Si is already at his desk by the time I reach the office. From the way I drop my bag by my desk, he and Ben can already sense my mood. Neither attempts to make conversation as I turn on my monitor, the machine groaning back to life. Swigging aggressively at a takeaway coffee cup while I wait for the screen to light up, I try Maureen’s number again but there is no answer.
Since my conversation with Oscar, my mood has shifted between rage and bouts of self-doubt.
As soon as I am seated at my desk, an email appears on-screen from Si. Pausing for a second, I click on it.
Is everything OK?
When I glance sidelong towards where his head pokes up above his monitor, his eyes stay fixed to the screen, as if I am not sitting just a few feet away from him.
Ignoring the message, I carry on opening the document I’d been about to start work on and less than a minute later another message appears, this time accompanied by a pointed sigh from his side of the room.
Don’t ignore me. Fancy lunch?
I type without looking away from my screen.
I can’t.
Moments later I hear him thumping the keys with his fingers.
I just thought you might …
Christ, can he not leave it alone? Bloody hell, Si, take a hint. I should never have started sleeping with him. Now was not the time to become entwined with anyone, let alone a colleague.
Distraction comes in the form of the front door to the office slamming. From the nervous cough that followed from the other room, it is clear Elaine has returned from her break. Standing and walking quickly towards the internal door, I step into reception.
‘Hi, Isobel,’ she says without looking up.
‘Hi. I was just wondering, do you remember yesterday afternoon, someone delivered something for me?’
Elaine adopts the look of someone thinking hard, eyes pointing to the right, lips pursed at an angle.
‘Oh yes,’ she says, after a moment.
I feel my chest lift. ‘Brilliant. Can you tell me who sent it?’
She flicks through a notebook.
‘Here it is. It was a courier …’
‘Can I see?’
When I look at the paper, there is a signature, illegible. Next to it, where the company name should be, the box is left blank.
‘Oh sorry,’ she says, tutting to herself. ‘I asked him to fill it in but he was in a terrible rush – you know what they’re like – and I didn’t check that he had.’
‘What did he look like?’
She raises her eyebrows. ‘I don’t know … Young, wearing a tracksuit, maybe. He had a motorbike helmet. I wasn’t paying much attention, to be honest, love. A courier’s a courier. He wasn’t one of our usual ones, though, now that I think about him. I didn’t recognise him.’
‘Is there CCTV in here?’
‘CCTV? No, love. Why would—’
‘Shit,’ I say, slapping my hand against the desk, and Elaine looks up.
‘What’s the matter? Did you want it sending back?’
I stare at her for a moment, the urge to scream almost overwhelming. But instead I turn and return to my desk.
For the rest of the day Si and I avoid eye contact. At just after 5 p.m., he gets up and shuffles some papers before swinging on his coat.
Addressing Ben, though it is clearly for my benefit, he says, ‘I’m off now. Won’t be in tomorrow, I’m in court all day. I’ll let you know how it goes.’
Ben grunts without looking up, ‘Don’t let us keep you.’
I watch him cross the room from the corner of my eye.
‘Lovers’ tiff?’ Ben asks as the door slams shut.
My fingers tense over the keyboard. ‘Fuck off.’
Scraping back my chair, I pick up the packet of cigarettes.
At the other end of the office from where we sit is a cheap latex boxroom within which is the Editor’s office, his desk crammed in with a wood-effect table and a filing cabinet. Just past his office is an external door leading onto a metal fire escape covered in black peeling paint.
Outside, I smoke two cigarettes in a row at the top of the stairs, looking out over the garden, which consists of a few bald flower beds and a series of badly laid slabs of stone shaded by ancient oak and cedar trees.
In the basement Giovanni, the Art Director, is shouting at the work experience girl. For a moment I remember how, when I first started working here, I’d been quietly impressed by the ‘art department’ with its dark room and photo studio. Now it just looks like a dank cellar with strip lighting and a few rusting Bisleys.
Breathing deeply through my nose, the cigarette smoke pirouetting up my arm, I lean back against the wall, listening to the music drift across the gardens from an open window somewhere in the distance.
By 7 p.m., all but Elaine, who is sorting through paperwork at her desk in reception, have headed home or more likely to the pub. Minutes later, she pokes her head around the door. ‘I’m going home now. Don’t forget to lock up, will you?’
Once alone, I sit back at my desk. Through the slats in the blinds I see the light outside is fading, Camden Town enveloped in a haze of pinks and pale blues as dusk settles.
Working in silence, I stay another couple of hours until the room grows cold, finishing off a piece I’ve been working on, trying to put a positive spin on a knife amnesty which has produced a total of about three weapons over the course of a month.
Swigging at a warm can of gin and tonic, I type my final words. Just as I am pressing Shut down on my computer, the phone on my desk rings.
My fingers hesitate as they reach the receiver, before snatching it and drawing it to my ear.
‘Isobel? Thank God.’ The voice is Giovanni’s, behind him the telltale roar of the pub.
‘Bloody hell, what you doing calling my work phone at this time, you nutter?’ I ask and he carries on as if I haven’t spoken.
‘Listen, babe, I can’t find my wallet. Could you pop down for me and see if I’ve left it on my desk?’
I groan at the prospect of navigating my way down the fire escape into the garden and then back through the door into the basement, unlocking and re-locking doors as I go.
Giovanni makes a kissing noise down the line, ‘I know, I know. Pleeeeease, Issy babe …’
‘You’re fucking lucky I’m still here,’ I say.
He tuts. ‘Oh come on. You’re always there.’
Rolling my eyes, I stand up. ‘Wait there, I’ll call you back in two minutes. You owe me …’
It is pitch-black outside as I make my way past the back door towards the stairs to the basement. The steps make a hollow ringing sound as my feet strike the metal. On the last step, I hear a rustling and a scratching sound at the end of the garden; for a moment my whole body seizes. But then the noise comes again, followed by a lurching and a scuffle, and I see the outline of a fox, mangy with a stump for a tail, disappearing into the undergrowth.
Moving more quickly towards the back door, I unlock the basement, the rusted handle resisting for a moment against my efforts.
Inside, I feel around for a light. As I press the button, the room lights up and I see Giovanni’s wallet on his desk as he had described.
I am making my way back up the staircase with the wallet in my hand a moment later when the phone rings again.
Bloody Giovanni. I curse him silently as I move back into the main office.
‘Have some patience!’ I say as I pick up the phone, and for a moment the line is silent.
‘Giovanni?’ As I speak, my eyes peel instinctively back across the brightly lit room towards the darkness of the garden. Again, there is silence. But then, with the sound of my own quickening pulse throbbing in my ears, I hear something else, a low breathing down the line, and somewhere in the distance, the faint rumble of voices.
The chill that skims across the surface of my skin is like a shard of ice. Before I can think, my fingers slowly trace the surface of my desk towards my Dictaphone, which is in its usual position, plugged into the phone. My palms damp with a cold film of sweat, I press the ‘record’ button, and wait.
The line remains silent for another few seconds.
‘Giovanni, this isn’t funny,’ I say and then he speaks. His voice is muffled, deep with an intonation that is a world away from my colleague’s lilting sing-song.
‘Isobel,’ the muffled voice says. ‘I am watching you. No police, or I will kill you too.’