DAY 49
Support someone
“Woo! Go, Dr. Quarani! Go!” Annie jumped up and down, waving enthusiastically. She’d waited for over an hour to catch him jogging past, lean and focused. He didn’t seem to hear her, just kept pounding forward. His running gear wasn’t even sweaty. She turned the phone around so Polly could see via Skype. “That’s him.” All around them people were pressed against the marathon barriers, waving charity banners, shouting encouragement. The atmosphere was alive with positivity—Annie was worried she might even catch it. She’d brought Buster along on his lead, and he barked ferociously every time someone in costume went by. Annie hadn’t realized that being with a dog made people smile at you. It was disconcerting, but she couldn’t say it was unpleasant.
Polly was still mooning after Dr. Quarani. “He’s got such a nice bum in that Lycra.”
“Poll!”
“Well, he does. Where’s Dr. McGrumpy?”
“Not sure. Oh, look, here he comes now! Woo! Go, Dr. Max!” Dr. Max was struggling up the final stretch. His face was so engorged with blood Annie wondered if he was going to burst. He was absolutely plastered in sweat, the logo of the hospital trust obscured by dark patches—despite his grumbling, he had, of course, been raising money for it all along. “Keep going!” she shouted. “You can do it!”
“I don’t think he can do it, you know. I’ll tell them to clear a bed in A&E,” Polly said, her voice coming tinnily out of the phone.
“Shh,” Annie chided. “He’s doing his best.” She waved at him as he limped on, brows knit fiercely and shoulders pumping forward.
“‘Oh, I love you, Dr. McGrumpy! I definitely won’t look up your kilt if you collapse!’”
“Shut up, Polly!”
DAY 50
Quit your job
“I’m sorry, Annie, but we do need to get the bottom of this.”
Annie’s stomach fell away. She’d been called into Jeff’s office, where Sharon was sitting at the Chat Area, an expression on her face like she was chewing a rotten sardine. Today she wore outfit three—an oversize jumper printed with pictures of puppies, and sprinkled all over with hairs from actual dogs. Annie tried not to sneeze just thinking about it. “What’s the trouble, Jeff?”
Jeff looked even more awkward. “Um. Annie. I’ve just seen an online film thing.”
Oh, no. Her stomach sank so far it was knocking about in the region of her ankles. Not the stupid Thorpe Park thing. “Oh.”
“Is that you?” Jeff spun his laptop, which had the YouTube video on it, paused on a shot of Annie, mouth open, screaming.
“It’s hard to say,” she said evasively. “It’s quite blurry.”
“I have it on good authority that it’s you. That you went there, to a theme park, when you were supposedly off sick.”
“I don’t know who that Kent fellow was what rang up,” Sharon muttered. “Sounded so nice and all.”
“But you can’t prove that’s me,” Annie said, keeping her voice light and distant.
“No. We’d have to go through an official disciplinary process, and give you a written warning. It would take months. If you’d own up, however, we could leave it with a verbal warning. Three verbal warnings equal one written warning. Two written warnings mean a hearing...”
A familiar feeling was coming over Annie. Sitting in Jeff’s office with its smell of protein shakes and Pot Noodles, being told off for not smiling enough, or being sad, or not wanting to talk about other people’s healthy babies. In short, for being human, in a place that wanted to turn her into an invoice-processing robot. It sat on her chest, the knowledge that she could never change this place, its red tape, its rules. She wouldn’t even be able to get the dead plants taken away without a health-and-safety briefing. She couldn’t face one more day of lifting up her hand to key in the door code. Not one more day. “I can’t do this,” she heard herself say.
“Own up? I must say, Annie—”
“No. All this. Jeff...Sharon...why do we do this, day after day? Come into the horrible office—your homes are nicer than this, I hope? Don’t smell of gone-off food and have dirt on the desks that hasn’t been cleaned off in four years? They must be. But we spend most of our waking hours here—more than we’re even paid for—and we don’t even like any of the people we have to work with.”
Jeff opened his mouth as if he was going to protest this, then didn’t.
Annie went on. “What’s the point? Why do we commute for hours on crammed trains, with everyone angry and miserable, and sit at a desk all day in a dirty nasty place, and eat limp sandwiches and Cup A Soups, and ignore each other, and get sciatica, and then go home and sit in front of shows about baking and dancing and other people watching TV?”
“We ain’t all made of money,” Sharon sniffed. “Some of us need the cash.”
“No, we’re not. But why do we live here in London, where we just work to pay for travel and rent on horrible damp flats on the tenth floor? And surely we can find something else to do with our lives, something that pays? You, Jeff. I know you have dreams. You want to be the big man in local government. Big salary. Move out to Surrey. Propose to one of the women at your gym, with the spray tans and boob jobs. Send your kids to private school, give them what you never had.”
He gaped. “How did you—”
“But is it worth it? Is it worth spending your thirties pretending to care about dish rotas and photocopier etiquette and who stamps a little bit of paper? Just to get a good pension one day?”
“Annie! I must ask you to stop—this is very unprofessional.”
“I know. I know it is. It’s being professional that got me in this mess in the first place.” Annie felt like she was falling, and sliding, like gravity had her and she couldn’t stop even if she wanted to. Her fears were clinging to her legs, shrieking. How would she pay the mortgage? How would she look after her mum? How would she buy chocolate? But as Polly said, when you were dying, it really focused your mind. And Annie was dying, too. Maybe not in the next one hundred days, sure, but sometime, and in that context spending even one more hour in this office was too many. “I quit,” she heard herself say. “I can’t work here anymore. I’m sorry. It’s not your fault. Well, it is sort of Sharon’s fault, but I guess she can’t really help it.”
Sharon gaped. “You cheeky mare!”
Jeff was blinking hard, trying to keep up. “Annie, there’s a process, there’s a notice period, and—”
“I know that. But if I walk out right now, for example, is there anything you can do?”
“But...references...your final pay...”
“I don’t care about those.” If she was going to burn her life to the ground, she may as well douse it in petrol. “So, can you stop me? If I literally just go now?”
“No, but—I mean, leaving dos! We usually get a card and a whip-round...”
“That’s kind, Jeff. But I can’t go through it, pretending we all loved each other and you’ll miss me. I need to start being more honest in my life. So...bye.”