All I know for sure is that I don’t want it in my space; the emotions it brings with it are not invited.
Jaw clenched, I walk over to the wastepaper basket and peek inside it, just to double-check. It’s empty. No black socks, no unread letters. Will has never been here, he’s never dumped me here, he’s never woken up and kissed me and left me here. That bit of my history has yet to be written. Right now, it’s just an empty wastepaper basket with any number of future contents possible, and maybe—if I’m really careful, if I play my cards right—some of them don’t have to happen at all.
Firmly, I rip the envelope in half and throw it in the bin again.
And maybe some of them do.
12
By the next morning, I have a full plan.
Flying by the seat of your pants is a massively overrated aviation term, in my opinion. People act like it’s an interesting personality trait, but there’s a reason we have maps, and guidelines, and approved airline routes, and it’s to make sure that—much like Douglas Corrigan, the American pilot for whom the phrase was first coined—we don’t plan to fly from Brooklyn to California and somehow end up in Dublin.
Thanks to the gift of time travel, it seems that I now have four whole months to save my relationship, my living situation and my career. And I’m going to do whatever it takes to get there. As long as I can work out roughly where I went wrong the first time round, I should end up in a much happier place.
Or, at the very least, on the right bloody continent.
“Cassandra!” A pause. “Where the hell has Cassandra gone now?”
I’m in the office toilet, hiding.
Which is less a part of The Plan and more a realization that I may have screwed up The Plan already and it’s only nine thirty in the morning. The first thing I saw when I arrived at work was a handwritten orange note stuck to my computer monitor—from Barry, asking to see me—and despite being a fully grown adult, I feel exactly like I’ve been called to see the headmaster for a detention. I’m assuming, anyway. It never happened at school; I was an excellent student.
Quickly, I blast the tap and run my hands under it.
Then I exit the bathroom, shaking them to suggest that I have just been urinating for thirty-five minutes and not staring blankly at the monkeys in the wallpaper, wondering whether a jungle might be a less confusing environment.
“Bloody hell, woman,” Barry snaps. “Use a hand dryer.”
“No, thank you,” I say politely, wiping my hands on my pink Thursday jumpsuit and regretting it immediately. “Harvard University found two hundred and fifty-four colonies of bacteria growing in hand dryers, and they are unnecessarily loud. How may I help you today?”
Barry smiles. “Did you have a nice holiday yesterday?”
“Yes, I did,” I say with considerable relief. “Thank you so much for asking.”
“I’m being sarcastic, Cassandra.” The smile on Barry’s face disappears and he abruptly resembles corned beef. “I am really starting to lose my patience with your attitude now. Your email yesterday was frankly unacceptable. You can’t just ditch work for the afternoon whenever you feel like it, no matter how many vacation days you’ve stored up. And don’t think I haven’t noticed how many Idea Hurricanes you have now excused yourself from, Cassandra. They are requisite. That means not optional. Frankly, I don’t give a toss how you feel about them personally.They are a part of this agency’s ethos, an Opportunity to Effectively Ideate Together and Touch Base on What Makes Our Clients Tick in a Big Picture kind of way, and you will attend.”
I am certain that Barry has a list of corporate jargon stuck to his wall that he studies on a daily basis, because I’ve heard humans talk before and this isn’t it.
“But—”
“It’s on the website,” my boss cuts in, much more loudly. “In animated neon lettering I paid an embarrassing amount of money for. The official agency ethos is not Collectively Pooling Our Creative Resources, Everyone but Cassandra Dankworth, Who Thinks She’s Too Flaming Good for Them.”
“But that’s not what I said,” I object in genuine surprise. “I simply pointed out that you would be paying me for doing no work, which seems very unethical. It feels like stealing from the company.”
“Cassandra—”
“Nobody does anything.” I hold out my hands as a desperate plea for just a little bit of rational thinking. “It’s not just me. It’s a three-hour session of talking about their private lives and eating biscuits. Half of that particular one was spent discussing who hooked up with whom on the last Away Day. I just don’t think it’s an efficient use of our resources, and it makes me extremely uncomfortable.”
