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My boss sighs before she starts speaking. ‘Janie,’ she says gently. ‘We need to talk about this.’
‘About what?’
‘You’re making too many mistakes. I just watched you nearly put bleach on the wrong client.’
‘But I didn’t.’
‘Because she stopped you,’ she points out, quite correctly. ‘We’ve had a number of complaints about services in the last two weeks since you’ve been back. You lopped a good two inches off Mrs Palmer’s hair on Tuesday and she only came in for a trim.’
Did I? But if I’m honest, I don’t even remember seeing Mrs Palmer. That’s bad, right? I might be here in body, but it’s fair to say that my mind isn’t. It’s also fair to say that I’m not coping very well with my situation.
The first week after Dominic went, I was a complete mess. I was as sick as a dog every single morning after a long and wakeful night. There was no way that I could have considered coming into work at all, so I agreed with Kelly that I should take the time off as holiday. Mike did the same and we spent every day trawling around the local areas just hoping for a glimpse of Dominic. My friend tracked down the names of all the homeless charities in the area and we visited them all. In the evenings, we’d hang around where the homeless people sleep – partly praying that Dominic would be there and partly praying that he wouldn’t. We saw nothing to give us hope. Nothing at all. It’s as if Dominic has completely disappeared. We managed to get a mention for Dominic on the local radio news for one day. One day only. Then everyone had lost interested.
I check in with the police on a regular basis, but they have no news for me and I feel there’s not a great deal of interest in just another man who’s gone missing – even though he is here on a temporary visa. I think they suspect that he conned me to get over here and now, in the pattern I’m used to, believe he has simply absconded and that’s the last that I’ll ever see of him.
No matter how much I say it – Dominic isn’t like that, he wouldn’t do that – no one wants to believe me. No one wants to see the good in him, that he wouldn’t have done this without reason. Only Mike.
If Dominic would just call. If he would just call and tell me that he was OK, then I might at least be able to sleep at night. If he did just decide that he didn’t want to be with me any longer – even the thought of that makes my chest hurt – then he should have told me. He should have been straight with me. But in my heart, I don’t think that’s the case. He was still trying to put my best interests first. Deluded as he might be, he thought he was doing it for my benefit: taking the shame from my door, to protect me from a few people’s biased and incorrect opinion of him.
As it is, I haven’t had a decent night’s sleep since he disappeared. I sleep on the sofa, unable to face the comfort, the loneliness, of my bed. At most, I might catch a few hours out of sheer exhaustion. Now, back at work full-time, I can hardly stand on my feet all day let alone remember, or care, who should have bleach and who shouldn’t.
I realise that Kelly’s still poised, waiting for me to speak. ‘I’m sorry,’ I say.‘I can only apologise.’
‘Go home,’ she says. ‘Steph can cover your appointments. Get some rest. Those dark shadows under your eyes make you look like one of Edward Cullen’s crew.’
That gives me the glimmer of a weak smile.
‘And not the good-looking ones,’ she adds more gently.
I summon a laugh at that.
‘Take a few days off.’
‘I’d rather be here than on my own at home.’
‘And I’d rather my clients didn’t go out with dodgy haircuts in colours not of their choosing.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I say again. It makes me sound pathetic, but that’s how I feel so I do nothing to dress it up. ‘I’ll get my act together.’
‘Take today and tomorrow off. Sleep. Rest. Come back on Monday and we’ll see how you are then.’
‘OK. I’m sure I’ll be fine. I probably do just need to catch up on my sleep.’ But that’s not true. I might be lying to Kelly, but there’s no lying to myself. What I need is the hole in my heart to heal, the gaping wound in my life to be filled once more. What I need is Dominic to come back, then I’ll be just fine.
Then again, I’ll have to be all right, I think. I can’t afford to go to pieces. There are bills to pay. I can’t afford to lose my home because of this. And although I feel as if the world should have ended as soon as Dominic walked out of the door, it hasn’t. I have to carry on but at the moment, I can’t for the life of me see why.
