She still hadn’t replied to his text, but she hadn’t deleted it either. She knew she shouldn’t have opened it up as many times as she had done to try to second-guess what he wanted from her. She wouldn’t respond, but still, she wondered.
She didn’t see Vicky or Elena. She recognised someone who worked in accounts but not well enough to say hello to, even in passing. Then she heard her name being called from across the street and froze. When she turned to the source, it was to find Roisean bounding towards her, grinning like a maniac.
‘Marnie!’ She threw herself at her old boss. ‘It’s so good to see you. Are you coming back?’
‘No, I’m afraid not,’ smiled Marnie, touched by Roisean’s affection.
‘Have you time for a quick coffee?’ asked Roisean. ‘Please. I’ve missed you.’
How could she refuse.
‘I’m due back in ten minutes, but sod them,’ said Roisean. ‘I’ve got loads to tell you. Let me see if I can squash it all in in the time it takes us to drink a flat white.’
There was a small café along from the Dirty Dog: the Aloha. It had the tackiest décor in the world: plastic palm trees everywhere and a massive mural of a beach on the back wall. It wasn’t a place likely to be frequented by any of Marnie’s trendy nemeses.
‘It’s a bit shit but the coffee’s good. And cheap,’ said Roisean, queueing up at the counter. She insisted on paying. She’d explain why in a moment, she said and winked, sending Marnie off to grab a table.
‘You look thinner,’ said Roisean, when she brought the drinks over. She lifted the lid off a plastic pineapple on the table and spooned out some sugar into her coffee. ‘I hope that’s not from any stress.’
Marnie didn’t want to bring the mood down by saying that she’d been to two funerals in the same week. ‘I’ve cut out bread and potatoes,’ she fibbed.
‘I’d sooner die,’ Roisean declared. ‘Where are you living? I sort of tricked HR into giving me your address and I swung past but the house was empty. I emailed you too but I’m presuming you haven’t logged onto the Caramba mainframe.’
‘No. To be honest, I thought there would only be horrible emails.’
‘Well maybe you should have,’ Roisean scolded her gently. ‘Everyone was really worried about you. I think quite a few people emailed you with nice messages.’
Marnie doubted that and gave a little huff of disbelief.
‘I mean it. Obviously not Vicky and Elena, as you can imagine. But Arthur and Bette. Even Dennis the security bloke came up to see if we’d heard anything from you.’
‘That was sweet of him,’ said Marnie.
‘I’m not going to wait for you to ask me what happened after you’d gone, you must be dying to know,’ said Roisean.
‘I am and I’m not,’ replied Marnie. ‘The whole thing gave me nightmares.’ She looked Roisean square in the face then because she wanted her to hear this and believe her. ‘Justin told me he and his wife were divorcing. I would never have gone into a relationship with him if I’d known he was lying about that. In fact, I’m not even sure anything he told me was the truth.’
‘I knew that,’ said Roisean. ‘I think your reaction when his wife came storming in made that obvious. Either that or you should have left the job to go into acting. I felt gutted for you. Really sad. You looked heartbroken.’
Roisean believed her. Without any doubt. Boy it felt good that someone did.
Marnie had to ask. ‘Is he . . . Justin still working there?’
Roisean huffed. ‘Not only is he still working there but he’s become bosom buddies with Laurence. He’s so far up his backside, you can only see his feet these days.’
Marnie chuckled.
‘He brazened it out, like Shagger Sharon did. He didn’t come back into the office that afternoon, but the next day he turned up acting perfectly normally, as if nothing had happened.’
Marnie wasn’t surprised. Justin had clearly been a master at compartmentalising.
Roisean went on with glee sparkling in her voice: ‘Elena was given the job of acting head of department but, not to put too fine a point on things, she made a total balls of it. She has no people skills at all, as you know, and got everyone’s backs up, she hadn’t a clue what she was doing. Arthur had a blazing row with her one day. He called her quite a few choice names – we all sat there gobsmacked. We didn’t know he had it in him.’
‘Arthur?’ Quiet, calm Arthur?
‘Yep. She sent Laurence some wrong figures and then blamed Arthur for it. He didn’t take it lying down, I can tell you. And he was obviously storing a lot of things that he thought he’d get out at the same time. Including what an absolute bitch she was to you and that maybe she realised now what a good boss you were. He gave her a right mouthful. And then he walked out.’
‘Oh no . . .’
‘He actually turned into Spiderman at one point, he said – and I kid you not – with great power comes great responsibility. You could have heard a pin drop.’
‘But he’s so close to retiring.’ Marnie was very concerned.
‘Ah, don’t worry yourself. There’d have been a coup if he’d really gone. HR persuaded him to stay because Bette went down to tell them he was being bullied and she’d stand up in court and testify to it if it came to it. And so would I, for that matter. Even Vicky ditched Elena and transferred to Communications.’
‘Really?’ Marnie hadn’t expected any of this fallout. She’d imagined that she wouldn’t be missed at all and the department would function better than ever.
‘Yup. Then after Laurence made Elena cry in a meeting, she handed in her notice. She took her holiday entitlement and left straightaway. They talked Linda into coming back early to run the department and she starts on Monday. And guess who is the deputy?’ She didn’t give Marnie a single second to answer. ‘Me. I’ve got a lovely pay rise and Linda rang me and told me on the quiet that she’s not planning on staying long because she’s pregnant again, so she’s going to make sure that I’m ready to take over when she leaves. I can’t believe it.’
‘I can,’ said Marnie. ‘You were always far too competent to have a junior role.’
‘I’ve only got this chance because they were desperate to keep some consistency.’
‘It doesn’t matter how you got it, the fact is you have and now you show them what you can do.’ Marnie was delighted for her.
‘What about you then, Marnie?’
Oh, where to start, laughed Marnie to herself. Keep it simple.
‘I’m living in a small village in the Dales and I’m managing an estate.’
‘Oh wow. That sounds grand.’ Roisean looked genuinely impressed.
‘It’s certainly a challenge.’ That was one way of putting it.
‘I gather you and Justin are finished?’ Roisean asked, giving her watch a quick glance.
‘I never saw him again after that day. He just ran off and hid like the rat he was. Not even a text from him.’ She didn’t mention the recent one that she’d ignored.
‘Bastard,’ said Roisean and sounded exactly like Lilian for that split second, which made Marnie smile.