I’m now becoming slowly aware that the entire agency has gone silent and they have swiveled in their chairs to look at me.
I can feel my whole body fold inward, like a piece of origami.
“I don’t understand,” I finish desperately, trying to keep my voice low so my colleagues can’t hear it. “I’m just being honest, Barry. I saved you and our clients money and myself time. That’s a good thing, isn’t it?”
“I give up.” Barry sighs through gritted teeth, turning back toward his little glass box in the corner. “It’s like talking to a brick wall. Attend Idea Hurricanes. No more impromptu afternoons off. Or it’ll be a mute point, Cassandra, because the rest of your PR career will be one long holiday.”
“Moot,” I say automatically.
“What?”
“Moot. You said ‘mute.’ They’re two different words.”
“For fuck’s sake, Cassandra,” Barry sighs, closing his door behind him.
Clearing my throat, I go back to my desk and awkwardly arrange everything into straight lines until I can feel the glares from my colleagues slowly move away from the center of my forehead. I can see waves of sticky orange resentment seeping out of them like Fanta spills, trickling across the open-plan office, but I’m not entirely sure I understand why. They know I’m not lying. For our last brainstorm, seven of them brought beers and popcorn.
Everything is suddenly too bright, too loud, too close, the air is starting to hurt my skin, so I quickly grab my noise-canceling headphones, pop them over my head, pick up my pen and focus on remembering everything I can about my first solo meeting with SharkSkin. We’ve only just won the contract, and the brand hasn’t launched; Jack doesn’t despise me yet. He doesn’t like me—there’s definitely discomfort there—but it hasn’t quite hardened into the shriveling, withering sensation it eventually turns into.
As I write, the fizzing in my chest slowly starts to settle.
My plan is going to work. I can do this—I know I can. I can adjust my future. With the lessons I have learned over the last few months, I must be able to find a way to fix the career I accidentally obliterated the last t—
My neck prickles and I look up in irritation.
The top half of Sophie’s face is moving, but I have literally no idea how long she’s been talking to me. It could be minutes, could be hours. I could have been sitting here for six years with my body growing into my office chair, and frankly, when I’m this focused, I still wouldn’t have noticed. With a painful wrench—like being dragged by my hair out of a big well—I tug my headphones down.
“What?”
“—canes?” Sophie punctuates her keyboard with one jubilant finger. “I think they’re actually really helpful. Yesterday Grace thought of dogs in capes, and isn’t that just so original? I don’t know if they’re going to use it, but it was a lot of fun. Teamwork is super important in a job like this.”
I stare at her. Sarcasm? “Mmm.”
With a sense of relief, I go back to my work, but Sophie’s eyes are on me again; I lift one headphone.
“—brand,” she continues blithely. “It’s so fun. I’d love to work with such a challenging client and come up with something that might impress them.”
“Sure,” I say, waiting with the headphone held in the air to see if she’s done yet.
Nope. She’s still talking.
“But I’ve been put on this stupid travel company and they’re happy with everything,” she sighs. “Like, stop sending me to swanky hotels in exotic places all the time, you know? So annoying. I just want to stay in London. Hahaha.”
I glance in irritation at my watch: Jack and Gareth will be here any moment and, from what I remember of this meeting, I’m going to need every single second of mental preparation to stop myself accidentally driving my career into a wall again.
“Sophie,” I say as politely as I can, “when my headphones are on, it’s a pretty clear visual indication that I do not wish to engage in pointless chitchat.”
“Oh,” she says, smile disappearing. “Sorry.”
“SharkSkin are here,” the receptionist announces, and with a suddenly dry mouth, I hang my headphones back on their little hook and grab my file. Everything around me is turning up, as if a switch is being steadily twisted: ceiling lights, coffee smells, the little noises of my colleagues bumping hellishly against each other like a band full of ten-year-olds on recorders.