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Delia remembered that tale. The gruesome incident happened in 1989. Ann was only obsessed with expiry dates for food, obviously.
‘Was I that heavy?’ Jules said, quietly, and Delia said quickly, ‘Not at all! Not even slightly! Ann has an old injury.’
Yeah, a sprain of the manners.
‘Do you need First Aid?’ Roger said to Ann.
‘No, I am used to pain,’ Ann said, with a whiff of burning martyr.
‘Who’s our next volunteer?’ he said, trying to restore focus.
‘Shouldn’t you do exercises where I can take part?’ Ann said, beady eyes on a wary Roger. His eyes were suddenly full of: oh my God, I am going to be sued up the pipe on a discrimination and disability ticket.
Delia nearly laughed out loud. Ann truly was a rattlesnake in a Per Una waterfall cardigan.
Roger went into hushed conference with Linda and when they concluded, Linda said: ‘OK, we’re going to move on to a great fun exercise, my favourite. We all tell everyone one fact about ourselves that the group doesn’t know, for discussion! Here’s mine, to kick you off. I’ve seen Del Amitri nearly fifty times in concert and am a founder member of a fan club, The Del Boys and Girls.’
‘Never heard of them,’ Ann said.
After the excitement of Ann squawking, Delia’s hot resentment of the team-building games returned with full force.
Then irritation turned to boredom. Feigning interest in a colleague’s car-booting hobby or childhood sporting achievement wasn’t easy.
As they discussed her diffident gay colleague Tim’s trip to Reykjavik, Delia’s mind roamed the room and wandered out of the window. And then – KABOOM – something suddenly burst into her front brain at the most inappropriate moment.
Like a music hall act leaping through the curtains with splayed jazz hands – ta dah! – while an audience sat in sepulchral silence.
It had happened in the first days of February, earlier this year. Paul had slung his fisherman’s coat over the banister and Delia had seen a card in an inside pocket slide out. She wouldn’t usually have been nosy, but she could spy a teddy bear face. It couldn’t have been for Paul’s nephews – Delia ran the birthday admin for him.
‘What’s that?’ She’d tweaked it out, and found a Valentine’s card, a tooth-rottingly sweet, teenage sort of one with teddies stood in a pyramid formation, their rounded bellies each carrying a letter B-E-M-Y-V-A-L-E-N-T-I-N-E.
Paul had blushed damson. Paul never blushed.
‘For me? Aww! Getting slushy in your old age,’ she teased him.
She’d thought it was odd – Paul thinking of Valentine’s Day for once, the choice of that card. He sometimes came home with a bottle of Amaretto on the 14th of February, the choice of beverage in honour of their first meeting, but cards and flowers weren’t Paul’s way.
‘I’ll get you a different one. Not much of a surprise,’ he’d demurred. Sure enough, Delia received Monet’s lilies instead, although she insisted she liked the cheesy teddies.
Delia added the clues together. It had been for Celine. She had been getting romantic gestures long denied to Delia. And February to May: they’d been seeing each other longer than three months.
She felt as if she’d been disembowelled with a melon baller.
‘Delia. Now you,’ Roger said, turning to face her.
‘What?’ she said, blankly. It wasn’t meant to be insolent; she just felt so howlingly empty. She thought it didn’t matter that work didn’t mean anything because home was everything. Now, she had nothing.
‘Please tell everyone here a fact about you we don’t know.’
Delia blinked. That they didn’t know? Her life?
Her mouth was dry.
‘Last Friday, I proposed to my boyfriend. Then he sent a text meant for another woman to me. It turned out he’s been having an affair. We’ve split up.’
The circle of faces registered a mixture of fascination and astonishment.
‘That’s hardly appropriate,’ Roger said, into the ensuing silence.
‘You said something you don’t know?’ Delia said.
‘Yes! Something we don’t know. Not … that.’
‘Was it meant to be something work related?’ Delia said. She was in a space beyond caring about professional interests or social embarrassment. It was like that time on a campsite when she was so hideously ill with flu she didn’t care about doing a noisy Portaloo poo.
‘No!’ Roger said.
She dispassionately noted that even though she wasn’t trying to be clever, he looked wrong-footed and maybe even intimidated.
‘It should be something innocuous. We don’t need to know about your dirty laundry.’
Dirty laundry?
Delia swallowed and assessed her surroundings. This room, these people, this job. What was it all for, this putting up and shutting up and sucking up? Where did it get you?
‘Well, that’s bullshit. You asked for something personal you didn’t know and I told you something. Now it’s not good enough. Being cheated on isn’t good enough either but I have to live with it. Don’t play stupid “getting to know you” games and then complain about getting to know someone.’
Roger boggled. Everyone else sat bolt upright and poised, perfectly immobile, like Red Setter bookends. Linda looked like she’d been slapped. Ann was enthralled, having forgotten about her osteopathic agony.
‘Here’s something else you don’t know about me. I’m leaving.’
Roger snorted. ‘Then I need you to follow me upstairs and we’ll discuss your notice period.’
‘I’ve saved all my holiday for the honeymoon I’m not having any more, which is offset against my notice period. So I don’t have a notice period. This is it.’
Silence.
Roger stared at Delia. The room’s attention had now switched to him, like Centre Court at Wimbledon, to see his return volley. Roger pushed his glasses up his nose. He cleared his throat.
‘The council has only just paid to send you on that health and safety course. We’ve nursed a viper at our breast.’
Delia was going to call ahead and say ‘Surprise! I’ve left my job and will be walking into our house at an unusual time of day,’ then asked herself why she was doing it.
She didn’t owe Paul the courtesy. In fact, who was Delia really protecting? If there was anything to interrupt, she needed to know. She didn’t think Paul would risk doing it in their bed when she still had her key, but her parameters for what was or wasn’t Paulness had changed.
Delia felt cold trepidation as she opened the front door, but there was no noise inside. No Parsnip to greet her, either. Paul must be walking him, or he’d taken him to the pub. Delia wondered if Celine had ever petted him, and the rage surged again. She’d be checking Parsnip’s fur for any unfamiliar perfume.
Her phone beeped – a nervous text from Aled’s partner Gina, asking if she was OK. Too little,