AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I am in no way surprised that Jonathan Forest drives a BMW. I’m sure there is, somewhere in the world, a man who drives a BMW and is not a bellend but I’ve not met him. The thing about a Beamer is that it’s the car you get if you really want to be driving a full-on-midlife-crisis-cock-on-wheels but you’re too insecure to own it.
I get in the passenger side and he gets in the driver’s seat and it’s as awkward as fuck before we even make it out the car park.
“Thanks for this,” I tell him. If I’m honest I’m not entirely sure what “this” is and I’m pretty sure I’ve got nothing to thank him for, but I only think that because I know he’s an arse and it would be really convenient if we could start from a place where Idon’tknow he’s an arse, or at least where he doesn’t know I know he’s an arse.
Jonathan’s eyes flick briefly to mine in the rearview mirror. “Think nothing of it. I’d do the same for any employee who’d had an accident.”
Any employee who’d had an accident he’d caused maybe.
He clears his throat. “How are you feeling?”
Pretty crap for a whole lot of reasons. “Still a bit confused.”
“And”—he’s trying very hard to sound gives a crap, and he does, just not about me—“you really don’t remember anything about what happened?”
This is why I’m shit at lying. It’s way too much effort. “I don’t remember much at all.”
“Including me?”
Fuck. The right thing to do here is to be honest. To sayactually it’s not that bad. Only then we’d have to talk about what went on at the showroom, including the bit about how fired we all are. And it seems like he’s as keen to forget that as I am. I’m not as confident about this sort of thing as Claire, but I get the impressionthat Jonathan Forest is the kind of man who can’t go back on something he’s said, even if he knows it was wrong. So maybe this is my chance to give us a fresh start. “I know I know you,” I try.
“I’m your boss,” he explains.
“Well,”—this might be pushing it, but I can’t resist—“you seem like a good one.”
To his credit, Jonathan looks the teeniest bit ashamed. Because, when you get right down to it, a truly great boss doesn’t chase his employees into shower units and land them up in hospital. “I…” He seems genuinely at a loss. “Thank you.”
If a fresh start is what I’m aiming for here, I probably shouldn’t be enjoying watching him squirm. And I’mmostlynot. After all, I’ve still got a head injury to deal with. But there’s something feels very turnabout-is-fair-play about letting this prick pretend everything was hunky-dory this morning. Which means I can’t quite resist needling him, just slightly. “So what did happen? Maybe it’ll jog my memory.”
There’s a silence as Jonathan tries to balance covering his arse now with covering his arse later. “Well, I wasn’t really—I didn’t really see what happened. But I think you fell into a Nexa by MERLYN 8mm Sliding Door Shower enclosure.”
“How did I do that?”
He aggressively overtakes a car that’s going at a perfectly reasonable speed. “I suppose you must have tripped.”
“Oh aye?” I let that hang for a bit. “Here’s hoping none of your staff left out the thing I tripped over because then I’d be able to sue yez.”
Jonathan goes white. “I think that’s very unlikely.”
“I’m only messing.”
“You probably shouldn’t joke about lawsuits, Sam.”
I shrug. “Maybe I’m just that sort of person. I’m clumsy and I make inappropriate jokes.”
“Or maybe,” Jonathan suggests, “you’re a model employee who never cheeks his boss.”
It’s the first time I’ve heard Jonathan Forest indulge in anything resembling humour. It’s annoying because if he was like this for real, I might be able to stand him. “I’m not sure, but I don’t think that sounds like me.”
He doesn’t answer that. Then again, how could he? Either he starts trying to convince me I’ve got a completely different personality like I’m Goldie Hawn inOverboardor he says “actually, you were an insubordinate cock and I’d just fired you” and neither of those are good options for him. Finally he settles on, “Not far now”, like he’s worried I might think I’ve been kidnapped. Although since he’s driving me into a woodland, I’m not sure that’s reassuring.
I’ve never given much thought to where Jonathan Forest lived. He’s like a schoolteacher in that way—you just imagine that he only exists at work and when you go home he stops existing unless he needs to ring you up to be disappointed. If I’d had to make a real guess I’d have assumed he had one of those London apartments the size of a roll of sticky tape that cost as much as a five-bedroom house in a normal city.
He doesn’t.
The other thing I’d never given much thought to, on account of how I never come south unless it’s a work thing and even then I try not to, is whether there were fancy bits of Croydon. I mean I don’t want to sound ignorant and that but just the name makes you think way more of, well, of a bed and bath superstore on a retail park next to a Nando’s than it does of cosy detached houses with trees out front and grass all round and little stone walls running along the side of the road. It’s not quite cottagecore because it’s mostly new builds and half of them are way too big to be cottages, but it’s strangely, overwhelminglynice.
It’s the kind of place that has good schools, is what I’m saying.
