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MICHELLE GASPED. ‘PEPPA Pig...’ She stepped back and banged her leg against the edge of the desk.
‘Do you like it?’ Bea smiled with pride.
‘Lovely...’
Bea looked at Michelle and frowned. ‘Are you all right? You look peaky today.’
Michelle peered into the cake box that Bea was holding. A huge blue eye stared up at her. Her heart pounded as the memory of her last Peppa Pig encounter flashed into her mind. ‘No, I’m fine.’
‘You should’ve seen it before we cut into it. Huge. I got the recipe off the internet. Try a piece of the snout, it’s got extra butter icing in it.’ She poked it with the knife and a green dollop squirted out. ‘The kids loved it.’ Bea had made the cake for her niece’s birthday. ‘A couple were sick. To be expected with a trampoline party. All that bouncing...’
Michelle winced as she recalled her jumping accident. She accepted a slice but refused the nose. Before she’d had a chance to choose a less threatening piece of what was left of Peppa’s face, the eye was niftily carved out and delivered to her on a paper hand towel.
Bea cackled. ‘I’m going to give the snout to Phil.’ She disappeared out of the office, dropping crumbs in her wake.
Peppa’s icing-sugar eye gave her a mischievous sideways glance, an embarrassing reminder of the car park incident. Whenever she did something stupid, Michelle’s mind would dig up a selection of other mortifying occasions, as if to take advantage of any opportunity to make herself feel as rubbish as possible. Her stomach now contracted in humiliation and then pain, as she was once more overwhelmed by the internal argument raging inside her that had been robbing her of sleep the last few nights – her stupidity over Dan.
Sometimes she’d get up after another a restless night, determined to end the relationship. Other mornings, she’d wake up shattered, yet happy, all doubts allayed.
The Malaga holiday was playing on her mind a lot during the night. She’d fantasize about herself and Dan being a proper couple for a whole week, imagining them sitting on the terrace of a little bar, drinking Cava and watching the sun set over the sea. He’d be all glassy-eyed, admiring her silky, tanned skin and toned body – still time to sort out that part – and begging her to wait for him. They’d spend their nights passionately entwined. A whole magical week to themselves.
Then she’d drift off to sleep and wake up with a jolt, sweating and enveloped by overwhelming grief, the word ‘week’ echoing around in her head. Dan was The One for her. Humiliation would wash over her, as she realised she’d been counting down the days, to what amounted to no more than one week out of Dan’s year. He’d chosen to spend the other fifty-one with Penny.
There was something about one week that reminded her of a saying she’d heard quoted from the Bible way back in school assembly. It was to do with not settling for scraps from the table, like a stray dog... She couldn’t quite remember the wording, but the sentiment knocked her sick.
That morning, the alarm seemed to go off five minutes after she’d finally fallen asleep. She’d had to force herself out of bed and off to work, her usual fatigue exacerbated by the exhaustion of her constantly churning stomach.
The incoming email alert clanged through the speaker, still on maximum after listening to snoring on a sleep study. Had her leg not felt too heavy with tiredness to lift, she would have put her foot through the computer screen. Instead, she violently clicked on the email – a ‘Dear both’ message to herself and Phil.
‘Vindictive Moron.’ A familiar pain seared up through her back teeth and into her jaw. Taking her fury out on the keyboard, she emailed Phil on a forward of the original message.
Can you believe this? Three stinking phone calls we haven’t logged. I see there’s no thanks for the fifteen we did manage. Didn’t have the decency to ask whether there might be a problem with finding the actual time to log them on that stupid half-cocked, inconceivably complicated system! Maybe he could come and treat the patients, so we can sit on our backsides logging bleeding phone-calls... What an absolute arsehole! P.S. please delete this email and empty your trash folder afterwards. Thanks.
An almighty thud against the office door coincided with the trill of the phone. Michelle jumped up from her seat and spun around, unsure where to look. She held the handset to her ear, as a shocked Phil bounded into the room, glasses askew and his red face glowing under a layer of perspiration.
‘You clicked “reply to all”,’ he announced, as the person on the other end of the line picked up.
Panicked, she checked the name flashing on the handset screen, recoiling in horror at the sight of a V. Michelle attempted to force the phone onto Phil, who flung his hands in the air, mouthed a cartoon-type ‘Oooh,’ and fled.
***
THE WORDS WERE STILL ringing in Michelle’s head as she dragged her weary legs back to the car park after work, her eyes puffed up from sobbing in the toilets between patient consultations. Never, in all her years in nursing, had she been called unprofessional, offensive or incompetent. And to be threatened with the union... This time she had to lose her job.
