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Bob was also later into work than usual as he’d had to order a taxi to take him into town to collect his car from the solicitor’s car park. Had he been sensible he would have ordered it the previous evening but he was unaccustomed to using taxis and didn’t realise the demand during the rush hour and school run times. He found it hard to comprehend how many children went to school by taxi, such a huge change from his day when most children walked to school. He asked the taxi to drop him in the centre of Persford so he could pop into Marks and Spencer and buy a bunch of flowers for his solicitor Siobhan Jeffries whom he treated so badly. Yesterday had been an awful day but in some ways, it had somehow marked a turning point. It was as if all the pent-up grief and emotion had been gnawing away inside him and he had been refusing to acknowledge it. Somehow it had found a weak point and it had burst through with a ferocity which had later shocked him. His first outlet for his anger had been Brett and then the girl Siobhan. He’d behaved appallingly but it had brought him to his senses and to realise that he needed to seek help, otherwise his grief was going to destroy everything. He thought of his dear wife Joan, she would have hated to see him in this state. He owed it to her memory if nothing else.
Today would be a day of apologies and a chance to move forward. It was difficult to face up to the fact that he wasn’t coping but he couldn’t carry on in the same vein. He would contact the company’s medical insurers and request some counselling, Piers had suggested it often enough and had on many occasions been rebuffed, but no longer. Armed with a mid-priced bouquet of flowers he walked into the solicitor’s office and stood feeling embarrassed at the front desk.
‘Good morning, I wonder if you could give these to Ms Jeffries, I behaved rather rudely yesterday and I wanted to say sorry.’
‘Oh, well, that’s very nice of you, could you give me your name?’
‘Mr McKewan, Bob,’ he replied.
‘Would you like to hand them to her in person, I’m sure she’s available.’
‘Er, no I don’t think so,’ and he paused as the receptionist was looking fixedly at him, ‘sorry, well yes, on second thoughts I should do that.’
The receptionist phoned through and after a couple of minutes Siobhan came through from the door behind reception.
‘These are for you,’ said Bob, looking increasingly uncomfortable, ‘I wanted to say sorry, I was a complete pig yesterday,’ and he handed over the bouquet.
Siobhan looked at Bob, ‘Mr McKewan, that’s really not necessary, but it’s kind of you. They’re lovely,’ and she sniffed at the flowers. ‘We understand, you are going through a difficult time, please don’t hesitate to call me if you have any questions about the estate,’ and she smiled sympathetically at him.
‘Well thanks, yes, I’ll do that. Now best get on,’ he said and headed for the door. Reaching the outside he breathed a sigh of relief. It hadn’t been quite as painful as he’d expected. He was amazed he’d gone through with it, a few years ago he couldn’t imagine ever saying sorry like that and admitting his shortcomings. He headed around the corner to retrieve his car. It wasn’t over yet, he had a few more apologies to make before the day was through.
**
When Nick finally arrived at work he found that Kirsty had already started to analyse the reaction they were trialling as a precursor to scaling up. Fortunately, she’d remembered to wait for him before she started to try to isolate the product. It was yet another example of Kirsty going ahead against Nick’s instructions but he hadn’t the energy to argue with her, he had too many disputes currently on-going. Perhaps Billie had forgotten to pass on his message but it was pointless trying to find out whether that was the case. His heart sank when Billie again asked to speak to him in private when he had a minute free. Nick fully expected to be given some sort of formal warning, at the very least a verbal one, so he was looking very troubled when they went into one of the small meeting rooms just after 11 a.m.
‘Nick, sit down, you look ready to drop, are you feeling OK?’
‘Oh, yes, it’s just that I didn’t sleep very well. Polly and I had a bit of an incident in town last night,’ he paused as Billie frowned, wondering what had happened. ‘Someone pushed into Polly and she fell over, I think he was trying to snatch her bag.’ Nick decided this was a reasonable account of what had happened, and he didn’t want to blatantly lie to Billie, he was just slightly economical with the truth.
‘God, that’s awful, is Polly OK?’
‘Well she’s a bit shaken up, needs some new tights,’ he joked, ‘her knee is a bit bruised. But I’ve reported it to the police, they seem to think there are a lot of CCTV cameras, the incident might have been captured.’
‘Well I sincerely hope so, I’ll be careful when I go out in town in that case. Anyway, about what happened yesterday,’ Nick remained silent, dreading what was coming next. ‘I’ve had a think about what you said about Kevin and I’ve taken it further.’
Nick was amazed he was hearing this, he was expecting a complete carpeting.
‘Oh, well that’s good, thank you.’
‘I spoke to Brett and he was very concerned that someone has been taking things out through the back door, so to speak. He said he’d get in touch with Stefan to see whether we can tighten up our ordering, make it more of an online process, more easily trackable. He’s going to liaise with finance and I think we may be looking at a full investigation. Kevin needs to be very worried.’
‘Excellent,’ said Nick, smiling for the first time that morning.
‘But that’s tip-top secret, so keep it under your hat. Don’t have anything to do with him. If you need anything send Kirsty down to the storeroom, and make sure you aren’t alone with him in case he decides to level any other accusations against you.’
‘Well that’s a big relief, thanks for believing my side of the story,’ said Nick, sighing and rubbing his head with his hands.
‘Now let’s get on with some science. How’s the scale up going?’
‘Well it’s in hand, probably Monday for the big reaction, we are just doing a couple of trials, very small scale was done yesterday, today we are going to do it on ten grams then for the biggie next week,’ and Nick crossed fingers on both hands.
‘That’s great, good to see you are checking it out cautiously and not just going by what the contract company did. Always best to get a feel for it. Kirsty behaving herself, following all the safety rules is she?’
‘Oh, yes, completely,’ lied Nick, hoping that Billie didn’t detect him dissembling.
Nick knew he would still need to keep a beady eye on Kirsty, she tended to have a reckless streak and for the next couple of days, there was no room for that sort of behaviour.
