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Perhaps I could just ask her to take me off his job and have someone else finish the audit? But then I’d have to explain myself. I’d look like an idiot who couldn’t handle the work, and if I couldn’t handle this audit, I wouldn’t get a promotion anyway.
I’d royally stuffed up.
And I should feel sick in the stomach. I should feel regret.
But I felt quite the opposite: alive, exhilarated
I wanted - needed - to talk someone else. A best friend. Sisters. My mum.
I texted my little sister, Lily, then buried myself in work all afternoon and into the night, staying in my flat, unable to face stares and whispers at the office.
It was evening when Lily texted back. I swore her to secrecy, then told her about the bar fight, about Stuart reading poetry and about falling asleep on him. She cheered when I confessed to having sex with Stuart on his desk, then asked if she could write a song about it.
I stated she could not.
I paced the flat, biting my nails. I should get dinner soon. I needed to hear a comforting voice. Texting Lily wasn’t enough. Back home, it was five a.m. and my family would be already up doing chores around the farm. I pressed the video call button for my older brother, Ryan, hoping he wasn’t working in the paddock.
“Heyyyyy Henny Penny!” Ryan loomed over the camera on his phone with a huge grin.
“Oh, you did not!” I hissed, riled up immediately hearing my nickname.
“Ohhhhh, but I did, Henny. So, Amanda Henrietta Turner,” he said with an affected British accent. “Sup?”
He shoved a spoonful of cereal into his mouth, milk droplets catching on his beard.
“Ugh, can you try eating with your mouth closed?”
He shrugged, still grinning. “You missed Tom by a day.”
I smiled at the mention of our little brother, the youngest in the Turner family.
“He left yesterday to go back to uni early to do a summer intensive course. You can get him on group chat though.”
“Is Mum home?”
“Yes, love! I’m here!” My mother waved in front of the camera, wearing a hat and carrying a cane basket. Mum didn’t have a camera phone and I relied on Ryan to make video calls.
“What did you pick in the garden?”
Mum pulled out a zucchini. “Zukes, last of the tomatoes, some basil but it’s gone to bolt. Picked the last of it today. Gonna be thirty-seven degrees, absolute scorcher. I’ll let the veggies go fallow and get the chooks to scratch over the veggie beds.”
I shivered even though the heating in my room was perfectly fine.
“It was fourteen degrees in Oban today. I actually saw some young girls in bikinis sunbaking.”
Ryan and mum laughed and silence filled the gap in conversation, making it a gulf. How had I come to this, where I didn’t know how to talk to my family, yet missed them like crazy?
“You look very nice tonight. Are you going out, love?”
“Yeah, super fancy corporate, Moo,” Ryan added with another crunch of cereal.
“Oh,” I looked down, blinking. I still wore the same clothes I’d been wearing at work, when Stuart and I had… God, I still wasn’t wearing underwear!
“It’s nothing.” I hoped they couldn’t tell how much I was blushing. “Just my work clothes. From the distillery today.”
Ryan stopped chewing. Mum set her basket down on the kitchen table and smiled; a special smile that meant she was reminiscing about Dad.
“Your dad was really fond of whisky.”
