“Yes, I know.” The area manager spoke as if he were a fool. “I’ve had a lot of managers call in sick today, so there will be no call tonight.”
The line clicked and the area manager was gone.
“Prick,” said Paul.
Nick laughed into the line. “I’d wet myself if he hadn’t actually gone yet.”
Paul tutted. “Guy don’t scare me.”
“You find it weird?” asked Nick. “I mean, what he said?”
“About managers calling in sick? I guess so. Maybe they all went on a bender and planned a mass sickie. You know we’re never in the loop about those things, just because we’re both married and past the age of thirty. This is a young man’s game, fella.”
“Yeah, maybe. I just find it weird with how town was so quiet today. And that guy who came in at the end of the day was a total mess. There must be a right horrible bug going around.”
“Yeah, the bloody lergy, and I have it,” said Paul, before clearing his throat of phlegm. “I got to go, governor. Think a night in the pub is in order if I’m going to be feeling rough all night.”
Nick rolled his eyes. “Just don’t come in with a hangover.”
“Ha! I’m Sikh. We don’t get drunk. There’s no beer in the world strong enough.”
Nick laughed and both men exited the call.
He went downstairs to spend the evening with his family, hoping that whatever was going around, he wouldn’t catch it.
Chapter three
The evening had gone by quickly. A dinner of fish fingers followed by a few hours of innocuous reality television and it was soon everybody’s bedtime. Nick had intended to put James to bed right after dinner, but ended up changing his mind. He had become so feverish and fitful that Nick decided to let him stay up just so he could keep an eye on him. Deana had started to feel grim, too. She’d spent the evening reaching for the tissue box every few minutes. By the end of the night the living room had started to feel more like an infirmary than a place to relax. Nick assumed it was only a matter of time before he succumbed to the dreaded ‘lergy’ himself.
Just after ten O’ clock, Deana had carried James upstairs – he remained asleep in her arms – and then joined Nick in bed a few minutes later. She took a handful of flu capsules from the bedside drawer and dry swallowed them with a brief gagging sound. Then she dragged herself into her no-sex ‘frumpy’ pyjamas and was snoring loudly before even ten minutes had passed.
Nick had then been left staring at the ceiling and struggling to find sleep himself. He was dreading another workday like the one he’d just had. The minutes had seemed like hours and the stress of not meeting target had been constantly on his mind.
He was nothing but a glorified salesman, really, but sometimes Head Office made his job as stressful as being a brain surgeon. Targets for this, targets for that, working weekends, opening evenings; they expected him to live, breathe, and eat the phone industry. But the truth was that he didn’t give two shits about the company he worked for. It was a paycheque, nothing more, and he hated every minute he spent there.
It’s my life, though. Nobody else to blame.
Dropping out of University of Birmingham was perhaps his biggest mistake – his parents would certainly say so – but he had little faith that it would have resulted in anything different if he had graduated. He would still be the same, unambitious dropout that he’d always been; always taking the path of least resistance. He could have been a teacher or a journalist by now, but instead he had allowed himself to fall short and become a middle manager in retail. It was a comfortable, respectable living, but deeply unfulfilling. But it was totally his own fault.