It’s Not Me, It’s You

Roger’s lips moved as he read the words, and cogs turned. He looked at Delia with scarily maniacal eyes, like a Blue Meanie in Yellow Submarine.

‘Thoughts?’

Delia had very little time to decide what to do. In the brief window afforded for calculation, she concluded that playing completely dumb was not going to work. The Naan was describing her approach, right after Roger had asked her to make it.

‘I had … opened a dialogue,’ she said.

‘How?’ Roger said. The air of menace could be cut with a potato peeler and Delia knew every single one of her colleagues were watching the show avidly.

‘On email. I …’

‘Forward me the correspondence!’ Roger bristled. Literally bristled. He looked like a Quentin Blake illustration: scribbly hair, beard made of hay, thunderous brow, pinprick eyes, magnified behind thick, square teacher glasses.

He stalked back to his screen to await the evidence and Delia felt sick.

The playful exchange between her and Naan only looked acceptable on two conditions: 1) she had time to present it carefully and sympathetically and 2) Naan had indeed backed off.

Given neither applied, she was fucked.

She looked at the discussion again and tried to tell herself, well at least you’re not outright saying HAHAHA GOOD ONE STICK IT TO THE OLD SCROTES. She didn’t think she came off as issuing the sort of schoolmarm admonishments that Roger’s wrath demanded though, to put it mildly.

Delia hit forward with the heavy heart of the condemned woman and prefaced it:

Hi Roger. As you can see, I am making the first steps in gaining his trust here.

It was a craven ‘Please do not bollock me’ plea. She also offered a brief explanation of staking out Brewz and Beanz. It didn’t really help Delia’s cause that the whole interaction started with the Naan spotting her, not vice versa. Or that Roger’s testicular fortitude as a boss was alluded to.

Some extremely tense minutes ticked past. Roger was hunched over his screen, Delia trying not to look over at him.

Ann said: ‘Was that to do with the things you kept laughing at?’ loud enough that Roger’s head jerked up.

What an absolutely traitorous cow, Delia thought. Ann probably only found natural disasters and jihadist attacks funny.

The appearance at her shoulder took less than fifteen minutes. It felt as if Roger appeared with a gust of icy air and the opening chords of ‘Enter Sandman’.

‘Follow me,’ he said.

Roger took Delia into an airless deserted office down the corridor, full of filing cabinets and an old whiteboard, with FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES = ACTION? -> FACILITATION marker-penned on it.

‘Any idea what I want to talk to you about?’

‘Peshwari Naan?’ Delia said, hoping her tone didn’t sound insubordinate.

‘I’d like you to explain the rationale behind the informal correspondence you’ve entered into with someone who is a declared enemy of this organisation.’

Oh for goodness’ sake, why did Roger always have to talk as if he was in a Tom Clancy? The battle fleet will never be ready!

‘I was winning his trust by speaking to him in his own language,’ Delia said.

‘The impression you gave the Naan – and myself – was that you found the tenor of his contribution acceptable. No doubt emboldening him to commit his latest infraction.’

He was officially the Naan now, like the Zodiac or the King of Pop.

‘I had to be careful about steaming in and saying “You can’t do that,” because technically, he can do that. I thought the softly-softly approach would work better.’

‘We’ve seen how well it worked. Sorry if I wasn’t clear enough, Ms Moss, but as a representative of the council you were not expected to engage in ribald badinage and casually ask he “tone it down a bit”.’

This was so unfair. Roger had said: any means, foul or fair.

‘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.

Fifteen

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 forward to try to examine Ann and she let out another howl.

‘Don’t TOUCH IT!’

‘What did you do to it?’ Delia said.

‘It got shut in a fire door in Chapel St Leonards,’ Ann said. ‘It’s never been right since.’

Delia remembered that tale. The gruesome incident happened in 1989. Ann was only obsessed with expiry dates for food, obviously.

‘Was I that heavy?’ Jules said, quietly, and Delia said quickly, ‘Not at all! Not even slightly! Ann has an old injury.’

Yeah, a sprain of the manners.

‘Do you need First Aid?’ Roger said to Ann.

‘No, I am used to pain,’ Ann said, with a whiff of burning martyr.

‘Who’s our next volunteer?’ he said, trying to restore focus.

‘Shouldn’t you do exercises where I can take part?’ Ann said, beady eyes on a wary Roger. His eyes were suddenly full of: oh my God, I am going to be sued up the pipe on a discrimination and disability ticket.

Delia nearly laughed out loud. Ann truly was a rattlesnake in a Per Una waterfall cardigan.

Roger went into hushed conference with Linda and when they concluded, Linda said: ‘OK, we’re going to move on to a great fun exercise, my favourite. We all tell everyone one fact about ourselves that the group doesn’t know, for discussion! Here’s mine, to kick you off. I’ve seen Del Amitri nearly fifty times in concert and am a founder member of a fan club, The Del Boys and Girls.’

‘Never heard of them,’ Ann said.

Sixteen

After the excitement of Ann squawking, Delia’s hot resentment of the team-building games returned with full force.

