Peony Place. Jules Wake

never heard him speak like that before.

      I stared at him for a moment before finding the words and it was only fear that gave them a voice.

      ‘But a month? That’s a long time. I can’t be off for a month. Can’t I just have the medication for my blood pressure? I’ll try to take it a bit easier.’

      Didn’t he understand that if I took a month off my career could be over? People at my level didn’t take time off for stress.

      ‘If I believed you for a minute, I might consider it. This has been a long time coming, Claire. The last time you came to see me, I gave you the benefit of the doubt because you said it had been a particularly busy month. I can’t overlook it again. You need to look at your whole lifestyle. Start eating properly. Taking more exercise. And in the short term taking some time away from work.’

      ‘But—’

      He held up a hand. ‘If I said you had a broken leg and couldn’t walk on it for a month, what would you do?’

      I stared mutinously at him.

      ‘Your mind needs a rest. The work will be still be there. In fact, you need to talk to your HR people about your workload. You’ve said yourself that the department is a person down. They need to sort that out.’

      Well of course they did, but complaining about such things was below my paygrade. I was the capable, efficient one. People like me did not get signed off with stress.

      Apparently I was wrong. They did. Starting with immediate effect.

      Feeling as if I was having an out of body experience, I left the doctor’s surgery and went home via the post office, standing for a full five minutes in front of the post box before I finally committed the toxic sick note to its open mouth so that it could wing its way to the HR department. Then I had to make the embarrassing phone call to my boss, Alastair, during which I had to admit the shameful truth. Me, Claire Harrison, rising star, had been mown down by stress. It was all I could do not to cry down the phone. He was surprisingly sympathetic and actually said he’d been a little worried about me and to take as much time off as I felt I needed since I was a valued member of staff. A small part of me wanted to say, ‘so why the bloody hell haven’t you done more about recruiting the missing body,’ but it wasn’t the sort of thing you said to your boss, no matter how understanding he sounded.

      And now I was left, swollen eyed and lost, wondering what on earth I was going to do with myself. I couldn’t even phone Mum and invite myself into one of her soothing hugs because she was presently bobbing on a large boat probably somewhere in the Atlantic. She and Dad had left Southampton over a week ago.

      ‘Claire?’ The voice made me lift my head. I realised I must have looked a right idiot standing in the middle of the street, my mobile in my hand, with a vacant expression on my face. ‘Claire? What are you doing?’

      My sister peered suspiciously at me. ‘Shouldn’t you be at work? Greasing the wheels of industry and making sackfuls of money?’

      ‘I’ve been to the doctor.’ Already I felt as if I was skiving.

      ‘Oh God, you’re not ill, are you?’ She peered at my saggy, red eyes. ‘Is it serious?’

      And once again, completely against my control, tears flowed like tea from a leaky teapot.

      ‘It’s not cancer, is it?’

      How like Alice to immediately jump to the worst conclusion.

      ‘No. I’ve…’ I could hardly bring myself to say it. In fact, she was the last person I wanted to admit it to. Our relationship was such that she’d probably say it was karma or something but I didn’t have the wherewithal to lie; I felt too battered, as if I’d just been rescued from a shipwreck. All that crying, probably, and so I said it: ‘I’ve been signed off with stress.’

      ‘Oh,’ she said with a slight air of disappointment as if to say, is that all?. Then her eyes brightened with sudden beady avarice. ‘Do you want to go to The Friendly Bean for a coffee?’

      Even as listless and drained as I felt, like the last lone piece of spaghetti abandoned in the pan, some small part of my brain thought, that’s odd. Her response was quite un-Alice-like but I allowed myself to be steered down the street and across the road into the park, perhaps because I didn’t know what else to do.

      The Friendly Bean, though it was situated in the middle of Victoria Park, was the place to go in Churchstone. It was a funky café run by Sascha, a statuesque young woman with wild, thick blonde curls piled up on top of her head, secured by a succession of paisley scarves that changed with the seasons. The old Victorian pavilion was eclectically furnished with a mix of church pews, softened by plump velvet cushions, old-fashioned school desks, stools made from tractor seats which were more comfortable than they appeared, and worn sofas that welcomed you into their lumpy embrace. It was always teeming with customers. This morning was no exception but Alice made a beeline for an empty corner with a battered leather chesterfield armchair and a padded stool, plumping for the armchair and calling over her shoulder, ‘Mine’s a cappuccino.’

      Having a clear purpose stirred me from my fug, with the quick observation that Alice had neatly manoeuvred me into paying. I should have realised that altruism had little to do with her quick invitation.

      I handed her the coffee and sat down on the stool next to her, taking a grateful sip of my own Americano. The noise and bustle of The Friendly Bean with its yummy mummies and smattering of people working at laptops made me feel more grounded and a bit more normal, although a headache was digging in, its tight bands of pain circling my skull.

      ‘So. Signed off. Stress. How long for?’ Alice’s sharp interest was palpable as she studied me, her nose almost quivering like a squirrel’s.

      I sighed, not quite believing it. Nothing seemed real at the moment. It was as if I were floating through fog. ‘A month.’ A whole month. What on earth was I going to do with myself? The thought of it was causing me more anxiety than going to work had been doing for the last… longer than a week, I realised, at last facing up to the truth. I’d had this about-to-step-off-a-cliff feeling for the last two… go on then, three months. In my usual overachieving way, I’d been successful at masking it.

      ‘A month. Will they pay you?’

      ‘I guess so.’ I hadn’t even thought about it. Sick pay wasn’t something I’d ever had to consider before.

      ‘Well that’s good. You can still enjoy yourself then.’

      ‘Mmm.’ I nodded while thinking, enjoy myself? Doing what?

      ‘So what are you going to do with yourself?’

      Why did she have to ask that? My stomach knotted itself like crazy macramé. What indeed? But I’d only just walked out of the surgery; I think I was still in shock.

      ‘I know.’ She straightened as if the thought had just light-bulbed its way into her head, at which point I knew her invitation to coffee had had an agenda.

      ‘You can look after the girls and I can go to India.’ Her beam was brilliant, her eyes sparkling with enthusiasm and delight. ‘That will give you something to do.’

      Funny how Alice managed to make it sound as if she were doing me a huge favour.

      ‘I can, can I?’ I raised a sarcastic eyebrow feeling a little more like myself. This was so typical of Alice.

      ‘Yes. It’s perfect.’

      I stared at her, noting the heightened colour on her cheeks as she clapped her hands together. ‘Serendipity. It was meant to happen.’

      ‘And how do you figure that?’ Sometimes I did think she was barking mad, although more often than not, she was just manipulative.

      ‘You being signed off at exactly