‘Well, you’re a shy one.’ Sandra laughed but Keisha could see she was hurt. She understood how that was – it’d taken her a while not to expect Ruby to come over and hug her like she used to. She stuck her hands under her arms so she wouldn’t try to hold the kid.
‘Come on, my sweetypie, home time.’ Keisha’s mum folded her granddaughter into her chest, and it was right, Keisha had to admit. You would see the two of them, and even though they were both light-skinned enough, you’d say, oh yeah, black granny, black grandkid. It looked right. That was the problem. That was when everything had started to go wrong.
‘We’ll get sweets, eh? Fruit Pastilles, ice lolly?’ Puffing, Mercy let the girl slide down. Ruby’s face puckered, thinking about what sweets to have, no doubt, and for a moment Keisha wished it was her going home with her mum, the safeness of it, eating sweets in front of Friday cartoons. Or even that she was the one buying, saying to Ruby, You have to brush your teeth after.
She wanted to say something to Ruby. It was the first time she’d seen her in weeks; Chris didn’t like her going to visit. She wanted to say something, but what was there? Nothing. Fuck all. She waited till Mercy and her granddaughter had wobbled far enough down the corridor, and then set off fast in the opposite direction.
Charlotte
‘So, Charlotte – keeping busy? Not long now, eh?’
Charlotte was by now an expert at minimising one computer window while beaming a large smile at her boss and calling up a document on the branding of a new rice-cake snack. ‘A week tomorrow.’
‘So we shouldn’t count on seeing you down the boozer after work?’ He leaned over the partition, so close she was breathing his aftershave.
She managed to look regretful. ‘Oh, sorry, no. We just have so much to do – you know how it is.’
He waved his empty coffee cup. ‘How about I make you a cup of the hard stuff, at least, before you abandon us?’
‘I’ll do it, Simon, you must be swamped,’ she said, as she knew he expected.
Filling the kettle at the tiny sink area, Charlotte sneaked a look at the clock. 4.06 p.m. She would be out of here soon, for an increasingly rare free weekend with Dan. It was a lie that they had plans. For the past month Dan had crashed into bed at nine, worn out from fourteen-hour days, and she’d sat up poring over wedding magazines and stationery designs. It felt like they’d been passing in the corridor for so long. But not tonight. It was going to be a proper romantic evening in, talking, being together. She’d make sure of it.
As she brought him his coffee, Simon was standing over the new girl – what was her name again? Tory, that was it – his crotch pressed into the back of her ergonomic chair as he pointed to something on the screen. Charlotte remembered it – she remembered that part of Simon a bit better than she wished.
‘Coffee,’ she said brightly, passing him the mug he always had to have, the one with the crest of his Oxford college on it, to remind everyone he was an intellectual, even if he wrote copy for cereal ads.
‘Oh, Tory,’ she said. ‘I wanted a quick chat with you, about the Snax rebrand?’ Like every woman in the office, all Charlotte’s statements were questions, rising up at the end. It showed friendliness, a willingness to be contradicted. She didn’t notice she did it any more.
Simon withdrew. ‘You’ve got it now, Tory. I’ll leave you ladies to it.’ He strutted off in his Prada cardigan, drips of coffee catching in his beard.
Tory looked worried. ‘God, it’s a bit dodge, isn’t it? His you-know-what was, like, millimetres from my armpit.’
Charlotte pushed back her curly hair, the colour of very good old gold, and imparted some wisdom. ‘It’s mostly harmless. But listen, if he asks you for a drink, make sure there’s other people there too. Like, seriously.’
The other girl laughed uncertainly and Charlotte felt pleased with herself, how she knew her way round this office, how she could handle Simon like a little lamb, after hard-learned lessons. She’d done it now, and she wouldn’t have to go back and be like this Tory, clueless. ‘It’ll be OK. Don’t worry.’
4.15 p.m. Surreptitiously she opened her table-planning software. Yes, the rebranding of seventy-calorie snack