Then irritation turned to boredom. Feigning interest in a colleague’s car-booting hobby or childhood sporting achievement wasn’t easy.

As they discussed her diffident gay colleague Tim’s trip to Reykjavik, Delia’s mind roamed the room and wandered out of the window. And then – KABOOM – something suddenly burst into her front brain at the most inappropriate moment.

Like a music hall act leaping through the curtains with splayed jazz hands – ta dah! – while an audience sat in sepulchral silence.

It had happened in the first days of February, earlier this year. Paul had slung his fisherman’s coat over the banister and Delia had seen a card in an inside pocket slide out. She wouldn’t usually have been nosy, but she could spy a teddy bear face. It couldn’t have been for Paul’s nephews – Delia ran the birthday admin for him.

‘What’s that?’ She’d tweaked it out, and found a Valentine’s card, a tooth-rottingly sweet, teenage sort of one with teddies stood in a pyramid formation, their rounded bellies each carrying a letter B-E-M-Y-V-A-L-E-N-T-I-N-E.

Paul had blushed damson. Paul never blushed.

‘For me? Aww! Getting slushy in your old age,’ she teased him.

She’d thought it was odd – Paul thinking of Valentine’s Day for once, the choice of that card. He sometimes came home with a bottle of Amaretto on the 14th of February, the choice of beverage in honour of their first meeting, but cards and flowers weren’t Paul’s way.

‘I’ll get you a different one. Not much of a surprise,’ he’d demurred. Sure enough, Delia received Monet’s lilies instead, although she insisted she liked the cheesy teddies.

Delia added the clues together. It had been for Celine. She had been getting romantic gestures long denied to Delia. And February to May: they’d been seeing each other longer than three months.

She felt as if she’d been disembowelled with a melon baller.

‘Delia. Now you,’ Roger said, turning to face her.

‘What?’ she said, blankly. It wasn’t meant to be insolent; she just felt so howlingly empty. She thought it didn’t matter that work didn’t mean anything because home was everything. Now, she had nothing.

‘Please tell everyone here a fact about you we don’t know.’

Delia blinked. That they didn’t know? Her life?

Her mouth was dry.

‘Last Friday, I proposed to my boyfriend. Then he sent a text meant for another woman to me. It turned out he’s been having an affair. We’ve split up.’

The circle of faces registered a mixture of fascination and astonishment.

‘That’s hardly appropriate,’ Roger said, into the ensuing silence.

‘You said something you don’t know?’ Delia said.

‘Yes! Something we don’t know. Not … that.’

‘Was it meant to be something work related?’ Delia said. She was in a space beyond caring about professional interests or social embarrassment. It was like that time on a campsite when she was so hideously ill with flu she didn’t care about doing a noisy Portaloo poo.

‘No!’ Roger said.

She dispassionately noted that even though she wasn’t trying to be clever, he looked wrong-footed and maybe even intimidated.

‘It should be something innocuous. We don’t need to know about your dirty laundry.’

Dirty laundry?

Delia swallowed and assessed her surroundings. This room, these people, this job. What was it all for, this putting up and shutting up and sucking up? Where did it get you?

‘Well, that’s bullshit. You asked for something personal you didn’t know and I told you something. Now it’s not good enough. Being cheated on isn’t good enough either but I have to live with it. Don’t play stupid “getting to know you” games and then complain about getting to know someone.’

Roger boggled. Everyone else sat bolt upright and poised, perfectly immobile, like Red Setter bookends. Linda looked like she’d been slapped. Ann was enthralled, having forgotten about her osteopathic agony.

‘Here’s something else you don’t know about me. I’m leaving.’

Roger snorted. ‘Then I need you to follow me upstairs and we’ll discuss your notice period.’

‘I’ve saved all my holiday for the honeymoon I’m not having any more, which is offset against my notice period. So I don’t have a notice period. This is it.’

Silence.

Roger stared at Delia. The room’s attention had now switched to him, like Centre Court at Wimbledon, to see his return volley. Roger pushed his glasses up his nose. He cleared his throat.

‘The council has only just paid to send you on that health and safety course. We’ve nursed a viper at our breast.’

Seventeen

Delia was going to call ahead and say ‘Surprise! I’ve left my job and will be walking into our house at an unusual time of day,’ then asked herself why she was doing it.

She didn’t owe Paul the courtesy. In fact, who was Delia really protecting? If there was anything to interrupt, she needed to know. She didn’t think Paul would risk doing it in their bed when she still had her key, but her parameters for what was or wasn’t Paulness had changed.

Delia felt cold trepidation as she opened the front door, but there was no noise inside. No Parsnip to greet her, either. Paul must be walking him, or he’d taken him to the pub. Delia wondered if Celine had ever petted him, and the rage surged again. She’d be checking Parsnip’s fur for any unfamiliar perfume.

Her phone beeped – a nervous text from Aled’s partner Gina, asking if she was OK. Too little, too late. Delia fired off a brief reassurance that didn’t invite more conversation.

