“Can you get Issy to call me?”
“Um, yeah?”
And the voice hung up. I looked at Issy. Her eyes were still on her screen. I tried to lean into her field of vision without disturbing anyone else. I waved at her. She glanced at me, a flicker of annoyance crossing her face, then looked back at the screen. A few seconds later she licked her lips and took off her headphones.
“What do you need?” Her tone had that forced friendliness to it like you get at the end of the night at a bar.
“Sorry, are you Issy?”
She took a deep breath and nodded.
“Yep, and I’m chasing a deadline.”
“Uh, someone called asking for you.” I pointed at the phone, as if that might clear things up. “Sorry, I didn’t get their name.”
“Probably Mel.”
“They wanted you to give them a call.”
“Okay.” She moved to put her headphones back on.
I looked at the phone then back at Issy.
“It seemed pretty urgent.”
Issy looked at me for a moment.
“Yeah, I’ll give her a call in a second.” Friendliness even more forced now. She put her headphones back on and got back to work. I pretended to look busy on the iPad for the rest of the day.
By the time it came to six o’clock all I wanted to do was go home and recuperate. I’d done nothing, but I felt exhausted. I hurried down the stairs toward the foyer. Before I could leave, Issy tapped my shoulder.
“Some of us are heading out for a drink. Want to come with?”
I couldn’t read her expression. She had that cool impassive look that could be boredom or disinterest or nerves. I was so tired I couldn’t figure out which. That’s when I made my fatal mistake.
“Sorry, I’ve got a thing.”
Her eyebrows raised and she huffed a little out of her nose.
“Oh, sure. A ‘thing’.”
Standoffish. Snobbish. A cold fish.
“No, I really—” God, what was I doing? “Next time, yeah?”
“Sure,” she said and left through the door without looking at me. I already knew there wouldn’t be a next time.
I saw my outfit reflected in the glass doors as she left. The shirt was wrinkled in several places, and the waistband of the trousers had slid down my hips a little so they sagged around the crotch. It looked like I had deflated. The overhead lighting caught my hangdog expression perfectly.
I’d like to think if Issy and the others had ever stuck around, waited for me to warm up a little, they’d find me worth the wait. But very few did. Stick around, I mean. Not at the office. Not anywhere in the city, really. I tried the usual antidotes: going to bars, signing up to gym classes, joining a book club. But none of it worked. There seemed to be this need to be instantly knowable, constantly reachable, but always at a polite distance. Everything was organised through convoluted apps and always-on instant messaging that left me feeling both dizzy and violated.
That’s why it was so important now to be different here, where life was slower, more intimate. This was my chance at a fresh start. A friendlier, warmer, more open me. I would not make the same mistake again.
I followed the river toward Carlinsrest, until eventually I reached the bridge into the village. It was an ancient-looking thing, made with rounded stones dotted with lichen and moss. A less-ancient-but-still-visibly-old sign had been fastened to one of its pillars, reading BODACHS BRIG. Coming over the other side was an elderly gentleman, wearing a tan sweater vest and a flat cap tucked between what looked like two antlers atop his head. I squinted. As he got closer, I saw the antlers were two tufts of wiry white hair. He was pushing a wheelchair bearing an equally ancient lady, wrapped up in an old wax jacket, two sizes too big for her, hood up, head back, mouth open and snoring. Next to the two of them trotted a lively collie, tongue flapping out the side of its mouth.
Perfect. Here was my chance. Time to be a countryside person.
I put on my best most happy-normal-person smile.
