insisted on and then had eaten half a tin of Quality Street watching a Gogglebox Celebrity Special and Cav fiddling with a rear derailleur on his bike all over the carpet. ‘Sort of, anyway.’

  Zac stared at me. ‘They want us both there at the same time too. So a team presentation. Are you up for it?’

  The walls trembled, but just about held and the bitter taste was receding. ‘Well, I know what the job entails pretty well, so I can do that. Are they interviewing us, do you think?’

  ‘Looks likely.’ Zac gave me another once-over. ‘If you take the red thing off and put a jacket on, you may get away with it.’

  I instantly felt insecure again. ‘I haven’t got a jacket. Just my coat.’

  There was a bustle in the doorway and Priya poked her head in. ‘I brought Christmas cake,’ she said. ‘We made a trial batch and this is the failure. I hope you like nuts, Nettie went a bit bonkers with the almonds. She’s been forbidden from touching the marzipan this time round, she’s rather heavy-handed with the essence and it tastes a bit like cyanide.’ She looked at us, staring at her. ‘It’s fine, it hasn’t really got cyanide in.’ She gave a quick glance at the heavy, foil-wrapped parcel in her hand. ‘I don’t think.’

  ‘Pri, can I borrow your jacket?’ I asked quickly and slightly breathlessly. ‘And your shirt.’

  Priya was wearing her usual office wear, a black blazer and white shirt with a cord skirt that definitely wouldn’t fit me. The tops would be touch-and-go, I was taller, plumper and more booby than her, but it was worth a shot.

  ‘What?’ She crossed her arms defensively. ‘Why?’

  ‘Sartorial emergency,’ Zac said.

  ‘Well, I need to wear something.’ She kept her arms folded.

  ‘We can swap. It�
��s only for half an hour or so.’ I had Miriam coming in at half-past nine and I definitely didn’t want to keep her waiting, she might dig her way out of the interview room with a spoon through force of habit. ‘We have to do a presentation.’

  ‘What?’ Pri’s eyes widened. ‘Seriously? Now?’

  ‘Yep.’

  She looked me up and down. ‘I see. Okay. Clothing swap. Just, you know, try not to move too much. This jacket’s snug on me, sale bargain and all that, but the seams might not take the stress if you have to run.’

  We went into Priya’s office, while Zac paced up and down outside, periodically saying things like ‘ten minutes and we ought to be in there,’ which didn’t help my anxiety. But doing something did help. Instead of giving rise to panic over not knowing what the hell we were going to face, the adrenaline kicked me into action, and over it all was a tinge of anger. How dare they not give me warning in good time? Were they trying to wrong-foot me? Put me at a disadvantage?

  And then I found myself anchored to the pragmatic by the tightness of Priya’s shirt under my armpits.

  ‘I’d keep the jacket done up if I were you.’ She stood away and looked critically at me. ‘You look a bit Late Night Channel Five otherwise.’

  ‘I don’t think it will do up.’ I stretched the buttons over my chest. ‘I feel like I’ve been through a hot wash.’

  Zac tapped on the door. ‘We’d better get in there,’ he said indistinctly. ‘It’s five to.’

  I burst out of the room and he stepped backwards, then stared.

  ‘Wow,’ he said. ‘That’s… errr… distracting.’

  Priya waved us off, my red top making her look as though she’d got her mum’s clothes on as Zac led us, at speed, down the corridor.

  ‘Don’t hurry,’ I said, ‘it’s like wearing a corset. I can’t breathe if I rush, especially up those stairs.’