Delia had asked herself what she’d have done if she’d had word of Aled cheating on Gina, and she decided she’d have insisted Aled tell her. She certainly couldn’t have sat there with them and run double books. And condolences-wise, she wouldn’t have limped in with a text, days after the fact, either. It would’ve been bringing a bottle and a box of pastries, and swearing, like a proper friend.

Delia avoided looking round the house, and bolted up the stairs. She heaved the largest trolley case out of the wardrobe, the dark blue one with the hummingbirds on it that Paul complained made him look unmanly in the arrivals and departures hall. A notional unmanliness, as they never went abroad. Parsnip’s infirmity and the pub were powerful draws to stay home.

What should she pack? Delia started flinging underwear and clothes into the case. Had she really left her job? Had the Paul shock made her manic? Was she going against the advice she’d heard more than once, about not making any major decisions in the first six months after a life-changing event?

The front door banged and gave her a thunderclap of the heart. Paul was home, chatting to Parsnip. She heard their dog yap and do his usual three revolutions, chasing his own tail, before settling in his basket. Parsnip didn’t so much sit down as let his legs collapse underneath him.

Delia paused over the suitcase. She knew Paul was staring at her discarded pink coat.

‘Delia? Dee?’ he shouted up the stairs.

She zipped the case and heaved it off the bed, her work bag on her shoulder. Along with everything she had in Hexham, this would do for now.

She pulled it along the first-floor landing as Paul bounded halfway up the stairs.

‘Delia,’ he said, line of sight dropping to the suitcase as he eyed her through the banister spindles.

He looked tired, with a shaving cut on his chin. He was wearing that grey John Smedley jumper that Delia bought him to match his grey eyes, but he wouldn’t win any brownie points because of it.

‘You’re going to Hexham for longer?’

It was strange – Delia realised she hadn’t definitely decided, until that moment. Seeing Paul standing there, she knew she had to leave Newcastle. There were so few certainties now, Delia had to rely on the rare convictions she had. She surprised herself with her resolve.

‘I’m going to London.’

‘What? For the weekend?’

‘For the foreseeable future. I’m going to stay with Emma.’

‘How long have you got off work?’

‘I’ve left my job.’

‘What?’

Paul’s aghast expression was sour satisfaction. She could do surprises too.

‘How come? Are you OK?’

‘Because I got told off for how I run social media and participate in team-building events, and I needed to leave anyway. I haven’t been OK since our anniversary.’

Delia left her luggage trolley for the bathroom raid, filling a toiletry bag with jars and tubes. Paul and his confusion loitered behind her.

‘Do you not think we should talk before you move to the other end of the country indefinitely?’

‘Do you?’ Delia said. ‘Is there new information?’

She zipped up the vinyl flowery wash bag, then did a mental inventory: favourite dresses, liquid eyeliner, laptop. Those were the can’t-live-without essentials, she could buy anything else.

‘We’ve been together ten years, yes, I think there is more to talk about.’

‘So, talk,’ Delia said. ‘I’m going to call a taxi.’

She produced her mobile and booked one for ‘as soon as possible’ while Paul frowned.

‘Come downstairs while you wait for it?’ Paul said.

Before she could stop him, he’d darted round, got hold of her trolley case and bumped it down the staircase, standing it upright in the hall.

Delia followed him and bent down to pet Parsnip in his basket, making it quick so she didn’t cry. She kissed the top of his head, rubbed his ears and inhaled his biscuity smell. He blinked baleful chocolate eyes and did what passed for a wonky Parsnip smile, before resuming snoring. Paul would take good care of him in the interim, she still trusted him that much.

‘Are you leaving for good?’ Paul asked, once Delia had made it clear she wouldn’t be sitting down.

‘I’m leaving for a while. I don’t know how long,’ Delia said.

‘Does this mean you don’t want to stay together?’

‘All I know is, I can’t live here with you for the time being.’

‘… OK. Can I call you from time to time?’

‘You still have my number.’

‘You’ll be looking for work in London?’

‘Yes.’

‘You’ll probably be there for a while, then.’

Delia simply shrugged.

‘Can I ask you some questions?’ she said, after a short pause.

Paul nodded.

‘When did you start seeing Celine?’

Paul coloured, instantly. ‘As in a date …? I don’t know …’

‘You went on a date?’ Delia said, to increase the discomfort, folding her arms.

‘No. I mean as in, the day it started.’

‘Was it before February this year?’

Paul frowned. ‘No …?’

‘Later, then?’

‘Yeah. Like I said, about three months ago.’

‘You bought a Valentine’s card. I saw it, and you never gave it to me.’

Paul frowned. ‘You saw one before you were meant to, so I had to buy another one. You still got one.’

‘You never buy me Valentines’ cards.’

‘I know. It being the twentieth anniversary with my parents … it made me more sentimental than usual.’

If he was invoking his parents’ death to get Delia to back down, it was the most craven gambit imaginable. If he wasn’t? Delia’s former feelings finally stirred.

‘So, what date did you get together with Celine? I find it hard to believe that it wouldn’t stick out in your memory.’